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Nativity   Listen
noun
Nativity  n.  (pl. nativies)  
1.
The coming into life or into the world; birth; also, the circumstances attending birth, as time, place, manner, etc. "I have served him from the hour of my nativity." "Thou hast left... the land of thy nativity." "These in their dark nativity the deep Shall yield us, pregnant with infernal flame."
2.
(Fine Arts) (capitalized) A picture representing or symbolizing the early infancy of Christ. The simplest form is the babe in a rude cradle, and the heads of an ox and an ass to express the stable in which he was born.
3.
(Astrol.) A representation of the positions of the heavenly bodies as the moment of one's birth, supposed to indicate one's future destinies; a horoscope.
The Nativity, the birth or birthday of Christ; Christmas day.
To cast one's nativity or To calculate one's nativity (Astrol.), to find out and represent the position of the heavenly bodies at the time of one's birth.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nativity" Quotes from Famous Books



... that day's exercise, and considered herself, like the Emperor Titus, to have lost a day. But what came of the London lady's or of Mrs. Schreiber's Spartan discipline? Did the little blind kittens of Gracechurch-street, who were ordered by their penthesilean mamma, on the very day of their nativity, to face the most cruel winds—did they, or did Mrs. Schreiber's wards, justify, in after life, this fierce discipline, by commensurate results of hardiness? In words written beyond all doubt by Shakspeare, though not ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... and the mothers almost always bear names stamped with peculiar solemnity, recalling, not the saints and martyrs, but moments in the life of Jesus Christ: as Mother Nativity, Mother Conception, Mother Presentation, Mother Passion. But the names of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... matter was the opposite of that which mortals entertain: his nativity was a spiritual and immortal sense of the ideal world. His earthly mission [15] was to translate substance into its original meaning, Mind. He walked upon the waves; he turned the water into wine; he healed the sick and the sinner; he raised the dead, and rolled away the stone ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... if he could. But I know that he cannot." Alfred's value to literature is this: he placed by the side of Anglo-Saxon poetry,—consisting of two great poems, Caedmon's great song of the 'Creation' and Cynewulf's 'Nativity and Life of Christ,' and the unwritten ballads passed from lip to lip,—four immense translations from Latin into Anglo-Saxon prose, which raised English from a mere spoken dialect to a true language. From his reign date also ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... and superstition play into each other's hands. This finds a curious illustration in a letter to his sons, written four years before his death: "Towards the latter end of this month, September, Charles will begin to recover his perfect health, according to his Nativity, which, casting it myself, I am sure is true, and all things hitherto have happened accordingly to the very time that I predicted them." Have we forgotten Montaigne's votive offerings at ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... of the place of my nativity was fitting and dreadful. I was mortally glad to ride away into the clear air and the invigorating silence. But on my heart there still lay heavy the twice-repeated prediction of my father and of the Lady Ysolinde, ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... seated in a luckless place. A second reference to the planet of his nativity and its unlucky position in heaven at the ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden

... Periodical and Anniversary Winds, and their Causes; as also of the production of Artificial Winds, for refreshment and other advantages. To which he subjoyns a Discourse, tending to prove, That all Meteors owe their Nativity to the Fiers of ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... about the mulatto offspring of Thomas Jefferson. Goodell lamented the fact that Jefferson in his will had to entreat the legislature of Virginia to confirm his bequest of freedom to his own reputed enslaved offspring that they might remain in the State of their nativity, where their families and connections were.[492] Writing in 1845, the editor of the Cleveland American expressed regret that notwithstanding all the services and sacrifices of Jefferson in the establishment of the freedom ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... but with great good-nature, and seemed to enjoy the sport. It was easy to perceive, on this occasion, who were favourites with the ship's company, by the degree of severity with which they were treated. The tyro was seated on the side of the cow-pen: he was asked the place of his nativity, and the moment he opened his mouth, the shaving-brush of the barber, which was a very large paint brush, was crammed in with all the filthy lather with which they covered his face and chin; this was roughly scraped off with the great razor. The doctor felt his pulse, and prescribed ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... following description of himself in his Correspondence with Erskine, ed. 1879, p.36. 'The author of the Ode to Tragedy is a most excellent man; he is of an ancient family in the west of Scotland, upon which he values himself not a little. At his nativity there appeared omens of his future greatness. His parts are bright; and his education has been good. He has travelled in post-chaises miles without number. He is fond of seeing much of the world. He eats of every good dish, especially apple-pie. He drinks old hock. He has a very fine temper. He ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... Lady Fast, if of an annual character, was regulated of necessity by the feast of the Annunciation, or, in the happier, more affectionate phrase of our forefathers, "the Gretynge of Our Ladye." The Blessed Virgin had no fewer than six festivals—those of the Conception, Nativity, Annunciation, Visitation, Purification, and Assumption—any one of which might be made the starting-point of the fast either by the choice of the votary or by the cast of the die. A third method is instanced in the "Popish Kingdom" of Barnabe Googe (1570), actually an English metrical ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... which Wit found, and brought to these his companions, for whom Architecture built a little house; Painting made a portrait of it: Poetry wrote a copy of verses upon it, which Music put a tune to; and Astronomy calculated the dear creature's nativity; which so pleased Lady Fashion, that she recommended them to the house of Ostentation, but left Wit behind, because as wit was out of taste, Fashion would not have any thing to say to it. However, some of ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens

... street, below, the assistant of the Clutching Hand who had waited while Taylor Dodge was electrocuted, was waiting now as his confederate, "Pitts Slim"—which indicated that he was both wiry in stature and libellous in delegating his nativity—made ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... even as a baby, yet Mr. Verdant Green's nativity seems to have been chronicled merely in this everyday manner, and does not appear to have been accompanied by any of those more monstrous phenomena, which in earlier ages attended the production of a genuine ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... the late House of Commons, and opposing the desires of the king in all his matters in that House; and endeavouring to become popular, and advising how the Commons' House should proceed, and how he would order the House of Lords. And he hath been endeavouring to have the king's nativity calculated; which was done, and the fellow now in the Tower about it.... This silly lord hath provoked, by his ill carriage, the Duke of York, my Lord Chancellor, and all the great persons, and therefore most ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... "I was not thus favoured in my nativity. The star of love was not in the ascendant, the lord of magic charms was not trembling upon my horizon, the sun of earthly happiness was not enthroned in my mid-heaven. How could it be? She had it all, this Unorna here, ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... offered tribute or fought against, but when they had done the greatest ill, then peace and truce were made with them. And nevertheless for all the truce and tribute, they went flockmeal everywhere and harried and robbed and slew our poor folk. And then, in this year, between the nativity of St Mary and St Michael's Mass, they sat round Canterbury and came into it through treachery, because AElfmaer betrayed it, whose life the Archbishop AElfeah had before saved. And there they took the Archbishop AElfeah, and AElfweard, the king's reeve, and Abbot AElfmaer, ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey

... when there is a drowsy blether from the flock, and far down the mesa the twilight twinkle of shepherd fires, when there is a hint of blossom underfoot and a heavenly whiteness on the hills, one harks back without effort to Judaea and the Nativity. But one feels by day anything but good will to note the shorn shrubs and cropped blossom-tops. So many seasons' effort, so many suns and rains to make a pound of wool! And then there is the loss of ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... be judged too harshly. It is always respectable to defend the fireside, and the land of one's nativity, although the cause connected with it may be sometimes wrong. This Indian knew nothing of the principles of colonization, and had no conception that any other than its original owners—original so far as his traditions reached—could have a ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... Europe who had come to Brazil found themselves located in surroundings radically different from the ones to which they had been accustomed in the land of their nativity. Physically they had to adapt themselves to a new climate. From the moment of their arrival on the parcel of land allotted to them they were in contact with many objects for which their mother tongue offered no designation. The animals, plants, insects and even the agricultural ...
— The German Element in Brazil - Colonies and Dialect • Benjamin Franklin Schappelle

... the peasantry formerly asserted that, on the anniversary of the Nativity, oxen knelt in their stalls at midnight,—the supposed hour of Christ's birth; while in other localities bees were said to sing in their hives and subterranean bells to ring a ...
— Myths and Legends of Christmastide • Bertha F. Herrick

... a sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates."[14217] The "valiant men" are "swept away"—"many fall—yea, one falls upon another, and they say, Arise and let us go again to our own people, and to the land of our nativity from the oppressing sword."[14218] Nor do the mercenaries escape. "Her hired men are in the midst of her, like fatted bullocks; for they also are turned back, and are fled away together; they did not stand because the day of their calamity ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... we read in chapel about forty Psalms, and sing about twelve hymns. These are pretty well known by heart, and form already a very considerable stock of Scriptural reference. The Resurrection and the Gift of the Spirit, the Nativity, Manifestation, Betrayal, Ascension, Crucifixion, Burial, with the doctrines connected with them, come in this way every week before their minds. I translated Psalms chosen with reference to this plan, and wrote hymns, &c. in ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... dealings with the devil than they were really guilty of. And this trade grew so open and so generally practised that it became common to have signs and inscriptions set up at doors: 'Here lives a fortune-teller', 'Here lives an astrologer', 'Here you may have your nativity calculated', and the like; and Friar Bacon's brazen-head, which was the usual sign of these people's dwellings, was to be seen almost in every street, or else the sign of Mother Shipton, or of Merlin's ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe

... when we consider the dreadful consequences suffered by the victims of this traffic; a separation like that of death between the nearest and dearest relatives; a banishment for ever from the land of their nativity and the scenes of their youth; the painful inflictions by the hands of slave drivers, to whom cruelty was rendered delightful by its frequent exercise; with many other sufferings too numerous to mention, we cannot wonder at this horror on the part of these ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... condition of servitude.[15] The Liberal Republicans, rallying in a different quarter that year, declared in their platform their belief in the equality of all men before the law and the duty of the government in all its dealings with the people to mete out equal and exact justice to all of whatever nativity, race, color or persuasion, religious or political. The Liberal Republicans pledged themselves to maintain the union of States, emancipation, and enfranchisement and to oppose any reopening of the questions ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... that is once done, can never be obviated. The virtuous become endowed with great virtues, and sinful men become the perpetrators of wicked deeds. Men's actions follow them; and influenced by these, they are born again.' The Brahmana enquired, 'Why does the spirit take its birth, and why does its nativity become sinful or virtuous, and how, O good man, does it come to belong to a sinful or virtuous race?' The fowler replied, This mystery seems to belong to the subject of procreation, but I shall briefly describe to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... from the truth, perhaps, as any other. I perceive there exist some doubts as to the place of my nativity," he added, after a pause that denoted a hesitation, which all hoped was to end in his setting the matter at rest, by a simple statement of the fact; "and I believe I shall profit by the circumstance, to praise and condemn at pleasure, since no one can impeach my candour, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... Could you possibly wish for a more favorable conjunction of circumstances? Yet all these have happened and passed away, and, as it were, left you with a laugh. There are likewise, events of such an original nativity as can never happen again, unless a new world ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... The fast of the seventeenth of Tammuz came round. Sabbatai abolished it, proclaiming that on that day the conviction that he was the Messiah had been borne in upon him. The ninth of Ab—the day of his Nativity—was again turned from a fast to a festival, the royal edict, promulgated throughout the world, quoting the exhortation of Zephaniah: "Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion; for lo I come, and I will dwell in the midst of thee, saith the Lord." Detailed prescriptions ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... "On the Nativity of our Lord following, the King and his justice Hubert de Burgh came to Sarum on the day of the Holy Innocents, and there the King offered one gold ring with a precious stone called a ruby, one piece of silk, and one gold cup of the weight of ten marks; and when the mass was celebrated ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White

... taken from the room in which Bishop Hooper was lodged the night before his burning, and from oak formerly in old All Saints' Church, as souvenirs of the regard which the association entertains for you and its recognition of your ardent affection for the City of Gloucester, the honored place of the nativity of the progenitor of your family, Charles Hoar, who was elder Sheriff in 1634; and may these sincere expressions also be typical of the sterling friendship existing between ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... anti-christian council and the most tyrannous inquisition that ever inquired. Till then books were ever as freely admitted into the world as any other birth; the issue of the brain was no more stifled than the issue of the womb: no envious Juno sat cross-legged over the nativity of any man's intellectual offspring; but if it proved a monster, who denies, but that it was justly burnt, or sunk into the sea? But that a book, in worse condition than a peccant soul, should be to ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton

... completely under the dominion of the Church—to German mysticism, we find above and beyond mysticism, we find above and beyond love, a new principle: The soul of man is the starting-point of religious consciousness and the content of the religious consciousness is the soul's road to God. The nativity of Christ ceased to be regarded as a historical event, and became the birth of the divine principle in the soul of man. In passing I will mention a German nun, Mechthild of Magdeburg (1212-1277), who anticipated ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... Nativity once in the main of light Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd, Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight, And Time that gave, doth ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... Annunciation, presents no feature of interest; nor yet does the tenth, the Visit of Mary to Elizabeth. The eleventh, the Nativity, though rather better, is still ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... the "Galilean" Arhat. With regard to charge two, the distinguished philologist is reminded of the glass house he and all Christian chronologists are themselves living in. Their inability to vindicate the adoption of December 25 as the actual day of the Nativity, and hence to determine the age and the year of their Avatar's death— even before their own people—is far greater than is ours to demonstrate the year of Buddha to other nations. Their utter failure to establish on any other but traditional evidence the, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... occasion, and at one end a platform was constructed. At an early hour in the evening, the room was crowded with colored children and adults, and soldiers and officers. The programme opened with the singing of "My country, 'tis of thee." Chaplain Fuller read the account of the nativity of Christ. Dr. Linson prayed. Then the children discoursed very sweet music in solo, semi-chorus, and chorus, and at intervals spoke pieces in a very commendable manner, considering that it was probably the first attempt of colored ...
— Mary S. Peake - The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe • Lewis C. Lockwood

... wall, which I was careful to see were prevented from setting fire to the straw. The dull red tint of the brick walls, the clean yellow straw, and the bright radiance of our glorious Union Jack made a splendid combination of colour. It would have been a fitting setting for a tableau of the Nativity. ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... of more ancient birth than many very honest people suspect; nay, more than, were the register of its nativity laid before their eyes, they would be willing to admit. We have no space for its voluminous history; but it is our belief, since quackery first plied its profitable trade with human incredulity, it never perpetrated so successful a trick as that exhibited ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various

... happened to turn upon the politics of some German courts, "Count," said he to Ferdinand, in a very abrupt and disagreeable manner of address, "I was last night in company with some gentlemen, among whom a dispute happened about the place of your nativity; pray, what country are you of?" "Sir," answered the other, with great politeness, "I at present have the honour to be of England." "Oho!" replied the chevalier, "I ask your pardon, that is to say, you are incog; some people may find it convenient to keep themselves in that situation." ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... I give 5l. per annum for ever to be disposed of in buying Bibles, catechisms, or for encouraging poor children to learn to read and answer in catechising in the parish of Dittisham, in the county of Devon, the place of my nativity and baptism, which sum shall be bestowed according to the direction of the minister there for the time being; and to the present minister I give 20l. I give to the poor of Acton each five shillings; I give to the poor of Westminster, Kensington, Knightsbridge, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various

... the Nativity drawing near, the lady told her husband that, an it pleased him, she would fain go to church on Christmas morning and confess and take the sacrament, as other Christians did. Quoth he, 'And what sin hast thou ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... marvellous invention; but it has no rival in the architectonic effect of harmony, and the masterly feeling for balanced masses it displays. The five subjects chosen by Giovanni for his bas-reliefs are the "Nativity," the "Adoration of the Magi," the "Massacre of the Innocents," the "Crucifixion," and the "Last Judgment." In the "Nativity" our Lady is no longer the Roman matron of Niccola's conception, but a graceful mother, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... every part of America except Canada, with the mercenaries from Europe, being collected for this attempt, God only knows the event. To His protection I commend myself, earnestly praying that in this glorious contest I may not disgrace the place of my nativity, nor, after it is over, be ashamed to see my wife, my children, and my parents again. To the care of Providence, and, under that, to you, honored Sir, with our other friends, I commend all that is near and dear to me, and am, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... two brothers, why one prefers lounging, play, and perfume, to Herod's rich palm-tree groves; why the other, rich and uneasy, from the rising of the light to the evening shade, subdues his woodland with fire and steel: our attendant genius knows, who governs the planet of our nativity, the divinity [that presides] over human nature, who dies with each individual, of various complexion, white ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... soon forget, and which a visiter learns, perhaps, sooner than any association of placid delight connected with rural scenery. When, too, the traveller, or the man of the world, after a life spent in other pursuits, returns to the village of his nativity, the old hawthorn is the only playfellow of his boyhood that has not changed. His seniors are in the grave; his contemporaries are scattered; the hearths at which he found a welcome are in the possession of those who know him not; the roads are altered; the houses ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various

... on the left the Annunciation, on the right the Nativity; in the centre, now hidden by a hideous wooden erection, there is a beautiful little tabernacle between two angels. Between the pilasters, as between the columns above, stand large ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... Maupassant was from Normandy; and Daudet had the Southern expansiveness and abundance, just as Maupassant had the Northern reserve and caution. If an author is ever to bring forth fruit after his kind he must have roots in the soil of his nativity. Daudet was no orchid, beautiful and scentless; his writings have always the full flavor of the southern soil. He was able to set Tartarin before us so sympathetically and to make Numa Roumestan so convincing because he recognized ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... of the Feast of the Nativity, Christmas-day of the year 800, duly came. It was destined to be a great day in the annals of the Roman city. The chimes of bells which announced the dawning of that holy day fell on the ears of great multitudes assembled in the streets of Rome, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... to the last a moiety of her earnings, and many a half-dollar that had come from Rose's pretty little hand, had been converted into gold, and forwarded on the same pious errand to the green island of her nativity. Ireland, unhappy country! at this moment what are not the dire necessities of thy poor! Here, from the midst of abundance, in a land that God has blessed in its productions far beyond the limits of human wants, a land in which famine was never known, do we at this moment hear thy groans, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... Colgan, who identify the Crag of Dumbarton with the Nemthur of the Saint's nativity, are faced by the unanswerable difficulty that though Nemthur may be the name of a tower, or may be the name of the district in which the tower stood, it cannot be the name of a town. The Saint in his "Confession" states that his father hailed from the suburban district of a town called Bonaven ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming

... one of his homilies on the nativity of our Saviour, says, in addressing man: "O man, recognize thy dignity!" We might, with all due propriety, address these same words to woman, for her happiness and virtues depend in great measure on the elevated idea that she has of herself, ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi

... rather the Mecca than the birthplace of artists, but it can boast the nativity of MacDowell, who improvised his first songs here December 18, 1861. He began the study of the piano at an early age. One of his teachers was Mme. Teresa Carreno, to whom he has dedicated his second concerto ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... a certain precision, and whose black and white checked neckerchief, tied in a formal bow, proclaimed the English respectability of the period. At the president's dictation he took down Randolph's name, nativity, length of residence, and occupation in California. This concluded, the president, glancing at his ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... apocryphal, and if, regarding the other genealogy, exegesis has since obscured the luminousness of the method adapted by the Church, the latter's intention was none the less irreproachable, and that alone imports. Before it, before the miracle of the nativity and the divine episodes of the transfiguration, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, reverently the Occident has knelt. They are indeed divine. If they did not occur in Judea, they have occurred ever since. Continuously, in the hearts of ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... The nativity of the patients showed that nearly all countries were represented—Russia, Poland, Italy, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Scotland, England, Germany, Ireland, China, Hungary, Australia, ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... star called the "Lion's Heart" predominated at his nativity, and that the "Fox" was on the decline—omens and prodigies well suited to announce the birth of a prince who was himself a living tempest. Charles's infancy has nothing very remarkable. His education was strictly attended to, and he proved an attentive scholar. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various

... anniversary of his death, the other on the day of his translation. The former is couched in these words: "O God, who hast not without reason mingled the birthday of the glorious high-priest, Thomas, with the joys of thy nativity, by the intervention of his merits" (ipsius mentis intervenientibus), "make these thy servants venerate thy majesty with the reverence of due honour. Amen. And as he, according to the rule of a good shepherd, gave ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler

... the building. Around him were packages with arms, and near him one small barrel, as it seemed, of gunpowder; many papers in different parcels, and several keys for correspondence in cipher; two or three scrolls covered with hieroglyphics were also beside him, which Albert took for plans of nativity; and various models of machinery, in which Dr. Rochecliffe was an adept. There were also tools of various kinds, masks, cloaks, and a dark lantern, and a number of other indescribable trinkets belonging to the trade of a daring plotter ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... striking is a large head and bust of Christ on the easternmost division of the vaulting. One hand holds the Gospels, with the inscription Salus Populi Ego Sum. On the wall beneath are the Descent from the Cross and the Entombment. The Nativity and Annunciation also appear on the roof, while on the walls are the Entry into Jerusalem, the Raising of Lazarus, the Descent into Hell, and the Appearance to Mary Magdalene ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant

... have the history of Abram and Sarah, their wanderings from the land of their nativity to Canaan, their blunders on the journey, their grief at having no children, except one son by Hagar, his concubine, who was afterwards driven from their door, into the wilderness. However, Sarah in her old age was blessed with a son of her own, which event ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... the mother of Jesus, ascends to heaven is the day when the Zodiacal constellation Virgo, "the Greek Astrea, leaves the European horizon," and the "8th of September, when Virgo emerges from the sun's rays, is held sacred as the Nativity of the Queen ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... be the very voice of God. The struggle with Newman was not the struggle of faith with scepticism, but the struggle between two kinds of loyalty, the personal loyalty to his own past and his own friends and the Church of his nativity, and the loyalty to the infinitely more ancient and venerable tradition of the Roman Church. It was, as I have said, an aesthetic conversion; he had the mind of a poet, and the particular kind of beauty ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... brief, but not unsatisfactory. He said that, since his departure, he had been a seafaring man, and that, having acquired sufficient property to render him easy in the decline of his days, he had returned to live and die in the town of his nativity. ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... together to great advantage and interest to the child. For instance, when a napkin ring has been made of reed let the child next construct one of raffia, and then compare the finished article as to the material vised, the beauty, the flexibility, the durability, and the nativity of each. ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw

... years, and when there are no less than 365 days to determine their lives in every year, that the first day should mark the last, that the tail of the snake should return into its mouth precisely at that time, and that they should wind up upon the day of their nativity, is indeed a remarkable coin- cidence, which, though astrology hath taken witty pains to solve, yet hath it been very wary in making predictions of it," should himself die on ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... collection (again very much in accordance with the practice of his models of the preceding generation), entitled Flowers of Sion, and consisting, like the sonnets, of poems of various metres. One of these is noticeable as suggesting the metre of Milton's "Nativity," but with an alteration of line number and rhyme order which spoils it. Yet a fourth collection of miscellanies differs not much in constitution from the others, and Drummond's poetical work is completed by some local pieces, such ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... the elimination of which from English literature would undeniably be a serious loss to it; yet, of these plays twenty-three have entirely foreign scenes and characters. Milton, as a political writer, was English; but his "Paradise Lost and Regained," his "Samson," his "Ode on the Nativity," his "Comus," bear no reference to the land of his birth. Dryden's best-known work to- day is his "Alexander's Feast." Pope has come down to us as the translator of Homer. Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne are the great quartet of English ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... Fighting with eminent prowess on her side, Shall be entombed with every sacred rite That follows to the grave the lordliest dead. But for his brother, who, a banished man, Returned to devastate and burn with fire The land of his nativity, the shrines Of his ancestral gods, to feed him fat With Theban carnage, and make captive all That should escape the sword—for Polynices, This law hath been proclaimed concerning him: He shall have no lament, no funeral, ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... ancient Nominalists said that it was the same thing to say "Christ is born" and "will be born" and "was born"; because the same thing is signified by these three—viz. the nativity of Christ. Therefore it follows, they said, that whatever God knew, He knows; because now He knows that Christ is born, which means the same thing as that Christ will be born. This opinion, however, is false; both because the diversity in the parts of a sentence causes a diversity of enunciations; ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... of all affection, dear home, my nativity, 50 Whom in anguish I deserting, as in hatred a runaway From a master, hither have hurried to the ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus

... in confinement sixteen months, whilst Cromwel outlived the prediction four years. This insignificant fellow was mighty great with the duke of Buckingham, who, notwithstanding the vanity of the art, and the notorious ignorance of the professor of it, made him cast not only his own, but the King's nativity; a matter of dangerous curiosity, and condemned by a statute which could only be said to be antiquated, because it had not for a long time been put in execution. This fellow he had likewise employed, among others, to excite the seamen to mutiny, as he had given money ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... On his "Nativity," Botticelli wrote: "This picture I, Alessandro, painted at the end of the year 1500 in the troubles of Italy, in the halftime after the time, during the fulfilment of the eleventh of John, in the second woe of the ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon

... compiler rather than as an historian. His major works were The Roman History, from the Building of the City, to the Perfect Settlement of the Empire by Augustus Caesar . . . (1695-98), the equally comprehensive A General Ecclesiastical History from the Nativity of Our Blessed Saviour to the First Establishment of Christianity . . . (1702), his all-inclusive The History of England from the first Entrance of Julius Caesar . . . to the Conclusion of the Reign of King James the Second . . . (1707-18), and the more detailed but equally long work, ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard

... possessed of them, he could only say that he attributed it to the custom of presenting spoons on certain occasions. One was beautifully wrought; the bowl was very large, and its edges carved with exquisite workmanship. In the middle of the bowl was a representation of "the nativity," carved in so masterly a manner, that, although it was considerably defaced, it must have required the ablest artists to accomplish. The handle, which was likewise superbly carved, ended in a figure ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various

... His nativity carefully concealed, and being personally introduced to the chief gardener by one who well knew him; armed, too, with a line from Sir John, and recommended by his introducer as uncommonly expert at horticulture; Israel was soon installed as keeper ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... monks arrived from Jerusalem to present to the King, with the patriarch's blessing, the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and Calvary, as well as the sacred standard. Lastly, on the 25th of December, 800, "the day of the Nativity of our Lord," says Eginhard, "the King came into the basilica of the blessed St. Peter, apostle, to attend the celebration of mass. At the moment when, in his place before the altar, he was bowing down to pray, Pope Leo placed on his head a crown, and all the Roman people shouted, 'Long ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... were Germans; my grandfather was born in the South. About the year 1820 he, along with two brothers, bade farewell to the land of his nativity and emigrated to South Africa. They found a home for themselves in the neighbourhood of Port Elizabeth, and there they settled as farmers. Two of the brothers married women of Dutch extraction; one died ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald

... anticipations of many holy men." Moreover, he enjoined the officers to look to the good conduct of their troops; to repress swearing, gaming, riot, and plunder, and thereby to render them more deserving of victory. Accordingly, a fast of three days was proclaimed for the fleet, beginning with the Nativity of our Lady; all the men went to confession and communion, and appropriated to themselves the plentiful indulgences which the Pope attached to the expedition. Then they moved across the foot of Italy to Corfu, with ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... Masses of Saints, the chants for which were taken from those which later were collected together to form the Common. For the Feasts of the Annunciation, the Assumption, and the Nativity of the Virgin, all the chants were taken from older Masses, e.g., from the masses of Advent and of certain Virgins and Martyrs. The Procession of the Purification, both words and melody, was borrowed from the Greeks by Pope Sergius. For the Mass ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt

... immaterial to the discussion. Let the advocates of man's right to participate in governmental affairs choose their own ground and we will be content. The voting franchise exists, and it exists because it has been seized by force or because of some right antedating its sanction by law. Nativity does not confer it, because aliens exercise it; it does not arise from taxation, for many are taxed who can not vote and many vote who are not taxed. Ability to bear arms is not the test of the voting franchise, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... grandsire from being able any more to grant that {boon}. And from a God thou shalt become a lifeless carcase; and a God {again}, who lately wast a carcase; and twice shalt thou renew thy destiny. Thou likewise, dear father, now immortal, and produced at thy nativity, on the condition of enduring for ever, wilt then wish that thou couldst die, when thou shalt be tormented on receiving the blood of a baneful serpent[75] in thy wounded limbs; and the Gods shall make thee from an immortal {being}, subject to death, and the three ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... is to deliver you this Letter. He is going to the Land of his Nativity, wishing for the best Happiness of his own Country & ours and hoping that mutual Affection will be at length restored, as the only Means of the prosperity of both. As he determines to spend the Remainder of his Days in the Country where ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... the moonlit road; and very crisply their music rang out beneath a sky scattered with cloud and stars. All their songs were simple carols of the country, and the burden of them was but the joy of man at Christ's nativity; but the young man and maid who ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... some wretched years, she died,——at least her condition so closely resembled death as to deceive every one who saw her. She was buried——not in a vault, but in an ordinary grave in the village of her nativity. Filled with despair, and still inflamed by the memory of a profound attachment, the lover journeys from the capital to the remote province in which the village lies, with the romantic purpose of disinterring the corpse, and possessing ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... January 10th, 1870, Mr. Cochran adds, "Geog Tapa continues to witness novel scenes under the eccentric and reckless Priest John. At the close of the fast of the nativity, the communion was administered to the whole village, and numbers from surrounding villages were also invited in. Many who had not communed for from ten to thirty years, as well as the more superstitious and the lowest rabble, participated. ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson

... wild—in the sense of natural—growth; it is indigenous to the soil; its accidental qualities it may share with the flowers of other lands, but in its essence it remains the original, spontaneous outgrowth of our clime. But its nativity is not its sole claim to our affection. The refinement and grace of its beauty appeal to our aesthetic sense as no other flower can. We cannot share the admiration of the Europeans for their roses, which lack the simplicity ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... this work, he has spoken in terms of unqualified reprobation of the baneful system to which the unhappy place of his nativity has been the victim, he would have it distinctly understood, that it has been furthest from his thoughts to connect the censure which he has bestowed on it, with those who have permitted its continuance. He is ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... the star ... came and stood over where the young child was. The curtains of the void were parted by invisible hands, and down the long vista of the centuries he saw the familiar scene of the Nativity, dwelt on so often and so faithfully in his childhood training that it seemed almost like a part of the material scheme of the universe: the Babe in the manger; the shepherds watching their flocks; ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... had no suspicion of the deception. He was faint and weary with travel, and felt that he could endure fasting no longer. Without hesitancy, he partook heartily of the meal, and in so doing was overcome. All at once he seemed to forget the blood of his sisters, and even the village of his nativity. He ate so heartily as to produce drowsiness, and soon fell into a profound sleep. Onwe Bahmondoong watched his opportunity, and, as soon as he found his slumbers sound, resumed his youthful form. He then drew the magic ball from his back, which turned out ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... the far-famed "golden fruit of the Hesperides," which Hercules stole, was the orange; but it seems highly improbable that it was known to writers of antiquity. It is supposed to be indigenous to Central and Eastern Asia. Whatever its nativity, it has now spread over all the warmer regions of the earth. The orange tree is very hardy in its own habitat, and is one of the most prolific of all fruit-bearing trees, a single tree having been known to produce twenty thousand good oranges in a season. Orange trees attain ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... infant Saviour. Some have ridiculed, some have excused this strange combination of inaccuracies but is it less one of the divinest pieces of sentiment and poetry that ever breathed and glowed from the canvas? You remember too the famous nativity by some Neapolitan painter, who has placed Mount Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples in the background? In these and a hundred other instances, no one seems to feel that the apparent absurdity involves the highest truth, and that the sacred beings thus represented, if once allowed as objects of faith ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... and when her son was to be born, she was warned in a dream to make pilgrimage to a cave on Mount Ne. There the spirits of the mountain attended; there were signs and portents in the heavens at the nativity. The k'e-lin, a beast out of the mythologies, appeared to her; and she tied a white ribbon about its single horn. It is a creature that appears only when things of ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... a previous state recognition of Christianity. But that was neither splendid nor distinct. Whereas the Byzantine Rome built avowedly upon Christianity as its own basis, and consecrated its own nativity by the sublime act of founding the first provision ever attempted for the poor, considered simply as poor, (i.e. as objects of pity, not as instruments ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... and he lost his humorous poise: the heart-breaking seriousness of it all now came to his realization. How he wanted to draw her to him, forgetting all the differences in nativity, the social and political conditions ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard

... This supposition rests, apparently, upon the expression of Robinson in his parting letter to Carver, where he says: "What shall I say or write unto you and your good wife, my loving sister?" Neither the place of Mrs. Carver's nativity nor her ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... totally opposite. There the prince regards the place of his nativity as an accident of mere indifference. If the parent root be good, he thinks it will flourish in every soil, and perhaps acquire fresh vigour from transplantation. It is not locality, but his own cast ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... Hence the perversity and contrariness of thy mind, gathering strength by the licence that I gave thee, hath made thy madness to fall upon mine own pate. Rightly prophesied the astrologers in thy nativity that thou shouldest prove a knave and villain, an impostor and rebellious son. But now, if thou wilt make void my counsel, and cease to be my son, I will become thine enemy, and entreat thee worse than ever man yet entreated ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... at length arrived when be was to perform what was then thought a long and somewhat perilous journey, to the mansion of the early friend who had calculated his nativity. His road lay through several places of interest, and he enjoyed the amusement of travelling, more than he himself thought would have been possible. Thus he did not reach the place of his destination till noon, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... that paradise of nature, where every prospect pleases, and naught but man is vile. Sunbeam left the place of her nativity without a lingering glance behind, for there she had been nothing but an ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... of the drooping west, To see the day spring from the pregnant east, Ravish'd in spirit, I come, nay more, I fly To thee, blest place of my nativity! Thus, thus with hallow'd foot I touch the ground, With thousand blessings by thy fortune crown'd. O fruitful Genius! that bestowest here An everlasting plenty year by year; O place! O people! manners! framed to please All nations, customs, kindreds, languages! ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick

... portrayed with vermilion, girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity."—Ezekiel, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldaea, the land of their nativity."—Ezek. xxiii. 15. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson

... Being—the Beginner of a new race. Adam had in himself all the possibilities which Christ realized, but the former failed and the latter succeeded and so has become the Head of a divine and heavenly type of humanity. By "a new nativity," a rebirth from above, any man in the world who wills it in living faith may be a recipient of the divine-principle, the Christ-Life, and may thereby be raised to membership in the Kingdom of the Christ-Humanity, which is as far above the Adam-Humanity ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... "At my nativity," says Sir Thomas Browne, "my ascendant was the earthly sign of Scorpius; I was born in the planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me." One would think that he were anatomizing a tailor! save that to the latter's occupation, methinks, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... guardianship of the Romans, Greeks, and Armenians, who vie with each other in adorning it. Beneath an altar gorgeously decorated, and lit with everlasting fires, there stands the low slab of stone which marked the holy site of the Nativity, and near to this is a hollow scooped out of the living rock. Here the infant Jesus was laid. Near the spot of the Nativity is the rock against which the Blessed Virgin was leaning when she presented her babe to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... saw men portrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldaeans portrayed with vermilion, girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldaea, the land of their nativity."[371] ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... was at a loss to know by what process they had arrived at the conclusion that seven men of science must be substituted to fill the place of one distinguished statesman whom they had expected to hear. He prided himself on his Albany nativity. He was proud of the old Dutch character, that was the substratum of the city. The Dutch are hard to be moved, but when they do start their momentum is not as other men's in proportion to the velocity, but as the square ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett

... Now clear the triple region of the air, And let the Majesty of Heaven behold Their scourge and terror tread on emperors. Smile, stars that reign'd at my nativity, And dim the brightness of your [199] neighbour lamps; Disdain to borrow light of Cynthia! For I, the chiefest lamp of all the earth, First rising in the east with mild aspect, But fixed now in the meridian line, Will send up ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe

... by Mr Jedediah Cleishbotham.—That I kept my plight in this melancholy matter with my deceased and lamented friend, appeareth from a handsome headstone, erected at my proper charges in this spot, bearing the name and calling of Peter Pattieson, with the date of his nativity and sepulture; together also with a testimony of his merits, attested by myself, as ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... The first pamphlet he wrote, The Mystery of God concerning the whole Creation, is dedicated "To my beloved countrymen of the County of Lancaster." In his time the term "countrymen" had a more contracted meaning than now, and implied a common nativity of a Shire or Parish: indeed it still has this meaning in ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

... Louis XIV. with old Maintenon proves how impossible it is to escape one's fate. The King said one day to the Duc de Crequi and to M. de La Rochefoucauld, long before he knew Mistress Scarron, "I am convinced that astrology is false. I had my nativity cast in Italy, and I was told that, after living to an advanced age, I should be in love with an old ——- to the last moment of my existence. I do not think there is any great likelihood of that." He laughed most heartily as he said this; ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans

... disappointment,—but here credulity attained her zenith;—amongst other schemes, equally practicable, the projectors of this notorious bubble set up a method of making butter from beech-trees; a plan to learn people to cast their nativity; an insurance against divorces; and a way of making ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... "for a man living in the United Kingdom, to consider, before he determines on expatriation, whether he can, by industry and integrity, obtain a tolerably comfortable livelihood in the country of his nativity; whether, in order to secure to his family the certain means of subsistence, he can willingly part with his friends, and leave scenes that must have been dear to his heart from childhood; and whether, in order to attain to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various

... this precedent, admit the State's right to deny suffrage, and there is no limit to the confusion, discord and disruption that may await us. There is and can be but one safe principle of government—equal rights to all. Discrimination against any class on account of color, race, nativity, sex, property, culture, can but embitter and disaffect that class, and thereby endanger the safety of the whole people. Clearly, then, the national government not only must define the rights of citizens, but must stretch out ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... the others, and a whole class being in the class-room, put the pointer into one of the children's hands, and desire the child to find out the Nativity of Jesus Christ. The other children will be on the tip-toe of expectation, to see whether the child makes a mistake; for, should this be the case, they know that one of them will have the same privilege of trying to find it; ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... fairest maid thou hast ever beheld in the Island of Britain, and the least lovely of them was more lovely than Gwenhwyvar, the wife of Arthur, when she has appeared loveliest at the Offering, on the day of the Nativity, or at the feast of Easter. They rose up at my coming, and six of them took my horse, and divested me of my armour; and six others took my arms, and washed them in a vessel until they were perfectly bright. And the third six spread cloths ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest

... splendidly dressed men and women passed in and out with smiles and congratulations. The fandangoes and the gambling houses were all open. From the huertas around, great numbers of families had come to receive absolution and keep the Nativity. Their rich clothing and air of idleness gave a holiday feeling to the streets noisy with the buzzing of the guitar, the metallic throb of the cithara, the murmurs of voices, and the cries of the hawkers. Priests, Mexicans, Indians and Americans ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr

... he thereby subjected himself self to open rebuke in his own country;[4] [Footnote 4: See Dyce's Strictures etc., 1859, p. 28.] and he found, we suppose, his justification for this course in his seniority and his opponent's place of nativity. It is true, also, that, in the recently published edition of Shakespeare's Works, just alluded to, he has vengefully revived, in its worst form, the animosity which disgraced the pages of the editors and commentators of the last century, and has attacked the most eminent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... cut short, and stood aggressively erect upon a bullet head, his clothes were soiled and greasy beneath a gray coating of dust. A pair of alert, lead- blue eyes and a certain facility of movement belied the drawl that marked his nativity. He removed his hat and bowed at ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach

... and saints. The halo is a purely optical illusion, produced by moisture in the air, in the manner of a rainbow; but the aureola is conferred as a sign of superior sanctity, in the same way as a bishop's mitre, or the Pope's tiara. In the painting of the Nativity, by Szedgkin, a pious artist of Pesth, not only do the Virgin and the Child wear the nimbus, but an ass nibbling hay from the sacred manger is similarly decorated and, to his lasting honor be it said, appears to bear his unaccustomed dignity with a ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... them to become naturalized, have generally not much overpassed that period, and have returned to the country of their origin, where they reside, avoiding all duties to the United States by their absence, and claiming to be exempt from all duties to the country of their nativity and of their residence by reason of their alleged naturalization. It is due to this Government itself and to the great mass of the naturalized citizens who entirely, both in name and in fact, become citizens of the United ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... he poked out. He's a awful star for females! hates 'em like poison! I suspect he's been worriting hisself into her nativity, for I got out from her the year, month, and day she was born, hour unbeknown, but, calkeiating by noon, Herschel was dead agin her in the Third and Ninth House,—Voyages, Travels, Letters, News, Church Matters, and ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Kolyada! Kolyada has arrived. On the Eve of the Nativity, Holy Kolyada. Through all the courts, in all the alleys, We found Kolyada In Peter's Court. Round Peter's Court there is an iron fence, In the midst of the Court there are three rooms, In the first room is the bright Moon, ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann

... differences between them, which, or some of which, observable at first, grew more distinct in the lapse of years, in their places of nativity, in their temperaments, in their intellectual traits, and in their politics. Both were partly of Gallic descent; but here they differed as in other things. Tazewell was French on the father's side; Taylor on the mother's. Tazewell's ancestors were from that city on the banks ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby

... threatening arm, an [258] angry brow! Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me, And hide me from the heavy wrath of heaven! No! Then will I headlong run into the earth: Gape, earth! O, no, it will not harbour me! You stars that reign'd at my nativity, Whose influence hath [259] allotted death and hell, Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist, Into the entrails of yon [260] labouring cloud[s], That, when you [261] vomit forth into the air, My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths; But let my soul mount and ascend to heaven! [The clock ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe

... It contained two portraits—one of a captain in the British navy, in full uniform, his head bare, and locks of fair hair falling even over his shoulders, for he had disdained the peruke then in fashion—and that of a lady, whose dark eyes and raven ringlets told that her nativity had been ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite

... faces, bodies, and limbs of a large portion of the slaves, especially of the hands upon the plantations, shows their African nativity, while the smooth skin and generally greater degree of intelligence of others show them to have been born in slavery upon the island. These latter are mostly sought for service in the cities. They are remarkably healthy when not overworked, and form the most ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... sight of them something stirred in her that was the gift of all the wandering years of that old Ulysses, her grandfather, to whom the beckoning lights of ships at sea were irresistible, and though she doted on the glens of her nativity, she had the spirit that invests every hint of distant places and far-off ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... confined myself to a description of the general impression produced by the luxuriant growth of the soil, without entering into the individualities of the vegetation. In the more highly situated Montanas, where the cinchona is found in the place of its nativity, the gigantic orchidae, the numerous fern plants, the tree-like nettles, the wonderful bignonias, and the numerous, impenetrable complications of climbing plants, powerfully rivet the attention of the observer. Lower down, in the lighter forest soil, amidst numerous shrubs and ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... anything at all is certain, it is this, that in ancient times the Calebites lived in the south and not in the north of Judah, and in particular that David by his nativity belonged not to them but rather to the older portion of Judah which gravitated towards Israel properly so called, and stood in most intimate relations with Benjamin. Of the first three members of the genealogy, Nahshon and Amminadab ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... period is the crisis of the fate of Church or State. Yet surely no records of the past, extant, tell us of such dark threatening clouds as hang over the realm of England at this time; when the thousandth year since our blessed Lord's nativity having passed, we seem to be entering on those awful plagues which the Apocalypse tells us must precede the consummation of ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... destroyed, and the mausoleum of Henri II., last duc de Montmorency, at Moulins. To Michel are due the sculptures of the triumphal arch at the Porte St. Denis, begun in 1674, to serve as a memorial for the conquests of Louis XIV. A marble group of the Nativity in the church of Val de Grace was reckoned his masterpiece. From 1662 to 1667 he directed the progress of the sculpture and decoration in this church, and it was he who superintended the decoration of the apartments of Anne of Austria in the old Louvre. F. Fouquet also employed him ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... patched together of gay parti- coloured pieces. The exact resemblance of the figure of Pulcinello is said to have been found among the frescoes of Pompeii. If he came originally from Atella, he is still mostly to be met with in the old land of his nativity. The objection that these traditions could not well have been preserved during the cessation for so many centuries of all theatrical amusements, will be easily got over when we recollect the licences annually enjoyed at the Carnival, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... with more grace and freshness of invention. He has, however, nothing of his dramatic power. His genius is rather idyllic and romantic. Although some of the figures in these Medici palace frescos are thought to be family portraits, still they hardly seem very lifelike. The subjects selected are a Nativity, and an Adoration of the Magi. In the neighborhood of the window is a choir of angels singing Hosanna, full of freshness and vernal grace. The long procession of kings riding to pay their homage, "with tedious pomp and rich retinue long," has given the artist an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... record, did the same legendary form of historic composition continue to subsist. On the other hand, as a striking antithesis to this Grecian condition of history, we find amongst the Hebrews a circumstantial deduction of their annals from the very nativity of their nation—that is, from the birth of the Patriarch Isaac, or, more strictly, of his son the Patriarch Jacob—down to the captivity of the two tribes, their restoration by Cyrus, and the dedication of the Second Temple. This Second ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... consists in familiarizing himself with these jungle avenues, and the status of an adult is largely determined by the number of trails which he can follow upon his own island. The females never learn them, since from birth to death they never leave the clearing in which the village of their nativity is situated except they be taken to mate by a male from another village, or captured in war by the enemies of ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... of our Lord one thousand four hundred and eighty-one, and but a night or two after the festival of the most blessed Nativity, the inhabitants of Zahara were sunk in profound sleep the very sentinel had deserted his post, and sought shelter from a tempest which had raged for three nights in succession, for it appeared but little probable that an enemy would be abroad during ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... dream panorama is not a literal discussion of abolitionism or states' rights. It illustrates rather the Hebraic exultation applied to all lands and times. "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord"; a gracious picture of the nativity. (Edith Storey impersonates Mary the Virgin.) "I have seen him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps" and "They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps"—for these are given symbolic pageants of ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... unique feature in the England of that day. They formed as common a method of raising revenue in the island realm of King George II. as they still do in the alleged continental portion of his realm, France, and in the land of his nativity, Germany. Indeed, the particular lottery in question was to be officered by the standing committee on lotteries, whose official business was to "secure two and a half million pounds for his Majesty" by ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... days, and a subsequent charter from Ranulf de Blundevill (12th century) licensed the abbot and monks to hold their fairs and markets before the abbey gates. A charter of John the Scot, earl of Chester, mentions fairs at the feasts of the Nativity of St John Baptist and St Michael. For many centuries the rights claimed by the abbot in connexion with the fairs gave rise to constant friction with the civic authorities, which lasted until, in the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... the rallying-point, while Virginians sought the Military Bounty Lands in the region of Chillicothe. The Middle States and the South, with their democratic ideas, constituted the dominant element in Ohio politics in the early part of her history. This dominance is shown by the nativity of the members of the Ohio legislature elected in 1820: New England furnished nine Senators and sixteen Representatives, chiefly from Connecticut; New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, seventeen Senators and twenty-one Representatives, mostly from Pennsylvania; while the South furnished nine ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... between ninety and a hundred persons, including men, women and children. After the captain had distributed some presents among these people, and shewn to the chief the gardens which had been made, he returned on board, and spent the remainder of the day in the celebration of his royal master's nativity. Captain Furneaux and all his officers were invited upon the occasion; and the seamen were enabled, by a double allowance, to partake ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... passion for self and boundary is done, that Compassion for neighbor and nation is the art of the future; crying the end of the national soul and the stroke of the hour for the birth of the world-soul; crying to America, the only temple, the sole house of nativity, to put on again her youthful magic, to ignite afresh the Gleam of her Founders, to arise to her superb and heroic destiny. They sat in silence until the tap at the door. It was the one-armed soldier, who came in, regarded the stove critically inside ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort

... of Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the last crop of autumn apples was gathered; the master was content with the results, paid off Vassily, and gave him an extra sum as reward for his ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... Oh, the mystery, the mystery of that growth from the casting of the soul as a seed into the dark earth, until the time when, led through all natural changes and cleansed of weakness, it is borne from the fields of its nativity for the long service. ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... of light could be seen the long face of a horse or the horned head of a cow. There was a steady sound of munching. The scene was not unlike many paintings of the stable in Bethlehem on the night of the Nativity. And here, too, justice was being born in a dark age. There had been too many sudden deaths, too many jumped claims, too much drinking, too much shooting, too many strong men, too few weak men, until finally—for time, during the long winter, hung upon the ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... great classes, privileged, common and simple. Privileged octaves are further divided into three orders. Those of the first order are the octaves of Easter and Pentecost; the octaves of Epiphany and Corpus Christi belong to the second order, and the octaves of the Nativity and Ascension belong to the third. The Christmas octave admits feasts of saints, but the octaves of Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost do not admit any feasts (Tit. V., sec, 3). A day within an octave has a right to first Vespers, and the antiphon and response ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley

... her on what day and at what hour she was born. They also inquired concerning the birthdays of her parents, and other events of her life. Timotheus had informed her that the emperor had ordered them to cast her nativity. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... January 1493, the admiral set sail at sun-rise, standing to the north-west, having the boats a-head to lead him safe cut of shoal water. He named the port which he now quitted Navidad, or the Nativity, because he had landed there on Christmas day, escaping the dangers of the sea, and because he began there to build the first Christian colony in the new world which he had discovered. The flats through ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... to set a picture of Our Lady above the Altar in her Chapel. Long did he pray with ever- increasing fervour and much fasting that this boon might be vouchsafed him for her glory and the Convent's greater good. And one day—'twas her Nativity—he set his hand to the work, for it seemed to him that she would have it so; and he was greatly humbled that such heavenly kindness should attend so vile a sinner. Day by day he set apart some hours for this service; and he limned a face so fair and radiant, with woman's love and light of ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless

... observed in painting. Only contiguous parts of space and only one moment of time should be represented inside a single frame. Both these unities were violated in old religious paintings where sometimes the Nativity, Flight into Egypt, Crucifixion, and Resurrection were all ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... existence. As a statesman, as a gentleman, as a man, the Marquis of Londonderry was the Bayard of political chivalry, sans peur et sans reproche, and it reflects no slight disgrace on this monument-rearing age, that neither in the land of his nativity nor in that of his adoption has any memorial been raised worthy of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... years; a licensed broker; nativity, American; temperament, sanguine; habit, slightly obese; constitution, robust. History of the ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... of Jupiter and Mars, the Chaldean; with the Sun, the Egyptian; with Venus, the Mohammedan; with Mercury, the Christian; and the conjunction of Jupiter with the Moon will one day bring forth the religion of Antichrist. Cecco d'Ascoli had already blasphemously calculated the nativity of Christ, and deduced from it his death upon the Cross. For this he was burnt at the stake in 1327, at Florence. Doctrines of this sort ended by simply darkening men's whole perceptions of ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... Denis no assistance came from the King, and it was only on the 8th of September that, having received reinforcements, Joan of Arc was at length enabled to make a determined attack. It was a very high and holy day in the Church Calendar—the Feast of the Virgin's Nativity—and, not unmindful of the sacredness of that feast-day, Joan of Arc had determined to make a general attack; for 'the better the day the better the deed!' was her feeling on that anniversary. In those times the western limit of Paris was where ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower

... himself, Charles surrounded himself that night with cheer. A band of wandering minstrels had arrived to sing, the great fire blazed, the dogs around it gnawed the bones of the Christmas feast. But when the troubadours would have sung of the Nativity, he bade them in a great voice to have done. So they sang of war, and, remembering his cousin Philip, his ...
— The Truce of God • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... relict of five husbands, and the happy mother of twenty-seven children, the tender pledges of our chaste embraces. Had old Rome, instead of England, been the place of my nativity and abode, what honours might I not have expected to my person, and immunities to my fortune? But I need not tell you that virtue of this sort meets with no encouragement in our northern climate. Children, instead of freeing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... populate' in a day, a year. You, sair, come from the East, hein? Sair, relativement, effort against effort, they have not done as much in the East in feefty years as we have done in the Southwest in twenty,—believe that, sair." It was that same feeling for the State, that quick, leaping passion of nativity that Steering had thus far found in every Missourian with whom he had come ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... carvings; among these are two very curious slabs with figures under arches, one of which was found under the pavement of S. Crisogono, while the other, closely resembling it in style, came from S. Domenico. The former shows the Flight into Egypt and the Massacre of the Innocents; the latter the Nativity and Adoration of the Kings. They probably formed part of a chancel enclosure. There are also fragments of ciboria, altar frontals, or sarcophagi, while a column sawn in two has furnished decorated jambs to the door of the upper church. On a lintel of ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... of it (32) the reader will observe a reference to the grand epoch of the creation of the world. So also in Ethelwerd, who closely follows the "Saxon Annals". It is allowed by all, that considerable difficulty has occurred in fixing the true epoch of Christ's nativity (33), because the Christian aera was not used at all till about the year 532 (34), when it was introduced by Dionysius Exiguus; whose code of canon law, joined afterwards with the decretals of the popes, became as much ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown



Words linked to "Nativity" :   virgin birth, death, renascence, reincarnation, nascency, birth, nascence, alteration, theological doctrine



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