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Heathenish

adjective
1.
Not acknowledging the God of Christianity and Judaism and Islam.  Synonyms: ethnic, heathen, pagan.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Heathenish" Quotes from Famous Books



... Charlotte," answered Nellie, "and lives in Rochester, in a great big house, with the handsomest things; but she don't come here often, it's so heathenish, she says." ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes

... piece of Axminster and a bit of yellow silk with half a dragon on it. The ceremony, one could see, was not new. Vanishing into the further mysteries of the rear, he brought out a bowl of tea, steaming, a small dish of heathenish things, nuts perhaps, or preserves, deposited the offering on the minister's pointed knees, and retired behind the counter to watch ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... shoot grafted on a Christian tree. At its base lies the heathenish notion that sin can be extirpated by severe onslaughts upon the body and the physical life. It has existed in Buddhism before some Christians adopted it. In the early days of Christianity it was proclaimed as superior wisdom by the Platonic philosophers. Like many a lie it has been decked out ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... the Vidame intervened with an explanation which made America appear in a light less heathenish. "The planting of Saint Barbara's grain," he said, "is a custom that I think is peculiar to the South of France. In almost every household in Provence, and over in Languedoc too, on Saint Barbara's day the women ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... old horse shoe' must be mentioned, to throw utter contempt upon a custom, then very prevalent, and even now practised, of nailing an old horse shoe over the door of the house, to prevent a witch from entering. When will these absurd heathenish customs cease ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... carefully kept since three hundred years previous to the Christian era. The temple, though wearing a most deserted and neglected aspect, is still in charge of a few yellow-robed priests, who keep up an appearance daily of regular services, such as they are, and more heathenish ones were never witnessed. The ceremonies during our brief visit consisted of grotesque dancing, beating of drums, and blowing upon a shrill fife before a rude altar, upon which incense was burning. There was also marching, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... philosophers, kings, Gregory the Great, Martin Luther, all testified that they had often seen him. The mediaval conception of the devil was sometimes comical, sometimes awful. Grimm says, "He was Jewish, heathenish, Christian, idolatrous, elfish, titanic, spectral, all at once." He was "a soul snatching wolf," a "hell hound," a "whirlwind hammer;" now an infernal "parody of God" with "a mother who mimics the Virgin Mary," and now the "impersonated ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... although the Christian clergy set themselves strongly against these ornaments; some even refusing the Communion-Sacrament to those who persist in retaining that heathenish emblem ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... Rhine-castles looked down the reaches of the river only to spy out their prey or their enemy; the monks in their quiet valleys looked out for their trout-stream and kitchen-garden, but any interest beyond that would have been heathenish and dangerous. Whilst to the ancients the earth had value only as enjoyable, inhabitable, the earlier Christian ages valued it only as uninhabitable, as a wilderness repelling society. In the earliest mediaeval landscapes, the effort to represent a wilderness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... that arch yonder was built in the time of William the Conqueror. I never look at it without feeling the oppression of the ages come upon me. And when I get into this bigoted Close and think of the heathenish way the people live in it, shutting themselves in from the rest of the citizens with unchristian ideas of their own superiority, I am confirmed in my unbelief. I feel if there were any truth in that religion, those who profess ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... the first of the year and spring, is observed as a solemn festival throughout all Persia, which has been continued from the time of idolatry; and our prophet's religion, pure as it is, and true as we hold it, has not been able to abolish that heathenish custom, and the superstitious ceremonies which are observed, not only in the great cities, but celebrated with extraordinary rejoicings in every ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.

... "I crave your pardon, good our imperial spouse, and our daughter born in the purple chamber. I remember me, our most amiable and accomplished daughter, that last night you wished to know the particulars of the battle of Laodicea, with the heathenish Arabs, whom Heaven confound. And for certain considerations which moved ourselves to add other enquiries to our own recollection, Achilles Tatius, our most trusty Follower, was commissioned to introduce into ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... has a heathenish—I mean, a Russian—name like that," says Miss Priscilla. "She is a very little woman, with merry eyes, and she laughs always, and she has the prettiest, the most courteous manners. Quite a relief I found her, after the inanities ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... Hester Prynne's forehead. Madam Hester would have winced at that, I warrant me. But she,—the naughty baggage,—little will she care what they put upon the bodice of her gown! Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or such like heathenish adornment, and so walk the streets as brave ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... morning and I was surprised to realize how heathenish and unchristian the sermon sounded to me. It was painful to feel that I did not believe one word of what a Christian minister said. What a network man seems to have made of the simplest things, wherein ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff

... clothing, everything owned by the deceased, and often donating much extra; all gathered around the grave wailing most pitifully, tearing their faces with their nails till the blood would run down their cheeks, pull out their hair, and such other heathenish conduct. These burials were generally made under their thatch houses or very near thereto. The house where one died was always torn down, removed, rebuilt, or abandoned. The wailing, talks, &c., were in their own jargon; none else could understand, and they seemingly knew but little of its meaning ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... answered Beulah, who had no wish to mingle in the crowd which, she understood from the conversation, would assemble that evening in the parlors. The trio round the hearth looked at each other, and evidently thought she manifested very heathenish taste. Cornelia smiled, and leaned back with an expression of pleasure which ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... is heathen to the core. The Arian Christ is nothing but a heathen idol invented to maintain a heathenish Supreme in heathen isolation from the world. Never was a more illogical theory devised by the wit of man. Arius proclaims a God of mystery, unfathomable to the Son of God himself, and goes on to argue as if the ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin

... told me about the jugglers, and the pouring of the little pool of ink into the palm of the boy's hand, I instantly suspected that I had disturbed the three Indians, lurking about the house, and bent, in their heathenish way, on discovering the whereabouts ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... usual shrill volubility and apparent animosity which was at once the delight and scorn of the intelligent Caucasian who did not understand a word of it. Such, at least, was the feeling with which Mr. Tretherick on his veranda, and Col. Starbottle who was passing, regarded their heathenish jargon. The gallant colonel simply kicked them out of his way: the irate Tretherick, with an oath, threw a stone at the group, and dispersed them, but not before one or two slips of yellow rice-paper, marked with hieroglyphics, were exchanged, and a small parcel ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... Day in olden times. But the Puritans, who slew their king, Charles I., were very much opposed to all joyousness and mirth, and one of their first acts when they came into power was to put down the May-pole. They ordered that all May-poles (which they called "a heathenish vanity, generally abused to superstition and wickedness") shall be taken down by the constables and churchwardens, and that the said officers be fined five shillings till the said May-poles be taken down. So the merry May songs were hushed for many a long ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... the converted Jews to be debarred at once from observing the legal ceremonies, while converted heathens were forbidden to observe the rites of heathendom, was in order to show that there is a difference between these rites. For heathenish ceremonial was rejected as absolutely unlawful, and as prohibited by God for all time; whereas the legal ceremonial ceased as being fulfilled through Christ's Passion, being instituted by God as a figure ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... uncultivated here," he said; "and, I may add, without the sinful leaven of self-commendation, that, since my short sojourn in these heathenish abodes, much good seed has been scattered by ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... 'So spoke this poor heathenish Kentuckian, who had not been instructed in his constitutional relations, and consequently was betrayed into acting in a sort of Christianised manner, which, if he had been better situated and more enlightened, he would not have ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various

... was the only one of the band who wondered at the sight, and thanked God for undeserved and unexpected mercy, for he alone fully understood the polluted stock from which they had all sprung, and the terrible pit of heathenish wickedness from which they had been rescued, not by him (the humbled mutineer had long since escaped from that delusion), but by ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne

... for those captive tribes, themselves were they Who wrought their own captivity, fell off From God to worship calves, the deities Of Egypt, Baal next and Ashtaroth, And all the idolatries of heathen round, Besides their other worse than heathenish crimes; Nor in the land of their captivity 420 Humbled themselves, or penitent besought The God of their forefathers, but so died Impenitent, and left a race behind Like to themselves, distinguishable scarce From Gentiles, but by circumcision vain, And God with idols ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton

... merciful, when we ascribe principles of action to Him which, as a human father, we should call preposterous and monstrous?" Error, however, like disease, is not easily eradicated; but as men get better acquainted with God, those dark and heathenish conceptions regarding him entertained by Calvinists, such as the foredooming of children and men to endless misery, will give place to nobler thoughts of the Author of ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace

... Christian inhabitants of those lovely valleys. We sailed for the Straits of Gibraltar, calling on the way at Malaga to obtain water and fresh provisions. While a party of our seamen were on shore at that place, a procession carrying the Host, with banners and heathenish figures, passed through the streets, when they not only refused to bow, but mocked and jeered, at which the mob, urged on by a priest, savagely attacked them and drove them back to ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston

... is very obviously so. 'Righteousness' is, I suppose, to be understood here in its narrower meaning of observance of what is right, the squaring of conduct according to a solemn sovereign law of duty. Substantially it is equivalent to the somewhat heathenish word 'morality,' and refers human conduct and character to a law or standard. What, then, is 'holiness'? It is the same general conduct and character, considered, however, under another aspect, and in another relation. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... witch breweth her evil decoctions! See how the smoke from her fire broodeth on wood land and meadow! Grant that the sun cometh out to smother the smudge of her caldron! She hath been forth in the night, full of her spells and devices, Roaming the marshes and dells for heathenish musical nostrums; Digging in leaves and at stumps for centipedes, pismires and spiders, Grubbing in poisonous pools for hot salmanders and toadstools; Charming the bats from the flues, snaring the lizards by ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field

... monopoly for Ralegh's particular good. Popham embellished his confused discourse, partly apologetic, and partly condemnatory, but not intentionally brutal or malevolent, by a glance at Ralegh's reputed free-thinking. He had been taxed, said Popham, by the world with the defence of most heathenish and blasphemous opinions. 'You will do well,' the virtuous Chief Justice exhorted him, 'before you go out of the world, to give satisfaction therein. Let not any devil,' or, according to the Harleian MSS. version, 'Hariot ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... A somewhat heathenish prayer indeed, and far too full of human passion for one about to leave the human shores. But, then—well, it was Beatrice who prayed—Beatrice, who could realise no heaven beyond the limits of her ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... For this the fair Eugenia styled him "a silly old fool," wondering "what business it was to him," and "why he need be so much interested in one who, if she had any sense, would, in less than two weeks, turn him from the house, with his heathenish ways." Still, fret as she would, she could not in the least retard the progress of matters, and one morning towards the last of October, she heard from Mrs. Leah, whom she met at a store in the village, that the wedding was ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes

... none of my handiworks, I tell you," said Shanty, decidedly, "for none of your heathenish fancies and follies. The time was when I lent myself to these sort of follies, but, thank my God, I have learned to cast away, aye, and to condemn such degrading thoughts as these. Believe me, young man, that if God is on your side, neither witch nor ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]

... you sit in front of me. It's a heathenish custom, this shrouding of one's self in black, and so unbecoming. Lily, get Lizzie Bettie a glass of iced tea, or would you rather have lemonade?" And Mrs. Deford stopped fanning long enough to put her lorgnette to her eyes and look at her latest ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher

... animals; was it not that our English Bannians, while they preserve them from other enemies, will most unmercifully slaughter whole horse-loads themselves, so that they stand clearly acquitted of any such heathenish superstition. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... noticed it before!" exclaimed Maria Sharp, "but it ain't Christian, that floor! it's heathenish and ungodly!" ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... further addition to his coat of color. He was to them an Indian of an unknown tribe, yet, since he was to be offered to the gods, he was made the very center of ceremonial dances, and infernal heathenish customs. ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan

... he, finally, "I remember now! The queen said, that if every knight went with Witold against The Lame-Man, then heathenish power would be destroyed. But all cannot go because of the dishonesty of Christian lords. We are obliged to guard the boundaries from the attacks of the Czechs and the Hungarians and also from the attacks of the Order, because we cannot trust any of them. Therefore if Witold go with ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... Nations. The Chapter is (as an Excellent Person calls it) an Extravasated Account of the Circumstances, which befell the Primitive Church, during the first Four or Five Hundred Years of Christianity: It shows us the Face of the Church, first in Rome Heathenish, and then in Rome Converted, before the Man of Sin was yet come to Mans Estate. Our Text contains the Acclamations made upon the most Glorious Revolution that ever yet happened upon the Roman Empire; namely, ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... every chance. It isn't that these old arms ache for them, that this rather tired heart weakens when they cry for God knows what, and modern science says let them cry!—it is that, deep in me, Tappan, a heathenish idea persists that what they need more than hygienics and scientific discipline is some of that old-fashioned love—love which rocks them when it is not good for them—love which overfeeds them sometimes so that they yell with old-fashioned colic—love which ventures a bacilli-laden ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... any notion of prevailing by entreaty over an unwilling God, that is heathenish, and belongs to such as think him a hard master, or one like the unjust judge. What so quenching to prayer as the notion of unwillingness in the ear that hears! And when prayer is dull, what makes it flow like the thought that God is waiting to give, wants ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... England. Celibacy was discouraged. The law of Augustus Julia et Papia Poppaea contained some seven regulations against it, which were abolished by Constantine. Concubinage was allowed, if a man had not a wife, and provided the concubine was not the wife of another man. This heathenish custom was abrogated by Justinian. [Footnote: D. 25. 7. C. 5, 26.] The wife was entitled to protection and support from her husband, and she retained her property independent of her husband, when the conventio was abandoned, as it was ultimately. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... opinions are? Perhaps more than one of you hold such as I should think ought to send you straight over to Somerville, if you have any logic in your heads or any human feeling in your hearts. Anything that is brutal, cruel, heathenish, that makes life hopeless for the most of mankind and perhaps for entire races,—anything that assumes the necessity of the extermination of instincts which were given to be regulated,—no matter by what name you call it,—no matter whether a fakir, or a monk, or a deacon believes it,—if received, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... details. It is not without reason, so the words may be paraphrased, that I say: "Walk ye in the light of the Lord," for at present the Lord has forsaken the people on account of their sins, and with that, a participation in His light is incompatible. By being full of heathenish superstition, of false confidence in earthly things, yea, even of the most disgraceful that can be imagined for Israel, viz., gross idolatry, they rather become more and more ripe for the divine judgment which will ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... engine was a new festival. Paul stood before the fire, and stared with dreamy eyes into the glowing depths which opened yawning, as if it wished to swallow something alive. He thought of the old heathenish idol Moloch, about whom he had heard in his biblical history, and every moment he expected to see a pair of red, glowing arms stretch themselves forth. And then in the body of the monster there arose a mysterious singing, at times hollow, like the distant ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann

... but, like the Scotch Presbyterians, she fears that they are wicked. "Still, you say they haven't got immortal souls to save, and I don't suppose they're responsible for their actions," she allows; "but as for traipsing up to those heathenish, haunted woods when all Christian folks are in bed, I don't believe in it, and neither would Mr. Beresford; but if you're set on it, I ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... men and women to whom I believe He has planned you shall carry the message of peace, He has taken your child in order that you may be saved. He knew that was the only way of bringing you to see the great plan of salvation, and to save your innocent little girl from growing up in a heathenish home, where there was no beauty, no kindness, no good example, no God. I beseech you to surrender yourself at once. Remember, the Spirit will not always strive with you, and if you chase it away ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman

... whole neighbourhood. In a town the druggist was usually consulted by the poor, if they consulted any one at all who had learned medicine; but the physicians most in favour were "white witches," namely, old women who dealt in herbs and charms, the former of which were real remedies, and the latter heathenish nonsense. A great deal of superstition mixed with the practice of the best medical men of the day. Herbs must be gathered when the moon was at the full, or when Mercury was in the ascendant; patients who had the small-pox must be wrapped in scarlet; the blood-stone ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... opinion; since not one of those persons were in particular friendship with the gentleman who gave in their names. By this and some other incidents, particularly the recommendation of the late Archbishop of Dublin,[167] the Doctor became known to his Excellency; whose fatal turn of mind toward heathenish and outlandish books and languages, finding, as I conceive a like disposition in the Doctor, was the cause of his becoming so domestic, as we are told he is, at the Castle ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... "I am ruined, and I will ruin all that can remind me of her. Fru Holle! Fru Holle! Thou heathenish woman! I will tear down and smash the apple tree, and pull it up by the roots. It shall never ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... answer for. Nothing is too good to be true. Not even the love of a man for a maid, Valerie. You found it so good that you were thoroughly prepared to find it false. And the moment you saw the clouds, you believed the sun to be dead. That is heathenish and the way of the people who imagine a ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... prohibit, under a severe penalty, the smoking of tobacco, which was compared to the smoke of the bottomless pit. Drinking of healths, and wearing long hair, were also forbidden, under the same penalty: the first was considered as a heathenish and idolatrous practice, grounded ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest

... to these heathenish practices was the resolution entered into and signed by the fishermen of Staithes, in August, 1835, binding themselves 'on no account whatever' to follow their calling on Sundays, 'nor to go out without boats or cobbles to ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... vain and most heathenish repetitions—do I not vex you by them, you whom I would always please, and never vex? Yet they force their way because you are the best noblest and dearest in the world, and because your happiness ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... devote himself to proving the solidarity of all "church priests," Establishments, and prelatical Christians generally. Father Bowles might be in a "parlish" state; but as to all supporters of bishops and the heathenish custom of fixed prayers—whether they wore black gowns or no—"a man ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... choral outbursts. At the words of Elijah, "Invoke your forest gods and mountain deities," the Priests of Baal break out into the stirring double-chorus, "Baal, we cry to thee," which is fairly sensual and heathenish in its rugged, abrupt melodies, as compared with the Christian music. At its close Elijah bids them "call him louder, for he is a god; he talketh, or he is pursuing." Again they break out into a chorus of barbaric energy ("Hear our Cry, O Baal"), in the intervals of which ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... took place in a field. At first it was only between two who had been miscalling one another; but there was many looking on, and when the town man was like getting the worst of it the others set to, and a most heathenish fray with no sense in it ensued. One man had his arm broken. I mind Hobart the bellman going about ringing his bell and telling all persons to get within doors; but little attention was paid to him, it being notorious that Snecky had had a ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie

... Joshua, the next in age, changed his glorious prophetic name to the Greek Jason, and going to Antioch, offered a great sum of money to be made High Priest, and for leave to set up at Jerusalem a place for the practice of the heathenish games of strength, where men fought naked. Antiochus was but too glad of the offer; so the good High Priest was carried off to die a prisoner at Antioch, and the apostate was set up in his room ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... generality of Schools go on in the same old dull road, wherein a great part of Children's time is lost in a tiresome heaping up a Pack of dry and unprofitable, or pernicious Notions (for surely little better can be said of a great part of that Heathenish stuff they are tormented with; like the feeding them with hard Nuts, which when they have almost broke their teeth with cracking, they find either deaf or to contain but very rotten and unwholesome Kernels) whilst Things really ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius

... be greatly surprised to hear it asserted, that the Bible lends its sanction to this antiquated, and, as he thinks, exploded superstition. He knows how expressly the Bible forbids God's people to have anything to do with it, or with its heathenish professors. "Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven, for the heathen are dismayed at them."[289] And they will be still more surprised to learn, that those who object against the Bible, that it ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... a pursuit. The moralists, who utter their heathenish oracles in the commonplace complaints of a heathenish discontent, tell us, that we are born but to pursue, and pursue but to be deceived. They say, that man in his career after earthly honours, is like the child that chases the gaudy insect; the pursuit idle; the object ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... the hand, and lost to view when it falls into the earth. Yet there lay the seed of eternal life—thence sprang the stem on which all the saved of mankind shall grow as branches. Israel was feeble among the nations—a little child writhing in the grasp of imperial Rome; Judea and Galilee, with the heathenish Samaria between, constituted his beat throughout the brief period of his public ministry. The range was short in its utmost length, narrow in its utmost breadth. In a map of the world of ordinary size, the spot that indicates Palestine can scarcely ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... do to say this openly. But when the Crusader returned home, he was likely to imitate the manners which he had learned from his heathenish foe, compared to whom the average western knight was still a good deal of a country bumpkin. He also brought with him several new food-stuffs, such as peaches and spinach which he planted in his garden and grew for his ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... is an island—also. The sea dashes wrecks on all four sides of it, but there is no village on its shores so heathenish that if a man is cast upon the beach the inhabitants do not rejoice ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... of the heart, even when erroneously expressed, through involuntary ignorance, shall not be rejected by that just Being who seeks not to reap where He hath not sowed; but that it may come up as holy incense before Him, when our cold, unloving, orthodox prayers, backed by our heathenish lives, and meaner offerings on the altar of our God, shall return, blighted and blighting, into our own bosoms. Or should you be too petrified with pious horror at this—Popery, as with your longest, dismalest face, you will style it—to think with any charity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... time dragged so for me when being clothed by Annette and Aunt Mary. True, Aunt Mary paused to sniff into her handkerchief every few minutes or to listen to Annette's French raptures as she laid upon me each foolish garment up unto the long swath of heathenish tulle she was beginning to arrange when an interruption occurred in the shape of Rufus, who put his head in the door and mysteriously summoned Polly, who had come in to exhibit her silk muslin frills, in which she was the ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... Episcopalian, and preferred to read her prayers rather than to listen to those written and memorised by the Presbyterian minister, seemed to be regarded as a relic of heathenish rites—a thing almost cannibalistic. When she elected to engage a woman and a "hired man" to manage her house, she felt the disapprobation of the entire village, as if she had sunk into some decadent ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... we have another curious and almost heathenish specimen, in which we see the crossbones as an addition to the "skull," if "skull" it can be considered, with its ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent

... heathenish," said Mr. Wigglesworth, perplexed and displeased at sentiments which controverted all his notions and feelings and implied the utter waste, and worse, of his whole life's labor. "Would you forget your dead friends the moment they ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... strange thing that in this pretty peaceful time the stormiest day and the fruitfullest of future mischiefs should have been a certain Lord's Day, only a week or two after our coming. It was from Mr. Truelocke that I learnt to say 'the Lord's Day,' Sunday, said he, being a heathenish, idolatrous word, nor would he allow of the fashion of calling the day of rest 'the Sabbath.' 'We keep not holy,' said he, 'the seventh-day Sabbath of the people of Israel, but the first day made holy for us by the resurrection of our Lord;' and I saying idly to him, out of ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling

... and different in his look that—like any other dried-up old blunderer in my place—I felt an instant tendency to laugh. It was that heathenish possession, the old insanity of the risibles, which makes a man think it a humourous thing that his friend ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... heathenish rhyme that has come down out of other and worse times; for though I do not say but that a wreck on Moonfleet beach was looked upon sometimes as little short of a godsend, yet I hope none of us were so wicked as to wish a vessel to be wrecked that we might share in the plunder. Indeed, I have ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... naturally generous, so I can't help it. Keep calm, sir. In some things we have an affinity. I can see it in your eye. I did not anticipate meeting an affinity out here in this wild and heathenish country." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish

... Indians now all profess themselves to be Christians. Scores of them by their lives and testimonies assure us of the blessed consciousness that the Lord Jesus is indeed their own loving Saviour. Every conjuring drum has ceased. All vestiges of the old heathenish life are gone, we ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young

... may!" said Mr. Deighton, and looking at the mystic sign, the use of which he had so often tried to put down as a silly, heathenish practice, he felt a ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke

... his commands with all the emphasis he could give them, but neither Lize nor Lee would consent to go. "It would be heathenish to leave him alone in this ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... at publishing the banns, because they averred it was a heathenish name; parents have lingered their consent, because they suspected it was a fictitious name; and rivals have declined my challenges, because they pretended ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... known to every plain thinker, Just as when we say, the devil's a tinker, Which cannot, in literal sense be made good, Unless by the devil we mean Mr. Wood. But some will object that the devil oft spoke, In heathenish times, from the trunk of an oak; And since we must grant there never were known More heathenish times, than those of our own; Perhaps you will say, 'tis the devil that puts The words in Wood's mouth, or speaks from his guts: ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... "Sich ignorance as ye two do be showin' is heathenish," he declared. "I suppose now ye wud be for puttin' the cook stove in the parlor an' settin' up the piany in the ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... could scarcely keep from shuddering when I heard them speaking in this wild, heathenish, bloody ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... very glad to welcome you, Mr Andrew Crawford," he said, putting out his horny-palmed hand. "You come from the North, I know, by your name, and you are none the less welcome so far from the old country, out in these southern and heathenish lands. Your stout arm and rifle will be a pleasant addition, too, to our party; for they are rough fellows we are travelling amongst, and I shouldn't be surprised if we had to fight our way out ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... intrust it, had not kept it back. We should rejoice to see thy outward man here, especially on a day which should not be a first day, being liable to worldly callers in on that day. Our little book is delayed by a heathenish injunction, threatened by the man Taylor. Canst thou copy and send, or bring with thee, a vanity in verse which in my younger days I wrote on friend Aders' pictures? Thou wilt find it in the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... single-mindedness and integrity of the British and Foreign Bible Society, that he promoted their efforts within his own dominions to the utmost of his ability." He pointed to the condition of Spain, which was "overspread with the thickest gloom of heathenish ignorance, beneath which the fiends and demons of the abyss seem to be holding their ghastly revels." He described it as "a country in which all sense of right and wrong is forgotten . . . where the name of Jesus is scarcely ever mentioned ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... under the name of "Currer Bell," as under any other, more or less euphonious. Whoever it be, it is a person who, with great mental powers, combines a total ignorance of the habits of society, a great coarseness of taste, and a heathenish doctrine of religion. And as these characteristics appear more or less in the writings of all three, Currer, Acton, and Ellis alike, for their poems differ less in degree of power than in kind, we are ready to accept the fact of their identity or of their relationship with ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... forget that in the first instance he was wronged, and deeply wronged, by the man who was murdered. When first we came here, his mind brooded upon that, and he seemed to look upon what he had done as an ignorant savage would look upon the vengeance which his heathenish creed had taught him to consider a justifiable act of retaliation. Little by little I won my poor father away from such thoughts as these: till by-and-by he grew to think of Henry Dunbar as he was when they were young men together, linked by a kind of friendship, before ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... mounting, mounting interest. The world gaped at the far-borne clang and smoke and roar. Military men in clubs demonstrated to a nicety just how long the fortress might hold out, and just how it must be taken at last. Schoolboys fought over again in the schoolyards the battles with the heathenish names. The Emperor of the French and the King of Prussia and the Queen of Spain and the Queen of England and the Czar and the Sultan and the Pope at Rome asked each morning for the war news, and so did gaunt cotton-spinners staring in mill ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... boy! So will I. I had a very early dinner. New York is the most arid place on holidays," he continued as he rattled the ice in the glasses. "When one gets too old to hit the rapids down there, and tired of gobbling food to heathenish dance music, there is absolutely no place where you can get a chop and some milk toast in peace, unless you have strong ties of blood brotherhood on upper Fifth Avenue. But you, why aren't you ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... Christianity was swept westward before them. They had lived in a part of the Continent which had not been reached by Christianity nor classic culture, and they worshipped the false gods of Woden and Thunder, and were addicted to various heathenish practices, some of which now mingled with the festivities of Christmastide. Still, as these Angles came to stay and have given their name to our country, it may be well to note that they came over to Britain from the one country which is known to have borne the name of Angeln or the Engle-land, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... are thinking of Eleusis, and not of the way to Eleusis; so that we may as well keep our suggestion to ourselves,—also those pious admonitions which we were just about to administer to our companions on heathenish superstitions. A strange fascination these Athenians have; and before we are aware, our thoughts, too, are centred in Eleusis, whither are tending, not Athens only, but vast multitudes from all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... district in question are untaught barbarians. It is more for their sakes,—more for the love of gathering the lost sheep into the fold, than for our own satisfaction, that we seek to pitch our tents in the desert of their ignorance. They, and their children, are the prey of heathenish modern doctrines, which alas!— are too prevalent throughout the whole world at this particular time,— and, as they are at present situated, no restraint is exercised upon them for the better controlling of their natural and inherited vices. Unless ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... the South, of antiquity and paganism—are utterly missed out; and that, to this divine young nymph, "Cupid and Psyche" is distinguishable from, say, "Beauty and the Beast" only by the unnecessary addition of a lot of heathenish names and the words which she does not even want to understand? Hence literature, alas! is, so to speak, for the literate; and one has to have read a great, great deal in order to taste the special exquisiteness of books, their marvellous ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... woman. Now, with your valuable and scholarly work, price twenty-five cents, he studies over the closing chapter an hour or two, then goes out into society and gathers in his victim. And yet I do not grudge the long, long hours I squandered in those years when people were in heathenish darkness. I had no book like yours to tell me how to win the affections of the opposite sex. I could only blunder on, week after week and yet I do not regret it. It was just the school I ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... of heathenish customs which the widows are obliged to observe. There is, first, the terrible lamentation for the dead. Secondly, the widows must allow themselves to ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... of Rom. ix. 14-24, as my friend understood it. I acknowledged the difficulty of the passage, and of the whole argument. I was not prepared with an interpretation; but I revered St. Paul too much, to believe it possible that he could mean anything so obviously heathenish, as that first-sight meaning.—My friend looked grave and anxious; but I did not suspect how deeply I had shocked him, until ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... unqualifiedness of Thy miserable servant. My father and my mother read the books of the soul, but they have left behind them a dry-eyed reprobate in me! Say that to-night as you look around on the grievous famine of the suppletory arts and stratagems of repentance and reformation in your heathenish bedroom. ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... feign'd fields of heathenish bliss Could raise such pleasures in the mind; Nor does the Turkish paradise Pretend to joys ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts

... applaud an "entertainment by declamations and music, after the manner of the ancients" (1656). The press began timidly to venture on books of amusement, in a style of humour which seemed ribald and heathenish to the staid and sober covenanter. Something of the jollity and merriment of old Elisabethan days seemed to be in the air. But with a vast difference. Instead of "dallying with the innocence of love," as in England's Helicon (1600), or The Passionate Pilgrim, the sentiment, crushed and maimed ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... it? Well to be sure! The grand names girls have dangling about with them nowadays! My name's plain Catherine, and it's good enough for me, thank goodness. But these young ladies of the new style must be Ediths and Eleanors and Ophelias, and all that heathenish kind of thing, as if they were princesses of the blood or play-actresses, instead of being good Christian Susans and Janes and Betties, like their grandmothers were before them. And Miss Edith, now, what is ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... rendered his visage doubly austere, and proclaimed the misgivings of the worthy Obed's mind, as he beheld his personal dignity thus prostrated, and what was of far greater moment in his eyes, himself led forth, as he firmly believed, to be the victim of some heathenish sacrifice, the reader will find no difficulty in giving credit to the sensation of awe, that was excited by his appearance in a band already more than half-prepared to worship him, as a powerful agent of ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... We have no Account of the particular Colours, Casts and Turns of this Body of Eyes; but as he was Pimp for his Mistress Juno, tis probable he used all the modern Leers, sly Glances, and other ocular Activities to serve his Purpose. Some look upon him as the then King at Arms to the Heathenish Deities; and make no more of his Eyes than as so many Spangles of ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... what he meant by addressing his master in that familiar way. It is very well for natives to have a name for one among themselves, but it is not decent that they should call a white man by their heathenish appellations to his face. The Zulu laughed a quiet little ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... most critical moment due south, for our front waved and blew like a flag at a masthead ... Thank God, the enemy was getting away from his big engine, and his ordinary troops were fagged and poor in quality. It was when his fresh shock battalions came on that I held my breath ... He had a heathenish amount of machine-guns and he used them beautifully. Oh, I take my hat off to the Boche performance. He was doing what we had tried to do at the Somme and the Aisne and Arras and Ypres, and he was more or less succeeding. ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... of intercourse) for some one hundred and twenty colleges within our borders. Add to this a demand not peculiar but general—the increased claim of the sciences and of modern languages upon our regard—and the accompanying fallacy of supposing Latin and Greek heathenish and useless, and we have a summary view of the influences bearing upon our literary institutions. Hence both good and evil have arisen. Our colleges easily conforming in their youthful and supple energy, have met the demands of the age. They have thrown ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... the face of God and the law," she said; "that woman," here she lifted her long, boney finger and pointed it towards Mrs. Farnham, "that woman had wronged me and the being I loved better than myself, and this filled me with a heathenish thirst for vengeance ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... the more learned, it is a pretty general opinion that all the oracles were mere cheats and impostures; calculated either to serve the avaricious ends of the heathenish priests, or the political views of the princes. Bayle positively asserts, that they were mere human artifices, in which the devil had no hand. In this opinion he is strongly supported by Van Dale, a Dutch physician, and M. Fontenelle, who have expressly written on ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... three which had not been kept in repair, and were deserted, and of course they were said to be haunted, and we were told of their ghosts, and why they walked, and when. From some of the local superstitions Kate and I have vainly endeavored ever since to shake ourselves free. There was a most heathenish fear of doing certain things on Friday, and there were countless signs in which we still have confidence. When the moon is very bright and other people grow sentimental, we only remember that it is a fine night to ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... into hard lines once more. "Oh, that! well, it is a resolve you put into my head, Con.; although I'll swear the thought was never in your mind. I have resolved to act upon your advice; to curb my heathenish temper, and to help Sybil, when the right time comes, in the ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... fever and exhaustion on the banks of Sacramento! Yet no word of sacrifices there. And why should we so regard all we give and do for the Well-beloved of our souls? Our talk of sacrifices is ungenerous and heathenish.... ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... word," answered the slave, "than, 'Tell your countryman that everybody must be obedient, and resigned to the will of Heaven. Heathenish prophecies are often the consequence of godly truth ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... old religionist, when the youths presented themselves before him; "Go; carry forth the tidings of this visitation, that men come to our succor. I ask not vengeance on the deluded and heathenish imitators of the worshippers of Moloch. They have ignorantly done this evil. Let no man arm in behalf of the wrongs of one sinful and erring. Rather let them look into the secret abominations of their own hearts, ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... they call Nowremanskoy Lapary, that is, the Norwegian Lappes because they be of the Danish religion. For the Danes and Noruegians they account for one people. The other that haue no religion at all but liue as bruite and heathenish people, without God in the worlde, they cal Dikoy Lapary, or the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt



Words linked to "Heathenish" :   irreligious



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