"Heathenish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we must be on our guard," said the Abbe Plomb, "since their interpretations are for the most part heathenish. Marbode, for example, though he was a Bishop, has left us but a very pagan interpretation of the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... not only distrusts fairies, but, like the Scotch Presbyterians, she fears that they are wicked. "Still, you say they haven't got immortal souls to save, and I don't suppose they're responsible for their actions," she allows; "but as for traipsing up to those heathenish, haunted woods when all Christian folks are in bed, I don't believe in it, and neither would Mr. Beresford; but if you're set on it, I ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... suppose ignorantly," said the man in black; "eating the bodies of the dead was a heathenish custom, practised by the heirs and legatees of people who left property; and this custom is alluded ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... College, and thence wherever they choose to send me. I confess that I have a preference for Africa; there are certain kings there"—he pronounced several crack-jaw names—"that I can not think wholly ill of. There must be some hope of conversion among them. I trust to wean them from that heathenish slave-trade. They may make use of their people at home in planting sugar-cane and cultivating rice. In a couple of years I will send you, by way of London, the first ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... at these celebrations were members of other tribes whom they had enslaved. Not only are the teaching and influence of Mr. Duncan having the effect of making the Indians fall away from such inhuman and heathenish practices, but they are also removing much of the deadly hostility which formerly existed among different tribes. More Indians are gradually coming in from the country round about and making ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... writers says that the favourite deities of the Finns in his time were Vaeinaemoeinen and the Virgin Mary. But this stage is much less visible in the Kalevipoeg, which is, on the whole, a more archaic and more heathenish poem than the Kalevala. ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... loveliness of yours! Alas that the interior of this Gothic temple of Genoa should abound in the abomination of rococo restoration! They say that the dust of St. John the Baptist lies there within a costly shrine; and I wonder that it can sleep in peace amid all that heathenish show of bad taste. But the poor saints have to suffer a ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... this morning and I was surprised to realize how heathenish and unchristian the sermon sounded to me. It was painful to feel that I did not believe one word of what a Christian minister said. What a network man seems to have made of the simplest things, wherein to be everlastingly confounded. ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... clothed by Annette and Aunt Mary. True, Aunt Mary paused to sniff into her handkerchief every few minutes or to listen to Annette's French raptures as she laid upon me each foolish garment up unto the long swath of heathenish tulle she was beginning to arrange when an interruption occurred in the shape of Rufus, who put his head in the door and mysteriously summoned Polly, who had come in to exhibit her silk muslin frills, in which she was the incarnation of ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... with Wantonness and Riot were discomfited by the Goddess of Chastity and her attendants, was performed in the open air. A troop of nymphs and fairies lay in ambush for her return from dining with the earl of Surry; and in the midst of these Heathenish exhibitions, the minister of the Dutch church watched his opportunity to offer to her the grateful homage of his flock. To these deserving strangers, protestant refugees from Spanish oppression, the policy of Elizabeth, in this instance equally generous and discerning, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... a loss to know? There were but three young ladies present. My own girl, whom I went to see and did expect to meet; Miss Cavendish, whom you have just identified as one of the two alluded to, and the brilliant little creature whom you introduced by a heathenish sort of name which I ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... symbols. One of Ames's sermons became historical in the Puritan controversies. It was delivered on St Thomas's day (1609) before the feast of Christ's nativity, and in it he rebuked sharply "lusory lotts" and the "heathenish debauchery" of the students during the twelve days ensuing. The scathing vehemence of his denunciations led to his being summoned before the vice-chancellor, who suspended him "from the exercise of his ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... his notions are only crazy fancies as absurd as his beard. His appearance is very heathenish," ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... them, as the manner of the world is: a practice that is not only unnecessary, but they thought evil in the tendencies of it, being a provocation to drink more than did people good, as well as that it was in itself vain and heathenish. ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... knees in the high road to thank God for the great favour vouchsafed to him of at last treading the soil which had been hallowed by the footprints of Apostles and martyrs. But now he felt depressed, for he understood nothing of this heathenish business, and, wandering through the streets of the city, he tried to find the Scala Santa in the southern quarter, where all pilgrims first paid their devotions when ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... there in monstrous disguises, in the garb of guardsmen, lawyers, parsons, fine gentlemen, and such other masquerade dresses. So, I here shake hands and cut with all these busy people, none of whom write to me. Indeed I ask it not;—and here I am, a poor traveller and heathenish philosopher, who hath perambulated the greatest part of the Levant, and seen a great quantity of very improvable land and sea, and, after all, am no better than when ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... fear, for those who believed that the great god Pan was indeed dead; nor 'auguries,' nor 'auspices,' for those to whom divination was nothing; while to speak of 'initiating' a person into the 'mysteries' of an art, would have been utterly heathenish language. Nay, they must have found fault with the language of Holy Scripture itself; for a word of honourable use in the New Testament expressing the function of an interpreter, and reappearing in our 'hermeneutics,' ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... religious and philosophic opinions? We must consider this point also with more circumspection than has been shown by most of Montaigne's critics. The habit of calling him "sceptic," a habit initiated by the Catholic priests who denounced his heathenish use of the term "Fortune," and strengthened by various writers from Pascal to Emerson, is a hindrance to an exact notion of the facts, inasmuch as the word "sceptic" has passed through two phases of significance, and may still have either. ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... say that I remember much about it," answered her husband. "I have a dim remembrance that he said something that sounded rather heathenish about the cabinet bringing good luck to its owners. I didn't pay much attention to it at the time, because I don't believe in anything of the sort. And besides, your Uncle Jacob was a very peculiar old gentleman; one never knew what to make of his odd ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... be heirs to the parents, which by them were not begot [Sidenote: Nuns concubines.] in lawfull matrimonie but on concubines, whether they were nunnes or secular women. Also of paiment of tithes, performing of vowes, auoiding of vndecent apparell, and abolishing of all maner of heathenish vsages and customes that sounded contrarie to the order [Sidenote: Curtailing of horsses.] of christanitie, as curtailing of horsses, and eating of horsses flesh. These things with manie other expressed in 20 principall ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... its formal introduction and development, it would be possible not only to enable the philosophical king, to whom all the pagan gods were alike equally fictitious and equally useful, to manifest respect even to the ultra-heathenish practices of the Egyptian populace, but, what was of far more moment, to establish an apparent concord between the old sacerdotal Egyptian party—strong in its unparalleled antiquity; strong in its reminiscences; ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... "This is a heathenish outrage, Captain, if a young cub like you can be the commander of a ship like that!" exclaimed Captain Bristler, foaming with rage over the result of the affair; and he interlarded his speech with all the oaths in the vocabulary ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... everything owned by the deceased, and often donating much extra; all gathered around the grave wailing most pitifully, tearing their faces with their nails till the blood would run down their cheeks, pull out their hair, and such other heathenish conduct. These burials were generally made under their thatch houses or very near thereto. The house where one died was always torn down, removed, rebuilt, or abandoned. The wailing, talks, &c., were in their own jargon; none else could ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... from a secret sympathy for "missie"—he would often devote himself to proving the solidarity of all "church priests," Establishments, and prelatical Christians generally. Father Bowles might be in a "parlish" state; but as to all supporters of bishops and the heathenish custom of fixed prayers—whether they wore black gowns or no—"a man mut hae ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not. I take much of my kirk out of doors. Moors make grand kirks. That has a sound, has it not, of heathenish brass cymbals?" ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... Indians in their religious worship,[21] are more after the Mosaic institution, than of Pagan imitation. This could not be the fact if a majority of the old nations were of heathenish descent. They are utter strangers to all the gestures practiced by Pagans in their religious rites. They have likewise an appellative, which with them is the mysterious, essential name of God; the tetragrammaton, which they never use in common ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... heartily acquitted of plagiarism? An age—and none so little in advance or in arrear of it as I—of easy writing and discursive reading, of ideas unpatented, and books that have outlived copy-right. But this has detained us long enough: for the present, my brain is quit of its heathenish exculpations: let us pass on; many regiments are yet to be reviewed; their uniforms [Hibernice] are various, but ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... sunk upon his knees stone dead. I could hardly believe my eyes. The sight of so large an animal being killed at such a distance by one shot had an extraordinary effect. I heard a heathenish scream of joy behind me, and upon turning round I perceived the now courageous gun-bearers running towards me at their best pace. They were two of the Topari villagers, and had been perfectly aghast at the idea of one person, with only a single-barrelled ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... volubility and apparent animosity which was at once the delight and scorn of the intelligent Caucasian who did not understand a word of it. Such, at least, was the feeling with which Mr. Tretherick on his veranda, and Col. Starbottle who was passing, regarded their heathenish jargon. The gallant colonel simply kicked them out of his way: the irate Tretherick, with an oath, threw a stone at the group, and dispersed them, but not before one or two slips of yellow rice-paper, marked ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... defend, surely, their plotting to use the savages against their neighbors—against helpless women and children. That must be heathenish ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... worth while, obtained in India until recent years. The consequence was that the children of Christian congregations were neglected and allowed to absent themselves from Christian services and to grow up in ignorance and heathenish darkness. As a result of this many of these boys and girls, when they grew up into manhood and womanhood, reverted to heathenism; and many flourishing Christian congregations of the last generation became defunct. It is now understood, with ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... heads. So he discouraged chess as a degrading game, that did not improve either the mind or the morals, and abolished the tournament summarily. Then he sent for the four priests who had had the effrontery to play better than a Grand Lama, and addressed them as follows: "Miserable and heathenish men, calling yourselves priests! Know ye not that to lay claim to a capacity to do anything better than my predecessor is a capital offence? Take that chessboard and, before day dawns upon the torture chamber, cut it into four equal parts of the same shape, each containing sixteen ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... you, Sniggius hath a device for disguising all that could give offence. The Queen will become Semiramis or Zenobia, I know not which, and my Lord of Leicester, Master Hatton, and the others, will be called Ninus or Longinus, or some such heathenish long-tailed terms, and speak speeches of mighty length. Are they to ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Nothing is too good to be true. Not even the love of a man for a maid, Valerie. You found it so good that you were thoroughly prepared to find it false. And the moment you saw the clouds, you believed the sun to be dead. That is heathenish and the way of the people who ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... without reason, so the words may be paraphrased, that I say: "Walk ye in the light of the Lord," for at present the Lord has forsaken the people on account of their sins, and with that, a participation in His light is incompatible. By being full of heathenish superstition, of false confidence in earthly things, yea, even of the most disgraceful that can be imagined for Israel, viz., gross idolatry, they rather become more and more ripe for the divine judgment which will break ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... but I can't help picking it up. It is horrid to remember that that arch yonder was built in the time of William the Conqueror. I never look at it without feeling the oppression of the ages come upon me. And when I get into this bigoted Close and think of the heathenish way the people live in it, shutting themselves in from the rest of the citizens with unchristian ideas of their own superiority, I am confirmed in my unbelief. I feel if there were any truth in that religion, those who profess it would have begun to practise its precepts by this time; they would ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... said the brother. "When he was at home, he was always saying things which our mother called 'impolite,' our father 'outlandish,' and the blacks 'right down heathenish.' However, with all his roughness, I believe there never was a more truly honorable man, or a ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... never mind, we've had enough of that. [He whistles the first bars of the Dessauer March.] Tell me, you've taken part in those heathenish performances—at my son's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... between these two? I think there is very obviously so. 'Righteousness' is, I suppose, to be understood here in its narrower meaning of observance of what is right, the squaring of conduct according to a solemn sovereign law of duty. Substantially it is equivalent to the somewhat heathenish word 'morality,' and refers human conduct and character to a law or standard. What, then, is 'holiness'? It is the same general conduct and character, considered, however, under another aspect, and in another ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... of their rights were but land pirates who would be justly compelled by the government to disgorge their holdings. Bill had been in the habit of calling all Spaniards "greasers," just as the average Spaniard spoke of all Americans as "gringos," or heathenish foreigners. ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... water they washed their thin faces and hands in; so we had no ice, nor did we miss it, but the judge had a plateful of chips on the table before him, one of which he every now and then popped into his long thin bell—glass of claret, diluting it, I should have thought, in rather a heathenish manner; but n'importe, he worked away, sawing off pieces now and then from the large lump in the blanket, (to save the tear and wear attending a fracture,) which was handed to him by his servant, so that by eleven o'clock at night, allowing for the water, he must have ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... and different in his look that—like any other dried-up old blunderer in my place—I felt an instant tendency to laugh. It was that heathenish possession, the old insanity of the risibles, which makes a man think it a humourous thing that his friend should be ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... Parsons have stuck at publishing the banns, because they averred it was a heathenish name; parents have lingered their consent, because they suspected it was a fictitious name; and rivals have declined my challenges, because they pretended it was ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... sister Charlotte," answered Nellie, "and lives in Rochester, in a great big house, with the handsomest things; but she don't come here often, it's so heathenish, she says." ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... viand by the sectaries; though at other times it agreed very well with their stomachs. In the parliamentary ordinance, too, for the observance of the Sabbath, they inserted a clause for the taking down of maypoles, which they called a heathenish vanity. Since we are upon this subject, it may not be amiss to mention that, besides setting apart Sunday for the ordinances, as they called them, the godly had regular meetings on the Thursdays, for resolving cases of conscience, and conferring about their progress in grace. What ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... desolation. Information was sought of these spiders, but in vain. They were of a different nationality from those with the expedition, and their language seemed but a musical, meaningless jargon. They were a timid, gentle race, but ignorant, and heathenish worshipers of unknown gods. The expedition detailed a great detachment of missionaries to teach them the true religion, and in a week's time a precious work had been wrought among those darkened creatures, not three ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... heathenish prayer indeed, and far too full of human passion for one about to leave the human shores. But, then—well, it was Beatrice who prayed—Beatrice, who could realise no heaven beyond the limits of her passion, who still ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... office. Hence our Lord reproved His disciples for seeking precedence, by saying to them (Matt. 20:25): "You know that the princes of the gentiles lord it over them." Here Chrysostom says (Hom. lxv in Matth.) that in these words "He points out that it is heathenish to seek precedence; and thus by comparing them to the gentiles He converted their ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Russia, was so convinced of the single-mindedness and integrity of the British and Foreign Bible Society, that he promoted their efforts within his own dominions to the utmost of his ability." He pointed to the condition of Spain, which was "overspread with the thickest gloom of heathenish ignorance, beneath which the fiends and demons of the abyss seem to be holding their ghastly revels." He described it as "a country in which all sense of right and wrong is forgotten . . . where the name of Jesus is scarcely ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... critical moment due south, for our front waved and blew like a flag at a masthead ... Thank God, the enemy was getting away from his big engine, and his ordinary troops were fagged and poor in quality. It was when his fresh shock battalions came on that I held my breath ... He had a heathenish amount of machine-guns and he used them beautifully. Oh, I take my hat off to the Boche performance. He was doing what we had tried to do at the Somme and the Aisne and Arras and Ypres, and he was more or less succeeding. And the reason was that he was going ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... devils, or the most important of them, had distinguishing names—strange, uncouth names; some of them telling of a heathenish origin; others inexplicable and almost unpronounceable—as Ashtaroth, Bael, Belial, Zephar, Cerberus, Phoenix, Balam (why he?), and Haagenti, Leraie, Marchosias, Gusoin, Glasya Labolas. Scot enumerates seventy-nine, the above amongst them, and he does ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... Eleusis, and not of the way to Eleusis; so that we may as well keep our suggestion to ourselves,—also those pious admonitions which we were just about to administer to our companions on heathenish superstitions. A strange fascination these Athenians have; and before we are aware, our thoughts, too, are centred in Eleusis, whither are tending, not Athens only, but vast multitudes from all Greece. Their movement is tumultuous; but it is a tumult of natural enthusiasm, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... but with a mounting, mounting interest. The world gaped at the far-borne clang and smoke and roar. Military men in clubs demonstrated to a nicety just how long the fortress might hold out, and just how it must be taken at last. Schoolboys fought over again in the schoolyards the battles with the heathenish names. The Emperor of the French and the King of Prussia and the Queen of Spain and the Queen of England and the Czar and the Sultan and the Pope at Rome asked each morning for the war news, and so did gaunt cotton-spinners ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... brothers of the good Onias were among the worst; Joshua, the next in age, changed his glorious prophetic name to the Greek Jason, and going to Antioch, offered a great sum of money to be made High Priest, and for leave to set up at Jerusalem a place for the practice of the heathenish games of strength, where men fought naked. Antiochus was but too glad of the offer; so the good High Priest was carried off to die a prisoner at Antioch, and the apostate was set up in his room in order to pervert the Jewish youth to idolatry. ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... to worry that good old Padre," he continued, with a light smile, "but I'm afraid that they prefer this cross to the chapel for certain heathenish reasons of their own. I am quite sure that they still hold some obscure rites here under the good Father's very nose, and that, in the guise of this emblem of our universal faith, they worship some deity we have ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... cymbals, to which had been added other more ingenious ear tortures in the shape of rattles and whistles. Broken-collared men and faded women struggled for elbow room like a mass of flies caught on sticky paper. There was something both heathenish and pathetic in the whole thing. The place ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... of himself Horrocks became fascinated. There was something so barbarous—heathenish—in what he beheld. The minutes flew by, and the dance was rapidly nearing its height. More couples fell out, dead beat and gasping, but still there remained a number who would fight it out to the bitter end. The streaming faces and gaping ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... theatre of the Greeks and Romans was continued in some of its grosser forms in Constantinople and in other parts of the fallen empire far into the Middle Ages. But it was essentially mythological or heathenish, and, as such, it was opposed by the Christian church, which, however, provided a substitute for what it thus opposed, by adding a dramatic element to its festivals. Thus the manger at Bethlehem, with the worship of the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... progress of that ferocious sect founded on the opinions of Judas the Gaulonite, who acknowledged no sovereign but Jehovah, and who constantly denounced as the greatest of all sins those payments or services by means of which a heathenish government was supported. In prosecuting their revolutionary schemes; they esteemed no man's life dear, and set as little value upon their own. Devoted to the principles of a frantic patriotism, they were content to sacrifice to its claims the clearest dictates of humanity and religion; being at ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... looked at her sharply; the twilight had fallen, and the carriage was very dark. "That's a heathenish thing to say, Helen, and it is not so. The consolations of religion belong to a man in death as much as in life; they ought not to belong more to death than to life, but they do, sometimes. It isn't that there is not ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... Confessor the tribute paid by the city of Gloucester consisted almost entirely of iron rods wrought to a size fit for making nails for the king's ships. An old religious writer speaks of the ironworkers of that day as heathenish in their manners, puffed up with pride, and inflated with worldly prosperity. On the occasion of St. Egwin's visit to the smiths of Alcester, as we are told in the legend, he found then given up to every kind of luxury; and when he proceeded to preach unto them, they ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... savage; his movements are impulsive and uncontrolled, and his handsome face looks as if it belonged to a half-tamed creature out of the woods. He talks loud, laughs incessantly, croons a monotonous chant, which sounds almost as heathenish as tom-toms, throws himself out of his saddle, hanging on by one foot, lingers behind to gather fruits, and then comes tearing up, beating his horse over the ears and nose, with a fearful yell and a prolonged sound like ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Christianity has been preached in earnest, been the alternate hope and anxiety of the missionary; intellectually renouncing their own paganism, but withheld by the prejudices of their families from giving up the heathenish customs of caste; admiring divine morality, but not perceiving the inability of man to attain the standard; and refusing to accept the mysteries in the supernatural portion of Revelation. Such was probably Serfojee; such was the celebrated Brahmin Ram Mohun Roy, with whom Bishop Middleton ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... we have another curious and almost heathenish specimen, in which we see the crossbones as an addition to the "skull," if "skull" it can be considered, with ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... look-out. Some are burying the body of the poor girl who was shot, so that the enemy and the wild beasts can't find it. I told 'em that father and mother lay in the lake, but I wouldn't let them know in what part of it, for Judith and I don't want any of their heathenish company ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... child, over the objects which met her eyes, and which, after the rain, stood in the bright sunshine, as if in the glory of a festive-day. The world was to her now more than ever a magic ring; not the perplexing, half-heathenish, but the purely Christian, in which everything, every moment has its signification, even as every dewdrop receives its beaming point of light from the splendour of the sun. Autumn was, above all, Petrea's favourite season, and its abundance now made her soul overflow with joyful ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... certain ointments, to induce deadly maladies in men by waxen images, or love by means of charms and philtres—were inheritances from ancient paganism. But the theory of a compact was the product of later times, the result, no doubt, of the efforts of the clergy to inspire a horror of any lapse into heathenish rites by making devils of all the old gods. Christianity may be said to have invented the soul as an individual entity to be saved or lost; and thus grosser wits were led to conceive of it as a piece of property that could be transferred by deed of gift ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... mistletoe was never put up in churches but by mistake or ignorance of the sextons: it being a heathenish and profane plant, and therefore assigned to the kitchen. Mr. Brand made many diligent inquiries after the truth of this point. He learnt at Bath that it never came into churches there. An old Sexton at Teddington told him that mistletoe was once put up in the church there, but was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... it a revived taste for those elegant amusements, which, during the usurpation, had been condemned as heathenish, or punished as appertaining especially to the favourers of royalty. To frequent them, therefore, became a badge of loyalty, and a virtual disavowal of those puritanic tenets which all now agreed in condemning. The taste of the restored monarch also was decidedly in favour of the drama. At ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... faith that originated in the system immediately preceding. Protestant sects have transferred many of the false doctrines of Romanism to their own creeds, hence they worship the first beast just as truly as the Papists worshiped the dragon by accepting heathenish principles. The greatest principle of false doctrine that originated with Catholicism, and one that has been transferred to every Protestant sect, is, that a human organization is necessary to complete the church of Christ on earth. ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... don't lift up," she explained, "like all the box lids as ever I saw, and me with Lady Chitterton for six years, traveling constantly. The front of the thing splits in the middle and the bottom half falls on the floor. A heathenish kind of tray lifts off from its hinges like a door, and a clothes rack pulls out on runners. 'T is a sight to curdle your blood; and the number of dresses she's brought would make her out to be richer than Crusoe!—though I have heard ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... babies," interrupted Peace in decided accents, "and we shan't call them such heathenish names as stones. This book, now, has a long line of names,—here it is,—and there ought to be some pretty ones amongst them, though I can't say the a's sound very nice. There is only one decent one in the ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... almost tried it, and my experience satisfied me that existence could scarce be ended in a less gentle way. Only upon the two last, therefore, did my mind dwell; and for some time I sat coolly weighing the one against the other. Unfortunately, my young days had been passed in a manner almost heathenish; and at that time I did not even know that taking one's own life was a crime. This consideration, therefore, had no weight in the balance, and all I had to guide me was the conjecture as to which of the two modes of death ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... visit her, in order that she might have a domestic feminine influence upon her. They found, accidentally, that she did not know a word of any catechism, and, terrified, loaned her religious novels to convert her: she took them graciously, but never cut the leaves. There were to them even more heathenish indications in her hoopless straight skirts: the good little creatures zealously cut and trimmed a dress for her from the very last patterns. She put it on, and straightway went through bog and brake with Bruno for mushrooms, coming back with it in tatters. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... was wronged, and deeply wronged, by the man who was murdered. When first we came here, his mind brooded upon that, and he seemed to look upon what he had done as an ignorant savage would look upon the vengeance which his heathenish creed had taught him to consider a justifiable act of retaliation. Little by little I won my poor father away from such thoughts as these: till by-and-by he grew to think of Henry Dunbar as he was when they were young men together, linked by a kind of friendship, before ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Rosicrucian &c. Adj. heterodox, heretical; unorthodox, unscriptural, uncanonical; antiscriptural[obs3], apocryphal; unchristian, antichristian[obs3]; schismatic, recusant, iconoclastic; sectarian; dissenting, dissident; secular &c, (lay) 997. pagan; heathen, heathenish; ethnic, ethnical; gentile, paynim[obs3]; pantheistic, polytheistic. Judaical, Mohammedan, Brahminical[obs3], Buddhist &c.n.; Romish, Protestant &c.n. bigoted &c. (prejudiced) 481, (obstinate) 606; superstitious &c. (credulous) 486; fanatical; idolatrous ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... "I hate the heathenish sort of dress," she exclaimed, "but if it comes to that, I believe that Catherine Sharston will look just as well with a chaplet of leaves round her head as anyone else in ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... utmost pity for a man who is content to live all his life shut in between brick walls. To undertake to bring up a family of boys and girls where all the blessed freedom of out-door life is denied them, is worse than pitiful,—it's heathenish. Not that every boy ought to live on a farm and work in a barn-yard,—hoe corn all summer and chop wood all winter,—but I don't believe a child can grow up strong, healthy, and natural, body-wise and soul-wise, unless he has ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... Arles has established herself at last under the same roof which gives refuge to the outcast Boody woman. Nothing more was needed to seal the opinion of the spinster, and to confirm the current village belief in the heathenish character of the French lady. Dame Tourtelot was shrewdly of the opinion that the woman represented some Popish plot for the abduction of Adele, and for her incarceration in a nunnery,—a theory which Miss Almira, with her natural ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... with the gentleman who gave in their names. By this and some other incidents, particularly the recommendation of the late Archbishop of Dublin,[167] the Doctor became known to his Excellency; whose fatal turn of mind toward heathenish and outlandish books and languages, finding, as I conceive a like disposition in the Doctor, was the cause of his becoming so domestic, as we are told he is, at ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... respectful terms, urged him to defer his claim to Connecticut until the king of England and the States-General of Holland should agree about their limits, so that the colonists of both nations, might live "as good neighbors in these heathenish countries." Director Van Twiller added, with good sense, which does him ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... young Thule studied wild fairy-tales; yet, for all his heathenish training, he had some noble traits, which ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... Cimmerian darkenesse. But we may iustly and religiously thinke thus muche, that among vs and our neighbours of Norway (for I will not range out of my bounds, nor affirme any thing of vnknowen people) after heathenish idolatry was rooted out, Christian faith and religion did florish far more sincere, and simple, as being lesse infected with the poison of poperie, at that time, then afterward, when as the pestiferous leauen of the see of Rome being augmented, and the contagious mischiefe growing ripe, the poison ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... addressing themselves to Freya in their love adventures, and of requesting her assistance. He told me, and he quite frightened me when he said it, that a certain night ceremony, in which I took part in my early youth, and which is the affair to which I have alluded, was in every point heathenish, being neither more nor less than an invocation to this Freya, the wife of the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... who are not so bad in themselves in reality, but who are so haunted by evil thoughts, impulses, and desires, that they, being taught by the absurd old heathenish psychology that the "soul" is all one spiritual entity, believe themselves to be as wicked as Beelzebub could wish, when, in fact, these sins are nothing but evil weeds which came into the mind as neglected seeds, ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... almost universal. Ascetics, saints, bishops, peasants, philosophers, kings, Gregory the Great, Martin Luther, all testified that they had often seen him. The mediaval conception of the devil was sometimes comical, sometimes awful. Grimm says, "He was Jewish, heathenish, Christian, idolatrous, elfish, titanic, spectral, all at once." He was "a soul snatching wolf," a "hell hound," a "whirlwind hammer;" now an infernal "parody of God" with "a mother who mimics ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Myndert, ere the last sounds were fairly ended. "This is downright heathenish; and a plain-dealing man, who does business above-board, has good reason to wish himself honestly at church. What have we to do with land-witches, or water-witches, or any other witchcraft, that we stay in the brigantine, now ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... Janus in Roman times, which was turned into a temple dedicated to St. John. The idol which formerly was worshiped as Janus is being now worshiped as St. John. In the same temple there is an image now consecrated as St. Mark which was formerly the god Mars. The saint worship in Brazil is just as heathenish. In China Buddhist idols were renamed Jehosaphat by the Jesuits and worshiped. Their practices in Brazil are in keeping with their methods in ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... view, if he does not. What is the use of my saying what some of these opinions are? Perhaps more than one of you hold such as I should think ought to send you straight over to Somerville, if you have any logic in your heads or any human feeling in your hearts. Anything that is brutal, cruel, heathenish, that makes life hopeless for the most of mankind and perhaps for entire races,—anything that assumes the necessity of the extermination of instincts which were given to be regulated,—no matter by what name you call it,—no matter whether a fakir, or a monk, or a deacon believes it,—if ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... more learned, it is a pretty general opinion that all the oracles were mere cheats and impostures; calculated either to serve the avaricious ends of the heathenish priests, or the political views of the princes. Bayle positively asserts, that they were mere human artifices, in which the devil had no hand. In this opinion he is strongly supported by Van Dale, a Dutch physician, and ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... leisure time during service in church to discover a text that might be used against him in the event of the farmer's reduction to a state of distress, and his, the squire's, making the most of it. On the contrary, according to his heathenish reading of some of the patriarchal doings, there was more to be said in his favour than not, if he increased his territorial property: nor could he, throughout the Old Testament, hit on one sentence that looked like a personal foe to his projects, likely to fit into the mouth ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... judgment, knowing him to be a very Solomon.' Then, turning to the culprit, 'You know my lord's chateau, of course? My guards will take you there.' 'The devil a furlong know I of this accursed spot,' answered Tibbald viciously, 'seeing that I arrived here a good hour after dark, and by a road as heathenish as yourselves.' ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Mayakin, excitedly, trembling. "That either comes to him from excessive drinking, or else—Heaven forbid—from his mother, the orthodox spirit. And if this heathenish leaven is going to rise in him I'll have to struggle hard with him! There will be a great conflict between us. He has come out, breast foremost, against me; he has at once displayed great audacity. He's young—there's not much cunning in him ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... waxed indignant. "Sich ignorance as ye two do be showin' is heathenish," he declared. "I suppose now ye wud be for puttin' the cook stove in the parlor an' settin' up the piany ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... disconcerted by his fall. And Nokes, who had certainly shown no aptitude for the fray, was abused by them all as having caused their retreat by his cowardice; while Sing Sing, the runaway cook, who knew that he had forfeited his wages at Gangoil, was forced to turn over in his heathenish mind the ill effects of joining the losing side. "You big fool, Bos," he said more than once to his friend the woodsman, who had lured him away from the comforts of Gangoil. "I'll punch your head, John, if you don't hold your row," ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... societies all over the world have given him medals; he is—why, if he wished to he could write a string of letters after his name a yard long. I believe—hang it, it sounds absurd, but I believe he has been—er—knighted or something like it, in one heathenish little kingdom. And in Washington there, at the Institute, ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... individual under the name of "Currer Bell," as under any other, more or less euphonious. Whoever it be, it is a person who, with great mental powers, combines a total ignorance of the habits of society, a great coarseness of taste, and a heathenish doctrine of religion. And as these characteristics appear more or less in the writings of all three, Currer, Acton, and Ellis alike, for their poems differ less in degree of power than in kind, we ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... the overland route! How many sank from fever and exhaustion on the banks of Sacramento! Yet no word of sacrifices there. And why should we so regard all we give and do for the Well-beloved of our souls? Our talk of sacrifices is ungenerous and heathenish.... ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with glittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots of human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... lovely valleys. We sailed for the Straits of Gibraltar, calling on the way at Malaga to obtain water and fresh provisions. While a party of our seamen were on shore at that place, a procession carrying the Host, with banners and heathenish figures, passed through the streets, when they not only refused to bow, but mocked and jeered, at which the mob, urged on by a priest, savagely attacked them and drove them ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... ferocity and pitiless cruelty. Pizarro and Cortes were attractive; we like to look at them a second time. Much we condemn, but much we admire. Their sagacity, their prowess, their heroic spirit, take us captive despite their baser qualities. In them was duplicity, revenge, bigotry, heathenish cruelty; but these were not all the qualities the inventory discovered. In Philip, however, were all the Spanish villainies without the Spanish virtues. He is blessed with scarcely a redeeming quality. His excellencies were a stolid inability to believe himself defeated, which, had it been ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... This heathenish cross restored the breed again, Ruin'd its blood, but much improved its flesh; For from a root the ugliest in Old Spain Sprung up a branch as beautiful as fresh; The sons no more were short, the daughters plain: But there 's a rumour which I fain would hush, 'T is said that Donna ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... however, was not confined to the worshippers of Venus Urania; it was widely spread throughout Heathendom; so widely that, as we learn from Tacitus, the priests of the Naharvali (in modern Denmark) officiated in the dress of women. Like many other heathenish customs and costumes, traces of this have descended to our own times; such, for example, may have been the exchange of dresses on New Year's Eve, &c.: see Drake's Shakspeare and his Times, vol. i. p. 124., ed. 4to. And what else is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... wear horns, although the Christian clergy set themselves strongly against these ornaments; some even refusing the Communion-Sacrament to those who persist in retaining that heathenish emblem derived ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... relative—an old maiden cousin, ever so old—who liked my picture so well that she declared she would make me her heiress. She's worth almost as much as you are. They named me after her—Sally Rogers Pendleton. That's how I happen to have such a heathenish name. But I'll change it quick enough after the old lady dies and leaves ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... A somewhat less heathenish story with regard to money is the following, which may be taken as a specimen of the Skazkas which bear the impress of the genuine reverence which the peasants feel for their religion, whatever may be the feelings they entertain towards its ministers. While alluding ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... melted. To sleep was impossible, as the September night was hot and sultry, and never for a moment did Wilford lose his consciousness or forget to accuse himself of being an idiot for coming into that heathenish neighborhood after a wife when at home there were so many girls ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... manners demanded some show of grief at the young man's melancholy end; but, as his lordship pointed out to his weeping daughter, higher reflections ought to triumph over the vulgar instincts of sorrow, and an etiquette almost heathenish. "Let us be thankful," said he, "that poor Beauclerk was spared some lingering malady and the shattering disappointments of a public career. He would not wish us to mourn. And indeed, any undue mourning on your part might give a very false impression in society. You ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... violating some of their conventions or hurting their feelings. The Black and the White mix very quaintly in their ways. Sometimes the White shows in spurts of fierce, childish pride—which is Pride of Race run crooked—and sometimes the Black in still fiercer abasement and humility, half heathenish customs and strange, unaccountable impulses to crime. One of these days, this people— understand they are far lower than the class whence Derozio, the man who imitated Byron, sprung—will turn out a writer or a poet; ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... provisions then in the ground were washed away. I thought this was in some measure a judgment upon us for working on Sundays, and it hurt my mind very much. I often wished to leave this place and sail for Europe; for our mode of procedure and living in this heathenish form was very irksome to me. The word of God saith, 'What does it avail a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' This was much and heavily impressed on my mind; and, though I did not know how ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... favor of these practices are very deeply rooted in the native mind. Even at Loanda they retire out of the city in order to perform their heathenish rites without the cognizance of the authorities. Their religion, if such it may be called, is one of dread. Numbers of charms are employed to avert the evils with which they feel themselves to be encompassed. Occasionally you meet a man, more ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... had under the pope four score and fifteen, called festival, and thirty profesti, beside the Sundays, they are all brought unto seven and twenty, and, with them, the superfluous numbers of idle wakes, guilds, fraternities, church-ales, help-ales, and soul-ales, called also dirge-ales, with the heathenish rioting at bride-ales, are well diminished and laid aside. And no great matter were it if the feasts of all our apostles, evangelists, and martyrs, with that of all saints, were brought to the holy days that follow upon Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, and those of the Virgin Mary, with the ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... and Christianity was swept westward before them. They had lived in a part of the Continent which had not been reached by Christianity nor classic culture, and they worshipped the false gods of Woden and Thunder, and were addicted to various heathenish practices, some of which now mingled with the festivities of Christmastide. Still, as these Angles came to stay and have given their name to our country, it may be well to note that they came over to Britain from the one country which is known to have borne the name of Angeln or the Engle-land, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... without any merit or worthiness of our own, we give Jews and Turks no less occasion for laughter and mockery than when we speak of the three persons. For this is a more absurd assertion by far, in the estimation of human reason, which speculates in its Jewish and Turkish—yea, heathenish—teachings, on this wise: God is an only, almighty Lord of all, who has created all men and given them the law according to which they are to live; accordingly it follows that he will be merciful to ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... (do not know), my lord," she replied, "unless, Heaven save us! he takes you for the Lord of lords. I didna think the bairn was so heathenish and so daft (foolish). You maun forgie (must forgive) ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... comfort in our misery. She, on the other hand, would not hear of this, and told us that she thought she had been called Undine by her parents, and that Undine she wished still to be called. Now this appeared to me a heathenish name, not to be found in any calendar, and I took counsel therefore of a priest in the city. He also would not hear of the name of Undine, but at my earnest request he came with me through the mysterious forest in order to perform the rite of baptism here in my cottage. The little one stood before ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... the villagers who came to sit and condole with him; while his wife, and an unmarried daughter who lived at home, both deploring the wickedness of Bridgepath, tried to throw in a word of scriptural truth now and then, for the sake of instructing and improving their heathenish neighbours. ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne's forehead. Madam Hester would have winced at that, I warrant me. But she,—the naughty baggage,—little will she care what they put upon the bodice of her gown! Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or such like heathenish adornment, and so walk the streets as brave ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bear the shame, for the man who does shamefully ought to be ashamed. It is that, when I am in my grave—or somewhere else, for I know Mary does not like people to talk about being in their graves—you say it is heathenish, don't you, Mary?—when I am where they can't find me, then, it is horrid to think that people up here will have a hold on me and a right over me still, because of debts I shall never ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... old religionist, when the youths presented themselves before him; "Go; carry forth the tidings of this visitation, that men come to our succor. I ask not vengeance on the deluded and heathenish imitators of the worshippers of Moloch. They have ignorantly done this evil. Let no man arm in behalf of the wrongs of one sinful and erring. Rather let them look into the secret abominations of their own hearts, in order that they crush the living ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... the sermon of Daniel, 4, 24, faith is required. [The words of the prophet which were full of faith and spirit, we must not regard as heathenish as those of Aristotle or any other heathen. Aristotle also admonished Alexander that he should not use his power for his own wantonness, but for the improvement of countries and men. This was written correctly ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... The heathenish terror with which the steam man had at first inspired the savages had rapidly worn away, the circumstances unfortunately having been such that they had very speedily learned that it was nothing more than a human invention, which of itself could ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... he can board. He don't call it boardin'. Thoph Black says he said what he wanted was a snug little den where him and his few remainin' household gods could be together. Thoph said he couldn't make out what household gods was, and I'm plaguey sure I can't. Sounds heathenish to me. And I told Thoph, says I, 'That ain't no way to hunt a boardin' house, goin' round hollerin' for a den. If I was takin' in boarders and a feller hove alongside and says, "Can I hire one of them dens of yours?" he'd get somethin' ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Edwin Clayhanger all religions were equally heathenish! She was quite startled out of her amazement, and her response was an almost humble entreaty not to make fun. The next moment she regretted that she had not answered him with sharp firmness. She was somewhat out of humour with him. He had begun by losing sight of ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... with all the emphasis he could give them, but neither Lize nor Lee would consent to go. "It would be heathenish to leave him alone in this ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... of human life, are all peculiarly mission fields. It is remarkable how the modern city reproduces world conditions morally. The city is a sort of miniature of the world. All the varying moral conditions of the heathen world, atheism, savagery almost, crude heathenish superstition, degradation of woman, neglect of children, and untempered lust, may be found in New York and Chicago, in London and Paris, in Vienna and Berlin, and in varying degree in all cities of Christian lands. The grosser parts are hidden away, ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... great Fathers, his parentage was humble. He owed nothing to the circumstances of wealth and rank. His father was a heathen, and lived, as Augustine tells us, in "heathenish sin." But his mother was a woman of remarkable piety and strength of mind, who devoted herself to the education of her son. Augustine never alludes to her except with veneration; and his history adds additional confirmation to the fact that nearly all the remarkable men of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... Rosetta without a moment's hesitation. "Jane after its mother, of course; and I have always thought Camilla the prettiest name in the world. Charlotte would be sure to give it some perfectly heathenish name. I wouldn't put it past her calling ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... idolatrous and superstitious pastimes, especially against the Sanct Obert's Play," was issued by the Session. It seems to have had little effect, for again in 1587 the bakers were required "to take order for the amendment of the blasphemous and heathenish plays of Sanct Obert's pastime." Eventually in 1588, several "insolent young men" were imprisoned for their "idolatrous pastime in playing of Sanct Obert's play, to the great grief of the conscience of the faithful and infamous slander ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... in, just over his head, and there he sat, soommanay (tamely) under it; so we saw very well he could not take care of himself. Notwithstanding all this, we had some fears that the return of their annual feast-day would revive their love for heathenish merry-makings with a force too strong for their new convictions. The day came, and we watched the village narrowly. There was no car, no procession, no music: and, when night came, no tom-tom was beaten, no ...
— Old Daniel • Thomas Hodson
... his Moslemah to prayer. He rejected bells as used by Christians, trumpets as the summons of the Guebres, and finally adopted the human voice. I have had equal doubt concerning my dinner-call. Gongs, now in present use, seemed a newfangled and heathenish invention, and the voice of the female womankind I rejected as equally shrill and dissonant; wherefore, contrary to the said Mahommed, or Mahomet, I have resumed the bell. It has a local propriety, since it was the conventual signal ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Tithes are demanded as alms for the poor. A fast during the month of Ramzan must be kept throughout the whole of every day; and the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca—an ancient institution, the rites of which were now divested of their heathenish accompaniments—maintained. The existence of angels and devils is taught, and heaven and hell are depicted in material colors—the one of sensuous pleasure, the other of bodily torment. Finally, the resurrection, judgment, and retribution of good and evil ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... to be haunted, and we were told of their ghosts, and why they walked, and when. From some of the local superstitions Kate and I have vainly endeavored ever since to shake ourselves free. There was a most heathenish fear of doing certain things on Friday, and there were countless signs in which we still have confidence. When the moon is very bright and other people grow sentimental, we only remember that it is a ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... worn piece of Axminster and a bit of yellow silk with half a dragon on it. The ceremony, one could see, was not new. Vanishing into the further mysteries of the rear, he brought out a bowl of tea, steaming, a small dish of heathenish things, nuts perhaps, or preserves, deposited the offering on the minister's pointed knees, and retired behind the counter to watch ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... soil uncultivated here," he said; "and, I may add, without the sinful leaven of self-commendation, that, since my short sojourn in these heathenish abodes, much good seed has been scattered ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... a heathenish—I mean, a Russian—name like that," says Miss Priscilla. "She is a very little woman, with merry eyes, and she laughs always, and she has the prettiest, the most courteous manners. Quite a relief I found her, after the inanities of ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... a very different strain.... In pronouncing these [sentences from the Tusculan Questions, etc.] he was one day so eager that he unfortunately bit his tongue ... this accident gave Thwackum, who was present, and who held all such doctrines to be heathenish and atheistical, an opportunity to clap a judgment on his back."—The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Bk. V. chap. ii. 1768, i. 234. See, too, Letter to Murray, November 23, 1822, Letters, 1901, vi. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... collection of pin-cushions, needle-books, card-racks, workbags, articles of infant wear, etc., etc., etc., made by the willing or reluctant hands of the Christian ladies of a parish, and sold perforce to the heathenish gentlemen thereof, at prices unblushingly exorbitant. The proceeds of such compulsory sales are applied to the conversion of the Jews, the seeking up of the ten missing tribes, or to the regeneration of the interesting ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... help respecting the sincerity of their misguided zeal, and being stimulated by their fervour to apply supplications to Heaven in a purer form, wondering, meanwhile, what new-born feelings could teach him to accompany in prayer, though with varied invocation, those very Saracens, whose heathenish worship he had conceived a crime dishonourable to the land in which high miracles had been wrought, and where the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... poor, heathenish Kentuckian, who had not been instructed in his constitutional relations, and consequently was betrayed into acting in a sort of Christianized manner, which, if he had been better situated and more enlightened, he would not have been ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of the remains of Aristophanes. That I have not shown them in their true form, I am not afraid that any body will complain. I have given an account of every thing, as far as it was consistent with moral decency. No pen, however cynical or heathenish, would venture to produce, in open day, the horrid passages which I have put out of sight; and, instead of regretting any part that I have suppressed, the very suppression will easily show to what degree ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... I though bred in Macon's heathenish lore, Which thou oppressest with thy puissant might, Yet trust thou wilt an helpless maid restore, And repossess her in her father's right: Others in their distress do aid implore Of kin and friends; but I in this sad plight Invoke thy help, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... me,' said Mr. Hale, smiling, 'that you might pioneer a little at home. They are a rough, heathenish set of fellows, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a mind to go with you. Think of me in this heathenish country and you among friends and ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... how long I had continued to live in this despairing and heathenish condition, when one day, in harvest time, Madelena brought good Father Antonio to see me. This Father Antonio was the priest of the chapel of Santa Maria, who had performed the marriage ceremony between Waldemar de ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... him sharply what he meant by addressing his master in that familiar way. It is very well for natives to have a name for one among themselves, but it is not decent that they should call a white man by their heathenish appellations to his face. The Zulu laughed a quiet little laugh ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... sufficiently obvious and natural, but which you somehow seem to have missed. Granted that my fancy for Hetty was only a cloud of illusions, still I could not, within a few days of her sudden death, go in cold blood to take part in a grotesque and heathenish mummery over her coffin. I should have broken out and strangled somebody. But on every other point I—weakly enough—sacrificed my own feelings to those of Jansenius. I let him have his funeral, though I object to funerals and to the practice of sepulture. I consented to ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... first light of morning he awoke as completely possessed by this woman as if he had been with her all the night before. The unconscious operations of life went on in him only to perpetuate this excitement. His brain held but one image now—vibrated, burned with it. It was a heathenish feeling; without friendliness, almost ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... internal evidence to prove that their origin must be sought in a period long prior to the spread of Christianity. Indeed the earliest proof of their observance in Northern Europe is furnished by the attempts made by Christian synods in the eighth century to put them down as heathenish rites.[263] Not uncommonly effigies are burned in these fires, or a pretence is made of burning a living person in them; and there are grounds for believing that anciently human beings were actually burned ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... was in quest of sandal-wood. This sandal-wood was to be carried to Canton and sold, and a cargo of teas taken in with the avails. Now, sandal-wood was supposed to be used for the purposes of idolatry, being said to be burned before the gods of that heathenish people, Idolatry being one of the chiefest of all sins, Friend Abraham White had many compunctions and misgivings of conscience touching the propriety of embarking in the trade at all. It was true, that our knowledge ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... Ballad of Brunanburh, the most successful being that by the Poet Laureate. Our language is rather out of practice for kindling a poetic fervour around the sentiment of flinging scorn at a vanquished foe; but the following will serve to illustrate this heathenish element, or such relics of it as survived in the tenth century. The person first ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... has often been and is still grossly abused. It has often been encumbered and entangled with error and superstition; and therefore there have not been wanting radical purists who have not only set it aside, but cried it down as Romish and heathenish. The more sober and conservative churches have been content to purge it of its error and superstition. In its purified form they prize it highly, cherish its use, practice it, and find it attended ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... with regret, vexation, and shame; at the first flush, death—for Frank—had been preferable to this. She had a considerable store of vanity; she was not very philosophical. Besides, she was not married; and what Captain Vidall, her devoted admirer and possible husband, would think of this heathenish alliance was not a cheer ful thought to her. She choked down a sob, and waved her hand towards Richard to answer for her. He was pale too, but cool. He understood the case instantly; he made up his mind instantly also as to what ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... heathenish!" exclaimed Mr. Swan. "What do folks want with a charm when they've got a spade to chop the ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... by the poor, if they consulted any one at all who had learned medicine; but the physicians most in favour were "white witches," namely, old women who dealt in herbs and charms, the former of which were real remedies, and the latter heathenish nonsense. A great deal of superstition mixed with the practice of the best medical men of the day. Herbs must be gathered when the moon was at the full, or when Mercury was in the ascendant; patients who had the small-pox must be wrapped in scarlet; the blood-stone ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... to these heathenish practices was the resolution entered into and signed by the fishermen of Staithes, in August, 1835, binding themselves 'on no account whatever' to follow their calling on Sundays, 'nor to go out without ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... to the cold floor, and from the cold floor to the bed, and refused a piece of gold the abbess offered for her trouble, begging it might be given to Lisa Behlken, a little gipsy maiden, whose thievish and heathenish parents had left her behind them in the town, but who had been taken in and sheltered by the poor widow, though she had enough to do to get her ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... her place only a few months ago, for she lived in Cheltenham before Mr. Bobby died. The last incumbent had probably been of Welsh extraction, for the cottage had been named 'Dan-y-cefn.' Mrs. Bobby declared, however, that she wouldn't have a heathenish name posted on her house, and expect her friends to pronounce it when she couldn't pronounce it herself. She seemed grieved when at first I could not see the absolute necessity of naming the cottage at all, telling her that in America we named only grand places. She was struck dumb with ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... afterwards, having fetched an old lute which had been his mother's, he sat and watched her fit new strings to it, rallying her over her tangle. But when she had it tuned and, touching it softly, began the first of those murmuring heathenish songs to which I have since listened so often, pausing in my work, but never without a kind of terror at beauty so far above my comprehending—why, then my Master laughed ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch |
