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Deity   Listen
noun
Deity  n.  (pl. deities)  
1.
The collection of attributes which make up the nature of a god; divinity; godhead; as, the deity of the Supreme Being is seen in his works. "They declared with emphasis the perfect deity and the perfect manhood of Christ."
2.
A god or goddess; a heathen god. "To worship calves, the deities Of Egypt."
The Deity, God, the Supreme Being. "This great poet and philosopher (Simonides), the more he contemplated the nature of the Deity, found that he waded but the more out of his depth."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Deity" Quotes from Famous Books



... Pearly Ruler without taking any share in the decision were two who at this point are drawn into the narration, Leou and Ning. Leou was a revengeful demon, ever at enmity with one or another of the gods and striving how he might enmesh his feet in destruction. Ning was a better-class deity, voluptuous but well-meaning, and little able to cope with Leou's subtlety. Thus it came about that the latter one, seeing in the outcome a chance to achieve his end, at once dropped headlong down to earth and sought ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... allegorical personage of the "Faery Queen"; and in his "Tombless Epitaph" he described himself as Idolocrastes Satyrane. Under this disguise he looked upon himself as the spokesman of the Idea of the Omnipresence of the Deity. In order to appreciate the following beautiful letter, one of the finest Coleridge ever wrote, the reader should peruse Coleridge's "Aeolian Harp", "Lines written on leaving a Place of Retirement", "The Lime-Tree Bower", and Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey". Wordsworth's ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... why Johnson has thought there was any want of clearness in this passage even in prose. Addison has given us almost the very same thought in very good prose: "If we look forward to him [the deity] for help, we shall never be in danger of falling down those precipices which our imagination is apt to create. Like those who walk upon a line, if we keep our eye fixed upon one point, we may step forward securely; whereas an imprudent ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... the girl who is the presiding deity, or rather the tutelary angel of the scene, how are all discords harmonized; how all its latent music poured forth! It is a portrait from the life—it has the mystic charm of fulfilled reality, how far beyond the fairest ideals ever born of thought! ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... Peepe through thy Marble Mansion, helpe, or we poore Ghosts will cry To'th' shining Synod of the rest, against thy Deity ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... as in all these legends. The knowledge of the broken vows comes to light and the guilty ones are offered as a sacrifice to an enraged deity—the priest perishes in the flames with the ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... answering a categorical question there. Shakespeare has got to be a kind of deity. Prudent minds, having certain latent thoughts concerning him, will reserve them in a condition of lasting probation. Still, as touching avowable speculations, we are permitted a tether. Shakespeare himself is to ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... make trial of his celestial spear. At the outset of the combat he had hurled this weapon with such force, that it fixed itself deep in the stump of a wild olive tree that stood in the field. The tree had been sacred to the deity Faunus, but the Trojans had cut it down to make a clear ground for their military movements. When AEneas attempted to wrench the spear out, Turnus prayed to Faunus to detain ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke

... bi Amrillah, sixth Fatimite Khalif of Egypt (A.D. 995-1021), cruel and fantastic tyrant, who claimed to be an incarnation of the Deity. He was the founder of the religion of the Druses, who look to him to reappear and ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous

... regarding old Indian customs, he informed me that among Indians bowing was a very recent innovation, and that the men of the olden time—the fire-worshippers or sun-worshippers—never deigned to bow to one another: they bowed to none but the Deity. They took not the Great Spirit's name in vain; nor did they mention it save in a whisper, and with bowed head. He regretted that since coming in contact with the irreverent and blaspheming white men, his people had lost much of their old-time ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... reflection as of habit; which habit being generated by the external expressions of reverence which we use ourselves, or observe in others, may be destroyed by causes opposite to these, and especially by that familiar levity with which some learn to speak of the Deity, of his ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin

... first impressions of this kind, I found my self far gone in an Intrigue, and that without either Thought or Design; but I understood afterwards that a Breach of Idleness being espy'd in my Conduct, the Roving Deity seiz'd the Advantage and enter'd Sword in Hand. The Gentlewoman who drew me into this Snare, was no otherwise my Acquaintance than by an accidental Visit; but I was so much a Philosopher, as to know that where there is a Sympathy of ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe

... to frighten Gilgamesh by repeating the description of the terrible Huwawa. Gilgamesh is still undaunted and prays to his patron deity Shamash, who apparently accords him a favorable "oracle" (trtu). The two heroes arm themselves for the fray, and the elders of Erech, now reconciled to the perilous undertaking, counsel Gilgamesh to take provision along for the undertaking. They urge Gilgamesh ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous

... say most truly that the spirit of life, which hath its dwelling in the most secret chambers of the heart, began to tremble so violently that the least pulse of my body shook herewith, and in the trembling it said these words: "Here is a deity stronger than I who, ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco

... imprudence reverted upon herself, and she suffered in proportion to her pride and to her fondness. By such slight circumstances is the human heart alienated from love! Struggling to be free, the restive little deity ruffles and impairs his plumage, and seldom recovers a disposition to tranquillity. Vivian's good-nature had induced him for some time to submit to restraint; but if, instead of weakly yielding to the fond importunity of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... correspondence between the Essays and the two speeches on death, we may note how some of the lines of the Duke in the opening scene connect with two of the passages above cited in connection with Hamlet's last soliloquy, expressing the idea that nature or deity confers gifts in order that they should be used. The Duke's ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson

... Dee says that he was brought into unison with Kelly by the mediation of the angel Uriel. Afterwards he found himself deceived by him in his opinion that these spirits, which ministered unto him, were messengers of the Deity. They had several quarrels before-time; but when he found Kelly degenerating into the worst species of the magic art for purposes of avarice and fraud, he broke off all connection with him, and would never afterwards be seen in his company. Kelly, being discountenanced ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... have lost their way in it. Was Serapis of native origin, or was he imported from Sinope or Seleucia, or even from Babylon? Each of these opinions has found supporters very recently. Is his name derived from that of the Egyptian god Osiris-Apis, or from that of the Chaldean deity Sar-Apsi? Grammatici certant.[1] ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... love, worship and adore that everlasting deity—money. The poor feel its want, the rich know its power. Virtue falls before its corrupting and seductive influence. Honor is tainted by it. Pride, pomp and power, are but the creatures of money, and which corrupt hearts and enslaved souls wield to the great annoyance—yea, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... with the intention on her part there to always remain. It was like entering the vestibule of heaven. She records of her first night there: "I lifted up my eyes to the heavens; they were unclouded and serene; I imagined that I felt the presence of the Deity smiling on my sacrifice, and already offering me a reward in the consolatory peace of ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... pathways of feeling and thought which lead up to every moment of action, and to those moments of intense suffering which take the quality of action—like the cry of Prometheus, whose chained anguish seems a greater energy than the sea and sky he invokes and the deity he defies. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... historic London, and the Romans, being still heathen, would, we may be sure, have a temple dedicated to the gods close by. Old tradition has it that the principal temple was dedicated to Diana, and it is no improbable guess that this deity was popular with the incomers, who found wide and well-stocked hunting grounds all round the neighbourhood. Ages afterwards, in the days of Edward III., were found, in the course of some exhumations, vast quantities ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham

... stranger? For Homer says that all the gods, and especially the god of strangers, are companions of the meek and just, and visit the good and evil among men. And may not your companion be one of those higher powers, a cross-examining deity, who has come to spy out our weakness in argument, and to ...
— Sophist • Plato

... unjustly resist, meant not in general of poets, in those words of which Julius Scaliger saith, "qua authoritate, barbari quidam atque insipidi, abuti velint ad poetas e republica exigendos {71}:" but only meant to drive out those wrong opinions of the Deity, whereof now, without farther law, Christianity hath taken away all the hurtful belief, perchance as he thought nourished by then esteemed poets. And a man need go no farther than to Plato himself to know his meaning; who, in his dialogue called "Ion," ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney

... evoked to prove the Harmony of Reason amidst the most varied accomplishments. Although Pope's name occurs but seldom in the history of Freethought—while that of Bolingbroke is emblazoned in all its glory, and Voltaire is enshrined as its only Deity—yet we must not forget that what is now known as the only collection of St. John's works (the edition in five volumes by Mallet,) were written for the instruction of Pope—sent to him in letters—discussed and agreed to by him—so that the great ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... summer breeze. Wherever there is a spot shadier and pleasanter to look upon than the rest, there may be seen the red portal of a shrine which the simple piety of the country folk has raised to Inari Sama, the patron god of farming, or to some other tutelary deity of the place. At the eastern outlet of the valley a strip of blue sea bounds the horizon; westward are the distant mountains. In the foreground, in front of a farmhouse, snug-looking, with its roof of velvety-brown thatch, a troop of sturdy urchins, suntanned and stark naked, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... likely to rise philosophically into the larger air of universal history, properly so called. His famous Discourse is a vindication of divine foresight, by means of an intensely narrow survey of such sets of facts as might be thought not inconsistent with the deity's fixed purpose to make one final and decisive revelation to men. No one who looks upon the vast assemblage of stupendous human circumstances, from the first origin of man upon the earth, as merely the ordained ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley

... constantly increases in fertility. All that merely struggles into vegetation on the higher mountains has here more strength and vitality. The sun shines with warmth, and there is once more belief in a Deity. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... to state the object of her visit immediately upon entering the room, before she allowed herself to be intimidated by the atmosphere of fear and respect which encompassed the grandfather and made of him a sort of awe-inspiring deity. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... much influenced by authority will often be tempted to think that there are no fixed principles in human nature for this art to rest upon.... Away, then, with the senseless iteration of the word popular! ... The voice that issues from this spirit [of human knowledge] is that Vox Populi which the Deity inspires. Foolish must he be who can mistake for this a local acclamation, or a transitory outcry—transitory though it be for years, local though from a Nation. Still more lamentable is his error who can believe that there is anything of divine infallibility in this clamour of that small though ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... sunset glow. 2. A smiling landscape lay before us. 3. Columbus was born at Genoa. 4. The forces of Hannibal were routed by Scipio. 5. The capital of New York is on the Hudson. 6. The ships sail over the boisterous sea. 7. All names of the Deity should begin with capital letters. 8. Air is composed chiefly of two invisible gases. 9. The greater portion of South America lies between the tropics. 10. The laurels of the warrior must at all times be dyed in blood. 11. The first word of every entire sentence should begin with a capital letter. ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... made a marriage happy, that union should have been thrice blessed. To maintain the supremacy of the Church seemed to both the main object of existence, to execute unbelievers the most sacred duty imposed by the Deity upon anointed princes, to convert their kingdoms into a hell the surest means of winning Heaven for themselves. It was not strange that the conjunction of two such wonders of superstition in one sphere should have seemed portentous in the eyes of the English nation. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... faults, but by producing regular dramas like the Greeks." He forgets that the statement in the mouth of a Greek dramatist that his play was not intended for the stage, would have been a confession of failure; and that Aristotle had admitted that even the Deity could not make the Past present. The ethical motives of Faliero are, first, the cry for vengeance—the feeling of affronted or unsatiated pride,—that runs through so much of the author's writing, and second, the ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... lord: I talked of no deity. I talked of a living Love that gave us birth and calls us his children. Your deity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... starry Science in her cradle rock'd, And Castaly enchasten'd with his dews, Closes his eyes upon the holy word, And, blind to all but arrogance and pride, Dares to declare his infidelity, And openly contemn the Lord of Hosts? What is philosophy, if it impart Irreverence for the Deity, or teach A mortal man to set his judgment up Against his Maker's will? The Polygar, Who kneels to sun or moon, compared with him Who thus perverts the talents he enjoys, Is the most bless'd of men! Oh! I would walk A ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... it. Mock oaths are habitual to Irishmen in ordinary conversation; but the use of any or all of them is not considered to constitute an oath: on the contrary, they are in the mouths of many who would not, except upon a very solemn occasion indeed, swear by the name of the Deity in ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton

... an abbreviation of the Anglo-Saxon of Good, the two words in that language being identical. To many this will be an aid to realizing the omnipresence God, and add to the reverential sense of that personal nearness which makes the Deity a Father ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... water. She heard his voice, smothery, hurried, but still pleasant, say: "Take these, Miss Mayne, take these! Begin on them, begin! Confound it! What's the time?" And the young woman's voice: "Half past one, Mr. Cuthcott!" And a noise from Mr. Cuthcott's throat that sounded like an adjuration to the Deity not to pass over something. Then the young woman dipped and began gathering those leaves of paper, and over her comely back Nedda had a clear view of Mr. Cuthcott hunching one brown shoulder as though warding something off, and of one of his thin ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... truths, moral and spiritual. But to the ancients (to the Greeks and Romans, for instance), it meant nothing of the kind. A religion was simply a cultus, a threskeia, a mode of ritual worship, in which there might be two differences, namely: 1. As to the particular deity who furnished the motive to the worship; 2. As to the ceremonial, or mode of conducting the worship. But in no case was there so much as a pretence of communicating any religious truths, far less any moral truths. The obstinate error rooted ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... lawyer, he, at least, congratulated himself on not belonging to the legal fraternity. Mr. Tucker thereupon said that his honorable friend from Maine reminded him of the Pharisee in the parable, apparently thanking his Deity for having created him unlike—"You," broke in Mr. Blaine, who had seated himself in the semicircle immediately in front of Mr. Tucker's desk. This telling interruption was greeted with roars of laughter, which completely drowned further remarks from ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... here ascribed to God is by not a few regarded as an attribute wholly alien to the proper nature of the Deity. Such, however, is evidently not the judgment of the Talmudists. Nor is this surprising when we see elsewhere how boldly they conceive and how freely they speak of the Divine Majesty. The Rabbis are not in general a shamefaced generation, and ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... or the Great Muchilinda. Eitel says: "A naga king, the tutelary deity of a lake near which Sakyamuni once sat for seven days absorbed in meditation, whilst the king guarded him." The account in "The Life of the Buddha" is:—"Buddha went to where lived the naga king Muchilinda, and he, wishing to preserve him from the sun and rain, wrapped his body ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... Faust on the other. Faust is little better than a wizard from the first, for if knowledge had given him what he: sought, he had never had recourse to witchcraft! Helen, however, partakes in some sort of the triumphant nobility of an avenging deity who has cozened hell itself, and not in vain. In the whole majesty of her great wrong, she loses the originally vulgar character of the witch. It is not as the consequence of a poison-speck in her own heart that she ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... of years. When it became insecure by years of decay it was taken down; but a tremendous thunder-storm, which occurred soon after, was interpreted by the superstitious citizens as a wrathful protest of the Deity at its removal, indicating that the people did not intend to complete the work, and it was repaired and restored to its original position. Not less than twenty years, with the utmost diligence, will be required to finish the building, and five millions of dollars ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... an exceeding high mountain, and offered him this world—this grain of sand—if he, the God of all the worlds, would fall down and worship him, a poor devil, without even a tax title to one foot of dirt! Is it possible the devil was such an idiot? Should any great credit be given to this deity for not being caught with such chaff? Think of it! The devil—the prince of sharpers—the king of cunning—the master of finesse, trying to bribe God with a grain of sand that ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... was to return thanks to heaven for being on the borders of the sea. I saw waving on the Neva the English flag, the symbol of liberty, and I felt that on committing myself to the ocean, I might return under the immediate power of the Deity; it is an illusion which one cannot help entertaining, to believe one's self more under the hand of Providence, when delivered to the elements than when depending on men, and especially on that man ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein

... sequence of events as ascertained by us." It had been objected that he often uses teleological language, speaking of purpose, intention, contrivance, adaptation, etc. In answer to this objection, he says: "It has been said, that I speak of natural selection as a power or deity; but who objects to an author speaking of the attraction of gravity as ruling the movements of the planet?" He admits that in the literal sense of the words, natural selection is a false term; but "who ever objected to chemists, speaking of ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge

... by few. But observe that from those who with deepest spirit, meditate, and with deepest passion, mourn, there are no such words as these; nor in their hearts are any such consolations. Instead of the perpetual sense of the helpful presence of the Deity, which, through all heathen tradition, is the source of heroic strength, in battle, in exile, and in the valley of the shadow of death, we find only in the great Christian poet, the consciousness of a moral law, through which "the gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to scourge ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... counterpart to the anthropomorphic gods, Xenophanes set up a philosophical conception of God: God must be One, Eternal, Unchangeable and identical with himself in every way (all sight, all hearing and all mind). This deity, according to the explicit statements of our earliest sources, he identified ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... Emperors took divine titles, accepted homage, worship, honor, all of which belonged, by right, to Deity alone. Augustus had temples reared for the worship of himself, and, through all the ages since, the remains of one of these temples (at Angora) has remained, and inscribed upon a great stone lintel is the significant word: ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... illustrative everywhere of the tastes of these denizens of the unknown kingdom. The walls of the great hall were strangely sculptured with colossal monstrosities, mostly hideous designs, apparently intended to depict the awful wrath of the deity Zomara, while here and there were curious frescoes of almost photographic finish, the execution of which had been accomplished by some art quite unknown to European civilization. The paving whereon we stood was of jasper, highly polished, with here and there strange outlines inlaid with gold. ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... the second time within a few minutes that Dick Leslie had spoken the name of the Deity, and nothing could more clearly have indicated the change wrought in him by the knowledge of Flora's love. Hitherto he had felt himself to be an outcast, cruelly and unjustly deserted by his Creator; despised and ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... to take Abraham's real existence for granted, as I am not one of those who think that a statement must be false because it is made in the Book of Genesis. That there was a very ancient shrine in Hebron, that the great Tree of Mamre was the abode of a local deity, may be conceded, but to my mind there is no more real figure in history than Abraham. Especially when one compares the modern legends with the Biblical story does the substantial truth of the narrative in Genesis manifest itself. The narrative may contain elements ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... deity of darkness was Po, a vague and elemental spirit. But the kuhane anera maaa of the new religion had definite and fearful attributes explained by the priests. So Great Fern conceived him as a kind of cross between a man and a boar, with a tail like that of a shark, running through the forests ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... all the gods sing and laugh and jest and shout. And the Bacchantes swing to and fro their ivy-wreathed staves, and their mouths with ecstasy pour forth their stammering songs of mirth! Venus has soared away! But no one observes it. Each is his own deity, here in the Media Nocte. Oh, blessed night of the gods! Forget that the wretched day of man will return in the morning! Louder resound the strains of music, and all is bustle, stir, and song ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... Hindus, how many races, have knelt in the dust before the Trimurti, your threefold deity, O Elephanta? How many centuries were spent by weak man in digging out in your stone bosom this town of temples and carving your gigantic idols? Who can say? Many years have elapsed since I saw you last, ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... dearest Night; Spread now thy thickest, darkest Veil: And you great Deity of Dreams Succour a faithful Lover once With Silence and with deepest Shades; You never yet help'd with your dismal Black A Heart more true, nor more ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym

... metaphysical forms, science examines such subjects as the moral history of the Hebrew theocracy; or ponders reverently over the mystery of the divine scheme of redemption, and the teaching which scripture supplies on the deepest problems of speculation, the relations of Deity to the universe, the act of creation, the nature of evil, and the administration ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... Christ is come in the flesh is not of God; and this is that spirit of Anti-christ, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world" (1 John iv:2-3). Such a denier of the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ is no christian at all and all fellowship even to the greeting must be denied to him. This seems severe and intolerant. But it is not if we consider what the denial of the Person of our holy and blessed Lord ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein

... Dr. Cullen, his son the advocate, Dr. Adam Fergusson, and Mr. Crosbie, advocate. Witchcraft was introduced[123]. Mr. Crosbie said, he thought it the greatest blasphemy to suppose evil spirits counteracting the Deity, and raising storms, for instance, to destroy his creatures. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, if moral evil be consistent with the government of the Deity, why may not physical evil be also consistent with it? It is not more strange that there ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... fault of frequent repetition, incidental to all such prayers; but it was plain and comprehensive in its doctrines, and breathed a tone of general sympathy and charity, which is not so commonly a characteristic of this form of address to the Deity as it might be. That done he opened his discourse, taking for his text a passage from the Song of Solomon, laid upon the desk before the commencement of the service by some unknown member of the congregation: ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... steep and loosely strewn with crags We mounted slowly: yet to both of us It was delight, not hindrance: unto both Delight from hardship to be overcome, And scorn of perilous seeming: unto me Intense delight and rapture that I breathed, As with a sense of nigher Deity, With her to whom all outward fairest things Were by the busy mind referr'd, compared, As bearing no essential fruits of excellence. Save as they were the types and shadowings Of hers—and then that I became to her A tutelary angel as she rose, And with a fearful self-impelling ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... studies the cemetery, the chapel, the school, the gallery, the burial-service, the estate,—whatever is nearest. He finds astonishing values in labor, trade, production, art, science, war. In his boyhood he built an altar with his playthings and burned incense to Deity on a pile of shells and stones. That act of worship foreshadowed his whole career; he took every creature and thing from God's hand with reverent expectation, and never rested till he had opened to some intent of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... am not sure," he confessed. "It is rumored that the priests of the sea god, Kondaro, by praying to their deity, are guided across the ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole

... assistance, though if perchance he missed any of Philip's treasure-ships he complacently reported "the reason" to those in authority as "being best known to God," and there the incident ended. On the other hand, the Deity was no mystery to him. His belief in a Supreme Power was real, and that he worked in harmony with It he never doubted. When he came across anything on land or sea which he thought should be appropriated for the benefit of his ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... better understanding of his son's position. Nothing appears more unmistakably in these letters than the ingrained theism of Stevenson's way of thought. The poet, the romancer within him, revolted from the conception of formless force. A personal deity was a necessary character in the drama, as he conceived it. And his morality, though (or inasmuch as) it dwelt more on positive kindness than on negative lawlessness, was, as he often insisted, very much akin to the morality ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... upheld, that he may know how frail His fallen condition is, and to me owe All his deliverance, and to none but me. Some I have chosen of peculiar grace, Elect above the rest; so is my will: The rest shall hear me call, and oft be warn'd Their sinful state, and to appease betimes The incensed Deity, while offer'd grace Invites; for I will clear their senses dark, What may suffice, and soften stony hearts To pray, repent, and bring obedience due. To prayer, repentance, and obedience due, Though but endeavour'd with sincere intent, Mine ear shall not be slow, mine eye not shut. And I will ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... was a long prayer by the preacher. He began by addressing the Deity as all mighty and all knowing, and then spent many minutes in drawing His attention to details which had evidently escaped His notice, and in offering suggestions for the better government of the universe. He dwelt on the humility and penitence of the congregation, including himself, and at ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... persons may stand together, the interior being fitted as a small chapel. A vast number of little scraps of paper, bearing Japanese characters, fluttered from the interior walls of the image, plastered there by pious pilgrims as prayers to the presiding deity. As the door was opened for us to enter and was closed again, these scraps rustled in the agitated atmosphere like an army of white bats, producing a puzzling effect until our eyes became accustomed to the dim light, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... It must be clear to the most unlettered mind that, as all things were originally created by the Deity, including the hair on our heads and the beards on our faces, there can be ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock

... was believed to exist a boundless, uncircumscribed region, of immeasurable extent, called the Empyrean, or Heaven of Heavens, the incorruptible abode of the Deity, the place of eternal mysteries, which the comprehension of man was unable to fathom, and of which it was impossible for his mind to form any conception. Such were the imaginative beliefs upon which this ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... grillage and be large as fate, The sweet anxiety of reeded pipes Is a mere thing to it. Like Heaven street When the steel of God's army surges through it, Bright anger burning on an errand of swords, So is the sense of man when woman-joy Pours through his flesh a throng of deity, White clamorous flame; yea, desire of woman Maketh the mind of more room for amazement Than that blue loft hath for the light, more charged With spiritual joy that goes in stress As far as tears, with this more throbbingly charged Than the starr'd ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie

... too small for mortal sight Grow all things that are seen, Their floating particles of light Weave Nature's robe of green. The motes that fill the sunny rays Build ocean, earth, and sky,— The wondrous orbs that round us blaze Are motes to Deity! ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... in the Flemish peasant's relation with his Deity. It is all very vague to him: a jumble of veneration and familiarity, of sanctity and profanity, without any thought of being familiar, or ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... prisoners, or sacrificed you all justly to the offended laws of my country. I could have overpowered you with my armed warriors at Caxamarca. But I failed in my duty to my people in receiving you as friends. You have robbed me of my kingdom and compelled me to insult my Deity, by stripping his temples to ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... remembered that we must not judge a people's ethics wholly by their views of future punishment. Scandinavians, Greeks, and Semites up to a certain stage were as unethical as the Celts in this respect, and the Christian hell, as conceived by many theologians, is far from suggesting an ethical Deity. ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... respect—those whose respect is the mainstay of our self-confidence. She was moving toward him to pour out the violence that was raging in her on the subject of this flirtation of Jane Hastings. The spectacle of a useless and insincere creature like that trifling with her deity, and being permitted to trifle, was more than she could endure. But Victor, dropping listlessly to his chair and reaching for his pencil, was somehow a check upon her impetuousness. She paused long enough ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... whatever was taught concerning the nature either of the human mind or of the Deity, made a part of the system of physics. Those beings, in whatever their essence might be supposed to consist, were parts of the great system of the universe, and parts, too, productive of the most important effects. Whatever human reason could either conclude ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... begin every sentence, all names of persons and places, all appellations of the Deity, the first word of every line of poetry, and show themselves in the pronoun "I," and ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... final submission was not made till 785. The Saxons were still in that stage of political development which Tacitus describes in his Germania, ruled by petty chiefs who set up a war-leader when there was need for common action, otherwise united only by racial sentiment and the cult of a tribal deity. But they were a warlike race, and found in this crisis a leader of genius, the famous Widukind. At last he set his followers the example of embracing Christianity. Charles acted as sponsor at his baptism, and Widukind became a loyal subject of his spiritual ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... who has been a witness of those providential deliverances, and doubts the being of a Supreme Power, disqualifies himself from any title to all future mercy, and justly deserves the wrath of an incensed Deity. This day, at noon, being well out of the bay, and nigh mid-channel over, steered E.N.E. for Cape Virgin Mary, with a fine gale at S.W. At one we saw the cape bearing N.E, by E. distant nine leagues; at seven in the evening saw a low point of flat land, stretching away ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... practised in the technicalities of parlours, but timid because of "company"—came in to set the tea. And Miss Gailey inspected her with the calm and omniscient detachment of a deity, and said to Caroline when she was gone that Florrie seemed a promising little thing—with the 'makings of a good servant' in her. Afterwards the mistress recounted this judgment to Florrie, who was thereby apparently much impressed ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... Excellencies will, I hope, excuse me when I differ from you as to our having a religion in common with you; the religion of America is the religion of all mankind. Any person may worship in the manner he thinks most agreeable to the Deity; and if he behaves as a good citizen, no one concerns himself as to his faith or adorations, neither have we the least solicitude to exalt any one sect or ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... distinctly audible to the other. The petition was short, beautiful, and even lofty in language, without a particle of Scripture jargon, or of the cant of professed devotees; but it was a fervent, direct, comprehensive, and humble appeal to the Deity for mercy on the being who now found himself in extremity. A child might have understood it, while the heart of a man would have melted with its affecting and meek sincerity. It is to be hoped that the Great Being, whose Spirit pervades the universe, and whose clemency ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... imitation-master widened and widened, and became an abyss, and a very real one—and on one side of it stood Roxy, the dupe of her own deceptions, and on the other stood her child, no longer a usurper to her, but her accepted and recognized master. He was her darling, her master, and her deity all in one, and in her worship of him she forgot who she was and what he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Saint as he is sketched is sometimes a positively repulsive being—arrogant, venomous, and cruel; he demands two eyes or more for one, and, pucklike, fairly revels in mischief! As painted he is in fact more a pagan deity than a Christian man. ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous

... to us He is active in everything that occurs; and the feeding of the five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, while it may be more startling, is not more divine than the process of feeding them with bread and fish produced and caught in the usual way. Men used to speak of Deity and humanity as two distinct and different things that were joined in Jesus Christ; no man is to us without "the inspiration of the Almighty," and Christ is not so much God and man, ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin

... than the rule, and gradually disappeared from society. After Jeremiah we hear no more of impurities hiding under the altar, or of savage superstition seeking to please Jehovah by outraging the holiest instincts of human nature. Jehovah became the name for a conception of Deity so spiritual, so holy, that henceforth the student of Israel's ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... single principle of honour, to come forward calmly, boldly, and rationally to defend his country. When we behold, Sir, a great and powerful nation exerting all its energy to undermine the vast fabrics of Religion and Government, when we behold them inculcating the disbelief of a Deity, of future rewards and punishments; when we behold them discarding every moral principle and dissolving every tie which connects men together in Society, which sweetens life and renders it worthy enjoying; when we behold them brutalizing man that they may govern him,—as friends to Humanity; ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... perfectly imperceptible till pointed out by the guide. According to the tradition of the town, these passages have been the scene of many a deed of darkness. A statue of Hercules was found on the scite of the palace, and buried by Pope Urban, that the figure of a Heathen Deity might not ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... peasant customs all over Europe, which he asserts illustrate this myth, an ancient ritual which originally marked the beginning of the new year, when the tree spirit, or spirit of vegetation, was burned, the special reasons why the deity of vegetation should die by fire being that as "light and heat are necessary to vegetable growth, on the principle of sympathetic magic, by subjecting the personal representative of vegetation to their influence you secure a supply of these necessaries ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... choir; both being quite distinct from the hall, or reception-room of the public, which was the nave with its enlargements in the transepts. This arrangement marks the distinction between churches built as shrines for the deity and churches built as halls of worship for the public. The difference is chiefly in the apse, and the apse of Chartres is the most interesting of all apses from this point ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... eyes twinkling with something like moisture. They certainly were; and putting the smiles and the tears together, Daisy felt sure that June was as glad to see her as she was to see June. In truth, Daisy was a sort of household deity to June, and she welcomed her back accordingly, in her secret heart; but her words on that subject, as on all others, were few. The business of undressing, however, went on with great tenderness. When it was finished, ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner

... agitation I now feel, convince you, Lady Matilda, that, with all my seeming good fortune, I am not happier than yourself." And so much was he agitated while he delivered this, that it was with difficulty he came to the conclusion. When he did, he bowed with reverence, as if leaving the presence of a deity, ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... soothing remark in a kindly paper in Blackwood's Magazine for January, that the writer had discussed his theme "by no means unfairly or disrespectfully." But with a shudder he recognized what a peril he had escaped. Great Scott!—the reference is to a local American deity who is invoked in war, and not to the Biblical commentator—what would have happened to him if he ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... thousand million souls!—the fate of a planet which, without my intervention, would become simply a vast tomb. It is for me to say whether the genus homo shall be perpetuated, and in what form it shall be perpetuated. Joseph, this is terrible! These are the functions of deity, not of man." ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... information, strikes me now as ominous. He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, 'must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings—we approach them with the might of a deity,' and so on, and so on. 'By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,' etc., etc. From that point he soared and took me with him. The peroration was magnificent, though ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... feast-maker, is Almighty God. Luke the Evangelist calleth him a man, saying, "A certain man ordained a great supper." He calleth him a man, not that he was incarnate, or hath taken our flesh upon him: no, not so; for you must understand that there be three Persons in the Deity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. And these three Persons decked the Son with manhood; so that neither the Father, neither the Holy Ghost, took flesh upon them, but only the Son; he took our flesh upon him, taking it of the Virgin Mary. But Luke called ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer

... waters in the caves, The royal robe of morning on thy head Abides for ever. Evermore the wind Is thy august companion; and thy peers Are cloud, and thunder, and the face sublime Of blue mid-heaven! On thy awful brow Is Deity; and in that voice of thine There is the great imperial utterance Of God for ever; and thy feet are set Where evermore, through all the days and years, There rolls the grand hymn ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... and she felt that if some one, who was worthy in the sight of heaven, would but plead for her in their own name, and not let God know it came from her, who was so unworthy, God might grant it. At length a friend appeared to stand between herself and an insulted Deity; and she felt as sensibly refreshed as when, on a hot day, an umbrella had been interposed between her scorching head and a burning sun. But who was this friend? became the next inquiry. Was it Deencia, who had so often befriended her? She looked at her, ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth

... rest- and snatch myself, while I yet am able, from the fascination of EGOTISM:-a monster who has more votaries than ever did homage to the most popular deity of antiquity; and whose singular quality is, that while he excites a blind and involuntary adoration in almost every individual, his influence is universally disallowed, his power universally contemned, and his worship, even by his followers, never ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... presence among men, there was joy, and feasts, and hospitality; and peace amongst otherwise fierce tribes instead of war and violence. After a time, however, the goddess withdrew herself to her secret temple—satiated with the converse of mankind; and then the wagon, the pall, and the deity herself were bathed in the holy lake. The administrant slaves were sucked up by its waters. There was terror and there was ignorance; the reality being revealed to those alone who thus suddenly ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham

... deny that the bread and wine at the Mass are changed in any way into the body and blood of Christ, with the soul and deity, the bones and sinews," answered Herezuelo, solemnly. "I deny that when Jesus said, 'I am the living bread which came down from heaven,' He was even speaking of the Last Supper, or that He intended that it should be supposed that He was to become literally ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston

... bells in spangled ways! Leap, leaves in every tree! Ye winds and waters, nights and days, Dance, dance for Deity. ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various

... be accompanied by a right and open state of the heart. A true perception and acknowledgment of beauty is then certainly elevating; exalting and purifying the mind in accordance with its degree. And it would indeed seem, from the lavish profusion with which the Deity has seen fit to scatter it around us, that it was His beneficent intention we should be constantly under its influence. Now the artist is one gifted by his Creator to discern that ineffable beauty which is everywhere present, to live in the realm of the ideal, and to reveal it to men ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... history of the world from the creation of Adam, God is connected with mankind in every creed, whether worshipped as the universal sublime Spirit of omnipotence, or shaped by the forms of idolatry into representations of a deity. From the creation of Adam, mankind has acknowledged its inferiority, and must bow down and worship either the true God or a graven image; or something that is in heaven or in earth. The world, as ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... mood? Whether the pure intent makes righteousness, Or virtue needs the warrant of success? All this I know: not Ammon can impart Force to the truth engraven on my heart. All men alike, though voiceless be the shrine, Abide in God and act by will divine. No revelation Deity requires, But at our birth, all men may know, inspires. Nor is truth buried in this desert sand And doled to few, but speaks in every land. What temple but the earth, the sea, the sky, And heaven ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... counteracting cause is asserted, viz. a direct interposition of an act of the will of a Being having power over nature. Therefore, all that Hume proved is, that we cannot believe in a miracle unless we believe in the power, and the will, of the Deity to interfere with existing causes by introducing new ones; and that, in default of such belief, not the most satisfactory evidence of our senses or of testimony can hinder us from holding a seeming ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing



Words linked to "Deity" :   god of war, Teutonic deity, spiritual being, sea god, immortal, zombi, Arhant, sun god, zombie, Phrygian deity, divinity, Greco-Roman deity, supernatural being, Graeco-Roman deity, earth-god, Roman deity, Hypnos, Semitic deity, Norse deity, Egyptian deity, Japanese deity, Anglo-Saxon deity, Boddhisatva, war god, saint, goddess, Arhat, Quetzalcoatl



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