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More "Oracle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... A comet was seen, and also three Suns: In which yeer, Florus President of the Jews was by them slain. Paul writes to Timothy. The Christians are warned by a divine Oracle, and depart out of Jerusalem. Boadice a British Queen, killeth seventy thousand Romans. The Nazareni, a scurvie Sect, begun, that boasted much of Revelations and Visions. About a year after Nero was proclaimed enemy ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... born yesterday. Will you allow me to express an opinion, in which I may be quite wrong, but to which I am entirely wedded? If the custom-house officers had been coming, they would have been here now. In other words, somebody is working the oracle, and (for a good guess) ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... is grounded only upon the word and oracle of God, and not upon the light of Nature. Herein there has not been sufficiently inquired the true limits and use of reason in spiritual things. Exposition of Scriptures, on the other hand, is not deficient. Divinity has four main branches—faith, manners, liturgy, and government—in ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... not, in that event, to conceal from Lord Mountclere the circumstances of her position till it should be too late for him to object to them, she found her conscience inconveniently in the way of her theory, and the oracle before her afforded no hint. 'Ah—it is a point ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... their hearts and told them that France could not die. Hoping nothing from earth, they lifted their souls to heaven; an ardent religious fervor seized upon them, which had no part with clergy or creed. It rose from the extremity of their need, and fixed its root in an old oracle of the Middle Ages, which had predicted that France should be 'lost through a woman and saved by ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... friends at last found him and induced him to return, for his country was going to rack and ruin, and even its capital had fallen into the enemy's hands. The loving fairy herself sends the prince back to his country; for the oracle has decreed that she shall lay upon her lover the severest of tasks. Only by performing this task triumphantly can he make it possible for her to leave the immortal world of fairies in order to share the fate of her earthly lover, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... suffer death at the altar unless some one offers to die in her place; likewise a custom whereby a nymph between fifteen and twenty years of age is annually sacrificed to the goddess. When besought to release the land from this tribute Diana through her oracle replies: ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... palliates educational situations without affording a solution. It is so steeped in tradition that it resorts to statistics as it would consult an oracle. We look to see it establishing precedents only to find it following precedents. When we would find in it a leader we find merely a follower. To such teaching statistical numbers mean far more than living children. Indeed, ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... the little cell on top of the eight-storied tower at Babylon, and was said by the priests to share the couch of the god; that the Thebans in Egypt tell a similar story of their god; that at Patara, in Lycia, the priestess who gave the oracle consorted with the god; and that at Babylon every woman was compelled once to sacrifice herself to the first comer in the temple of Mylitta. The last statement was long considered so monstrous that it was not believed. That incredulity arose from modern mores, in which religion ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the only object he had on earth was to deprive the Duchess of her power and favour with the King. Christian smiled internally to see him approach the state of mind in which he was most easily worked upon, and judiciously kept silence, until the Duke called out to him, in a pet, "Well, Sir Oracle, you that have laid so many schemes to supplant this she-wolf of Gaul, where are all your contrivances now?—Where is the exquisite beauty who was to catch the Sovereign's eye at the first glance?—Chiffinch, hath he seen her?—and what does he say, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... "We are your oracles." —Dodona was an oracle in Epirus.—The temple of Zeus there was surrounded by a dense forest, all the trees of which were endowed with the gift of prophecy; both the sacred oaks and the pigeons that lived in them answered the questions of those who came to consult ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... no opportunity of enquiring what I wished of that so holy oracle of Thine, his breast, unless the thing might be answered briefly. But those tides in me, to be poured out to him, required his full leisure, and never found it. I heard him indeed every Lord's day, rightly expounding ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... great benefactor to Rouen died the following year, deeply lamented by the inhabitants, and generally so by France; but, above all, regretted by Louis XIIth, his sovereign, whom, to use the words of Guicciardini, he served as oracle and authority. The author of the History of the Chevalier Bayard, is still louder in his praise.—The western facade of the cathedral was not finished till 1530, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... breath of rose Steals from the dawn and softly blows Beneath the lintel, where is hung My little bell with winged tongue; Steals from the dawn, that it may be An oracle of peace to me; For hark! athwart my fitful dreams There mingles with the Orient beams A wakening psalm of tinkling bell: "God brings the ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... how this was to be done. The devil advised them to make a brazen head, with all the internal structure and organs of a human head. The construction would cost them much time, and they must wait with patience till the faculty of speech descended upon it. Finally, however, it would become an oracle, and, if the question were propounded to it, would teach them the solution of their problem. The friars spent seven years in bringing the subject to perfection, and waited day after day in expectation that ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Albert and their children. Indeed the Baron seems to have been a permanent pillar for princes to lean upon. From youth to old age he was to two or three royal households the chief "guide, philosopher, and friend"—a Coburg mentor, a Guelphic oracle. ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... Potomac against the universality of the impeaching power. The system of the Senate may be inferred from their transactions heretofore, and from the following declaration made to me personally by their oracle.* 'No republic Can ever be of any duration without a Senate, and a Senate deeply and strongly rooted, strong enough to bear up against all popular storms and passions. The only fault in the constitution of our Senate is, that their term of office is not ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Rome, year in and year out. Temples were erected to Thetis, Diana, Flora, etc., and peasants went about dressed up as haruspices and augurs. The Pontifex slaughtered a sheep on the sacrificial altar, the oracle was consulted in a cave, and in a temple dedicated to the sun young priests kept up an ever-flaming fire. On this estate an actor was master of the hunt, librarian, theatre director, high priest of the sun and—schoolmaster, all in his own person; and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... time, if Mathieu had renounced the actual exercise of authority, he none the less remained the creator, the oracle who was consulted, listened to, and obeyed. He dwelt with Marianne in the old shooting-box which had been transformed and enlarged into a very comfortable house. Here they lived like the founders of a dynasty who had retired in full glory, setting their only delight in beholding around them the ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... sense is still the canon by which his judgment is determined. On this ground he disbelieves the Jewish religion,(454) selecting successive passages of the national history, such as the sacrifice of Isaac, the oracle of Urim,(455) the ceremonial religious system,(456) as the object of his attack. A degree of interest attaches to his criticism on these points, in that it was the means of calling forth the celebrated work of Warburton on the Divine Legation ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... great oracle of God, St. John Chrysostom, deplores with infinite compassion in some part of his works the disaster and calamity of his century, in which not only was the memory of an infinity of illustrious persons cut off from among mankind, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... to insist much upon the inexpressible value of the Bible, the privilege and blessing of it to nations, families, and persons; but he never entertained the least notion of the worth of it till now, when being to talk to heathens, savages, and barbarians, he wanted the help of the written oracle for his assistance. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... 'Tis ill-Manners to pluck the Masque off, when we would not be known: besides that, Curiosity has lost Men many a Blessing, and plung'd the Discoverers into signal Calamities; as witness Oedipus, and the Oracle, Lot's Wife, Orpheus and Eurydice, and several other true and ancient Histories, which I have something else to do than think ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... they wandered down to the banks of the river, and watched the trout and the running water. Hadria had long been wishing to find out what her oracle thought about certain burning questions on which the sisters held such strong, and such unpopular sentiments, but just because the feeling was so keen, it was ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... was killed by the falling of a log it will be remembered that Ekpenyong was blamed for the event and retired to the bush. Not long afterwards a young chief there fell sick, and the witch- doctor on consulting his oracle declared that he saw Akom and her son dancing the whole night long, and gaily piercing the sick man with knives and spears. Akom was charged with sorcery, and asked to take the poison ordeal. Her friends advised her to flee, and she and her son disappeared during the night and took refuge in ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... he seems the last, Remembering all his greatness in the past. No more in soldier fashion will he greet With lifted hand the gazer in the street. O friends, our chief state-oracle is mute; Mourn for the man of long-enduring blood, The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute, Whole in himself, a common good. Mourn for the man of amplest influence, Yet clearest of ambitious crime; Our greatest, yet with least ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... folks would crowd around the hearth, listening with breathless attention to some old crone of a negro, who was the oracle of the family, and who, perched like a raven in a corner of the chimney, would croak forth, for a long winter afternoon, a string of incredible stories about New England witches, grisly ghosts, and ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... Thebans—he intervened in the Phocian War. Phalaecus surrendered. Phocis was crushed. Philip took its place in the Amphictyonic Council, and was thus established as a Greek power in the very centre, at the sacred hearth, of Greece. The right of precedence in consultation of the oracle ([Greek: promanteia]) was transferred from Athens to Philip. While indignant Athenians were clamouring for the revocation of the peace, Demosthenes upheld it in his speech "On the Peace" in September. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... me right With: Our evening is over us; our night | whelms, whelms, and will end us. Only the beak-leaved boughs dragonish | damask the tool-smooth bleak light; black, Ever so black on it. Our tale, our oracle! | Let life, waned, ah let life wind Off her once skeined stained veined variety | upon, all on two spools; part, pen, pack Now her all in two flocks, two folds—black, white; | right, wrong; reckon but, reck but, mind But these two; ware of a world where but ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... will furnish us with a piece of history not unapplicable to our present purpose. Servius Sulpicius, a gentleman of the patrician order, and a celebrated orator, had occasion to take the opinion of Quintus Mutius Scaevola, the oracle of the Roman law; but for want of some knowlege in that science, could not so much as understand even the technical terms, which his friend was obliged to make use of. Upon which Mutius Scaevola could not forbear to upbraid him with this memorable reproof[g], "that ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... maid, naming all the girls one after another, shall marry, to which he answers according to his own whim, or agreeable to the intimacies he has taken notice of during the time of merriment, and whatever he says is absolutely depended upon as an oracle; and if he couple two people who have an aversion to each other, tears and vexation succeed the mirth; this they call "cutting off the fiddler's head," for after this he is ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... question of my dear oracle, I know what the answer will be; and hence, no doubt, the reason why I so often consult her. I have but to wear a particular expression of face and my Diana takes her reflection from it. Suppose I say, "My dear, don't you think the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Romans, especially those of Crassus and Julian—or (as more disastrous than any of them, and in point of space as well as in amount of forces, more extensive,) the Russian anabasis and katabasis of Napoleon. 3dly, That of a religious Exodus, authorized by an oracle venerated throughout many nations of Asia, an Exodus, therefore, in so far resembling the great Scriptural Exodus of the Israelites, under Moses and Joshua, as well as in the very peculiar distinction of carrying along with them their entire families, women, children, slaves, their herds ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Indian Jake discharged his old debt with the Company. This was not sufficient, however, to re-establish confidence in him. There was a lurking suspicion among them, fostered by Uncle Ben Rudder of Tuggle Bight, the wiseacre and oracle of the Bay, that Indian Jake's payment of the debt was not prompted by honesty but by ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... recognised, but who was oppressed by the unwonted light, and inwardly ashamed of the hesitation and uncertainty of his tread. While sons, nephew, and a throng of his officers, were listening to him as to an oracle, and following the tracings of his sword, as he showed how this advance and that retreat had been made above two thousand years ago, he was full of consciousness that the spirit of the history of freedom was received more truly by the youngest of his audience than ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... and Scotch subjects, have an undue prominence in "N. & Q.:" let me therefore introduce to your readers a neglected Irishman, in the person of Peter Brett, the "parish clerk and schoolmaster of Castle-Knock." This worthy seems to have been a great author, and the literary oracle of the district over which he presided, and exercised the above-named important functions. His magnum opus appears to have been his Miscellany; a farrago of prose and verse, which, to distinguish ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... Morrissey tried to get a wedge in somewhere to reopen it, but he tried in vain. Enos Walker was adamant. So, disappointed and discomfited, the emissaries of Colonel Richard Butler bade "good-day," to the oracle of Cobb's Corners, and drove back ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... great duties and the great responsibilities of the priesthood, young men upon whom the spirit of God seems to have rested. There were in Israel schools of prophets; this does not mean that their training ended in the diploma of a seer or an oracle, but that this novitiate was favourable to the action of God upon their souls, and inclined them thereto. A smaller seminary possesses also the hope of the harvest. It is there that the minds of the students, ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... observes. Blackwell, in his curious Life of Homer, after showing that the ancient oracles were the fountains of knowledge, and that the votaries of the god of Delphi had their faith confirmed by the oracle's perfect acquaintance with the country, parentage, and fortunes of the suppliant, and many predictions verified; that besides all this, the oracles that have reached us discover a wide knowledge of everything relating to Greece;—this learned writer is at a loss ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... He arraigned the guilty pair before God; and, laying his axe at the root of the tree—calling on Herod's conscience, long gagged and silent, to take part in the impeachment—he said, in effect: "I summon you before the bar of God, and in the pure light which streams from his holy Oracle, your consciences being witnesses against you, you know perfectly well that it is not right for you to be living as you are living. 'Thou shalt ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... stood in a more imposing attitude and spoke in a more commanding tone than are indicated in the foregoing sentences. The prevailing stand point from which he spoke was that of an oracle giving responses from the inner shrine of the Divinity. The words and sentiments he uttered were not his, but the Father's; and he uttered them in the clear tones of knowledge and authority, not in the whispering accents of speculation ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the oracle of the Pythia," she said at last. "We will not commit ourselves to anything at the behest of Richard Percival. On my way to the station, now, in fact, Madeline and I will go to see this rose among cabbages. We will introduce ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... Trauer, and quoted the text of Scripture Auge um Auge, Zabn um Zahn, after which he did not again allude to his wife's decease. In his last years, when my father managed the estate, and he only lived with us and criticised, he came to have the reputation of an oracle. The neighbours sent him their sons at the beginning of any important phase in their lives, and he received them in this very arbour, administering eloquent and minute advice in the deep voice that rolled round the shrubbery and filled me with a vague sense of guilt as I played. Sitting ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... servitude implies that of subordination of man to things; and when later feudal law declared the serf ATTACHED TO THE GLEBE, it only periphrased the literal meaning of the word servus.[16] Spontaneous reason, oracle of fate itself, had therefore condemned the subaltern workman, before science had established his debasement. Such being the case, what can the efforts of philanthropy do for beings ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... found at night like any Pagan of old worshipping one of the lions in Trafalgar Square, around whose mane he had hung a votive wreath of water-lilies, across whose unresponsive neck the Lord Mayor had wound his arms in supplication, imploring it that it might speak, and give a sign like the Oracle in Delphi. ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... bought a cup-and-ball, and was trying, not very successfully, to induce the sphere to abide in the hollow prepared for it. Navailles had got a large Pulcinello doll that squeaked, and was pretending to treat it as an oracle, and to interpret its mechanical utterances as profound comments on his companions and prophecies as to their fortunes. Albret was tripping over a skipping-rope; Gironne puffed at a spinning windmill; Choisy played on a bagpipes, and Montaubert ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Leontes, her husband. Leontes had sent some messengers to ask the god, Apollo, whether he was not right in his cruel thoughts of the Queen. But he had not patience to wait till they came back, and so it happened that they arrived in the middle of the trial. The Oracle said— ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... just endeavoured to find a message, "godly and wholesome, and necessary for these times," in the opening paragraphs in the Epistle to the Hebrews. We come now to interrogate our oracle again, and we open the third chapter as ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... such man as he were to sit upon our woolsack now; what would the world think, if when the mighty oracle commanded the next cause to come on, the reply should be, "Please your good lordship, there is no other!" Well might ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... originated the ten ayllus mentioned above. From his time began the idols huauquis, which was an idol or demon chosen by each Inca for his companion and oracle which gave him answers[58]. That of Manco Ccapac was the bird indi already mentioned. This Manco Ccapac ordered, for the preservation of his memory, the following: His eldest son by his legitimate wife, who was his ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... Venus' Oracle in turn I leaned the Secret of my Love to learn. The Answering Riddle came: "She loves you, yes, In just Proportion to the Sum ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... Bear! You talk like an oracle. I guess we'll run up my red parasol on the end of an oar for a danger sign. Bert could see that from the terrace." She glanced shorewards as she spoke, and he saw her face change momentarily. "Why," she said quickly, "I thought we were close in. ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... people themselves are generally denied, because they are not in harmony with foregone conclusions. The meaning of ancient manuscripts is disfigured, and, in fact, sacrificed to fiction, if only the latter proceeds from the mouth of some favorite oracle. ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... expected her to throw off the unholy prestige of that long domination? She could not help believing what she had been told; that she was in some mysterious way odious and unlovable. It was cruelly true—to her. The oracle of so many years had spoken finally. Only other people did not find her out at once.—I would not go so far as to say she believed it altogether. That would be hardly possible. But then haven't the ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... a narrow-minded, selfish man, caring very little for any one's comfort but his own, and at times was exceedingly cross and testy. Unfortunately, he took great interest in politics, and was quite an oracle in the village bar-room. He was bigoted and "set" in his opinions, considering all who differed from him as enemies to their country, and called them rascals and hypocrites freely. His wife had been dead about two years, when a presidential election came on. James Foster, unluckily, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Society; and which, notwithstanding such malicious assertions, waxed stronger as it grew. There was one noticeable feature of affairs at this juncture, that the uninitiated were at a loss to account for, and that was the studied neutrality maintained by the oracle of the village, who had been wont to utter his momentous decisions, upon the current topics of the day, through the medium of that "valuable" ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... being himself naturally of a devout and serious turn of mind, that he resolved to remain among them; and, in addition to the instruction of the children, has taken upon himself the duty of clergyman, and is the oracle of the community.' ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... as you see, are in good condition. The bronze 'Serpent Column' in the centre of the square, representing three serpents coiled around each other, once supported the tripod used in the ceremonial services of the Pythian oracle ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... results. Cooper says not one Tory called on him when he was to England, but Walter Scott; and that I take it, was more lest folks should think he was jealous of him, than any thing else; they jist cut him as dead as a skunk; but among the Whigs, he was quite an oracle on ballot, univarsal suffrage, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the east and some to the west to pay their vows, but the holiest shrine is where true love is, and there alone the oracle speaks in response to young hearts. Amelie, sweet, modest flower that she is, pays her vows to Our Lady of St. Foye, Pierre his to Amelie! I will be bound, dame, there is no saint in the calendar so holy in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... said Miss Bell. "He will teach what we are to think of marriage. I am inclined to listen to him as to an oracle. He does not see the things that we see, and he sees things that we do not see. Monsieur Choulette, what do you ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... squeezes the cocoa-nut gratings over a wooden bowl, and a creamy juice runs through his fingers. The bowl is brought to Agelan, who looks at it as if reading an oracle; then he selects a hot stone from his own fire, and sends the bowl back to be embedded in the gratings. He approaches with his stone in a wooden fork, and squats down near the bowl lost in thought, as if anxious not to miss the right moment; then ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... "Damn your oracle of Delphi, you old rascal," cried the Prince, with great good-humour. "That's a crumb of the mouldy bread of learning you used to cram down my throat in the old days. It makes Master Wheatman writhe to hear it. The only advantage I ever got out of being a Prince was that ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... said. "The proof is a terrible one, but I require this proof. I must descend into the tomb to obtain it: well, then, I will descend into the tomb. I must consult the sombre oracle of death concerning the mysteries of life: well, then, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... countrymen into a corner at the point of a logical bayonet from which they felt that there was no escape, he proposed that the question what was to be done should be referred to an oracle in which the whole country had the greatest confidence, and to which recourse was always had in times of special perplexity. It was whispered that a near relation of the philosopher's was lady's-maid to the priestess who delivered the oracle, ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... dear Harry, and probably if Mrs. Cecil Burleigh had been as effusive as these young folks, she might have done the same; for while they talked in the rose-bower Mr. Cecil Burleigh and his wife came by, she leaning on his arm and looking up and listening as to the words of an oracle. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... to ask: 'Was it not possible to avert this annexation which loomed before every mind, brooding like a shadow upon the country?' He went to Sir Theophilus; he asked his question; and at length the oracle spoke. Without moving a muscle of his wonderfully impassive countenance, without even raising his eyes to look at the interlocutor, Sir Theophilus calmly murmured: 'It is too late!—too late!' And so, without the authorization of the home Government, without the consent of her Majesty's High Commissioner, ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... and Pelias felt secure upon the throne he had taken from his brother. Once he sent to the oracle of the gods to ask of it whether he should be fearful of anything. What the oracle answered was this: that King Pelias had but one thing to dread—the ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... mother boasted to the nymphs, daughters of Nereus, that she was far more beautiful than they. This roused their anger, and they persuaded Neptune, their friend, to make the sea overflow our shores and send a monster to destroy us. Then an oracle proclaimed that we never should be rid of these evils until the queen's daughter should be given for the monster's prey. The people forced my parents to make the sacrifice, and I was chained ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... blood. The threadbare author hates the gaudy coat; And swears at the gilt coach, but swears afoot: 10 For 'tis observed of every scribbling man, He grows a fop as fast as e'er he can; Prunes up, and asks his oracle, the glass, If pink and purple best become his face. For our poor wretch, he neither rails nor prays; Nor likes your wit, just as you like his plays; He has not yet so much of Mr Bayes. He does his best; and if he cannot please, Would quietly sue out his writ of ease. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Richelieu, the penetration, the exquisite tact, the almost instinctive presentiment of approaching events which gave so much authority to the counsel of Shaftesbury, that "it was as if a man had inquired of the oracle of God." In this school Thucydides studied; and his wisdom is that which such a school would naturally afford. He judges better of circumstances than of principles. The more a question is narrowed, the better he reasons upon it. His work suggests ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I could do concerning the Book you wanted was to send your Enquiry to the Oracle ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... two of which take the form of denial. First, he denies that there is in man anything of the nature of Free-Will, and attributes the belief in it to vulgar and childish ignorance. Secondly, and in support of the primary negation, he denies that there is any oracle in man's bosom,—that his spirit had any knowledge of itself or of the relationships it sustains: in other words, denies the validity of Consciousness. Thirdly and lastly, he attempts to show that all actions of individuals originate not in themselves, but result from a law ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... nostrils, and his coarse, half-formed lips, of the bluish color of raw corned-beef. But I looked upon these feelings as unreasonable prejudices, and strove to conquer them, seeing the admiration which he received from others. He was an oracle on the subject of 'Nature.' Having eaten nothing for two years, except Graham bread, vegetables without salt, and fruits, fresh or dried, he considered himself to have attained an antediluvian purity of health,—or that he would attain it, so soon as two pimples on his left temple should ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... LONG the oracle of the country gentlemen of the high Tory party. The ancient News-Letter was written in manuscript and copied by clerks, who addressed the copies to the subscribers. The politician by whom they were compiled picked up his intelligence ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... feel that my temperament is so excitable, that I should fear giving up my mind to other subjects which have ever proved sufficiently alluring to me, and which I fear would make my life a fever of unsatisfied longings and expectations.' So men unconsciously often hint an oracle of their lives. Perhaps these forebodings of a high-wrought hour may in other hues have at many moments come back to Mr. Gladstone's mind, even in the full sunshine of a triumphant career of duty, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... beg his advice, how I might carry my self securely there, without offence of mine own conscience. Signor Arrigo mio (sayes he) I pensieri stretti, & il viso sciolto, will go safely over the whole World: Of which Delphian Oracle (for so I have found it) your judgement doth need no commentary; and therfore (Sir) I will commit you with it to the best of all securities, Gods dear ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... piece of tender air, thy virtuous daughter, Which we call mollis aer; and mollis aer We term it mulier; which mulier, I divine, Is this most constant wife: who even now, Answering the letter of the oracle, Unknown to you unsought, were clipp'd about ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... our holy faith. With all the rage of an infuriated lion it pounced upon every literary production or practical movement that had a tendency to restore the old landmarks. Its influence was felt throughout Germany and the Continent. Every university and gymnasium listened to it as an oracle, while its power was felt even in the pot-houses and humblest cottages. Berlin was completely under its sway, and Berliner was a synonym of Rationalist. Oetinger wrote a curious passage in a volume of sermons, published in 1777, in which he descants On those ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... dragon Fafnir reminds us of Python, whom Apollo overcame; and, as Python guarded the Delphic Oracle, ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... a Jewish bookbinder, Simcha Kalimann, a wit and bel esprit, the oracle of the entire province, the living chronicle of his ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... Burns says that in 1889 "Lane's chief hero was Cleveland, and his oracle Godkin, of the EVENING POST"—later, the NATION. "When I knew him in New York he represented a San Francisco newspaper, the CHRONICLE, I think, as correspondent. He was not whole-heartedly in sympathy with his proprietor, nor indeed with the sensational aspect of journalism, ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... cure's too easy, and the price too dear: Great Portland near was banter'd when he strove, For us his master's kindest thoughts to move: We ne'er lampoon'd his conduct, when employ'd King James's secret councils to divide: Then we caress'd him as the only man, Who could the doubtful oracle explain; The only Hushai, able to repel The dark designs of our Achitophel: Compared his master's courage to his sense, The ablest statesman, and the bravest prince; On his wise conduct we depended much, And liked ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... the wheel of his burning spirit, revolving as the planets do, throws off sparks or streams of fire. To the accuracy of this observation witness both Browning and Tennyson. When they were "possessed," as the Delphic oracle would say, they marched toward truth like an invincible troop. Truth seemed the missing half of their own sphere, toward which, by a subtle and lordly gravitation, they swung. When Tennyson's instincts ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... published, and I sat staring at a book of my own making, and wondering how it ever got into being! And what was more, the book "took," and sold, and was reviewed in People's journals, and in newspapers; and Mackaye himself relaxed into a grin, when his oracle, the Spectator, the only honest paper, according to him, on the face of the earth, condescended, after asserting its impartiality by two or three searching sarcasms, to dismiss me, grimly-benignant, with a paternal pat on the shoulder. Yes—I was ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... came and stood in the corner of the hearth, with his back to the fire, and delivered himself like an oracle concerning you. He told me that early in life (conveying to me the impression of about a quarter of a century ago) you had had your feelings desperately wounded by some cause, real or imaginary—"It does not matter ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... souls, fired with the same zeal penitents and nuns, men rescued from the scorching furnace of life in the world, and women brought up from infancy in the shade of the cloister. M. Arnauld was a great theologian, an indefatigable controversialist, the oracle and guide of his friends in their struggle against the Jesuits; M. de Sacy and M. Singlin were wise and able directors, as austere as M. de St. Cyran in their requirements, less domineering and less rough than he; but M. de St. Cyran alone was and could be the head of Jansenism; he alone could have ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... who knows for one who wants to know, he answered more frankly, "Who are they waiting for? Why, Quidnunc. Mister Quidnunc. That's who it is. Him they call Quidnunc. So now you know." In fact, I did not know. He had told me nothing, would tell me no more, and while I stood pondering the oracle I was sensible of some common movement run through the company with a thrill, unite them, intensify them, draw them together to be one people with one faith, one hope, one assurance. And then the nun, who stood near me, fell to her ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... ages for destroying[31]." Now Theseus and Hercules, you know, have been the heroes of all poets, and have been renowned through all ages, for destroying monsters, for succouring the distressed, and for putting to death inhuman arbitrary tyrants. Is this your oracle? If he were to write the acts and monuments of whig heroes, I find they should be quite contrary to mine: Destroyers indeed,—but of a lawful government; murderers,—but of their fellow-subjects; lovers, as Hercules was of ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... paternal bookshop, where he soon familiarised himself with the novels of the world from Dumas and Luise Muehlbach to Ohnet and Zola, and with the popular sciences from Darwin to Mantegazza. His brain was a book catalogue, and his mouth an oracle of the tastes displayed at the last fair. But in reality he not only did not like the books, he regarded all this printed matter as a jolly fine deception practised on people who did not know what to do with their money. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... though temple thou hast none, Nor altar heap'd with flowers; Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan 30 Upon the midnight hours; No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet From chain-swung censer teeming; No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... proclaimed himself a convert to Socialism. When this great figure from the bourgeois intellectual world stepped boldly and somewhat noisily into the arena, there was not wanting a considerable group of young and uninitiated members in the party who flocked to his standard and found in him a new oracle. ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... solemnity. The third party of the group, Gregory's sister Rosamond, who had her brother's braids of red hair, but a kindlier face underneath them, laughed with such mixture of admiration and disapproval as she gave commonly to the family oracle. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... therefore, educated with great care. So the Hebrews depended on him, and were of good hopes great things would be done by him; but the Egyptians were suspicious of what would follow such his education. Yet because, if Moses had been slain, there was no one, either akin or adopted, that had any oracle on his side for pretending to the crown of Egypt, and likely to be of greater advantage to them, they abstained from ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... known as Granny Bains. Having spent almost her whole life out of doors, in heat and cold, storm and rain, she had come to be intimately acquainted with all the signs foreboding change of weather, and was looked upon by her acquaintances as a perfect oracle. She had also a most retentive memory, and being of a joyous nature, with a bodily frame that never knew illness, had learnt every verse or melody that was sung within her hearing, until her mind became a very storehouse of songs. To John, old Granny ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience. Who has not hearkened to Her infinite din? She is Truth's speaking-trumpet, the sole oracle, the true Delphi and Dodona, which kings and courtiers would do well to consult, nor will they be balked by an ambiguous answer. For through Her all revelations have been made, and just in proportion as men have ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... very happy marriage; and when her husband died just before I went to Europe, she was left alone and poor. I arranged a small house for her in the neighbourhood of the Hollow; and there she lives—a kind of mysterious oracle to the people about. And her greatest earthly pleasure, I suppose, is to have me come and see her. Gyda Boerresen is ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... had come—the reference here and elsewhere is always to the realm of popular magazine literature appealing to a very wide audience—for the editor of some magazine to project his personality through the printed page and to convince the public that he was not an oracle removed from the people, but a real human being who could talk and not ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... of winter; he liked the casual converse of the chance passengers, the inevitable deference to his local knowledge, the birdlike chatter and flattery of the young women. He liked, so easily, to play oracle and wiseman; he liked the admiration called forth by a certain theatrical prowess with the ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... example, the account which Herodotus gives us of the actions of the Greeks at Plataea, when their army confronted the remnant of the army of Xerxes, in the year 479 B.C. Here we see each side hesitating to attack the other, merely because the oracle had declared that whichever side struck the first blow would lose the conflict. Even after the Persian soldiers, who seemingly were a jot less superstitious or a shade more impatient than their opponents, had begun the attack, we are ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... be told. The patriotism and the sound sense of the people, whenever the Federal Government from its high places of authority shall proclaim the truth in unequivocal language, will, in my firm belief, receive and approve it. But so long as we deal, like the Delphic oracle, in words of double meaning, so long as we attempt to escape from responsibility, and exhibit our fear to declare the truth by the fact that we do not act upon it, we must expect speculative theory to occupy the mind of the ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... fancy was his only oracle; Who could buy lands and pleasure at his will, Yet slighted that ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... he breathed flames from his mouth which, no doubt, would burn up the strength of the proud oppressor, and wither the armies of the tyrannical Hadrian. Above all, Akiba, the greatest of the rabbins, the living oracle of divine truth, espoused the claims of the new Messiah; he was called the standard-bearer of the Son of the Star. Of him also wondrous stories were told. The first expedition of Barcochab was to the ruins ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... nations, in their celebrations, was looked upon as a special emblem of peace and good-will. Theba, in Egypt, was originally one of the temples dedicated to the Ark. Both priests and sooth-sayers were styled Ionah or Doves. To Dodona, in Epirus, was brought this and the first Grecian oracle all the rites and history of the Thebans. The priestesses of this temple were known in the Latin as Columbae. It is from this word that we derive the name Columbine, which means, in the Italian, "little dove." Homer alludes to the ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... finished stuff, Where the knotted thread was proud and rebelled As the shuttle proved The fated warp and woof that held When the shuttle moved; And pressed the dye which ran to loss In a deep maroon Around an altar, oracle, cross Or a crescent moon. Around a face, a thought, a star ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... right, which had bereft other men of their possessions, than the priests which required restitution of their owne. But (saith he) bicause the image of Christ hanging on the crosse was thought to speake these words, such credit was giuen thereto, as it had beene an oracle, that the priests had their sute dashed, and all the trouble was ceassed. So the moonks held those possessions, howsoeuer they came to them, by the helpe of God, or rather (as saith the same Polydor) by the helpe of man. For there were euen then diuers that thought this to be rather an oracle ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... and Dream Book. Containing the great oracle of human destiny; also the true meaning of almost any kind of dreams, together with charms, ceremonies and curious games of cards. A complete ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... maid, or such a maid, naming all the girls one after another, shall marry, to which he answers according to his own whim, or agreeable to the intimacies he has taken notice of during the time of merriment, and whatever he says is absolutely depended upon as an oracle; and if he couple two people who have an aversion to each other, tears and vexation succeed the mirth; this they call "cutting off the fiddler's head," for after this he is ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... vassals to preside? Is he not master of Thermopylae and the passes into Greece, and holds he not those places by garrisons and mercenaries? Has he not thrust aside Thessalians, ourselves, Dorians, the whole Amphictyonic body, and got preaudience of the oracle, [Footnote: This privilege, which had belonged to the Phocians, was transferred to Philip. It was considered an advantage as well as an honor in ancient times; for there were only certain days appointed in every month, when the oracle could be consulted, and the order of consultation was ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... OF SPINACH.—These comprise the Strawberry spinach, which, under that name, was wont to be grown in our flower-gardens; the Good King Harry, the Garden Oracle, the Prickly, and the Round, are the varieties commonly used. The Oracle is a hardy sort, much esteemed in France, and is a native of Tartary, introduced in 1548. The common spinach has its leaves round, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... with the solemn words with which a prophetic message is wont to be announced, thus at the outset stamping on the psalm its true character. The "oracle" or "word of Jehovah unto my Lord," which he heard, is a new revelation made to him from the heavens. He is taken up and listens to the Divine voice calling to His right hand, to the most intimate communion with Himself, and to wielding the energies of omnipotence—Him whom David knew to be ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... long before the birth of Christ, and many wise men and potentates toyed with the project in the hoary ages. The Persian king, Necho, was dissuaded sixteen hundred years before the dawn of Christianity from embarking in the enterprise, through the warning of his favorite oracle, who insisted that the completion of the work would bring a foreign invasion, resulting in the loss of canal and country as well. The great Rameses was not the only ruler of the country of the Nile who coquetted with the ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... Thus his oracle, but Jean Jacques' voice suddenly died down, for, as he sat there, the face of a woman made a vivid call of recognition. He slowly awakened from his self-hypnotism, to hear a woman speaking to him; to see two ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... oracle expounded in two elegies. 1st. Of Human knowledge. 2nd. Of the soule of man, and the immortality thereof;" with acrostics on Queen Elizabeth. (London, 1609, small 8vo.) The works of the above named Lady Eleanor Davies, the prophetess, widow of Sir John, were of a most extraordinary ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... his end, Like many another dreamer. What strange hints Of things past, present, and to come, there lie Sealed in the magic pages of that music Which, laying strong hold on universal laws, Ranges beyond these mud-walls of the flesh, Though dull wits fail to follow. It was this That made men find an oracle in the books Of Vergil, and an everlasting fount Of science ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... came, indeed, to be that very remarkable thing—a prophet honoured in her own community. Adopting an established custom of the town, she held in her own home two weekly meetings—one for men and women and one exclusively for women—at which she was the oracle. And all these meetings were very ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... tells you; Oracle? 'tis a voyce From above tells you; for the peoples tongues, When they pronounce good things, are ty'd to chaines Of twenty thousand linkes, which chaines are held By one supernall hand, and cannot speake But ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... critic's rank, Though conscious of his own internal blank, His want of taste unwilling to betray, 'Twixt sense and nonsense hesitates all day, With brow contracted hears each passage read, And often hums, and shakes his empty head, 210 Until some oracle adored pronounce The passive bard a poet or a dunce; Then in loud clamour echoes back the word, 'Tis bold, insipid—soaring, or absurd. These, and the unnumber'd shoals of smaller fry, That nibble round, I ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... said Agelastes; "believe me not a person to mix in the idle talk respecting you, with your comrades at the ale-cup. Such as I am, I can strike on this broken image of Anubis"—(here he touched a gigantic fragment of a statue by his side)—"and bid the spirit who long prompted the oracle, descend, and once more reanimate the trembling mass. We that are initiated enjoy high privileges—we stamp upon those ruined vaults, and the echo which dwells there answers to our demand. Do not think, that although I crave thy friendship, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... liberty," said Topaz to his master, "of remonstrating against your enterprise; but after speaking it was my duty to obey. I am your slave. I love you, and will follow you to the end of the world. But let us consult the oracle which ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... which poured the mountain streams, passed to the sea through a narrow gorge, the famous Vale of Tempe. In the mountainous region of Epirus were numerous streams flowing through the valleys. Within it was the ancient Dodona, the seat of the oracle. Magnesia, east of Thessaly, on the coast, comprised within it the two ranges of Ossa and Pelion. Central Greece contained eleven states. Malis had on its eastern edge the pass of Thermopylae. In Phocis, on the southern ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the Bible at random, seeking for a divine guidance, and his eye lighted on the words, "There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, even that we would be partakers of the divine nature." Before he left the house he again consulted the oracle, and the first words he read were, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." In the afternoon he attended service in St. Paul's Cathedral, and the anthem, to his highly wrought imagination, seemed a repetition of the same hope. The sequel may be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... was in it? My father indeed understood the meaning of it though I did not understand; but it was little agreeable to be thus made a helpless instrument, without any will of mine, in an operation of which I knew nothing; and to enact the part of the oracle unwillingly, with suffering and such a strain as it took me days to get over. I resisted, not as before, but yet desperately, trying with better knowledge to keep down the growing passion. I hurried to my room and swallowed a dose of a sedative which had been given me to procure sleep ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... if for the purpose of mature consideration. The audience waited for the announcement of the oracle's opinion. ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... anything, is to be done, and simple and clear in explaining himself where he thinks it is best to do nothing. Miss Goldsworthy herself had once stolen out to Consult with him. He became, indeed, for all who belonged to the queen, from this moment the oracle. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... exertion and observation. Do not mistake any mere defiance of these laws for originality. You might as well show your originality by defying the law of gravitation." Mr. Howard was not one to pose as the oracle of a new technique; in this essay he merely stated sincerely his experience in a craft, as a clinical lecturer demonstrates certain established ...
— Shenandoah - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Bronson Howard
... was my oracle during the first six years of childhood, resolving my difficulties and answering my questions. I was happy—very happy! and still look back to those days with indescribable pleasure and satisfaction. I had ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... rumours and slanders arisen?" I will tell you what I take to be the explanation. It is due to a certain wisdom with which I seem to be endowed—not superhuman at all like that of these gentlemen. I speak not arrogantly, but on the evidence of the Oracle of Delphi, who told Chaerephon, a man known to you, that there was no wiser man than Socrates. Now, I am not conscious of possessing wisdom; but the God cannot lie. What did ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... people were specially yearning to avenge the slaughter of Marcus Crassus and his army by the Parthians, and Caesar was at this time preparing an expedition against them. But a Sibylline oracle was alleged, that Parthia could only be conquered by a king; and it was proposed to invest Caesar with the royal title and authority over the foreign subjects of the state. It is agreed on all hands that, if his enemies did not originate this proposal, they at least craftily urged ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... world made their court to Hermione, that if any body had any petitions, or addresses to make to the Prince, it was by her sole interest; she sat in their closest councils, and heard their gravest debates; and she was the oracle of the board: the Prince paying her perfect adoration, while she, whose charms of youth were ended, being turned of thirty, fortified her decays with all the art her wit and sex were capable of, and kept her illustrious lover as perfectly her slave, as ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... "What speaks the oracle?" smiled Scotty. "Shall we or shall we not? Personally, I feel a desire for cooling springs, to step on a good-sized plat of green without having a watchful ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... business of trade, and among-other things he observed well to me, how it is not the greatest wits, but the steady man, that is a good merchant: he instanced in Ford and Cocke, the last of whom he values above all men as his oracle, as Mr. Coventry do Mr. Jolliffe. He says that it is concluded among merchants, that where a trade hath once been and do decay, it never recovers again, and therefore that the manufacture of cloath of England will never come to esteem again; that, among other faults, Sir Richard Ford cannot ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... our destination it became clearly necessary to put the baby to bed; but she got over that with the same good humor, tied a little handkerchief over her little head, and came out into the gallery with the rest. Then, such an oracle as she became in reference to the localities! and such facetiousness as was displayed by the married ladies! and such sympathy as was shown by the single ones! and such peals of laughter as the little woman ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... transformed into friendly intercourse, that prestige which is enjoyed by every man in the provinces who has made his money in Paris and deigns to come and spend it in a far away department, gave him great influence in the district; some persons listened to him as though he were an oracle. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... babblers," called Elfreda, "to the voice of the oracle. Let's leave old Father Ocean to himself and get into our everyday clothes. If we are going on a picnic, we'd better start. We can be on our way in an hour from now, if we hurry. To-night after dinner we'll all take a last melancholy stroll down here to find out what the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... you, Davis? which way shall we have the breeze when it does come?" asked our skipper of the old quartermaster, who was the oracle on such occasions. ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... intellectual, large-hearted, high-souled—a mother of men; the grave, energetic old maid—an executive power; the glorious girl, who, without a thought of self, demands in eloquent tones justice and liberty for all, and prophesies like an oracle of old. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... town like three great and mighty separate mountains. This town of Tor is small but well situated, all its inhabitants being Christians who speak Arabic. It has a monastery of friars of the order of Monserrat, in which is the oracle or image of Santa Catalina of Mount Sinai or St Catharine. These friars are all Greeks. The harbour of Toro is not large, but very secure, having opposite to the shore a long stony bank, between which and the shore is the harbour. At this place both the coasts of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... of; he suppresses the Ionic revolt; invades Greece; death of. Darius III., King of Persia. Defeated at Issus, and at Arbe'la; Flight and death of. De-iph'obus, a Trojan hero. De'lium, in Boeotia. Battle of. Del'phi, or Delphos. City, temple, and oracle of. De'los, island of; Confederacy of States at. Deme'ter. (See Ceres.) Deme'trius, son of Antigonus. Seizes the throne of Macedon. Demos'the-nes, the Athenian general. Captures Pylus; defeat and death of, at Syracuse. DEMOS'THE'NES, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... extraordinary conversational brilliancy that he could display when he pleased, the commanding dignity of his manners, even the matured authority of his reputation and years, might have served to awe the hopes, as well as to wound the vanity, of a man accustomed himself to be the oracle of a circle. These might have strongly influenced Legard in withdrawing himself from Evelyn's society; but there was one circumstance, connected with motives much more generous, that mainly determined his ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of art, that demonstrates profound science or particularly mathematical skill. Britain, where their discipline was in its highest perfection, and which was therefore resorted to by the people of Gaul as an oracle in Druidical questions, was more barbarous in all other respects than Gaul itself, or than any other country then known in Europe. Those piles of rude magnificence, Stonehenge and Abury, are in vain produced in proof of their mathematical abilities. These vast structures have nothing ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... were all wrong. The world was full of prejudice. We were heirs of all the mistakes of our forefathers for a thousand generations. "Every thing wants destroying," said one, "that every thing may be created anew." The oracle of the universe cries, "Behold, I make all things new;" and that oracle we ought to echo; and on that oracle we ought to act. "'When I was a child, I thought as a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child; ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... become a sort of oracle among the dwellers in "Mill avenue," as the street was facetiously called, and he was ready for any dish of gossip, not infrequently making himself conspicuous as a teller of news; he was faithful in gathering ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... at his Western home, and with the hearty acquiescence of his wife, who only needed to know the right, to pursue it, she began a physical life in obedience to the laws laid down by the said oracle, ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... Master Francis as a tale-teller pure and simple, although it cannot be said that all his innumerable critics and commentators have laid sufficient stress on this. From the uncomfortable birth of Gargantua to the triumphant recessional scene from the Oracle of the Bottle, proofs are to be found in every book, every chapter almost, and indeed almost every page; and a little more detail may be given on this head later. But the presentation of Rabelais as a novelist-before-novels may ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... with the most cherished emotions which glowed in her own mind. She found what she had ever been seeking, but had never found before, a truly sympathetic soul. She thought not of love. She looked up to M. Roland as to a superior being—to an oracle, by whose decisions she could judge whether her own opinions were right or wrong. It is true that M. Roland, cool and unimpassioned in all his mental operations, never entered those airy realms of beauty and those visionary regions of romance where Jane loved, at times, to revel. And ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... sense. This good creature flattered herself that she had an inexhaustible stock of this commodity; she placed the highest estimate on her own judgment; she believed herself to be well-nigh infallible. She discoursed in the tone of an oracle on future contingencies; she prided herself on being able to divine all things, to foresee all things, to predict all things—in a word, to be in the secret of the gods. As her Christian name was Joan, M. Moriaz, who set little ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... of good little girls in straw hats, such as I see in Blanche's little books," said the doctor, "all making the young lady an oracle, and doing wrong—if they do it at all—in the simplest way, just for ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... the chief divinities of the Greeks; the god of music and song, of prophecy, of the flocks and herds, of the founding of towns, and of the sun. He was the son of Zeus and Leto, and was born on the island of Delos. His favorite oracle was at Delphi. ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... episodes of Nicolas (who is here King of Carthage) and of Cleopatra follow; but when the expedition against Darius is reached, the mention of "Lube" in the French text seems to have induced the English poet to carry his man by Tripoli, instead of Cilicia, and bring him to the oracle of Ammon—indeed in all the later versions of the story the crossing of the purely fantastic Callisthenic romance with more or less historical matter is noticeable. The "Bishop" of Ammon, by the way, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... that in Greece—where those who look into these things most discriminatingly do not reckon the seven who bear the name as on the list of wise men—no one was so regarded except the man in Athens whom the oracle of Apollo designated as the wisest of men.[Footnote: Socrates.] In fine, you are thought to be wise in this sense, that you regard all that appertains to your happiness as within your own soul, and consider the calamities to which man is liable as of ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... and without distraction. Meet 'any six of these men in buckram,' and they will accost you with the same question and the same answer: they have seen it somewhere in print, or had it from some city oracle, that morning; and the sooner they vent their opinions the better, for they will not keep. Like tickets of admission to the theatre for a particular evening, they must be used immediately, or they will be worth nothing: and ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... They made many discoveries from mathematics which are welcome to men, and so, though they deserve our thanks for other discoveries, they are particularly worthy of admiration for their ideas in that field. For example, each in a different way solved the problem enjoined upon Delos by Apollo in an oracle, the doubling of the number of cubic feet in his altars; this done, he said, the inhabitants of the island would be delivered from an ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... realities that lie beyond it? If man is indeed, as Shakespeare describes him, 'a being of large discourse, looking before and after,' we could scarcely resist the belief, that, when once assured of the possibility of information on his head, he would, as it were, rush to the oracle, to have his absorbing problems solved, and his restless heart relieved of its load of uncertain forebodings."* [Bush's Statement ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... Jim was silent, turning the thing over with his cigar. Maria Angelina sat still as a mouse, fearful to breathe lest the bewildering revelations cease. Cousin Jane, over her second cup of coffee, had the air of a humorous and superior oracle. ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... councillors... The ministers were simply head-clerks of the bureaus. The Council of State served only to give form to the decrees emanating from him; he ruled even in petty details. Everybody around him was timid and passive; his will was regarded as that of an oracle and executed without reflection.... Self-isolated from other men, having concentrated in his own hands all powers and all action, thoroughly convinced that another's light and experience could be of no use to him, he thought that arms and hands ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... against such a manner of proceeding; she believed it was her friend's words that seemed to make such a simple action impossible, in spite of all the internal urgings. But a friend's advice is only thus powerful, when it puts into language the secret oracle of our souls. It was the whisperings of her womanly nature that caused her to shrink from any ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of congress in this emergency has given little satisfaction. They affect to give a declaration of the national will, and are as ambiguous as the Delphic Oracle; and it is said that their half- measures, and determination not to see that public opinion is against them, and that a thorough change can alone undermine this military revolution, will contribute more than anything ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the yard, and found the fly-coach had just crawled to the door. My father's head was buried deep in the vehicle; he was gathering up his packages and sending out, oracle-like, various muttered objurgations and anathemas upon Mrs. Primmins and her vacuum, which Mrs. Primmins, standing by and making a lap with her apron to receive the packages and anathemas simultaneously, bore with the mildness of an angel, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... there generally some clause against it?" Had this woman been trying to borrow from him on that settlement? But at this moment he reached the house, and got out of his cab still undecided as to how he was going to work the oracle. Impudence, constitutional and professional, sustained him in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... for Baxter during his stay I conducted badly. I was so excited and flattered by the visit of one whom I considered one of the first geniuses of the world, that I hardly knew what I was doing. I listened to all he said as if an oracle spoke. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... to Rouen died the following year, deeply lamented by the inhabitants, and generally so by France; but, above all, regretted by Louis XIIth, his sovereign, whom, to use the words of Guicciardini, he served as oracle and authority. The author of the History of the Chevalier Bayard, is still louder in his praise.—The western facade of the cathedral was not finished till 1530, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... legal science, he completed an Introduction to the Jurisprudence of Holland, a work which as soon as published became thenceforward a text-book and an oracle in the law courts and the high schools of the country. Not forgetting theology, he composed for the use of the humbler classes, especially for sailors, in whose lot, so exposed to danger and temptation, he ever took deep interest, a work ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and if he comes not himself, send his vassals to preside? Is he not master of Thermopylae and the passes into Greece, and holds he not those places by garrisons and mercenaries? Has he not thrust aside Thessalians, ourselves, Dorians, the whole Amphictyonic body, and got pre-audience of the oracle, to which even the Greeks do not all pretend? Yet the Greeks endure to see all this; methinks they view it as they would a hailstorm, each praying that it may not fall on himself, none trying to prevent it. And not only are the outrages which he does to Greece submitted to, but even the private ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... proceeding to any other task, and while doing so, cast a friendly glance at the dead Eva's picture. On the writing-table lay the bible, the only book not connected with his business affairs, that her husband ever read. Barbara sometimes drew comfort and support from the volume, but also used it as an oracle, for when undecided low to act she opened it and pointed with her finger to certain passage. This usually had a definite meaning and she generally, though not always, acted as it directed. To-day she had been disobedient, for in response to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Oracle was the name used to denote the place where answers were supposed to be given by any of the divinities to those who consulted them respecting the future. The word was also used to signify ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... but rather considered that they and the whole female sex were a kind of nonsensical mistake on the part of Nature, he took occasion to retire and shake his head in private at the boiler; inspired by which silent oracle, he was moved to give Joe various stealthy nudges with his elbow, as a parental reproof and gentle admonition to mind his own business and not make a fool ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... be a stranger in these parts, sir," said Master Nixon, following up this remark by a most enormous puff. He was the oracle of his circle, and there was silence whenever he was inclined to address them, which was not too often, though when he spoke, his words, as his followers often observed, were a regular ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... wasn't altogether your fault; it was an oversight of mine. I didn't bargain for a woman of that kind, and, of course, YOU couldn't be expected to think of it. Drink it! Drink it down, Smith. I'll manage to work the oracle ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... men who were once his fellow-workers, Craddock is an oracle," he went on. "His influence is not unlike Joan Lowrie's. It is the influence of a strong mind over weaker ones. His sharp sarcastic speeches are proverbs among the Rigganites; he amuses them and can make them listen to him. When he holds up 'Th' owd parson' ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... from his memory. He thought of the Holy Book as hostile to every form of earthly happiness, its promises only for those who lived to mortify their natural desires. Yet here was the very word of God encouraging him in his heart's hope. Were not men wont to use the Bible as their oracle, opening the pages at hazard, even as ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... answered that he was clearly trying to give the Mexicans every opportunity to solve their own troubles without interference. I was then asked, rather slyly, whether the President really wanted them to settle their troubles. Without waiting to hear my answer, the oracle went on to tell me what our real policy was as he saw it, and he had no doubts. The President wanted to take Mexico, but was intelligent enough to realise that if he simply seized it, he would forfeit any claim he might have to disinterestedness, ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... then recourse to his astrolabe, the oracle of Eastern science, and watching with grave precision until the precise time of the evening prayer had arrived, he sunk on his knees, with his face turned to Mecca, and recited the petitions which close the Moslemah's day ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... though thus greatly honoured, spake not greatly of himself; but when the oracle of God was delivered to him out of the bush, he said, Who am I, that thou dost send me? I am of a slender voice, ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... been born a cheerful, popular, and sympathetic boy, with a dancing-school manner, instead of an awkward and shy youth (although an exceedingly handsome one), we can not tell. That is the great secret behind the veil. The answer is not yet made, the oracle has not spoken, and we must not invade ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... patron, laughing; "I have sailed about with my father, and I know what is called a sou, a crown, a pistole, a louis, and a double louis, in all the languages of Europe; my crew, therefore, listen to me as they would to an oracle, and obey me as if I were ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the deity not by an outward sign but inwardly; he hears the god's voice, and can declare the divine will directly. This gift may reside in a certain family, and may be attached to a certain spot, where a regular oracle is open for consultation. At Dodona we read that the Selloi or Helloi, a band or family of priests of ascetic habits, interpret the rustling of the sacred oak, and Agamemnon consults the Pythia, the Delphic priestess, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... Royale with her devoted friend, the Comtesse de Maure, and continuing the traditions of the Hotel de Rambouillet. Her tastes had been formed in this circle, and she had also been under the instruction of the Chevalier de Mere, a litterateur and courtier who had great vogue, was something of an oracle, and molded the character and manners of divers women of this period, among others the future Mme. de Maintenon. His confidence in his own power of bringing talent out of mediocrity was certainly refreshing. Among his pupils was the Duchesse de Lesdiguieres, who said to him one day, "I ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... thirty. Occasionally the old fire would flash forth, and the wit and insight of his youth would shine out. Keats, Shelley, Lord Byron, and others strong and great sought him out to hold converse with him. And so he existed, a sort of oracle, amiable, kind and generous—wreck of a man that was—protected and defended by loving friends; while up at Keswick, Southey cared for his wife and educated his children as though ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... really offered such a toast? The fact is, he pretended to be a fierce radical, and was certainly the soul and the oracle of the small socialistic clubs in the neighborhood. People looked aghast when he began to talk of the reforms which he thought necessary; and they trembled when he proclaimed his convictions, that "the sword and the torch ought to search the rotten ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... studying his foot as though he were reading some mystic signals wigwagged from the gods, "mind, Davy, that you don't fall into the hands of the Professor. If the Professor catches you, Davy—" The foot stopped wiggling. The oracle was silent. Did it fear to reveal to me so dreadful a fate as mine if I fell into the Professor's clutches? I waved a hand defiantly to the seer and I rode on. Rode on? I was dragged on by four stout horses through the village to the mountains, for in my heart I was calling to my mother, ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... "Spoke like an oracle, my honest fellow!" said Gibbons, laughing; "it is a pity that your zeal and discernment should not be rewarded by some office ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... light, it is true; but nobody there at Tampa had a lamp of his own, except the few who had won renown in the Civil War, and reflected light was better than none at all. A very young and green second lieutenant who was able to boast that he had declined to be a major in a certain State was at once an oracle to other lieutenants—and to some who were not lieutenants. The policy which governed these appointments was not so well understood at that date in the campaign as it ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... reached. It was a green and shady valley, several miles long and three broad, in the midst of sand-hills. Here, over five hundred years before, had come the founder of Alexandria, Alexander the Great, to visit the oracle of Ammon, the god figured to be like a man having the head and horns of a ram. The statue of Amun-Ra had then been loaded with jewels, through the reverence of the merchants who halted their caravans at this oasis, and who left their treasures in the strong rooms of the temple, while resting ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... about this date, I suppose, that I read Bishop Butler's Analogy; the study of which has been to so many, as it was to me, an era in their religious opinions. Its inculcation of a visible Church, the oracle of truth and a pattern of sanctity, of the duties of external religion, and of the historical character of Revelation, are characteristics of this great work which strike the reader at once; for myself, if I may attempt to determine what I most gained from it, it lay in two ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... money. Yet he acknowledges that riches have the advantage of placing men above the temptation to dishonesty or falsehood. The respectful attention shown to him by Socrates, whose love of conversation, no less than the mission imposed upon him by the Oracle, leads him to ask questions of all men, young and old alike, should also be noted. Who better suited to raise the question of justice than Cephalus, whose life might seem to be the expression of it? The moderation with which old age is pictured ...
— The Republic • Plato
... are / but yet without synne. But now this remaynith as yet to be discussed / which theis men do take as for an oracle / and ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... believe for a moment that Paul would have sanctioned it. That settled it for Michael. For Michael had unbounded faith in the judgment of Paul; and the tragedy of his life lay in the fact that, on one important occasion, he misunderstood his oracle. ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... have influence at any price, and who will have other people busy themselves over them; when they cannot be oracles, they turn wags. M. Gillenormand was not of this nature; his domination in the Royalist salons which he frequented cost his self-respect nothing. He was an oracle everywhere. It had happened to him to hold his own against M. de Bonald, and ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... or refusal. 'Boswell,' says Horace Walpole, 'that quintessence of busy-bodies called on me last week, and was let in when he should not have been. After tapping many topics, to which I made as dry answers as an unbribed oracle, he vented his errand; 'had I seen Dr Johnson's Lives ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... notes be then? The ideas, arguments, and illustrations that now spring to your mind with a glance at this cipher or note will then have vanished. The cipher remains, but its inspiring power has passed. The oracle is dumb. You may summon spirits from the vasty deep—but will they come? You have again to face your old task; year after year the same drudgery awaits you with less hope of success. The brain, at first stimulated ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... these great practical difficulties lie in the way of applying the hybridization test, but even when this oracle can be questioned, its replies are sometimes as doubtful as those of Delphi. For example, cases are cited by Mr. Darwin, of plants which are more fertile with the pollen of another species than with their own; and there are others, such as certain ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... battle without consulting priest or augur. It was not only their goods, but their families, their life, the honor of their country, and the sanctuary of their religion, that the Greeks were defending, and they might rely on the protection of the gods. The oracle of Apollo had answered, "I and the white virgins will provide for this matter." The people surrounded the temple, and the priests supported and encouraged the people. During the night small bodies of AEtolians, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Vaticanus is sometimes said to have received its name from 'vaticinium,' an oracle or prophecy; for tradition says that Numa chose the Vatican hill as a sacred place from which to declare to the people the messages he received from the gods. It is not, however, one of the seven hills on which ancient Rome was built, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... "The oracle speaks in poetry," laughed Eric. "That was Florence Percival, who led the class in mathematics, as I'm a living man. By many she is considered the beauty of her class. I can't say that such is my opinion. I don't greatly care ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... trace thy trailing garments. Sighs and fears Have vanished: in one long and ardent gaze Thy steps I follow down the heavenly slope. Iris, be mine thy message! Let thy rays Write out how I with destiny may cope. Ah! spanned with light would be all coming days, Could I but read thy oracle of hope. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... earthquake should announce so great a fall— A summer's sun discloses it. Yon disk To the star-read Chaldean, bears upon Its everlasting page the end of what Seem'd everlasting; but oh! thou TRUE sun! The burning oracle of all that live, As fountain of all life, and symbol of Him who bestows it, wherefore dost thou limit Thy lore unto calamity?[6] Why not Unfold the rise of days more worthy thine All-glorious burst from ocean? why not dart A beam of hope athwart ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... providence, but was rather taken to prove that the sufferer was an evil-doer, justly hateful to the gods."[9] Jehu and his house were blamed for the blood spilt at Israel, although Jehu was commissioned by Elisha to destroy the house of Ahab.[10] This is like the case of OEdipus, who obeyed an oracle, but suffered for his act as for a crime. Jehovah caused the ruin of those who had displeased him, by putting false oracles in the mouths of prophets.[11] Hezekiah expostulated with God because, although he had walked before God with a perfect heart and had done what was right in His sight, he ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Maintenance thereof, Lands to the yearly value of 120l. or better; making this William Lilly first Master thereof; which Place he commendably discharg'd for 15 years. During which time he made his Latine Grammar, the Oracle of Free Schools of England, and other Grammatical Works. He is said also by Bale, to have written Epigrams, and other Poetry of various Subjects in various Latine Verse, though scarce any of them (unless it be his Grammar) now extant, only Mr. Stow makes mention of an Epitaph made by him, ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... and potent. As soon as he puts on the mantle, he finds that an indefinable change has come over his whole method of thinking and expressing himself. He is no longer an individual but the mouthpiece of an oracle. He catches some infection of style, and feels that although he may believe what he says, it is not the independent outcome of his own private idiosyncrasy. Now Fitzjames's articles are specially remarkable for their immunity from this characteristic. When I read them at the time, and I have had ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... engaging the love of women. The air, the manner, the tone, the conversation, the something that interests, and the something to be proud of—these are the attributes of the man made to be loved. And the Beauty-man is, nine times out of ten, little more than the oracle of his aunts, and the "Sich a ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that evening he began to perceive why the oracle had spoken. Claude having excused himself from dressing for dinner on the ground of another mysterious engagement with Billy Cheever, and Mrs. Masterman having retired up-stairs, Thor was alone in the library with ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... was evident that we were going to have a prolonged spell of grand weather SOME TIME, and read out a poem which was printed over the top of the oracle, about ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... deceived by an oracle, was conquered by Cyrus, king of Persia. Cyrus commanded a huge funeral pile to be erected upon which Croesus and fourteen Lydian youths were to be chained and burnt alive. When this was done, the discrowned king called on the name of Solon, and Cyrus ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... decorated skull set up on a block of wood on the table. Thus he receives his share of the food and of the cigars, and is raised to the rank of a domestic idol or korwar. Henceforth the skull is carefully kept in a corner of the chamber to be consulted as an oracle in time of need. The bodies of fathers and mothers are treated in the same way as those of firstborn children. On the other hand the bodies of children who die under the age of two years are never buried. ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... she said; and her voice, though quiet, was full of ugly meaning. "Snakes can hear, Miss Oracle, and bite, too. We'll ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... relates to the service of the gods, he strictly conformed to the advice of the oracle, who never gives any other answer to those who inquire of him in what manner they ought to sacrifice to the gods, or what honours they ought to render to the dead, than that everyone should observe the customs of his own country. Thus in all ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... of the ship Argo is a tragedy. Pelias, king of Ioleus, had consulted an oracle concerning the safety of his dominions, and was warned to beware of the man with one sandal. Soon afterwards Jason (a descendant of AEolus, the wind god) appeared before him with one foot unsandalled. He had lost his sandal while crossing a swollen stream. Pelias, anxious to rid ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... dost with an equal ray Into the palace and the cottage shine, And show'st the soul, both to the clerk and lay, By the clear lamp of oracle divine. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... I guess, I realized the awful helplessness that comes over the Psiless when a TK invokes his telekinetic power. I wanted no part of the future this corn-fed oracle had conjured up. But it might be the ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... higher power, to whom he gives all the glory and the praise. There are many like him, lady, both among Christians and Pagans. The sybils impose not so much upon others as upon themselves. They who give forth the responses of the oracle, oft-times believe that they are in very truth full of the god, and speak not their own thoughts, but the inspirations of him whose priests they are. To themselves more than to others are they impostors. The conceit of the peculiar favor of God, or of the gods in return for extraordinary devotion, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... message to them in its pure womanly goodness. Even the natives were touched. They whispered and hesitated. Then after a time of much murmured debate, the King of Fire stood forward as a mediator. "There is an oracle, O Korong," he said, "not to prejudge the matter, which decides all these things—a great conch-shell at a sacred grove in the neighboring island of Aloa Mauna. It is the holiest oracle of all our holy religion. We gods and men of Boupari have taken counsel together, and have come ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... difficult situations. You only have to live things in order to make other people take them for granted. You've never done anything to specially please father, and yet he listens to you as if you were an oracle. It's the same way with me. If any one had told me two years ago that I should ever come to praying for a stepmother I should have thought them crazy; and yet I have come to ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... felt the time had come—the reference here and elsewhere is always to the realm of popular magazine literature appealing to a very wide audience—for the editor of some magazine to project his personality through the printed page and to convince the public that he was not an oracle removed from the people, but a real human being who could talk and not merely write ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... asked the question, that she waited, almost expecting a reply, but there was no voice and none to answer her; and she was turning away with a sickening sense of mockery at her own folly in seeking the empty shrine whence the oracle of her life had departed, when her eye fell on the engraving over the mantel-piece. It was the one thing for which Mr. Drake had begged as a memorial of Joe Brownlow, and it still hung in its old place. It was of the Great Physician, consoling and healing all around-the sick, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... South, to give them to the slave, and to the master also, in spite of himself. All love the Union, and are ready to fight, perhaps to die, for it. Aye! but what does that mean? Something as antagonistic in the interpretation thereof as the decisions touching an ancient oracle, a disputed biblical text, or a knotty passage from ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... 'Suffing' (something) answers, through an interpreter, any questions in any tongue, even English, receiving, in return for the revelations, offerings of beads, leaf-tobacco, and cattle, which are mysteriously removed. The oracle is doubtless worked by some sturdy knave, a 'demon-doctor,' as the missionaries call him, who laughs at the beards of his implicitly-believing dupes. A tree growing near the stream represents 'Lot's wife's ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... temerity of Richelieu, the penetration, the exquisite tact, the almost instinctive presentiment of approaching events which gave so much authority to the counsel of Shaftesbury, that "it was as if a man had inquired of the oracle of God." In this school Thucydides studied; and his wisdom is that which such a school would naturally afford. He judges better of circumstances than of principles. The more a question is narrowed, the better he reasons ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that there were more ways than one of murderin' infant children. Her ideal along this line, I've discovered, is slow asphyxiation in a sort of Dutch-oven made of an eider-down comforter, with as much air as possible shut off from their uncomfortable little bodies. But the Oracle is going, and I intend to bring up my babies in my own way. For I know a little more about the game now than I did when little Dinkie made his appearance in this vale of tears. And whatever my babies may or may not be, they are ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... unison with my spirit: as if they too had taken their cue from the ill-omened bodings of my Indian oracle! A storm-cloud had suddenly obscured the sun—black as the wing of the buzzard-vulture. Red shafts were shooting athwart the sky—threatening to scathe the trees of the forest; thunder rolled continuously along their tops; and huge isolated rain-drops, like gouts of blood, came pattering down upon ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... and, laying his axe at the root of the tree—calling on Herod's conscience, long gagged and silent, to take part in the impeachment—he said, in effect: "I summon you before the bar of God, and in the pure light which streams from his holy Oracle, your consciences being witnesses against you, you know perfectly well that it is not right for you to be living as you are living. 'Thou shalt not ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... that should be the example And Oracle of the Kingdome, read to us No other doctrine! Egre. None that thrives so well As that, within my knowledge. Cow. Flatterie rubbes out, But since great men learne to admire themselves, Tis something crest-falne. Egre. To be of no Religion, Argues a subtle moral understanding, And it ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... for us another echo of the story of Minos in the shape of the reasons which led the Cretans to refuse aid to the rest of the Greeks during the Persian invasion. The Delphian oracle, which they consulted at this crisis, suggested to them that they had known enough of the misery caused by foreign expeditions. 'Fools, you complain of all the woes that Minos in his anger sent you, for aiding Menelaus, because they would not assist ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... whole nature and aim of the composition. In this version it is divided into two portions, the first dealing with the birth of Apollo, and the foundation of his shrine in the isle of Delos; the second concerned with the establishment of his Oracle and fane at Delphi. The division is made merely to lighten the considerable strain on the attention of the English reader. I have no pretensions to decide whether the second portion was by the author of the first, or is an imitation by another hand, or is ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... noise and empty rumours without difficulty and without distraction. Meet 'any six of these men in buckram,' and they will accost you with the same question and the same answer: they have seen it somewhere in print, or had it from some city oracle, that morning; and the sooner they vent their opinions the better, for they will not keep. Like tickets of admission to the theatre for a particular evening, they must be used immediately, or they will be worth nothing: and the object is to find auditors for the one and customers for the other, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... empty as it was. They could see no way out. If Merlin said that Merlin had to be destroyed, that was it. Merlin was infallible. Conn hated the thought of destroying that machine with his whole being, not because it was an infallible oracle, but because it was the climactic masterpiece of the science he had spent years studying. To destroy it was an even worse sacrilege to him than it was to the Merlinolators. And Rodney Maxwell was thinking of the ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... continuation of the same pleasant weather. Oheenaw and Shahaka came down to see us, and mentioned that several of their countrymen had gone to consult their medicine stone as to the prospects of the following year. This medicine stone is the great oracle of the Mandans, and whatever it announces is believed with implicit confidence. Every spring, and on some occasions during the summer, a deputation visits the sacred spot, where there is a thick porous stone twenty-feet ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... temple or a house of prayer, A palace, oracle, or spouse most fair; Or what you will: God's love is here displayed, And here his treasure safely up is laid; For his own darling none can find a place, Where he, as here, is wont to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... great renown, with various mighty feats of arms in recent campaigns, vaguely current, conduced to make him the monarch of the forecastle, and the arbiter of the various discussions and arguments among the men, who rarely ventured to dispute the dictum of their oracle. ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... "a weel learnt man," and fair in an argument, and willing to look at all the sides of a subject. This was Weaver Sim's opinion of the minister, and he was an oracle in a small way among ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... a daisy and began nervously to strip it of its petals—a pang of agony caught at the man's heart. So, only that morning, had he imagined himself consulting the daisy oracle. "She loves me, she loves me not." Absolutely he put the memory from him. Molly ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... jealous of the beauty of a maiden named Psyche, the youngest of three daughters of a king. She sent misery on the land and family, and caused an oracle to declare that the only remedy was to deck his youngest daughter as a bride, and leave her in a lonely place to become the prey of a monster. Cupid was commissioned by his mother to destroy her. He is here represented not as ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... temperament is to be corrected and new formed by medicines, it was necessary to begin a new regimen. With these sentiments he went to Delphi, and when he had offered and consulted the god, he returned with that celebrated oracle, in which the priestess called him "Beloved of the gods, and rather a god than a man." As to his request that he might enact good laws, she told him, Apollo had heard his request, and promised that ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... gave himself up to the torment of his thoughts. Two pictures alternately crowded his mind; one, that of the woman of his dream, entreating him to come back—which his memory clung to as an oracle; the other, of this woman, cold and lifeless, fathoms deep in the sea. He pondered on her chances. She was close to, or on the bridge steps; and boat No. 24, which he was almost sure was being cleared away as he looked, would ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... the sea through a narrow gorge, the famous Vale of Tempe. In the mountainous region of Epirus were numerous streams flowing through the valleys. Within it was the ancient Dodona, the seat of the oracle. Magnesia, east of Thessaly, on the coast, comprised within it the two ranges of Ossa and Pelion. Central Greece contained eleven states. Malis had on its eastern edge the pass of Thermopylae. In Phocis, on the southern slope of Mount Parnassus, was ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... inquires after the nails of the crucifixion, and, at the prayer of Cyriacus, their hiding-place is revealed. When the nails were brought to the queen she wept aloud, and the fountain of her tears flowed over her cheeks and down upon the jewels of her apparel. XIV. She seeks guidance by oracle as to the disposal of the nails. She is directed to make of them rings for the bridle of the chief of earthly kings. He who rides to war with such a bridle should be invincible; and a prophecy to that effect is quoted! Helena obeys, and sends the bridle ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... you of a rice- pudding seasoned plentifully with pepper, mustard, and, may be, a little rappee or prince's mixture added by way of sauce. I think the recipe would cut quite a figure in the Cook's Oracle or Mrs. Dalgairn's Practice of Cookery, under the original ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience. Who has not hearkened to Her infinite din? She is Truth's speaking-trumpet, the sole oracle, the true Delphi and Dodona, which kings and courtiers would do well to consult, nor will they be balked by an ambiguous answer. For through Her all revelations have been made, and just in proportion as men have consulted her oracle within, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... "No," replied the oracle, putting her warm hand upon the heart of the patient, "only in a dead faint and chilled to the marrow of her bones, poor heart! Whatever made her run out so in this storm? Where did you find her? had she fallen down in a fit? What was the cause on it?" ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Wales, when I was at Sydney, why, of course that chap's name was the same. I remember that much. Can't get hold of the name, though." He appeared to consult the pattern on his silk pocket-handkerchief as an oracle, and to await its answer with a thoughtful eye. Presently he blew his nose on the oracle, and returned it to his pocket, adding: "But it's a speculation—little speculation of my own. Don't ask me!" We saw, however, that more would come, without ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... who is looked upon as the oracle of the peerage in the science of political economy, accuses railroads of injuring shipping, and it is certainly true that the most perfect means of attaining an object must always limit the use of a less perfect means. But railways can only injure shipping by drawing ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... cannot see much here of what the temple of Venus was, but on my mountain you can see what the temple of Fortune must have been. In the days when she flourished, kings and princes travelled from distant lands to consult her oracle; now no one ever comes near the place except a tourist or two, passing to some more prosperous town, who may stay an hour to gaze upon the remains ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... times in ten she will inquire from her father confessor whether or not she can grant him his request, and the poor husband will have to wait patiently for the permission of the master or the rebuke of the lord, according to the answer of the oracle which had to be consulted! If he gets impatient under the yoke, and murmurs, the wife will soon go to the feet of her confessor; to tell him how she has the misfortune to be united to a most unreasonable man, and how she has to suffer from ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... led it himself to the door; held the stirrup for his master, with the mingled humility and grace of his profession, and then strutted away—"pride on his brow and glory in his eye"—to be the cynosure and oracle of ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... glory", but doubtless it was these which obscured the April sun that afternoon, so that the new baby could be carried out under the elm tree and there rocked to his first sleep. My next excursion, so the family traditions aver, was to Uncle Peter's, the nearest neighbor, the oracle of the community for all signs, omens and country folk-lore, who, taking me in his arms, carried me to the attic of his house and touched my head to the ridgepole: "What did you do that for?" my mother asked. "Oh, that's the way to make him a great man sometime. I does it to all the ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... scene To claim your tears, dear Brander. Doubtless days Of infinite scope lie yet before me, since No oracle has foretold that I shall die. But if I die, then go I singing down, Not praying or repentant, to my grave. I would smite again the altar! I would smite The hearts bowed before it; all the world And ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... Grandfather Smallweed's house. The door is opened by the perennial Judy, who, having surveyed them from top to toe with no particular favour, but indeed with a malignant sneer, leaves them standing there while she consults the oracle as to their admission. The oracle may be inferred to give consent from the circumstance of her returning with the words on her honey lips that they can come in if they want to it. Thus privileged, they come in and find Mr. Smallweed with his feet in the drawer ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... ravages of the Danes, and the whole land was in confusion, undertook a long journey to Athens, and there spent many years in the study of the Grecian, Chaldean, and Arabian literature. He there frequented all the places and schools of the philosophers, and even visited the oracle of the sun, which Esculapius had constructed for himself. Having accomplished the object of his travels, he returned through Italy and France; where, for his extraordinary learning, he was much favoured by Charles the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... almost as by instinct to the lodgings of the Lemprieres. He had long been accustomed to regard the simple good faith and courage of Mme. de Maufant as an infallible oracle in cases of conscience. Never had so hard a need for an infallible oracle presented itself to ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... fight?" asked Tom Strachan of another, not in the hearing of the first oracle, who ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... on Jerry Muskrat's back, and Jerry started for the Big Rock as fast as he could go. When all the Minks and the Otters and the Coons and the Muskrats saw them coming, they gave a great shout, for Grandfather Frog is sometimes called the oracle of the Smiling Pool. You know an oracle is one ...
— The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat • Thornton W. Burgess
... that was a Delphic Oracle. Worlds could not have tempted him to deviate from a letter ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... damage o' some kind," replied the oracle. "I've heerd say as how when them lanterns is showed aboard of a craft, that it's a sure sign as she's a doomed ship. I remembers one time when I was in the Chinee seas in the old—Lord ha' mercy ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... reign of Saturn, under the appellation of Ouranus, or Heaven; there the impious Titans warred with the sky; there Jupiter was born and nursed; there was the celebrated shrine of Ammon, dedicated to Theban Jove, which the Greeks reverenced more highly than the Delphic Oracle; there was the birth-place and oracle of Minerva; and there, Atlas supported both the heavens and the earth ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... being in a house of mourning may account for it. Fitful and versatile I know thee to be; changeable with scene and circumstance. Thy views are just what any eloquent companion pleases to make them. She thou lovest is thy deity; her lips thy oracle. And hence my cheerful omens of the future; the confidence I have in the wholesome efficacy of my government. I, that have the will to make thee happy, have the power too. I know I have; and hence my promptitude to give away all for thy sake; to give myself a wife's title ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... Salisbury's conduct in the affair, one would suppose that he had shut himself up in his study, and consulted the oracle: ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, November 4, 1897, No. 52 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... my brethren of mankind! The footprints are trodden and retrodden; the path wears ever broader, smoother, into a broad highway, where even wheels can run; and many travel it;—till—till the Town of Stowe disappear from that locality (as towns have been known to do), or no merchandising, heavenly oracle, or real business any longer exist for one there: then why should anybody travel the way?—Habit is our primal, fundamental law; Habit and Imitation, there is nothing more perennial in us than these two. They are the source of all Working and all Apprenticeship, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... great personage, grey-headed and blue-ribboned, who was permitted to share the honours of the high place, was hanging on her animated and inspiring accents. An ambassador, in an armed chair which he had placed somewhat before her, while he listened with apparent devotion to the oracle, now and then interposed a remark, polished and occasionally cynical. More remote, some dames of high degree were surrounded by a chosen band of rank and fashion and celebrity; and now and then was heard a silver laugh, and now and ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... were demonstrated. He felt the time had come—the reference here and elsewhere is always to the realm of popular magazine literature appealing to a very wide audience—for the editor of some magazine to project his personality through the printed page and to convince the public that he was not an oracle removed from the people, but a real human being who could talk and not merely ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... that she lacked good sense. This good creature flattered herself that she had an inexhaustible stock of this commodity; she placed the highest estimate on her own judgment; she believed herself to be well-nigh infallible. She discoursed in the tone of an oracle on future contingencies; she prided herself on being able to divine all things, to foresee all things, to predict all things—in a word, to be in the secret of the gods. As her Christian name was Joan, M. Moriaz, who set little store by his calendar, sometimes called ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... poor priest, whose only learning is some knowledge of the ancients," responded Don Inocencio. "I recognize the immense value, from a worldly point of view, of Senor Don Jose's scientific knowledge, and before so brilliant an oracle I prostrate ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... these sights distressed, To Faunus' oracle, his sire renowned, And seeks the grove, beneath Albunea's crest, And sacred spring, which, echoing from the ground, Leaps up and flings its sulphurous fumes around. Here, craving counsel when in doubtful plight, Italians ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... ancient oracle declares, temperance and fortitude, prudence and every virtue, are certain purgatives of the soul; and hence the sacred mysteries prophesy obscurely, yet with truth, that the soul not purified lies in Tartarus, immersed in filth. Since the impure is, from his depravity, the friend of filth, as swine, ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... that heareth you, heareth me, and he that heareth me, heareth Him that sent me;"(28) and, as if to emphasize this declaration, He added that any one who would not hear and obey the Church should be considered as a heathen and a publican—types of all that was bad.(29) The Church, therefore, is the oracle of God, it is His mouthpiece; it possesses and guards the only revelation which God has made to His rational creatures; it alone has the words of ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... felicity of these men, to stun all companies with noisy information; to still doubt, and overbear opposition, with certain knowledge or authentick intelligence. A liar of this kind, with a strong memory or brisk imagination, is often the oracle of an obscure club, and, till time discovers his impostures, dictates to his hearers with uncontrouled authority; for if a publick question be started, he was present at the debate; if a new fashion be mentioned, he was at court the first ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... give any further account than what we are able to conjecture from our Annals.—For who can question the address, and the capacity of Brutus, the illustrious founder of your family? That Brutus, who so readily discovered the meaning of the Oracle, which promised the supremacy to him who should first salute his mother? That Brutus, who concealed the most consummate abilities under the appearance of a natural defect of understanding? Who dethroned and banished a powerful monarch, the son of an illustrious sovereign? Who settled ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... We have an excellent newspaper press, daily and weekly, and should either or both ever, by any chance, fail to know anything—past, present, or to come—we have a Monday Lectureship, beside which the Oracle of Delphi was a last ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Hesiod may be told in outline. After the contest at Chalcis, Hesiod went to Delphi and there was warned that the 'issue of death should overtake him in the fair grove of Nemean Zeus.' Avoiding therefore Nemea on the Isthmus of Corinth, to which he supposed the oracle to refer, Hesiod retired to Oenoe in Locris where he was entertained by Amphiphanes and Ganyetor, sons of a certain Phegeus. This place, however, was also sacred to Nemean Zeus, and the poet, suspected by his hosts of having ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... Zahn, after which he did not again allude to his wife's decease. In his last years, when my father managed the estate, and he only lived with us and criticised, he came to have the reputation of an oracle. The neighbours sent him their sons at the beginning of any important phase in their lives, and he received them in this very arbour, administering eloquent and minute advice in the deep voice that rolled ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... of their arrival, a banquet was given them by their compatriots; and from that hour, Foresti became the oracle and the consoler, the teacher, almoner, and chief of his fellow-exiles. Subsequent events drove many other Italian patriots to our shores; his purse and his counsel were ever ready for the impoverished and inexperienced, who regarded him with filial admiration; while ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... sort of oracle among the dwellers in "Mill avenue," as the street was facetiously called, and he was ready for any dish of gossip, not infrequently making himself conspicuous as a teller of news; he was faithful in gathering up and retailing ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Within this aperture, on the right hand, is a hole two feet diameter, perforated quite through the rock sixteen feet, and running from north to south. In the abovementioned aperture a man might lie concealed, and predict future events to those that came to consult the oracle, and be heard distinctly on the north side of the rock, where the hole is not visible. This might make the credulous Britons think the predictions proceeded solely from the rock-deity. The voice on the outside was distinctly conveyed to the person in the aperture, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... reputation of vast experience in all the facts relating to those last fateful hours, which are the only certain event in every human existence, caused her to be regarded as a sort of Delphic oracle in such matters, and therefore Mrs. Kittridge, not without a share of the latent superstition to which each human heart must confess at some hours, drew confidentially near to Miss Roxy, and asked if she had anything ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... you upon the age in which he has cast your life. He who in a moment of uncertainty would inform himself of his future should not heed his intentions and hopes; by studying his present conditions, he will find himself an oracle unto himself. He should address his best mind to the question, 'I am now in a road; if I keep it, where will I arrive?' And wisdom will answer, 'What are thy desires? For what art thou fitted? What are the opportunities of the time?' Most ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... the ranks of the police of one of our biggest cities, and his former profession, not to speak of his knowledge of the world gained thereby, entitles him to esteem. It has raised him to the rank of a species of oracle on any subject upon which he is pleased to discourse; the result is a not unpleasing, because altogether unintentional, dogmatism which seasons Willy's opinions of men ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... present Drumcondra in order to reach the appointed field. The day seems to have been decided on by formal challenge, for we are told Brian did not wish to fight in the last week of Lent, but a Pagan oracle having assured victory to Brodar, one of the northern leaders, if he engaged on a Friday, the invaders insisted on being led to battle on that day. And it so happened that, of all Fridays in the year, it fell on the Friday before Easter: ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... regret her choice. Socknersh proved, as she had expected, a humble, hard-working creature, who never disputed her orders, indeed who sometimes turned to her for direction and advice. Stimulated by his deference, she became even more of an oracle than she had hitherto professed. She looked up "The Sheep" in her father's "Farmer's Encyclopaedia" of the year 1861, and also read one or two more books upon his shelves. From these she discovered that there was more in sheep breeding than was covered by the ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... the meanin' whereof is goin' to depend a heap on what you brands with it." This was said like an oracle. "Also, the same means more or less accordin' to who all puts the word in play. I remembers a mighty decent sort of sport, old Cape Willingham it is; an' yet Dan Boggs is forever referrin' to old Cape as 'ornery.' An' I reckon Dan thinks ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... only the leaders who confess their inadequacy, but the followers feel it, for even the most enthusiastic of them come sooner or later to find that their Oracle had not learned all wisdom, nor was fit to be taken as sole guide, much less as sole defence or satisfaction. He who looks to find all that he needs in men must take many men to find it, and no multiplicity of men will bring him ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... lunar allusion, but, judging that his rhyming gibberish, like that of the rascally priests in Apuleius, was a carefully prepared oracle of general application, kept in stock for the cozening of such prey as myself, I repeated to him my favourite Hindu proverb[7], and gave him, in exchange for his benevolent cheque on the future, a more commonplace article of present value, which ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... do not determine; but true it is, he had gotten the Queen's ear in a trice, and she began to be taken with his election, and loved to hear his reasons to her demands: and the truth is, she took him for a kind of oracle, which nettled them all; yea, those that he relied on began to take this his sudden favour for an alarm and to be sensible of their own supplantation, and to project his, which made him ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... Religion has been too often prostituted to the most detestable purposes; that furious bigots and bloody persecutors, and self-interested hypocrites of all qualities and dimensions, from the rapacious leader of an army, to the canting oracle of a congregation, have falsely called themselves Christians, are melancholy and humiliating truths, which (as none so deeply lament them) none will more readily admit, than they who best understand the nature, and are most concerned for the honour of Christianity. We are ready ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... threatened heat, then changed its mind, thickened and massed itself for storm. While he was dressing, Durant was made aware of the meteorological disturbance by an incessant tap-tap on the barometer as the Colonel consulted his oracle in the hall. The official ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... he was until the life he led had exhausted him. He was a universal favourite, and with his inexhaustible stock of tales, proverbs, and funny stories, he was welcome everywhere. He was very well read, too, and by no means devoid of learning. He was the oracle of the taverns, and was the life and soul of any party at which he might be present. He effected a regular literary revolution. Heretofore the only books which people cared for were the Quatre Fils d'Aymon and Renaud de Montauban. ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... the brands and receipts just the same. Only if we'd sold to any one that thought there was a cross look about it, we'd have had to take half money, that's all. They've fetched a rattling price, through Starlight's working the oracle with those swells, and ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... virtuous or vicious, holy or profane, so long as her imperative physical conditions of life, the mortal thing, are conformed to; society itself is not her care, nor civilization, nor anything that belongs to man above the brute. Her word, consequently, need not disturb us; she is not our oracle. It rather belongs to us to win further victory over her, if it may be, by our intelligence, and control her vital, as we are now coming to control her ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... have nothing against you, Ned, but your modesty; a very useless virtue on French ground, or indeed on any ground: I wish you had a little more consciousness of your own merits: remember that to know one's self the oracle of Apollo has pronounced to be the perfection of human wisdom. Our fair friend Mrs. H—— says, "Colonel Rivers wants nothing to make him the most agreeable man breathing but a ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... fate in the case of OEdipus, while we reject as arbitrary the situations in the Ahnfrau or other destiny tragedies. And such an element is indeed contained in the history of king OEdipus. His fate touches us only because it might have been ours, because the oracle hung the same curse over us before our birth as over him. For us all, probably, it is ordained that we should direct our first sexual feelings towards our mothers, the first hate and wish for violence against our fathers. Our dreams convince us of ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... fourth year of my apprenticeship, I paid a visit to my friends in the country, where I expected to be received as a new ornament of the family, and consulted by the neighbouring gentlemen as a master of pecuniary knowledge, and by the ladies as an oracle of the mode. But, unhappily, at the first publick table to which I was invited, appeared a student of the Temple, and an officer of the guards, who looked upon me with a smile of contempt, which destroyed at once all my hopes of distinction, so that I ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... certain impassivity of features and manner which some fin de siecle oracle of the cities had pronounced good form, but he was not wholly able to conceal his relief. Such an arrangement was entirely to his liking. It solved the situation satisfactorily in more ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it advises.' Having placed her cap upon some straw, she burnt in front of it a few juniper twigs, some capers, and a couple of green peas. She then croaked five times. This completed the rites, and having donned her cap again, she began to speak like an oracle. ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... prestige which is enjoyed by every man in the provinces who has made his money in Paris and deigns to come and spend it in a far away department, gave him great influence in the district; some persons listened to him as though he were an oracle. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... but, prophet though that journal professed to be, the oracle failed to discern that from that time forward the names of Robert Massey and Joe Slag would very soon cease to be connected with ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... unbreeched soothsayer only stared upon the florin with big eyes; the oracle could not be persuaded to reply; and the Countess kissed him lightly, gave him the florin, set him down upon the path, and resumed her way with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a preacher by the name of McIntyre, a type of the blatant Bellarmine who exiled Galileo—a man who never doubts his own infallibility, who talks like an oracle and continually tells of perdition for all who ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... reflection on the right manner of manifestation of all divine things to those who desire to see them. For every house of the Muses, where, indeed, they live, is an Interpreter's by the wayside, or rather, a place of oracle and interpretation in one. And the right function of every museum, to simple persons, is the manifestation to them of what is lovely in the life of Nature, and heroic in ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Laracor. Elsewhere Swift speaks of his "old Presbyterian housekeeper," "who has been my Walpole above thirty years, whenever I lived in this kingdom." "Joe Beaumont is my oracle for public affairs in the country, and an old Presbyterian woman ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... country-town. Here, indeed, a little money, a little learning, and a little fashion, will go ten times as far as they will in London. Here, a man who takes in the Quarterly or Edinburgh, is a literary character; the lady who has one head-dress in the year from a Bond-street milliner, becomes the oracle of fashion, "the observed of all observers;" here dinners are talked of as excellent, at which neither French dishes nor French wines were given, and a little raspberry ice would confer wide celebrity on an evening party, and excite much animadversion ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... the Ark in the house of our Lord in the oracle of the temple, in sancta sanctorum, under the wings of cherubim. In the ark was nothing but the two tables of Moses of stone which Moses had put in. And then Solomon blessed our Lord tofore all the people, ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... too generous not to give Credit to his Words, shew'd himself to his People, who were transported with Excess of Joy at the Sight of their darling Prince; falling at his Feet, and kissing and embracing 'em; believing, as some divine Oracle, all he assur'd 'em. But he besought 'em to bear their Chains with that Bravery that became those whom he had seen act so nobly in Arms; and that they could not give him greater Proofs of their Love and Friendship, since ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... Presbyterians, Anabaptists, Independents and Quakers, according as any of these were most in credit; so, since the fashion hath been taken up of exploding religion, the popish missionaries have not been wanting to mix with the freethinkers; among whom, Toland the great oracle of the Antichristians is an Irish priest, the son of an Irish priest; and the most learned and ingenious author of a book called "The Rights of the Christian Church,"[20] was in a proper juncture reconciled to the Romish faith, whose true son, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... a subtle and profound remark of Hegel's that the riddle which the Sphinx, the Egyptian symbol of the mysteriousness of Nature, propounds to Oedipus is only another way of expressing the command of the Delphic oracle, "Know thyself." And when the answer is given the Sphinx casts herself down from her rock. When man knows himself, the mysteriousness of ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... great note in the midland counties. Michael's abilities and attainments seem to have been considerable. He was so well acquainted with the contents of the volumes which he exposed to sale, that the country rectors of Staffordshire and Worcestershire thought him an oracle on points of learning. Between him and the clergy, indeed, there was a strong religious and political sympathy. He was a zealous churchman, and, though he had qualified himself for municipal office by taking the oaths to the sovereigns in possession, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... before. The plains were gashed with ravines and broken into hollows and steep declivities, which flanked our course, as, in long-scattered array, the Indians advanced up the side of the stream. Mene-Seela consulted an extraordinary oracle to instruct him where the buffalo were to be found. When he with the other chiefs sat down on the grass to smoke and converse, as they often did during the march, the old man picked up one of those enormous black-and-green crickets, which the Dakota call by a name that signifies ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... one, had by his mother been consigned over to the Manichaeans, but had found out how much that sect was to be abhorred, and had, therefore, avoided it. But he assured her that the child of such tears as hers could not perish. Which answer she took as an oracle from heaven. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... applauded in all conversations that he began to be the oracle of the poets; and it was by his judgment every performance was approved or condemned; which made the King jest with him, and tell him, that nature had given him a patent to be Apollo's viceroy. Lord Rochester ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... doings there are no secret; she is as bad as any Scythian herself,—butchering strangers and eating them! Apollo, too, who pretends to be so clever, with his bow and his lyre and his medicine and his prophecies; those oracle-shops that he has opened at Delphi, and Clarus, and Dindyma, are a cheat; he takes good care to be on the safe side by giving ambiguous answers that no one can understand, and makes money out of it, for there are plenty of fools who like being ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... seemed, we cannot deny, to savour either of presumption or of idiotcy, or more probably of both. And rightly. But we live in times of progress. The mystery of yesterday is the common-place of to-day; the Bible, which was Newton's oracle, is Professor Huxley's jest-book; and students at the University now lose a class for not being familiar with opinions, which but twenty years ago they would have been expelled for dreaming of. Everything is moving onward swiftly and satisfactorily; and if, when we have ...
— Every Man His Own Poet - Or, The Inspired Singer's Recipe Book • Newdigate Prizeman
... revolt again victorious, and elected at the age of ninety-six to the throne of the Eastern Empire, which he declined, and died Doge at ninety-seven. We still feel the force of Socrates, "whom well-advised the oracle pronounced wisest of men"; of Archimedes, holding Syracuse against the Romans by his wit, and himself better than all their nation; of Michel Angelo, wearing the four crowns of architecture, sculpture, painting, and poetry; of Galileo, of whose blindness Castelli ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... what old story says of Aesop's true, The oracle of Greece he was, And more than Areopagus[30] he knew, With all its wisdom in the laws. The following tale gives but a sample Of what has made his fame so ample. Three daughters shared a father's purse, Of habits totally diverse. The first, bewitched with drinks delicious; The next, coquettish ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... who had long been nuncio in Spain, observes, that the people, accustomed to revere the Inquisition as the oracle of divinity, abhorred the proposal of the marriage of the Infanta with an heretical prince; but that the king's council, and all wise politicians, were desirous of its accomplishment. Gregory XV. held ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... as an ancient oracle. I must have a little more light. Do these differences of feeling or opinion touch action? ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... aged forty-nine, or nearly, was pale from other causes, and it was a different kind of paleness; not bloodlessness, like Amadis, but something lacking in the blood, a vitiated state. Too much Fleet Street, in short; too much of the Oracle—Pantagruel's Oracle of the Bottle. ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... of his appeal to the jury, a dog began barking vigorously, he whirled around, shook his finger at the dog and said, gravely, with the quickness of thought, 'I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... blindness, she could read character unhesitatingly. That was, no doubt, why people feared her. When Mr. Secretary Howell, in the days when he was still the oracle of the Ruskin-Rossetti circle, had been regaling them with his wonderful tales, after dinner, she would throw her netting down and say, "How can you two sit there and listen to such a pack of lies?" She objected strongly, in these later years, ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... was in a grove, consecrated to Apollo, and situated between Colophon and Lebedos, in Ionia. The god had an oracle there. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... methods that neither crowds nor applause nor demands can confuse or disturb him. The great spirits who have nourished the best life of the race have not turned to their fellows for their aims and habits of work; they have taken counsel of that ancient oracle which speaks in every man's soul, and to that counsel they have remained steadfastly true. There is no clearer disclosure of divine guidance in the confusion of human aims and counsels than the presence of a distinct faculty or gift in a man; and when such a gift reveals itself ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... some powerful recollection. "Do I speak without proof of the public hazards?" he exclaimed. "I can give you demonstration—I need invoke neither powers above nor powers below to enlighten you. I have the oracle within my hand." The House fixed all its eyes upon him. He dropped his voice, and spoke with a faint, but clear tone which formed a remarkable contrast to his usually bold, and even harsh enunciation: "Sir," said he, in this half-whispered voice, "before I join these gentlemen ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... ought rather to be ashamed. They are monotonous dwellers in an unenlightened past like Mr. Sala, who is even more commonplace than the books of which he is for ever talking. Mr. Joseph Knight is their oracle at first nights, and some of them even labour under the wild impression that Mr. Robert Buchanan can write good English, and that Mr. George R. Sims—what would he be without ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... repose of all France again with new broils; he told her, that all the world made their court to Hermione, that if any body had any petitions, or addresses to make to the Prince, it was by her sole interest; she sat in their closest councils, and heard their gravest debates; and she was the oracle of the board: the Prince paying her perfect adoration, while she, whose charms of youth were ended, being turned of thirty, fortified her decays with all the art her wit and sex were capable of, and kept her illustrious lover as perfectly her slave, as if she ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... married M. Firmiani, receiver-general in the department of Montenotte. M. Firmiani died in Greece about 1822, and she became Mme. de Camps in 1824 or 1825. At this time she dwelt on rue du Bac and had entree into the home of Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, the oracle of Faubourg Saint-Germain. An accomplished and excellent lady, loved even by her rivals, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, her cousin, Mme. de Macumer—Louise de Chaulieu—and the Marquise d'Espard. [Madame Firmiani.] She welcomed and protected Mme. Xavier Rabourdin. [The Government Clerks.] At the ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... looking still upon her abominable governess as an authority. How could one have expected her to throw off the unholy prestige of that long domination? She could not help believing what she had been told; that she was in some mysterious way odious and unlovable. It was cruelly true—to her. The oracle of so many years had spoken finally. Only other people did not find her out at once.—I would not go so far as to say she believed it altogether. That would be hardly possible. But then haven't the most flattered, the most conceited ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... then, in ominous tone, spoke this oracle. "Patsy Ann, how yo' pappy doin' sence Matildy died?" "Matildy" was ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... and oracle he had been for so long, asked him what they ought to do; Cavalier replied that if they would follow him, their best course and his would be to take the first opportunity of gaining the frontier and leaving the country. They all declared themselves ready ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... The family oracle replied slowly that he had thought a good deal about it, and that he had inquired at the mission when the courier was ...
— The Little Girl Lost - A Tale for Little Girls • Eleanor Raper
... pretensions, there could be no doubt that she would have a variety of advantageous offers—and that her play should be to raise her value by rejecting, without hesitation, all pretenders but those of the first distinction. Lady Pierrepoint, who usually spoke with all the ambiguity of an oracle, seemed on this subject more than usually mysterious. She dropped half sentences, then checked herself, hinted that she was not at liberty to speak out; but that she had her own private reasons for advising her friend Miss Turnbull not to be ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... Jerome, the oracle on such subjects, from whom the Roman Catholic Church is unwilling to allow any appeal, expressly tells us that Cyprian[47], who called Tertullian the Master, never passed a single day without studying his works; ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... believe that God has commanded a tabernacle to be built to have His oracle heard from the ark in it? No, no! God is too great, too sublime for these unbearable Pagan follies. I worship God in everything. People can pray everywhere, ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff
... inform them how this was to be done. The devil advised them to make a brazen head, with all the internal structure and organs of a human head. The construction would cost them much time, and they must wait with patience till the faculty of speech descended upon it. Finally, however, it would become an oracle, and, if the question were propounded to it, would teach them the solution of their problem. The friars spent seven years in bringing the subject to perfection, and waited day after day in expectation that it would ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
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