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Incense   /ɪnsˈɛns/  /ˈɪnsˌɛns/   Listen
Incense

verb
(past & past part. incensed; pres. part. incensing)
1.
Perfume especially with a censer.  Synonyms: cense, thurify.
2.
Make furious.  Synonyms: exasperate, infuriate.



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"Incense" Quotes from Famous Books



... others are asking for beauty or fame, Or praying to know that for which they should pray, Or courting Queen Venus, that affable dame, Or chasing the Muses the weary and grey, The sage has found out a more excellent way— To Pan and to Pallas his incense he showers, And his humble petition puts up day by day, For a house full of books, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... knocked up yesterday in a good cause. We went to see Mr. Ruskin at Herne Hill. I find him far more personally lovable than I had expected. Of course he lives in the incense of an adoring circle, but he is absolutely unaffected himself, and with a GREAT charm. So much gentler and more refined than I had expected, and such ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... existence. It was free to move from place to place upon earth at will, and it could enter heaven and hold converse with the gods. The offerings made in, the tombs at all periods were intended for the nourishment of the KA, and it was supposed to be able to eat and drink and to enjoy the odour of incense. In the earliest times a certain portion of the tomb was set apart for the use of the KA, and the religious organization of the period ordered that a class of priests should perform ceremonies and recite prayers ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge

... tears into a twenty-five dollar handkerchief, and then giving a two-cent piece to the collection, thrusting it down under the bills, so people will not know but it was a ten-dollar gold piece! One hundred dollars for incense to fashion—two cents for God! God gives us ninety cents out of every dollar. The other ten cents, by command of His Bible, belong to Him. Is not God liberal according to this tithing system laid down in the ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... I was treated with great circumstance and worshipped like a god by the highest in the city, who came in to do me reverence and burned incense before me, till I was weary of the smell of it, for though such sorrow was on the land, the priests would abate no jot of their ceremonies or cruelties, and great hopes were held that I being of the race of ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... worship—simple, intelligible, and grand, appealing at the same time to the reason and the imagination. I prefer it infinitely to the Catholic service, for though I am fond of the bursts of music and the clouds of incense, I can't endure the undistinguishable sounds with which the priest mumbles ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... down the churches, and then imprisoning the priests and bishops. But one day he suddenly got mad, and gave an order that if the people would not worship the Roman gods and offer incense to them, and swear that they no longer believed in Christ, his soldiers would kill them like beasts and leave them in the streets, as a ghastly warning to any other fools ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay

... has urged somebody to incense her. Something she has heard of you which carries her beyond the bounds ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... foundation of truth and a large amount of exaggeration sums up the reports, so we must let it go at that. Troubridge seems to have been convinced that his Admiral was in the midst of a fast set, for he sends a most imploring remonstrance to him to get out of it and have no more incense puffed in his face. This was fine advice, but the victor of ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... others knowing anything about it. How am I to manage, then, so that M. le surintendant pass from the height of favor to the direst disgrace; that Vaux be turned into a dungeon for him; that after having been steeped to his lips, as it were, in all the perfumes and incense of Ahasuerus, he is transferred to the gallows of Haman; in other words, of Enguerrand de Marigny?" And at this reflection, D'Artagnan's brow became clouded with perplexity. The musketeer had certain scruples on the matter, it must be admitted. ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... bearded and unkempt . . . debauched acolytes . . . pilgrims from the Holy Land . . . glittering festal robes . . . vodka orgies, endless chants and litanies, holy lamps burning, somber eikons with staring eyes . . . the smell of greasy lukewarm cabbage soup, of unwashed bodies and boot leather and incense. Holy Russia—it all moved before his eyes in a kind of melodious twilight. Then the First Revelation. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... I wish to burn a little incense in honour of myself, or else I cannot live. It is the truth. You make Death my truer friend, and at this moment I would willingly go out. You would respect me more dead than alive. I could better pardon ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... appearing. What lovely figures some of them had. Others rather took her breath, and gave her the feeling she'd had before in her sister's bedroom. But then as her eye was caught again by the rapt faces all about, she chuckled to herself and thought, "There ought to be candles and incense here!" ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole

... would be indebted to you; your name would be recorded amongst the assertors of morality and religion; and I myself, though brought up in a different persuasion from yours, would be the first to offer my incense at the shrine of merit. But the tendency of your performance is to deny the divinity of Christ and the immortality of the soul. In denying the first, you sap the foundations of religion; you cut off at one blow the merit of our faith, the comfort of our hope, and the motives ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... a Venus, nor light enough for a nymph, she might have made a tolerable Minerva. She had probably some thoughts of the kind; for before we had time to make our bows, she threw herself into an attitude of the Galerie des Antiques, and, with her eyes fixed profoundly on the ground, awaited our incense. But when this part was played, the idol condescended to become human, and she spoke with that torrent of language which her clever countrywomen have at unrivaled command. She was "delighted, charmed, enchanted, to make ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... spring into a blaze. Sharp as a wheeling edge of disked, carnation flame, Gem-hard and cutting upward, slowly the round sun came. The arrowed fire caught the burning-glass and glanced, Split to a multitude of pointed spears, and lanced, A deeper, hotter flame, it took the incense pile Which welcomed it and broke into a little smile Of yellow flamelets, creeping, crackling, thrusting up, A golden, red-slashed ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... This youth of twenty on the throne? As through a casement now myself I see Pass down the shouting street; 'tis good to be Young, and the first Napoleon's son! All Notre Dame invades my dreaming soul, I see the incense, hear the organ roll, A nation offers up a prayer! God! what great causes may be served by kings! How they can love! Achieve what righteous things! Prokesch, the Future shows too fair! O France, who with thy blood ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand

... 23. The altar of the Fratres was in front of their grove; they used also a movable one (foculus) of silver, but cespiti ornatus (ib. p. 21): this was for the preliminary offering of wine and incense (Wissowa, R.K. p. 351). ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... But if gross adulation was not offered—a sort of moral pabulum, which the Queen's admirable good sense would have rejected, there was profound homage in the very attitude of courtiers and in the etiquette of Court life. The incense of praise and admiration, "unuttered or exprest," was perpetually and inevitably rising up about her young footsteps wherever they strayed; it formed the very air she breathed—about as healthful an atmosphere to live and sleep in as would be that of a conservatory abounding in tuberoses, ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood

... flowerbeds conceivable. The continuity of this flowery zone is interrupted here and there, especially on the south side of the mountain, by wide swaths of coniferous trees, chiefly the sugar and yellow pines, Douglas spruce, silver fir, and incense cedar, many specimens of which are two hundred feet high and five to seven feet in diameter. Goldenrods, asters, gilias, lilies, and lupines, with many other less conspicuous plants, occur in warm sheltered ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... we know, 'availeth much.' Continue, then, to offer up that incense for me," added he, "and I shall march forth to-morrow with redoubled strength; for I shall think, holy maid, that I have yet a Marion to pray for me on earth as well as one ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... monstrous figures—that of Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, all inlaid with gold and precious stones; and beside it were "braziers, wherein burned the hearts of three Indians, torn from their bodies that very day, and the smoke of them and the savor of incense were ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... beginning to the end of the Revolution, is always, in his own eyes, Robespierre the unique, the one pure man, the infallible and the impeccable; no man ever burnt to himself the incense of his own praise so constantly and so directly.—At this level, conceit may drink the theory to the bottom, however revolting the dregs and however fatal its poison even to those defy its nausea for the sake of swallowing it. And, since it is virtue, no one may refuse it without committing ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... an individual apparent exception as Panchaea the land of incense (ii. 417) is to be explained from the circumstance that this had passed from the romance of the Travels of Euhemerus already perhaps into the poetry of Ennius, at any rate into the poems of Lucius Manlius (iv. 242; Plin. H. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... the altar of incense, which was in the holy place of the tabernacle. It was of similar construction to the altar of burnt-offering, but smaller, being 2 cubits high and 1 cubit square (Ex. xxx. 1-5). It was overlaid with ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... balmed Tobacco be my Sheath, The ardent Weed above me and beneath, And let me like a living Incense rise, A ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin

... see what he would do next. At last the rabbit refused to keep up the heartless game any longer. It simply lay and trembled. Arthur prodded it with his foot, but it would not move. This appeared to incense him. He took a flying kick at the poor beast and killed it. It lay for a moment twitching, its muzzle covered in blood. A little thing no bigger than a kitten ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young

... forms a part: "Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Tell ye the man that sent you to Me, Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, and upon the inhabitants thereof, even all the words of the book which the king of Judah hath read; because they have forsaken Me, and have burnt incense unto other gods . . . My wrath shall be kindled against this place, and shall not be quenched. But to the king of Judah, which sent you to inquire of the Lord, thus shall ye say to him, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, as touching the words ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... pavement yonder, Even now I seem to see, At the shrine where once he worshipped, Some old saint on bended knee; Seems to rise the smoke of incense, In a column faint and dim, Still the organ through the rafters Seems to ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones

... their heads in the silent air; And the gleam of the purple tinged with gold Is as fair as the roses' velvety fold. There are tropical plants from the Southern seas Where the flowers sleep in the perfumed breeze; And the scent of the orange groves fill the air With a mystical incense rich ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick

... yon plank in the floor. 'Tis already loosened. Then, when he is accused to Cromwell, who hath strong doubts of him—I have seen to that; besides, I know him, he doth fear for the king, and will incense them all—I will have them ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... with these, full many other Knights She through her wicked working did incense Her to demaund and chalenge as their rights, Deserved for their perils recompense. Amongst the rest, with boastfull vaine pretense, Stept Braggadochio forth, and as his thrall Her claym'd, by him in battell wonne long sens: Whereto her selfe he did to witnesse call: Who, being askt, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... the middle, under a silken canopy with gold fringes, a higher ecclesiastic walked, a venerable figure, with long silver hair and beard, bearing the most holy object and looking like a high-priest, surrounded as he was with clouds of incense. After the priests came a long line of men in country costume, powerful figures with flashing eyes, and faces full of character. They held themselves upright like soldiers, and bore large white tapers ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... 1 the Nistinares hold a kind of religious festival at the house of one of their number. Salutations are exchanged, and presents of food and raki are made to the chief Nistinare. The holy icones of saints are wreathed with flowers, and perfumed with incense. Arrangements are made for purifying the holy wells ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... to mass in the new church. Candles burned, incense rose in clouds, the friars chanted, the bell rang, we took the wafer, the priest lifted ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... the great nobleness of her nature, the royalty of her soul. For the beauty of the spirit may transfigure its earth-bound temple, as some vast and grey cathedral with light streaming from its stained glass windows, and eloquent with chimes and singing, may breathe incense ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... with no objections, and seemed to be going to oust all the others, thanks, perhaps, to the combative and restive character of its promulgator, who bore criticism badly, and whom no one cared to incense, his sword being even more redoubtable than ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... at the large room. A song has just concluded, and he enters triumphantly amidst the thunder of applause, the jingling of glasses, the imperious vociferations of fresh orders, and an atmosphere of smoke that pervades the whole apartment, like dense clouds of incense burning at the altar ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... filled with flowers—sheaves of wattle and of the pale sandal-wood blossoms, as well as many sub-tropical blooms with which he was not familiar. Blending with, yet dominating the mixture of perfumes, a peculiar scent resembling incense, appealed to him; and this he did not a first trace to a log of sandal-wood smouldering on the open hearth more for effect than warmth, for the early spring evenings had scarcely a touch of chill. The French windows stood open to the veranda, a room in ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... accession to the imperial power, besides many odes that breathe a pristine reverence for the gods, and, on the other hand, the writer of satirical, playfully sceptical verses, who comments on the story of the incense melting without fire at the temple of Egnatia, with the famous and often-quoted 'Credat Judaeus'! The original Romans had been a believing people, most careful in all ceremonies and observances, visiting anything like sacrilege with a cool ferocity worthy of the Christian religious wars ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... that which, nine years old, looked beautiful At May-game. What do I say? I only meant That tender Dante loved his Florence well, While Florence, now, to love him is content; And, mark ye, that the piercingest sweet smell Of love's dear incense by the living sent To find the dead, is not accessible To lazy livers—no narcotic,—not Swung in a censer to a sleepy tune,— But trod out in the morning air by hot Quick spirits who tread firm to ends foreshown, And use the name of greatness unforgot, To meditate what greatness ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... with the incense of slavish applause, O'er the globe's fairest portion he trod; And, spurning its liberty, spirit, and laws, Conceiv'd himself rais'd to ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... the gardens, china asters, zinnias, and other familiar flowers. The atmosphere seemed laden with a curiously complicated odor, something besides the perfume of the plants and soil, arising no doubt from the human dwelling-places,—a mingled smell, I fancied, of dried fish and incense. Not a creature was to be seen; of the inhabitants, of their homes and life, there was not a vestige, and I might have imagined myself ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... our own, and then she had been accustomed to think every thing English of the purest water. A little reflection reconciled her to the innovation; and the next day, at a dinner party, she was heard defending the usage as a practice that had a precedent in the ancient incense of the altar. At the moment, however, she was dying to impart her discoveries to others; and she kindly proposed to the captain and Aristabulus to introduce them to some of her acquaintances, as they must ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... Tudor, who certainly did his part well, the tea-table party was a good deal more social than had been the individuals composing it while in the parlour. The favoured guests, notwithstanding the incense offered them by our hostess, appeared in no way to esteem themselves as better than the rest, and, as soon as opportunity was afforded them, tried to be at home with every one. Once more in the parlours, ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur

... fall on the families and the single figures which are hurrying towards the black hole of the church porch, towards the gloom of the nave, where one is enlaced in incense, where wheels of light and angels of color hover under the vaults which contain a little of the great emptiness of ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... loyalty, and all these things are found, for instance, in the poem "Beowulf," a poem full of interest of various kinds; full, too, as Professor Harrison says, "of evidences of having been fumigated here and there by a Christian incense-bearer." But "the poem is a heathen poem, just 'fumigated' here and there by its editor." There is a vast difference between "fumigating" a heathen work and adapting it to blessedly changed belief, seeing in old story the potential vessel of Christian thought and Christian teaching. ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey

... controlled Of hearts through which wild passions unchecked rolled; Of base mean deeds that burn like felon brand, In the pure sunlight of the eternal land; Or if sweet recollections of the past, Of homes where love her golden radiance cast, Of deeds of mercy unto man unknown, But breathing incense to the star-gemmed throne; We know that not one of Adamic race, Is unknown unto Him, the Lord of Grace, And with the thoughts that shape themselves to prayer, We can but leave them in His gracious care, Who, as sharp nails were piercing ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins

... have made the same but a colour to shadow actions otherwise scarce justifiable; which doth excite God's heavy judgments in the end, to the terrifying of weak minds from the cause, without pondering His just proceedings; and doth also incense foreign princes against our attempts, how just soever, who cannot but deem the sequel very dangerous unto their state (if in those parts we should grow to strength), seeing the very beginnings are ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes

... of Carthage lay in her commerce. Through her hands passed the gold and pearls of the Orient; the famous Tyrian purple; ivory, slaves, and incense of Arabia; the silver of Spain; the bronze of Cyprus; and ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell

... contemptible vanity, which tempts you to demand a homage and incense that should be offered only where it is due,—at another, and I grieve to add, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... mother of Western civilisation, which captured her fancy? Or did a curious perversity turn her from more obvious abodes, or was she kept there by the charm of a certain church which she would enter every day to steep herself in mellow darkness, the scent of incense, the drone of incantations, and quiet communion with a God higher indeed than she had been brought up to, high-church though she had always been? She had a pretty little apartment, where for very little—the bulk of her small wealth ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... saw herself sitting or strolling in vast rooms amid admiring groups; mirrors reflected her; she heard the rustle of her gowns on parquet or marble, the merry sound of her own laughter; other girls threw her the incense of their envy and imitation; and men, fresh and tanned from shooting, breathing the joy of physical life, devoted themselves to her pleasure, or encircled her with homage. Not always chivalrous, ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... is room enough in this doorway for the pair of us, and you need not grudge me things that are not yours to give. You seem to be just such another tramp as myself, but perhaps the gods will give us better luck by and by. Do not, however, talk too much about fighting or you will incense me, and old though I am, I shall cover your mouth and chest with blood. I shall have more peace tomorrow if I do, for you will not come to the house ...
— The Odyssey • Homer

... chant through the far arches, like fall winds among the trees. There was a flute-like gush of music, far off and mysterious, like birds. It came from the boy-choristers. Priests in glittering garments were kneeling before the cupola-crowned altar; there rose a cloud of incense from silver censers, and the organ thundered again, like the storm gathering over the woods. At the side of the altar stood the archiepiscopal throne, half in shadow amid the tall lights, red and gold; amid the piles of barbaric splendor, canopies, ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... citron board, the bowl embossed with gems, ... whatever is known Of rarest acquisition; Tyrian garbs, Neptunian Albion's high testaceous food, And flavoured Chian wines, with incense fumed, To slake patrician thirst: for these their rights In the vile atreets they prostitute for sale, Their ancient rights, their dignities, their ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... hills. Of every possible color. Gay trappings. Tinkling bells. Peculiar urging cry of the Spanish muleteers. Lavish expenditure of gold-dust for vegetables and butter. Potatoes forty cents a pound. Incense of the pungent member of the lily family. Arrival of other storm-bound trains, and sudden collapse in prices. A horseback-ride on dangerous mule-trail. Fall of oxen over precipice. The mountain flowers, oaks, and rivulets. Visit to Kanaka mother. A beauty from the ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... soul rather than a body that lay there, ablaze with spiritual fire, good will shining through everywhere. He did not pay me any compliment about my work, and I didn't pay him any about his. We did not burn any of the incense before each other which authors so often think it necessary to do, but we were friends instantly. I am not given to speedy intimacies, but I could not help my heart going out to him. It was a wonderfully invested soul, no hedges or fences across his fields, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... is subtly welded into the past, My love of you with the purple Indian dusk, With its clinging scent of sandal incense and musk, And withering jasmin flowers. My eyes grow dim and my senses fail at last, While the lonely hours Follow each other, silently, one by one, Till ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.

... a man encompassed by the cloud of incense casteth sweet odours about him, so he that trusteth in the Holy Promise is spiritually ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin

... You incense, alarm, and terrify me, at the same time.—Hasten, my dearest friend, hasten to me what further intelligence you can gather ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... had already displayed their pomp in that Basilica! Worship, prayer, chanting, never ceased there. From one end of the year to the other incense smoked, organs roared, and kneeling multitudes prayed there with their whole souls. Masses, vespers, sermons, were continually following one upon another; day by day the religious exercises began afresh, and each festival of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... monopolize its commodities.[2] Nevertheless, by the Navigation Act of 1660 colonial exports, part of which had to be carried only to England, were confined to English ships. This was a sufficient limitation of their former freedom of trade to incense the planters in the West Indies but, as a matter of greater importance to them, the king granted to the Company of Royal Adventurers the exclusive trade to the western coast of Africa, thus limiting their supply of Negro slaves to this organization. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... the senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy. One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... easy it would have been for you to burn incense to that great goddess, Lubricity, whom our critic says your people worship. You had Brantome, you had Tallemant, you had Retif, and a dozen others, to furnish materials for scenes of voluptuousness and of blood that would have outdone even the present naturalistes. From these alcoves ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... or twice to confess to this other confessor; then she ceased to go; soon she ceased even to think of going, and of all her religion naught remained in her mind but a certain far-off sweetness, like the faint odor of burned-out incense. ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... Grandeur will never make its presence felt by a greater weight of ceremony, nor ever extend a more watchful and provident care to all the equipage of rank and ostentation. Flattery, we may safely assert, will never offer its incense in a more seductive form, than when it borrowed the pencil of Holbein and the lyre of Spenser. Yet these persons were the same who trode upon floors strewn with rushes, and deemed it a point of nicety and refinement if these were changed sufficiently often to prevent the soiling ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... taken his ardour very seriously. He was a Pole and a musician, with all the temperament that might be expected from such a combination, and she had let it go at that, pushing his love aside with the careless hand of a woman to whom the incense of men's devotion has been so freely offered as to have become commonplace. But now the new ring of determination, of something unexpectedly dogged in his voice, poignantly recalled the warning uttered by Lady Arabella ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... can no longer receive her sons within her bosom, her spirit is perhaps more alive than it has ever been since her altars were demolished and the images of her saints torn from their high places. No longer do the smoke of innumerable candles and the fumes of incense blacken and obscure her arches, but the spiritual breath of supplication and of thanksgiving still as of yore ascends to heaven from this ancient church, consecrated by the prayers of so many {9} past generations. The old order has changed, ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith

... religious, and liked solemnity and decorum. The ikon had been put up at his expense; at his instructions some one of the patients read the hymns of praise in the consulting-room on Sundays, and after the reading Sergey Sergeyitch himself went through the wards with a censer and burned incense. ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... is encouraged by establishing, with money taken from the people, temples, processions, memorials, and festivals, which, aided by painting, architecture, music, and incense, intoxicate the people, and above all by the support of the clergy, whose duty consists in brutalizing the people and keeping them in a permanent state of stupefaction by their teaching, the solemnity of their services, their sermons, ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... thousands of lamps burned in the halls, a forest of candelabra shone like a conflagration kept within bounds; when the courtiers seemed to sink into the carpets and divans and silken and down coverlets; when the sweet-smelling incense rose from the golden censers and intoxicated the brain; when a hundred servants made ready the banquet of indescribable luxury, and carried it in silver dishes, alabaster bowls, and crystal goblets; when youths and maidens, with arms entwined, crowned ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... cause the lamp to burn always."[79] Spices for anointing oil]. Prepared for the purpose of anointing both the vessels of the Tabernacle and the Tabernacle itself. Spices entered into the composition of this oil, as is said in KKi-Tissa.[80] And for sweet incense] which was burned night and morning, as is described in detail in Tezaweh.[81] As to the word ketoret (Qof Mem Resh Tav), it comes from the rising of the smoke (Kitor (Qof ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... Having spent a very pleasant day, and enjoyed good cheer and good company, Three-forty was again "hitched to;" joined hands announced the parting moment had arrived; wreaths of smoke from fragrant Havanas ascended like incense from the shrine of Adieu; "G'lang"—the note of advance—was sounded; Three-forty sprang to the word of command; friends, shoes, and shoemakers were soon tailed of; and ere long your humble servant was nestling his nose in his ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... were oracles on earth, before Pan died, this sight would have been of the utmost use. For I should have consulted the oracle woman for a Lira—at Biasca for instance, or in the lonely woods of the Cinder Mountain; and, after a lot of incense and hesitation, and wrestling with the god, the oracle would have accepted Apollo and, staring like one entranced, she would have chanted verses which, though ambiguous, would at least have been ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... eyes big and staring, as he tore open one of the pale blue envelopes with trembling hands. The fragments of a violet, shattered by the long journey, fell before him as he plucked out the note, and its delicate fragrance rose up like incense as he read. He hurried through the missive, as if seeking something which was not there, then his hungry eyes left the unprofitable page and wandered about the empty room, only to come back to those last words: "Always ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... by pillows, she reclined luxuriously on a lounge. A thin spiral of smoke rose like incense to the ceiling from her lips. The slow, regular rise and fall of her breathing beneath the filmy lace of her gown accented the perfect fullness of ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... repaired to the Alhambra to congratulate the king; for, whatever storms may rage in the lower regions of society, rarely do any clouds but clouds of incense rise to the awful eminence of the throne. In this instance, however, a voice rose from the midst of the obsequious crowd, and burst like thunder upon the ears of Abul Hassan. "Woe! woe! woe! to Granada!" exclaimed the voice; "its hour of desolation approaches. The ruins ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... a mile lay through a dense pine-wood,—the tall trees rising like stately pillars in some vast temple filled with balsamic incense, and floored with a clean, elastic fabric, smooth as polished marble, over which the little feet lightly and gayly tripped. In the central depths where the sun's rays never penetrated, and the fallen leaves lay so thickly on the ground, no flowers ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society

... and a dove. When a man came who wanted a wife, he was directed to appeal to the dove. If riches were his desire, he worshipped the eagle. For daughters both, to the calves; to the lion for strength, and to the dragon for long life. Sacrifices and incense alike were offered to these idols, and both had to be purchased with cash money from Micah, even didrachms for a sacrifice, and one ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... unite mankind; When war, when slav'ry's iron days are o'er, When discords cease and av'rice is no more, And with one voice remotest lands conspire, To hail our pure religion's seraph fire; Then fame attendant on the march of time, Fed by the incense of each favored clime, Shall bless the man whose heav'n-directed soul Form'd the vast chain which ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... began like that. He did not know any more, but he repeated the words many times. And now he smelt the incense again, which had filled the whole church with perfume, heard again the little bell announcing the transubstantiation, saw the Lord's anointed with the splendid stole over his chasuble bow first to the left of the altar, then to the right. Oh, how he envied the boys in their white surplices, who were ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig

... enormous suspended [200] bells, sounded by swinging-beams; the swarming of dragon-shapes under the caves of the vast roofs; the glimmering splendour of the altars; the ceremonial likewise, with its chanting and its incense-burning and its weird Chinese music,—cannot have failed to inspire the wonder-loving with delight and awe. It is a noteworthy fact that the earliest Buddhist temples in Japan still remain, even to Western eyes, the ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... one guards against it. His powers of seduction attain monstrous proportions, holy incense hangs around him, the misunderstanding concerning him is called the Gospel,—and he has certainly not converted only the poor in spirit to ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... within. When you have seen one, you have seen all. A crippled beggar crouching at the door, a few common people kneeling before the candle-lighted shrines, a priest or two mumbling at a side-altar, half-a-dozen indifferent pictures and a great deal of gilt and marble everywhere, an odour of stale incense and mouldy cloth, and, over all, a dim dust-discoloured light. Fancy all this, and you will have before you a Roman church. On your way you pass no fine buildings, for to tell the honest truth, there ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey

... reply. She did not wish further to incense her son against the squire, yet in her heart she could not ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger

... man walked very leisurely along, swinging his light rattan. Wild roses and sweetbrier sent up their evening incense to the radiant sky. The young man lit a cigar, and sent up ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming

... Hornes continue to be exalted in the land! Tall as they are, may their shadows never be less! May the House of the Four Chimneys remain for ages, the citadel of Communipaw, and the smoke of its chimneys continue to ascend, a sweet-smelling incense in the ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... hath hidden thy glory, what hand hath muffled thine head? 1380 O sun, with what song shall we call thee, or ward off thy wrath by what name, With what prayer shall we seek to thee, soothe with what incense, assuage with what gift, If thy light be such only as lightens to deathward the seaman adrift With the fire of his house for a beacon, that foemen have wasted with flame? Arise now, lift up thy light; give ear to us, put forth thine hand, Reach toward us thy torch of deliverance, a lamp for the ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness, smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck. So I carried the boat of incense then at Clongowes. I am another now and yet the same. A servant too. A server ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... these were, so to speak, the mere outlying flakes, the feathery curls, of the balmy cirro-cumulus, whose huge bulk arose out of the bowels of the ship itself. Up and down, in and out, here and there, into every chink and crevice, rolled the blue-white incense-cloud, dense as the cottony puff at the mouths of the guns in Vernet's "Siege of Algiers." Or you might say that these were but the flying-buttresses, the floriated pinnacles, the frets, and the gargoyles of a great frowzy cathedral lying vast ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... Really, when I think of the twigs I've bent and the trees I've inclined, I feel that there should be a tablet erected to me somewhere. But the woman who weds Michael Daragh, I don't care who she is (lie: I care enormously!) will always be burning incense to him in her lesser soul, always straining on tiptoe to breathe the air in which he lives and moves ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... to the altar, soaring above the distant arches, and swelling upwards in floods of melody, until the vast concavity of the vaulted nave was filled with a sea of sound. But a sultry heaviness weighed with the incense upon the air. Elder citizens glanced uneasily at one another, and the thoughts of many wandered anxiously from the sacred building. Outside, the streets were empty. All Caracas was engaged in public worship; and the white ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... and indeed, in all her words, though they had rung like music, his ear, tuned to suspicion, had heard the mocking undercurrent of laughter. She had laughed at him secretly through all those months when he had offered up to her the incense of an absolute faith, an unshared devotion. Even now she might be laughing at him, playing on that in him which nothing could destroy or conceal—his love for her. And yet—! Behind him he heard the uneasy stir ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... every path is spread with leaves. The merry cry of bird and beast, That spake aloud their joy, has ceased: Still is the long melodious note That charmed us from each warbling throat. Why blows the blessed air no more, The incense-breathing air that bore Its sweet incomparable scent Of sandal and of aloe blent? Why are the drum and tabour mute? Why is the music of the lute That woke responsive to the quill, Loved by the happy, hushed and still? My boding spirit gathers hence Dire sins of awful consequence, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... and serenest music that Andrea had ever listened to rose up from under Gambara's fingers like the vapor of incense from an altar. The composer's voice grew young again, and, far from marring the noble melody, it elucidated it, supported it, guided it,—just as the feeble and quavering voice of an accomplished reader, such as Andrieux, ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac

... her shrine, but their votive garlands could never more glisten with the fresh dew of morning, the fumes from their lower altars, though they might lull the senses and intoxicate the brain, could never thrill like that earlier incense, with subtle ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... fresh store of strength and spirits, we return to our occupations, that we may thus mingle labour with pleasure, which would lose its zest by long continuance. After our work, we return to the temple, to thank God, and to offer him incense. From thence we go to the most delightful part of the garden, where we find three hundred young girls, some of whom form lively dances with the younger of our monks; the others execute serious dances, which require neither strength nor agility, and which only keep time to the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... calm and serene as before. Turning to the veiled woman near her, she said, "We may not burn perfumes over these our honoured dead, but you, Zarah, my child, have brought living flowers for the burial, and their fragrance shall rise as incense. Cast them into the grave ere ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker

... be convicted of occasional affectation in metaphor, as where the hills are 'as a stallion stal- wart, very-violet-sweet', or of some perversion of human feeling, as, for instance, the 'nostrils' relish of incense along the sanctuary side ', or 'the Holy Ghost with warm breast and with ah! bright wings', these and a few such examples are mostly efforts to force emotion into theological or sectarian channels, as in 'the com- fortless unconfessed' and the unpoetic line 'His mystery must be ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... unto ours A subtle perfume seemed to be, Like incense blown from April flowers Beside the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... of life's morning, fresh and calm, Dropped from the gleanings of relentless time, How from thy dainty chalice steals the balm That hung like incense ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... to confess that I am not a great man, and that, at any rate in the earlier part of my career, I had a hankering after the homage which is paid to greatness. I would fain have been a popular orator, feeding myself on the incense tendered to me by thousands; or failing that, a man born to power, whom those around him were compelled to respect, and perhaps to fear. I am not ashamed to acknowledge this, and I believe that most of my neighbours in Friday Street would own as much were they as ...
— George Walker At Suez • Anthony Trollope

... Christian Pantheon. Statues therein were rechristened, and the sacrificial altars were simply transferred for the use of the eucharistical sacrifice. The vestal virgins became nuns of the church; the Sacerdotes, her priests; the mysteries of Isis, her Agapae. Her incense, her pictures, her image-worship, her holy water, her processions, and her prodigies, too, all came from the same source. Thus were the socialistic and communistic teachings, based on the Philoic-Essenism of the Reformer of Nazareth, paganized, prostituted, and entirely misrepresented. His life ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... Incense ascended in clouds to the lofty roof; torches were uplifted, banners floated in the air, every eye was now strained to catch a glimpse of ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... Outside? Well, it was suthin' like this, ez he was explainin' it to me. He went to the cathedral durin' service, an' took in the priests and choir-boys in their surplices,—parkas, he called 'em,—an' watched the burnin' of the holy incense. 'An' do ye know, Dave, he sez to me, 'they got in an' made a smudge, and there wa'n't a darned mosquito ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... more sublime and recondite, This century of thine and mine will teach To those that follow! With what constancy, What yesterday it scorned, upon its knees To-day it worships, and will overthrow To-morrow, merely to pick up again The fragments, to the idol thus restored, To offer incense on the following day! How estimable, how inspiring, too, This unanimity of thought, not of The age alone, but of each passing year! How carefully should we, when we our thought With this compare, however different From that of next year it may be, at least Appearance ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi

... counting his beads, or ringing the bell, and uttering most dismal prayers. After various disposals of the cups, a larger bell was violently rung for some minutes, himself snapping his fingers and uttering most unearthly sounds. Finally, incense was brought, of charcoal with juniper-sprigs; it was swung about, and concluded the morning service to our great relief, for the noises were quite intolerable. Fervid as the devotions appeared, to judge by their intonation, I fear the Lama felt more curious ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... child of his brain hard in both hands lest it should escape prematurely, the little German went inside to preside over a repast, the distinctively German incense of ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... beauty no human tongue can express; in his hand he brandishes the lightning, the winged shaft of Zeus; perfumes of unspeakable sweetness pervade the ethereal realms. 'Tis a glorious spectacle to see the clouds of incense wafting in light whirlwinds before the breath of the Zephyr! But here he is himself. Divine Muse! let thy sacred lips begin with songs ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes

... appeasing anger in another; it is done chiefly by choosing of times, when men are frowardest and worst disposed, to incense them. Again, by gathering (as was touched before) all that you can find out, to aggravate the contempt. And the two remedies are by the contraries. The former to take good times, when first to relate to a man an angry business; for the first impression is much; and the other is, to sever, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... and to kindle the short-sighted; nor was it a wonder that the young chief—as he strode among his admiring tenants, his presence greeted, when he entered, with Irish acclamations, and his skirts kissed, when he passed, by devoted kernes—sniffed the pleasing incense, and trod the ground to the measure of imagined music. He felt himself a greater man this night than he had ever been before. The triumph that was never to be intoxicated him. He was Montrose, he was Claverhouse—a ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... freshly blew The eastern soft wind, and his galley now Grated the quaystones with her brazen prow In port Cenchreas, from Egina isle Fresh anchor'd; whither he had been awhile To sacrifice to Jove, whose temple there Waits with high marble doors for blood and incense rare. Jove heard his vows, and better'd his desire; For by some freakful chance he made retire From his companions, and set forth to walk, Perhaps grown wearied of their Corinth talk: Over the solitary ...
— Lamia • John Keats

... any notice of the prohibition! Now Morgan, dear, I think you've treated her handsomely and she has cause to be grateful to you. You offered her the incense of a profound faith in her genius and a profound admiration of her person. Not content with that, she needs must have the same incense—compounded of the same two essentials, observe you—from the world at large. For this ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... create festivals of love out of our love, to burn new incense on untrodden mountains; and to keep the secret of our pale faces, and why in the bacchanals of life we carry empty glasses, while with tinkling echoes and laughing foams the ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... still youthful imagination of her hero, after all she has gone through, is most touching. There she is, fading away, still feeding when she can feed on nothing else, on his glories, on the perfume of his incense. She had heard of my being in London from Lord Downes, who had seen me at the Countess de Salis's, where we met him and Lady Downes; when I met her again two days after we had been at Apsley House she said ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... less Chaste appear, 'Cause many Thirsts are quenched there? Or have you not with the same Odours met, When more then One have smelt your Violet The Phoenix is not angry at her nest, 'Cause her Perfumes makes others Blest: Tho' Incense to th' Immortal Gods be meant, Yet Mortals rival in the Scent. Man is the Lord of Creatures; yet we see That all his Vassals Loves are free; The severe Wedlock-Fetters do not bind The Pard's inflam'd and Am'rous Mind, But that he may be like a Bridegroom led Ev'n ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous

... pillars stands a mummy in its wooden case. At that end farthest from the low-browed doorway—which is guarded by two great figures of Isis and Osiris, sitting impassive, with hands on knees—is raised an altar of black marble, on which burns some incense. The perfumed smoke, wavering upwards, mingles with that of the lamps beneath the high ceiling. The prevailing color is ruddy Indian-red, relieved by deep blue and black, while brighter tints show here and there. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... by, for the west-winds awake On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake, To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine With incense they stole from ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... of the kiss; the ceaseless hunger, ceaselessly, divinely appeased! The aching presence of the beloved's beauty! The wisdom, the incense, ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet

... The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... and I obey," quoth King Shahriman and thereon summoned the Kazi and the witnesses, who came and wrote out the marriage contract between Taj al-Muluk and the Lady Dunya. Then they gave bakhshish[FN55] of money and sweetmeats; and lavished incense and essences; and indeed it was a day of joy and gladness and all the grandees and soldiers rejoiced therein. Then King Shahriman proceeded to dower and equip his daughter; and Taj al-Muluk said to his sire, "Of a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... incense fading to the bannered roof of some high choir, the bursts of unearthly melodies grew faint; in the far distance of the hollow ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... High Pr. The incense is upon the altar placed, The bloody sacrifice already past; Five hundred captives saw the rising sun, Who lost their light, ere half his race was run. That which remains we here must celebrate; Where, far from noise, without the city gate, The peaceful power that ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... with me, that I address you, veniente die comme decedente. I sent you some account of the H(ouse) of Commons last night before the division; we were about 89 majority. I got home between two and three. I can no more go to Brooks's to hear a rechauffe of these things, or assist at the incense offered to Charles, or his benediction and salut to those he protects. The reserve at White's tempts me as little, and so I think my own pillow the best ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... in a brass vessel set upon a tray. This was the audience chamber of Kazmah. In marked contrast to the overcrowded appointments, divans and cupboards of the first room, it was sparsely furnished. The floor was thickly carpeted, but save for an ornate inlaid table upon which stood the tray and incense-burner, and a long, low-cushioned seat placed immediately beneath a hanging lamp burning dimly in a globular green shade, it was devoid of decoration. The walls were draped with green curtains, so that except for the presence of the painted door, the ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... of the hand cannot be put upon a hard rock like syenite—the blow must be firm and fearless—the traceless, tremulous difference between common and immortal sculpture cannot be set upon it—it cannot receive the enchanted strokes which, like Aaron's incense, separate the Living and the Dead. Were it otherwise, were finish possible, the variegated and lustrous surface would not exhibit it to the eye. The imagination itself is blunted by the resistance of the material, and by the necessity of absolute predetermination of all it would ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... dawn to be a great stir in and about Suez. The sun came up over Widewood with a shout, hallooing to Rosemont a promise for all Dixie of the most ripening hours, thus far, of the year, and woods, fields, orchards, streams, answered with a morning incense. Johanna stood whispering loudly at ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... Lord Grandison, [George Villiers, fourth Viscount Grandison, and younger brother of Lady Castlemaine's father, who had died without male issue.] which was only in his name, for the use of my Lady Castlemaine's children; and that this did incense her, and she did speak very scornful words and sent a scornful message to ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... had left him a kindly, choleric, and respected newspaper figure. Dorn caught his eye and wondered over his sensitive infatuation of exotic writing. In the pages of Huysmans, De Gourmont, Flaubert, Gautier, Symons, and Pater he seemed to have found a subtle incense for his deadened nerves. Inside the flabby, coarsened body with its red face munching out monosyllables, lived a recluse. "Too much living has driven him from life," Dorn thought, "and killed his lusts. So he sits and reads books—the last debauchery: strange, twisted phrases like idols, like ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... commanded his attendant officer to seize him and detain him; but the other tribunes not permitting it, the officer released Crassus. Ateius, therefore, running to the gate, when Crassus was come thither, set down a chafing-dish with lighted fire in it, and burning incense and pouring libations on it, cursed him with dreadful imprecations, calling upon and naming several strange and horrible deities. In the Roman belief there is so much virtue in these sacred and ancient rites, that no man can escape the effects of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... daily service by the priests was of seven parts. 1st. Fire-making—rubbing the fire sticks, taking the censer, putting incense in it, and lighting it. 2nd. Opening the Shrine—going up to the shrine, loosening the fastening, and breaking the seal, opening the door, seeing the god. 3rd. Praise—various prostrations, and then singing ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... remarkable dinner, | |featuring the choicest foods of the Orient, was | |served by attendants wearing the dress of Chinese | |coolies. The rare old syrups of the Orient were | |enjoyed by the diners, while the fragrant odor of | |burning incense lent an air of subtle mysticism. | | | |Among the ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... been polluted by the Latin sacrifice, than it was deserted as a Jewish synagogue, or a heathen temple, by the clergy and people; and a vast and gloomy silence prevailed in that venerable dome, which had so often smoked with a cloud of incense, blazed with innumerable lights, and resounded with the voice of prayer and thanksgiving. The Latins were the most odious of heretics and infidels; and the first minister of the empire, the great duke, was heard to declare, that ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... crushed the soft leaves against her cheeks. It made all the world smell of its own balm and dew. The fragrance and beauty of the time passed into her soul, and awakened corners there all unused to such sweet incense. She was drunken with the wine that is not of grapes. She could not have found words for the passion that possessed her, though she hugged it to her heart like another self; but it was elemental, springing from founts deeper than those of life and death. God made it, and, ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... screened enclosure, they were all ordered off. They went and waited, silent now, awed by the presence of the men. While the bathing was going on the priests chanted and muttered incantations, and now and again a bell was rung, and incense waved, and tapers lighted. Now they were causing that mysterious Something which still hovered round the lifeless form to leave it and return to them, and when the bathing was over they signified that all was done; the Influence had departed, descended; the funeral ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... recompensed his considerate behavior by giving him that incense of love and esteem and intellectual deference which is desired by every man; and by convincing him that his ambitions—as she knew them—had in her the most complete sympathy, and the most valuable aid. This she did for him, and satisfied all the ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... shooting-coat, his thick shoes, his wide-awake hat stuck under one arm, and his stick under the other, while he holds his opera-glass to his eyes. How he shuffles about to get the best point of sight, quite indifferent as to clergy or laity! All that bell-ringing, incense-flinging, and breast-striking is nothing to him: he has paid dearly to be brought thither; he has paid the guide who is kneeling a little behind him; he is going to pay the sacristan who attends him; he is quite ready to pay the priest himself, if the priest would only signify his wish that ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... tenets should ever want a further elucidation, we shall not call on Atheism to explain them. We shall not light up our temple from that unhallowed fire. It will be illuminated with other lights. It will be perfumed with other incense than the infectious stuff which is imported by the smugglers of adulterated metaphysics. If our ecclesiastical establishment should want a revision, it is not avarice or rapacity, public or private, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... prosperity in his abode; otherwise a household must sustain decay and destruction. O lord, painted on the walls of thy house is a likeness of myself surrounded by numerous children. Stationed there I am daily worshipped with scents and flowers, with incense and edibles and various objects of enjoyment. Thus worshipped in thy house, I daily think of doing thee some good in return. It chanced, O virtuous king, that I beheld the fragmentary bodies of thy son. When these happened ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... to heighten the effect of the magnetic charm. "Richly stained glass shed a dim religious light on his spacious saloons, which were almost covered with mirrors. Orange blossoms scented all the air of his corridors; incense of the most expensive kinds burned in antique vases on his chimney-pieces; aeolian harps sighed melodious music from distant chambers; while sometimes a sweet female voice, from above or below, stole softly upon the mysterious silence that was kept in the ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... brass image or idol, which might have been Buddha for all that I know to the contrary, set up in the corner—the Chinese cook being so actively engaged in salaaming in front of this image, by touching the deck with his forehead and burning bits of gilt paper before it, as incense I suppose, that he ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... casting a spell?" The sweet scent of the flowers, which filled the whole church, mingled with the smell of the peasant's coats, tarred boots and shoes, the whole being drowned by the delicious, overpowering scent of incense. ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... me wander hand in hand with Thought, In woodland paths, and lone sequester'd shades, What time the sunny banks and mossy glades, With dewy wreaths of early violets wrought, Into the air their fragrant incense fling, To greet the triumph of the youthful Spring. Lo, where she comes! 'scaped from the icy lair Of hoary Winter; wanton, free, and fair! Now smile the heavens again upon the earth, Bright hill, ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler

... it upon their faces. Then, appearing fiendishly hideous, ghastlier than words can fitly picture, these revolting figures began with wild chanting to make offerings to their gods, dancing and capering before the flame to an accompaniment of dismal music, burning some incense ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... the morn of flowery May, When incense breathes from heath and wold— When laverocks hymn the matin lay, And mountain peaks are bathed in gold— And swallows, frae some foreign strand, Are wheeling o'er the winding stream; But sweeter to extend my hand, And ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... follow me now to an inner chamber in the palace of the mighty Caesar. A square room with walls of marble inlaid with precious stones, and with hangings of crimson silk to exclude the searching light of day. The air heavy with the fumes of burning incense that wound in spiral curves upwards to the domed roof, and escaped—ethereal and elusive—through the tiny openings practised therein, the seats of gilded wood with downy cushions that seemed to melt at a touch, and in a recess a monumental bed of solid and priceless citrus, ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... of Billy somewhere and made him forget his hunger. Like a sweet incense which induces pleasant daydreams they were wafted in upon him through the rich, mellow voice of the solitary camper, and the lilt of the meter ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... In songs that will not die How in Augustan days of old Your love did glorify His life and all his being seemed Thrilled by that rare incense Till, grudging him the dreams he dreamed, The gods did call ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... arbour, domed and pillared like a temple, stood beside the fountain, and as they ascended its marble steps a strong scent of sandalwood fell like a haze of incense upon Beryl's senses. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... The incense trembled as it upward sent Its slow, uncertain thread of wandering blue, As't were the only living element In all the church, so deep the stillness grew; It seemed one might have heard it, as it went, Give out an ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... spot where the village of Redbourn now stands, the parish church of which is dedicated to him. Meanwhile Alban was charged with aiding and abetting the escape of a blasphemer of the Roman gods, and then and there declared that he too was a Christian. He was ordered to offer incense on the altar of one of the Roman gods, but refused, and as a consequence was condemned to be beheaded. The place chosen for his execution was a grassy hill on the further side of the river Ver. Great was the excitement among the inhabitants of Verulamium, for as yet they had ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins

... is not mentioned; she is eclipsed in the grandeur and the state of her royal Bridegroom; nevertheless, she is both enjoying and sharing it. The very air is perfumed by the smoke of the incense that ascends pillar-like to the clouds; and all that safeguards the position of the Bridegroom Himself, and shows forth His dignity, safeguards also the accompanying bride, the sharer of His glory. ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor

... and lay in bed with her own self coming out, in evil curses for pain and her losses on 'Change, and slow horses, and she who had claptrapped thousands was caught herself by a slick brown man who called himself a Hindoo Yogi and treated her by burning cheap incense in a brass bowl, and a book of prayer that he called the "Word ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... gave themselves up to joy and gladness. The sound of music was heard from all parts of the city, and perfumed breezes went up as an incense from the halls of beauty ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... preparation glided swiftly away, and then we parted from friends who had won their way into our own hearts; and whose memory would ever be to us like the fragrance of holy incense. I learned from Mrs. Montgomery, before she left us, during a more confidential talk than usual, that her income was comparatively small, and that the chief part of this, a pension from Government in acknowledgment of her husband's ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur

... have made into the high priest of property and smug respectability, a divine sanction of all the horrors and abominations of modern commercial civilization! Jeweled images are made of him, sensual priests burn incense to him, and modern pirates of industry bring their dollars, wrung from the toil of helpless women and children, and build temples to him, and sit in cushioned seats and listen to his teachings expounded by doctors ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... the black Anubis with, his golden face appears in company with Thoth (a figure of a man with the head of an ibis), the Mercury of the Egyptians, god of the moon and inventor of speech, Isis, the Egyptian Ceres, and Nutpe, the Abyss of Heaven. The next case (68) is the highly decorated coffin of the incense-bearer of the abode of Noumra. Here the judgment scene of the Amenti is pourtrayed; Osiris, in the shape of a sphinx; and other sacred figures. The following case (69) contains a mummy (l) of a Theban priest of Amoun, swathed in its outer linen coverings, ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... twenty-three years old; his father, who was dead, had been a general, and the beautiful Countess Borsati was his sister. He presented me to the Countess Zanardi Nerli, still more lovely than his sister, but I was prudent enough not to burn my incense before either of them, for it seemed to me that everybody could guess the state of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... the throat of his goat-skin just where the head of the poor old goat was cut off, and straight-way, with a life-reviving gurgle, the stream called thunda panee gushes forth, and plant and shrub lift up their heads and the garden smiles again. The dust also on the roads is laid and a grateful incense rises from the ground, the sides of the water chatty grow dark and moist and cool themselves in the hot air, and through the dripping interstices of the khuskhus tattie a chilly fragrance creeps into the room, causing ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... her feet carried her into strange streets among strange people, where the reek of shipping became incense to her nostrils, and hairy-chested men of many ports stared boldly into her face and, reading her ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... it be (I thought) at some day's close, Some lilac-haunted eve, when every rose Breathes forth its incense. May He find me there, In holy leisure, lifting hands of prayer, In some sweet garden place, To catch the first dear ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn

... Van Artevelde had secretly sent to England the great treasure of Flanders, which he had been collecting for the space of the nine years and more during which he had held the government. This was a matter which did greatly vex and incense them of Ghent. As James Van Artevelde rode along the street, he soon perceived that there was something fresh against him, for those who were wont to bow down and take off their caps to him turned him a cold shoulder, and went back into their houses. Then he began to be afraid; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot



Words linked to "Incense" :   anger, stacte, joss stick, odorize, fragrance, scent, chemical compound, odourise, compound, perfume, exasperate, aroma



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