"Relic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man in a great walnut bed, a relic of the better days which this lodging house must have seen. The grimy red plush carpet, the red velvet chairs with broken springs, the double gilt-framed mirror above the mantel, had all been respectable, ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... with these reflections when the colonel once more entered and began pacing moodily up and down the room. The adjutant rose, but at a signal resumed his seat and waited. He was, as he whimsically described himself, "a relic of the previous administration." In those days officers might serve long years on the staff and never know an hour of company duty. Barker had been in the adjutant's office under three different regimental commanders, and, as etiquette required, had tendered his resignation to Button ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... chair, which was a relic from the home of Washington, there was an arch of verdant boughs, with the laurel profusely intermixed, and surmounted by his country's banner, beneath which he had won his victories. Our friend Ernest raised himself on his tiptoes, in hopes ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... has the capital disadvantage of erecting false standards of measurement, so that the Mu Nu man cannot be just to the hero of Zeta Eta. The secrecy is a spice that overbears the food. The mystic paraphernalia is a relic of the baby-house, which a generous ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... of her black corkscrew curls and staring blue eyes. Whenever she visited Overlea, Serena was given to her to play with, as a special privilege. Her grandma knew that Edna was careful, but she would not have brought out this relic of her childhood for everyone. "I will put this little shawl around her before you take her, for she has been in a cooler room, and it might chill you to touch her," said grandma, as she wound a small worsted shawl over Serena's blue silk frock. "I will put her on the bed there ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... were dying, Tirzah, I could not use the charm. It is a relic of idolatry, forbidden every believing son and daughter of Abraham. Take it, but do not wear ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... of rest brought no rest to her, suggested no hope, no sacred privilege of seeking Divine help to bear up under life's burdens. To her it was a relic of superstition, at which she chafed as interfering with the usual routine of affairs. She awoke with a headache, and a long miserable day she found it. Sabbath night she determined to have sleep, and therefore took an opiate ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... the venerable relic of revolutionary times, was well able to remember the feelings of the young lieutenant. Since he had given up riding altogether, and found it difficult to walk beyond the limits of his garden, the general's greatest delight was ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... great philosophers, great quacks; great conquerors, great murderers; great ministers, great thieves; each and all have had their admirers, ready to ransack earth, from the equator to either pole, to find a relic of them. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... known to the world by my predecessors that the United States have on several occasions endeavored to acquire Cuba from Spain by honorable negotiation. If this were accomplished, the last relic of the African slave trade would instantly disappear. We would not, if we could, acquire Cuba in any other manner. This is due to our national character. All the territory which we have acquired since the origin of the Government has been by fair purchase ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... more recent epoch than the reign of Constantine. And the Egyptian obelisks that stand in several of the piazzas put even the Augustan or Republican antiquities to shame. I remember reading in a New York newspaper an account of one of the public buildings of that city,—a relic of "the olden time," the writer called it; for it was erected in 1825! I am glad I saw the castles and Gothic churches and cathedrals of England before visiting Rome, or I never could have felt that delightful reverence for their ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on Mars for anyone to take more than he needs, for selfishness has been entirely eliminated from our planet. Selfishness has no place among really civilized beings. It is a relic of the jungle where it is necessary to ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... known to the Indians of Mexico by the name of Cambaraga; and are still remembered so in the traditions of Zuni Indians. In time those white people became mixed with Indians, until scarcely a relic of them remained. A few traditions of the Mexican Indians and a few Welsh words among the Zunis, Navajos and Moquis are all that can be found ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... things are shadows, And, in the life to come. Haply some chance-saved trifle May tell of this old home: As now sometimes we seem to find, In a dark crevice of the mind, Some relic, which, long pondered o'er, Hints faintly ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... is an anachronism in the nineteenth century, a hideous relic of the barbarism and anarchy of mediaeval times. In America, where every man is a czar, so far as the disposal of himself is concerned, the enslavement of the Russians seems a frightful disregard of the rights of man, the nation a giant Gulliver bound down to ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... two thousand crowns for it, as he once told me. It formed part of the nuptial present he made his wife, and it is magnificent. My mother gave it to me, and I, fool as I was, instead of keeping the ring as a holy relic, gave it to ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... from his chair, but at that instant his attention was arrested by the two men bringing up the rear; one, small and of uncertain age, the other, older even than he appeared, and bearing the unmistakable air of an English servant. As Ralph Mainwaring recognized James Wilson, the last relic of the old Mainwaring household, he suddenly grew pale and sank back into his chair, silent, watchful, and determined; while his son and the attorney, quick to note the change in his appearance, made neither inquiries nor comments, but ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... great emotion among both passengers and crew, for the majority of them had either dwelt in New York or been in some way associated with its enterprises and its people, and, vain as must be the hope of seeing any relic of the buried metropolis, every eye was on ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... accomplished race of the Mound-Builders should want in this savage region where the frost kills the early potatoes and stunts the scanty oats, I do not know. I have seen no trace of them, except this Tel, and one other slight relic, which came to light last summer, and is not enough to found the history of a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the blacks has been permitted to live for thirty-five years,—in the parish of St. Thomas in the East,—that very St. Thomas, possibly, whose court-house was called forty years ago the "hell of Jamaica," and where is preserved as a pleasant relic of the past a record book wherein the curious traveller reads the prices paid in the palmy days of slavery for cutting off the ears and legs, and slitting the noses, of runaway negroes. Had these negroes of Morant Bay any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... once met them at Florence, and thought them two weary pitiable men. One looked at the General as a curious relic of the old buck of the Regency days, and compassionated his nephew for having had his life spoilt by dangling after the old man. It was a warning indeed, and I am glad you have profited by ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which then greatly encouraged science. Its followers were, I believe, known as "Stinks Men." At any rate it is only comparatively recently that we have seen the splendid developments of to-day in those ancient institutions. One relic of the ancient days gives us an illuminating idea of how things used to be, just as a fossil shows us the environment of its day.[30] Trinity College, Dublin, has fine provision for scientific teaching, and a highly competent staff to teach. ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... Charles Anne, Victor Victoire. In cases where a mother's memory has been unusually dear to a son, this vocal memento of her, locked into the circle of his own name, gives to it the tenderness of a testamentary relic, or a funeral ring. I presume, therefore, that La Pucelle must have borne the baptismal name of Jeanne Jean; the latter with no reference, perhaps, to so sublime a person as St. John, but simply to some relative.]) ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... among the Knights of the Cross; I saw a procession in which they carried this great relic. But beside this, there are many other relics in the monastery in Oliva without which the order would not have ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Britain or the Great Wall of China. We know from tradition that war was frequently waged between the peoples of the Titicaca Basin and those of the Urubamba and Cuzco valleys. It is possible that this is a relic of one of ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... undermined confidence in the Jews as a people—their negation of that which is their valuable heritage. For Judaism is not merely tradition, a thing to be reverenced as a relic; it is a thing to be put to everyday use. This practical and vitalized Judaism is the real salvation for which the Jews have been groping, all the while under the delusion that it was anywhere but near at hand. Such a rejuvenated faith would mean an end of that homelessness which is accountable ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... spinning flax thread for linen, which may yet be found in the attics of many of our farmhouses, as well as in some of our parlors, where, with a bunch of flax wound around and tied to the spindle, they have within a few years been placed as a relic of ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... Leyden shortly after Mr. John Robinson. A hundred years later and more, in the oddest way, an acquaintance sprang up with certain Dutch connections, and in the course of it this Bible, then new and elegant, found its way over the sea as a gift to young Mistress Preston. In New England, and as a relic of the early ties of our people with Holland, momentarily renewed after a century had passed away, it is probably unique. It was a last farewell from Holland to her English children, before she parted ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... bar of the Convention, the commissary Vincent, who had undertaken secretly to convey to the Queen a copy of the King's printed defence, asked for something which had belonged to him, to treasure as a relic; the King took off his neck handkerchief and gave it him; his gloves he bestowed on another municipal, who had made the same request. "On January 1st," says Clery, "I approached the King's bed and asked permission to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... they cannot get out of their heads the idea that some one or more of the number will come to harm if the thing is done. This is what Mr. Tylor calls survival in culture. The faint belief in the corporate liability of these thirteen is the feeble relic and last dying representative of that great principle of corporate liability to good and ill fortune which has filled such an immense place in ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... forlorn and passive misery, and their wagons in like manner, drenched and woe-begone, stood not far off. The captain was just returning from his morning's inspection of the horses. He stalked through the mist and rain, with his plaid around his shoulders; his little pipe, dingy as an antiquarian relic, projecting from beneath his mustache, and his ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... attendance, prove that it goes to the last foul limit of the boot and rack. The cat is simply the rack without any of its intellectual reasons. Holding this view strongly, I open the ordinary humanitarian books or papers and I find a phrase like this, "The lash is a relic of barbarism." So is the plough. So is the fishing net. So is the horn or the staff or the fire lit in winter. What an inexpressibly feeble phrase for anything one wants to attack—a relic of barbarism! It is ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... name with gratitude), used to point out, amongst the ancient altars under his charge, one which is consecrated, Diis campestribus, and usually added, with a wink, "The fairies, ye ken."[22] This relic of antiquity was discovered near Roxburgh Castle, and a vicinity more delightfully appropriate to the abode of the silvan deities ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... impossible at this day to fathom the mystery of this terrible relic of some remote superstition. It may have been that the abhorrence and extinction of evil was roughly typified, or that it was understood that the death of the victim would, as if he were a scapegoat, ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... SMOKOVNIKOV, the president of the local Income Tax Department, a man of unswerving honesty—and proud of it, too—a gloomy Liberal, a free-thinker, and an enemy to every manifestation of religious feeling, which he thought a relic of superstition, came home from his office feeling very much annoyed. The Governor of the province had sent him an extraordinarily stupid minute, almost assuming that his dealings ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... plants with rose-colored flowers that grew there, and she gathered a quantity to mix with the Chartreux pansies which also grow in that arid desert, dividing them significantly with Calyste, to whom those flowers and their foliage were to be henceforth an eternal and dreadful relic. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... spoken of as the first of the seventh month. That is to say, the civil new year has been separated from the ecclesiastical and been transferred to spring; the ecclesiastical can only be regarded as a relic surviving from an earlier period, and betrays strikingly the priority of the division of the year that prevailed in the time of the older monarchy. It appears to have first begun to give way under the influence of the Babylonians, who observed the ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... sought in vain to hide itself among the leaves. So busied had I been it escaped my notice. Instinctively I reclaimed the prize and with no gentle hand I doubt, for his touch and jeering manner desecrated the sacred relic ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... Should you inspect the cell later, you will find, between the heaped cocoons on the wall, a little dried-up corpse. It is the larva that was such an object of care to the mother Mason. The efforts of the most laborious of lives have ended in this lamentable relic. It has happened to me just as often, when examining the secrets of the cell which is at once cradle and tomb, not to come upon the deceased grub at all. I picture the Stelis, before laying her own eggs, destroying the ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... generally divided into feudal-holding and burgage-holding. Since the Conveyancing (Scotland) Act 1874, there is, however, not much distinction between burgage tenure and free holding. It is usual to speak of the English burgage-tenure as a relic of Saxon freedom resisting the shock of the Norman conquest and its feudalism, but it is perhaps more correct to consider it a local feature of that general exemption from feudality enjoyed by the municipia as a relic of their ancient Roman ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the Normans could receive little aid from their archers. Both sides fought with obstinate valour. The Norman battle-cry was "God help us!" the English "God Almighty and the Holy Cross!" The latter invocation being to the relic at Waltham, which was the king's special ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... as religion, has its superstitions. These, gaining strength with time, may one day give imaginary value to this relic for its association with the birth of the great ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... had thrown themselves on the motley contents. Stray joints of clumsy fishing-rods; artificial baits; a pair of worn-out top-boots, in which one of the urchins, whooping and shouting, buried himself up to the middle; moth-eaten, stained, and ragged, the collegian's gown-relic of the dead man's palmy time; a bag of carpenter's tools, chiefly broken; a cricket-bat; an odd boxing-glove; a fencing-foil, snapped in the middle; and, more than all, some half-finished attempts at rude toys: a ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is pronounced by the Spaniards with a strong aspirate, the x and j having the same force. The vowel d, the queen of letters, reigns supreme in Spain; it is a relic of the old Moorish language. Everyone knows that the Arabic abounds in d's, and perhaps the philologists are right in calling it the most ancient of languages, since the a is the most natural and easy to pronounce of all the letters. It seems to me very mistaken to call such words ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... assumed the character of general: the sickly Franks were encompassed by the waters of the Nile and the Oriental forces; and it was by the evacuation of Damietta that they obtained a safe retreat, some concessions for the pilgrims, and the tardy restitution of the doubtful relic of the true cross. The failure may in some measure be ascribed to the abuse and multiplication of the crusades, which were preached at the same time against the Pagans of Livonia, the Moors of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... sheltered a relic of times gone by, which, a few days after, we examined with much curiosity. It was an old war-canoe, crumbling to dust. Being supported by the same rude blocks upon which, apparently, it had years before been hollowed out, in all probability it ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... it smack so strongly of outside influence that but little reliance can be placed on them. They are evidently a mixture of native traditions and Biblical stories. Like Teotihuacan and Tulla, this is regarded as a relic of Toltec times. This is but another way of saying that it is older in time than the majority ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... has been growing wilder. Thickset hedges have yielded to dykes of stone, and there is every sign that I am approaching the rugged region of the coast. At each point of vantage I can see a Cross, often a relic of the early Christians, stumpy and corroded. Then I come on a slab of gray stone upstanding about fifteen feet. Like a sentinel on that solitary plain it overwhelms me with ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... Pulcheria, did exist at Constantinople, and was so much venerated by the people as to be regarded as a sort of palladium, and borne in a superb litter or car in the midst of the imperial host, when the emperor led the army in person. The fate of this relic is not certainly known. It is said to have been taken by the Turks in 1453, and dragged through the mire; but others deny this as utterly derogatory to the majesty of the Queen of Heaven, who never would have suffered ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... saying to itself that giants are, and always have been, things of the past,—things gazed at over the beholder's shoulder and through the mists of years; and that this venerable monarch of my boyhood, this relic of times remote, has probably grown faster since it was cut down than ever it did while standing. I care not to argue the point. Rather, let me be glad that a tree is a tree, whether large or small. ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... significant of human isolation than the fragmentary arch in an ancient city of the vanished homo of thousands. Thus, by its necessity and its survival, a bridge suggests the first exigency and the last relic of civilized life. The old explorers of our Western Continent record the savage expedients whereby water-courses were passed,—coils of grape-vine carried between the teeth of an aboriginal swimmer and attached to the opposite bank, a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... sweet to gaze at Helicon And think, "On me the sacred fire has dropped, The lute, at any rate, still hangs, a relic, on This diaphragm, although the shirt is popped;" And so it was, I ween, with your position, Ansonia's sunny child, from house to house Aye wandering: still you ranked as a musician, The same ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... a beautiful girl in green. It was found among my father's papers only last year. It was a relic of his life abroad." ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... gracious dignity changed at once into a friendly sympathy. "I have here some things that may interest you," he said; "here is Coleridge's inkstand; there is Tom Moore's waste-paper basket; and there," he added, in a reverent tone, "is a piece of Dante's coffin." The last relic was enclosed in a solid glass, and he proceeded to tell the story of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Canterbury, and chaplain to King Canute, and on the 13th of November 1020 was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury. In 1022 he went to Rome to obtain the pallium, and was received with great respect by Pope Benedict VIII. Returning from Rome he purchased at Pavia a relic said to be an arm of St Augustine of Hippo, for a hundred talents of silver and one of gold, and presented it to the abbey of Coventry. He appears to have exercised considerable influence over Canute, largely by whose aid he restored ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... back. In the ploughed fields in the neighbourhood we made repeated trials whether it was possible to stand still in any spot where there was no relic of old Mexico within our reach; but this we could not do. Everywhere the ground was full of unglazed pottery and obsidian; and we even found arrows and clay figures that were good enough for a museum. When we left England, we ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... the crossing of the beams made such deep shadows; at the litter of brushes, tools, knives, and colours on a table made out of packing-cases; at the big window, innocent of glass, and flush with the floor, whence dangled a bit of rusty chain—relic of the time when the place had been a store-loft; her eyes were hastily averted from an unfnished figure ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... him hands in pockets, friendly and debonair, class distinctions for the moment quite forgot. For, let alone immediate convenience of chaperonage, the young man found unexpected entertainment in this typical South Saxon, relic, as it struck him, of a bygone age and social order. Might not that tough and somewhat clumsy body, that crafty, jovial, yet non-committal countenance, have transferred themselves straight from the pages of Geoffrey Chaucer into nineteenth-century life? Here, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... house, empty of furnishing, was a place of echoes muffled in dust; the insidious, dank odours of corrupting wood and plaster; walls with melancholy, superimposed, stripping papers; older, sombrely blistered paint and panelled wainscoting varnished in an imitation, yellow graining. It was without a relic of past dignity. Mariana was unable to discover a souvenir of the generations of Pennys that had filled the rooms with the stir of their living. Once more outside they sat on the stone threshold of ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... dependent, and with which they had to conspire—affects the imagination even more than cases where we see nothing. We are tempted less to musing and wonder by the Iliad, a work without a history, cut off from its past, the sole relic and vestige of its age, unexplained in its origin and perfection, than by the Divina Commedia, destined for the highest ends and most universal sympathy, yet the reflection of a personal history, and issuing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... announce anonymously the discovery of documents which owed all their existence to his own ingenuity. This, he admitted, was his notion of "fun." Whenever the whim seized him, he would in gravest manner reveal to the Press, or even contrive to bring to the notice of a learned society, some alleged relic in manuscript or in stone which he had deliberately manufactured. His sole aim was to recreate himself with laughter at the perplexity that such unholy pranks aroused. It is one of these Puck-like tricks on Steevens's part that has ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... white lace capes, and there are mediaeval religious processions with gorgeous costumes and solemn chants, and the bells ring all day long, and there is a service every five minutes with music, and a blessed relic to kiss in every church. She will be a Catholic in less than no time, and look back upon the camp-meeting with a ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... own heart is M. de Vauversin. It is nearly two years since I saw him first, and indeed I hope I may see him often again. Here is his first programme, as I found it on the breakfast-table, and have kept it ever since as a relic of ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... awoke to meet Coralie's eyes. She had watched by him as he slept; he knew it, poet that he was. It was almost noon, but she still wore the delicate dress, abominably stained, which she meant to lay up as a relic. Lucien understood all the self-sacrifice and delicacy of love, fain of its reward. He looked into Coralie's eyes. In a moment she had flung off her clothing and slipped like a ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... visions of his youth, the dreams of glory in marble. When he became master of Rivenoak, and gave up his London house, Arabella wished him to destroy all his sculpture, that no evidence might remain of the relations which had at first existed between them, no visible relic of the time which she refused to remember. Sir Quentin pleaded against this condemnation, and obtained a compromise. The fine bust, and a few other of his best things, were to be transferred to Rivenoak, and there kept under lock and key. Often had the baronet felt ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... little relic, treasured for a year, and smiled to read the words "My Polly's rose," scribbled under the ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... the daughter, and now the sole child of this unhappy house. The princess royal, whose qualities have honoured even her birth and blood, experienced from this period a mitigated captivity. Finally, on the 19th December, 1795, this last remaining relic of the family of Louis, was permitted to leave her prison and her country, in exchange for La Fayette and others, whom, on that condition, Austria delivered from captivity. She became afterwards the wife of her cousin, the duke d'Angouleme, eldest son of the reigning monarch of France, and obtained, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... English Mercury; a paper resembling the present London Gazette, which must have come out almost daily; since No. 50, the earliest specimen of the work now extant, is dated July 23d of the same year. This interesting relic is ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... were grafted onto you as your own," replied Old Beard. "I don't know how this would be done, perhaps through very deep and extensive hypnosis. The Martians, as well as we can tell anything about them at all, are experts in such mental fields, a relic of the ancient science they're legended to have had when ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... Augustus or the Antonines had left us a picture of patrician society at Rome, drawn with the same skill, and with the same delicate irony with which Mr. Disraeli has described a part of English society in "Lothair," no relic of antiquity would now be devoured with more avidity and interest. [Loud cheers.] Thus, sir, we are an anomalous body, with very ill-defined limits. But, such as we are, we are heartily obliged to you for wishing us well, and I give you our ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... quadrangle rose the great keep, which still stands, the finest relic of Norman civil architecture in England. It possessed great strength, and at the same time was richly ornamented with carving. The windows, arches, and fireplaces were decorated with chevron carvings. A beautiful spiral pattern enriched the doorway and pillars of the staircase leading to galleries ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... a vallyble relic," said the old man; "but you're worthy of it, Mary. I'd rather see you have it than any of them. My word, but I'm glad I've got it here safely. Esther would never have forgiven me.' Now, Samuel,' she said, as ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... once covered the body of Hartwick in Ebenezer church lay for many years beneath the basement floor of the First Lutheran church, which succeeded the older building. In 1913 this relic of Hartwick's sepulchre was sent to the seminary which he founded, where it occupies once more a place of honor. Besides Hartwick's name, and the record of his birth and death, the marble bears, inscribed ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... had partly recovered, and had gone back to the plough, he turned a tile up from the earth, on which was engraved a portrait of the Virgin, and no sooner had he taken this object into his hands than his pain, his fever, his lassitude disappeared. Convinced that the relic was sacred, he carried it to his priest, and on that very day he gave the land he had ploughed for a votive church. It has become the best known sanctuary in Porto Rico, for the large painting of the Virgin, copied from the smaller portrait on the tile, is just ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... family. At the Pope's request the king assembled an army, and marched against Astolpho. The war lasted for two years, but eventually terminated in the success of Pepin, who compelled Astolpho to yield up to the Pope the exarchate of Ravenna, the last relic of the great Roman empire in Italy, and of which the Lombards ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... flow'r! my bosom grieves, To view thy sadly drooping leaves: For, while their tender tints decay, The rose of Fancy fades away! As pilgrims, who, with zealous care, Some little treasur'd relic bear, To re-assure the doubtful mind, When pausing memory looks behind; I, from a more enlighten'd shrine, Had made this sweet memento mine: But, lo! its fainting head reclines; It folds the pallid leaf, and pines, ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... was the vessel in which the wine was contained which Christ gave to His disciples, saying, "Drink ye all of this;" this vessel was supposed to have been brought into England by Joseph of Arimathea; and the "quest" or search for this important relic formed one of the chief adventures of the Knights of ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... "then have I Christe's curse! Let be," quoth he, "it shall not be, *so the'ch.* *so may I thrive* Thou wouldest make me kiss thine olde breech, And swear it were a relic of a saint, Though it were with thy *fundament depaint'.* *stained by your bottom* But, by the cross which that Saint Helen fand,* *found I would I had thy coilons* in mine hand, *testicles Instead ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... hands of its possessor in some accidental way. But this is different; this, unless I am greatly mistaken, is a real Amati, and therefore worth at least a couple of hundred guineas. That could hardly have come accidentally into the hands of a wandering musician; it must be a relic of a time when he was in very different circumstances, and may well have been his before he left the home of ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... cut in two by wires, or dash into lighthouses, or locomotive headlights. Daylight finds them in all sorts of absurd places, in buildings, in open marshes, perched on telephone wires in a great city, or even on board of coasting vessels. The craze seems to be a relic of a bygone habit of migration, and it has at least one good effect, it breaks up the families and prevents the constant intermarrying, which would surely be fatal to their race. It always takes the young badly ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Savage and cruel—a relic of a bygone age! He stood there, ludicrous and unreal in his stark black nakedness, his frayed robes of crimson whipping to tatters in the breeze. Yet he had forgotten his wounds—Horab was standing upright—and Garry's hand that held the pistol fell loosely ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... said the boy as he took the jewelled belt back reverently and held it up to the light in turn. "It's very, very old, and means greatness to my family. It is a holy relic, and the Maharajahs of Dour have worn that in turn ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... anchor here and there upon sighting signal smokes raised by natives who had slaves to sell,[18] the separate traders began before the close of the colonial period to get their slaves from white factors at the "castles," which were then a relic from the company regime. So advantageous was this that in 1772 a Newport brig owned by Colonel Wanton cleared L500 on her voyage, and next year the sloop Adventure, also of Newport, Christopher and George Champlin owners, made such speedy trade ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... to the stiff leg and straight left; they stood up to show tricks of foot and hand—cunning shifts and feints; they ducked and side-stepped and smote the empty air with whirling fists to the imminent peril of the owl that was a parrot, which moth-eaten relic seemed to watch them with his solitary glass eye. And ever the Spider's respect and admiration for the mild-eyed, quiet-spoken champion waxed ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... brazen pride she boasted that she possessed something worth more than uncut rubies, carpets from Bagdad, and silken petticoats sewn with sequins. And the Ouled Nails could not gainsay her. Indeed, they turned their huge, kohl-tinted eyes upon the relic with envy, and stretched their painted hands towards it as if to a god in prayer. But Halima would let no one touch it, and presently, taking from her bosom her immense door key, she retired to enshrine the foot in her box, ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... business and removed the savings which he had accumulated during the several years he had been in office, his family and all his chattels to his original home; where, after having put everything in proper order, he himself travelled (carried the winds and sleeved the moon) far and wide, visiting every relic of note in the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... come out of the church to the place where in the usual way I shall deliver you my sermon, and you will kiss the cross; and therewithal, knowing, as I do, that you are one and all most devoted to Baron Master St. Antony, I will by way of especial grace shew you a most holy and goodly relic, which I brought myself from the Holy Land overseas, which is none other than one of the feathers of the Angel Gabriel, which he left behind him in the room of the Virgin Mary, when he came to make her the annunciation in Nazareth." And having ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... hatch was still there, in the wall. There it was, wondering why no inquiries were made through it now, or, may be, why it had not been sold into bondage with the double-door and the rest of the fixtures. A melancholy relic of past glories! I crossed over to the other side of the road, and passed my eye over the whole ruin. The roof, the ceilings, most of the inner walls, had already fallen. Little remained but the grim, familiar facade—a thin husk. I noted (that which I had never noted before) ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... chair has also been described by Passeri, the famous Italian antiquary, and a paper was read upon it, by Sir Digby Wyatt, before the Arundel Society, in which he remarked that as it had been fortunately preserved as a holy relic, it wore almost the same appearance as when used by the prelate for whom it was made, save for the beautiful tint with which time had ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... for many months relieved an inmate of a London hospital. The patient was a poor, old female, in the last stage of decrepitude, and fast sinking beneath the sorrows of life. She had seen happier days, and the only relic which she possessed of better fortune, was a pair of silver framed spectacles; which, on her death-bed, she bequeathed to her benefactress. The poor old woman's relations were dead, and this guardian-spirit who soothed her path to the grave, was her only friend. Such an act ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... a nail hung an old revolver, out of place, rusty, most conspicuous; and at a glance as like the relic in the Black Museum as one pea to another. But Langholm took it down to make sure. And the maker's name upon the barrel was the name that he had noted down at the Black Museum; the point gained, the last of the cardinal points postulated by the official who ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... is one-sided, Will," said Martin Grimbal gently; "besides, remember this is a cross. We're dealing with a relic of our faith, take my word ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... handicapped in their locomotion in their own homes is simply a relic of oriental slavery and prudery, and the revolt against it is sensible and wholesome. That they have come to stay is evident, while improved costumes for shop girls, and other women engaged in business every day in the year, are certain to follow in the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... was verily, that mysterious bone of contention; a handsome earthen tube some two feet long, neatly glazed, and painted with quaint grecques and figures of animals; a relic evidently ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the place of his burial until February, 1861, when Abraham Lincoln paid a last visit to his grave just before he left Springfield for Washington. On a piece of oak board he cut the letters T.L. and placed it at the head of the grave. It was carried away by some relic-hunter, and the place remained as before, with nothing to mark it, until the spring of 1876. Then the writer, fearing that the grave of Lincoln's father would become entirely unknown, succeeded in awakening public opinion on the subject. Soon afterward a marble shaft twelve feet high was ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... a hundred years old came to me by inheritance. It was originally painted green and had been given two coats of dark paint or varnish within the last 30 years. Desiring to improve the appearance of the relic, I decided to remove the paint and give it a mahogany stain. The usual paint removers would readily take off the two latter coats but had no effect upon the first. I tried to remove the troublesome green in various ways, but with little success until I applied a hot, saturated solution ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... is thus successfully emulating the symmetrical achievements of ancient times, a relic of great interest, recalling the romantic age of Spanish history, has just been unexpectedly brought to light. Some workmen, employed in making repairs in the Guildhall of Burgos, in Spain, have recently discovered the tomb of the Cid, so renowned in ancient story; ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... a partial glimpse of an interior which to my fancy had a peculiarly deserted and eerie look. I felt a desire to explore the place, attracted rather than repelled by its forlorn look of falling age; for I came from a part of the country where the most ancient relic dates back only forty years, and the aspect of everything old and quaint in the place had a charm for me which I suspect it offers to few of the natives. The front door was locked, but I obtained an entrance without difficulty at the back, and made my way through ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... chance. Whatever his faults, he had that element of greatness which excludes the intercession of pity. Supplication would be with him a form of condescension. It would be seen to be such. His was a monumental pride that could not stoop. She had preserved this image of the gentleman for a relic in the shipwreck of her idolatry. So she mused between the lines of her book, and finishing her reading and marking the page, she glanced down on the lawn. Dr. Middleton was there, and alone; his hands behind his back, his head bent. His meditative pace ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "That's a fine relic of barbarism!" remarked Tutt. "But the child soon passes through that dangerous zone and becomes entitled to be tried for his offenses by a jury of his peers; ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... relic was dug up in the Chinese city of Singanfu, in 1625. It is a stone slab, containing various inscriptions in Chinese and Syriac; it was erected in the year 781, and is a monument of the early existence of the Nestorian church in China. See Yule's account of it in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... into the dimensions of an average farm, as to the time taken to traverse them—when spaces are thus brought into the closest union, it is but the counterpart and prophecy of the close moral and industrial union of the people who inhabit the spaces. When slavery, that relic of barbarism, that demon of darkness and discord, is destroyed, we can conceive of nothing that shall possess like power to sunder one section of the Union from another—of nothing that shall not be within the power of the people to settle by rational discussion or ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... I should disbelieve it, if imputed to a friend whom I knew and loved. And so in like manner were a miracle reported to me as wrought by a Member of Parliament, or a Bishop of the Establishment, or a Wesleyan preacher, I should repudiate the notion: were it referred to a saint, or the relic of a saint, or the intercession of a saint, I should not be startled at it, though I might not at once believe it. And I certainly should be right in this conduct, supposing my First Principle be true. Miracles to the Catholic are historical ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... much with the horrible cough that tore him as with the cruel wind. He was a dreadful creature, with watery eyes, and a head and moustache of dirty gray. His long and unvenerable hairs strayed loose beneath the dunghill relic which crowned them. The rain was in his hair and beard, and had so soaked his tattered dress that it clung to him like the feathers of a drenched fowl. He shook and wheezed and panted, and gripped the air with tremulous fingers, and through the rents in his clothing ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... the jaw-bone, whitened by the elements, and having some plain, smooth surface, were excellent tablets for pencil writing. An emigrant desiring to communicate with another, or with a company, to the rear, would write the message on one of these bones and place the relic on a heap of stones by the roadside, or suspend it in the branches of a sage bush, so conspicuously displayed that all coming after would see it and read. Those for general information, intended for all comers, were allowed to remain; others, ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... not to have that happen," said the professor. "I am glad you boys found this. It is a valuable relic," and Amos Henderson put the message, the trinkets and ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... and the wall lies the tomb of Bishop de Rupibus, while in the space between the chantries of Beaufort and Waynflete lies the only ancient military effigy in the cathedral, a genuine relic of the fourteenth century. It is commonly known as William de Foix, and represents, in a slightly mutilated form, a knight in surcoat and complete ringed armour of the thirteenth century. His legs are crossed[5] and the feet rest on a crouching lion, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... Charles Darwin's affection for his brother Erasmus, as if he always recollected his solitary life, and the touching patience and sweetness of his nature. He often spoke of him as "Poor old Ras," or "Poor dear old Philos"—I imagine Philos (Philosopher) was a relic of the days when they worked at chemistry in the tool-house at Shrewsbury— a time of which he always preserved a pleasant memory. Erasmus being rather more than four years older than Charles Darwin, they were not long together ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... A very curious relic of Sir Isaac survives in the garden at Cranbury Park, viz. a sun-dial, said to have been calculated by Newton. It is in bronze, in excellent preservation, and the gnomon so perforated as to form the cypher I. C. seen either way. The dial is divided into nine circles, the outermost divided into ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... the best swordsman, and the heartiest drinker of his day. He is still looked upon in Germany as the typical hero of corps student life, and his pipe, or his Schlaeger, or his cap, or his Kneipe jacket is preserved as the relic of a saint. His was not the tepid virtue born of lack of vitality. One has but to remember Augustine and Origen and Ignatius Loyola, to recall the fact that the preachers of salvation, the ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... as to sacrificial and religious rites, and all else is omitted which does not provide material for artistic treatment. The so-called Northern Mythology, therefore, may be regarded as a precious relic of the beginning of Northern poetry, rather than as a representation of the religious beliefs of the Scandinavians, and these literary fragments bear many signs of the transitional stage wherein the confusion of the old and ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... some enthusiast's song, Breaking beneath a touch too strong; While the clenched hand upon the brow Told how remembrance throbbed there now! But soon 'twas o'er—that casual blaze From the sunk fire of other days— That relic of a flame whose burning Had been too fierce to be relumed, Soon passt away, and the youth turning To his bright ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... falcon-eyes darted right and left, and, like a chamois, she leaped down over the great masses of Turkish ruins, cleared the channel of a dry water-course, and alighted just in front of a Chasseur d'Afrique, who was sitting alone on a broken fragment of white marble, relic of some Moorish mosque, whose delicate columns, crowned with wind-sown grasses, rose behind him, against the deep intense ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... "Valuable relic missing," Mr. Schofield read. "It was reported at police headquarters to-day that a 'valuable object had been stolen from the collection of antique musical instruments owned by E. Magsworth Bitts, 724 Central Avenue. The police insist ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... occasionally, good as well as bad. There came up a heavy storm, and the next morning, walking with my father on the beach, strewn with deep-sea flotsam and jetsam, we came upon the mast of a ship, water-logged till it had the weight of iron; it might have been, as my father remarked, a relic of the Spanish Armada. And it was covered from end to end with the rarest and most beautiful ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... this rifle in military use, but for the accuracy of the shot it has never been surpassed, and it is to-day a loved relic and a valued hunting-piece. Men trained to shoot with it, used to the slender line of its silver foresight and to the delicate response of its hair-trigger, have made rare records in marksmanship. The very difficulty of loading—the time it took—taught its users to be accurate ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... Druid's temple, of perfect, though small dimensions. In order to make his farm more compact, he exchanged this field for another, and, I am sorry to add, the new proprietor destroyed this interesting relic of remote ages for some vulgar purpose. The fact, so far as concerns Thomas Wilkinson, is mentioned in the note on a sonnet on 'Long ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Luckily the barn was a good distance from the house and Mrs. Barnes and Imogene were sound sleepers. But even with those advantages he did not dare attempt getting the buggy out of the barn, and decided to use the old discarded carryall, relic of "Cap'n Abner," which now stood under the open ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... gold in weight, nature, and colour; it is in four pieces wrought round, joined together artificially, and clefted as it were in the middle, with a dog's head, the teeth standing outward; it is esteemed by the inhabitants so powerful a relic, that no man dares swear falsely when it is laid before him: it bears the marks of some severe blows, as if made with an iron hammer; for a certain man, as it is said, endeavouring to break the collar for the sake of the gold, experienced the divine vengeance, ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... country's poetry, in its every age." As for the villanelle, M. De Banville declares that it is the fairest jewel in the casket of the muse Erato; while the chant royal is a kind of fossil poem, a relic of an age when kings and allegories flourished. "The kings and the gods are dead," like Pan; or at least we no longer find them able, by touch royal or divine, to reanimate the magnificent ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... perfectly startles one with its immensity. The roof from which the dome springs is itself as high as the spires of most other churches—blackened for two hundred years with the coal-smoke of London, it stands like a relic of the giant architecture of the early world. The interior is what one would expect to behold, after viewing the outside. A maze of grand arches on every side, encompasses the dome, which you gaze up at, as at the sky; and from every pillar and wall look down the ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... Dunkerque - I suppose he died prisoner in the military prison hard by - and one, the most pathetic memorial I ever saw, a poor school-slate, in a wooden frame, with the inscription cut into it evidently by the father's own hand. In church, old Mr. Torrence preached - over eighty, and a relic of times forgotten, with his black thread gloves and mild old foolish face. One of the nicest parts of it was to see John Inglis, the greatest man in Scotland, our Justice- General, and the only born lawyer I ever heard, listening to the piping old ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson |
