"Ceremonial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seen it. She had expected an extreme dignity, an almost ceremonial sinking back, a slow ebbing, but this was like a shot from a bow. It stunned her. And for some time she remained stunned, while the doctor and her secretary and the hotel people did all that they deemed seemly on this great occasion. She let them send ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Each actor received four and a half yards of scarlet cloth to wear as a cloak on the occasion, and in the document authorising the grant Shakespeare's name stands first on the list. {232b} The dramatist Dekker was author of a somewhat bombastic account of the elaborate ceremonial, which rapidly ran through three editions. On April 9, 1604, the King gave further proof of his friendly interest in the fortunes of his actors by causing an official letter to be sent to the Lord ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... "living tomb" as they called it, meant, especially to a man of high caste, whether of the right or left hand section, the total loss to him of all that was worth living for. He could never be received in intercourse again with his own people, and so strong are the caste ideas of ceremonial uncleanness that it would be defilement to his friends and relations even to offer to him sustenance of any kind, and he was in point of fact excommunicated and avoided. Happily this dread of caste defilement has now, by railway communication over the country and equalization of classes under our ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... pottery of a brilliant white, lacking only the glaze which would have made it into porcelain. Patterns were stamped on the surface, often resembling the patterns on bronze articles. This ware was used only for formal, ceremonial purposes. For daily use there was also ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... in debate, not in a straightforward manner, but in a sort of respectful insinuating way which I already adopted. He explained to me that he was going to Saint-Germain to pay an ordinary visit; that on this occasion there would be some change in the ceremonial; explained the matter, and enlarged with eagerness on the necessity of not ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... the bacchanalia in the saloon of the palace, the divan was covered with young patricians. Maxentius might come, and the city throng to receive him; the legion might descend from Mount Sulpius in glory of arms and armor; from Nymphaeum to Omphalus there might be ceremonial splendors to shame the most notable ever before seen or heard of in the gorgeous East; yet would the many continue to sleep ignominiously on the divan where they had fallen or been carelessly tumbled by the indifferent slaves; that they would ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... paid to the relics of saints, it is not surprising that the consecrated wafer or host received the most extravagant marks of adoration. The king himself was often foremost in public demonstrations in its honor. Louise de Savoie, mother of Francis the First, relates in her quaint diary the pompous ceremonial observed in restoring to its original position a pyx containing the host which had been stolen from the chapel of the palace of St. Germain-en-Laye. The culprit had suffered the customary penalty, having had his hand cut off and being afterward burned alive. In the expiatory procession ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... ceremonial. President Hardouin thus opened the debate: "Gentlemen, there is no need to explain the situation, we all know ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... the King, "I have no objection that leeches should wrap their words in mist, and pretend to derive knowledge from the stars; but when you bid Richard Plantagenet fear that a danger will fall upon HIM from some idle omen, or omitted ceremonial, you speak to no ignorant Saxon, or doting old woman, who foregoes her purpose because a hare crosses the path, a raven croaks, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... associated with the Danish Royal family; for a long time the Crown Prince used to go regularly to his flat in Queen's Crossway Street, to be instructed by him in political economy. He was consequently used to Court ceremonial. ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... "They no find you here. This great place—what you call holy place. Here all white robes stay," and she showed where were piled many of the garments of white fur. The place was evidently a storehouse for the ceremonial robes. ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... sense as do the Sagas of the Scandinavians, furnishes us unchronological but interesting and more or less real narratives of events which have been glorified by the poets and artists. The ancient codes of law and of ceremonial procedure are of great value, while the "Norito" are excellent mirrors in which to see reflected the religion called Shint[o] on the more active ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... would register the quick motions of man. In Margaret's eyes Mrs. Wilcox had escaped registration. She had gone out of life vividly, her own way, and no dust was so truly dust as the contents of that heavy coffin, lowered with ceremonial until it rested on the dust of the earth, no flowers so utterly wasted as the chrysanthemums that the frost must have withered before morning. Margaret had once said she "loved superstition." It was not true. Few women had tried more earnestly ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... possible. I found myself under the stomach of a fallen dromedary, and had great difficulty in extricating myself; the boy Mohammed emerged from the tumult with a bleeding nose. Schooled by adversity, we bided our time ere approaching to cast the seven stones required by the ceremonial. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... way into your heart in a way to delight our own Father Finn of the Paulist choristers. The village cure—Monsignor of the Diocese of Sens—in those rich full tones that centuries of congregational singing have given to France, gives voice to the Ceremonial Beauty "ever ancient yet ever new." Very little need, there, for books; most young and old sing Introit, Credo, Preface and Agnus Dei from memory, artistically exact ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... first, but even then there was no provision for the students' lodgings. They could not live in colleges, as there were none; in fact, the only university buildings in existence, which probably served various ceremonial occasions, was a congeries of buildings called the Carolinum, after its founder. These buildings stood in the Old Town, and there were probably others used for university purposes dotted about ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... stated seasons, rigorously abstain from animal food, not only on Wednesdays and Fridays but also during Lent and the other long fasts, make occasional pilgrimages to the holy shrines and in a word fulfill carefully the ceremonial observance which they suppose necessary for ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... Canterbury, is known to have sat up all one night, in which, aided by her daughter, she had a copy made. I have the strongest reason for believing that one other person made a copy; for the description of the first twenty-four hours after the marriage ceremonial has been in my hands. Not until after the death of Lady Byron, and Hobhouse, who was the poet's literary executor, can the poet's Autobiography see the light; but I am certain it ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... became a daily ceremonial. Granville's servant, a favorite with his master, and the cause of more than one quarrel over his irreligious and dissipated conduct, would even go into his master's room, as a matter of form, when the Count was not ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... by those who even profess themselves Christians, and devout lovers of the sacred oracles, "How can you read the book of Leviticus? What can you find in the dry details of the ceremonial law to detain you months in its study and call forth such expressions of interest?" Such will probably pass by this article when they find themselves invited again to Horeb. Turn back, friends. You are not the only ones who have excused themselves from a feast. And we—we will extend our ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... buildings. Very rarely, however, especially in large towns, was the service of the gods thus limited to the strictly necessary. Around the sanctuary, or "divine house," was grouped a series of chambers in which sacrificial and ceremonial objects were stored, as flowers, perfumes, stuffs, and precious vessels. In advance of this block of buildings were next built one or more halls supported on columns; and in advance of these came a courtyard, where the priests and devotees ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... shoulders with King Richard's bunch, Or wrap himself in Hamlet's inky cloak, And strut, and storm, and straddle, stamp, and stare, To show the world how Garrick did not act, For Garrick was a worshipper himself; He drew the liturgy, and framed the rites And solemn ceremonial of the day, And called the world to worship on the banks Of Avon famed in song. Ah! pleasant proof That piety has still in human hearts Some place, a spark or two not yet extinct. The mulberry-tree was hung with blooming wreaths, The mulberry-tree ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... with reason to forms and ceremonies. If men wish to give unlimited power to their fellow-man, they must keep him separated from ordinary humanity; they must surround him with a continual worship, and, by a constant ceremonial, keep up for him the superhuman part they have granted him. Our masters cannot remain absolute, except on condition of being ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the most dazzling trappings overlaid with fine gold and curiously wrought in mosaic, advanced toward the valley of Ardres. No man, from personal inclinations or personal qualities, was better calculated to sustain his part in a brilliant ceremonial such as then struck the eyes of the spectators. An admirable horseman, tall and muscular, slightly inclined to corpulence, with a red beard and ruddy countenance, Henry VIII was at this time, by the admission of his rivals, the most comely and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... changed its character completely, and the sombre simplicity of the elder Philip's day gave place to a gayety and brilliant ceremonial which were more in accord with the new spirit of the times. Lerma filled the palace at Madrid with brilliant ladies in waiting, for he believed, with the gallant Francis I. of France, that a royal court without women is like a year without spring, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... that, capturing a wife being a proof of bravery, such a method of obtaining a wife would be practised by the strongest men and be admired, while, on the other hand, he considered that "female coyness" was "an important factor" in constituting the more formal kinds of marriage by capture ceremonial.[69] Westermarck, while accepting true marriage by capture, considers that Spencer's statement "can scarcely be disproved."[70] In his valuable study of certain aspects of primitive marriage Crawley, developing the explanation rejected by Fustel de Coulanges, regards the fundamental fact to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... drawing-room or the comforts of the kitchen or the fascinations of the bar, Mr. Simon P. Rattray knew nothing whatever about them. He was a total abstainer you see, and the blue ribbon appeared in his buttonhole on certain important ceremonial days and even on Sundays, and he was known to be interested in the fortunes of a cold, dismal little place built of plaster and presided over by a male Methodist just outside the village limits, known as a "Temperance Hotel." It ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... persuasive, that I should love to share with you the great certainties of those days. How harmonious is death within the natural soil, how admirable is the manner of man's return to the substance of his mother earth, compared with the poverty of funeral ceremonial! Yesterday I thought of those poor dead as forsaken things. But I had been present at the burial of an officer, and it seems to me that Nature is more compassionate than man. Yes indeed, the soldier's death is close to natural things. It is a frank horror, a horror that does not ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... with the same pompous ceremonial. All the pupils, dressed in white, carried wax tapers. For the whole week I had refused to eat. I was pale and had grown thinner, and my eyes looked larger from my perpetual transports, for I went to extremes ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... deity surrounded by many objects, which he strikes to cause thunder. Rattles made of gourds are used for the same purpose with some tribes; or down, etc., may be used in imitation of clouds, and water spurted about to represent rain. In many instances a secret ceremonial object is used,—a bull roarer in the rain making ceremonies. This is an object which, when whirled about, makes a sound in imitation of thunder. It represents a sort of thunder deity and so is associated ...
— The Sex Worship and Symbolism of Primitive Races - An Interpretation • Sanger Brown, II
... never understand the necessity, on active service, for polishing and burnishing steel-work, especially in a country of strong sunlight; and there was certainly nothing in our daily duties that we loathed half so much. For ceremonial parades, of course, you turned out as "posh" as the next man, but in a parched land where you could with difficulty keep your own person clean, it seemed a grievous waste of time and energy polishing bits and chains and stirrup-irons merely for the sake of doing it. ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... counts them equal to three thousand, for the reason that each verse in his book admits of a double and a triple interpretation. In his wisdom he analyzed the laws revealed to Moses, and he assigned reasons for the ritual and ceremonial ordinances of the Torah, which without his explanation had seemed strange. (24) The "forty-nine gates of wisdom" were open to Solomon as they had been to Moses, but the wise king sought to outdo even the wise legislator. He had such confidence in himself ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... piratical horde, amenable to no law but the law of force. The Malays of Sumatra committed a robbery and massacre upon an American vessel. Wretches! they did not then know that JACKSON was President of the United States! and that no distance, no time, no idle ceremonial of treating with robbers and assassins, was to hold back the arm of justice. Commodore Downes went out. His cannon and his bayonets struck the outlaws in their den. They paid in terror and in blood for the outrage which was committed; and the great lesson was taught to these distant pirates—to ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... funerals at Trieste, and there was to be another nine months onward in England. All that can be said is that Lady Burton seemed to draw comfort from pageantry and ceremonial that to most mourners would have been ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... so notable a conversion was fittingly marked by the magnificence of his obsequies. "He was buried," we read, "in great solemnity, the Corporation attending the funeral; and a grand Mass was said over the corpse in the Cathedral Church, which, was finely illuminated." The impressive ceremonial would have gratified vainglorious Mr. Blandy had circumstances permitted ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... owner's lifetime. This is a well-marked feature of early custom, and Du Chaillu has preserved something like the survival of the ritual observances connected with it in his account of the Scandinavian practice. On a visit to Husum he witnessed the ceremonial which attended the immemorial custom of the farm coming into possession of the eldest son, the father still being alive. The following is Mr. Du Chaillu's description, and the details are important: "The dinner being ready, all the members ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... excommunicated those who should use it in churches, and Innocent XII., in 1690, echoed the same anathema. Yet within a few years afterwards travellers reported that same free use of snuff in Romish worship which still astonishes spectators. To see a priest, during the momentous ceremonial of High Mass, enliven the occasion by a voluptuous pinch, is a sight even more astonishing, though perhaps less disagreeable, than the well-used spittoon which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... absolutely indispensable. She must be even more upon her guard than a man in all those niceties of speech, look and manner, which are the especial and indispensable credentials of good breeding. Every little drawing-room ceremonial, all the laws of society, the whole etiquette of hospitality must be familiar to her. And even in these points, artificial though they be, her best guide after all, is that kindness of heart which gives honor where ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... down that those who by their submission to these rites show their belief in the truth and their desire to follow that truth as far as in them lies, shall be called the followers of the faith. So in time it has come about that these ceremonial rites have been held to be the true and only sign of the believer, and the fact that they were but to be the earnest of the beginning and living of a new life has become less and less remembered, till it has faded into nothingness. Instead of the life being ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... attending the examination at the disinterment. Moreover, although it was stated by L'Etoile, that the corpse was re-interred at the public expense—that an advantageous offer of private sculpture was absolutely declined by the family—and that no member of the family attended the ceremonial:—although, I say, all this was asserted by L'Etoile in furtherance of the impression it designed to convey—yet all this was satisfactorily disproved. In a subsequent number of the paper, an attempt was made to throw suspicion upon Beauvais ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... go to Reims. It was necessary also to anticipate the English who had resolved to conduct thither their infant King that he might receive consecration according to the ancient ceremonial.[1337] But if the French had invaded Normandy they would have closed the young Henry's road to Paris and to Reims, a road which was already insecure for him; and it would be childish to maintain that the coronation could not have been postponed ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... Quintem, and had an odd habit of staying at home. They came to New York always on important business, which could not be transacted by any one else, four times a year; and, on those occasions, paid state visits to old Van Quintem, who reciprocated the civility by calling on them, in a ceremonial way, twice every summer. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... parliament, and St. Peter's church, enriched with the royal tombs. At the distance of twenty miles from London is the castle of Windsor, a most delightful retreat of the Kings of England, as well as famous for several of their tombs, and for the ceremonial of the Order of the Garter. This river abounds in swans, swimming in flocks: the sight of them, and their noise, are vastly agreeable to the fleets that meet them in their course. It is joined to the city by a bridge of stone, ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... for the purpose, had just taken the solemn oath which was to ensure public peace, social harmony, and respect for the law for evermore.[3235] Here, probably, as elsewhere, arrangements had been made for an stirring ceremonial; there were young girls dressed in white, and learned and impressionable magistrates were to pronounce philosophical harangues. All at once they discover that the people gathered on the public square are provided ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... at Los Angeles, July 16, 1847, just a year after enlistment, eight days before Brigham Young reached Great Salt Lake. The joyous ceremonial was rather marred by the fact that the muster-out officer was none other than Lieutenant Smith. There was an attempt to keep the entire Battalion in the service, both Kearny and Colonel Mason urging reenlistment. ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... let us suppose eleven days to have elapsed, the welcome news to have arrived at length from Dunstable, and the fair summer morning of life dawning in treacherous beauty after the long night of expectation. No bridal ceremonial had been possible; the marriage had been huddled over like a stolen love-match, and the marriage feast had been eaten in vexation and disappointment. These past mortifications were to be atoned for by a coronation ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... is followed by the bestowal of the Golden Rose, whereafter Cesare, having again kissed the Pope's feet and the Ring of the Fisherman on his finger, has the cap of office replaced upon his head by Burchard himself, and so the ceremonial ends. ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... Ceremonial meeting would be held every week on Monday night, because the girls had so many opportunities to win honors now that a whole month would be too long ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... commandment a special rule to meet the special case. In other words, besides being told what he is not to do (in the more strictly moral sphere of conduct), and what he is to do (in the more strictly ceremonial sphere), Man must be told, in the fullest detail, how he is to do whatever may have to be done in the daily round of his life. Such at least is the aim of legalism. The nets of the Law are woven fine, and flung far ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... the ceremonial weapon tossed the head of Firkked from the point; another Kragan kicked it aside and advanced to wipe the spear-blade with a rag. Von Schlichten took the Spear and gave ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... ceremonial dresses, from figures in the pictures in the Church of Santa Ana, Cuzco, A.D. 1570. From a sketch by ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... half in the persuasive charm of ceremonial, half in the hard procession of account books, the last three years of John's life had passed. On coming of age he had spent a few weeks at Thornby Place, but the place, and especially the country, had appeared to him so grossly protestant—so entirely occupied with the material ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... the visitors had trailed down the long stairway, shouting back their pleasure and gratitude, the wonderful dinner the hamper contained was prepared, and what a delightful ceremonial that was! Did ever any such tantalizing aroma drift upon the air as ascended from the browning turkey? Or did ever potatoes so fill their jackets to bursting? As for the celery—it was like ivory; and the cranberry jelly as transparent and glowing ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... President Shahabuddin AHMED (since 9 October 1996); note-the president's duties are normally ceremonial, but with the 13th amendment to the constitution ("Caretaker Government Amendment"), the president's role becomes significant at times when Parliament is dissolved and a caretaker government is installed - at presidential direction-to ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... knew of the primitive sect, with its early Christian polity, its literal interpretation of Christ's ethics, and its quaint ceremonial of foot-washing; he made something picturesque of that. "The father is a Mammon-worshipper, pure and simple. I suppose the young ladies go to church, but I don't know where. They ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of the European craft was concocted by Cagliostro, then it follows that he must have borrowed from the Chinese, and not the Chinese from him. The use of the square and compasses as symbols of moral rectitude, which forms such a striking feature of European masonry, finds no place in the ceremonial of the Triad Society, although recognized as such in Chinese literature from the days of Confucius, and still so employed in the every-day colloquial ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... ceremonial with which the festival had opened was over, and down the aisles on either side, past the family altars, with their innumerable candles and lanterns and censers,—ceaselessly smoking in memorial of the honored dead,—the brothers of the Frari and the ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... anxious to see her married. But every family to whom the prelate made advances took fright at a damsel gifted with the looks of a princess, who was reputed to be the cleverest of Mademoiselle Chamarolles' pupils and who, at the somewhat theatrical ceremonial of prize-giving, always took a leading part. A thousand crowns a year, which was as much as she could hope for from the estate of La Hautoy when divided between the mother and daughter, would be a mere trifle in comparison with the expenses into which a husband would be led by the personal ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... point in their speech; not always, of course, with accuracy or appropriateness. Now and then a Hindu will say that he is a Christian in heart; and that being so, he pleads to be dispensed from the inconvenient ceremonial of baptism, which would separate him from his own people. The laxity of many Nonconformists, and some others, concerning baptism, gives him some ground for making ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... are after a sensation, I'd send for Louis de Bourbon; if you want it to go off easily, I'd send for your old hatter in the Rue de Victoire; if you want to give it a ceremonial touch, I'd send for the Pope, but, on the whole, I rather think I'd do it myself. You picked it up yourself, why not put it on ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... can also be done in this instance!" promptly responded the baroness, proffering, without affectation of maidenly coyness, the ceremonial kiss, and cordially shaking hands with the ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... dead walls and heavy shade, to the glow in the west! While he thought of it his countenance too glowed with shame. He said to himself that never, should he live a hundred years, would he again be thus insensible to that great and splendid ceremonial which ends the day. For that moment she had wanted him, she had need of him: and not even in spirit had he been at hand, as her knight and servant ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... therapeutic agents, an inheritance from Chaldea and Egypt, was still strong even at the dawn of modern times; and the force of medical charms was supplemented by various magic rites and by the ceremonial preparation of medicines.[45:2] The use of curative spells and characts comes within the province of white magic, which is harmless; so called to distinguish it from black magic, or the black art, which involves a compact ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... orb, pendant over the Hudson, was not plainer to every sight that evening than was to every consciousness the fact that this gathering was a sort of ceremonial salute before a duel. The storm was soon to break; we all felt it in the air. There was a subdued, almost stiff, politeness in the tone and manner when Dutchman met Englishman, when Whig met Tory, which spoke more eloquently than words. Beneath the formal courtesy, and careful avoidance ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... been in attendance on the body, painted themselves black all over, covered their heads with leaves, and walked in solemn procession, headed by the chief brother-in-law, who carried the skull in the basket. Meantime the male relatives were awaiting them, seated on a large mat in the ceremonial ground, while the women grouped themselves in the background. As the procession of men approached bearing the skull, the mourners shot arrows over their heads as a sign of anger at them for having decapitated their relation. ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... by a new and false stimulus simulating the old and true. Viewed in this way, the huanaco's instinct might be regarded as something remaining to the animal from a remote past, not altogether unaffected by time perhaps; and like some ceremonial usage among men that has long ceased to have any significance, or like a fragment of ancient history, or a tradition, which in the course of time has received some new and false interpretation. The false interpretation, to continue the ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... these innovations was the development of the ritualistic spirit, according to which undue importance was attached to particular forms of worship, such as time, place, positions of the body, and ceremonial observances in general. Take baptism for an example. Apart from erroneous notions concerning the efficacy of baptism, which will be referred to under another head, the writings of the church fathers abound with the most ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... delight the novel spectacle. At the close, the king repaired to one of the men-of-war, upon whose deck a lofty throne was erected, draped with a costly awning. Here the splendor-loving monarch, surrounded by that ceremonial and pageantry which were so dear to him, received the congratulations of the dignitaries of his own and other lands upon his recent recovery from illness. At the end of a month the ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... not true to say that the sole reason of outward worship is to move the worshipper to interior devotion. It is not true that St. Peter's at Rome, and Cologne Cathedral, and the Duomo of Milan, with all their wealth and elaborate ceremonial, exist and are kept up solely because, things of earth as we are, we cannot be depended upon to praise God lovingly within the white-washed walls of a conventicle, or according to the simple ritual of the Society of Friends. We would not, even if we could, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... certain amount of cosmopolitanism,—and would not allow bigotry to become despotism. Manners were more self-respectful, and therefore more respectful of others, and personal sensitiveness was fenced with more of that ceremonial with which society armed itself when it surrendered the ruder protection of the sword. We had not then seen a Governor in his chamber at the State-House with his hat on, a cigar in his mouth, and his feet upon the stove. Domestic service, in spite of the proverb, was not seldom an inheritance, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... These rites are described in 6. 4. 24 of the Brihad [A]ranyaka Upanishad which consists both of metaphysics and of ceremonial rules.] ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... Maharajah once in every six years. Nothing, perhaps, conveys more graphically the extraordinary sanctity which attaches to the Brahman caste than the uncompromising manner in which all along the Malabar coast they have enforced and maintained the laws of ceremonial "pollution." Nowhere else have such stringent rules been enacted to fix the precise distance at which the bodily presence of a member of the lower castes is held to defile the sacred person of the Brahman. ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... the women toiled, preparing a ceremonial feast. Three antelope, a deer, and half a dozen of the wild sheep which roamed the hills were killed and placed for roasting over deep pits dug in the sand. Nor did any member of the tribe forget ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... It is a country where the women are not veiled. Their marriage is at their own choice, and takes place between their twentieth and twenty-fifth year. They seldom quarrel or shout out. They do not pilfer from each other. They do not tell lies at all. When calamity overtakes them there is no ceremonial of grief such as tearing the hair or the like. They swallow it down and endure silently. Doubtless, this is the fruit of ...
— The Eyes of Asia • Rudyard Kipling
... at that of the noble Duke of X—-; none where pleasure was more eagerly sought after, and more splendidly enjoyed. The Prince did not inhabit his capital of S—-, but, imitating in every respect the ceremonial of the Court of Versailles, built himself a magnificent palace at a few leagues from his chief city, and round about his palace a superb aristocratic town, inhabited entirely by his nobles, and the officers of his sumptuous Court. The people were ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... box, and having made all the necessary arrangements for the consecrations, I received an order from the oracle to go into the country and sleep there for seven nights in succession, to abstain from intercourse with all mortal women, and to perform ceremonial worship to the moon every night, at the hour of that planet, in the open fields. This would make me fit to regenerate Madame d'Urfe myself in case Querilinthos, for some mystic reasons, might not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... bejewelled trident. The curious Americans noted that the arch-priest's robes were as black as his evilly glittering eyes, and were embroidered with curious cabalistic symbols done in silver thread. In his withered hand Herakles carried a ceremonial trident—the mark of the ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... meant mere wading, though there was some variability among the sand ridges of the bottom; but the water, at its deepest, never reached their shoulders. Their small accident now began to take on the character of a ceremonial—an immersion incident to some religious rite or observance; and the little Sunday crowd collecting on the water's edge might have been members of some congregation sympathetically welcoming a pair of converts to ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... burnt the carcase, an incantation being pronounced over the burning beast. The remainder of the herd became well, and their recovery was attributed by the farmer and his simple-minded neighbours, not to the skill of the veterinary surgeon, but to the success of the weird ceremonial prescribed ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... Egyptians must be docketed. It cannot be denied that they were an industrious and even a strenuous people, that they indulged in the most serious thoughts, and attempted to study the most complex problems of life, and that the ceremonial side of their religion occupied a large part of their time. But there is abundant evidence to show that, like their descendents of the present day, they were one of the least gloomy people of the world, and that they took their duties in the most buoyant manner, allowing as much sunshine ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... not probable, however, that in this course the South acted with any mental reservation or sinister motive. The great breach of faith was not yet even meditated. Only a few hours afterwards, in a dignified and stately national ceremonial, in the midst of foreign ministers, judges, senators, and representatives, the new President of the United States delivered to the people his inaugural address. High and low were alike intent to discern the opening political currents of the new Administration, but none touched or approached this ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... persecution of the Catholics was suspended, or ceased altogether, and we may picture to ourselves the congregations again wending their way by unblockaded paths to the house of prayer, the churches once more roofed in and again made gorgeous by the stately ceremonial of the Catholic rite. In other ways, too, Alaric showed himself anxious to conciliate the favour of his Roman subjects. He ordered an abstract of the Imperial Code to be prepared, and this abstract, under the name of the Breviarium Alaricianum[92] is to this day one ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... revolt of the nations—all this you know. The Reformation was, in part, a struggle of the nations to give religious expression to their national life. The threefold bond that had held together the Church of the West—the bond of common language, law and ceremonial—was broken. ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... ever witnessed in a country village than the funeral of "the last of the Jocelyns,"—impressive in its solemnity, simplicity and lack of needless ceremonial. The coffin, containing all that was mortal of the sturdy, straightforward farmer, whose "old-world" ways of work and upright dealing with his men had for so long been the wonder and envy of the district, was placed in a low waggon and covered with ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... called gold, was the power of aureity. By the latter, i.e. by the imagination, thought and will were superadded to the occult quality, and every form of nature had its appropriate Spirit, to be controlled or conciliated by an appropriate ceremonial. This was entitled its SUBSTANTIAL FORM. Thus, physic became a sort of dull poetry, and the art of medicine (for physiology could scarcely be said to exist) was a system of magic, blended with traditional empiricism. Thus the forms of thought proceeded to act in their own emptiness, with ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... rival down the front walk, while Uncle Tucker, as was his custom, busied himself straightening hymn-book and Bible, so leaving the family altar in readiness for the beginning of a new day. And thus the primitive ceremonial, the dread of which had kept Everett late in bed every morning for a month, had resolved itself into what seemed to him but the embrace of a tender, whimsical brotherhood in which the old mystic both assumed and accounted for a stewardship in behalf of the others ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... adolescence, culminate at ten or twelve, and seem to retreat into the background as sex-phenomena appear." He distinguishes between two classes of cases: "fouling persons or things, secretly from adults, but openly with each other," and, less often, "ceremonial acts, connected with the act or the product, that almost suggest the skatological rites of savages." I can myself, as a result of numerous inquiries, confirm the existence of skatophilia in children. But I have not yet been able ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... social organisation of what is miscalled Christianity. That is as much a part of the world now as the Roman Empire was a part of the world when Christ came; but we must not mistake it for Christianity. Christianity is not a doctrine, or an organisation, or a ceremonial, or a society, but an atmosphere and a life. The essence of it is to train emotion, to believe and to practise the belief that all human beings have in them something interesting, lovable, beautiful, pathetic; and to make the recognition of that fact, ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... simple, poetical ceremonial did much to increase the charm of the Wellesley life. Of the several hearth fires which she kindled during the years when she kept Wellesley's fires alight, the Observatory hearth-warming was perhaps the most charming. The beautiful little building, given and equipped by Mrs. Whitin, ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... ceremonial was fairly over, and Christie dropped into a chair quite tired out with frequent pacings to and fro. In the kitchen she found the table spread for one, and Hepsey busy with ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... brothers was a very elaborate and ceremonial business. The Inquisition Court, with the bishop presiding, sat for about three hours. There was reading of papers, citing of ecclesiastical and royal decrees, and a good deal of argument between the bishop, the Chief Inquisitor, and Brother Basil. Through all this wordy process the two sailors ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... deceased refuse to proceed against his slayer, he shall take the curse of pollution upon himself, and also be liable to be prosecuted by any one who will avenge the dead. The prosecutor, however, must observe the customary ceremonial before he proceeds against the offender. The details of these observances will be best determined by a conclave of prophets and interpreters and guardians of the law, and the judges of the cause itself shall be the same as in cases of sacrilege. He who is convicted ...
— Laws • Plato
... everything else depends, is, Am I trusting to Him as my divine Redeemer? am I resting in Him as the Son of God? Some of us here now have a sort of nominal connection with Christ, who have a kind of imaginative connection with Him; traditional, ceremonial, by habit of thought, by attendance on public worship, and by I know not what other means. Ceremonies are nothing, notions are nothing, beliefs are nothing, formal participation in worship is nothing. Christ is everything to him that trusts Him. Christ is nothing but a judge and a condemnation ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... ever been revealed more clearly in the Bible than that innocent ignorance is an excuse in the sight of God. The cities of refuge and the entire ceremonial law were based upon this fact. Christ said, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). James says, "To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin" (Jas. 4:17). In Acts 17:30 we read, "The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked." ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... time, in charge of a small Norfolk parish, he was a great believer in the value of ceremonial—in the use, that is, of color, odor and sound to induce mental states of worship and adoration—more especially, however, of sound as uttered by the voice, the human voice being unique among instruments in that it combined the characteristics of all other sounds. Intoning, therefore, ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... Congregation Sisters, where his own sister, Jane Leber, the recluse, was still living. In consequence of the decision of M. de Olier, the body of the venerable Sister Bourgeois was buried beneath the parish church, the day following her decease, with such religious ceremonial and solemnity as Ville-Marie had never ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... naming a commander. The admiral proper was old and inexperienced, and his fighting impulses, admitting they had ever really existed, had been lost in the habitudes of courtierly life. He had become little more than a ceremonial marker. The need of the hour was a genuine sailor who could manoeuvre a squadron. On that score there was but one voice among the seamen and with ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... Wisdom would be guided in action by the prayers of ignorance, self-seeking and hatred, etc., etc. The savage who believes that his medicine man's antics, paint and feathers will bring rain and fertile soil has his counterpart in the civilized man who believes that this or that ceremonial and professed belief insures salvation. Faith is beautiful in the abstract, but in the concrete it is often the origin of superstition and amazing folly.[1] However crudely intelligence and honest scientific effort may work, they soar in a heaven far above ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... a public man. The great events of his life are of public as well as private significance, appropriately, therefore, invested with public ceremonial. Thus used to living in the public eye, the actors carry off their parts at weddings and other dramatic ceremonials, with more spirit than is easy to a townsman, who is naturally made self-conscious by being suddenly called upon to fill for a day a public position for which he has ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... (as distinguished from wild pigs) are, as will be seen below, never eaten in their own village on ceremonial occasions, or indeed perhaps at all, being only killed and cut up and given to the visitors to take away and ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... to enable them to wear ear ornaments of unusual size, but often to serve as a handy receptacle for a cigar! When travelling the Kachins usually carry in their hands double-ended spears, whose shafts are covered with a kind of red plush from which large fringes hang; but these are only ceremonial weapons, and show that their intentions are pacific. Like the Shans, they dispense with pockets in their clothing, but instead wear suspended under their arm a cloth bag, which is ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... from a dishonest and a superstitious man. No words can more strongly exclude dishonesty and falseness of heart than doing justice and loving mercy; and both these, as well as walking humbly with God, are put in opposition to those ceremonial methods of recommendation, which Balak hoped might have served the turn. From hence appears what he meant by the righteous, whose death he desires ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... march past, promenade, insubstantial pageant. dress; court dress, full dress, evening dress, ball dress, fancy dress; tailoring, millinery, man millinery, frippery, foppery, equipage. ceremony, ceremonial; ritual; form, formality; etiquette; puncto [Lat.], punctilio, punctiliousness; starched stateliness, stateliness. mummery, solemn mockery, mouth honor. attitudinarian^; fop &c 854. V. be ostentatious &c adj.; come forward, put oneself forward; attract attention, star it. cut a figure, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... that you reject all courtesy based on mere ceremonial. Let me then put the case of this Froissart more plainly—as I would have done from the first, had I dared to speak ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... especial distinction as sanctuaries none rivals in antiquarian interest the monastery of Durham. This is because of the existence of an ancient work on the "Rites of Durham," which enters in considerable detail into the ceremonial observed on such occasions, and was received for a long time as authoritative. Recent criticism by Mr. R. H. Forster has rather impaired the credibility of the document. He points out that its professed date is 1593, or more than fifty years after ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... the endless procession of ships .. before the wind, which for centuries past, by night and by day, have passed between the islands of Sumatra and Java, freighted with the costliest cargoes of the east. But while they freely waive a ceremonial like this, they do by no means renounce their claim to more solid tribute. Time out of mind the piratical proas of the Malays, lurking among the low shaded coves and islets of Sumatra, have sallied out upon the vessels sailing through the straits, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... this an occasion for all his eloquence; nay, for the sake of justice, I will say, his heart was full of rejoicing, for now he believed a church was grafted here, a Branch which the Root would nourish. His words served to deepen the impression made by the ceremonial. Clarice Briton and little Gabriel shone in white raiment that day; and, thanks to him, when he went on to prove the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth one with that mysterious majesty on high, a single leap took Clarice Briton over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... Majesties and their illustrious guests took possession of their respective seats, the prescribed ceremonial of preparation was in progress with the royal children, who had all been placed in state beds covered with ermined draperies under canopies of crimson velvet. Madame Elisabeth, the elder Princess, being surrounded by the ladies who were privileged to assist at her levee, the outer coverlet of her ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... imp of incongruity always with him—as Shakespeare's most stately heroes are attended by a comic servant. He married Miss Mary Todd, of Kentucky, at Springfield, at the age of thirty-three. It was the first wedding performed with all the ceremonial of the Episcopalian sect. This was to the awe of the Honorable Judge Tom C. Brown, an old man, and friend and patron of our Abraham. He watched the ecclesiastical functionary to the point of Lincoln's placing ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... re-enacted, not established, by Moses, and sanctioned by our Saviour when he refers to the Decalogue as a compend of moral duty, as also in various other forms and ways. As to modes of sabbatical observance, the rigid abstinences and austerities once common in New England were derived from the Mosaic ceremonial law, and have no sanction either in the New Testament or in the habits of the early Christians. I can conceive of no better rule for the Lord's day, than that each person so spend it as to interfere as little as possible with its fitting ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... awls, and perforators, slick stones and dressers, pipes of various forms and finish, discoidal stones and net sinkers, butterflys tones and other supposed ceremonial objects, masks or face figures and bird-shaped stones, gorgets, totems, pendants, trinkets, etc. Nor does the resemblance stop with types, but it is carried down to specific forms and finish, leaving absolutely no possible ...
— The Problem of Ohio Mounds • Cyrus Thomas
... ceremonial of the mourning was over, the Constable came to the Louvre, and was very coldly received by the King; he desired to speak with him in private, but the King called for Messieurs de Guise, and told him before them, that he advised him ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... was a peculiar club. It contained no member who should not be in it; and no one was left out who should be in. The number was about a dozen. For twenty years the club met in Dyonnet's studio, and afterwards, as the result of some convulsion, in K. R. Macpherson's. A ceremonial supper was eaten once a year, at which one dressed the salad, one made the coffee, and Harris sang a song. Here all pictures were first shown, and writings read—if they were not too long. If they were, there was in an adjoining room a tin chest, which in these austere days one ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... maidens of Tottenham and its vicinity, it appeared, had risen before daybreak that morning, and sallied forth into the woods to cut green boughs, and gather wild—flowers, for the ceremonial. At the same time they selected and hewed down a tall, straight tree—the tallest and straightest they could find; and, stripping off its branches, placed it on a wain, and dragged it to the village with the help of an immense team of oxen, numbering as many as forty yoke. Each ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... characteristics of Bismarck was his evident antipathy to ceremonial. He was never present at any of the great court functions save the first reception given at the golden wedding of the Emperor William I, and at the gala opera ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... the dead from their sight than to efface the remembrance of them from their mind. The funeral ceremonies are attended to by the priests, as the rites of love are performed by the attendant Cavaliers: ceremonial and custom supply the place of regret and enthusiasm. Lastly, and it is this that principally destroys love, the men of Italy are incapable of inspiring the women with any kind of respect: the latter do not feel obliged by the submission of the former, because their character ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... have you written against the CHANCERY STYLE, then" (the painfully solemn style, of ceremonial and circumlocution; Letters written so as to be mainly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... among them no less a prize than the editio princeps of Virgil, printed at Rome in 1469, which it was hard to let go. Next there was Baby Blount to be waited upon, and his mother, a pretty, appealing lady, with the glory of motherhood about her like a fairy garment. Part of the ceremonial was the putting of Master Blount into my arms, which was done very gingerly, with abundant cautions and precautions against my crushing or dropping him. He had a skin like white satin and a silvery down on his charming little head. Altogether ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... is yet, the pro-Cathedral of the diocese, and whenever a new church had to be opened, or there was any important ceremonial anywhere in Lancashire, our choir was generally invited. In this way I was delighted to go to the opening of the new church at Lydiate, so that I was taking part in the third stage of the Catholic history of the diocese—having said a ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... affairs to be decided in the new year were the reduction of Florence to submission and the coronation of the Emperor. The month of January was passed in jousts and pastimes; ceremonial privileges were conferred on the University of Bologna; magnificent embassies from the Republic of S. Mark, glowing in senatorial robes of crimson silk, were entertained; and a singular deputation from the African court ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... dressing for dinner—I think Alice would perform the ceremonial of a lady if she were shipwrecked on a desert island—and my father awaiting dinner. Dear father is never the pleasantest company at these seasons, when 'time stands still withal,' or rather, to him, keeps a snail's fretting pace. Well, I left them both and went down ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... intense interest to him. With eager delight he wandered through the temple and audience-chambers, the place of sacrifices and the palace, and having completed his inspection of the position and shape of the various sacrificial and ceremonial vessels, he turned to his disciples and said, "Now I understand the wisdom of the duke of Chow, and how his house attained to imperial sway." But the principal object of his visit to Chow was to confer with Laou-tsze; and of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... the last word her brightness became for a moment dimmed, and tears swam into her eyes for the first time since she had taken the ceremonial handkerchief away from them. But the next minute she lighted ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... to ask his most learned advocates how, precisely, they would define a magician. If what I read in a large number of authors be true, namely, that magician is the Persian word for priest, what is there criminal in being a priest and having due knowledge, science, and skill in all ceremonial law, sacrificial duties, and the binding rules of religion, at least if magic consists in that which Plato sets forth in his description of the methods employed by the Persians in the education of their young princes? I remember the very words of that divine philosopher. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... St. Gilbert's next care was to form a Chapter, as hitherto there had been no canons. In this important undertaking he followed the model of Lincoln Cathedral and established the rite of that church in the ceremonial of the services. The dignitaries and canons were ten in number, and there were also sufficient vicars choral, or minor ecclesiastics, to enable the sacred offices to be ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... devised. Probably everyone has seen two young cockerels, standing with their bills together, apparently lost in a Buddhistic reverie, suddenly broken by violence. They are only an illustration. All animals have their ceremonial of battle, when it is for the fun of fighting, pure and simple, ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... eastern side gate, they proceeded in an easterly direction, passed the main entrance of the Jung mansion, and entered a lofty doorway painted black. On the arrival in front of the ceremonial gate, they at once dismounted from the curricle, and madame Hsing, hand-in-hand with Tai-yue, walked into ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... earliest consciousness had been simply the religion of the Dead. It suited his inclination, it satisfied his spirit, it gave employment to his piety. It answered his love of great offices, of a solemn and splendid ritual; for no shrine could be more bedecked and no ceremonial more stately than those to which his worship was attached. He had no imagination about these things but that they were accessible to any one who should feel the need of them. The poorest could build such temples of the spirit—could make them blaze with candles and smoke with incense, make ...
— The Altar of the Dead • Henry James
... and just outside the rails a half-naked soldier lay snoring. Our Burman companion assured us that seeing the throne-room now in its condition of dismantled tawdriness, I could form no idea of the fine effect when King and Court in all their splendour were gathered in it on a ceremonial day. I tried to accept his assurances, but it was not easy to imagine such forlorn dinginess changed into dazzling splendour. Just over the throne, and in the centre of the Palace and of the city, rose in gracefully diminishing stages of fantastic woodcarving a tapering ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... Ascending the flight of steps leading to the principal entrance, we passed under the lofty arch of the gateway and found ourselves in a great court four hundred and fifty feet square, paved with red stone, in the centre of which a large basin supplied by several fountains contained the water for ceremonial ablutions. On three sides ran light and graceful arcades, while the fourth was quite enclosed by the mass of the mosque proper. Crossing the court and ascending another magnificent flight of stone steps, our eyes were soon commanding the facade of the great structure, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... of wood or else of costly marbles, and were decorated with mosaics, reliefs, gilding, &c.; sometimes also covered with canopies supported on columns. They were often of enormous size; that at St Sophia in Constantinople was large enough for the ceremonial of coronation. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... in full ceremonial on the quest of stag and boar. The bugles blew and a sort of stimulated courage once more entered the king's breast, courage born of the excitement around him, the baying of the hounds and the tramping and neighing of impatient horses. He had forced himself from his bed and on horseback ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... Englishman, and fortified by the redoubts cast up by diplomatic circumspection, he never gave any one the right or the opportunity of seeing a corner even of his concerns. His handsome young face had, by practice, become as expressionless in society as that of a princess at a ceremonial. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... tradition. In the earlier stages of society these are the two most powerful agents for binding together into groups men already associated by the ties of locality and common ancestry, and fettering them in the cast-iron bonds of custom and ceremonial observance. While the members of each group are thus held together by the ideas which appeal most profoundly to unsophisticated mankind, the various groups are automatically and by the same process held apart by the full force of those ideas. Thus are produced castes, with their deadening ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark |
