"Atheism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... aggressive and positive. I, too, am astonished at myself. I do not know my own mood, it is so clear, so sharp, so combative. Is it the spectacle of Italy, I wonder—of a country practically without religion—the spectacle in fact of Latin Europe as a whole, and the practical Atheism in which it is ingulfed? My dear friend, the problem of the world at this moment is—how to find a religion?—some great conception which shall be once more capable, as the old were capable, of welding societies, and keeping man's brutish elements ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... relieve others ... those golden days wherein were practised the Triumphs and Trophies of Cookery, then was Hospitality esteemed and Neighbourhood preserved, the Poor cherished and God honoured; then was Religion less talk't on and more practis't, then was Atheism and Schisme less in Fashion, and then did men strive to be good rather than to seem so." High-souled were the chefs of ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... makes for religion; though it be no more than the result of orderly habits of thought: its premise gleaned merely from a continual subconscious synthesis of the sum of personal existence. The type of the synthesis matters no more than the form of its result: mockery and atheism of Schopenhauer or von Hartmann; poetic illogicalities of Hegel; dizzy flights of Schelling; materialism of Locke; idealism of Berkeley; magnificent transcendentalism of the imperial Kant;—they become ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... rolled like a wintry sea over all nations, "I am lost!" Gambetta was an atheist, a man whose public indignities to womanhood were demonstrated from Paris to Berlin. Gambetta's patriotism for France could never atone for his atheism, and his infamy towards women. His death, in the dawn of 1883, was a page in the world's history turned ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... which is that of the Bible regarding God, is entirely foreign to the Hindu books. Their doctrine is various, but, in every case, erroneous. It is absolute pantheism, or polytheism, or an inconsistent blending of polytheism and pantheism, or atheism. ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... religious and political apostasy lay heavy on the land. Harlotry and atheism sat in the high places; and the "caresses of wantons and the jests of buffoons regulated the measures of a government which had just ability enough to deceive, just religion enough to persecute." But, while Milton mourned over this disastrous change, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... yours is mine, and what's mine's me own,"' observed Bundy, and during the laughter that greeted this definition Slyme was heard to say that Socialism meant Materialism, Atheism and Free Love, and if it were ever to come about it would degrade men and women to the level of brute beasts. Harlow said Socialism was a beautiful ideal, which he for one would be very glad to ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... at Mrs. Rose's I met the daughter of Charles Bradlaugh, a talented young woman, whom the college refused to admit to botany lectures because of her father's atheism. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... follow the most prudent methods of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce; (4) To prescribe rules in matters morally indifferent, where uniformity is advantageous. Opinions should be tolerated; all except Atheism, and the denial of ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... as I did at my ordination. God has been teaching me, even in the short time since I was ordained, wonderful lessons—lessons of strength being perfected in weakness. He alone knows the depths of our hypocrisy, our vanity, our atheism, and He alone can help us. To get nearer to Him, to know Him better—this is what I want, this is eternal life. As we believe in a Person who is by our side, who is helping us, training us, we shall be able to proclaim Him to others. Do not mind about feelings. You may have ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... aristocratic," said Robespierre, thinking of Rousseau. Atheism is democratic, say our present-day school teachers. Whence comes this difference of opinion? First because it was fashionable among the great lords of the eighteenth century to be libertines and free-thinkers, but among the people ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... which cannot be paralleled in ancient Greece, only they will there be seen, as it were, in their earlier and simpler forms. Traces of all the things that seem most un-Greek can be found somewhere in Greek literature: voluptuousness, asceticism, the worship of knowledge, the contempt for knowledge, atheism, pietism, the religion of serving the world and the religion of turning away from the world: all these and almost all other points of view one can think of are represented somewhere in the records of that one small people. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... himself: it is conceived in a spirit of bitterness, and there is more of spite against Lilly's person in it, than any tenderness or pity for his errors. He calls him a witty Atheist, when in all probability, what he terms atheism, was no more than a freedom of thinking, and facetious conversation, which to the pious churchman, had the appearance of denying the existence of God; besides, had Hall dealt candidly, he should have given his readers some more particulars of a man whom he ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... believe it can ever have such effect on a truly benevolent mind. Nothing less than a persuasion of universal depravity can lock up the charity of a good man; and this persuasion must lead him, I think, either into atheism, or enthusiasm; but surely it is unfair to argue such universal depravity from a few vicious individuals; nor was this, I believe, ever done by a man, who, upon searching his own mind, found one certain exception to the general rule." He then ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... Mr. Roosevelt the other day called him "a dirty little Atheist," he exposed nothing but his own ignorance. Paine was a deist, and he wrote The Age of Reason on the threshold of a French prison, primarily to counteract the atheism which he thought he saw at work among the Jacobins—an odd diagnosis, for Robespierre was at least as ardent in his deism as Paine himself. He believed in a God, Whose bounty he saw in nature; he taught the doctrine of conditional immortality, and his quarrel with revealed religion was chiefly that ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... about the year 1810, at the height of those hot debates that preceded the war of 1812. For nine years, he tells us, the subject gradually gained upon him, so that, at last, it was his first thought in the morning and his last at night. From the atheism upon which he had formerly plumed himself, he went to the opposite extreme. For a long time he was plunged into the deepest gloom, regarding himself as a sinner too vile to be forgiven. He sought ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... people demand his head. 4. Robespierre endeavours to acquit himself of the charges brought against him by the deputy Louvet. 6. Report in the assembly of disturbances in the department of Mayence and Loire. Three hundred millions of assignats issued with new emblems. A discourse upon Atheism pronounced by Dupont, and applauded by the convention. The Princess de Rohan-Rochefort is sent to prison for having written to the ex-minister Bertrand. 7. The battle of Gemappe—the Austrians are defeated by superior ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... commencing with the same data, it always comes to the same conclusions. Nor is this at all dependent on any inherent logic of truth. Very many of the errors of antiquity have re-appeared in our times. If the Greek schools were infected with materialism, pantheism, and atheism, the later progress of philosophy has shown the same characters. To a certain extent, such doctrines will receive an impression from the prevailing creeds, but the arguments which have been appealed to in their favor have always been the same. The distinction between these heresies ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... opposed to more venerable ways of thinking; even if we do not find that the often-quoted words of its earliest formulator apply with special force to its latest dialects—that if a little knowledge of physiology and a little knowledge of psychology dispose men to atheism, a deeper knowledge of both, and, still more, a deeper thought upon their relations to one another, will lead men back to some form of religion, which, if it be more vague, may also be more worthy than that ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... human life, are all peculiarly mission fields. It is remarkable how the modern city reproduces world conditions morally. The city is a sort of miniature of the world. All the varying moral conditions of the heathen world, atheism, savagery almost, crude heathenish superstition, degradation of woman, neglect of children, and untempered lust, may be found in New York and Chicago, in London and Paris, in Vienna and Berlin, and in varying degree in all cities of Christian lands. The grosser parts ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... consumed brave, humble victims, while Erasmus jested over the rising price of wood, In France the Inquisition entrapped many men of literary distinction, Louis de Berquin 1529, John de Caturce 1532, Stephen Dolet 1546; on the charge of heresy or atheism which could only with great difficulty be refuted. To kill a fellow-creature or to watch him put to death would be physically impossible to most of us, in our unruffled lives; where from year's-end to year's-end we hardly even hear a word spoken in anger. In consequence ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... published anonymously in Oxford, a little pamphlet called The Necessity of Atheism; he projected sending it round broadcast as an invitation or challenge to discussion. This small pamphlet—it is scarcely more than a flysheet—hardly amounts to saying that Atheism is irrefragably true, and Theism therefore false; but it propounds that the existence of a God cannot be proved by reason, nor yet by testimony; that a direct revelation made to an individual would alone be adequate ground for convincing that individual; and that the persons to whom such a revelation ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... Roman Church maintain its monopoly, although it has survived, purified and freed from many an ancient abuse. In most countries of western Europe and in our own land one may now believe as he wishes, teach such religious views as appeal to him, and join with others who share his sympathies. "Atheism" is still a shocking charge in many ears, but the atheist is no longer an outlaw. It has been demonstrated, in short, that religious dogma can be neglected in matters of public concern and reduced to a question of ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... witchcraft is, in effect, giving up the Bible. And they know, on the other hand, that, if but one account of the intercourse of men with separate spirits be admitted, their whole castle in the air (Deism, Atheism, Materialism) falls to the ground. I know no reason, therefore, why we should suffer even this weapon to be wrested out of our hands. Indeed, there are numerous arguments besides, which abundantly confute their vain imaginations. But we need not ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the system itself, rather than the faults and shortcomings of men, to be by its very nature responsible for all the economic evils of the day. "Down with the Stars and Stripes" is their cry. "Abolish religion and the present form of marriage." "Atheism and free-love must reign supreme." Then, trusting that workingmen will admire anything, provided that it be adorned in sufficiently glowing colors, they paint such fabulous pictures of Socialism as ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... 1846 the Whigs nominated him for Congress. The Democrats nominated the pioneer Methodist preacher, Peter Cartwright, who used the Washington's birthday address against Lincoln and even the charge of atheism, which had no worthy foundation, for Lincoln was profoundly religious, though he never united with any church. He said that whenever any church would inscribe over its altar as the only condition for membership the words of Jesus: "Thou shalt love the ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... of blood. After lying there about three quarters of an hour, brooding over the singular and mournful lot to which I was doomed, my mind passing over the whole scale or circle of belief and unbelief, from faith in the overruling providence of God, to the blackest atheism, I again took up my journey toward St. Michael's, more weary and sad than in the morning when I left Thomas Auld's for the home of Mr. Covey. I was bare-footed and bare-headed, and in{177} my shirt sleeves. The way was through bogs and briers, and I tore my feet often ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... done their futile best to tarnish the unsoilable fame of Shakespeare. In that land you,—who, according to your own showing, started for the race of life full of high hopes and inspiration to still higher endeavor—you have been, poisoned by the tainted atmosphere of Atheism which is slowly and insidiously spreading itself through all ranks, particularly among the upper classes, who, while becoming every day more lax in their morals and more dissolute of behavior, consider themselves far too wise and 'highly cultured' to believe in anything. It is a most ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... behaviour, they got up on their knees, and cried "Peccavi" with a most sonorous orthodoxy. Yes; poor Harry Fielding and poor Dick Steele were trusty and undoubting Church of England men; they abhorred Popery, atheism, and wooden shoes, and idolatries in general; and hiccupped "Church ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the theatres are, and places worse than those, and which to name were an offence. But to you they need not be named. Is all this, Varus, well enough? Is this that venerable order thou wouldst not have disturbed? Is that to be charged as impiety and atheism, which aims to change and reform it? Are they conspirators, and rebels, and traitors, whose sole office and labor is to mend these degenerate morals, to heal these corrupting sores, to pour a better life into the rotting carcass ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... movement toward freedom, wise and unwise, for the last seven hundred years. In truth, free thought in Europe owes more to him than to any other man except Abelard. His last declared follower was the impetuous Lucilio Vanini, who was burned for atheism at Toulouse in 1619. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... admission that the being of God is proved by reason, but it would be hard to discover how, upon his own conception of the nature and limits of reason, such a proof could ever be given. It has been said that it is no flaw in Butler's argument that he has left atheism as a possible mode of viewing the universe, because his work was not directed against the atheists. It is, however, in some degree a defect; for his defence of religion against the deists rests on a view of reason which would for ever preclude a demonstrative ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... and Butler, in the book which still receives more praise than any other attempt at reconciling philosophy and theology, tries to show that here, at least, the two doctrines are in harmony. He has probably produced, in men of powerful intellects, more atheism than he has cured; for he tries to demonstrate explicitly what is tacitly assumed by most theologians—the injustice of God. The doctrine may be horrible, but he says that facts prove it to be true. His whole logic consists in simply begging ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... philosopher of the whole collection, who had been expelled the university for atheism, has made great progress in a refutation of Lord Bolingbroke's metaphysical works, which is said to be equally ingenious and orthodox: but in the meantime, he has been presented to the grand jury as a public ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was a real and consistent sceptic. Scepticism both in its advantages and disadvantages is greatly misunderstood in our time. There is a curious idea abroad that scepticism has some connection with such theories as materialism and atheism and secularism. This is of course a mistake; the true sceptic has nothing to do with these theories simply because they are theories. The true sceptic is as much a spiritualist as he is a materialist. He thinks that the savage dancing round an African idol stands quite as good ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... of the reasons for thinking that, with the material, there must be something spiritual in environment, that if the woof is material the warp is God. Here we need not delay long. Blank atheism seems to be at present unpopular and generally regarded as unscientific. The so-called philosophic materialism of the present day seems to be in general far nearer to pantheism than to the old form of materialism which recognized only atoms and mechanism. Atheism ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... the area within which Moral Philosophy must work, if it is to escape the reproach of insanity, the lecturer goes on, as becomes a divine, to champion his study against the reproach of tending to Atheism. He groups all our senses, faculties, and impulses together, and says: "All these things Moral Philosophy observes, and, observing, adores the ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... the habitual coolness of one who has braved death too often to shrink at its approach. His farewell to his faithful wife was manly, tender, and most affecting. The accounts of his deportment on the scaffold effectually refute the charges of irreligion and atheism, which some writers have brought against him, unless we make up our minds to believe him an accomplished hypocrite. He spoke at considerable length, and his dying words have been faithfully reported. They contain a denial of all the serious offences laid to his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... finally, an inspiration for life which this philosophy of naturalism may convey—atheism, its detractors would call it, but none the less a faith and a spiritual exaltation that spring from its summing up of truth. It is well first to realize that which is dispiriting in it, its failure to provide for ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... this aerial pomp,—this strange silence,—was just the pause, the supreme moment before the angels descended," he mused, with a half-smile at his own fancy, for though something of a poet at heart, he was much more of a cynic. He was too deeply imbued with modern fashionable atheism to think seriously about angels or Resurrection trumps, but there was a certain love of mysticism and romance in his nature, which not even his Oxford experiences and the chilly dullness of English materialism ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... right to levy a second tax on the produce of all tilled lands, a second burden imposed upon the conquered Saxons. As a result, the leaders of the church live in palaces, while the people, the humbler part of their congregation; have sunk into practical atheism. In France, the reaction against a like state of things brought the church to the verge of destruction, and led the masses to infidelity and materialism. The result to the moral life of the people is too well known to need remark. Not less evil consequences have ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... Cicero revised the poem of Lucretius after the death of the author, and this circumstance is urged by the abettors of atheism, as a proof that the principles contained in the work had the sanction of his authority. But no inference in favour of Lucretius's doctrine can justly be drawn from this circumstance. (70) Cicero, though already ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... poem proceeds with the usual diatribe of Swift's desertion of the Whigs, his atheism, high-church sympathies, ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... principle of which was that only three facts (the words are Lord Cockburn's) were to be admitted without proof: (1) Mind exists; (2) matter exists; (3) every change indicates a cause. Nowadays the most orthodox of metaphysicians would admit that this limitation of position by no means implied atheism. But seventy years ago it would have been the exception to find an orthodox metaphysician who did admit it; and Lockhart, or rather Baron von Lauerwinkel, was perfectly justified in taking the view which ordinary ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... We must remark that these arguments are not directed against Atheism and its naturalistic philosophy, which supplies, in Mr. Browning's judgment, a consistent, if erroneous, solution of the problem. They only attack the position of those who would retain the belief in a personal God, and yet divest Him of every quality ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... bearing suitable watchwords, such as 'Long live the King,' 'May he govern as well as reign,' 'Long live the Crown,' the 'Flag,' and (perhaps) the 'Army.' You will oppose these generating ideas to 'Atheism' and 'Anarchy.' The essential point is that the people must be caused by festivals, songs, bands of music, and processions to think of the throne as their bulwark and the King as their saviour, and to take advantage of every opportunity to attest their gratitude ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... extreme nihilism would slip into a destructive, or at least negative system. But Mahayanism was pulled equally strongly in the opposite direction by the popular and mythological elements which it contained and was on the whole inclined to theism and even polytheism quite as much as to atheism and acosmism. A modern Japanese writer[108] says that Dharma-kaya "may be considered to be equivalent to the Christian conception of the Godhead." This is excessive as a historical statement of the view current ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... between the feudal system of society as variously modified throughout Europe, and the levelling principle of democracy. That principle is actively and indefatigably at work in these kingdoms, allying itself as occasion may serve with Popery or with Dissent, with atheism or with fanaticism, with profligacy or with hypocrisy, ready confederates, each having its own sinister views, but all acting to one straightforward end. Your rulers meantime seem to be trying that experiment with the British ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Writing to his wife after the loss of their little girl, Plutarch commends to her the hope set forth in the mystic rites and symbols of this drama, as, elsewhere, he testifies that it kept him "as far from superstition as from atheism," and helped him to approach the truth. For deeper minds this drama had a double meaning, teaching not only immortality after death, but the awakening of man upon earth from animalism to a life of purity, justice, and honor. ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... glorious Father of Spirits to their million-headed nondescript. Pantheism dethrones Jehovah and places no other intelligence in his place as Creator and Ruler of the universe; and, being conscious of the odium that necessarily attaches itself to Atheism, on account of its everlasting foolishness, they steal the name of God to cloak ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... OVERTURNED.—For, as we have shown the doctrine of Matter or corporeal substance to have been the main pillar and support of Scepticism, so likewise upon the same foundation have been raised all the impious schemes of Atheism and Irreligion. Nay, so great a difficulty has it been thought to conceive Matter produced out of nothing, that the most celebrated among the ancient philosophers, even of those who maintained the being of a God, have thought ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... Abbot's Manor would certainly object to a wandering parson in her house and grounds. Probably she was a very imperious, disagreeable young woman,—full of the light scorn, lack of sentiment and cheap atheism common to the 'smart' lady of a decadent period, and if it were true that she had been for so many years in the charge of an American aunt with a 'hundred millions,' the chances were ten to one that she would be an ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... abstraction than Mr. Phoebus, the worshiper of Nature, would tolerate. His school never care to pursue any investigation which cannot be followed by the eye—and the worship of the beautiful always ends in an orgy. As for Pantheism, it is Atheism in domino. The belief in a Creator who is unconscious of creating is more monstrous than any dogma of any of the churches in this city, and we have them ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... atheism seems The most insulting kind, For, though the tongue says, God is love, The heart is deaf ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... deism, scepticism, atheism, &c., &c., &c. was started against me; but never took, being bore down by the contrary authority of all the ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... exclusion of Christianity, and the acceptance or rejection of the concordat, Fouche, Francois de Nantz, Roederer, and Sieges were for the religion of Nature; Volney, Real, Chaptal, Bourrienne, and Lucien Bonaparte for atheism; and Portalis, Gregoire, Cambaceres, Lebrun, Talleyrand, Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte for Christianity. Besides the sentiments of these confidential counsellors, upwards of two hundred memoirs, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... grip of parricidal hands, and buried, fathoms deep, beneath a sea of blood; he saw the best of kings expire upon a scaffold, the victim not less of other men's crimes than of his own weakness; he saw that vice was hailed, as if it were virtue, wickedness uplifted, as if it were morality atheism, proclaimed aloud, as if it were religion; that the 'Goddess of Reason' (or rather a vile strumpet) was recognized as the only Deity, and honored with hecatombs of human victims; the people decimated and oppressed by cruel tyrants, in the name of the people; whilst beneath the ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... resignation is an awful thing," said Reckage. "It is a shade better than the atheism of despair; ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... Law,' 'Evolution,' or 'Development.' While I desire that the basis of Regina's education shall be sufficiently broad, liberal, and comprehensive, I intend to be careful what doctrines are propounded; for unfortunately all who sympathize with the atheism of Comte, have not his noble frankness, and fail to print as he did ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... speech, O Yajnaseni, is delightful, smooth and full of excellent phrases. We have listened to it (carefully). Thou speakest, however, the language of atheism. O princess, I never act, solicitous of the fruits of my actions. I give away, because it is my duty to give; I sacrifice because it is my duty to sacrifice! O Krishna, I accomplish to the best of my power whatever a person living in domesticity should ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... views, and by the time he was a little over one-and-twenty he began to be regarded as a leader. He became an adept in public speaking too, and the announcement that he was to be present at a meeting was almost sure to draw a crowd. He ceased attending any place of worship, and indeed the incipient atheism of his earlier years seemed to settle into a kind of general unbelief in anything spiritual ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... help to show his bright and sparkling disposition: At dinner with a large party of famous men and women, a French scientist annoyed all the rest by loudly arguing for atheism, and proclaimed his belief that there is no God. "Very good soup this," struck in Sydney Smith. "Yes, monsieur, it is excellent," replied the atheist. "Pray, sir," continued Smith, "do you believe in a cook?" The ounce of wit was ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... was of an intensely religious nature throughout her entire life; such characters swing between license and asceticism. But the charge of atheism told largely against her even among the so-called liberals, for liberals are often very illiberal. Marie Antoinette gathered her skirts close about her and looked at the "Minerva of Letters" with suspicion in her big, open eyes; cabinet officers forgot her requests to call, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... gives free play to Civilization, that Titan queen who has succeeded the ancient terrible figure of the King, that sham Providence, reared by man between himself and heaven. In the face of such achievements, atheism seems like a barren skeleton. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... says that atheism leaves to man reason, philosophy, natural piety, laws, reputation, and everything that can serve to conduct him to virtue; but superstition destroys all these, and erects itself into a tyranny over the understandings of men: hence atheism never disturbs the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... (3) Bacon's "Essay on Atheism." This quotation is made with admirable felicity and force by Dr. Whewell, page 378 of Bridgewater Treatise on Astronomy and General Physics considered with reference to ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... respect they were more successful than in the former, and I regret to say that atheism made immense strides among the educated class. They had some profound thinkers among them: Tchernyshevsky, Dobroluboff, Mikhailoff, besides Herzen and Ogareff, the two men who brought out the Kolokol ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... you put a question to me just now. This is my reply. The essence of religious feeling has nothing to do with reason, or atheism, or crime, or acts of any kind—it has nothing to do with these things—and never had. There is something besides all this, something which the arguments of the atheists can never touch. But the principal thing, and the conclusion of my argument, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... has already been called to the effects of French atheism upon the United States. The tide of unbelief rolled on until many religious people trembled for the creed and morals of American people. Its terrible influence was seen and felt in almost every department and ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... is one aim of this book to press home the point that the logical issue is between Theism and Atheism. That there is no logical halting place between the two, and that any attempt to call a halt is little more than a concession to a desire for mental or social convenience, seems to me as clear as anything can well be. And there is really ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... to know what Pantheism was. Mr. Propart smiled when you asked him and said it was something you had better not meddle with. Mr. Farmer said it was only another word for atheism; you might as well have no God at all as be a pantheist. But if "pan" meant "all ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... nothing but ignorance, vanity, and stupid infidelity." Ralph Cudworth, one of the greatest scholars of the latter part of the seventeenth century, said that they who denied the possibility of satanic intercourse "can hardly escape the suspicion of some hankering towards atheism."[198] Writing nearly a century later, when the English law merely prosecuted as rogues and vagabonds those who pretended to witchcraft, Blackstone thought it necessary to point out that this alteration did not deny the possibility of the ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... negative than they are, I should deem it culpable cowardice in me for this reason to publish anonymously. For even if an inquiry of the present kind could ever result in a final demonstration of Atheism, there might be much for its author to regret, but nothing for him to be ashamed of; and, by parity of reasoning, in whatever degree the result of such an inquiry is seen to have a tendency to negative the theistic theory, the author should ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... Burnet, who advised preachers to teach the eternity of future punishment whether they believed it or not.33 It is by such a course that error and superstition reign, that truckling conformity, intellectual disloyalty, moral indifference, vice, and infidelity, abound. It is practical atheism, debauchery ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... ever man more tempted than the miserable Mather? Should I tell in how many forms the Devil has assaulted me, and with what subtlety and energy his assaults have been carried on, it would strike my friends with horror. Sometimes, temptations to vice, to blasphemy, and atheism, and the abandonment of all religion as a mere delusion, and sometimes to self-destruction itself. These, even these, do follow thee, O miserable Mather, with astonishing fury. But I fall down into the dust, on my study floor, with tears, before the Lord, and then they quickly vanish, ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... whites, these stanch, stalwart Anglo-Saxon men, and of these eight million loyal, affectionate, docile negroes, all American-born citizens—we are to make of them a bulwark which shall resist the oncoming tide of socialism, anarchism and of atheism, which is trying to overwhelm our American institutions, rob us of our public-school system, profane our Sabbath and snatch the scepter ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various
... ablaze in the morning sun. The air is sharp and keen, not foetid with poisonous lies; the waters are blue and beautiful; there are shining shores about us, and marvels of a new nature on every hand. We who were in the night, and of it, become vivid with the sun. Our atheism banishes the worshipped gods of evil that are no more extant in our dogmatic creed of joy. For Truth and Beauty have guided us hand in hand, and all they ask of us is to throw away the Law of Lies and to acknowledge that the ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... of love ends by making us doubt everything. The final result of all deceptions and disappointments is atheism, which may not always yield up its name and secret, but which lurks, a masked specter, within the depths of thought, as the last supreme explainer. "Man is what his love is," and follows the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... There is but one verity. Those who are willing to tolerate any religion, whatever it may be, and try to make you believe that liberty for both is necessary in your commonwealth, are paving the way towards atheism." ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of atheism and sedition—of contempt of established authorities—was thus raised under the influence of private pique and long-cherished envy: it soon found an echo in the painted walls where the conclave sat "in close divan," and it was handed about ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... the world a taste of his atheism and impiety, I shall recite two of his verses, as recited ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... revival of Jansenism. Jansenism is Calvinistic, and Calvinism is democratic; but the real concentration of French minds was on material questions. The foundations of religious beliefs had been undermined, and hence arose the painful prevalence of atheism. The period was one of progress in the study of material laws in every field. The national intellect had taken a new bent, and it was one which tended to violent social revolt. The hall of science is the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... Aristotle and the alchemists. Atomism, however, was for Boyle merely an instrument of method and not a philosophical theory of the world. A sincerely religious man,[2] he regards with disfavor both the atheism of Epicurus and his complete rejection of teleology—the world-machine points to an intelligent Creator and a purpose in creation; motion, to a divine impulse. He defends, on the other hand, the right of free ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... manifestly feel that they are put upon their defence in the matter of religion. As far as they themselves are concerned, they are at peace with their own consciences; but nevertheless they do not sit easily under the charge of atheism which is very generally brought against them by that part of the world to which science does not stand in place of religion. They are now making desperate efforts to show that they have a religion, and Mr. M. J. ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... made stone, and no wonder that kills; but that which is but a vapour, and a vapour not forced but breathed, should kill, that our nurse should overlay us, and air that nourishes us should destroy us, but that it is a half atheism to murmur against Nature, who is God's immediate commissioner, who would not think himself miserable to be put into the hands of Nature, who does not only set him up for a mark for others to shoot at, but delights herself to blow him up like a glass, till she see him break, even ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... continually, that rightly to distinguish between two words will throw a flood of light upon some controversy in which they play a principal part, nay, may virtually put an end to that controversy altogether. Thus when Hobbes, with a true instinct, would have laid deep the foundations of atheism and despotism together, resolving all right into might, and not merely robbing men, if he could, of the power, but denying to them the duty, of obeying God rather than man, his sophisms could stand only so long ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... American State is Christian, and under the Christian law, and is based upon Christian principles. It is bound to protect and enforce Christian morals and its laws, whether assailed by Mormonism, Spiritism, Freelovism, Pantheism, or Atheism. But the State does the contrary. For, I ask, is not the State indirectly prohibiting the profession of Christianity by establishing a system of education which prohibits all religious instruction? The State forbids the teacher to speak a word ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... 'Radicalism is a spirit,' wrote the Vicar of Harrow in 1820, 'of which the first elements are a rejection of Scripture, and a contempt of all the institutions of your country, and of which the results, unless averted by a merciful Providence, must be anarchy, atheism, and universal ruin.'"[1] The Vicar of Harrow in 1820 very fairly sums up the substance of innumerable German speeches, pamphlets, and election addresses in 1912 on the ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... lot; but every real man must, in one way or another, fight a great battle. . . . Especially I feel indebted to Abbot's article. Truly he 'says, that the great question of the coming days is,—theism, or atheism? Not whether Jesus is our Master, the chief among men, but whether the God in whom Jesus believed really exists; and, by consequence, whether the immortality which lay open to his vision is but a dream of weary and burdened humanity? Herbert ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... never been sufficiently considered. It is probable that such a condition has never existed before or since that era of the world. The consequences to Rome were—that the reasoning and disputatious part of her population took refuge from the painful state of doubt in Atheism; amongst the thoughtless and irreflective the consequences were chiefly felt in their morals, which were ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... that the admission of the principle of Rationalism would ultimately drive us, not only to reject Christianity, but to reject Theism in all its forms, whether Monotheism, or Pantheism, and even positive or dogmatic Atheism itself. Nor could we stop, indeed, till we had arrived at that absolute pyrrhonism which consists, if such a thing be possible, in the negation of all belief,—even to the belief that ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... Of Unity in Religion Of Revenge Of Adversity Of Simulation and Dissimulation Of Parents and Children Of Marriage and Single Life Of Envy Of Love Of Great Place Of Boldness Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature Of Nobility Of Seditions and Troubles Of Atheism Of Superstition Of Travel Of Empire Of Counsel Of Delays Of Cunning Of Wisdom for a Man's Self Of Innovations Of Dispatch Of Seeming Wise Of Friendship Of Expense Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... absurd supposition that the origin of things, or the mystery of existence [i.e. the fact that anything exists at all], admits of being explained by the theory of Theism in any further degree than by the theory of Atheism. Next it was shown that the argument "Our heart requires a God" is invalid, seeing that such a subjective necessity, even if made out, could not be sufficient to prove—or even to render probable—an objective existence. And with regard to the further ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... Victoire, Misson sailed from Rochelle to the West Indies, and Caraccioli lost no opportunity of preaching to young Misson the gospel of atheism and communism, and with such success that the willing convert soon held views as extreme as those of his teacher. These two apostles now began to talk to the crew, and their views, particularly on the rights of private property, ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... pointless to follow the lost children of the party, Naigeon and Sylvain Marechal, Mably and Morelly, the fanatics that set atheism up as an obligatory dogma and a superior duty; the socialists who, to suppress egoism, propose a community of property, and who found a republic in which any man that proposes to re-establish "detestable ownership" shall be declared an enemy of humanity, treated as a "raging maniac" and shut ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Church; others who deny the divinity of Christ, without, however, separating themselves from the Protestant Church; others, again, who believe in God, but do not believe in any Church; others—and amongst these are many of the cleverest men—who openly profess atheism. In consequence of this state of things, the Catholic party has a natural ally in the Calvinists, who as fervent believers and inflexible conservers of the religion of their fathers, are much less widely separated from the Catholics than from a large party ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... in question and that which is posterior to the first promulgation of such knowledge. In the first we find mainly the old accusations which have long ceased to exert any conspicuous influence, namely, Atheism, Materialism, and revolutionary plotting. Without disappearing entirely, these have been largely replaced in the second group by charges of magic and diabolism, concerning which the denunciations have been ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... recommends its "usefulness for refuting Atheism." Probably Mr. Sinclair got the story, or had it put off on him rather, through one Campbell, a student of philosophy in Glasgow, the son of Gilbert Campbell, a weaver of Glenluce, in Galloway; the scene in our own time, of a mysterious murder. Campbell had refused alms to Alexander Agnew, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... directly. Mr. Mill once called the attention of the present writer to exactly the same kind of rhetorical skill in the speeches of Robespierre. The reader may do well to turn, for excellent specimens of this, to the speech of January 11, 1792, against the war, or that of May 1794 against atheism. The logic is stringent, but the premises are arbitrary. Robespierre is as one who should iterate indisputable propositions of abstract geometry and mechanics, while men are craving an architect who shall bridge ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... With affright did He bend his mind's eye on the space beyond the grave; nor could hide from himself how justly he ought to dread Heaven's vengeance. In this Labyrinth of terrors, fain would He have taken his refuge in the gloom of Atheism: Fain would He have denied the soul's immortality; have persuaded himself that when his eyes once closed, they would never more open, and that the same moment would annihilate his soul and body. Even this resource ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... in the gipsy character is their indifference about religion. Not that they are strong-minded or sceptical. They have never made any profession of atheism. Far from that, indeed, the religion of the country which they inhabit is always theirs; but they change their religion when they change the country of their residence. They are equally free from the superstitions which replace religious feeling in the minds of the vulgar. How, indeed, ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... the canon, "Omnis determinatio est negatio," proceeds by wiping out all dividing lines, which he regards as illusions, in order to reach the ultimate truth of things. This, as Hegel showed, is acosmism rather than Pantheism, and certainly not "atheism." The method of Spinoza should have led him, as the same method led Dionysius, to define God as [Greek: hyperousios aoristia]. He only escapes this conclusion by an inconsistency. See E. Caird, Evolution of Religion, vol. ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... now, in spite of our atheism and our apathism, amid all the overwhelming world-influences of this great 'living Present'—the ghost of the dead Past will come rushing back upon us with its solemn voices and its infinite wailings of pity: ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Governments, taken separately, one can see something excusable or at least human. When the Kaiser encouraged the Russian rulers to crush the Revolution, the Russian rulers undoubtedly believed they were wrestling with an inferno of atheism and anarchy. A Socialist of the ordinary English kind cried out upon me when I spoke of Stolypin, and said he was chiefly known by the halter called "Stolypin's Necktie." As a fact, there were many other things interesting about Stolypin besides his necktie: his policy of peasant proprietorship, ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... anywhere on the earth a soul that trusts and prays, then must the world be wrong in its belief. A law is a rule of conduct, a law of nature is a rule of God's conduct, and though we have abstracted the personality and freedom, they are none the less there. There is also a mitigated form of this atheism as follows: many believe in a personal God, yet conceive Him to be fettered by his own laws; as if He had made the machine of the universe, wound it up, and could now only stand helplessly aside to see it go. Prayer is of no avail ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... fourteen, and his sister was twelve, past. These are the ages when children often experience a change of heart, as all "revivalists" know. Robert Browning was swinging off towards atheism. He grew melancholy, irritable and wrote stanzas of sentimental verse. He showed this verse, high-sounding, stilted, bold and bilious, to his mother and then to his father, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... scorn of aristocracies, and no men have been so bitterly persecuted in history as those who represented the religious opposition to despotism. The Hebrew aristocracy in old Palestine called this sentiment 'atheism' in Jesus Christ, and crucified Him. The pagan aristocracy called it a 'devilish superstition' in the early Christians, and slaughtered them like cattle. The priestly and civil absolutism of the sixteenth century called it 'fanaticism' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Mankind, if you would take this Subject into your own Consideration, and convince the hopeful Youth of our Nation, that Licentiousness is not Freedom; or, if such a Paradox will not be understood, that a Prejudice towards Atheism ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... which rises in the fountain of Delight and brings torture, even amid the roses of the feast. It is with mocking irony that Dante places Epicurus in the furnace-tombs of his Inferno amid those heresiarchs who denied the immortality of the soul. Hafiz was an Epicurean without the atheism or the despair of Epicurus. The roses in his feast are ever fresh and sweet and there is nothing of bitterness in the perennial fountain of his Delight. This unruffled serenity, this joyful acceptance of material ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... congregation in London. The music in St. Joseph's was allowed by connoisseurs, who knew their Elgar as well as their Goss, their Perosi as well as their Bach, and their Wesley, to be remarkable. Critical persons, mostly men, who sat on the fence between Orthodoxy and Atheism, thought highly of Mr. Harding's sermons, and even sometimes came down on his side. And, of all signs surely the most promising for a West End clergyman's success, smart people flocked to him to be married, and Arum lilies were perpetually being carried in and out of his chancel, which ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... himself. With a knowledge of the writer, it is amusing to read the grave strictures of the London critics, who complained that he bounded with amazing rapidity from one subject to another, without leaving a trace of his track: now among the stars—then on a steam engine chasing infidelity—or pelting atheism with meteoric stones.[148] ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... been said that Buddha and Kapila were both atheists, and that Buddha borrowed his atheism from Kapila. But atheism is an indefinite term, and may mean very different things. In one sense every Indian philosopher was an atheist, for they all perceived that the gods of the populace could ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... pushed out to gain subsistence with. It is a terrible anomaly, and yet, I say, it is none the less an active power, and shows us that, however neglected, the child of the abject poor is not dormant or undeveloped. In the first place, very likely, it has developed itself into a dogged atheism—a sulky unbelief. The brain of the vagrant boy is active with speculation as well as with practice—he has some theory of this life in which he lives, and, as might be expected, a theory woven with the ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... executed; Domitilla was banished to a desolate island on the coast of Campania; and sentences either of death or of confiscation were pronounced against a great number of who were involved in the same accusation. The guilt imputed to their charge was that of Atheism and Jewish manners; a singular association of ideas, which cannot with any propriety be applied except to the Christians, as they were obscurely and imperfectly viewed by the magistrates and by the writers ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... attained to the agrarian, they neglected it so far as to suffer the law to grow obsolete; but if you do not take the due dose of your medicines (as there be slight tastes which a man may have of philosophy that incline to atheism) it may chance to be poison, there being a like taste of the politics that inclines to confusion, as appears in the institution of the Roman tribunes, by which magistracy and no more the people were so far from attaining to peace, that they in getting ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... priesthood at the present day nor in the practice of its followers in Ceylon is the name or the existence of an omnipotent First Cause recognised in any portion of their worship. MAUPIED has correctly described Buddhism both in Ceylon and China as a system of refined atheism (Essai sur l'Origine des Peuples Anciens, ch. x. p. 277), and MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE gives the weight of his high authority in the statement that "The most ancient of Baudha sects entirely denies the being of a ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... pictured in the successful strife of an athlete at the Isthmian games; not in the torrent of Demosthenes, dark with self-love and the spirit of vengeance; not in the fitful philosophy and intemperate eloquence of Tully; not in the genial libertinism of Horace, or the stately atheism of Lucretius. No! these must not be our masters; in none of these are we to seek the way of life. For eighteen hundred years the spirit of these writers has been engaged in weaponless contest with the Sermon on the Mount, and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... themselves into poetry and piety. We should be unjust to some of the greatest geniuses if the extraordinary sentiments which they put into the mouths of their dramatic personages are maliciously to be applied to themselves. EURIPIDES was accused of atheism when he introduced a denier of the gods on the stage. MILTON has been censured by CLARKE for the impiety of Satan; and an enemy of SHAKSPEARE might have reproached him for his perfect delineation of the accomplished villain Iago, as it was said that Dr. MOORE ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli |
