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More "Irreverence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... known now in the life which, moment to moment, is his own. The extreme sense of this may take on the expression of the pantheistic mood, as here in Shelley's words, without any logical irreverence: for pantheism is that great mood of the human spirit which it is, permanent, recurring in every age and race, as natural to Wordsworth as to Shelley, because of the fundamental character of these facts and the inevitability of the knowledge of them. The ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... senses and my imagination; it is religion set to music and painting, and artistic religion does not suit me. The incessant passing of people through the church, too, disturbs one, and gives an unpleasant air of irreverence to the whole.... I think I might like to go to a cathedral for afternoon service, much as I like to spend my Sunday leisure in reading Milton, though I should not be satisfied to make my whole devotional exercises consist in reading "Paradise Lost." A wretchedly weak, poor sermon; how strange ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... for ignoble things; The strife for triumph more than truth; The hardening of the heart, that brings Irreverence for the ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... legal existence at all, and he had been heard to express his surprise that the twelve judges had not long since decided this state of things to be unconstitutional, and overturned the American government by mandamus. His disgust increased, accordingly, as Captain Truck's irreverence manifested itself in stronger terms, and there was great danger that the harmony, which had hitherto prevailed between the parties, would be ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... of some of the most respected and venerated saints among the Franciscans; going so far, indeed, as to bestow upon his finest cat the name of Saint Francis himself, the founder of the order. It is difficult to conceive of such irreverence in a priest, himself a member of that great order in the Catholic Church; and it is this, if anything, which would show a weakness of the mind. But even here, let us say, not as excuse, but in mitigation ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... in disorder on the floor, and the sight of this confusion produced a favorable excitement and reaction; she succeeded in expressing herself in husky accents and broken, hardly intelligible sentences, so far as to scold them sharply for their irreverence for the precious documents, and for the disorder they had created. The waiting-woman proceeded to pick them up: but Damia again became unconscious. Gorgo bathed her brow and tried to pour some wine ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... if I am correct in my estimate of them, will afford a very sufficient answer to those who think that the scientific habit of mind tends to irreverence. ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... prophane irreverence of this conduct more striking than its ingratitude. When from reading that our Saviour was "the brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his person, upholding all things by the word of his power," we go on ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... the irreverence in making S. Joachim's friends arrive in tall hats and dress clothes? Why should they not read the Giornale di Sicilia and play cards? Where is the irreverence in making the children celebrate his daughter's birth by dancing to a piano? ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... she had returned to her childhood's home to find men who had danced her on their knees bending low before her, and proclaiming themselves her humble vassals. It was intoxicating. She had always looked up to Austin with awe, as one too remote and holy for girlish irreverence. And now! No wonder her sex laughed ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... the world we must use everything that will save and reject everything that will injure. This requires careful and close attention. You must keep in mind the question, 'Will Jesus come here and save souls?' Carefully eliminate all that will show irreverence for holy things or disrespect for the church. Carefully introduce wherever you can the direct teachings of the Gospel, and then your entertainments will be the power of God unto salvation. The entertainments of the church need to be ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... had much in common—although the one was full of saintly fire and the other, at times, of defiant irreverence. It was Pierce whose visits Toombs most enjoyed at his own home, with whom he afterward talked of God and religion. The good bishop lived to bury the devoted Christian wife of the Georgia statesman, and finally, when the dross of worldliness was gone, ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... this Sabbath morning struck dismay to Jock's orthodox soul, clinging tenaciously to its ancient traditions. Lawyer Ed, too, seemed to have donned the spirit of irreverence with the bonnet, and was conducting himself as no elder of the kirk should have behaved even at a St. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... irreverence is unpleasant in itself, and yet when complication is added to it few of us can avoid laughing, and I am afraid that some considerably enjoy objectionable allusions. To tell a man to go to h—-, or that he deserves to go there, is merely ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... tirelessly about the sick room, damping cloths, filling the ice-bag, infiltering drops of nourishment, was: "God is good!" and these words, far from breathing a pious resignation, voiced a confidence so bold that it bordered on irreverence. Their real meaning was: Richard has still ever so much work to do in the world, curing sick people and saving their lives. God must know this, and cannot now mean to be so foolish as to WASTE ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... introduces an elaborate discussion of the different sorts of jokes, which proves the high value attached in Italy to all displays of wit. It appears that even practical jokes were not considered in bad taste, but that irreverence and grossness were tabooed as boorish. Mere obscenity is especially condemned, though it must be admitted that many jests approved of at that time would now appear intolerable. But the essential point to be aimed at then, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... the least idea of irreverence, "lowers his neck and then lifts it up again, raises up the hair-like feathers on his crop, and spreads out his tail like a fan. He then addresses the assembled birds, who strut about with their wings half opened, and answer him ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... excess, will cloy the fancy, but not so as entirely to unfit the mind for a higher species of intellectual enjoyment. We would have old and new alternate in the literary wreath, lest, by losing the comparison, the "bright lights" of other times should be treated with irreverence and neglect.] ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... never earnest. All this is a purely artistic world, a world of decorative arabesque incident, intended to please, scarcely ever to move, or to move, at most, like some Decameronian tale of Isabella and the Basil Plant, or Constance and Martuccio. On the other hand, there is none of the grotesque irreverence of Pulci. Boiardo and Ariosto are not in earnest; they are well aware that their heroes and heroines are mere modern men and women tricked out in pretty chivalric trappings, driven wildly about from Paris to Cathay, and from Spain ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... We should come to Church to worship God with the best member that we have; we should come with the feeling—"I was glad when they said unto me we will go into the House of the Lord;" "I love the place, O Lord, wherein Thine honour dwells." All slovenliness in the performance of the service, all irreverence, or signs of inattention, and indifference, are tokens of a want of thankfulness. We should get this thought fixed in our minds when we enter Church,—I have come here to-day mainly to thank God for His great ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... the other mark of a personality so freshly minted as to have taken no more than two impressions. Rory was her guide, philosopher, and crony. He was her overwhelming ideal of power, wisdom, and goodness; he was her help in ages past, her hope for years to come (no irreverence intended here; quite the reverse, for if true family life existed, we should better apprehend the meaning of "Our Father, who art in heaven"); he was her Ancient of Days; her shield, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... far more assured in the times when the spiritual saturnalia were allowed than now. The irreverence which was not dangerous then, is now intolerable. It is a bad sign for a man's peace in his own convictions when he cannot stand turning the canvas of his life occasionally upside down, or reversing it in a mirror, as painters do with their pictures that they may judge ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... family after the ark landed," whispered Shif'less Sol to Henry, in a tone that was far from irreverence. But Paul said aloud: ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... from complete collapse by remembering that it was not irreverence, but simply spiritual ignorance on the part of Anne that was responsible for this extraordinary petition. She tucked the child up in bed, mentally vowing that she should be taught a prayer the very next day, and was leaving the room with the light ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Let Irreverence stay her ribald tongue before these illustrious writings, and Indecency vomit her own nastiness elsewhere ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... that she might be known from all other deer and her life thus preserved. For no good Hellen, or Greek, would slay for food any animal sacred to a god. This beautiful golden-horned hind Eurystheus ordered Hercules to bring to him alive, for the irreverence of the King did not go so far ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... earth by a priori theories, and cosmogonies invented in the cloister; and dared, poor, simple, ignorant mortals, to fancy that they could comprehend and gauge the ways of Him Whom the heaven and the heaven of heavens could not contain. This, this is irreverence: but it is neither irreverence nor want of faith, if a man, awed by the mystery which encompasses him from the cradle to the grave, shall lay his hand upon his mouth, with Job, and obey the voice which cries to him from earth and heaven—"Be still, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... an instant sensation; it was denounced for its scandalous irreverence by the members of the Historical Society, especially by those who had Dutch ancestors, but was received with roars of laughter by the rest of the population. Those who read it now (from curiosity, for its merriment has long since departed, leaving it dull as any thrice-repeated ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... crowd had been composed of Americans, we should have anticipated an unhappy time for Smith; but good, loyal Canadians, by the limitations of temperament, could get no further than a spirit of manifest irreverence. ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... cruelest offence to persons of a different temper; for, if a loyalist would be greatly affronted by hearing any indecencies offered to the person of a temporal prince, how much more bitterly must a man who sincerely believes in such a being as the Almighty, feel any irreverence or insult shewn to His name, His honour, or His institution? And, notwithstanding the impious character of the present age, and especially of many among those whose more immediate business it is to lead men, as well by example as precept, into the ways of piety, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... between Pilgrims and Puritans. And she didn't know why we came over here, and why it was not the same God in England, and if all the gods in India were idols. Chilian, you shouldn't encourage her irreverence. It looks ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... then, even those of Riouffe, may be submitted without irreverence to earnest discussion. When a tenth part of the funds annually devoted to researches in and examination of old chronicles, is applied to making extracts from the registers relative to the French Revolution, we shall certainly see many other hideous circumstances that revolt ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... heartily at the paragraph. The sheet was printed at night, after the king had placed his initials to the copy. In the morning several persons came to condole with me, but I received their sympathy with great irreverence. I merely laughed at Count Clary, who said I would surely submit to the operation; and just as he uttered the words the three surgeons came ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... God, so precious, so inspiring, is treated with such utter irreverence and contempt in the calculations of us mortals as this same air of heaven. A sermon on oxygen, if one had a preacher who understood the subject, might do more to repress sin than the most orthodox discourse to show when and how and why sin came. A minister ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... six this evening; I hope you will be regular attendants. You live in a godless house; take care that the atmosphere does not affect you. Mr. Tom Lester never entered the House of God after I spoke to him about the irreverence of his yawns during the sermon! Good-bye, and I hope you will prove pleasant neighbours. That ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... because I . . . am holy"; and Ecclus. 10:2: "As the judge of the people is himself, so also are his ministers." Consequently, there can be no doubt that the wicked sin by exercising the ministry of God and the Church, by conferring the sacraments. And since this sin pertains to irreverence towards God and the contamination of holy things, as far as the man who sins is concerned, although holy things in themselves cannot be contaminated; it follows that such a sin is mortal ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Disrespect. — N. disrespect, disesteem, disestimation[obs3]; disparagement &c. (dispraise) 932, (detraction) 934. irreverence; slight, neglect, spretae injuria formae [Lat][Vergil], superciliousness &c. (contempt) 930. vilipendency|, vilification, contumely, affront, dishonor, insult, indignity, outrage, discourtesy &c. 895; practical ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... food and drink, the free-thinker Boutraix proposes that they shall equip themselves from these with costumes not unsuitable to the knight, squire, and page of the legend, and they do so, Bascara refusing to take part in the game, and protesting strongly against their irreverence. At last midnight comes, and they cry, "Where is Ines de las Sierras?" lifting their glasses to her health. Suddenly there sounds from the dark end of the great hall the fateful "Here am I!" and there comes forward a figure in a white shroud, which seats itself in the vacant place assigned by tradition ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... letter, written by the earl of Essex, just before his execution, to another nobleman, a passage somewhat resembling this, with which, I believe every reader will be pleased, though it is so serious and solemn that it can scarcely be inserted without irreverence. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... other reason, because of the long delay which it implied, it would be utterly fruitless. But the possible danger of exposing a Constitution, framed and adopted in the earlier and more conservative days of the Republic, to be torn in pieces in these times of lawless irreverence and change, is too great for any wise man willingly to encounter. The very equality of the States in the Senate, which was won by the revolutionary sacrifices and valor of the smaller States, now almost forgotten, ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... and faced the Squire with a solemnity presently yielding to his natural desire to grin at any form of joke, and his belief that when the Squire indulged such flagrant irreverence as this he must be joking. Yet he answered evasively: "You hearn't he says now he hain't ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... but she went to church regularly and made all the responses, pleasing the clergy, and deriving some solace herself from the occupation—at least she always said the services were soothing. She was genuinely shocked by a sign of irreverence, and would sing the most jingling nonsense as a hymn with perfect gravity and without perceiving that there was any flaw in it. In these matters she showed no originality at all. She would repeat "my duty towards my neighbour is to love him as myself, and to do to all men as ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... to desolation; the heart of the land I love seems to beat in the silent night gathering around me; amid things eternal, I touch the familiar and the kindly earth. Moving, I step softly, as though my footfall were an irreverence. A turn in the road, and there is wafted to me a faint perfume, that of meadow-sweet. Then I see a light glimmering in the farmhouse window—a little ray against the blackness of the great hillside, below which the water sleeps. . ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... that I might be impressed by the sound as well as by the knowledge o' th' fact—"for," saith I, a-hammering away on a shoe for Joe Pebbles's brown nag King Edward (though I had often reasoned with Joe on account o' th' name, first because o' its irreverence, second on account o' th' horse not being that kind o' a horse, as 'twas a mare)—"for," saith I, as I made th' shoe, saith I, "'tis sure a great wickedness to steal a lass's sweetheart away from her!" saith I. And so 'twas; but, for all I could do, I ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... upon us—and passed forth between the tall stone gate-posts, as uncertain as the wandering Arabs where our tent might next be pitched. Providence took me by the hand, and—an oddity of dispensation which, I trust, there is no irreverence in smiling at—has led me, as the newspapers announce, while I am writing from the Old Manse, into a custom-house.[76] As a story-teller I have often contrived strange vicissitudes for my imaginary ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... a fierce hurt challenge in his eyes for irreverence and incredulity and even perhaps good-natured jeers, but Garry, sensing something big and unfamiliar, held out his hand. Kenny wrung ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... for Kitty—the only worshiper of the professor's gods in Williamson Valley—to supply that companionship which seems so necessary even to those whose souls are so far removed from material wants. In short, as Little Billy put it, with a boy's irreverence, "Kitty rode herd on the professor." And, strangely enough to them all, Kitty seemed ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... such solemn surroundings that our first plays were played. And the stories that were acted were Bible stories. There was no thought of irreverence in such acting. On the contrary, these plays were performed "to exort the mindes of common people to good devotion and ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... others, and is brought to the level of the only creature whom he cannot change or influence, an outcast of the streets, a boy whom the mere animal appetites have turned into a small fiend. Never having had his mind awakened, evil is this creature's good; avarice, irreverence, and vindictiveness, are his nature; sorrow has no place in his memory; and from his brutish propensities the philosopher can take nothing away. The juxtaposition of two people whom such opposite means have put in the same moral position is a stroke of excellent art. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... let a Syrian take up new politics, join the Young Turk Party, forswear religion, or grow cynical about accepted doctrine, and the angle of his tarboosh shows it, just as surely as the angle of the London Cockney's "bowler" betrays irreverence and the New York gangster's "lid" expresses self-contempt ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... keenest irony and bitterest sarcasms. In his last years he even became cynical and rugged and vulgar, in which we may of course trace the influence of his tavern associates. It is to his credit that he did not sink into Byronic misanthropy and bitter self-lacerating scorn, or even into Heine's irreverence and persiflage. ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... way, in Christian Europe, we may contrast Dunbar's pious "Ballat of Our Lady" with his "Kynd Kittok," in which God has his eye on the soul of an intemperate ale-wife who has crept into Paradise. "God lukit, and saw her lattin in, and leugh His heart sair." Examples of this kind of sportive irreverence are common enough; their root is in human nature: and they could not be absent in the mythology of savage or of ancient peoples. To Zeus the myths of this kind would come to be attached in ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... he gradually accustomed himself to regard religious things. His father's habit, in the long graces which preceded each meal, rather wearied the temper of his son. The precocious young skeptic, with characteristic irreverence, ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... no irreverence but a vast derogation of Shad Wells. Somehow her point of view was ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... transgression because some sudden calamity, surprising him, has caused this habitual transgression to be also a final one. Could the man have had any reason even dimly to foresee his own sudden death, there would have been a new feature in his act of intemperance—a feature of presumption and irreverence, as in one that, having known himself drawing near to the presence of God, should have suited his demeanour to an expectation so awful. But this is no part of the case supposed. And the only new element in ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... must not, indeed. Do you know this irreverence in speaking of the members of so sacred a profession is not at all what ought to be done. Don't Edgar. Dear papa, I may be foolish, but I ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... "Irreverence for pervading custom," went on Bob, "is shown by certain men when they smoke, with no word of apology, in a lady's reception-room, or track mud in on their boots, as if it was a country club. Some people enjoy having their ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... that in a long and varied experience with them, these traits have been characteristic of those I have met. But it is not my lack of reverence that I intended to write about, it is the contradictory way in which those who are under their charge view this matter. The practical, effective and active irreverence of professing Christians astonishes as much as it puzzles me. They believe, or assume to believe, in the sacredness of the ministry and in the reverence due ministers as such; how do they show it? It seems to me that the architectural custom of elevating the pulpit above ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... steamer in which the central saloon was to hang perfectly still while the outer hull of the ship pitched and rolled with the moving sea. It was a failure, but the theory was sound and looked practicable. At any rate, it is a parable of what may be in our lives. If I might venture, without seeming irreverence, to modernise and so to illustrate this command of our Lord's, I would say, that He here bids us do for our life's voyage across a stormy sea, exactly what the 'Bessemer' ship was an attempt to do in its region—so to poise and control the oscillations ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... whether the showman or the priests are to blame for my irreverence, or whether it is the fault of the system itself. The argument in favor of the adoration of images is that they make impressions on the senses which aid devotion; but, if the impressions made on my senses are to be considered, the whole tendency is to debase the immortal Maker of ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... full-grown brethren. It was like the flush of an Arctic summer, blossoming all over, out of and into the stillness, the loneliness, and the chill rigor of winter. Though authoritative in his class without any effort, he was indulgent to everything but conceit, slovenliness of mind and body, irreverence, and above all handling the Word of God deceitfully. On one occasion a student having delivered in the Hall a discourse tinged with Arminianism, he said, "That may be the gospel according to Dr. Macknight, or the gospel according ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... A.M., Master of the Grammar School of Kingston upon-Hull, 1789, p. 11. BOSWELL. Southey (Life of Wesley, i. 41), mentioning the names given at Oxford to Wesley and his followers, continues:—'One person with less irreverence and more learning observed, in reference to their methodical manner of life, that a new sect of Methodists was sprung up, alluding to the ancient school of physicians known by that name.' Wesley, in 1744, wrote The Humble ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... time, also, he was conscious of some irreverence in designating that stranger, even in his secret thoughts, by the sobriquet of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... men moved about slowly in their creased black clothes, or stood in groups talking covertly of the corn planting which had begun; there was an evident desire to compensate by lowered voices and lack of animated speech for the manifest irreverence of the topic. ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... cypripedium speeds its parting guest with a sticking-plaster smeared all over its back. And so we might continue almost indefinitely. From the stand-point of frivolous human etiquette we smile, perhaps, at customs apparently so whimsical and unusual, forgetting that such a smile may partake somewhat of irreverence. For what are they all but the divinely imposed conditions of interassociation? say, rather, interdependence, between the flower and the insect, which is its ordained companion, its faithful messenger, ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... she thought of Francis Markrute. He was so immensely rich, she could not help a relieved sigh. There would be money at all events. But she knew that could not be the reason. She was aware of her son's views about rich wives. She was aware, too, that with all his sporting tastes and modern irreverence of tradition, underneath he was of a proud, reserved nature, intensely proud of the honor of his ancient name. What then could be the reason for this engagement? Well, she would soon know. It was half-past eight ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... the nineteenth century a woman by the name of Lady Morgan, who was the author of several novels and books of travel. Although her record in intelligence and morals is good, John Croker, who regularly reviewed her books, accuses her works of licentiousness, profligacy, irreverence, blasphemy, libertinism, disloyalty and atheism. There are twenty-six pages of this in one review only, and any paragraph would be worth the quoting for its ferocity. After this attack it was Macaulay who said he hated Croker like ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... bitter this very sensible reflection could be. It disturbed his placid temper. He felt like railing at fate for ill- usage. Fortunately, Mulai Hamed had no further cause to chide the Effendi on account of his seeming irreverence, or Dick's copying of Stump's methods might not have been ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... to have made on very sacred subjects— remarks which most people would recognise as irreverent, if made by grown-up people, but which are assumed to be innocent when made by children who are unconscious of any irreverence, the strange conclusion being drawn that they are therefore innocent when repeated by a ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... world's famous sea-fights have been fought, they were already antediluvian. A few years later I saw a long range of them enjoying their last repose on the skids in a navy-yard; and a bystander, with equal truth and irreverence, called them pop-guns. One almost felt that the word should be uttered in a whisper, out of respect for their feelings. But the whole equipment of the ship, though up to date in itself, was so far of the past that I recall ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... Rome resounded, on account of the prolonged strife with the Church of Constantinople, set himself down to discuss the same topics which they were wrangling over by the light—to him so clear and precious—of the Greek philosophy. There was perhaps in this employment neither reverence nor irreverence. He had not St. Augustine's intense and almost passionate conviction of the truth of Christianity; but he was quite willing to accept it and to discourse upon it, as he discoursed on ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... to shock you, Mr. Allen," replied Mercy, in a gentler tone. "Pray forgive me. I do not think, however, there is half as much real irreverence in saying that the Lord expects us to look out for ourselves and keep out of mischief as there is in teaching that he made a whole world full of people so weak and miserable that they couldn't look after themselves, and had to be ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... upper class, the manners of which she retains, without respecting its laws"); but the present meaning is quite different from this, the phrase being now used as a euphuistic designation of a disreputable woman. French slang is saturated with irreverence. A common term for an emaciated-looking man is to call him an "ecce homo," and a "grippe Jesus" is thieves' slang for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... which I find in these Stratfordolaters, these Shakesperoids, these thugs, these bangalores, these troglodytes, these herumfrodites, these blatherskites, these buccaneers, these bandoleers, is their spirit of irreverence. It is detectable in every utterance of theirs when they are talking about us. I am thankful that in me there is nothing of that spirit. When a thing is sacred to me it is impossible for me to be irreverent toward it. I cannot ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... 'Much more than you think,' they replied; 'we are no longer to be kept in darkness and ignorance respecting these matters:' and then they would produce their books and read paragraphs, making such comments that every person was scandalized; they cared nothing about the Pope, and even spoke with irreverence of the bones of Saint James. However, the matter was soon bruited about, and a commission was dispatched from our see to collect the books and burn them. This was effected, and the skippers were either punished or reprimanded, since which I have heard nothing more of them. I could ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... hour the following morning, and while they were having breakfast angry and excited voices were heard alongside; and as they eagerly listened to the picturesque flow of profane language intermixed with a few eloquent remarks to God to forgive such irreverence, their minds were permeated with fear lest suspicion would fall on them during the paroxysm of alternate rage and godliness. Plunker was a powerful man, and when his anger was roused they knew by ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... Lord tak's sic guid care o' the body, Thamas," retorted Macwha, with less of irreverence than appeared in his words, "maybe he winna objec' to gie a look to my puir soul as weel; for they say it's worth a hantle mair. I wish he wad, for he kens better nor me hoo to ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... flower-beds and old summer-house and air of peace. No one troubled the birds in that place, and they had grown shameless in their familiarity with dignities—a jackdaw having once done his best to steal the Doctor's bandana handkerchief and the robins settling on his hat. Irreverence has limits, and in justice to a privileged friend it ought to be explained that the Doctor wore on these occasions an aged wide-awake and carried no gold-headed stick. His dog used to follow him step by step as he fed the birds and pottered among the ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... Through a motive of truthfulness he became false. And in this particular instance he would, at any rate, have become false, whatever had been the native constitution of his mind. It was a mere impossibility to reconcile any real allegiance to his church with his known irreverence to religion. But upon far more subjects than this Pope was habitually false in the quality of his thoughts, always insincere, never by any accident in earnest, and consequently many times caught in ruinous self-contradiction. Is that the sort of writer to furnish an advantageous study for the precious ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... doctrines of passive obedience and divine indefeasible right, which found their way into the world by the freedom of publication? Even that great work, the treatise of Locke on Government, itself, which is justly regarded as the political Bible (I mean no irreverence) of Englishmen, would never have seen the light, but that it was written to refute the base and detestable tenets of Barclay and Filmer. Their political treatises were false and slavish, and even illegal; for they were the same for which Dr. Sacheverel was afterwards impeached by the Parliament; ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... mind was not unpoetical, has done his utmost, by interesting his reader in our native commodity by interspersing rural imagery, and incidental digressions, by clothing small images in great words, and by all the writer's arts of delusion, the meanness naturally adhering, and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and manufacture, sink him under insuperable oppression; and the disgust which blank verse, encumbering and encumbered, superadds to an unpleasing subject, soon repels the reader, however willing to ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... passionately, "your Bible prophesies the same irreverence. Look at your text in 2d Peter, third chapter, seventh and twelfth verses. Are not the elements to melt with fervent heat? Are not the 'heavens to be folded together like a scroll?' Are not 'the rocks to melt, the stars to fall, and the moon to be turned ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... walked in front of the Chapter in his pluvial, carrying a silver stick nearly as tall as himself, making the tiles of the pavement re-echo with its blows. During High Mass and the choir in the evening he walked about the naves to check any irreverence on the part of the congregation or any inattention on that of the staff. At eight o'clock at night in the winter, and at nine in summer, he locked the door of the staircase leading to the upper cloister, putting the key in his ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... circumstances lending themselves in a wonderful way to the comparison which French writers love to make, but which many of us must always feel, however spotless the sufferer, to have a certain irreverence in them. But if ever martyr were worthy of being called a partaker of the sufferings of Christ it was surely this girl, free, if ever human creature was, from self-seeking, or thought of reward, or ambitious hope, in whose heart there had ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... enjoyed laughter and was always at home with humanity, knew very well how to be silent. There was a saying she cared for, "God speaks to man in the silence;" perhaps she felt there was a suspicion of irreverence in talking to any one, even to Dion, about her aspiration to God. If, on his return home, he asked her how she had passed the day, she often said only, "I've been very happy." Then he said to himself, "What more can I want? I'm able to ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... special rites, a Mass of the Holy Spirit, of which the efficacy was so miraculous that it never met with any opposition from the divine will; God was forced to grant whatever was asked of Him in this form, however rash and importunate might be the petition. No idea of impiety or irreverence attached to the rite in the minds of those who, in some of the great extremities of life, sought by this singular means to take the kingdom of heaven by storm. The secular priests generally refused to say the Mass of the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... softly and reverently in an old-fashioned attic. Much of the irreverence of the young generation is due to the fact that men have stopped building the wide, deep fireplaces of old and the old-fashioned style of attic. When you take the family hearthstone and the prayer and memory closet out of a home you ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... and mischief upon the clergy ... is their packing their sermons so full of similitudes" (p. 41.). Eachard has a museum of curiosities in this line. The Puritan Pulpit, however, far outstrips even the incredible nonsense and irreverence which he adduces. Let any one curious in such matters dip into a collection of Scotch Sermons of the seventeenth century. Sir W. Scott, in some of his works, has endeavoured to give a faint idea ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... people," he said to me, soon after his adventure with the "boys." "Such a compound of devotion and irreverence, meanness and generosity, cunning and child-like openness, was never seen. When I give Holy Communion with you, sir, on Sunday morning, my heart melts at the seraphic tenderness with which they approach the altar. That striking of the breast, that eager look on their faces, and that 'Cead mile ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... of the doctor's comprehension. To Scott, the very religion that he sought to question, was a pure white lily reverently to be placed beneath his microscope. To Kathryn, it was a red, red rose to be worn flauntingly upon the apex of her Sunday hat. On week days, she was developing a cheap irreverence which never could be in danger of turning into anything more vital. It needs some brains and no small amount of reverence in any man, before he can become an honest agnostic; in both brains and ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... on the cliffs gave more than a single glance at "Israel's Tabernacle," as, without the least irreverence, he had named his boat. But, using the same ports as the smugglers, he was often brought into close relations with them. They asked him for information which was freely given, as from one friend to another. They trusted him, for though often interrogated by the ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... flogged him for such irreverence, we are not told; nevertheless, the fact is suggestive of an element in the boy's make-up to which the ingenious skeptic may appeal with success. Possibly it was only the native humor of the boy, which, with his love of fun, cropped out on that occasion. It was irreverence, however, whatever ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... others, from Boccaccio downward, it has at least one quality that some greater achievements do not possess: it is absolutely pure in thought, word and suggestion. If it is filled with nonsense, that nonsense at any rate is innocent. It is modest, cleanly and without malice or irreverence. A worthier and nobler work might have been written; a purer work could not ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... equals him to, or rather what Gods he puts him above. And Glaucus took no exception to being praised at the expense of his art's patron deities; nor yet did they send any judgement on athlete or poet for irreverence; both continued to be honoured in Greece, one for his might, and the other for this even more than for his other odes. Do not be surprised, then, that when I wished to conform to the canons of my art and find an illustration, I took an exalted one, as reason ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... my friends, not hating my enemies, but detesting superstition." Despite the admiration of the people, the powers of the state could not forget that the man so enthusiastically received was the great apostle of mockery and irreverence. The government gave its last kick to the dead lion by ordering the papers not to comment on his death. The church laid an interdict on his burial in consecrated ground,—an hour or two too late, as it proved. His ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... faiths; why should we be alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God believes. Long as I have lived, and many blasphemers as I have heard and seen, I have never yet heard or witnessed any direct and conscious blasphemy or irreverence; but of indirect and habitual, enough. Where is the man who is guilty of direct and personal insolence to ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... and argued, in no spirit of irreverence, but simply with the logic of her race, and the sweet reasonableness that is a vital element of the Hindu faith at its best. But, after that final confession, Aunt Julia, pained and bewildered, had retired from the field. And Lilamani, flung back ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... children. A rough earth-hint, a Rabelaisian ditty, a gross amazing jest, a chuckle of deep Satyric humour;—and the monstrous "thickness" of Life, its friendly aplomb and nonchalance, its grotesque irreverence, its shy shrewd common-sense, its tough fibres, and portentous indifference to "distinction"; tumbles us over in the mud—for all our "aloofness"—and roars over us, like a ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... simple statement, that if the people of a Territory wanted slavery they would have it, and if they did not, they would not let it be forced on them, was fully justified by the facts of American history. It has been characteristic of the American people that, without irreverence for law, they have not allowed it to stand in the way of their natural development: they have not, as a rule, driven rough-shod over law, but have quietly allowed undesirable laws ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... me say that if there should seem to be the faintest tinge of irreverence in aught I write, I tell my story badly. There was no irreverence in Fishin' Jimmy. He possessed a deep and profound veneration for all things spiritual and heavenly; but it was the veneration of a little child, mingled as is that child's with perfect confidence and utter frankness. And he ...
— Fishin' Jimmy • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... limited study of the prevailing attitude towards sex and reproduction convinces one that back of the greatest sexual problems of our times is the almost universal secrecy, disrespect, vulgarity, and irreverence concerning every aspect of sex and reproduction. Even expectant motherhood is commonly concealed as long as possible, and all reference to the developing new life is usually accompanied with blushes and tones suggestive of some great ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... his progress from shrine to shrine upon his knees, and saying a penitential prayer at each. Light-footed girls ran across the path along which he crept, or sported with their friends close by the shrines where he was kneeling. The pilgrim took no heed, and the girls meant no irreverence; for in Italy religion jostles along side by side with business and sport, after a fashion of its own, and people are accustomed to kneel down and pray, or see others praying, between two fits of merriment, or ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not the only person who observed the "irreverence" of Martius. A priest of Jupiter, coming out of the Temple, saw the whole thing and made his own comments. He knew Aurelius Lucanus, the Advocate, slightly, but not ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... brain of the soutar, he undid his parcel, and after carefully enveloping his own violin in the paper, took the old wife of the soutar, and proceeded to perform upon her a trick which in a merry moment his master had taught him, and which, not without some feeling of irreverence, he had occasionally practised upon his ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... more than superficially parted. There can be little doubt that the four months which he spent in Geneva in 1754 marked a very critical time in the formation of some of the most memorable of his opinions. He came from Paris full of inarticulate and smouldering resentment against the irreverence and denial of the materialistic circle which used to meet at the house of D'Holbach. What sort of opinions he found prevailing among the most enlightened of the Genevese pastors we know from an abundance of sources. D'Alembert had ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... traces a little deeper some pathway that tends toward a habit. The mistake is often made of thinking that habits can be formed only by "taking thought." It is true that some of the finest habits of life are built into character with painstaking effort, but untidiness and selfishness and irreverence and all their kin reach fullest unfolding in the thoughtless outflow of activity, ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... chafe, and moan. It knows not what it wants, but it knows that it feels pain and wants something to relieve that pain. The old things are beginning to totter and fall, and ideas rendered sacred by years of observance are being brushed aside with a startling display of irreverence. Under the surface of our civilization we may hear the straining and groaning of the ideas and principles that are striving to force their way out on ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... One had sent forth a portion of His own nature to dwell in these forms of frail mortality and imperfection, and no darkness, no sorrow, nor erring of ours could reach to Him; might we not think,—God knows, I said, that I would be guilty of no irreverence or presumption,-but might we not think that with infinite consideration and pity he looks down upon us struggling with our load; upon our weakness and trouble, upon our ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... into conversation. We spoke a good deal to-day on the subject of religion, the difference between Christianity and Mahometanism, and, above all, the absurdity of their repeating the Koran, like so many parrots, without understanding one word of what they say; and the irreverence of addressing God in words they do not understand, so that their hearts can take no part in their prayers. They agreed that it would be better to learn God's law, instead of trusting merely to their hadjis, who are often as ignorant as themselves. A respectable old Bruni man, speaking of ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... Mary Carvel, in a tone of gentle reproach. She thought she detected the far-off shadow of a possible irreverence in her sister's tone. Macaulay again interposed, while Paul and I endeavored to avoid each other's eyes, lest we should be overtaken by an ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... words so sway his enraptured flock, mangles the Holy Scriptures with a fine irreverence, and pours forth his doctrine with an entirely self-satisfied indifference to reason and common sense. Nor has love accomplished its perfect work, for the interloper who stands at the entry is ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the warnings of history repeat themselves!" he said suddenly.. "An age of mockery, sham sentiment, and irreverence has always preceded a downfall,—can it be possible that we are already receiving hints of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... been pronounced, Malling settled himself to listen. He felt tensely interested. Both Mr. Harding and Chichester were now before him, the one as performer—he used the word mentally, with no thought of irreverence—the other as audience. He could study both as he wished to study them ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... die with Him.' 'He is going to His death, that I am sure of, and I am going to be beside Him even in His death.' A constitutional pessimist! The only other notice that we have of him is that he broke in—with apparent irreverence which was not real,—with a brusque contradiction of Christ's saying that they knew the way, and they knew His goal. 'Lord! we know not whither Thou goest'—there spoke pained love fronting the black prospect of eternal ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... a more modern parallel—we must entreat our readers to pardon any seeming irreverence which may appear in the comparison—if in the letters of the correspondents of three different newspapers written from America or Germany, we were to read the same incidents told in the same language, surrounded it might be with much that was unlike, but nevertheless in themselves identical, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... carefully. The man's carelessness and seeming irreverence on that never-to-be-forgotten day might not have been intentional. He must not allow his prejudice to interfere with his judgment. That was not business. He resolved to hear what the ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... glad to notice, that the Bishop abstained from all attempts to convey religious instruction, because he was not sufficiently acquainted with the language to know what ideas he might or might not be suggesting. That was wise, and yet how unlike many hot-headed men, who rush with unintentional irreverence ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Paris he declined to be introduced to the Abbe Le Blanc, "on account of the irreverence with which he had treated Shakespeare." There can, indeed, be no doubt that the Abbe, although he wrote amusing letters, was a very prejudiced person, and his evidence and opinions touching the English stage must be received with caution. So far as can be ascertained, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... certain peculiarities of Shakespeare when mediocre French writers and critics began to find in his "barbarities" an excuse for irreverence at the expense of Racine, but he never tires of reiterating his admiration for the country of Locke and Hume, of Bolingbroke and Newton. A hundred phrases could be gathered from his correspondence extending over half a century, in which this finds serious or extravagant ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... was no irreverence in the exclamation that broke from the girl's lips. Instead, only a tense horror that touched to ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... of loving may be well enough for God," retorted Dorothy with no thought of irreverence, "but for man it is dangerous. Whom man loves he should cherish. A man who has a good, obedient daughter—one who loves him—will not imprison her, and, above all, he will not refuse to speak to her, nor will he cause her to ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... impenetrable shroud that enveloped him, and the senseless form he held on his breast. And if he tried to follow on by that clue which Armine had left him, whirlwinds of dismay seemed to sweep away all hope and trust, while he thought of wilfulness, recklessness, defiance, irreverence, and all the yet darker shades of a self- indulgent ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is as the companion of St. Paul. The Virgin never appears as the subject of any special reverence. Sometimes, as in pictures of the Magi bringing their gifts, she is seen with the child Jesus upon her lap. No attempt to represent the Trinity (an irreverence which did not become familiar till centuries later) exists in the catacombs, and no sign of the existence of the doctrine of the Trinity is to be met with in them, unless in works of a very late period. Of the doctrines of Purgatory and Hell, of Indulgences, of Absolution, no trace ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... not fit often do teach them, and is not that worse than nothing?' said Helen; 'I should think irreverence and false doctrine ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the youngest member they seem to have no stamina; they fall ill when all others are well, as if afflicted with a species of paralysis that affects body, mind, and moral sense at once. If the phrase may be used without irreverence, there is no health in them. The slightest difficulty is sufficient to send an apparently strong, hale man whining to the workhouse. He localises his complaint in his foot, or his arm, or his shoulder; ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... of the Church's style, but I do not think, were there no absolute irreverence and scandal to be feared, that she would hesitate to use such a language, were it the only one understood by such a people. St. Francis Xavier's "catechisms" were often hardly less uncouth. Still, her whole tendency would be towards restraint, order, and exterior reverence. Again, the stoical ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... Sabina's black boy: the gendarme, with shouldered musket, is trying to look as stiff and cross as possible, being scandalised by his superior officer's defection from the path of duty; and still more by the irreverence of the black boy, who is dancing, grinning, snapping his fingers, in delight at having discovered and ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... coincided with the year of the jubilee; but he passed through Italy without desiring, or deserving, the plenary indulgence which abolished the guilt or penance of the sins of the faithful. The Roman pope was offended by this neglect; accused him of irreverence to an image of Christ; and exhorted the princes of Italy to reject and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Question', which would be interesting as a literary curiosity were it not in spirit and tendency so unspeakably wicked as to excite in every rightminded reader a feeling of amazement and disgust. With a hard, brutal audacity, a blasphemous irreverence, and a sneering mockery which would do honor to the devil of Faust, it takes issue with the moral sense of mankind and the precepts of Christianity. Having ascertained that the exports of sugar and spices from the West Indies have ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... breath sharply and winced at this irreverence, but quickly remembered that she must always be sending out messages of love, north, east, south, and west. So she sent a rather spiky one in the direction of her husband who was sitting due east, so that it probably got to him at once, and smiled the particular hard firm smile which was an heirloom ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... a surprising, disconcerting greeting. But Ruth quickly understood. There was no irreverence in it, only a man's stumbling, wholehearted confession. It was a plea that she had no will to deny. The quick, warm tears of joy came welling to her eyes as she silently took his hand and led him out of the little garden and ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... venomous spirit is in that serpent Milton, that black-mouthed Zoilus, that blows his viper's breath upon those immortal devotions from the beginning to the end! This is he that wrote with all irreverence against the Fathers of our Church, and showed as little duty to the father that begat him: the same that wrote for the Pharisees, that it was lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause,—and ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... has departed with his bride on a wedding tour to Texas, each upon a bicycle. Other strange affairs will no doubt take place. By and by the bishops will see no more irreverence in bidding Godspeed to girls starting on a journey to California upon bicycles than to girls departing to Europe ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... some. Sir Wilfrid Lawson (who ought to know) replies that he is a man "who has ceased to be a gentleman and has not become a nobleman." But this is too severe a judgment. It breathes a spirit of contempt bred of familiarity, which may, without irreverence, be assumed by a member of an exalted Order, but which a humble outsider would do well to avoid. As Major Pendennis said of a similar manifestation, "It sits prettily enough on a young patrician in early life, though, nothing is so loathsome ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Syrian take up new politics, join the Young Turk Party, forswear religion, or grow cynical about accepted doctrine, and the angle of his tarboosh shows it, just as surely as the angle of the London Cockney's "bowler" betrays irreverence and the New York gangster's "lid" expresses self-contempt ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... she was saying. I asked her the purport of her prayers; she told me she said the "Our Father," and then the "Hail Mary:" at my request she repeated the latter, and I gave her a gentle lecture on the irreverence of chattering to God so volubly, and of employing herself about her clothes at the same time; adding that she should be devout, deliberate, and quiet while speaking to God; but as for the Virgin Mary it was no matter how she ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... right. The actors were full of me: very gratifying; but everybody laughed! Just like their cheek! There's nothing laughable, I should fancy, about anything so played out as I've become. Ugh! how I detest irreverence! HORNBLOWER and HACKING have both written to the papers, maintaining that I belong to them, and that the theatre has no right to have me impersonated on the Stage; they term it "Thought Transference," "The Brain-Wave," ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... ridiculed certain peculiarities of Shakespeare when mediocre French writers and critics began to find in his "barbarities" an excuse for irreverence at the expense of Racine, but he never tires of reiterating his admiration for the country of Locke and Hume, of Bolingbroke and Newton. A hundred phrases could be gathered from his correspondence extending over half a century, ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... kneeling by the bedside of the dying murderer, to pray some comfort into his passing soul. But his "gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it," while through Helen ran a cold shudder of disgust at the familiarity and irreverence of the ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... take a more modern parallel—we must entreat our readers to pardon any seeming irreverence which may appear in the comparison—if in the letters of the correspondents of three different newspapers written from America or Germany, we were to read the same incidents told in the same language, surrounded it might be with much that was unlike, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... was not unfrequently subjected in consequence of the apathy of others. Referring to the reluctance shown by many, of whom the utmost patriotism was expected, to rally around the flag of the country, he exclaims—in a partial perversion of Scripture language, but without irreverence, "Tell this not in the ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... Ruskin's illness his cousin, Mrs. Arthur Severn, has become more and more indispensable to him: she sits at the head of the table and calls him "the coz." An eminent visitor was once put greatly out of countenance by this apparent irreverence. After obvious embarrassment, light dawned upon him towards the close of the meal. "Oh!" said he, "it's 'the coz' you call Mr. Ruskin. I thought you ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... the direct election of United States Senators. I have seen some thoughtful men discuss that with a sort of shiver, as if to disturb the original constitution of the United States Senate was to do something touched with impiety, touched with irreverence for the Constitution itself. But the first thing necessary to reverence for the United States Senate is respect for United States Senators. I am not one of those who condemn the United States Senate as a body; for, no matter what has happened ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... on account of the prolonged strife with the Church of Constantinople, set himself down to discuss the same topics which they were wrangling over by the light—to him so clear and precious—of the Greek philosophy. There was perhaps in this employment neither reverence nor irreverence. He had not St. Augustine's intense and almost passionate conviction of the truth of Christianity; but he was quite willing to accept it and to discourse upon it, as he discoursed on Arithmetic, Music, ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... and then surrender a small part of it in charitable, religious and educational donations; he at once ceases being a thief and straightway becomes a noble benefactor. Vanderbilt now shed his life-long irreverence, and gave to Deems, a minister of the Presbyterian Church, as a gift, the Church of the Strangers on Mercer street, and he donated $1,000,000 for the founding of the Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tenn. The press, the church and the educational ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... not—you must not, indeed. Do you know this irreverence in speaking of the members of so sacred a profession is not at all what ought to be done. Don't Edgar. Dear papa, I may be foolish, but I do ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... badly wounded man pulling himself over the ground, and making strange gutteral noises—Amber concluded to wait for the guide Naraini had promised him. He turned aside and seated himself upon the edge of a broken sandstone tomb. The silence was appalling and for relief he took refuge in cheap irreverence. "Home," he observed ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... therefore, for Kitty—the only worshiper of the professor's gods in Williamson Valley—to supply that companionship which seems so necessary even to those whose souls are so far removed from material wants. In short, as Little Billy put it, with a boy's irreverence, "Kitty rode herd on the professor." And, strangely enough to them all, Kitty seemed ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... which had quite as much power of provoking noise as the first of imposing silence, traversed in its turn the Piazza of St. Peter's: this was the dinner procession. The people received it with the usual bursts of laughter, without suspecting, for all their irreverence, that this procession, more efficacious than the former, had just settled the election of ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "I mean no irreverence," he resumed; "but you know, dear Sergius, it is with laughter as with tears, we cannot always control it.... Anthony resolved to be a Saint, but was troubled by visions of beautiful women. To escape ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... Latin Grammar." To the elder and middle-aged portion of the community, however, the very notion of such a work may seem in the highest degree preposterous; if not indicative of a degree of presumptuous irreverence on the part of the author little short of literary high treason, if not commensurate, in point of moral delinquency, with the same crime as defined by the common law of England. It is out of consideration for the praiseworthy, though perhaps erroneous, feelings of such respectable personages, ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... in a curious incongruity—extreme homeliness joined to awe; the Infinite is contained within the narrowest human bounds; God Himself, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, a weak, helpless child. But a step more, and all would have been irreverence; as it is we have devotion, human, naive, ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... "Such irreverence shall not be!" exclaimed Ranulph, seizing Luke with one hand, and snatching at the cereclothes with the other. "Remove ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... these people," he said to me, soon after his adventure with the "boys." "Such a compound of devotion and irreverence, meanness and generosity, cunning and child-like openness, was never seen. When I give Holy Communion with you, sir, on Sunday morning, my heart melts at the seraphic tenderness with which they approach the altar. That striking of the breast, that eager look on their ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... for a vast and vigorous change. It may not be a European change. Society may not be cast into the furnace, as it has been by those struggles, wars, and revolutions, which were essential to the working of the iron temperament of Europe. But Providence, if we may so speak without irreverence, evidently delights in the variety, multitude, and novelty of its highest expedients. If no two great portions of the physical world are like in form, climate, product, and even in the colouring of their skies, why are we to insist on uniformity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... up, as tidily as may be. Suffer, then, such mingling of my thoughts: the web I weave has many threads, woven with divers colours. Human nature is nothing if not inconsistent; and I have no more notion of irreverence in turning from a high topic to a low one, than a bee may be fancied to have of irrelevant idleness in flitting from the sweet violet to the scented dahlia. We may gather honey out of every flower. Have you not often noticed, that riches generally ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Holy Bible, (Whene'er 'twas the thought first struck him, How death, at unawares, might duck him Deeper than the grave, and quench The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench) Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence, As to hug the book of books to pieces: And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance, Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases, Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see equipt yours,— So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures. And ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... country, justifies all the satire which a dramatist can heap upon the man who commits this crime, even after he is in the grave. And the English people do not share with us—I say it to their credit—our universal irreverence for what is solemn and sacred. One must not, either in social life or on the stage, speak too lightly there of any serious subject; of course, they can laugh, however, at an old man that makes a fool of himself. So we merely toned down the levity by leaving old Mr. Browne out of the ...
— The Autobiography of a Play - Papers on Play-Making, II • Bronson Howard
... in a minor key as we grow older. There are few majestic passages in the later acts of life's opera. Ambition takes a less ambitious aim. Honor becomes more reasonable and conveniently adapts itself to circumstances. And love—love dies. "Irreverence for the dreams of youth" soon creeps like a killing frost upon our hearts. The tender shoots and the expanding flowers are nipped and withered, and of a vine that yearned to stretch its tendrils round the world there is left but ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... offended. Suppose, for instance, in the closing benediction, the clergyman were to give vital significance to the vague word "Holy," and were to say, "the fellowship of the Helpful and Honest Ghost be with you, and remain with you always," what would be the horror of many, first at the irreverence of so intelligible an expression; and secondly, at the discomfortable occurrence of the suspicion that while throughout the commercial dealings of the week they had denied the propriety of Help, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... enter into conversation. We spoke a good deal to-day on the subject of religion, the difference between Christianity and Mahometanism, and, above all, the absurdity of their repeating the Koran, like so many parrots, without understanding one word of what they say; and the irreverence of addressing God in words they do not understand, so that their hearts can take no part in their prayers. They agreed that it would be better to learn God's law, instead of trusting merely to their hadjis, who are often as ignorant as themselves. A respectable old Bruni ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... and prayed more. He prayed, at last, almost all his time. When he did not pray, he slept. When he could not sleep, he prayed. He addressed God with that sublime familiarity of his, which fell from his lips with no more irreverence than the kiss of a child falling upon its mother's ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... has caused this habitual transgression to be also a final one. Could the man have had any reason even dimly to foresee his own sudden death, there would have been a new feature in his act of intemperance—a feature of presumption and irreverence, as in one that, having known himself drawing near to the presence of God, should have suited his demeanour to an expectation so awful. But this is no part of the case supposed. And the only new element in the man's act ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... undermines the foundations of faith and prepares the mind to break away from control, to pass from instinctive opposition to antagonism, from antagonism to contempt, from contempt to rebellion and revolt. Arrogance of mind, irreverence, self-idolatry, blindness, follow in their course, and the whole nature loses its balance and becomes through ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... of God. St. Peter recognizes this distinction when he said to Annanias, Thou hast not lied unto men but unto God. All lying is sinful, but lying to God is a higher crime than lying to men. There is greater irreverence and contempt of the divine presence and authority, and a violation of an obligation of a higher order. Every man feels that the marriage vows have a sacred character which could not belong to them, if marriage was merely a civil contract. In like manner the divine institution of government ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... this thought seemed to cast upon the priesthood made him pause. He had not yet shaken off the dominion of old ideas and old habits. He apologized to an unseen censor for the apparent irreverence of his thought. It was not the priesthood, it was—He came again to a standstill. He was not prepared to own to himself that he disapproved of the Father Superior. He had vowed obedience, and here he sat raging against a decree because it sacrificed ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... has been written concerning Roumanian funerals. That they are showy, almost to irreverence, and that the exposure of the face of the corpse in its glazed coffin is repulsive, there can be no doubt, but they are not one whit worse than the lugubrious processions with their 'arrangements' in black and feathers which are still to be seen in England; and there, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... theology and method of instruction used by some of the earliest laborers in this field left something to be desired in point of adaptedness to the savage mind. Without irreverence to the great name of Jonathan Edwards, there is room for doubt whether he was just the man for the Stockbridge Indians. In the case of the Rev. Abraham Pierson, of Branford, in New Haven Colony, afterward founder of Newark, we have an illustration ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Owen Sandbrook was never far off. He took them to eat ices, conducted them to good points of view, found seats for them, and told them who every one was, with droll comments or anecdotes which entertained them so much, that Phoebe almost wished that Robin had not made her sensible of the grain of irreverence that seasoned ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... understandings became fully possessed with the whole spirit and purpose of them; and he, therefore, bade that they should be buried with his body, as though such holy precepts could not without irreverence be left to circulate in mere lifeless writings. For this very reason, they say, the Pythagoreans bade that their precepts should not be committed to paper, but rather preserved in the living memories of those who were worthy to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... afraid that the public taste would not approve of the allusions to free-masonry and Soyer's soup. . . . And worse than that, one and all—Jew, Turk, infidel, and heretic, as well as the orthodox—joined in pious horror at his irreverence;—the shocking way he had of jumbling religion and politics—the human and the divine—the theories of the pulpit with the facts of the exchange. . . . The very atheists, who laughed at him for believing in a God, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... childhood being indicated by their shaven heads—they were presented to the ancestors, and their acceptance was notified by what (looking at the matter from the natives' standpoint) we might, without irreverence, almost call the sacrament of food and water, too sacred even for the elders' hands to touch. This acceptance was acknowledged and confirmed on the part of all the Lewe ni Nanga [junior initiated men] by their gift of food, and it was finally ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... usually grim, more often wondering why his boots, that never creaked before, should creak on those particular boards, and feeling a quiet curiosity, without the least mixture of fear or awe as to what old Squaretoes intended to say to him. But all feeling of irreverence ceased when, shown into the baronet's room, and the door closed, Sir Miles rose with a smile, and cordially shaking his hand, said, dropping the punctilious courtesy of Mister: "Ardworth, sir, if I had a little prejudice against you before you came, you have conquered ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tends toward a habit. The mistake is often made of thinking that habits can be formed only by "taking thought." It is true that some of the finest habits of life are built into character with painstaking effort, but untidiness and selfishness and irreverence and all their kin reach fullest unfolding in the thoughtless outflow of activity, when ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... many things, and to keep the secrets of the order. To Amidon it seemed really awful—albeit somewhat florid in style; and when Alvord nudged him at one passage in the obligation, he resented it as an irreverence. Then he noted that it was a pledge to maintain the sanctity of the family circle of brother Martyrs, and Alvord's reference of the night before to the obligation as affecting his association with the "strawberry blonde" took on ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... Gods he equals him to, or rather what Gods he puts him above. And Glaucus took no exception to being praised at the expense of his art's patron deities; nor yet did they send any judgement on athlete or poet for irreverence; both continued to be honoured in Greece, one for his might, and the other for this even more than for his other odes. Do not be surprised, then, that when I wished to conform to the canons of my art and find an illustration, ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... communicants kneel in receiving the Holy Communion, is called, in the Institution Office the Altar Rail. Supposed to have been first introduced by Archbishop Laud as a protection of the Altar against the lawlessness and irreverence of the Puritans. ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... gift of God, so precious, so inspiring, is treated with such utter irreverence and contempt in the calculations of us mortals as this same air of heaven. A sermon on oxygen, if one had a preacher who understood the subject, might do more to repress sin than the most orthodox discourse to show when and how and why sin came. A minister ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... examples, but scarcely described in general terms. It has been said of that class of American humorists of which Artemus Ward is a representative that their peculiarity consists in extravagance, surprise, audacity and irreverence. But all these qualities have characterized other schools of humor. There is the same element of surprise in De Quincey's {568} anticlimax, "Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other which, perhaps, at the time he thought little ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... the so-called civilised world is spreading a deep distrust, a deep irreverence of every man towards his neighbour, and a practical unbelief in every man whom you do see, atones for itself by a theoretic belief in an ideal human nature which you do not see. Such a temper of mind, unless it be checked ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... trying defects which I find in these Stratfordolaters, these Shakesperoids, these thugs, these bangalores, these troglodytes, these herumfrodites, these blatherskites, these buccaneers, these bandoleers, is their spirit of irreverence. It is detectable in every utterance of theirs when they are talking about us. I am thankful that in me there is nothing of that spirit. When a thing is sacred to me it is impossible for me to be irreverent toward it. I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... martyrs. The struggles of Christianity against the powers of heathenism enthroned in the Roman Empire and throughout the world form a bright chapter in the annals of historic deeds and supreme loyalty to lofty ideals. When we view the subject from this angle, it would almost seem to be an act of irreverence or of sacrilege to call in question the doctrines and practises of that period when the church was baptized by fire and waded through rivers of blood. Reverence for the martyrs and for their noble efforts to extend the cause of Christ is praiseworthy, but in justice to truth, ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... pencil to mark the most important passages, but I quickly put my pencil in my pocket for I found I had to mark every sentence." Reading the book for perhaps the seventh time I can only say (I hope without irreverence) what G.K. himself says happens to those who can read the words of the Gospels "simply enough." They "will feel as if rocks had been rolled upon them. Criticism is only words about words; and of what use are words about such words ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... name, he would fall into deep reverie, lasting sometimes for hours. And although he contracted two marriages afterward, they were simply marriages of convenience, to which, after their termination, he frequently referred flippantly, sometimes with irreverence, ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... in a tone of gentle reproach. She thought she detected the far-off shadow of a possible irreverence in her sister's tone. Macaulay again interposed, while Paul and I endeavored to avoid each other's eyes, lest we should be overtaken by an explosion ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... darling. His ways are not for us to understand." Gwen could not for the life of her help recalling some irreverence of Adrian's about Resignation and Fatalism. But though she almost smiled over his reprehensible impiety—"No connection with the shop opposite"—she could and did pay a mental tribute to the Granny's quiet earnestness. She ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... appeal to the vulgar by aggressive rationalists. Let rationalism filter down in the course of time; the vulgar were not prepared for it as yet. It was bad that they should be superstitious, but worse, far worse, that they should be brutally irreverent, and brutal irreverence inevitably came of atheism preached at the street corner. The men who preached it were themselves the very last to guide human souls; they were of coarsest fibre, without a note of music in them, fit only for the world's grosser purposes. And they ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... principles with the form of absolution in the Visitation of the Sick. This was, in Mr. Cleaver's opinion, sophistry almost as bad as Newman's, and Froude's tutorship came to an end. There was no quarrel, and, after a tour through the south of Ireland, where he saw superstition and irreverence, solid churches, well-fed priests, and a starving peasantry in rags, Froude returned for a farewell visit to Delgany. On this occasion he met Dr. Pusey, who had been at Christ Church with Mr. Cleaver, and ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... enterprise and improvement, their respect for the fiddle, and their contempt for the almighty dollar. [Footnote: This phrase, used for the first time in this sketch, has since passed into current circulation, and by some has been questioned as savoring I fear, however, my prayer is of irreverence. The author, therefore, owes it to his orthodoxy to declare that no irreverence was intended even to the dollar itself; which he is aware is daily becoming more and more an object of worship.] I fear, however, ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... her life thus preserved. For no good Hellen, or Greek, would slay for food any animal sacred to a god. This beautiful golden-horned hind Eurystheus ordered Hercules to bring to him alive, for the irreverence of the King did not go so far as to ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... over the combs, smooth and brush her beautiful plumes, offer her food from time to time, and in short do all that they possibly can to make her perfectly happy; while too often children treat their mothers with irreverence or neglect, and instead of striving with loving zeal to lighten their labors and save their steps, they treat them more as though they were servants hired only to wait upon every whim ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... many specimens of his caustic wit. Whistler actually kept silent in his presence—possibly expecting a repetition of the mot: "My dear friend, you conduct yourself in life just as if you had no talent at all." Manet good-naturedly took a browbeating, but the Academic set were outraged by the irreverence of Degas. What hard sayings were his! Poor Bastien-Lepage, too, came in for a scoring. Barricaded in his studio, it was a brave man who attempted to force an entrance. The little, round-shouldered artist, generally good-tempered, would pour a stream of verbal ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... conducting of public worship by the minister. It is not a difficult matter to take exception to methods to which we have long been accustomed, and to compare these, sometimes to their disadvantage, with ideal conditions. As a matter of fact, however, it may in all fairness be asked, does disorder or irreverence characterize Presbyterian worship in general, or indeed to any noticeable extent? Whatever lovers of another system, within our own Church, may say, it cannot be denied that the impression in the minds of men of all denominations (an impression that has not ...
— Presbyterian Worship - Its Spirit, Method and History • Robert Johnston
... unpurchasable luxury, one of the many angel gifts that had fallen like dew upon us—and passed forth between the tall stone gate-posts, as uncertain as the wandering Arabs where our tent might next be pitched. Providence took me by the hand, and—an oddity of dispensation which, I trust, there is no irreverence in smiling at—has led me, as the newspapers announce, while I am writing from the Old Manse, into a custom-house.[76] As a story-teller I have often contrived strange vicissitudes for my imaginary ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... sense of the One above all others. What she said to herself as she moved tirelessly about the sick room, damping cloths, filling the ice-bag, infiltering drops of nourishment, was: "God is good!" and these words, far from breathing a pious resignation, voiced a confidence so bold that it bordered on irreverence. Their real meaning was: Richard has still ever so much work to do in the world, curing sick people and saving their lives. God must know this, and cannot now mean to be so foolish as to WASTE ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... and essays Abraham Bishop struck out boldly, with earnestness, logic, shrewd wit, and irony, and, as has been said, at times with dangerous irreverence,—often with down-right impudence when that would serve his purpose. An illustration of his extreme use of it was in 1800, about the time of the organization of the ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... were in Miss Weston's class, and much did they delight in her teaching. There was a quiet earnestness in her manner which attracted her pupils, and fixed their attention, so as scarcely to allow the careless room for irreverence, while mere cleverness seemed almost to lose its advantage in learning what can only truly be entered into by those whose conduct agrees with ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hoax made an instant sensation; it was denounced for its scandalous irreverence by the members of the Historical Society, especially by those who had Dutch ancestors, but was received with roars of laughter by the rest of the population. Those who read it now (from curiosity, for ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... vulgar superstitions and absurd conceptions that deform the pure faith of a Christian 220 should possess a greater immunity from ridicule than stories of witches, or the fables of Greece and Rome. But there are those who deem it profaneness and irreverence to call an ape an ape, if it but wear a monk's cowl on its head; and I would rather reason with this weakness than ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... world's evolution toward better things. On social ethics the poets of the mid-Victorian period wrote with philosophic sobriety; they maintained a strict moral standard. In their wildest emotional flights they abstained from irreverence or indecorum. They undoubtedly represented the prevailing cast of thought, the taste and tendencies of the society to which they belonged; the growing scepticism, the influence on established ideas of advancing science and philosophy. Literature had been ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... thing they are not nearly so superior as they suppose they are. They think "Irreverence for the dreams of youth" always comes from "the hardening of the heart." But youth has some fantastic as well as some noble dreams, so that docility is a better quality than independence in a very young ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... in which there was no intentional irreverence. Then she jumped into bed and began a ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... first love letter I had ever had from Martin, and it melted me like wax over a candle. I have it still, and though Martin is such a great man now, I am tempted to copy it out just as it was written with all its appearance of irreverence (none, I am sure, was intended), and even its bad spelling, for without that it would not be Martin—my boy who could never ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Cardinal Bibbiena introduces an elaborate discussion of the different sorts of jokes, which proves the high value attached in Italy to all displays of wit. It appears that even practical jokes were not considered in bad taste, but that irreverence and grossness were tabooed as boorish. Mere obscenity is especially condemned, though it must be admitted that many jests approved of at that time would now appear intolerable. But the essential point to be aimed at then, as now, was the promotion of mirth by cleverness, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... III., and the peculiarly dingy and weather-stained appearance of the small finely-finished bricks, of which the habitation was built,—all showed the abode of former generations adapted with tasteless irreverence to the habits of descendants unenlightened by Pugin, or indifferent to the poetry of the past. The house had emerged suddenly upon Frank out of the gloomy waste land, for it was placed in a hollow, and sheltered from sight by a disorderly ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... consecrates itself to the contemplation of beauty, evil will not take complete possession of. Est Deus in nobis. Deus, be it well understood. Let Senor Don Jose, then, continue to admire the marvels of our church; I, for one, will willingly forgive him his acts of irreverence, with all due respect for the ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... it ever gave, and all the gold they ever found. There, too, had been the wide, dark-eaved garrets full of moth-devoured relics of splendor; who knew what might be lying hidden in those vast hair-covered chests? They were there no longer now; for once, in an access of angry irreverence, Margaret had had them all dragged down, and had sold their contents to the rag-man, and had made by her speculation cloaks for themselves and a shawl for Frederick,—in the days when gentlemen condescended to lend to their stiff costume ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... of re-awakening courage in his followers; rather, indeed, of growing terror at the irreverence of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... if there should seem to be the faintest tinge of irreverence in aught I write, I tell my story badly. There was no irreverence in Fishin' Jimmy. He possessed a deep and profound veneration for all things spiritual and heavenly; but it was the veneration of ...
— Fishin' Jimmy • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... in my youth, and had been a never-failing source of curiosity to me. It was Gustave Dore's "Christian Martyrs," and I had once been deprived of pudding at the nursery dinner, because I had remarked (with irreverence wholly unintentional) that one of the lions seemed ill, and anxious to "climb up the wall and get away from the nasty martyrs." Thus it is that children are misunderstood by their elders! and now, as I gazed at the same picture on the monastery wall, I felt again all the old, impotent ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... which seemed the metropolis of the district; it flamed with gin-palaces; a multitude were sauntering in the mild though tainted air; bargaining, blaspheming, drinking, wrangling: and varying their business and their potations, their fierce strife and their impious irreverence, with flashes of rich humour, gleams of native wit, and racy phrases ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... explained all heaven and earth by a priori theories, and cosmogonies invented in the cloister; and dared, poor, simple, ignorant mortals, to fancy that they could comprehend and gauge the ways of Him Whom the heaven and the heaven of heavens could not contain. This, this is irreverence: but it is neither irreverence nor want of faith, if a man, awed by the mystery which encompasses him from the cradle to the grave, shall lay his hand upon his mouth, with Job, and obey the voice which cries to him from earth and heaven—"Be ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... found comfort in this hypothesis. In the Cratylus of Plato, Socrates speaks of the notion of explaining myths by etymological guesses at the meaning of divine names as "a philosophy which came to him all in an instant". Thus we find Socrates shocked by the irreverence which styled Zeus the son of Cronus, "who is a proverb for stupidity". But on examining philologically the name Kronos, Socrates decides that it must really mean Koros, "not in the sense of a youth, but signifying the pure and garnished mind". Therefore, when people ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... my friend, "sure he has. My mother put in my trunk when I left home a Sunday School card on which were the words: 'Thy God seeth thee, my son.' Without irreverence I would advise every stock boy who wants to get on the road to write these words and keep them before him every day: 'The eyes of the old man are ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... highly of themselves than they ought to think"; they come to regard themselves as specially favored of heaven; they talk of the Almighty in a free and easy manner, and of Jesus Christ as tho He were not the Judge at all. When they pray, it is with a familiarity bordering on irreverence, and when they deal with sacred themes it is with a lightness that breeds contempt. When they recount the marvels which they have wrought in the name of Christ, it is hardly-possible for them to hide their self-complacency; for, while they profess to give Him the glory, the manner of their speech ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... and, without lifting her head, gazed, with eyes raised from the wool-work, motionless at the posturing figure of her sister. It was sacrilege that she was witnessing, a prodigious irreverence. She was conscious of an expectation that punishment would instantly fall on this daring, impious child. But she, who never felt these mad, amazing impulses, could ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... that we have; we should come with the feeling—"I was glad when they said unto me we will go into the House of the Lord;" "I love the place, O Lord, wherein Thine honour dwells." All slovenliness in the performance of the service, all irreverence, or signs of inattention, and indifference, are tokens of a want of thankfulness. We should get this thought fixed in our minds when we enter Church,—I have come here to-day mainly to thank God for His great goodness to me, ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... irony and bitterest sarcasms. In his last years he even became cynical and rugged and vulgar, in which we may of course trace the influence of his tavern associates. It is to his credit that he did not sink into Byronic misanthropy and bitter self-lacerating scorn, or even into Heine's irreverence and persiflage. ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
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