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More "Propitiate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little Irish blarney to propitiate me,' laughed Mr. Kendal, who certainly was in unusual spirits after his execution and rescue by proxy, but ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cataracts, but it was manned by as smart a crew of young Chinese as could be found on the river. It was pitch dark when we paddled into the stream amidst a discharge of crackers. As we passed under the Kweili, men were there to wish me bon voyage, and a revolver was emptied into the darkness to propitiate the river god. ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... year of the pestilence a strange and portentous event occurred. The Tiber rose to an unusual height, overflowed with its waters the great circus (Circus Maximus), and put a stop to the games then going on, which were intended to propitiate the wrath of heaven, and induce the gods to relieve man from the evil ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... college of old women? They cannot think it needful to salvation,or they would not withdraw themselves. Wherefore is it? Do they fear these self-elected, self-ordained priests, and offer up their wives and daughters to propitiate them? Or do they deem their hebdomadal freedom more complete, because their wives and daughters are shut up four or five times in the day at church or chapel? It is true, that at Hoboken, as every where else, there are ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... knew when his wife would return, and was ready to receive her in the meekest of moods. He had cut an unusual quantity of wood and kindlings, but they failed to propitiate. Sissy soon called her mother to come over to her cabin to hear of Mr. Birdsall's visit, and all that it portended. Aun' Sheba listened in silence, and sat for a long time in deep thought, while ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... stirring up a great commotion of piety in Milan. The city had been brought to the very lowest state of misery by the Spanish occupation; and, strange to say, this friar was himself a Spaniard. In order to propitiate offended deities, he organized a procession on a great scale. 700 women, 500 men, and 2,500 children assembled in the cathedral. The children were dressed in white, the men and women in sackcloth, and all were barefooted. They promenaded the streets of Milan, incessantly shouting Misericordia! ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... have known in life. When a field is blighted or a crop does not promise well, a gourd is placed in the pathway; passengers set up a wailing cry, which they intend as a prayer to the spirits to give a good crop to their mourning relatives. Rumanika, in order to propitiate the spirit of his father, was in the habit of sacrificing annually a cow on his tomb, and also of placing offerings on it of corn and wine. These and many other instances show that, though their minds are dark and misguided, the people possess religious sentiments which might afford ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... night, trembling with fear, they [89] sought to propitiate the glorious goddess; and in the morning they told all to their father, Celeus. And he, according to the commands of the goddess, built a fair temple; and all the people assisted; and when it was finished every man departed to his own home. Then Demeter returned, and sat down within the temple-walls, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... was a broad crimson sash. He advanced with a grave dignity. Each bow—and he bowed often—was an act of ceremonial courtesy. There was no trace of servility, nor of any special desire to please or propitiate in his manner. He reached the step below the terrace on which the flagstaff stood. He bowed once more and then stood upright, looking straight at the Queen ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... persuaded that he had no wish to establish a tyranny in Germany, were likely to capitulate, and after a victory his generosity in leaving Germany her liberty would appear the greater. Charles did not at this moment fear the Turk, and it was in his power at any moment to propitiate the French. Pedro de Soto urged the continuance of the war, to avert the danger of a papal-French combination, which would be the natural result of Paul's indignation at a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... subject that would recall their old relations at Glanyravon, that he gradually felt more at his ease with her, and it ended by his resuming his old, friendly intercourse with Mr and Mrs Jones. But Freda knew well that, in spite of her best efforts to propitiate him, he never forgot those words, 'Do you know who I am, and who you are?' He was always gentlemanlike, always kind, always ready to do anything she asked him, but he never relaxed the somewhat formal respect of his manner. In society, he was quite different with every one else to what he was ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... myself grow weak. But Sallie proceeded gayly: "Then you know how hard I have tried to propitiate those miserable Asburys. I declare, I think Alice might meet me half way. Perhaps she didn't like being seated between Frank Mayo and Brian Beck, but both she and that awful Frost man sat as stiff and unsmiling as if ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... always sad for the historian to have to record a departure from principle, and I have to confess with shame on Mr. Bultitude's account that, feeling the Doctor's eye upon him, and striving to propitiate him, he humiliated himself so far as to run about with an elaborate affection of zest, and his exertions were rewarded by hearing himself cordially ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... fortitude—that is, I feel sure I could—but toothache, no! I am not ashamed of it. Every brave man has at least one weakness. Lord ROBERTS'S was cats. Achilles' was tendons. Mine is toothache (Biographers, please note). When my jaw annoys me I try to propitiate it with libations of whisky, brandy, iodine, horse-blister and patent panaceas I buy from sombreroed magicians in the Strand. If these fail I totter round to the dentist, ring the bell and run away. If the maid catches me before I can escape and turns me into the waiting-room ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... it. In what other Lepantos besides Trafalgar Square Cunninghame Graham has fought, I cannot tell. He is a fascinating mystery to a sedentary person like myself. The horse, a dangerous animal whom, when I cannot avoid, I propitiate with apples and sugar, he bestrides and dominates fearlessly, yet with a true republican sense of the rights of the fourlegged fellowcreature whose martyrdom, and man's shame therein, he has told most powerfully in his Calvary, a tale with an edge that will cut the soft cruel hearts and strike ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... gentle flattery would propitiate my father. Instead, his brows knitted, and he shot forward his head and asked: "The what kind of ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... of antiquity; and it is not more than thirty years since the labors of Niebuhr made the truth generally known,—if it can, indeed, be said to be so known even now. The Gracchi long passed for a couple of demagogues, who were engaged in seditious practices, and who were so very anxious to propitiate "the forum populace" that they were employed in perfecting plans for the division of all landed property amongst its members, when they were cut off by a display of vigor on the part of the government. "The Sedition of the Gracchi" was for ages one of the common titles for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... a ghastly grin on his tormentors. It was meant to propitiate them, to save the last scrap of his self-respect by the assumption that they were all good fellows together. Feebly it suggested that after all a ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... Young people, who find that their daily pleasures depend not so much upon their own exertions as upon the humour and caprice of others, become absolute courtiers; they practise all the arts of persuasion, and all the crouching hypocrisy which can deprecate wrath, or propitiate favour. Their notions of right and wrong cannot be enlarged; their recollection of the rewards and punishments of their childhood, is always connected with the ideas of tyranny and slavery; and when they break their own chains, they are impatient to impose similar bonds ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... waters. Rain fell or threatened for both of the days. Not even the presence of three queens—of England, Prussia, and Belgium—two kings, a prince consort, an archduke, and a future emperor and empress, could propitiate the adverse barometer, or change the sulky face of the sky. Between showers the Queen had a glimpse of the romantic scenery, and perhaps Ehrenbreitstein was most in character when the smoke from the firing of twenty thousand troops "brought home to the imagination ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... beginning and the end of their philosophy. Let us listen for a moment to their language. "Prayer should be only for the good". "Men should act according to the spirit, and not according to the letter of their faith". "Wouldest thou propitiate the gods? Be good: he has worshipped them sufficiently who has imitated them". It was from a Stoic poet, Aratus, that St. Paul quoted the great truth which was the rational argument against idolatry—"For we are also His offspring, and" ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... was, at the same time, the Only Begotten Son of God, and, as the idea of sacrifice to the numerous gods was an important part of the religious orgies of the time, they could only bring that into their new scheme for entrapping souls by making the Son—who was really God—a sacrifice to himself, to propitiate himself, and keep himself from utterly destroying and damning the folks He himself had created. So they made it out that this good man should be a propitiation for the "sins of the race." Silly; improbable; unlawful; incredible; impossible. ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... distrust American democracy," returned Paul, smiling, "and feel disposed to propitiate it by a temporary sacrifice of ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... two young people drew apart, escaped from the elders, to create a new thing by themselves. He worked in the garden to propitiate his uncle. He talked churches to propitiate his aunt. He followed Anna like a shadow: like a long, persistent, unswerving black shadow he went after the girl. It irritated Brangwen exceedingly. It exasperated him beyond bearing, to see the lit-up grin, the cat-grin as he ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... sudden, Urvasi enters on a heavenly car, accompanied by his friend. They are invisible to the king as on the previous occasion. The moment that Urvasi is about to withdraw her veil, the queen appears. She is dressed in white, without any ornaments, and comes to propitiate her ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... when misfortunes began to overwhelm him. His Majesty had proofs of this in a visit he made to the Faubourg Saint-Antoine; and it is very certain that, if under other circumstances he had been able to bend from his dignity to propitiate the people, a means which was most repugnant to the Emperor in consequence of his remembrances of the Revolution, all the faubourgs of Paris would have armed themselves in his defense. How can this be doubted after the event which I ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... buffaloes, and other animals are sacrificed daily at her shrine. We saw the bloody work going forward. Crowds of pilgrims, numbering at least three hundred during our short stay, came in bands from the country to propitiate the goddess. Each one presents an offering as the idol is shown. It is the most disgusting object I have ever seen, and a sight of it would, I am sure, frighten children into crying. The business is skilfully managed. A small dark hall, capable of ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... Percival had not even time to breathe into her ear the "Forgive me" with which he meant to propitiate her. He was not very penitent for his offence. He thought that he was sure of Elizabeth's pardon, because he thought himself sure of Elizabeth's love. But, as a matter of fact, that stolen kiss did not at all advance his ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... to go To Hades, do not fail to throw A "Sop to Cerberus" at the gate, His anger to propitiate. Don't say "Good dog!" and hope thereby His three fierce Heads to pacify. What though he try to be polite And wag his Tail with all his might, How shall one amiable Tail Against three angry Heads prevail? The Heads must ...
— The Mythological Zoo • Oliver Herford
... position of the Chinese permitted to remain in the Islands has changed since the American advent. In former times, when the highest authorities frowned upon the Chinese community, it was necessary to propitiate them with bags of silver pesos. There was no Chinese consul in those days; but Chino Carlos Palanca was practically the protector and dictator of his countrymen during the last decade of Spanish rule, and, if a cloud descended upon them from high quarters, he used to pass the word round for a ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Mexico once more. So the allied army of Spaniards and Tlascalans set out upon their journey through luxuriant plains and flourishing plantations, met occasionally by embassies from different towns, anxious to claim the protection of the white men, and bringing rich gifts of gold to propitiate them. They passed between the two enormous mountain peaks, Popocatapetl, 'the hill that smokes,' and Iztaccihuatl, 'the white woman,' and presently encountered a blinding snow-storm, from which they ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... village of Stromness, on the Orkney main island, called Pomona, lived, in 1814, an aged dame called Bessie Millie, who helped out her subsistence by selling favourable winds to mariners. He was a venturous master of a vessel who left the roadstead of Stromness without paying his offering to propitiate Bessie Millie! Her fee was extremely moderate, being exactly sixpence, for which she boiled her kettle and gave the bark the advantage of her prayers, for she disclaimed all unlawful acts. The wind thus petitioned for was sure, she said, to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... although it was evident that they knew they were meant as questions. The pole we observed in the creek, on the evening previously to our making the Darling, was not the only one that fell under our notice; our impression therefore, that they were fixed by the natives to propitiate some deity, was confirmed. It would appear that the white pigment was an indication of mourning. Whether these people have an idea of a superintending Providence I doubt, but they evidently dread evil agency. On the whole I should say they are ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... tost in soul, wandering hither and thither, rested not night or day in the pursuit of her husband, desiring, if she might not sooth his anger by the endearments of a wife, at the least to propitiate him with the prayers of a handmaid. And seeing a certain temple on the top of a high mountain, she said, "Who knows whether yonder place be not the abode of my lord?" Thither, therefore, she turned her steps, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... before another party came up the opposite side of the ship. They announced themselves to be a nominating committee of the Perpendiculars, on exactly the same errand as their opponents. They, too, wished to propitiate the foreign interests, and were in search of a proper candidate. Captain Poke had been an attentive listener to all that occurred during the circumstances that preceded my nomination; and he now stepped promptly forward, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... came in sight, nursing the villages of Pen-Kai and Blut, and the wandering streets of Mlo, where priests propitiate the avalanche with wine and maize. Then the night came down over the plains of Tlun, and we saw the lights of Cappadarnia. We heard the Pathnites beating upon drums as we passed Imaut and Golzunda, then all but the helmsman slept. And villages scattered along the banks of the ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... government—that they as a body and the great sectarian power of the West, formally ask'd Mr. Harlan's appointment—that he was of them, having been a Methodist minister—that it would not do to offend them, but was highly necessary to propitiate them. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... he did this he heard a footstep and a cough together close at hand, and, turning with a start, beheld a pale and slender man of brief stature, who scraped his lantern jaws with apologetic thumb and finger, and looking at him with a startled meekness, as if he would fain propitiate anger for a possible intrusion, sidled to the foot of the stairs, mounted the stairway with a backward glance and a second cough of apology, and ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... of primitive religion is the inevitable sequel. In behalf of the interests which represent him man must here, as ever, make the best terms he can with the powers which beset him. He has no concern with these powers except the desire to propitiate them. He has no knowledge of their working excepting as respects their bearing upon his interests. Obeying a law of human nature which is as valid now as then, he seeks for remedies whose proof is the cure which they effect. Let the association between a certain ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... her mourned virginity, was never paraded, (that I wot of,) for any other than a much-to-be-lamented damsel. Who ever asked, in those old times, the mediation of St. Enoch? Where were the offerings, in jewels or in gold, to propitiate that undoubted man of God and denizen of heaven, St. Moses? what prows, in wax, of vessels saved from shipwreck, hung about the dripping fane of Jonah? and where was, in the olden time, that wretched ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... always consecrating the event of the moment; they are under the influence of dreams and apparitions, and they build altars and temples in every village and in any place where they have had a vision. The law is designed to prevent this, and also to deter men from attempting to propitiate the Gods by secret sacrifices, which only multiply their sins. Therefore let the law run:—No one shall have private religious rites; and if a man or woman who has not been previously noted for any impiety offend in this way, let them be admonished to remove their rites ...
— Laws • Plato
... praiseworthy efforts, but at what cost no one but herself ever knew. Marion's whole life became one propitiatory sacrifice to her mother-in-law. To propitiate Mrs. Daintree was a very simple matter. Bearing in mind that her leading characteristics were a bad temper and an ungovernable desire to ride rough-shod over the feelings of all those who came into contact with ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... they use, than thus cloudily enwrapped in allegorical devises." He thought that Homer and Virgil and Ariosto had thus written poetry, to teach the world moral virtue and political wisdom. He attempted to propitiate Lord Burghley, who hated him and his verses, by setting before him in a dedication sonnet, the ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... whence I now bring very important news. The haughty Manasara, brooding over his defeat, unmindful of your generous forbearance, and only anxious to wipe off his disgrace, has been for a long time endeavouring to propitiate with very severe penance the mighty Siva, whose temple is at Mahakala, and he has so far succeeded that the god has given him a magic club, very destructive of life ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... the morrow be regarded as virtues. The accused were cited before the tribunal of Ain, in the city of Bourg, where dwelt a majority of their friends, relatives, abettors and accomplices. The Ministry sought to propitiate the one party by the return of its victims, and the other by the almost inviolate safeguards with which it surrounded the prisoners. The return to prison indeed resembled nothing less than ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... in the snowy Algidus among the oaks and holm trees, or thrives in the Albanian meadows, with its throat shall stain the axes of the priests. It is not required of you, who are crowning our little gods with rosemary and the brittle myrtle, to propitiate them with a great slaughter of sheep. If an innocent hand touches a clear, a magnificent victim does not pacify the offended Penates more acceptably, than a consecrated ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... were intended to propitiate the gods being completed, the consuls took the sense of the senate on the state of the nation, the conduct of the war, what troops should be employed, and where they were severally to act. It was resolved that ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... sentiment that he could hardly credit and was wholly impotent to express. With a face, voice, and manner trained through forty years to terrify and repel, Rhadamanthus may be great, but he will scarce be engaging. It is a fact that he tried to propitiate Archie, but a fact that cannot be too lightly taken; the attempt was so unconspicuously made, the failure so stoically supported. Sympathy is not due to these steadfast iron natures. If he failed to gain his son's friendship, or even his son's toleration, on ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... purpose on one side to some large opposite tree on the other. Such poles are permanently fixed, supported by substantial props, and it was doubtless one of them that Captain Sturt supposed to have been erected to propitiate some deity. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... Arts asked himself what he could do to propitiate the female M. D. He went to the gardener and got him to cut a huge bouquet, choice and fragrant, and he carried it all the way to Hillstoke. Miss Gale was at home. As he was introduced rather suddenly, she started and changed color, and said, sharply, "What do you want?" Never ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... sacrificial cultus of heathenism, but a confession that the whole heathen world finds and feels itself to be guilty at the bar of natural reason and conscience? The accusing voice within them wakes their forebodings and fearful looking-for of Divine judgment, and they endeavor to propitiate the offended Power by their offerings ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... her ill-treatment, desired her to repair to her confessor, who was the proper person to award a punishment for such a catalogue of heinous crimes. The next day I was in the confessional, when she narrated all that had passed: I then told her she had nothing to do, but to propitiate Heaven by dedicating her musical talents to its service; pointing out, that her only chance of salvation was from immediately taking the veil. I refused to listen to any other species of penance, however severe, for which she gladly would ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... When the body was burnt and the bones collected in a silver urn, which his father had ordered to be carried back to his native land, to be there buried beneath the earth, Sapor, after taking counsel, determined to propitiate the shade of the deceased prince by making the destroyed city of Amida his monument. Nor indeed was Grumbates willing to move onward while the shade of his ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... sorry comedy with such skill as he can manage. To his German countrymen he has to proclaim that the war has been one brilliant progress from the start to the present time. This must be done in order to allay the apprehensions of Berlin and to propitiate the ever-increasing demand for more plentiful supplies of food. Secretly he has to work quite as hard to secure for the Central Empires such a conclusion of hostilities as will leave them masters of Europe. And, without doubt, he has to put up with a good many indignities ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... minutely enthusiastic is the hunter's treatment of his theme, that the attempt to win any favour for his performance from the Saxon reader, is attended with no small risk,—although it is possible that a little practice with the rifle in any similar wilderness may propitiate even the holiday sportsman somewhat in favour of the subject and its minute details. We must commit this forest minstrel to the good-nature of other readers, entreating them only to render due acknowledgment to the forbearance ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Johnson, 'those are the most wretched who exhibit their productions on the theatre, and who are to propitiate first the manager and then the public. Many an humble visitant have I followed to the doors of these lords of the drama, seen him touch the knocker with a shaking hand, and after long deliberation adventure to solicit entrance by a single ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Hargrove had the tact to put her guests immediately at ease. She proposed to have a good time during the remainder of the summer, and saw in Burt a means to that end, while she instinctively felt that she must propitiate Amy in order to accomplish her purpose. Therefore she was disposed to pay a little court to her on general principles. She had learned that the young girl was a ward of Mr. Clifford's. What Burt was to Amy ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... myself upon my knees, and pray to all the saints to come to my aid; for I do not dare, in consequence of my excess of wickedness, to call upon God. O Saints of God, you I pray with weeping full of grief, that ye would propitiate his mercies for me miserable. Alas me! Father Abraham, pray for me, that I be not driven from thy bosom, which I greatly long for, and yet not worthily, because of the ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... the night lighted joss-sticks are stuck in the bow of the sampan, and lighted paper is waved about to propitiate the spirit of the waters and of the night; small saucers of rice, boiled turnip, and peanut-oil are also solemnly presented to the tutelary gods, to enlist their active sympathies as an offset against the fell designs of mischievous spirits. Falling asleep ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... that this isolated people were influenced by a higher race, to the extent of adopting a totally new Supreme Being, from Europeans, a being whom they in no way sought to propitiate, and who was of no practical use. And this they did, he says, not under priestly influence, but in the face ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... should say. He is a lank giant of about seven feet in height; the kind of show man that used to go about in caravans over the country; and he began rocking over me like a poplar in a gale, and cries out: "Stay there! away with that! Providence? Can you set a thought on Providence, not seeking to propitiate it? And have you not there the damning proof that you are at the foot of an Idol?"—The old idea about a special Providence, I suppose. These fellows have nothing new but their trimmings. And he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cross marking the boundary between the Kolyma and Verkhoyansk districts. The cross was hung with all kinds of rubbish, copper coins, scraps of iron, and shreds of coloured cloth suspended by horse-hair, which had been placed there by Yakute travellers to propitiate the gods and ensure a prosperous journey. The cross, as a Christian symbol, did not seem to occur to the worshippers of the Shaman faith, who had left these offerings. We slept on the northern side of the mountain at a povarnia renowned even amongst the natives for its revolting ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... to propitiate the hunted animal, in order not only to avert the anger of its kin but also to obtain its aid, appears in the numerous cases in which excuses are made for the killing, and the animal is implored to make a friendly report of the man to its friends and ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... after the right has been mentioned, or, in short, the other one. Many things which are lucky if seen on the right are fateful omens if seen to leftward. On the other hand, if you spill the salt, you propitiate destiny by tossing a pinch of it over the left shoulder. A murderer's left hand is said by good authorities to be an excellent thing to do magic with; but here I cannot speak from personal experience. Nor do I know why ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... justice which marked the course prescribed to me by two of my illustrious predecessors when acting under their direction in the discharge of the duties of superintendent and commissioner shall be strictly observed. I can conceive of no more sublime spectacle, none more likely to propitiate an impartial and common Creator, than a rigid adherence to the principles of justice on the part of a powerful nation in its transactions with a weaker and uncivilized people whom circumstances have placed at ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... second of April following; and the first mention we find of Goldsmith is in connection with an incident which has its ludicrous as well as its regrettable aspect. The further success of She Stoops to Conquer was not likely to propitiate the wretched hole-and-corner cut-throats that infested the journalism of that day. More especially was Kenrick driven mad with envy; and so, in a letter addressed to the London Packet, this poor creature ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... had, in singular succession, dead calms and fresh breezes, stiff gales and sudden squalls; saw sharks, flying-fish, and dolphins; spoke several vessels: had a visit from Neptune when we crossed the Line, and were compelled to propitiate his favour with some gallons of spirits, which he seems always to find a very agreeable change from sea water; and touched at Table Bay and ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... situation was hemming her in, and left gaps for a passage through to something else—even these had now to be curbed. Useful in hate, they were impotent in love. So Ruth recognised in her new humility. But when one day, seized by panic at having spoken irritably to her, Dickie hastily tried to propitiate her, to ingratiate himself so that she might spare him, might let him live a little longer, then Ruth felt she must cry aloud under the strain of this subtle torture. Why, he was her lover, her man, her child.... In thought, her arm shaped itself into a ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... "the father bears the heat and burden of the day, the maternal uncle only comes when it is a question of life or death." The Khasi father is revered not only when living, but also after death as U Thawlang, and special ceremonies are performed to propitiate his shade. Further remarks on the subject of marriage will be found in the Section which ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... which new land long remained marshy and scarcely habitable, and the original settlers were forced to abandon it on account of the numerous serpents by which it was infested: But they afterwards returned, being instructed to propitiate ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... box, open on the side next us, fitted up as a shrine; in it sat an Indian goddess in vermilion and gold, with minor deities round her, all very fearsome. I was told it was a cholera goddess, and the dancing was to propitiate her and drive cholera out of the village. I'd fain remember the light and shade and colour, but it is difficult to do these unfamiliar scenes from memory; of scenes at home one can grasp more in the time, for many forms are familiar and others one can reason from these—that they must ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... of the ancient world—the God of human passions, frailties, caprices, and whims is gone, and with him the old duty to propitiate him, so that he might be induced to treat you better than your neighbor. Can anyone question the advance that has been made in diminishing the prevalence of these medieval, essentially childish, and essentially selfish ideas? The new God is the God of law ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... relation with me was a singular one. Her life was passed in a crack-brained sort of alternation between love and hatred for me. If I was in a good-humour with her (as occurred sometimes) there was nothing she would not do to propitiate me further; and she would be as absurd and violent in her expressions of fondness as, at other moments, she would be in her demonstrations of hatred. It is not your feeble easy husbands who are loved best in the world; according to my ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Aztecs of Cortez' time, with their comparatively high civilization, tolerated human sacrifices. But their human sacrifices were merciful compared with ours. What is cutting out a man's heart on an altar to propitiate a god, to hounding him to death through miserable years in a prison to placate the spite of an accuser, the justice of a court, or the grudge of a warden ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... three Rhodian sculptors, Agesan'dros, Polydo'rus, and Athenodo'rus. It represents a scene, in connection with the fall of Troy, that Virgil describes in the Second Book of the AEneid. A Trojan priest, named Laocoon, endeavored to propitiate Neptune by sacrifice, and to dissuade the Trojans from admitting within the walls the fatal wooden horse, whereupon the goddess Minerva, ever favorable to the Greeks, punished him by sending two enormous ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... him. It might have struck a disinterested observer that she was a little afraid of him—a little anxious to propitiate him; but none of these ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... with holy-water was a part of the original rite, on the ground that the mariner was passing into new countries, once thought uninhabited, as into a strange new-world, to sanctify the hardiness and propitiate the Ruler of Sea and Air. The Dutch, also, performed some ceremony in passing the rocks, then called Barlingots, which lie off the mouth of the Tagus. Gradually the usage went farther out to sea; and the farther it went, of course, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... us an altar, tug at the cliff-boulders, pile them with the rough stones— we no longer sleep in the wind, propitiate us. ...
— Sea Garden • Hilda Doolittle
... Fredegonde, imploring her forgiveness. The king had him expelled from the church, but, instead of taking warning, he lingered in the shops around the market-place in the Cite, selecting jewels and rich stuffs with which to propitiate the queen; when she issued from the church and saw him, she despatched her guards to arrest him; one of them was wounded, and another gave him a sword-cut over the head; as he fled across the Petit-Pont, he fell and broke his leg. The manner and quality of ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... a piece of the comb and placed it in the fork of a tree for the honey-guide, assuring those who looked on, that it was necessary to propitiate the bird and pay it for its services—a plan of which the little thing seemed highly to approve, for it flew to the comb at once, and ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... the pass. I was told that they dated from a very remote period, and that there were several other such groups in the country, but none so remarkable as the one which I had seen. They had a religious origin, having been designed to propitiate the gods of deformity and disease. In former times it had been the custom to make expeditions over the ranges, and capture the ugliest of Chowbok's ancestors whom they could find, in order to sacrifice them in the presence of these ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... The astrologers sometimes forbid the body to be carried out for interment at the principal door of the house, pretending to be regulated in this by the stars, and order it to be carried out by some other way; or will even command a passage to be broken out in the opposite wall of the house, to propitiate the adverse planet. And if any one object to this, they allege that the spirit of the dead would be offended, and would occasion injury to the family. When the body is carried through the city to be buried, wooden cottages are built at certain ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... so with the greatest pleasure, and as he wished to propitiate the soldier in order that he might not be molested in the persons of his laborers, he refused to accept the money which the alferez was trying to get out of ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... the prince's mistress. His mistress! Oh, what fabulous fortune! What might her history be? I burned to hear it, and wearied of Octave's seemingly endless chatter about his method of painting; I had heard all he was saying many times before, but I listened to it all again, and to propitiate him I regretted that the picture was not painted in his present manner, "for there are good things in the picture," I said, "and the model—you seem to have been ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... have conceived, rightly or wrongfully, that they have some cause of complaint against ourselves, and out of all England we could not have selected an envoy more calculated to allay irritation and to propitiate good will." As one whose cordial genius was, in truth, a bond of sympathy between the two great kindred nationalities, Charles Dickens indeed went forth in one sense at that time, it might almost have been said, in a semi-ambassadorial character, not between the rulers, but between the peoples. ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... is to this shrine of the Maya Venus that as far down as the Spanish conquest, pilgrims repaired yearly to offer their prayers and votive presents to propitiate that divinity. Cogolludo tells us that it was on her altar that the priest who accompanied the adventurers who first landed at the island, after destroying the effigies of the Goddess and of her companions and replacing them by a picture of the Virgin Mary, celebrated mass for the first ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... Christ speaketh better things than that of Abel. The real atonement—so infinitely beyond the heathen conception that God requires human blood to propitiate His justice and bring His mercy—needs to be understood. The real blood or Life of Spirit is not yet discerned. Love bruised and bleeding, yet mounting to the throne of glory in purity and peace, over the steps of uplifted humanity,—this is the deep significance of the blood of Christ. Nameless ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... Forum or the Senate; it was employed to save culprits, to kindle patriotic devotion, or to stimulate the sentiments of freedom and public virtue. Eloquence certainly did not belong to the priest. It was his province to propitiate the Deity with sacrifices, to surround himself with mysteries, to inspire awe by dazzling rites and emblems, to work on the imagination by symbols, splendid dresses, smoking incense, slaughtered beasts, grand temples. He was a man to conjure, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... impart his own convictions, gave a candor and patient and sweet reasonableness to his preaching, which has, I think, never been equalled in any preacher of his measure of intellect, height of imagination, and reverence of soul. For he could never lower his ideals to please or propitiate. He was working for no immediate and transitory effects. He could use no arts that entangled, dazzled, or frightened; nothing but truth, and truth cautiously discriminated. His sermons were born of the most painful labors of his spirit; they were careful and finished works, written ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... said—Oh, aunt, do you think I am a witch?' And now Lois was standing up, holding by Grace's cloak, and trying to read her face. Grace drew herself, ever so little, away from the girl, whom she dreaded, and yet sought to propitiate. ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... yes! the thunder rolls over all, but the stroke of lightning falls only upon me; and I—I am the one," said the prince, solemnly; "I am the sacrificial offering chosen by the king, with which he will seek to propitiate the frowning gods ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... way to the fort we met Tootahah, who, though not king, appeared to be at this time invested with the sovereign authority; he seemed not to be well pleased with the distinction that was shewed to the lady, and became so jealous when she produced her doll, that to propitiate him it was thought proper to compliment him with another. At this time he thought fit to prefer a doll to a hatchet; but this preference arose only from a childish jealousy, which could not be soothed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... attained as yet to a conception of the impersonality of Nature, he regarded these forces which helped and hindered him as friendly and alien powers which it was in the imperative interests of his own welfare to placate and propitiate. It was in this urgent sense of helplessness and need that there were developed the two outstanding modes of communication with the ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... political and theological compass, and yet in our hearts acknowledge him to be the best of all good fellows. Without surrendering a single conviction, we came to see the virtue of so stating our beliefs as to persuade and propitiate, instead of offending and alienating. We had attained to that temper which, in the sphere of thought and opinion, is analogous to the crowning ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... games that Mr. Newell calls "world-old and world-wide." It is found in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, etc., was played by Froissart in the fourteenth century, and by Rabelais in the fifteenth. The game is supposed to have had its source in a formula sung at the sowing of grain to propitiate the earth gods and to promote and quicken the growth of crops. Mrs. Gomme notes that the turning around and bowing to the fields and lands, coupled with pantomimic actions of harvest activities, are very general in the history of sympathetic ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... noble veteran were prepared to march. Previously, however, to their departure from the city, they piously bent their steps towards the cathedral, where divine service was performed with great pomp, to propitiate heaven in favour of its servants. The archbishop delivered an eloquent oration inculcating on the Christians their duty, and the glory of their enterprize; pointing out fame and honour to the survivors—an ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... beautiful and industrious beings," I can imagine him murmuring to himself, "whom I see everywhere, serving me I know not why? What fairy godmother bade them come trotting out of elfland when I was born? What god of the borderland, what barbaric god of legs, must I propitiate with fire and wine, lest ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... before drinking still continues in Persia, and perhaps generally in the East. Mons. Nicolas considers it "un signe de liberalite, et en meme temps un avertissement que le buveur doit vider sa coupe jusqu'a la derniere goutte." Is it not more likely an ancient Superstition; a Libation to propitiate Earth, or make her an Accomplice in the illicit Revel? Or, perhaps, to divert the Jealous Eye by some sacrifice of superfluity, as with the Ancients of the West? With Omar we see something more is signified; the precious Liquor is not lost, but ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... acquaintance with her, I have never discovered but one foible incident to the flesh, love of her morning nap! You have adroitly struck Achilles in the heel. Sound the timbrel and sing like Miriam over your victory; for it were better to propitiate one of the house of Palma, than to strangle Pharaoh. You should apply for a position in some foreign legation, where your talents can be fitly trained for the tangles of diplomacy. Now if you were only a man, how admirably ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... instructions from his anxious mamma, took off what few clothes the poor boy had on, and repairing to the baptismal font in the yard, sprinkled cold water upon his naked breast and lips, presented his credentials in the shape of offerings to propitiate the gods of war, agriculture, etc., whose names you will find further along in this history, repeated a prayer in which "the Lord was implored to wash away the sin that was given him before the foundation of the world, so that the child might be born anew," and told the three little boys who ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... rashness, clinging to Aubrey, with her gaze riveted on Maltravers; and Aubrey, whose gentle character was borne down and silenced by the powerful and tempestuous passions that now met in collision and conflict, withheld by his abhorrence of Vargrave's treachery from his natural desire to propitiate, and yet appalled by the apprehension of bloodshed, that for the first ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... prominent part which religious forms of worship take in the every-day life of the people. Monuments and temples everywhere bear testimony to the universal belief in a Supreme Being; and Hindoo, Mussulman, and Buddhist alike, by numberless prayers and frequent offerings, confess their desire to propitiate His power and ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... Speaker, not nominally, but essentially. He further relates how when a railroad magnate traveled, his journey was like a royal progress; Governors of States and Territories bowed before him; Legislatures received him in solemn session; cities and towns sought to propitiate him, for had he not the means of making or marring a city's fortunes? "You cannot turn in any direction in American politics," wrote Richard T. Ely a little later, "without discovering the railway power. It is the power behind ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... us not struggle with th' eternal will, Nor languish o'er irreparable ruins; Come, haste and live—Thy innocence and truth Shall bless our wand'rings, and propitiate heav'n. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... and despondency. He knew that in order to steer this government by public opinion successfully through all the confusion created by the prejudices and doubts and differences of sentiment distracting the popular mind, and so to propitiate, inspire, mould, organize, unite, and guide the popular will that it might give forth all the means required for the performance of his great task, he would have to take into account all the influences strongly affecting the current of popular thought and feeling, and to ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... piece of sculpture, representing the Virgin or any saint, in the first case it is turned towards the wall; or, in the second, it is covered over with a sheet, in order that it may not be a witness of the sin. In asking a favour of an image, it is a common practice for the devotee, in order to propitiate it, to inflict upon himself some punishment or privation; such, for example, as that of absenting himself from the theatre, or the bullfights (corridas de toros), abstaining from eating dessert, or from going to the promenade, balls, and routs. This is called ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... eyes had a suspicion of tears in them. "It was just a passing weakness, and I am all right now. Yes, I will get the Scholarship, and I will stoop to Aunt Susan's ways—I will cringe to her if necessary; I will do my best to propitiate Sir John Wallis, and I will act like a snob in every sense of the word. There now, Mummy, I see you are dying to have the box opened. We will open it and see ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... of the Massachusetts Bay Court on the Royal Message; their address of vindication and entreaty to the King; and instead of sending agents, send two large masts, and resolve to send L1,000 to propitiate the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... authorities. These acknowledged governments are supplemented by other unacknowledged ones, that grow up in all circles, in which every man or woman strives to be king or queen or lesser dignitary. To get above some and be reverenced by them, and to propitiate those who are above us, is the universal struggle in which the chief energies of life are expended. By the accumulation of wealth, by style of living, by beauty of dress, by display of knowledge or intellect, each tries to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... you are not getting on very well with Alice. I wish it were different. Could you not do something to propitiate her?" ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... anything lost; as also that the voice of certain wild animals, birds, or beasts, will insure them good-luck, or warn them of danger. With the utmost complacency our sable brother builds a dwarf hut in his fields, and places some grain on it to propitiate the evil spirit, and suffer him to reap the fruits of his labour, and this too ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... was sent in search of an easier landing-place, with orders to propitiate the natives, if possible, by presents. He was expressly enjoined not to expose himself to danger, to return if several pirogues advanced against him, not to leave the boat himself, and not to allow more than two men to land at ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... commanded Psyche to visit the Infernal Regions and obtain from Proserpine a closed box of cosmetic which was on no account to be opened. Psyche thought death alone could bring her to these realms, and was about to throw herself from a tower, when a voice instructed her how to enter a cavern, and propitiate Cerberus with cakes after ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... anxious to propitiate Sally. He returned from London with presents for her, and he always spoke to her, looking at ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... upon the part of the body affected.[7:1] Passages from the books of the Gospel (literally "good spell") were especial favorites as such preservatives; they were usually inscribed on parchment, and were even placed upon horses.[7:2] Amulets were also employed to propitiate the goddess Fortune, and to thwart her evil designs. So insistent was the belief in the virtues of these objects, and to such a pitch of credulity did the popular mind attain, that special charms in great variety were devised against particular diseases, as well as against misfortunes and ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... whereas there is another and a very short one, which the Pope and the other great prelates, who know and practise it, will not have made known, for that the clergy, who for the most part live by alms, would incontinent be undone, inasmuch as the laity would no longer trouble themselves to propitiate them with alms or otherwhat. But, for that thou art my friend and hast very honourably entertained me, I would teach it thee, so I were assured thou wouldst practise it and wouldst not discover it to any living soul.' Fra Puccio, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... bear arrived, and was duly installed in an apartment which had been prepared for him, as well as it could be on such short notice; for all agreed, that he must be treated with great care and attention, not only in order to propitiate him, but because it might be dangerous to let him return in worse condition than he came. So neither trouble nor cost was spared to make him comfortable; and very comfortable he was: supplied with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... you to propitiate the cove or not, as you please; and now that we have settled the main point, let us ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... own imagination. They write as men whose minds are rendered morbid with mysterious fears, rather than brightened into holy gladness, by a filial love of God. They seem to be vindicating with servile dread a character, whose wrath they would deprecate, and whose doubtful favour they would propitiate on their own behalf. Even when they express their persuasion of their own interest in "special grace," it is more in the spirit of men who are conscious of being the favoured objects of capricious tyranny, than of that serene and hopeful and cheering ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... say, the gods aid those who propitiate them, I will begin my book by invoking divine approval, not like Homer and Ennius, from the Muses, nor indeed from the twelve great gods of the city whose golden images stand in the forum, six male and as many female, but from a solemn council of those twelve divinities ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... celebrated in the spring was sacred to Jal, and that in the autumn to the mother-goddess. But there was this difference between them—that at the spring ceremony female victims only were sacrificed to Jal to propitiate him and to avert his evil influence, while at the autumn celebration males alone were offered up to the mother-goddess in gratitude for her gifts of plenty. Also criminals were occasionally thrown to the Snake that his hunger ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... you've been appointed an admiral in the Russian Navy, or that you've married the Grand Duchess Irene Yaroslav, I shall not for one moment disbelieve you. At the same time, if you come back from Russia without your ears, the same having been cut off by your peasant neighbours to propitiate the ghost of a martyr who died six hundred years ago, I shall not be surprised either. That is the country you're going to—and I ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... were still in force. From a careful perusal of the works of the "Fathers," and the contemporary books of the heathens, he fancied that all the superstitions in the world differed but in degree—that religion was but the organic cause of superstition, the arguments made for it by the philosophers to propitiate the vulgar. This idea (in the main) was agreed to by Woolston, although his violent "Discourses," which were addressed to the unlearned, contained within them the germ of their intrinsic popularity. Yet even Woolston's works, notwithstanding their bluff exterior, had something ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... regard, but because she was the mother of Alexander. Polysperchon, therefore, considered it very important to secure her influence, and the prestige of her name in his favor. At the same time, while he thus sought to propitiate Olympias, he neglected Cassander and all the other members of Antipater's family. He considered them, doubtless, as rivals and antagonists, whom he was to keep down by every means in ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the food of the Tuatha, now exorcised those very beings. The trefoil signified the Trinity, and the cross no longer the rays of the sun on water, but the cross of Calvary. The fires which had been built to propitiate the god and consume his sacrifices to induce him to protect them were now lighted to protect the people from the same god, declared to be an evil mischief-maker. In time the autumn festival of the Druids became the vigil of All ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... to the story of the lions which stopped the rebuilding of Samaria must occur to everyone, and if the Samaritans had quarter as good cause for their fears as had the railway coolies, their wish to propitiate the local deities is easily understood. If the whole body of lion anecdote, from the days of the Assyrian Kings till the last year of the nineteenth century, were collated and brought together, it would not equal in tragedy or atrocity, ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... new policy of international brigandage was the need, as he conceived it, to propitiate those Southern expansionists who in the lower South at least formed so large a part of the political machine, who must somehow be lured back into the Union; to whom the Virginia Compromise, as well as every other scheme of readjustment yet suggested, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... superstition and themselves done something to mar their perfect happiness. Polycrates offered his ring to avert the calamity sure to follow unmitigated pleasure or success, and Franz ought, perhaps, to have also made an effort to propitiate his envious Fate. ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... guests—one bowl to each couple facing each other. But before commencing a portion was laid aside and dedicated to their gods, with various mysterious ceremonies; for here, as in other places where the gospel is not known, the poor savages fancied that they could propitiate God with sacrifices. They had never heard of the "sacrifice of a broken spirit and a contrite heart." This offering being made, the feast began in earnest. Not only was it a rule in this feast that every mouthful should be swallowed ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... husband. She was of a very stern and masculine character, and she seems to have mastered Antony by surpassing him in the use of his own weapons. In fact, instead of attempting to soothe and mollify him, she reduced him, it seems, to the necessity of resorting to various contrivances to soften and propitiate her. Once, for example, on his return from a campaign in which he had been exposed to great dangers, he disguised himself and came home at night in the garb of a courier bearing dispatches. He caused himself to be ushered, muffled and disguised as he was, into Fulvia's apartments, where he handed ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... Furies and infernal gods, And visit, without leave, the dark abodes? Attend the term of long revolving years; Fate, and the dooming gods, are deaf to tears. This comfort of thy dire misfortune take: The wrath of Heav'n, inflicted for thy sake, With vengeance shall pursue th' inhuman coast, Till they propitiate thy offended ghost, And raise a tomb, with vows and solemn pray'r; And Palinurus' name the place shall bear." This calm'd his cares; sooth'd with his future fame, And pleas'd to hear his ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... will which all his relations and friends had taken as the final expression of his life's weakness, his miserable failure to play the man in his own household, and in which she, his wife, had recognized with a secret triumph his last effort to propitiate her, his last surrender to her. Everything left to her, both land and personalty, everything! save for a thousand a year to each of the children, and fifteen hundred a year to Coryston, his heir. The great ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at the age of thirty-two, he paused from the fiery speed of his earlier course; and for the first time gave the nations an opportunity of offering their homage before his throne. They came from all the extremities of the earth to propitiate his anger, to celebrate his greatness, or to solicit his protection. . . . History may allow us to think that Alexander and a Roman ambassador did meet at Babylon; that the greatest man of the ancient world saw and spoke with a citizen of that great nation, ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... feet of us, gurgling and crooning, flapping his hands and waggling his great head; his uneasy eyes wandered from the Wonder to me and back again, but it was plainly the Wonder whom he wished to propitiate. Then he suddenly backed as if he had dared too much, flopped on to the wet grass and regarded us both with foolish, goggling eyes. For a few seconds he lay still, and then he began to squirm along the ground towards us, ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... confused with the aboriginal superstitions, and neither have been entirely obliterated by the cult which superseded them. The belief in the power of malignant spirits to cause misfortune, sickness, and death is still strong among the Malays, whose pawangs or medicine-men claim to be able to propitiate demons by spells, prayers, and offerings. These men frequently invoke benevolent spirits by the names of Rama, Vishnu, and other Hindu deities, in complete ignorance that they are Hindu,[36] to counteract the evil influences of malevolent demons. Practices ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... be as much use to me as to any one else," said Cecily indignantly. She had sacrificed her dear forget-me-not jug to satisfy some pang of conscience, or propitiate some threatening fate, but surrender her precious cherry vase she could not and would not. Felicity ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... same class, Bucoli or buccaniers, as those who figure so conspicuously in the adventures of Chariclea and Theagenes. The robbers are at this juncture in expectation of an attack from the royal troops; and, having been ordered by their priests to propitiate the gods by the sacrifice of a virgin, are greatly at a loss for a victim, when chance throws Leucippe in their way. She is forthwith torn from her lover, and sent off to the headquarters of the banditti; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... There was something slightly subservient, consciously inferior, in Charlotte's attitude to life. She had loved it secretly, with a sort of shame, with a corroding passion and incredulity and despair. Such natures are not seldom victims of the power they would propitiate. It killed her in her effort to bring ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... for sin, of which the soul is conscious in all ages and countries; sometimes to obtain divine favor, as in military expeditions, or to secure any object dearest to the heart, such as health, prosperity, or peace; sometimes to propitiate the deity in order to avert the calamities following his supposed wrath or vengeance. The oblations were usually in the form of wine, honey, or the fruits of the earth, which were supposed to be necessary for the nourishment of the gods, especially in Greece. The sacrifices were generally of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... traditions, he had believed in the existence of a Good Spirit, which he called Kissa-Manito; and also in the existence of a bad spirit, whose name was Muche-Manito; but in what little worship he had engaged heretofore he had endeavoured to propitiate and turn away the malice of the evil spirit, rather than to worship the Good Spirit, in whom all Indians believe, but about whom he had very vague ideas until his visit to the Christian hunter's wigwam. Now, however, even before he skinned ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... reason, subjected him to the charge of atheism, we may doubt his entire sincerity when he pretends to advocate the doctrine of necessity out of a zeal for the Divine Sovereignty and the dogma of Predestination. If he hoped by this avowal of his design to propitiate any class of theologians, he must have been greatly disappointed; for his speculations were universally condemned by the Christian world as atheistical in their tendency. This charge has been fixed upon him, in spite of his solemn protestations ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... party. He was under a noble exterior a man without heart, pity, honour, or conscience. He aspired to nothing but tyranny, and though he would have made use of Gaspar Ruiz for his nefarious designs, yet he soon became aware that to propitiate the Chilian Government would answer his purpose better. I blush to say that he made proposals to our Government to deliver up on certain conditions the wife and child of the man who had trusted to his honour, and that this offer ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... at my command, to assure him that I did not wish to have anything more to do with Devrient. At this the Grand Duke told me, with renewed gentleness, that he declined to regard my assurance as irrevocable, for it lay in his power to propitiate me by other means. I took my departure with an expression of serious regret that I could not help regarding as fruitless any effort made in the direction contemplated by my patron. Later on I ascertained that Devrient, who, of course, was informed by the Grand Duke of what had taken place, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... first the Myth applied. Its object is as much to propitiate the gods as to preserve social order. It is absolute because it is inspired. Many of its ordinances as drawn from the myth are inapplicable to man, and are unjust or frivolous. Yet such as it is, it rules the conduct of the commonwealth ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... worlds to come, and drivel about the resurrection of dead bodies, and bring in a thousand more absurdities to catch fools? But now, dearest son, if thou hast any regard for me thy father, bid a long farewell to these longwinded follies, and come sacrifice to the gracious gods, and let us propitiate them with hecatombs and drink-offerings, that they may grant thee pardon for thy fall; for they be able and strong to bless and to punish. And wouldst thou have an example of that which I say? Behold ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... all conscience, is pitiable enough—its temples infested by fortune-tellers, witches, and fakirs, its faith mingled with gross superstitions and charms to propitiate the "nats" or spirits which are supposed to inhabit streams, forests, villages, houses, etc., and to have infinite power over the lives and fortunes of the people. A common sight on the morning streets is a group of yellow-robed priests with their begging bowls, into which ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... possessor of the estate was not the real owner of Son Febrer, and frequently, on arriving at the city with his gifts, he changed his route and left them at the houses of his creditors, awe-inspiring personages whom he desired to propitiate. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... poem about the cook instead of the camel-boys. Luckily, however, at the last moment I remembered a superstition of the Ancient Egyptians. They were in the habit of sacrificing a black lamb to propitiate Set, the sender of storms. Our lamb was black: and at the hour of his untimely death a storm was coming up. The dreadful deed, therefore, was ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... fellow used to buy it, and roast it on the Sunday. There was a cheap periodical of selected pieces called the Portfolio, which he had also a great fancy for taking home with him. The new proposed "deed," meanwhile, had failed to propitiate his father's creditors; all hope of arrangement passed away; and the end was that his mother and her encampment in Gower Street north broke up and went to live in the Marshalsea. I am able at this point to resume ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... forty-five, who was ready to nurse his now declining years. That year 1822 was a year of much sorrow; the cholera, said to have first appeared in 1817, became very virulent. The Hindoos viewed it as a visitation from the goddess of destruction, and held services to propitiate it, and when that had passed away, a more than usually fatal form of fever set in. Krishnu-pal, the first convert, who had for twenty years been a consistent Christian, was one of the first to be taken away. Dr. Carey himself, though exceedingly ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... receiving one of the greatest possible favours that can be conferred on him, whatever may be his own superiority of social rank or worldly circumstances; and that, therefore, his conduct should be marked by a delicate respect towards the parents of his lady-love. By this means he will propitiate them in his favour, and induce them to regard him as worthy of the trust they have placed ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... Colonel, and wrestled with him for half an hour. At the end of that time, the Regimental Sergeant-Major reported himself. The situation was rather novel to him; but he was not a man to be put out by circumstances. He saluted and said, "Regiment all comeback, Sir." Then, to propitiate the Colonel—"An' none of the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... to London till the second of April following; and the first mention we find of Goldsmith is in connection with an incident which has its ludicrous as well as its regrettable aspect. The further success of She Stoops to Conquer was not likely to propitiate the wretched hole-and-corner cut-throats that infested the journalism of that day. More especially was Kenrick driven mad with envy; and so, in a letter addressed to the London Packet, this poor creature determined once more to set aside the judgment of the public, and show Dr. Goldsmith ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... and horses. If the sailor told her of my inclination to travel, she was sure there was no place like England, and could not imagine why any man that can live in his own country should leave it. This sullen and frigid being I found means, however, to propitiate by frequent commendations of frugality, and perpetual care ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... greatly disliked! I hated his pale face as much now as I had then. Even the errand of good on which he had come could not blind me to his thin-lipped mouth, to his mock humility and crafty eyes. "I have had no task so pleasant for many days," added he, with every appearance of a desire to propitiate. ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... complimentary address were at first the expressions of submission from prisoners to their conqueror, or from subjects to their ruler, either human or divine—expressions which were afterwards used to propitiate subordinate authorities, and slowly descended into ordinary intercourse. All modes of salutation were once obeisances made before the monarch and used in worship of him after his death. Presently others of the god-descended race were similarly saluted; and by ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... regarded as the suzerain of a host of subordinate lords and princes, ruling over the surrounding swamps and pine barrens. Outina gratefully received the two prisoners whom Laudonniere had sent to propitiate him, feasted the wonderful strangers, and invited them to join him on a raid against his rival, Potanou. Laudonniere had promised to join Satouriona against Outina, and Vasseur now promised to join Outina against Potanon, the hope of finding gold being in both cases the source of this impolitic ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... had approached the bishop, who, eager to propitiate whoever seemed most likely to become king, gave the signal for the procession that was to mark the solemn bearing of the crown of Lutha up the aisle to ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... happy-omened. Our own left seems equally to mean the hand that is left after the right has been mentioned, or, in short, the other one. Many things which are lucky if seen on the right are fateful omens if seen to leftward. On the other hand, if you spill the salt, you propitiate destiny by tossing a pinch of it over the left shoulder. A murderer's left hand is said by good authorities to be an excellent thing to do magic with; but here I cannot speak from personal experience. Nor do I know why the wedding-ring is ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... honours of a niche beside the altar. Jephtha's daughter, for all her mourned virginity, was never paraded, (that I wot of,) for any other than a much-to-be-lamented damsel. Who ever asked, in those old times, the mediation of St. Enoch? Where were the offerings, in jewels or in gold, to propitiate that undoubted man of God and denizen of heaven, St. Moses? what prows, in wax, of vessels saved from shipwreck, hung about the dripping fane of Jonah? and where was, in the olden time, that wretched and insensate ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the life and warmth of religious feeling. We may err in linking the imperishable with the transitory, and confound the living plant with the decaying pole to which it clings. My object, however, at present is not to argue, but to mark a tendency. We have ceased to propitiate the powers of nature—ceased even to pray for things in manifest contradiction to natural laws. In Protestant countries, at least, I think it is conceded that the age ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... banishment—this time in a ship which he fitted out for discovery; and so he sailed away in the direction of Gunnbiorn's land, and found it. He whiled away three years on its coast, and as soon as he was allowed, ventured back with the tidings. While, to propitiate intending settlers, he said he had been to Greenland, and so the ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... Lepantos besides Trafalgar Square Cunninghame Graham has fought, I cannot tell. He is a fascinating mystery to a sedentary person like myself. The horse, a dangerous animal whom, when I cannot avoid, I propitiate with apples and sugar, he bestrides and dominates fearlessly, yet with a true republican sense of the rights of the fourlegged fellowcreature whose martyrdom, and man's shame therein, he has told most powerfully in his Calvary, a tale with an ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... depended, it goaded me to the warmest resentment. I looked round the tennis-court—which, empty, shadowy and silent, seemed a fit place for such horrors—with rage and repulsion; apprehending in a moment of sad presage all the accursed strokes of an enemy whom nothing could propitiate, and who, sooner or later, must set all my care at nought, and take ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... rises full-faced above the eastern hills. Not very long ago, at a time when cholera had appeared in the city and was taking a daily toll of life, this oart was the scene of a bi-weekly ceremony organized by the Bhandaris of Dadar and Mahim and designed to propitiate the wrath of the cholera-goddess, who had slain several members of that ancient and worthy community. For the Bhandaris, be it noted, know little of western theories of disease and sanitation; and such precautions as the boiling of ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... whispers imploringly, as her eyes meet his; and turning upon the couch of her chamber, where he hath lain her, awakes to consciousness, and finds him watching over her with a lover's solicitude. "I was not cold because I loved you less-oh no! It was to propitiate my ambition-to be free of the bondage of this house-to purge myself of the past-to better my future!" And she lays her pale, nervous hand gently on his arm-then grasps his hand and presses it ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... deny God, or mock him by acknowledging and not heeding him, or treat him as an arbitrary, formal monarch; whether, taking no trouble to find out what pleases him, they do dull things for his service he cares nothing about, or try to propitiate him by assuming with strenuous effort some yoke the Son never wore, and never called on them to wear, they are slaves, and not the less slaves that they are slaves to God; they are so thoroughly slaves, that they do not care to get out of their slavery by becoming sons and daughters, by finding ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... to-day, and seen the boatswain and carpenter, both of whom have agreed to help me. I've had a plank rigged up with staves into a sort of raft, on which I mean to take my chance. There's a bag all ready with some victuals in it, and another with a few nails, beads, etcetera, to propitiate the natives. Young Hayward is the only other officer besides yourself to whom I have revealed my intention. Like you, he attempts to dissuade me, but in vain. ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... the ocean. Perhaps an aspersion with holy-water was a part of the original rite, on the ground that the mariner was passing into new countries, once thought uninhabited, as into a strange new-world, to sanctify the hardiness and propitiate the Ruler of Sea and Air. The Dutch, also, performed some ceremony in passing the rocks, then called Barlingots, which lie off the mouth of the Tagus. Gradually the usage went farther out to sea; and the farther it went, of course, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... went also that numerous class of persons in our commercial cities who depend altogether on bank credits for their solvency and means of business, and who are therefore obliged, for their own safety, to propitiate the favor of the money power by distinguished zeal and devotion in its service. The result of the ill-advised legislation which established this great monopoly was to concentrate the whole moneyed power ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... burden of the day, the maternal uncle only comes when it is a question of life or death." The Khasi father is revered not only when living, but also after death as U Thawlang, and special ceremonies are performed to propitiate his shade. Further remarks on the subject of marriage will be found in the ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... the whole heathen world finds and feels itself to be guilty at the bar of natural reason and conscience? The accusing voice within them wakes their forebodings and fearful looking-for of Divine judgment, and they endeavor to propitiate the offended Power by ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... the means which can propitiate your favour, Major Bridgenorth," said Peveril,—"for I will not doubt that they will be consistent with my honour and duty—and you shall soon see how eagerly I will obey your directions, or submit ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... when his wife would return, and was ready to receive her in the meekest of moods. He had cut an unusual quantity of wood and kindlings, but they failed to propitiate. Sissy soon called her mother to come over to her cabin to hear of Mr. Birdsall's visit, and all that it portended. Aun' Sheba listened in silence, and sat for a long time in deep thought, while Sissy and Vilet ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... dust, and nearly all of which are dirty beyond description. Immediately after the Spanish conquest a rage possessed the victors to build churches, without regard to the necessary population for their support, perhaps hoping thereby to propitiate heaven for their rapaciousness and outrageous oppression of the native race. The criminal extortion exercised by the priesthood and their followers forms a dark blot upon the escutcheon of both the church and the state. O Christianity, ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... Cheng-tang, who to great valour added the virtues of humanity and justice. Pitying the oppressions of the people, he came to them as a deliverer; and the frivolous tyrant was compelled to retire into obscurity. A more remarkable exhibition of public spirit was the offering of himself as a victim to propitiate the wrath of Heaven. In a prolonged famine, his prayers having failed to bring rain, the soothsayers said that a human victim was required. "It shall be myself," he replied; and, stripping off his regal robes, he laid himself on the altar. A copious shower was ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... direction of his glance instinctively, and saw, standing on the pavement, and wearing the blue cockade, Sir John Chester. He held his hat an inch or two above his head, to propitiate the mob; and, resting gracefully on his cane, smiling pleasantly, and displaying his dress and person to the very best advantage, looked on in the most tranquil state imaginable. For all that, and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... human sacrifice, to propitiate the favor of their gods in a battle they were about to undertake. The victim was generally some strolling vagabond, who was not aware of his fate till the moment arrived, and he received his death-blow from a club. For the purpose of showing the inhabitants the use of the horses, ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... could not forget that his career had come to an end. There was much to remind him that this was so. He was made aware of it by the sad, sympathetic glances of the women; by their tactful courtesies; by the fact that Livingstone, anxious to propitiate Hanley, treated him rudely; by the sight of the young officers, each just starting upon a career of honor, and possible glory, as his career ended in humiliation; and by the big war-ship herself, that recalled certain crises when he had only to press ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... the offering by which Joe and his companions expected to gain immunity, showed that the fellow was really a most worthless character, whose death even would have been a benefit to the tribe. Thus it seemed that they had two purposes in view—the one to propitiate me and get good terms, the other to rid themselves of a vagabond member of ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... reputation on the stage or elsewhere. The making of a theatrical success is a much more complicated and curious thing than such persons fancy it to be. Immense are the pains taken to get a good word from Mr. This of the Star, or Mr. That of the Courier, to propitiate the favour of the critic of the day, and get the editors of the metropolis into a good humour,—above all, to have the name of the person to be puffed perpetually before the public. Artists cannot be advertised like Macassar oil or blacking, and they want it to the full as much; hence ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to visit the Infernal Regions and obtain from Proserpine a closed box of cosmetic which was on no account to be opened. Psyche thought death alone could bring her to these realms, and was about to throw herself from a tower, when a voice instructed her how to enter a cavern, and propitiate Cerberus with cakes after the ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stand-down; breathing time; convention; modus vivendi[Lat]; flag of truce, white flag, parlementaire[Fr], cartel|!. hollow truce, pax in bello[Lat]; drawn battle. V. pacify, tranquilize, compose; allay &c. (moderate) 174; reconcile, propitiate, placate, conciliate, meet halfway, hold out the olive branch, heal the breach, make peace, restore harmony, bring to terms. settle matters, arrange matters, accommodate matters, accommodate differences; set straight; make up a quarrel, tantas ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... the present established relations of our appetites to the time-honoured savours, by which the ancient Jews sought to propitiate the Deity, are destined to be superseded. On the other hand it is quite possible that all the juggling of modern "machine" cookery is a false step, and injurious to digestion and health. It is not unlikely that there is no relish which has so sure a hold on the digestion ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... idolatry and transferred to our Christian festivals. Cutting the mistletoe was distinctly a rite practised by the Druids, who cut the sacred plant with a golden knife, and sacrificed two white bulls to the sylvan deities whom they thus sought to propitiate. We hang up our bunches of mistletoe now, but we do not attach any superstitious importance to it, nor imagine that any gods of the woods will be influenced by our procedure. The bringing in of the Yule-log was a Norse custom observed in honour ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... of devils about," she declares, shaking her head; "or else why do they put up arches especially to keep them off—propitiate them, and prevent their entrance into the village? They have little bamboo huts like dolls' houses, and place food inside, that the devils may lodge and eat. It seems that the corpse to-day had a good time of it. They gave him a month's food, new gong ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... one means of avenging the petty indignities to which I had it in my power to subject him. Yet an acute friend of mine gave a more harmless, or at least a less offensive, construction to his attentions, which he conceived to be meant for my daughter Julia, though immediately addressed to propitiate the influence of her mother. This could have been no very flattering or pleasing enterprise on the part of an obscure and nameless young man; but I should not have been offended at this folly, as I was at the higher ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... the lands under his rule. The death of Saladin encouraged the idea of a new crusade. Henry as crusader might propitiate the Pope. But such an expedition once started might have been diverted, as indeed happened a few years later, for an attack upon Constantinople, which should lead to the union of both empires under the ambitious Hohenstaufen. Pretexts were ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... Mid[-e], inviting them to visit him at his own wigiwam at a specified time. When the conference takes place, tobacco, which has been previously furnished by the candidate, is distributed and a smoke offering made to Kitshi Manid[-o], to propitiate his favor in the deliberations about to be undertaken. The host then explains the object of the meeting, and presents to his auditors an account of the candidate's previous life; he recounts the circumstances ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... twenty-second they approached Scioto, called by the French St. Yotoc, or Sinioto, a large Shawanoe town at the mouth of the river which bears the same name. Greatly doubting what welcome awaited them, they filled their powderhorns and prepared for the worst. Joncaire was sent forward to propitiate the inhabitants; but they shot bullets through the flag that he carried, and surrounded him, yelling and brandishing their knives. Some were for killing him at once; others for burning him alive. The interposition of a ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Lady Calmady reflectively, not without a grudging admiration. But an evil spirit possessed him, a necessity of mastery—inevitable reaction from recently endured humiliation—which provoked him to measure his strength against hers. He needed a sacrifice to propitiate his anger. That sacrifice must be in some sort a human one. So he deliberately pulled the tall lamp nearer, and swung his chair round sideways, leaning his elbow on the table, with the result that the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of the human race too abundantly testifies. We encounter the trace of it in Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac—arrested by the command of Jehovah. But Abraham would never have thought of slaying his son to propitiate his God, had not the custom been well established. In the case of Jephthah's daughter the sacrifice was actually allowed. We come upon the same custom in the fate of Iphigenia—at a critical turning point ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... the guard, as well as he could explain himself, enquired why did he not say at once that he was a Russian? "Mashallah! it was an unlucky mistake. Am I not blind, not to see that you were no Englishman?" Further to propitiate the newly created Muscovite colonel's wrath, a guard of five men, a guard of honour,—hear it, ye Englishmen!—was sent to conduct him safe home, and to protect him from further insult; and with this guard of honour, Costingen the Turk actually ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... to it, body and soul!' cried Clotilde, sobbing and bursting into desperation out of a weak show of petulance that she had put on to propitiate him. 'If I have to tell, I will tell how it was. For that my heart is unchanged, and Alvan is, and will be, my lord, all the world may see. I would rather ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was one of the first deserters. He resigned the several commands which he held, and exhorted the Presbyterians to fast and pray, and submit to the will of God.[c] From that time it became their chief solicitude to propitiate the army. They granted very ingeniously leave of absence to the eleven accused members; they ordered the new levies for the defence of the city ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... stronger. The Brahman would have no social intercourse with the Sudra, and thought even his touch a profanation. For the Brahman represented Brahma, was in fact Brahma incarnate, while the Sudra was a manifestation of deity in inferior clay. Yet the Brahman needed the Sudra, and had to propitiate him in order to use him. So the Aryan absorbed into his own system some of the Dravidian gods, and usually did so by marrying to Dravidian female divinities male deities of his own. Siva, the Aryan god, for example, took for his wife the Dravidian goddess Kali. In many ways ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... victim, which is pastured in the snowy Algidus among the oaks and holm trees, or thrives in the Albanian meadows, with its throat shall stain the axes of the priests. It is not required of you, who are crowning our little gods with rosemary and the brittle myrtle, to propitiate them with a great slaughter of sheep. If an innocent hand touches a clear, a magnificent victim does not pacify the offended Penates more acceptably, than a ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... going." He felt no inclination even to take her hand: she had annoyed him too sorely. But now that she had gained her point, she was prepared to humble herself that she might propitiate him. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... talking on the subject, you know. But, really, I had a reason. I did not want to seem to propitiate your favour by any such means; I wished to try my chances with you on my own merits; and that was also a reason why I made my profession in Montreal. I wanted to do it without delay, it is true; I also wanted to do it quietly. I mean ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... our American kinsfolk have conceived, rightly or wrongfully, that they have some cause of complaint against ourselves, and out of all England we could not have selected an envoy more calculated to allay irritation and to propitiate good will." As one whose cordial genius was, in truth, a bond of sympathy between the two great kindred nationalities, Charles Dickens indeed went forth in one sense at that time, it might almost have been said, in a semi-ambassadorial character, not between the rulers, but between the peoples. ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... wounds or other troubles in which a flux of blood appears are thought to emanate from the desire of the familiars of the warrior priests for blood. Hence he is called upon to make intercession and to propitiate[16] these bloodthirsty spirits with the sacrifice of a pig or fowl. After the pig has been killed, a little of the blood is caught in a split bamboo receptacle,[17] which is then hung up in the house with the blood left in it for the regalement ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... drum-beater, drummed in homage to him, and the four Kings were they that were loudest in their revilings of the spouse of Kadza, and most obsequious in praises of the Master. The King of the City was fain to propitiate his people by a voluntary resignation of his throne to Shibli Bagarag, and that King took well to heart the wisdom of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... familiar objects become for him peopled with spirits, like in character to men, but more powerful, and his success in life and its various operations depends on the degree in which he is able to propitiate these spirits and secure their co-operation. If he desires rain, he must win the favour of the spirit who controls it, if he would fell a tree and suffer no harm, he must by suitable offerings entice the indwelling ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... him—is invoked principally for the gout, and persons so afflicted crawl through the hole under the tomb, where, suspended by chains, is an iron hook. They twist a lock of their hair round this hook, and tear it off with violence, hoping to propitiate the saint by this mortification—evidently a remnant of heathen times, when hair was sacrificed to deities or to the ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... of his new family, with softnesses of sentiment that he could hardly credit and was wholly impotent to express. With a face, voice, and manner trained through forty years to terrify and repel, Rhadamanthus may be great, but he will scarce be engaging. It is a fact that he tried to propitiate Archie, but a fact that cannot be too lightly taken; the attempt was so unconspicuously made, the failure so stoically supported. Sympathy is not due to these steadfast iron natures. If he failed to gain his son's friendship, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... them. I hope not, for wide sympathies are a very desirable thing. William Adolphus, looking round for a friend, honoured me with his confidence, and during his visits to Artenberg used to consult me almost daily as to how he might best propitiate his deity and wean her thoughts from that other alliance which had so eclipsed ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... prepared to make good his escape again, to sea, in case of any sudden or extraordinary danger. Another party were employed in erecting altars, and preparing for sacrifices and other religious celebrations, designed on the part of AEneas to propitiate the deities of the place, and to inspire his men with religious confidence and trust. He also immediately proceeded to organize a party of reconnoiterers who were to proceed into the interior, to explore the country and to communicate ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... number seventy-two," shouted the usher again, and as the witness was a Jew, his hat was sent for. "There's a lot of history behind that hat," said Mr. Clarkson, wishing to propitiate public opinion. ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... An amusing story was told, that after some meeting to arrange matters with Bradbury and Evans, the printers, Boz, ever charitable, was glad to report to Forster some hearty praise by this person, of the ability with which he (Forster) had arranged the matters, thus amiably wishing to propitiate the autocrat in his friend's interest. But, said the uncompromising Forster, "I am truly sorry, my dear Dickens, that I cannot reciprocate your friend's compliment, for a d——nder ass I never encountered in the whole course ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... shrieked and whirled themselves into a state of hysteria, and would have continued dancing all night, had they not been summarily dismissed. As far as I could make out, this was less of an attempt to propitiate local devils than an endeavour to frighten them away by sheer terror. It was unquestionably a horribly uncanny performance, what with the white streaked faces and limbs, and the clang of the metal dresses; ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... every day from the country round about to take part in the demonstration against the Act. Mr. Hood's storehouse was burned to the ground. Mr. Hood getting ashore by stealth, came, however, unmolested to Annapolis and offered at a low price the goods he had brought out in the bark, thinking thus to propitiate his enemies. This step ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sense in this objection, and the rustler saw it. He was anxious to propitiate the young woman, whom ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... received as jovial humour, but which a chance word or inadvertent glance of misappreciation may in a moment cause to be exchanged for expressions and acts of the most diabolical ferocity—was at once discharged by these ruffians at Carera and his crew, who, anxious to propitiate their most unwelcome visitors, did their best to retort in kind; and for the next twenty minutes or so the little vessel fairly rang with the most foul, blasphemous, and blood-curdling language it has ever been my misfortune to listen to. Fortunately for us our knowledge of the ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... every aspect of nature was regarded as an expression of anger or pleasure on the part of the divinities. Thunder, lightning, eclipses, comets, drought, floods, storms—anything strange or terrible, the cause of which was not understood, was ascribed to the wrath of some divinity; and men hastened to propitiate, as best they might, the divinities who were supposed to be scourging or threatening them. These deputy-gods were supposed to occupy the space between the earth and moon, and, being almost numberless and invisible, their worshippers held them in the same dread ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... or chapel is generally to be found throughout the whole Christian world near a ferry, to which the passenger went to propitiate the Deity before embarking, and to express his gratitude when ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... named Manabozho and Chibiabos, are the chief characters. The Manitos (spirits or gods) drown Chibiabos. Manabozho mourns and smears his face with black, as Demeter wears black raiment. He laments Chibiabos ceaselessly till the Manitos propitiate him with gifts and ceremonies. They offer to him a cup, like the beverage prepared for Demeter, in the Hymn, by Iambe. He drinks it, is glad, washes off the black stain of mourning, and is himself again, while Earth again is joyous. The Manitos ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... wandering hither and thither, rested not night or day in the pursuit of her husband, desiring, if she might not sooth his anger by the endearments of a wife, at the least to propitiate him with the prayers of a handmaid. And seeing a certain temple on the top of a high mountain, she said, "Who knows whether yonder place be not the abode of my lord?" Thither, therefore, she turned her steps, hastening now ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... short one, which the Pope and the other great prelates, who know and practise it, will not have made known, for that the clergy, who for the most part live by alms, would incontinent be undone, inasmuch as the laity would no longer trouble themselves to propitiate them with alms or otherwhat. But, for that thou art my friend and hast very honourably entertained me, I would teach it thee, so I were assured thou wouldst practise it and wouldst not discover it to any living soul.' Fra Puccio, eager to know the thing, began straightway ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... subsequent course sprang from personal vindictiveness is trifling. He was too large a personality, too well defined an intellect, to be thus explained. Very probably Davis made his first great blunder in failing to propitiate the Rhett faction. And yet few things are more certain than that the two men, the two factions which they symbolized, could not have formed a permanent alliance. Had Rhett entered the Cabinet he could not have remained in it consistently for any considerable time. The measures in which, presently, ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... pestilence a strange and portentous event occurred. The Tiber rose to an unusual height, overflowed with its waters the great circus (Circus Maximus), and put a stop to the games then going on, which were intended to propitiate the wrath of heaven, and induce the gods to relieve man from the evil of ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... are sometimes moved to pity and forgiveness, but to Him such weakness is unknown. He is utterly and absolutely implacable; no gifts or prayers, no holocausts of human victims can appease, or ever, for one moment, propitiate Him. ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... side is in power. If they are Liberals, they have to propose a few socialistic and iconoclastic measures, secretly thanking God for the House of Lords all the while. If they are Conservatives, they propitiate the Landlords and the Church by putting forward some outrageously retrograde proposal or other, secure in the knowledge that it will be knocked on the head by the halfpenny papers. Of the remaining ten ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... so-called Bacon Rebellion was the failure of Governor Berkeley to protect the settlers from Indian depredations, the governor having a monopoly of the fur-trade, and being inclined by motives of self-interest to propitiate the savages. An armed force assembled and chose Bacon as their leader. They first repulsed the Indians, and then demanded from the governor a commission for Bacon as commander-in-chief of the Virginia ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... Vermond shot him through the head, and then, turning his horse towards the gate of St. Denis, endeavoured to make his escape. He was, however, too ill-mounted to succeed in this attempt, the carriage of the ex-Queen having been followed by many of the nobles who were anxious to propitiate the favour of the King by so easy a display of respect to the dethroned Marguerite; and ere he reached the barrier the wretched young man ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... extended and rather intimate acquaintance with her, I have never discovered but one foible incident to the flesh, love of her morning nap! You have adroitly struck Achilles in the heel. Sound the timbrel and sing like Miriam over your victory; for it were better to propitiate one of the house of Palma, than to strangle Pharaoh. You should apply for a position in some foreign legation, where your talents can be fitly trained for the tangles of diplomacy. Now if you were only a man, how admirably you would suit the Hon. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... wind, by which the ship was attacked, was attributed by the natives on board to the anger of the god of Shoupah,[BM] the Areekee who resided in the neighbourhood. Korro-korro, who was among them said that as soon as he got on shore he would endeavour to prevail upon the Areekee to propitiate the offended deity. When Marsden asked the people of ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... Savonarola.[3] Again, in 1529, we find a certain monk, Tommaso, of the order of S. Dominic, stirring up a great commotion of piety in Milan. The city had been brought to the very lowest state of misery by the Spanish occupation; and, strange to say, this friar was himself a Spaniard. In order to propitiate offended deities, he organized a procession on a great scale. 700 women, 500 men, and 2,500 children assembled in the cathedral. The children were dressed in white, the men and women in sackcloth, and all were barefooted. They promenaded the streets of Milan, incessantly shouting Misericordia! ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... those of monarchs, and parliaments, and constituted authorities. These acknowledged governments are supplemented by other unacknowledged ones, that grow up in all circles, in which every man or woman strives to be king or queen or lesser dignitary. To get above some and be reverenced by them, and to propitiate those who are above us, is the universal struggle in which the chief energies of life are expended. By the accumulation of wealth, by style of living, by beauty of dress, by display of knowledge or intellect, each tries to subjugate others, and so aids in weaving that ramified network of restraints ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... the MS. to Gifford for advice as to its publication. Byron seems to have resented this on the ground that it might look like an attempt to propitiate ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... once a dog, my dear, that was hit by three men, one after another, as they went by him where he lay in the sun; and in return he bit them—deep—and they let him alone then, and ever after sought to propitiate him. Well, the first he bit in the arm, where there was a brand for deserting; and the second he bit in the throat, where there was a hideous mole; and the third he bit in the shoulder, where there was the mark of a secret camorra. Now, not one of these three durst speak ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... sentiment the Administration find it politic to propitiate the local authorities and the people, who, if they were aroused to a feeling of honest indignation at what daily passes beneath their notice, might sweep the pestilence out of their midst. Accordingly, ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... palace! Which of them will drive back for us these foreign troops? They are all afraid of the Tartar swords and arrows! But if they cannot exert themselves to expel the barbarians, why call for the princess to propitiate them? ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... once more. So the allied army of Spaniards and Tlascalans set out upon their journey through luxuriant plains and flourishing plantations, met occasionally by embassies from different towns, anxious to claim the protection of the white men, and bringing rich gifts of gold to propitiate them. They passed between the two enormous mountain peaks, Popocatapetl, 'the hill that smokes,' and Iztaccihuatl, 'the white woman,' and presently encountered a blinding snow-storm, from which they found shelter in one of the large ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... Boston, Mass., who has won deserved distinction in advancing the interests of Sir George Pullman, of Chicago, is here visiting his parents, who reside on Upper Hominy. We are glad to see Mr. Hicks and hope he may live long to visit Blue Ruin and propitiate up and down ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... it is, to propitiate your hostess. So seating himself by the Begum, Taji led off with earnest inquiries after her welfare. But the Begum was one of those, who relieve the diffident from the embarrassment of talking; all by themselves ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the fullest extent those superstitions which form such a salient characteristic of all the Bantu tribes. Now, all savages believe that persons whose wits are affected are wizards, whom it is good policy to propitiate, and whom he may be dangerous to offend. Therefore the king signified that the ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... at the building of national maraes, at the commencement of a war, or in cases of the serious illness of a superior chief. The number of victims sacrificed, is proportioned to the magnitude of the occasion; as many as a score have sometimes been offered to propitiate the gods during the severe sickness of a powerful chief. The priests signify to the chief the number required; the latter then sends out his runner or messenger, (te vea), who delivers to each of the subordinate chiefs, one of these packages for each victim to be furnished from ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... that offended tribunal, to propitiate which I have passed so many years in penitence and prayer, let me record for the benefit of others the history of one, who, yielding to fatal passion, embittered the remainder of his own days, and shortened those of the adored partner of his guilt. Let my confession ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... jewels." "O Emir," asked Talib, "shall we leave our damsel with what is upon her, things which have no equal and whose like is not to be found and more perfect than aught else thou takest; nor couldst thou find a goodlier offering wherewithal to propitiate the favour of the Commander of the Faithful?" But Musa answered, "O man, heardest thou not what the Lady saith on this tablet? More by token that she giveth it in trust to us who are no traitors." "And shall we," rejoined the Wazir Talib, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... that God was to be found there, and that the tent of Moses was the spot where they were to appear before their Creator. God, however, was not at all pleased to see Moses keep himself aloof from the people, and said to him: "According to our agreement, I was to propitiate thee every time thou wert angry with the people, and thou wert to propitiate Me when My wrath was kindled against them. What is now to become of these poor people, if we be both angry with them? Return, therefore, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... flowers held in the hand will conduct them to anything lost; as also that the voice of certain wild animals, birds, or beasts, will insure them good-luck, or warn them of danger. With the utmost complacency our sable brother builds a dwarf hut in his fields, and places some grain on it to propitiate the evil spirit, and suffer him to reap the fruits of his labour, and this too they ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... worship take in the every-day life of the people. Monuments and temples everywhere bear testimony to the universal belief in a Supreme Being; and Hindoo, Mussulman, and Buddhist alike, by numberless prayers and frequent offerings, confess their desire to propitiate His power and ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... her poem about the cook instead of the camel-boys. Luckily, however, at the last moment I remembered a superstition of the Ancient Egyptians. They were in the habit of sacrificing a black lamb to propitiate Set, the sender of storms. Our lamb was black: and at the hour of his untimely death a storm was coming up. The dreadful deed, therefore, was ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Eumenides, which signifies the "well-meaning" or "soothed goddesses;" This appellation was given to them because they were so feared and dreaded that people dared not call them by their proper title, and hoped by this means to propitiate their wrath. ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... coquettish villas and pavilions, the doors of which were barely looked. The German soldiers would very likely occupy the houses, but assuredly they would do no harm to them. "Perhaps, however, it might be as well to propitiate the foreign soldiers. Let us leave something for them," said worthy Monsieur Durand to Madame Durand, his wife; "they will be hungry when they get here, and if they find something ready for them they will be grateful and do no damage." So, although the honest Durands ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... proceedings of the Massachusetts Bay Court on the Royal Message; their address of vindication and entreaty to the King; and instead of sending agents, send two large masts, and resolve to send L1,000 to propitiate the King 180 ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... knees. Round his waist was a broad crimson sash. He advanced with a grave dignity. Each bow—and he bowed often—was an act of ceremonial courtesy. There was no trace of servility, nor of any special desire to please or propitiate in his manner. He reached the step below the terrace on which the flagstaff stood. He bowed once more and then stood upright, looking straight at the Queen with calm, ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... Great Britain as a Parliament of nice honour and stanch justice... Their request then is that this great Parliament may make good the Treaty of Limerick in all the Civil Articles." In order to propitiate those to whom he makes this appeal, he accuses the Irish Parliament of encroaching on the supreme authority of the English Parliament, and charges the colonists generally with ingratitude to the mother country to which they owe ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... these, represented the attitude of primitive man to nature, and really was his religion. He had no idea of immutable laws, but regarded the world about him as changeable and fickle like himself, and "to make life go as he wished, he must be able to please and propitiate or to coerce these forces ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... hard to propitiate," said the young Jewess. "In old times, after the sacrifice was offered, a man was cleansed from sin. He had not to cleanse himself by ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... propitiate Sally. He returned from London with presents for her, and he always spoke to her, ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... the twenty-first Sunday of my bereavement, Alexander, I trust, is ordained a deacon of the Church of England. Heaven propitiate his entrance! I wrote to the good Bishop of Salisbury to beseech his pious wishes on this opening ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... and started around the cage with it in his mouth, dancing like a cannibal. His long, serious face was more thoughtful and solemn, however, than usual. I was puzzled. I had heard of dancing at funerals. Either this was such a dance, or else some wild orgy to propitiate the spirits that preside over ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... Florence. She had been the most faithful of wives, the most attractive of consorts, and one of the most generous of benefactresses. It was "the body" of as unselfish a sister-in-law as any man, high or low, ever had, who strove her utmost to propitiate, screen, and honour the self-seeking brother of her husband. It was "the body" ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... the Protestants, murdered to propitiate Providence, and, if possible, extort for the queen a return of the Divine favour. The alarm of invasion diminished as summer advanced. England had again a fleet upon the seas which feared no enemy, and could ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... not nominally, but essentially. He further relates how when a railroad magnate traveled, his journey was like a royal progress; Governors of States and Territories bowed before him; Legislatures received him in solemn session; cities and towns sought to propitiate him, for had he not the means of making or marring a city's fortunes? "You cannot turn in any direction in American politics," wrote Richard T. Ely a little later, "without discovering the railway power. It is the ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... so hard to propitiate, my good woman! I have explained to you how it happened! I came as soon as I could! I am willing to reward you liberally for all the trouble you have had with him. So now show me my son, there's ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... expense to provide everything that money could procure to restore her health. He also refused to be reconciled to his son Fred, who had succeeded in his loved profession beyond his expectations, and who had sought, again and again, to propitiate his father. At last Fred resolved to go abroad and study the works of the ancient masters. He corresponded regularly with Loo for some time, but his letters suddenly ceased to make their appearance, and nothing was heard ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... question desires is that the Albanians shall pasture their flocks and market their sheepskins in peace, free of Serbian control. In every country at present at war, the desire of the majority of people is for a non-contentious solution that will neither crystallise a triumph nor propitiate an enemy, but which will embody the economic and ethnological and geographical common sense of the matter. But while the formulae of national belligerence are easy, familiar, blatant, and instantly present, the gentler, greater formulae of that wider and newer world pacifism has still to be generally ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... louder than the old cock ever crowed,' he said; but he said it more good-humouredly than sneeringly, and it was evident that he was more than willing to propitiate Lancelot. 'We ought to make terms, for we are both at a loose end here, and might at least agree not to annoy each other. For you see, Lieutenant—if you will take that title—that as you judge you shall be judged. If ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... him, the first time he was to set up a man servant. He had to break it to his landlady, who would naturally resent the change. He may have been priming himself with some of those perpetual glasses of brandy and water to which he was addicted, and who knows but that, in his ardour to propitiate, he may have gone a little too far? This fact too, of the introducing a man servant into her establishment, Mrs. Bardell may have indistinctly associated with a general change in his life. If she were to become Mrs. Pickwick her duties ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... in the least mind his assignment to so prominent a position, but he did mind Little Teacher's attitude toward him throughout the day. He sought to propitiate her by coming to her assistance in many little tasks, but she persistently ignored his overtures. He then ventured to seek enlightenment regarding his studies, but she coldly informed him he could remain after school to ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... lead the singing. Nevertheless, when the concert was over, not a word was said on the subject by any one, though I had quite expected to be taken at once to the magisterial chamber to hear some dreadful sentence passed on me; and when, before retiring, anxious to propitiate my host, I began to express regret for having inflicted pain on them by attempting to sing, the venerable gentleman raised his hands deprecatingly, and begged me to say no more about it, for painful subjects were best forgotten. "No doubt," he kindly ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... motion and the water-habitat of many of the species cause him to be associated as a divinity with Varuna, the water-god. Thus in early Hinduism one finds snake-sacrifices of two sorts. One is to cause the extirpation of snakes, one is to propitiate them, Apart from the real snake, there is revered also the N[a]ga, a beautiful chimerical creature, human, divine, and snake-like all in one. These are worshipped by sectaries and by many wild tribes alike. The N[a]ga tribe of Chota N[a]gpur, for instance, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... should you chance to go To Hades, do not fail to throw A "Sop to Cerberus" at the gate, His anger to propitiate. Don't say "Good dog!" and hope thereby His three fierce Heads to pacify. What though he try to be polite And wag his Tail with all his might, How shall one amiable Tail Against three angry Heads prevail? The Heads must win.—What puzzles me Is why in Hades there should ...
— The Mythological Zoo • Oliver Herford
... been of a most pacific disposition, that to wag his tongue or lift his hand against that sacred gentleman would be an unhallowed act. He was sorry that his noble mind should take offence; still, he felt the fact to be not incompatible with its nobility, and sought to propitiate and conciliate that gallant soul. Her father, a gentleman in misfortune—a gentleman of a fine spirit and courtly manners, who always bore with him—he deeply honoured. Her sister he considered somewhat vain and proud, but a young lady of infinite ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... after death, and pointed, as all men do, to the sky, when talking of that subject. They held, indefinitely, that there was some overruling Spirit; but they believed also in malignant influences which it was advisable to propitiate. Their worship was connected with the caverns of the island, those mysterious formations beneath which the strange sounds were heard. The walls of these caverns were covered with pictured distortions, half man, half animal, which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... and sacrifices, and the entire service of gods, demigods, and heroes; also the ordering of the repositories of the dead, and the rites which have to be observed by him who would propitiate the inhabitants of the world below. These are matters of which we are ignorant ourselves, and as founders of a city we should be unwise in trusting them to any interpreter but our ancestral deity. He is the god who sits in the centre, on ...
— The Republic • Plato
... have contemplated this step without it. During one of our riding excursions we were to secure the services of a Methodist minister in the adjoining county, and, later, that of the Mission padre—when the secret was out. "I will gif her away," said Enriquez confidently, "it will on the instant propitiate the old shadbelly who shall perform the affair, and withhold his jaw. A little chin-music from your oncle 'Arry shall finish it! Remain tranquil and forgot not a ring! One does not always, in the agony and dissatisfaction of the moment, a ring remember. I ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... parts, he lives in continual dread of what he deems the direct and isolated acts of evil spirits. Feeling them continually near him, he will naturally endeavour to enter into communion with them. He will strive to propitiate them with gifts. If some great calamity has fallen upon him, or if some vengeful passion has mastered his reason, he will attempt to invest himself with their authority, and his excited imagination will soon persuade him that he has ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... now I should leave an aching void. You would still have that beautiful punch of yours, and there would be nobody to exercise it on. You would pine away. From now on matters should, I think, move rapidly. During the course of the next week I shall endeavour to propitiate you with gifts. Here is ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the purring of the gong vibrated through the house, and he slipped a hand through his father's arm. "That reminds me—I'm starving hungry! If they're still out, let's be bold, and propitiate the teapot on ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... be called by divine epithets with but little exaggeration; partly from the fact that the unusually potent were apt to be considered as unrecognised or illegitimate descendants of "the strong, the destroyer, the powerful one;" and partly, also, from compliment and the desire to propitiate. ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... your banking account, and your banker," he went on. This was perfectly true, though it was Raffles alone who had kept the one open, and enabled me to propitiate the other in moments ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... responselessly drink her vile gifts, for I seek no offerings from folk that do ill. But rather, O brides, may concord always be yours, and constant love ever dwell in your homes. But when thou, O queen, whilst gazing at the stars, shalt propitiate the goddess Venus with festal torch-lights, let not me, thine own, be left lacking of unguent, but rather gladden me with large gifts. Stars fall in confusion! So that I become a royal tress, Orion might ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... was wicked, and she had promised Clotilde,—that droll little saint,—to resort to them no more. Hereafter, she should do nothing of the sort, except, to be sure, to take such ordinary precautions against misfortune as casting upon the floor a little of whatever she might be eating or drinking to propitiate M. Assonquer. She would have liked, could she have done it without fear of detection, to pour upon the front door-sill an oblation of beer sweetened with black molasses to Papa Lebat (who keeps the invisible keys of all the doors that admit suitors), but she dared not; and then, the hound would ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... said William. By his determined rattling he had now collected the animated attention of some half-dozen apes. Either to propitiate them, or to show his consideration for their feelings, he proceeded to offer them the apple ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... in the words, a timorously expectant question. Emma had learnt the sad lesson of hope deferred, always to meet discouragement halfway. It is thus one seeks to propitiate the evil powers, to turn the edge ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... although their strength was not impaired. At the base of every one lay hideous relics. Henry shivered again. He knew. Here Indians brought their captives and burned them to death, partly for the sake of their own vengeance and partly to propitiate the mighty spirits that had their abode in the depths of the great lakes. He was sure that his comrades and he had landed upon a sacrificial island, and he resolved that they should depart at the very first light ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... said Daisy, who, although she could not have swallowed a sweety to save her life at that moment, had sense enough to know that her wisest plan was to propitiate Dove. ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... your noble brother, the Marquis d'Elboeuf, transfix two stags with a single arrow. If the most Christian king will not help us, move the pope to help us. I alone in this land sustain his cause.' To propitiate his holiness, Primate Daniel was dismissed to the ranks of the army, and Creagh received his crosier, and ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... like their chiefs, have attendants to execute his behests. These inferior spirits see what passes on earth, and report it to their Great Ruler: the Indian, trusting to their good offices, invokes those spirits of the air in times of peril, and endeavors to propitiate them by throwing tobacco or other simple offerings to the winds or upon the waters. But, amid all these corrupt and ignorant superstitions, the One Spirit, the Creator and Ruler of the World, is the great object of the Red Man's ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... sight doth delight my soul!' His practical jokes are unworthy of a court jester. The congealing of his blood agitates his superstitious mind far more than the terrible frankness of Mephistophilis. Miserably mean-spirited, he seeks to propitiate the wrath of the fiend by invoking his torments upon an old man whose disinterested appeal momentarily quickened his conscience into revolt. Finally, when we recall the words with which Tamburlaine faced death, what contempt, despite the frightful anguish of the scene, is aroused by Faustus's ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... shall we do?" she said. "This is very unfortunate. If I had thought the Doctor—but the little fellow is so sweet, I thought he would be pleased and amused. We must try to keep them away from each other. Or perhaps, if the little dear would try to propitiate the Doctor,—you have no idea how sensitive he is, and how he feels anything like disrespect,—if he were to try to ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... Wordsworth resembled a man coming into a drawing-room with muddy boots and a smock-frock. He courted disgust, and such courtship is pretty sure of success. But Landor made his bow in full court-dress. In spite of the difficulty of his poetry, he had all the natural graces which are apt to propitiate cultivated readers. His prose has merits so conspicuous and so dear to the critical mind, that one might have expected his welcome from the connoisseurs to be warm even beyond the limit of sincerity. To praise him was to announce one's own possession ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... previously been the custom of the wild men to kill chickens, pigs or carabaos in case of illness, in order to propitiate evil spirits, the kind and number of animals killed being of course determined by the wealth of the patients. They have now satisfied themselves that quinine for malaria, salvarsan for yaws, and other effective remedies for common ailments are more useful and more readily obtained than ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... not one of those women who serve a friend by halves. She knew well how to propitiate and reason down the apathetic temperament of Lady Chillingly; she did not cease till that lady herself came into Kenelm's room, and said ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and hundreds of kids, goats, buffaloes, and other animals are sacrificed daily at her shrine. We saw the bloody work going forward. Crowds of pilgrims, numbering at least three hundred during our short stay, came in bands from the country to propitiate the goddess. Each one presents an offering as the idol is shown. It is the most disgusting object I have ever seen, and a sight of it would, I am sure, frighten children into crying. The business is skilfully managed. A small dark hall, capable ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... borne wherever the wind which drives them goes, falling on lands exceedingly far away. And once, they say, they fell in Byzantium[151] and so terrified the people there, that from that time up to the present the whole city has seen fit to propitiate God with prayers every year; and at another time they fell on Tripolis in Libya. Formerly this rumbling took place, they say, once in a hundred years or even more,[152] but in later times it has happened much more frequently. This, however, they declare emphatically, ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... your glory to my care, no longer as before let our path be hindered. Now at last let us propitiate Phoebus with sacrifice and straightway prepare a feast. And until my thralls come, the overseers of my steading, whose care it is to choose out oxen from the herd and drive them hither, we will drag down the ship to the sea, and do ye place all the tackling ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... each couple facing each other. But before commencing, a portion was laid aside and dedicated to their gods, with various mysterious ceremonies; for here, as in other places where the gospel is not known, the poor savages fancied that they could propitiate God with sacrifices. They had never heard of the "sacrifice of a broken spirit and a contrite heart." This offering being made, the feast began in earnest. Not only was it a rule in this feast that every mouthful should be swallowed by each guest, however unwilling and unable ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... the king, to which was usually added a commemorative inscription. In front of this stele was erected an altar, upon which sacrifices were made, and if the monument was placed near a stream or the seashore, the soldiers were accustomed to cast portions of the victims into the water in order to propitiate the river-deities. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... morn the Household God has rice and tea before him; the Kitchen God has gone with celebrations at springtime to the spirit up above. The candles have been lighted and the smoke of incense has ascended to propitiate the God of Light, Lord Buddha, and Kwan-yin, and my children have been taught their prayers and holy precepts. It is not my fault, nor shouldst thou blame it to my teaching if rites and symbols have lost their meaning, ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... ivory or silver, drawn by tame lions and elephants. I can't recollect the order. O! but the grandest thing of all was the Carmen, sung by twenty-seven noble youths, and as many noble maidens, taken for the purpose from the bosoms of their families to propitiate the gods of Rome. The flamens, augurs, colleges of priests, it was endless. Last of all came the ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... gnomes and norns without number. The forests, the mountains and gorges, are inhabited by these people still. Nissen is the good fairy of the farmers. He looks after the cattle particularly, and if he is well treated they are healthy, and the cows give lots of milk. To propitiate him it is necessary to put a dish of porridge on the threshold of the cow stable on Christmas morning. Whenever the family move, this invisible being goes along with them and sits on the top of the loads. In haying time he always rides on the load of hay, and the bedstemoder, best mother or grandmother, ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... deed. In preparing a body for burial, the Greeks took a piece of money and put it into the mouth, to give to the ferryman Charon. With the money a small quantity of pudding or cheese was put in for Cerberus, to propitiate him. As a corpse was being carried out to be interred, the deceased was commended to the protection of the infernal gods. To burn a body was considered more honourable than to lay it in the cold grave, for the Greeks ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... existence, than the nurse, under instructions from his anxious mamma, took off what few clothes the poor boy had on, and repairing to the baptismal font in the yard, sprinkled cold water upon his naked breast and lips, presented his credentials in the shape of offerings to propitiate the gods of war, agriculture, etc., whose names you will find further along in this history, repeated a prayer in which "the Lord was implored to wash away the sin that was given him before the foundation of the world, so that the child might be ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... region called Campania, in the midst of which is the volcano Vesuvius. [Footnote: Among the strange customs of the olden times in Italy was one called ver sacrum (sacred spring). In time of distress a vow would be made to sacrifice every creature born in April and May to propitiate an offended deity. In many cases man and beast were thus offered; but in time humanity revolted against the sacrifice of children, and they were considered sacred, but allowed to grow up, and at the age of twenty ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... tranquillity and ease, which comprehended their highest notions of happiness. The wicked were to expiate their crimes by ages of wearisome labor. They associated with these ideas a belief in an evil principle or spirit, bearing the name of Cupay, whom they did not attempt to propitiate by sacrifices, and who seems to have been only a shadowy personification of sin, that exercised little influence over ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... her, but the squatter girl had infinite confidence in the future events foretold by the witch. To-night she must see the woman—must ask her news of Daddy Skinner from the fortune pot. The dead fish hanging upon the slender arm were to propitiate the witch's anger for being dragged from ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... lived, in 1814, an aged dame called Bessie Millie, who helped out her subsistence by selling favourable winds to mariners. He was a venturous master of a vessel who left the roadstead of Stromness without paying his offering to propitiate Bessie Millie! Her fee was extremely moderate, being exactly sixpence, for which she boiled her kettle and gave the bark the advantage of her prayers, for she disclaimed all unlawful acts. The wind thus petitioned for was sure, she said, to arrive, though ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... suffers the penalty of sin,—en o sozetai. 'I should like to hear some more explanations of the names of the Gods, like that excellent one of Zeus.' The truest names of the Gods are those which they give themselves; but these are unknown to us. Less true are those by which we propitiate them, as men say in prayers, 'May he graciously receive any name by which I call him.' And to avoid offence, I should like to let them know beforehand that we are not presuming to enquire about them, but only about the names ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... superstitions, and neither have been entirely obliterated by the cult which superseded them. The belief in the power of malignant spirits to cause misfortune, sickness, and death is still strong among the Malays, whose pawangs or medicine-men claim to be able to propitiate demons by spells, prayers, and offerings. These men frequently invoke benevolent spirits by the names of Rama, Vishnu, and other Hindu deities, in complete ignorance that they are Hindu,[36] to counteract the ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... London; and during my extended and rather intimate acquaintance with her, I have never discovered but one foible incident to the flesh, love of her morning nap! You have adroitly struck Achilles in the heel. Sound the timbrel and sing like Miriam over your victory; for it were better to propitiate one of the house of Palma, than to strangle Pharaoh. You should apply for a position in some foreign legation, where your talents can be fitly trained for the tangles of diplomacy. Now if you were only a ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... said nothing more. They waited thus the fourth day at the place on account of the stormy state of the sea, but after that the storm ceased, and the anchor was weighed. When the voyage was now continued with a favourable wind, the skipper said: 'You laughed at my advice to propitiate the Semes rock, and considered it a foolish superstition, but it certainly would have been impossible for us to get past it, if I had not secretly by night ascended the rock and sacrificed.' To the inquiry what ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... estate was not the real owner of Son Febrer, and frequently, on arriving at the city with his gifts, he changed his route and left them at the houses of his creditors, awe-inspiring personages whom he desired to propitiate. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... roe. So minutely enthusiastic is the hunter's treatment of his theme, that the attempt to win any favour for his performance from the Saxon reader, is attended with no small risk,—although it is possible that a little practice with the rifle in any similar wilderness may propitiate even the holiday sportsman somewhat in favour of the subject and its minute details. We must commit this forest minstrel to the good-nature of other readers, entreating them only to render due acknowledgment to the forbearance which has, in the meantime, troubled them only with the first half ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... who was anxious to propitiate Michael, laughed a cheerless laugh. "You have such a flow of spirits," said he, "I am sure I often find it quite amusing. But regarding this principle of which I was about to speak. It is that of accommodating one's-self to the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with those that are good, depends upon only seven words[306]. Do thou then, O lord, show us thy grace. The blazing sacrificial fire eats all the oblations of clarified butter poured upon it. Of righteous soul, and possessed of great energy thou art among men, a blazing fire in energy. We propitiate thee, O thou of great learning! We surrender ourselves to thee. Do thou, for showing us favour, take back from ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... lying waste"—the very spot for a theatre—"because it was reputed to be haunted by a malignant goddess,"—that wouldn't matter as long as the "gods" were well provided for. Then it continues, "They" (who?) "did all they could to propitiate her, setting apart a tree—." Yes; but it wasn't the right tree: of course it ought to have been a BEERBHOOM TREE. His first drama might have shown how a Buddhist priest couldn't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... murdered to propitiate Providence, and, if possible, extort for the queen a return of the Divine favour. The alarm of invasion diminished as summer advanced. England had again a fleet upon the seas which feared no enemy, and could even act on the offensive. In May, two ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... this sorry comedy with such skill as he can manage. To his German countrymen he has to proclaim that the war has been one brilliant progress from the start to the present time. This must be done in order to allay the apprehensions of Berlin and to propitiate the ever-increasing demand for more plentiful supplies of food. Secretly he has to work quite as hard to secure for the Central Empires such a conclusion of hostilities as will leave them masters of Europe. And, without ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... first-born children—commuted afterwards to the blood of the sacred animal, the Llama. And as to Mexico, Sahagun, the great Spanish missionary, tells us that it was a custom of the people there to "smear the outside of their houses and doors with blood drawn from their own ears and ankles, in order to propitiate the god of Harvest" (Kingsborough's Mexican ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... him, almost as if I sought to propitiate him. I might have been courting his patronage for his own "Life." Then, with a start, I came to, to find myself talking nonsense to the portrait that years before Andriaovsky had refused to ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... that on the journey from Kailua to Kealakekua he passed at least one heiau to every half mile. The classic instance in Hawaiian history is the building of the great temple of Puukohala at Kawaihae by Kamehamaha, in order to propitiate his war god, and the tolling thither of his rival, Keoua, to present as the first victim upon the altar, a treachery which practically concluded the conquest of Hawaii. Malo (p. 210) describes the "days of ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... in soul, wandering hither and thither, rested not night or day in the pursuit of her husband, desiring, if she might not sooth his anger by the endearments of a wife, at the least to propitiate him with the prayers of a handmaid. And seeing a certain temple on the top of a high mountain, she said, "Who knows whether yonder place be not the abode of my lord?" Thither, therefore, she turned her steps, hastening now the more because desire and hope pressed her on, weary as she was ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... no doubt, not so bad as it looks. They say the rack is not, though probably no one would care to try. There were holidays; there was a large circle of hospitable family friends, and strangers were only too anxious to welcome (and perhaps to propitiate) Her Majesty's Inspector. The agreeable anomalies of the British legal system (which, let Dickens and other grumblers say what they like, have made many good people happy and only a few miserable) allowed Mr Arnold for many years to act ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... well," said Holden, thinking that it might be well to propitiate the Medicine Man for the time. But Thunder-maker, stooping forward with a pretence of picking up something from the ground, came close enough to whisper, so that only the ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... in order to steer this government by public opinion successfully through all the confusion created by the prejudices and doubts and differences of sentiment distracting the popular mind, and so to propitiate, inspire, mould, organize, unite, and guide the popular will that it might give forth all the means required for the performance of his great task, he would have to take into account all the influences strongly affecting the current of popular thought and feeling, and to direct while ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... coachman to make a round of a mile or two, as far as the village of ——, with whose rector he was particularly desirous to speak. A momentary cloud gathered on D'Effernay's brow, yet it seemed no more than his usual expression of vexation at any delay or hinderance; and he was so anxious to propitiate his rich visitor, who appeared likely to take the estate off his hands, that he complied with all possible courtesy. The coachman was directed to turn down a by-road, and a very bad one it was. The captain ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... approaching Holy-tide, to propitiate the minds of his subjects and vassals, they were invited in large numbers to partake of a princely festivity at Castell-Coch, or the Red- Castle, as it was then called, since better known by the name of ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the hand that is left after the right has been mentioned, or, in short, the other one. Many things which are lucky if seen on the right are fateful omens if seen to leftward. On the other hand, if you spill the salt, you propitiate destiny by tossing a pinch of it over the left shoulder. A murderer's left hand is said by good authorities to be an excellent thing to do magic with; but here I cannot speak from personal experience. Nor do I know why the wedding-ring is worn on the ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... of the prophets of the eighth century, by persecution, by the introduction of foreign and sensual cults, and especially by reviving in the name of Israel's God(110) the ancient sacrifice of children, in order to propitiate His anger. Thus it appears that the happier interests of religion—family feasts, pieties of seed-time and harvest, gratitude for light, fountains and rain, and for good fortune—were scattered among a host both of local and of foreign ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... religious asceticism, I may, before concluding this chapter, draw attention to what seem to me the more general reasons which prompt men to ascetic practices: (1) A desire, which is intensified by all personal or national troubles, to propitiate the Unseen Powers. (2) A longing on the part of the intensely religious to follow in the footsteps of their Master, almost invariably an ascetic. (3) A wish to work out one's own future salvation, or emancipation, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... we do?" she said. "This is very unfortunate. If I had thought the Doctor—but the little fellow is so sweet, I thought he would be pleased and amused. We must try to keep them away from each other. Or perhaps, if the little dear would try to propitiate the Doctor,—you have no idea how sensitive he is, and how he feels anything like disrespect,—if he were to try to ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... their lovely petals. You wish me a rose-strewn itinerary, all conceivable forms of 'good luck'; as though you stood on tip-toe and shouted after me: 'Gluck auf.' As a happy augury, I accept it. Like the old Romans, you have offered up for me a dainty sacrifice to propitiate Domiduca—the goddess who grants travellers a ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... skill baffled and confounded, Columbus endeavoured to propitiate heaven by solemn vows, and various private vows were made by the seamen. The heavens, however, seemed deaf to their vows: the storm grew still more furious, and every one gave ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... this he heard a footstep and a cough together close at hand, and, turning with a start, beheld a pale and slender man of brief stature, who scraped his lantern jaws with apologetic thumb and finger, and looking at him with a startled meekness, as if he would fain propitiate anger for a possible intrusion, sidled to the foot of the stairs, mounted the stairway with a backward glance and a second cough ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... what its fruits could buy. He might have built a palace on the Heights with the tolls he took from the disreputable houses of the city; he was contented with Monahan's saloon: nor did he seek to propitiate a possible God by endowing churches and hospitals with a portion of his income. Try though I might, I never could achieve the perfection of this man's contempt for all other philosophies. The very fact of my going there in secret to that dark place of his from out ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Irusian Mountains came in sight, nursing the villages of Pen-Kai and Blut, and the wandering streets of Mlo, where priests propitiate the avalanche with wine and maize. Then the night came down over the plains of Tlun, and we saw the lights of Cappadarnia. We heard the Pathnites beating upon drums as we passed Imaut and Golzunda, then all but the helmsman slept. ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... long. The dancers shrieked and whirled themselves into a state of hysteria, and would have continued dancing all night, had they not been summarily dismissed. As far as I could make out, this was less of an attempt to propitiate local devils than an endeavour to frighten them away by sheer terror. It was unquestionably a horribly uncanny performance, what with the white streaked faces and limbs, and the clang of the metal dresses; the surroundings, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... and in spite of your pretended belief in the greatness and goodness of God, you belittle Him by the thought that an omission of a single ceremony, the eating of meat and milk together, the tearing of a tzitzith (fringe) will offend Him, or that a certain number of mitzvoth (good acts) will propitiate Him. Do you understand now what I mean when I say that superstition is ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... father's fiefs, and meeting the allied forces of the Lombard barons in the field of Coviolo like an independent potentate. His power and splendour were great enough to rouse the jealousy of the Emperor; but Henry III. seems to have thought it more prudent to propitiate this proud vassal, and to secure his kindness, than to attempt his humiliation. Bonifazio married Beatrice, daughter of Frederick, Duke of Lorraine—her whose marble sarcophagus in the Campo Santo at Pisa is said to have ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... this man had been selected as the offering by which Joe and his companions expected to gain immunity, showed that the fellow was really a most worthless character, whose death even would have been a benefit to the tribe. Thus it seemed that they had two purposes in view—the one to propitiate me and get good terms, the other to rid themselves of a vagabond member of ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... than any among the representatives of sects he so heartily despised, turned to question how Quakers had fared in this objectionable and presumptuous Colony of New England, the answer was not one to propitiate, or to incline to any favor. The story is not one that any New Englander will care to dwell upon, even to-day, when indifference is the rule toward all theological dissension, past or present. It is certain that had Winthrop lived, matters could never have reached ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... entered boldly, traversed the crowd, and knelt at the feet of Fredegonde, imploring her forgiveness. The king had him expelled from the church, but, instead of taking warning, he lingered in the shops around the market-place in the Cite, selecting jewels and rich stuffs with which to propitiate the queen; when she issued from the church and saw him, she despatched her guards to arrest him; one of them was wounded, and another gave him a sword-cut over the head; as he fled across the Petit-Pont, he fell and broke his leg. The manner and quality of a torture that should ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... to the fullest extent those superstitions which form such a salient characteristic of all the Bantu tribes. Now, all savages believe that persons whose wits are affected are wizards, whom it is good policy to propitiate, and whom he may be dangerous to offend. Therefore the king signified ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... which is held in alternate years at Walpi and Oraibi, at the former place in the odd year and at the latter place in the even year, some time during the month of August. It is purely a religious ceremony, an elaborate supplication for rain, and is designed to propitiate the water god or ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... Jane to the footman, "I knew I should get at it eventually." She smiled at him with a friendly good-will; she acknowledged him as a human being, and she hoped to propitiate him into the concession that ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... Haug says "as an invisible thing at all times and is like the latent power of electricity in an electrifying machine, requiring only the operation of a suitable apparatus in order to be elicited." The sacrifice is not offered to a god with a view to propitiate him or to obtain from him welfare on earth or bliss in Heaven; these rewards are directly produced by the sacrifice itself through the correct performance of complicated and interconnected ceremonies which constitute the sacrifice. Though in each ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... stripes. It was unjust and cruel and Mamma and Papa would never have allowed it. Unless perhaps, as Aunty Rosa seemed to imply, they had sent secret orders. In which case he was abandoned indeed. It would be discreet in the future to propitiate Aunty Rosa, but, then, again, even in matters in which he was innocent, he had been accused of wishing to "show off." He had "shown off" before visitors when he had attacked a strange gentleman—Harry's uncle, not his own—with requests for information about the Griffin and the ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... now subdued, questions were put to him from all sides. But his powers of observation and description went no further. As he was anxious to propitiate his captors, he answered as often as possible in the affirmative. Mr. Jansenius asked him whether the young woman he had seen was a lady, and he said yes. Was the man a laborer? Yes—after a moment's hesitation. ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... whom, prepossessed with ideas of feudality, they regarded as the suzerain of a host of subordinate lords and princes, ruling over the surrounding swamps and pine barrens. Outina gratefully received the two prisoners whom Laudonniere had sent to propitiate him, feasted the wonderful strangers, and invited them to join him on a raid against his rival, Potanou. Laudonniere had promised to join Satouriona against Outina, and Vasseur now promised to join Outina against Potanon, the hope ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... To you the thoughts of no inhuman heart. Now pleased and satiate from the social rite Repair we to the blessings of the night; But with the rising day, assembled here, Let all the elders of the land appear, Pious observe our hospitable laws, And Heaven propitiate in the stranger's cause; Then join'd in council, proper means explore Safe to transport him to the wished-for shore (How distant that, imports us not to know, Nor weigh the labour, but relieve the woe). Meantime, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... following the bent of our ancestral instincts, we go on, age after age, in the performance of some senseless act which once had a use and meaning we excuse ourselves by calling it symbolism. Our "symbols" are merely survivals. We have theology and patriotism. We have all the savage's superstition. We propitiate and ingratiate by means of gifts. We shake hands. All these and hundreds of others of our practices are distinctly, in their nature and ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... with a gulp, and then, as though to propitiate Laura, she drew her breakfast back to her, and again tried to eat it. Small and slight as they both were, there was a very sharp contrast between her and her stepdaughter. Laura's features were all delicately clear, and nothing could have been more definite, more brilliant than the colour of the ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gods, Mercury [62] is the principal object of their adoration; whom, on certain days, [63] they think it lawful to propitiate even with human victims. To Hercules and Mars [64] they offer the animals usually allotted for sacrifice. [65] Some of the Suevi also perform sacred rites to Isis. What was the cause and origin of this foreign worship, I have not been able to discover; further than that ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... Lake was unfortunately on duty beside old Lady Chelford, whom it was important to propitiate, and who was in the middle of a story—an extraordinary favour from her ladyship; and he had the vexation to see Lord Chelford palpably engaging Miss Brandon for ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... this ordeal to her favorite. It was clear to him now that she was troubled, and he held the large and unaccustomed presence of the "comp'ny mit whiskers" responsible. Countless generations of ancestors had followed and fostered the instinct which now led Morris to propitiate an angry power. Luckily, he was prepared with an offering of a suitable nature. He had meant to enjoy it for yet a few days, and then to give it to Teacher. She was such a sensible person about presents. One ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... women burst into prolonged wailings, and the bravest of the men trembled. The messenger said that the white men had consented to abstain from using their magical powers until the following day; and that the only chance to propitiate them was for deputations from the villages to come in, early the next morning, with promises of peace and offerings for ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... her of my inclination to travel, she was sure there was no place like England, and could not imagine why any man that can live in his own country should leave it. This sullen and frigid being I found means, however, to propitiate by frequent commendations of frugality, and perpetual care ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... hand, he heard sounds: the sound of the night wind, the sound of one of the soldiers singing as he cleaned his rifle—the men always sang over this business, as if to propitiate the gun god—the scratch of the scorpion and the "creak, creak" of a joist warping ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... endless merry-making. Now it was a big feast; now a game of chance played by two large parties matched against each other, while the lodge was crowded almost to suffocation by eager spectators; now a dance, of the peculiar Indian kind; now some solemn ceremony to propitiate the spirits who were supposed to rule the weather, the crops, the hunting, and all ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... poetess: the woes of humanity are reflected in her own sorrows, to which she gave utterance in soulful tones. She, too, became an exemplar for a number of young women. A Pole, Yenta Wohllerner, like Rachel Morpurgo, had to propitiate churlish circumstances before she could publish the gifts of her muse, and Miriam Mosessohn, Bertha Rabbinowicz, and others, emulated her masterly handling ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... facing each other. But before commencing, a portion was laid aside and dedicated to their gods, with various mysterious ceremonies; for here, as in other places where the gospel is not known, the poor savages fancied that they could propitiate God with sacrifices. They had never heard of the "sacrifice of a broken spirit and a contrite heart." This offering being made, the feast began in earnest. Not only was it a rule in this feast that every mouthful should be swallowed ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... is the life of the game, and they chase her and propitiate her; and she generally condescends to return, for solitary dignity is dull. If any of the seniors happen to see it, it is checked as much as possible, but oftener we hear of it in that very informing prayer, which is to her quite the event of the evening; for she takes to the outward forms ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... the Egyptian could have found a ready answer had her pity for Nanny been less sincere; as it was, she hesitated, wanting to propitiate the doctor, while ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... only were there roughly modeled dishes and jars in the collection, but also all sorts of strange clay idols. You see, instead of worshipping the gods of goodness, Theo, these early peoples thought they could propitiate the gods of evil if they worshipped them instead; accordingly they made all sorts of grotesque images, some of them very hideous. None of this clay work was glazed, of course, for at that time men had not yet discovered that they could put a glaze over the ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... heads of the government—that they as a body and the great sectarian power of the West, formally ask'd Mr. Harlan's appointment—that he was of them, having been a Methodist minister—that it would not do to offend them, but was highly necessary to propitiate them. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... reach him, with hand, foot, or missile. The Sakai think it unlucky to sing or dance for nine days after a death, so the tribesmen had to give the poor little urchin, who had done the wrong, a fairly bad time of it to propitiate the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... tremendous eruption from it, which flooded several villages, destroyed many plantations and fishponds, filled up a deep bay 20 miles in extent, and formed the present coast. The terrified inhabitants threw living hogs into the stream, and tried to propitiate the anger of the gods by more costly offerings, but without effect, till King Kamehameha, attended by a large retinue of priests and chiefs, cut off some of his hair, which was considered sacred, and threw it into the torrent, which ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... formed a league to avenge their master's death by killing Kotsuke no Suke. This Oishi Kuranosuke was absent at the castle of Ako at the time of the affray, which, had he been with his prince, would never have occurred; for, being a wise man, he would not have failed to propitiate Kotsuke no Suke by sending him suitable presents; while the councillor who was in attendance on the prince at Yedo was a dullard, who neglected this precaution, and so caused the death of his master and the ruin ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... predecessors when acting under their direction in the discharge of the duties of superintendent and commissioner shall be strictly observed. I can conceive of no more sublime spectacle, none more likely to propitiate an impartial and common Creator, than a rigid adherence to the principles of justice on the part of a powerful nation in its transactions with a weaker and uncivilized people whom circumstances ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... interlarding their most solemn speeches with expostulations and threats of neglect if he fails in complying with their requests. As most of their petitions are for plenty of food they do not trust entirely to the favour of Kepoochikawn but endeavour at the same time to propitiate the animal, an imaginary representative of the whole race of larger quadrupeds that are objects ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... of anger or pleasure on the part of the divinities. Thunder, lightning, eclipses, comets, drought, floods, storms—anything strange or terrible, the cause of which was not understood, was ascribed to the wrath of some divinity; and men hastened to propitiate, as best they might, the divinities who were supposed to be scourging or threatening them. These deputy-gods were supposed to occupy the space between the earth and moon, and, being almost numberless and invisible, their worshippers held them in the ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... evidently belonged to that lowest and most horrible class of men-stealers, who propitiate the chiefs by assisting ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to be slaves and struggling to be lords," their servile adulation of rank and talent; their stupid admiration of processions and levees, are leading features of all the American books of travel.... We much doubt if all the pretty things we have quoted will so far propitiate Lady Blessington as to make her again admit to her table the animal who has printed what ensues. [Here follows the report of Moore's conversation on the subject of O'Connell.] As far as we are acquainted with ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... natives used to throw live people from it into the river as sacrifices. This is possibly true but there is little evidence to show that the natives of the Congo ever sacrificed either living or dead to propitiate ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... that the whole heathen world finds and feels itself to be guilty at the bar of natural reason and conscience? The accusing voice within them wakes their forebodings and fearful looking-for of Divine judgment, and they endeavor to propitiate the offended Power by their ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... began to be afraid. The duke of Ch'i said, 'With Confucius at the head of its government, Lu will become supreme among the States, and Ch'i which is nearest to it will be the first swallowed up. Let us propitiate it by a surrender of territory.' One of his ministers proposed that they should first try to separate between the sage and his sovereign, and to effect this, they hit upon the following scheme. Eighty beautiful girls, with musical and dancing accomplishments, and a hundred ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... I am pretty!" she whispered to her mirror. "Glad, glad!" Then with a laugh at her own childishness she "touched wood" to propitiate the jealous fates and ran down stairs to hide herself in the ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... able to accompany us. In embarking, M. Radisson must needs observe all the ceremony of two races. Such a whiffing of pipes among the stately, half-drunk Indian chiefs you never saw, with a pompous proffering of the stem to the four corners of the compass, which they thought would propitiate the spirits. Jean blew a blast on the trumpet. I waved the French flag. Godefroy beat a rattling fusillade on the drum, grabbed up his bobbing tipstaff, led the way; and down ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... mean? Why, that these simple people want rain on the land, and that they have collected from all parts of the country to offer their prayers, and their money, to propitiate the Deity. Could we, but for one moment, as onlookers from some other sphere, see this line of creeping things on their earnest errand, the sight would seem a strange one. Do these atoms on the earth's surface hope to change the order of the elements, ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... devil! Then this thought seemed to him a new transgression which might lessen the chances of his being able to save her, and he tried to forget it in prayer, to atone by penitence. He offered his own life amid whatever tortures would propitiate the offended deity, but he prayed ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... the midst of which is the volcano Vesuvius. [Footnote: Among the strange customs of the olden times in Italy was one called ver sacrum (sacred spring). In time of distress a vow would be made to sacrifice every creature born in April and May to propitiate an offended deity. In many cases man and beast were thus offered; but in time humanity revolted against the sacrifice of children, and they were considered sacred, but allowed to grow up, and at the age of twenty were sent ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... were not lacking in Israel. While the gentle and gracious warmth of the spring sun called forth the happy adoration of the people, the scorching and consuming heat of the midsummer sun roused the fears of the sufferers for their crops, their cattle, and their very lives. They sought to propitiate this fierce Power, which was evidently hostile to man, with offerings of the life it devoured so pitilessly. The choicest lives—the first-born son, the fairest maiden of the village—were sacrificed to glut its greed of death. Into the fiery arms of Moloch parents laid ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... Blentz had approached the bishop, who, eager to propitiate whoever seemed most likely to become king, gave the signal for the procession that was to mark the solemn bearing of the crown of Lutha up the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... show kindness which his mother had suggested as the only payment Theo would accept. Geoff in his generosity was going to give the price beforehand, to intimate his intention of saving Theo trouble by coming to the Warren every second day, and generally to propitiate and please his new tutor. It was a very important expedition, and nobody after this could say that Theo's ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... however, we have been exerting our best efforts to propitiate her good will. Upon the pretext that Texas, a nation as independent as herself, thought proper to unite its destinies with our own, she has affected to believe that we have severed her rightful territory, and in official proclamations and manifestoes has repeatedly threatened ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... of the kingdom of Pyrrhus, and by them are entertained awhile and sent upon their way with gifts and guidance (343-577). The voyage from Dyrrhachium and the first glimpse of Italy. They land and propitiate Juno: then coast along till they sight Mount AEtna (578-666). After a description of the rescue of Achemenides and the escape from Polyphemus, the voyage and the story end with the death ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... leaves—red, orange, golden and green; there were wild grapes too, and hazel-nuts, brown and ripe. Of all these she gathered eagerly until her basket was full, thinking that some would delight Gracie, others propitiate ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... took a piece of the comb and placed it in the fork of a tree for the honey-guide, assuring those who looked on, that it was necessary to propitiate the bird and pay it for its services—a plan of which the little thing seemed highly to approve, for it flew to the comb at ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... something in this, and no doubt a reluctance to discuss their grandmother with a stranger, and a prejudiced stranger, had mingled with Jacinth's desire to propitiate her aunt. So the sisters kissed and made friends, and when a few minutes afterwards they went down-stairs, and Mr Denison made his appearance again, the traces of tears had all but vanished ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... had strong opponents in the women of all the Dyak tribes. They held important parts in all the feasts, incantations, and superstitions, which could not be called religion, but were based on the dread of evil spirits and a desire to propitiate them. The women encouraged head-taking by preferring to marry the man who had some of those ghastly tokens of his prowess. When Sir James Brooke forbad head-taking among the tribes in his dominions, it ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... but it ceases to be magic when it is used simply to determine in the State ritual whether in a religious process the victim is perfect and agreeable to the deity. In fact magical formulae, magical instruments, unless they are used in the true spirit of magic, to compel, not to propitiate a deity, are no longer magic, and may be passed over here. When we come to discuss the ritual of sacrifice and prayer, of lustratio, of vows, of divination, we may find it necessary to recall what has here been said. On the whole, we may conclude that organised religious cult, from ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... objection, and the rustler saw it. He was anxious to propitiate the young woman, whom ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... and took the chair she offered, for he would rather propitiate than annoy her, seeing he was more afraid of Grizzie than aught in creation except dogs. And Grizzie, appreciating his behaviour, had compassion upon ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... shall give a clear and conscientious vote against the motion of the honourable Member for Finsbury; and I conceive that the petitioners will have much less reason to complain of my open hostility than of the conduct of the honourable Member, who tries to propitiate them by consenting to hear their oratory, but has fully made up his mind not ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... reverence from mankind. If a man did his duty towards his neighbour, he might pass his whole time on earth oblivious of the fact that such a Power was in existence; unless perchance he wished to obtain some good or attain some end, in which case he might seek to propitiate Him by sacrifice and prayer. There was no Devil to tempt man astray, and to rejoice in his fall; neither was there any belief that righteous behaviour in this world would lead at death to absorption in the Deity. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... nearly all of which are dirty beyond description. Immediately after the Spanish conquest a rage possessed the victors to build churches, without regard to the necessary population for their support, perhaps hoping thereby to propitiate heaven for their rapaciousness and outrageous oppression of the native race. The criminal extortion exercised by the priesthood and their followers forms a dark blot upon the escutcheon of both the church and the state. O Christianity, as Madame Roland ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... didn't tell him that, but I can tell him some other time," answered Will, who would have promised anything in his desire to propitiate Ann and his father, and to gain their consent to his entering Llaniago College at the beginning of ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... acknowledgments of gratitude to God. Their belief in Him is universal, and their confidence in his goodness and mercy almost exceeds belief. Their Almighty Creator is always before their eyes on all important occasions. They feel and acknowledge, his supreme power. They also endeavour to propitiate Him by outward worship or sacrifices. These are religious solemnities, intended to make themselves acceptable to the Great Spirit, to find favour in His sight, and to obtain His forgiveness ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... is rubbing in her objections with the flat of her hand. That blubbering and moaning, accompanying an elephantine tread, is fat Mrs. Casey, second floor, home drunk from an afternoon out, in fear of the vengeance of Mr. Casey; to propitiate whom she is burning a pan of bacon, as the choking fumes and outrageous sizzling testify. I hear a feeble whining, interrupted by long silences. It is that scabby baby on the third floor, fallen out of bed again, with nobody home to ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... you might distrust American democracy," returned Paul, smiling, "and feel disposed to propitiate it by a temporary sacrifice of rank ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the two sons of the next generation, Thyestes seduced the wife of his brother Atreus; and Atreus in return killed the sons of Thyestes, and made the father unwittingly eat the flesh of the murdered boys. Agamemnon, son of Atreus, to propitiate Artemis, sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia, and in revenge was murdered by Clytemnestra his wife. And Clytemnestra was killed by Orestes, her son, in atonement for the death of Agamemnon. For generations the race had been dogged by crime and punishment; and in choosing for his theme the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Amongst them were some clubs, most of them made of casuarina wood, skilfully carved, or embossed in an artistic manner with mother-of-pearl or with whalebone. The custom of amputating a joint or two of the fingers or toes, to propitiate the Deity, was still observed, in the case of a near ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... above the eastern hills. Not very long ago, at a time when cholera had appeared in the city and was taking a daily toll of life, this oart was the scene of a bi-weekly ceremony organized by the Bhandaris of Dadar and Mahim and designed to propitiate the wrath of the cholera-goddess, who had slain several members of that ancient and worthy community. For the Bhandaris, be it noted, know little of western theories of disease and sanitation; and such precautions ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... leave out old friends because they are neither rich nor fashionable and to include comparative strangers because they are of great social importance, not alone shows a want of loyalty and proper feeling, but is to invite the contempt of those very ones whom such snobbery seeks to propitiate. ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... time he was to set up a man servant. He had to break it to his landlady, who would naturally resent the change. He may have been priming himself with some of those perpetual glasses of brandy and water to which he was addicted, and who knows but that, in his ardour to propitiate, he may have gone a little too far? This fact too, of the introducing a man servant into her establishment, Mrs. Bardell may have indistinctly associated with a general change in his life. If she were to become Mrs. Pickwick her duties might be naturally expected to devolve ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... Tibetans show great skill, much of the decorative work on the handles of their swords and daggers being very artistic. The common people live in constant terror of evil spirits in this world and of terrible punishments in the hereafter; the educated classes believe they can drive off or propitiate all evil influences in this world, but fear they may be changed in a future rebirth to some vile form of being. In general, the people are treacherous and cowardly. For weapons of defence they use matchlocks; in firing them, the weapon is held ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... lived chiefly on deer and smaller game, and cultivated potatoes and Indian corn. They believed in one Great and Good Spirit, and in the existence of numerous evil spirits, whom they feared and endeavoured to propitiate. Missionaries, however, went among them, and many have been brought out of darkness to a knowledge ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... a robber. The gang engaged him in various little matters, in which we grieve to relate that though his intentions were excellent, his success was so ill as thoroughly to enrage his employers; nay, they were about at one time, when they wanted to propitiate justice, to hand him over to the secular power, when Clifford interposed in his behalf. From a robber the sage dwindled into a drudge; menial offices (the robbers, the lying rascals, declared that such offices were best fitted to the genius of his country!) succeeded to noble exploits, and ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... It was ridiculous to be discomposed by this young man, to whom, she was sure, she was naturally superior; but sitting behind that piano as though it were a pulpit, he had an air of authority and she was anxious to propitiate him. 'Well—' Henrietta repeated, hanging on ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... They had not to propitiate Some curst kioodle at each gate, But entered one another's grounds, Unscared, and were not fed ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... Nevertheless, when the concert was over, not a word was said on the subject by any one, though I had quite expected to be taken at once to the magisterial chamber to hear some dreadful sentence passed on me; and when, before retiring, anxious to propitiate my host, I began to express regret for having inflicted pain on them by attempting to sing, the venerable gentleman raised his hands deprecatingly, and begged me to say no more about it, for painful subjects were best forgotten. "No doubt," he ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... failed to propitiate Magda in the slightest degree. She felt intensely annoyed that anyone from the outside world—from her world of London—should have intruded upon her seclusion at Ashencombe, nor could she imagine how Davilof had ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... Bruni to-day. The discus-knife, a wooden weapon, is not now in use, but is known to have been used formerly. The wild Kadayans sacrifice after every new moon, and are forbidden to eat a number of things until they have done so. The Malanaus set laden rafts afloat on the rivers to propitiate the spirits of the sea. The very names of the two kinds of cotton, then evidently a novelty to the Chinese, are found in Borneo: KAPOK is a well-known Malay word; but TAYA is the common name for cotton among the Sea Dayaks, though it is doubtful whether ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... sleeping sickness I can bear with fortitude—that is, I feel sure I could—but toothache, no! I am not ashamed of it. Every brave man has at least one weakness. Lord ROBERTS'S was cats. Achilles' was tendons. Mine is toothache (Biographers, please note). When my jaw annoys me I try to propitiate it with libations of whisky, brandy, iodine, horse-blister and patent panaceas I buy from sombreroed magicians in the Strand. If these fail I totter round to the dentist, ring the bell and run away. If the maid catches me before I can escape and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... little lady a great deal, before he ventured on any overtures towards acquaintanceship. He knew an abundance of simple acts to propitiate and invite the approaches of the little people, and he resolved to play his part right skilfully. He could cut cunning little baskets out of cherry-stones, could make grotesque faces on hickory-nuts, or odd-jumping figures out of elder-pith, and he was a very Pan in the manufacture of whistles ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... worship of the evil principle. They did not, perhaps, adore Arimanes under one sole name, or consider the malignant divinities as sufficiently powerful to undertake a direct struggle with the more benevolent gods; yet they thought it worth while to propitiate them by various expiatory rites and prayers, that they, and the elementary tempests which they conceived to be under their direct command, might be merciful to suppliants who had acknowledged their power, and ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... of public fast, humiliation, thanksgiving, and prayer was ordered throughout the republic for the 9th of May, in order to propitiate the favour of Heaven on the great work to be undertaken; and, as a further precaution, Prince Maurice ordered all garrisons in the strong places to be doubled, lest the slippery enemy should take advantage ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... European. With the exception of a few of Sekeletu's tusks, the oxen needed for carrying, and a trifling amount of coffee, cloth, beads, etc., Livingstone had neither stores of food for his party, nor presents with which to propitiate the countless tribes of rapacious and suspicious savages that lined his path. The Barotse men who accompanied him, usually called the "Makololo," though on the whole faithful and patient, "the best that ever accompanied me," were ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... are wandering from the Way. I have observed the feasts and fastings; each morn the Household God has rice and tea before him; the Kitchen God has gone with celebrations at springtime to the spirit up above. The candles have been lighted and the smoke of incense has ascended to propitiate the God of Light, Lord Buddha, and Kwan-yin, and my children have been taught their prayers and holy precepts. It is not my fault, nor shouldst thou blame it to my teaching if rites and symbols have lost their meaning, and if the Gods of China are no longer strong enough ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... bidding, however humiliating this may be. The shipper, realizing that the manager's displeasure or good will toward him finds practical expression in his daily freight bills, finally loses, like the serf, all self-esteem in his efforts to propitiate an overbearing master. He is intimidated to such an extent that he never speaks openly of existing abuses, lest he lose the special rates which have been given him, or, if he is not a participant of such privileges, lest additional favors be given to his rivals and ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... perhaps, in the world whom Mrs. Ricketts more cordially disliked than this good lady, but all the same, it was now her policy to propitiate her. She smoothed, therefore, her brow, dried her eyes, and, with a profound courtesy, ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
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