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Piety   Listen
noun
Piety  n.  
1.
Veneration or reverence of the Supreme Being, and love of his character; loving obedience to the will of God, and earnest devotion to his service. "Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man."
2.
Duty; dutifulness; filial reverence and devotion; affectionate reverence and service shown toward parents, relatives, benefactors, country, etc. "Conferred upon me for the piety Which to my country I was judged to have shown."
Synonyms: Religion; sanctity; devotion; godliness; holiness. See Religion.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Piety" Quotes from Famous Books



... Her sister Chrona had taken religious vows. She remained alone, the last of her family, not knowing at what moment she might share their fate, dwelling almost in exile at Geneva, where her days were spent in works of charity and piety. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... they know not which side to choose—both seemeth to them to be alike well founded on the word—they should exercise their spiritual sagacity, and set their gift of discerning a work, to see which of the two tendeth most to promote piety and godliness, and the kingdom of Christ, and so see which of the two is the truth, "which is after godliness," as the apostle speaketh, Tit. i. 1; they must look which of the two is the doctrine which is according to godliness, I Tim. vi. 3. That is the truth which ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)

... revered friend, that from a kind of superstition, agreeable in a certain degree to him as well as to myself, I had, during my travels, written to him from LOCA SOLEMNIA, places in some measure sacred. That, as I had written to him from the tomb of Melancthon, sacred to learning and piety, I now wrote to him from the palace of Pascal Paoli, sacred to wisdom and liberty; knowing that, however his political principles may have been represented, he had always a generous zeal for the ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... mental gifts bestowed on us by God will not be brought to view. I have attempted to portray your Majesty, your very self, in the great central statue; for you are truly a god Mars, the only brave upon this globe, and all your bravery you use with justice and with piety in the defence of your own glory." Scarcely had he allowed me to finish this oration, when he broke forth with a strong voice: "Verily I have found a man here after my own heart." Then he called the treasurers who were appointed for my supplies, and told them to disburse ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... humor, interest, passionate love, adventures, pathos—every page is woven with threads of human nature, life as we know it, life as it is, and above it all a spirit of righteousness, true piety, and heroic patriotism. These inspire the author's genius and fine literary quality, thrilling the reader with tenderest emotion, and holding to the end his unflagging, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... were not, as Villehardouin would say, fighting for the truth; they were not even, as Voltaire would say, fighting for what they thought was the truth; this was only what they thought they thought, and they were really thinking of something entirely different. They were not moved either by piety or priestcraft, but by a new and unexpected nomadism. They were not inspired either by faith or fanaticism, but by an unusually aimless taste for foreign travel. This theory that the war of the two great religions could be explained ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... charitable Christian, a very good man, who lets his deeds of kindness speak of him. He is not a politician-no! he is a better quality of man, has filled higher stations. Nor is he of the modernly pious-that is, as piety professes itself in our democratic world, where men use it more as a necessary appliance to subdue the mind than a means to improve civilization. But he was always cautious in giving expression to his sentiments, knowing the delicate sensibilities of those ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... she returned, softly, "I will go to the convent where I was educated. It is some eight or ten miles distant from here, and I think" (here she counterfeited the most wonderful expression of ingenuous sweetness and piety)—"I think I should like to make a 'RETREAT'—that is, devote some time solely to the duties of religion before I enter upon a second marriage. The dear nuns would be so glad to see me—and I am sure you will not object? ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... day always followed the Blessed One, striving to throw every obstacle in his way towards the Buddhahood." Gotama rides a long distance that night, only stopping at the banks of the Anoma beyond the Koliyan territory. There, on the sandy bank of the river, at a spot where later piety erected a dagaba (a solid dome-shaped relic shrine), he cuts off with his sword his long flowing locks, and, taking off his ornaments, sends them and the horse back in charge of the unwilling Channa to Kapilavastu. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... readers would doubtless find the controversy uninteresting, if not altogether unprofitable. We, however, cheerfully insert the paper offered by Lieutenant Phelps, on account of the spirit of earnest piety and love of truth which seem to pervade it; and we shall confine ourselves here to the briefest possible comment which will enable us to make understood our ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... brief. It informed me of her husband's hopeless state, and hinted at his being 'a little nearer' than heretofore, and consequently more difficult to manage for his own comfort. It said nothing of her weariness and watching, and praised him highly. It was written with a plain, unaffected, homely piety that I knew to be genuine, and ended with 'my duty to my ever ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... thus modelled and prepared, Augustus pronounced a studied oration, which displayed his patriotism, and disguised his ambition. "He lamented, yet excused, his past conduct. Filial piety had required at his hands the revenge of his father's murder; the humanity of his own nature had sometimes given way to the stern laws of necessity, and to a forced connection with two unworthy colleagues: as long as Antony lived, the republic forbade him ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... 11, 1917, when General Allenby went into the Mount Zion quarter of the Holy City, the British name rested on a foundation as certain and sure as the rock on which the Holy City stands. Right down in the hearts of a people who cling to Jerusalem with the deepest reverence and piety there was unfeigned delight. They realised that four centuries of Ottoman dominion over the Holy City of Christians and Jews, and 'the sanctuary' of Mahomedans, had ended, and that Jerusalem the Golden, the central Site of Sacred History, ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey

... whence he addressed the nearmost part of the people in low, soothing tones of persuasion. Apparently he ignored Ezra Brunt, but the man was convicted of sin, and felt himself melting like an icicle in front of a fire. He recalled the days of his youth, the piety of his father and mother, and the long traditions of a stern Dissenting family. He had backslidden, slackened in the use of the means of grace, run after the things of this world. It is true that none of his chiefest iniquities presented themselves to him; he was quite unconscious ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... seventeenth. In fact, the commencement of the persecutions of the Christians appears to synchronize exactly with the period of the breaking out of the Marcomannic war, which seems to have alarmed the whole empire, and the emperor himself, into a paroxysm of returning piety to their gods, of which the Christians were the victims. See Jul, Capit. Script. Hist August. p. 181, edit. 1661. It is remarkable that Tertullian (Apologet. c. v.) distinctly asserts that Verus (M. Aurelius) issued no edicts against ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... under pain of derogation, will do wisely to conform. How often has not a cold glance of an eye informed me that my dog was disappointed; and how much more gladly would he not have taken a beating than to be thus wounded in the seat of piety! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... it is certain that if any medical man had come to Middlemarch with the reputation of having definite religious views, of being given to prayer and of otherwise showing an active piety, there would have been a general presumption against his medical skill. ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall

... the works (poems and criticism) and correspondence of the late Lionel Johnson. I presume that this edition will comprise his study of Thomas Hardy. The enterprise proves that Lionel Johnson has admirers capable of an excellent piety; and it also argues a certain continuance of the demand for his books. I was never deeply impressed by Lionel Johnson's criticisms, and still less by his verse, but in the days of his activity I was ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... Piety and fear, Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth, Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood, Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades, Degrees, observances, customs, ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... the Parsis that in changing their religion, they would not only relinquish the heirloom of their remote forefathers, but of their own fathers; and it is felt as a dereliction of filial piety to give up what was most precious to those whose memory is most precious and almost sacred ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... Cecilia was a noble Roman lady, who lived in the reign of the Emperor Alexander Severus. Her parents, who secretly professed Christianity, brought her up in their own faith, and from her earliest childhood she was remarkable for her enthusiastic piety: she carried night and day a copy of the Gospel concealed within the folds of her robe; and she made a secret but solemn vow to preserve her chastity, devoting herself to heavenly things, and shunning the pleasures and vanities ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... four others were real seminaries, in which the doctrine of the final holiness and happiness of all intelligent beings, after future disciplinary punishment, was inculcated by men as much distinguished for piety and virtue and missionary zeal, as any ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... ability and piety have seldom or rarely been disputed, comments on some of the above articles thus: (Commentary p. 606.) "Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store as God hath prospered him, that ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign - 1847 edition • Joseph Bates

... species of insult and injury. The Catholics were determined that the Protestant religion should not be tolerated in France, and that all who did not conform to the Church of Rome should either perish or be driven from the kingdom. Many of the Protestants were men of devoted piety, who cherished their religious convictions more tenaciously than life. There were others, however, who joined them merely from motives of political ambition. Though the Protestant party, in France itself, was comparatively small, the great ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... over at this delicate compliment, and observed, with becoming diffidence and great originality, that "beauty was only skin-deep at the best, and not by any manner of means to be compared with Christian piety and high intellect." ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... Moving Finger writes; and having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... doubt, snugly lodged before this in the house called Beautiful, at —— Walnut Street, where that "grave and beautiful damsel named Discretion" had already welcomed him, smiling, though "the water stood in her eyes," and had "called out Prudence, Piety, and Charity, who, after a little more discourse with him, had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... had then been dead nearly two hundred years. Truly the man in whom piety and genius are blended ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... angered or dismayed by his host's unceremonious departure, for social etiquette is not very rigid on Old Bear Mountain. He was a tall athletic fellow, clad in a suit of brown jeans, which displayed, besides the ornaments of patches, sundry deep grass stains about the knees. Not that piety induced Brice to spend much time in the lowly attitude of prayer, unless, indeed, Diana might be accounted the goddess of his worship. The green juice was pressed out when kneeling, hidden in some leafy, grassy nook, he ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... her, Which night and Hellespont would quickly send her. With this confirm'd, she vow'd to banish quite All thought of any check to her delight; And, in contempt of silly bashfulness, She would the faith of her desires profess, Where her religion should be policy, To follow love with zeal her piety; Her chamber her cathedral-church should be, And her Leander her chief diety; For in her love these did the gods forego; And though her knowledge did not teach her so, Yet did it teach her this, that what her ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman

... Marcus Marulus, Mombritius, David Rothe, the prudent prelate, And Vice-Primate of all Ireland, Belarminus, Dimas Serpi, Bede, Jacobus, and Solinus, Messingham, and to express it In a word, the Christian faith And true piety that defend it. For the play is ended where Its applause, I ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... Where morals are loose, piety is seldom in excess. But there are a half-dozen of churches in Washington, besides preaching every Sunday in the House of Representatives. The relative size and cost of the churches, as compared with the Public Buildings, indicates the true object of worship in Washington. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... remarkable, like most of the churches of Catholic Switzerland, for a hideous style of devotional ornament; but it had a certain cold and musty picturesqueness, and Rowland lingered there with some tenderness for Alpine piety. While he was near the high-altar some people came in at the west door; but he did not notice them, and was presently engaged in deciphering a curious old German epitaph on one of the mural tablets. At last he turned away, wondering ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... an only daughter, named Mary, beautiful of countenance, but more beautiful in heart. She had been educated at the Moravian school at Fairfield, and was distinguished for fervent piety and deep sympathy with the missionary cause. The two young folks were thrown together, mutual esteem deepened into love, and the maiden, possessed with so large a missionary spirit, was prepared to share the lot of the young ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane

... reason teaches that especial regard should be had to the fitness of candidates to public offices; but, though piety and honesty go to form the greatest merit, yet, as the appearance of these virtues is often imposed on us for the reality, no tree should be severely judged till he gets into office, when he will show himself ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg

... principle worship was based. It consisted in doing things agreeable to the gods to obtain their favor. Plato expresses as follows[55] the thought of the common man, "To know how to say and do those things that are pleasing to the gods, either in prayers or in offerings, this is piety which brings prosperity to individuals and to states. The reverse is impiety which ruins everything." "It is natural," says Xenophon at the end of his treatise on Cavalry, "that the gods should favor those especially who not ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... figure of the Saviour was rudely carved in relief. The form was so uncouth as to be scarcely human. The head was half as wide again as the space across the shoulders, and the hands were nearly as large as the head. How many centuries ago did Christian piety raise this rough image of its hope upon the moors amidst the purple heather and ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... adored husband, deprived of wonted comforts and luxuries, and toiling in humble and unwonted labors, she yet recalls this as one of the happiest periods of her life. And it was not the mere exercise of benevolence and piety in ministering, comfort and relieving suffering. It was, still more, the elevated enjoyment which only an enlarged and cultivated mind can attain, in the inspirations of grand and far-reaching results purchased by such sacrifice and suffering. It was in aiding ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... early Germany, in their lovely heartiness, in their unambitious limitation, and their pious sense, deserve a friendly acknowledgment. What man has considered the pious images in the prayer-books of the Middle Ages, the unadorned innocence, the piety and purity, the patience of the martyrs, the calm, heavenly transparency of the figures of the holy angels, without being attracted by the simple innocence and humility of these forms, the creation of pious artists' hands? Who has beheld them without ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... devotions. Clear of the city walls, one sees nothing on every side but huge storks. They are held sacred by the natives, being supposed to migrate to Mecca every year. I heard at Ispahan that, notwithstanding the outward austerity and piety of the people of Koom, there is no town in Persia where so much secret depravity and licentiousness are carried on ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... young, leaving a widow and four children, of whom John was the eldest; his mother is described as "a lady of many excellences of mind and character, beautiful in person, well informed, resolute, generous, amiable, kind, and, above all, eminent for piety and the religious virtues." Her little property, it seems, was lost through fraud or neglect, and the widowed mother, with her four infant children, thrown destitute upon the world. In a few years, however, she was again married to Dr. Moor, and John was removed to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various

... votive offerings—little models of ships that had been set there by sailors, grateful for succor in storm and escape from shipwreck, wreaths and pictures and crosses and images of saints, emblems all of a simple piety that his racked spirit was slowly learning to understand. In front of him was the altar with its image of Our Lady of the Sea, curiously and beautifully wrought in silver, the figure of the Divine Woman on a space of tumbling sea. At the left of the altar, ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... her over the head. Nobody can regret it so much as I do! Nobody can feel so acutely the position in which I am placed! I have sat in this House for many years, and many gentlemen know me well. I think, Sir, that they will acknowledge that I am a man not deficient in filial piety or general humanity. Sir, I am sorry for what I did in a moment of heat. I have now spoken the truth, and I shall leave myself in the hands of the House.' My belief is I should get such a round of applause ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... son, Gen. LEE's filial piety was so marked as to make him an example worthy of all imitation by the youth of his country. In every post of honor or trust to which he was called—and they were many and exalted ones—he met his engagements ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various

... more beautiful menagerie of Chinese pheasants than any in his father's extensive gardens." This oracle seemed so impossible to be accomplished, that he believed it more than he had done the first, which shewed his great piety. He determined to begin his second search, and being told by the lord lieutenant that there was in England a Mr. Banks,[2] who was going all over the world in search of he did not know what, his highness thought he could not have ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole

... does not explain everything to a mere maharajah. But the mere maharajah was in no mood to be put off with smiles just then. As Yasmini got the story afterward from the bald old mendicant, whose piety had recently won him permission to bask on the comfortable carved stones just outside the window, Gungadhura burst forth into such explosive profanity that the high priest ran out of the room. The mendicant vowed that he heard the door slam—and so he did; but it was really Gungadhura, ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... Churches are depraved because they have excluded so many of the most powerful moral forces of the time. Certain it is that they have offended by their exclusiveness; by the narrowing down of interest; by the cliquishness of those who are specialists in piety or ritual. We may observe their habit of mind in that narrow Victorian sect which converted Mr. Gosse's strong-willed and in many ways lovable father into an intolerant tyrant (as set forth in Father and ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... my observations have hitherto been confined to Dr. Currie's book: if, by fraternal piety, the poison can be sucked out of this wound, those inflicted by meaner hands may be safely left to heal of themselves. Of the other writers who have given their names, only one lays claim to even a slight acquaintance with the author, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... Those who work out their salvation with fear and trembling; who live in the world without indulging in its vices. Who shall be saved? That Christian woman who, shut up in the circle of her domestic duties, rears up her children in faith and in piety; divides her heart only between her Savior and her husband; is adorned with delicacy and modesty; sits not down in the assemblies of vanity; makes not a law of the ridiculous customs of the world, but regulates those customs ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... information as to the literary and social conditions of the time, and are the most reliable authority for the history of humanism in the Carolingian age. He also trained the numerous monks of the abbey in piety, and it was in the midst of these pursuits that he was struck down by death on the 19th ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Johnson slow of belief without strong evidence. La Credulite des incredules. Coast of Mull. Nun's Island. Past scenes pleasing in recollection. Land on Icolmkill. October 20. Sketch of the ruins of Icolmkill. Influence of solemn scenes of piety. Feudal authority in the extreme. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... should say, that there was one Plutarch, that would eat his children as soon as they were born; as the poets speak of Saturn. And as the contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is greater towards men. Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy, in the minds of men. Therefore theism ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... bought you, you and your tricks. You won't have to look at these crowns twice without finding me a way to have my wife. In bringing this conjunction about you commit no sin. It is a work of piety to bring together two people whose hands only been put one in to the other, and that ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... manner; that lofty light air, that politely disdainful view of Valori and mankind: he has now need of men. Complains of nothing, is cheerful, quizzical;—ardently busy to "grind out the notches," as our proverb is; has a mild humane aspect, something of modesty, almost of piety in him. Help me, thou Supreme Power, Maker of men, if my purposes are manlike! Though one does not go upon the Prayers of Forty-Hours, or apply through St. Vitus and such channels, there may be something of authentic petition to Heaven in the thoughts ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... anything that should be done, kind or good, (and who but fools couldn't?) then do it; push at it together: you can't quarrel in a side-by-side push; but the moment that even the best men stop pushing, and begin talking, they mistake their pugnacity for piety, and it's all over. I will not speak of the crimes which in past times have been committed in the name of Christ, nor of the follies which are at this hour held to be consistent with obedience to Him; but I WILL speak of the morbid corruption and waste of vital power in religious ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... repose of a satiated tiger, an indignant and threatening voice reached him even in the recesses of his palace. The Sheik Yussuf, governor of the castle of Janina, venerated as a saint by the Mohammedans on account of his piety, and universally beloved and respected for his many virtues, entered Ali's sumptuous dwelling for the first time. The guards on beholding him remained stupefied and motionless, then the most devout prostrated themselves, while others went to inform the pacha; ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... possible? What man's breath shall be strong enough to put out at one effort the burning lamp of God? These rash endeavours of an impious piety may evoke miracles strange and monstrous. Tremble, guilty that ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... we can offer a charming variety, Far renowned for larning and piety; Still, I'd advance you, widout impropriety, Father O'Flynn as the ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... four hours about a reasonable time; Wesley, six; Lord Coke and Sir Wm. Jones, seven; and Sir John Sinclair, eight. These were the theories of men who were all eminent for their learning, and most of them for their piety. How far their practice corresponded with their theories, we are ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... least not inferior to that which is exemplified elsewhere, and there is the advantage of an entire absence of assumption and pretence. The moral atmosphere, so far, is pure; and there is found a strong desire to walk ever on the mountain tops of life; though taste, rather than piety, is the ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... good conduct during the day, their teacher was accustomed to translate orally to them, at its close, at first simple stories, and then such volumes as Paradise Lost, The Course of Time, and Edwards's History of Redemption. To these were added such practical works as Pike's Persuasives to Early Piety, Pastor's Sketches, and Christ a Friend; and the pupils understood books a great deal better in the free translations thus given, than in the more exact renderings issued from the press. Baxter's Saints' Rest, poured thus hot and glowing ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary

... One day of his work and bother would kill another man, yet he is so cheerful at breakfast, lunch, and dinner; but I know he suffers fearfully from low spirits. I hear him walking up and down his room all night (it is next to mine). It is only his great piety carries him through. He and I agree in a great many ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... drastic, remedies. "It is not me," replies poor Lawrence, in an interrupted voice, "'tis nature that is gelide and timide." In fact, he lived but few months after, I believe, and retained his faculties still a shorter time. He was a man of strict piety and profound learning, but little skilled in the knowledge of life or manners, and died without having ever enjoyed the reputation ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... of genuine piety I had heard within the walls of the monastery, I thought more of the Abbot Tobias from that moment that he was not ashamed to speak them in the presence of Prince and Councillor of State, as well as before a rough ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... was a species of moral and mental hydrophobia, and the mass of men no more desired to be converted to heresy than we desire to be bitten by mad dogs. In their simple souls they abhorred and feared the thing. They attended an auto-da-f as an act of faith, piety, and rejoicing. They might have been a Paris crowd watching the last hours of such a social pest and terror as Landru, except that it probably occurred to few of the Parisian sightseers to pray for ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... because (as we have seen) he had no skill in literary arts, or because (as I am sometimes tempted to suppose) there is a law in human nature that prevents young men - not otherwise beasts - from the performance of this simple act of piety - months and years had gone by, and John had never written. The habit of not writing, indeed, was already fixed before he had begun to come into his fortune; and it was only the difficulty of breaking this long silence that withheld him from an instant ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson

... we may add that St. John's Gospel is characterised by a tone of fervent piety which is totally wanting in those of the ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... instruction into which you have thrown the teachings of your own little experience, and which you give forth from your own heart, will do a hundred times more good than any amount of ingenuity, brilliancy, or even piety, which you may preach at second-hand, with the feeling that somehow you stand to all this as an outsider. If you wish honestly to do good, preach what you have felt, and neither ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... you hear, you who so rashly accuse the art of magic? It is an art acceptable to the immortal gods, full of all knowledge of worship and of prayer, full of piety and wisdom in things divine, full of honour and glory since the day when Zoroaster and Oromazes established it, high-priestess of the powers of heaven. Nay, it is one of the first elements of princely instruction, nor do they lightly ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... hasty expressions he had used. He had acquired the low and vulgar habit of using profane language at the poorhouse. He was conscious that it was not only wicked to do so, but that it was very offensive to many persons who did not make much pretension to piety, or even morality; and, in summing up his faults in the woods, he had included this habit as one ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic

... wonderful and unheard of, they would have been much more so if the ships to a reasonable amount had been furnished me. But what has been accomplished is great and wonderful, and not at all proportionate to my deserts, but to the sacred Christian faith, and to the piety and religion of our sovereigns. For what the mind of man could not compass, the spirit of God has granted to mortals. For God is wont to listen to his servants who love his precepts, even in impossibilities, as has happened to me in the present instance, who have accomplished ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various

... some sort, when registering the barometer and the thermometer of their religious experience were the most unrelenting self-accusers. It is safe to say, as a general thing, that those who in that introspection, in the measurement of their heats and chills of piety, grieved most deeply and found the most ingenious causes for self-infliction were either the most calculating hypocrites or the most truly godly. To which of the two classes any one particular individual might belong could not always ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... as those who marry for convenience. Picture of a modern marriage. A lesson both to parents and children in love-cases. Handsome men seldom make good husbands. Miss Howe reflects on the Harlowe family, as not famous for strictness in religion or piety. Her ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... judgment she measured the character of Madame de Montespan, and she forecast in her mind the inevitable downfall of the proud and arrogant favorite. She was the very opposite in nature of Madame de Montespan. Her self-possession, poise, skill and tact, virtue and piety made an irresistible appeal to the tired King. That her piety was scarcely more than a cloak is betrayed by many of her own utterances. "Nothing is more clever than irreproachable behavior," she said at one time to ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne

... thicket of trees to a handsome graystone country seat, situated in the midst of beautifully ornamented grounds and known as Willow Heights, the residence of Dr. William Day, a retired physician of great repute, and a man of earnest piety. He was a widower with one fair daughter, Clara, a girl of fourteen, then absent at boarding-school. Traverse had never seen this girl, but his one great admiration was the beautiful Willow Heights and its worthy proprietor. He opened the highly ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... life dashed, as it were, to the ground. I had expended all my little capital in providing a comfortable home for her, who, alas! was doomed never to behold it; and I had a little son to bring up without the aid of my poor Emma, whose piety and sweet temper would have been so ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland

... you will have no one for the present: I mean no one very fit to direct you in practical matters; but in all that tends directly to the welfare of the soul you will have one young in years but old in good works, and very much my superior in piety." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... the deepest pain. As two whole years must necessarily elapse before Anthony could enter into holy orders, he determined to prosecute his studies in the country with their worthy curate, Mr. Grant, a gentleman of great learning, piety, and worth. ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... out of the burning," as he termed himself—when a boy was remarkable for his piety. At eight his father admitted him to the Holy Communion. He had thus early learned the lesson of self-control; for his mother tells us that having smallpox at this age he bore his disease bravely, "like a man and indeed like a Christian, without any ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross

... from the moment he laid eyes on him. His pugnacious piety he might have endured but for the fact that he was good-looking and eloquent. When he rose in the pulpit in all his sacred dignity, fixed his eyes on Margaret, and began in tenderly modulated voice ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... demoralisation, both of France and Spain. Knox and Buchanan, the one from the stand-point of an old Hebrew prophet, the other rather from that of a Juvenal or a Tacitus, tried the other method, and called acts by their just names, appealing alike to conscience and to God. The result was virtue and piety, and that manly independence of soul which is thought compatible with hearty loyalty, in a country labouring under heavy disadvantages, long divided almost into two ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... whose promising talents and piety I dare not now make further mention, having calmly asked me my opinion respecting the state of the ship, I told him that I thought we should be prepared to sleep that night in eternity; and I shall ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor

... few days after Tecaughretanego made his prayer and offered up his tobacco, rain came and raised the Olentangy high enough to let them pass safely into the Scioto. He does not say whether he thought this was the effect of the old Indian's piety, but he always speaks reverently of Tecaughretanego's religion. He is careful to impress the reader again and again with the importance of the Indian family he had been taken into, and with the wisdom as well as the goodness of Tecaughretanego, who held some such place among the Ottawas, ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... the breakfast hour at Fellside. There were no family prayers. Lady Maulevrier did not pretend to be pious, and she put no restraints of piety upon other people. She went to Church on Sunday mornings for the sake of example; but she read all the newest scientific books, subscribed to the Anthropological Society, and thought as the newest scientific people ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... requires an assent to its creed, and forbids heresy. But this only means, "Receive the creed as true until you are able to see how it is true." The Church also insists greatly on love, and its saints have been filled with the highest raptures of piety. But it never requires feeling. It says, "Use the means we put into your hands, and feeling will come. Pray, as we command you to do, whether you feel deeply or not. Feeling will come by and by." Discipline, therefore, and ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... the Betts case scarcely existed. When it did come up, she would say impatiently that in her opinion such private matters were best left to the people concerned to settle; and it was evident that to her the High Anglican view of divorce was, like the inconvenient piety of Hoddon Grey, a thing of superfluity. But Marcia knew very well that her mother had no mind to give to such a trifle—or to anything, indeed—her own marriage not excepted—but Arthur's disclosure, and Arthur's intentions. What her mother's plans were she could not discover. They lingered ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... plate, our furniture, or our money. At length the custom of manumission, and the diffusion of Christianity, ameliorated the condition of the Anglo-Saxon slaves. Sometimes individuals, from benevolence, gave their slaves their freedom—sometimes piety procured a manumission. But the most interesting kind of emancipation appears in those writings which announce to us, that the slaves had purchased their own liberty, or that of their family. The Anglo-Saxon laws recognised the liberation of slaves, and placed them under legal protection. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various

... chance! If I had gone a-whoring with the Practice of Piety in my pocket I had never ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... Active volcanoes, and extinct volcanoes, and the marks everywhere of volcanic action likewise support the theory of expansion and elevation by heat. A volcano is not made on purpose to frighten superstitious people into fits of piety and devotion; it is to be considered as a spiracle of a ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... nor wives for their husbands; parents for their children, nor children for their parents." The saddest proof of the extent of the suffering is shown in the irreligious despair which seized upon the sufferers. Scotland then, as now, was strongly marked for its piety, but want made men defiant of heaven, prepared, like her who counselled the man of Uz, to curse God and die by the roadside. Warned by no dream of thin and ill-favored kine, the Pharaohs of Westminster had passed ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... Bishop of Salisbury and all the members of the brotherhood, who were headed by Walter the Prior, solemnly, with psalms and hymns, entered the crypt in which the martyr's body lay, and removed the stones which covered the tomb. Four priests, specially conspicuous for their piety, were selected to take out the relics, which were then placed in a strong coffer studded with iron nails ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers

... could repair The sad devastation that time has made there; If the joys of the world had a balm to impart, That would act as a charm to the woes of the heart. Yes, there is such a balm, but it comes from above, It is wafted to earth on the pinions of love; 'Tis the spirit of piety, spotless and pure, That teaches us calmly life's ills to endure; When it reigns in the heart, every error's forgiven, It resigns us to earth, and prepares us ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney

... recluse from sheer sense of duty and faithful lose, while other wives, who have less means than I, live in state and go to entertainments.—And whose slaves are better kept and more often freed than ours? Where is the beggar so sure of an alms as in our house, where I, and I alone, uphold piety?—And now am I so fallen that the sun may not shine on me, and that a worthy man like you should withdraw his friendship all in a moment, and for the sake of this ungrateful, loveless creature—because, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... a common one," replied the old man, "and arises from the fact that you do not know what religion is. Mere piety is not religion. There is a life of charity as well as a life of piety, and the latter without the former is like ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... safely at home, busy with his books and the small parish which found in him a minister by nature as by grace, a quiet, studious man, rich in the wisdom that is better than learning, the charity which calls all mankind 'brother', the piety that blossoms into character, making it august ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... there shall be none to bestow, in some charitable use as he shall think fitt. I desire my body may be interred and put to rest in the chapple of Eaton College, a place that hath my dear affections and prayers that it may be a flouring nursery of piety and learning to the end of the world. And for a profession of any faith, I refer myself to the works which I not long since published in one volume, wherein I have professed a right and saving faith, and hope to continue therein ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various

... valley." When they repeated this, every last vestige of Jacob's doubt disappeared, and he said: "Great is the steadfastness of my son Joseph. In spite of all his sufferings he has remained constant in his piety.[296] Yea, great are the benefits that the Lord hath conferred upon me. He saved me from the hands of Esau, and from the hands of Laban, and from the Canaanites who pursued after me. I have tasted ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... our fathers have been represented as gloomy, superstitious, severe, irrational, and of a licentious tendency. But when other systems shall have produced a piety as devoted, a morality as pure, a patriotism as disinterested, and a state of society as happy, as have prevailed where their doctrines have been most prevalent, it may be in season to seek ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... wisdom, and this Solomon is said to have possessed far beyond his contemporaries, and to a degree incompatible with his years. It is said that he built and consecrated a "temple for the Lord," and that, as a result of his extreme piety and devotion to God, he was vouchsafed ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... ornamental dishes the family possesses. The priest is received with bows at the door, and when the benediction is over he is rewarded with the gratuity of a paul or a scudo, according to the piety and purse of the proprietor; while into the basket of his attendant is always dropped a pagnotta, a couple of eggs, a baiocco, or some such trifle. [Footnote: Beside the blessing of the eggs and house, it is the custom ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... they were received as befitted their heavenly mission, and from Basel were accompanied by Pantulus, who was afterward canonized, and whose portrait is to be seen in the church of St. Ursula. Once at Rome Pope Cyriacus himself was so affected by their devoted piety that, after praying with them at the tombs of the apostles, he determined on abdicating the pontifical office to accompany them on their return down ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... esteemed before all things dear and precious, I have believed that I should be undertaking no ungrateful or unprofitable task, in demonstrating that not only can such freedom be granted without prejudice to the public peace, but also, that without such freedom, piety cannot flourish nor the public peace ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza

... came round, I went to the standing, but found him not; so I enquired for him and was told that he lay sick in the hut of such a woman. Now this was an old woman, renowned for piety, who had a hut of reeds in the burial- ground. So I went thither and found him lying on the naked earth, with a brick for a pillow and his face beaming with light. I saluted him and he returned my salute; and I sat down at his head, weeping over ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous

... by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions — by abandoning every value except the will to power — they ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... royal navy in number and equipage, very formidable at sea; lastly, for a complement of all these blessings, they were enjoyed under the protection of a King of the most harmless disposition; the most exemplary piety; the greatest sobriety, chastity, and mercy, that ever Prince had been endowed with: But all these blessings could but enable, not compel, us to be happy. We wanted that sense, acknowledgement, and value of our own happiness, which all but we had; and ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... than these; for full many are the calamities, alas! alas! which a city undergoes when it has been reduced. One drags another,[117] slaughters, and to parts he sets fire—the whole city is defiled with smoke, and raving Mars that tramples down the nations, violating piety, inspires them. Throughout the town are uproars, against the city rises the turreted circumvallation,[118] and man is slain by man with the spear. And the cries of children at the breast all bloody resound, and there is rapine sister of pell-mell confusion. ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus

... book was being published, new forces were at hand which were to strip the thin disguise of piety from pilgrims of this sort. The Colloquies of Erasmus appeared before the third edition of Informacon for Pylgrymes, and exploded the idea that it was the height of piety to have seen Jerusalem. It was nothing but the love ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard

... my task very expeditiously: for I was glad of this opportunity of witnessing, the maternal piety with which she enforced, in voice and expression, every sentence that contained any lesson that might be useful to her royal daughters. She reads extremely well, with ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... is not always safe,—safe either to others, or to ourselves! But I dare open to you now my real heart: look in it; I dare to say that you will behold charity, benevolence, piety to God, love and friendship at this moment to yourself; but I own, also, that you will behold there a determination—which to me seems courage—not to be the only idle being in the world, where all are ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... properly understood until we have formed a clear conception of the traditional Chinese theory concerning the nature of Political Sovereignty. The political edifice, no less than the social, is built on the Confucian and pre-Confucian foundation of filial piety. The Emperor is father of his people; the whole population of the empire forms one vast family, of which the Emperor is the head. As a son owes obedience and reverence to his parent, so does the subject owe reverence and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... mischievous or detestable work. What wonder that every one shrank from me in dread—that my father drove me forth at length, when the disgrace of which I was the cause was past his patience to bear. Mistress Clarke came with me; and here we try to live such a life of piety and prayer as may in time set me ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... whom, for many yeares, he had constantly accompanyed, in all his honourable employments, and in all the engagements of the former warre, dyed with him, at the age of xxxii., much bewailed by his father, whom he never offended; and much beloved by all for his knowne piety, vertue, loyalty, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... has been mentioned, with the presence of the accused, on the spot, where and when the crime was alleged to have been committed, or within miles or hundreds of miles of it. No reputation for virtue or piety could be pleaded against it. The doctrine which Cotton Mather proclaimed, on another occasion, that the Devil might appear as Angel of Light, completed the demolition of the securities of innocence. There was no difficulty in getting "other testimony" ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... the tone of piety which the Pamphlet displays, I dare not trust myself to put on paper my feelings about the principles contained in it; tending as they do, in my opinion, altogether to make shipwreck of Christian faith. I also lament, that, by its appearance, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... other plays." Mr. Home was a Presbyterian minister. His first play was "The Tragedy of Douglas," which D'Israeli describes as a drama which, "by awakening the piety of domestic affections with the nobler passions, would elevate and purify the mind;" and proceeds, with no little indignation, to relate how nearly it cost the author dear. The "Glasgow divines, with the monastic spirit of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... visum[obs3][Latin]; actum me invito factus[Latin], non est meus actus[Latin]; aujord'hui roi demain rien[French]; quisque suos patimur manes [Latin][Vergil];"The moving finger writes and having writ moves on. Nor all your piety and wit can bring it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it."[Rubayyat ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... dwells in infinite peace. He sees the universe and is not troubled, and shall not we who are akin to him learn to look upon our little meteorite without losing repose of mind and heart? Were it not a sweeter piety to trust that he who made all things will know how to make all things right; and therefore not to grow anxious lest some investigator should find him at fault or thwart his plans? As living bodies ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... undertaken. A man entirely without redeeming vices would have had no common basis on which to work, and no means of gaining the sympathy of his flock. As we came to know Elias B. Hopkins better, we discovered that in spite of his piety there was a leaven of old Adam in him, and that he had certainly known unregenerate days. He was no teetotaler. On the contrary, he could choose his liquor with discrimination, and lower it in an able manner. He played a masterly ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to name a single good thing that they do. Give them to the divine; do they add to his piety, to his zeal, to his faithfulness, to his love of God or man? No; they destroy them all. Give them to the physician; do they increase his skill, his power to discriminate amid the symptoms of disease, his judgment to apply the appropriate remedies, his kind and affectionate ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... talk too much o' carnal means and worldly chances, without leaning upon that heavenly goodwill which should be to us as a staff on stony and broken paths. Yes, gentlemen,' he continued, raising his voice and glancing across the table at some of the courtiers, 'ye may sneer at words of piety, but I say that it is you and those like you who will bring down God's anger ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... beauty, ease, and accomplishments she was not proud; but her pride was too ethereal to be seen. It was not the vain consciousness of gifts and endowments, but the serene sense of worthiness, of unimpaired health, honor, and descent, which made her kind and thoughtful to a degree only less than piety. Grateful for her social rank and parentage, she adorned but did not forget them. The suitors who came for her were weighed in this scale of perfect desert—to be sons of such parents and associates of her married sisters and sisters-in-law. Not one had ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... they make little or no sacrifice for others. Many self-supporting churches do not shelter weaker ones and have no thought for the heathen. There are churches that are fortunate in having in their official boards men of culture, piety, and business experience, but these are virtues very rarely found in the same men. Business methods are often low in churches because of the difficulty of finding strictly business men among the laity. In the erection of churches the spirit of ostentation rather ...
— The Defects of the Negro Church - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 10 • Orishatukeh Faduma

... willingly composed except under the impulse to body forth a vision of the love and light and life which was the spirit of the power he worshipped. This persistent upward striving, this earnestness, this passionate intensity, this piety of soul and purity of inspiration, give a quite unique spirituality to his poems. But it cannot be expected that the colder perfections of Academic art should always be found in them. They have something of the waywardness and negligence of nature, something ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... But it is evident to the unprejudiced that the usage in question gradually went out in submission to the altered spirit of the times. It was one feature of a general system of manners, fitted by its piety and simplicity for a pious and simple age, and which therefore even the 17th century had already outgrown. It is not to be inferred that filial affection and reverence have decayed amongst us, because they no longer express themselves in the same way. ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... supplemented his masterful nature, and the sons of the household were brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. At the age of eleven the third son, William Ewart Gladstone, was sent away to Eton, where his two brothers were already at school. Here his piety and studious habits militated against his popularity, but here his intellectual ambition was aroused and his soul was enriched by the closest intimacy with Arthur Hallam, whom Tennyson's "In Memoriam" has eulogized. Like Canning he was a precocious orator, and edited the school paper ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... penetrated. In her, indeed, there is no weak compromise with human feelings. The lesson meant to be taught by the novel is the necessity of taking precaution in regard to marriage. One point insisted upon again and again is the requirement of piety in the husband. It is the duty of a Christian mother to guard against a connection with any one but a Christian for her daughters: for throughout the whole work the sovereign right of the parent over the child is not merely implied, it is directly asserted. "No really ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... the prince began: "There reigned a pious monarch o'er Ayodhya in the days of yore: Sagar his name: no child had he, And children much he longed to see. His honoured consort, fair of face, Sprang from Vidarbha's royal race, Kesini, famed from early youth For piety and love of truth. Arishtanemi's daughter fair, With whom no maiden might compare In beauty, though the earth is wide, Sumati, was his second bride. With his two queens afar he went, And weary days in penance spent, Fervent, upon Himalaya's hill Where springs the stream called Bhrigu' rill. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... a parsonage. Many commanders of fine merchant-ships come from these abodes of piety and peace. Jim's father possessed such certain knowledge of the Unknowable as made for the righteousness of people in cottages without disturbing the ease of mind of those whom an unerring Providence enables to live ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... nor does it require any stretch of fancy to see in him the Christchild that St. Christopher bore over the river, for so might that Child have come into this wilderness preaching the eternal lesson. The pathetic story is a fable of piety, in fact, and is somewhat nervelessly handled for reality; the figures seem to glide in their motions, they are not quite set on the earth, they are impalpable except in their emotions. The facts lack firmness, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... of any house of prayer, except in Sky, that was not in ruins. The malignant influence of Calvinism has blasted ceremony and decency together; and if the remembrance of papal superstition is obliterated, the monuments of papal piety are likewise effaced. ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... which he disappeared together with them. When his companions came out to seek him they did not see him, but a voice from Heaven informed them that he had been translated among the gods to live for ever, as a reward for his piety and righteousness. The voice went on to command the survivors to return to Babylonia, unearth the sacred writings, and make them known to men. They obeyed, and, moreover, built many cities and ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell

... ministers, whilst I examined their kirk-registers, and extracted from them every entry where the name of Hunter or Welsh was to be found. Never was task more gratifying. The bonhomie of the priests, and the simplicity of their parishioners, were a new world to me, whilst they, the clergy, men of piety and learning, considered themselves as out of the world altogether. The population was thin and scattered, the mode of living primitive in the extreme, and the visit of a stranger, so insignificant as myself, quite enough ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... is the Spring!— See yonder, yonder, by the river there, Long glittering pearly fingers flash Upon the warm bright air: Why, 'tis the heavenly palm, The Christian tree, Whose budding is a psalm Of natural piety: Soft silver notches up the smooth green stem— Ah, Spring must follow them, It is ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne

... and of love. He seems unintellectual to an abnormally intellectual age; he seems unpoetic to a taste formed upon poetic tidbits; he seems irreligious to standards founded upon the old models of devotional piety; he seems disorderly, incoherent to all petty thumb and finger measurements. In his ideas and convictions, Whitman was a modern of the moderns; yet in his type, his tastes, his fundamental make-up, he was primitive, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... occasion, however, the little building was full, and that was as much as could have happened had it been as large as St. Peter's itself. The prayers were devoutly and fervently read, and the sermon was plain and filled with piety. ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... that two hundred millions of that continent, which is the mother of such a civilization, are not to have any future at all? Such a doubt would be almost blasphemy against Providence. But there is a Providence indeed—a just, a bountiful Providence, and in it I trust, with all the piety of my religion. I dare to say my very self was an instrument of it. Even my being here, when four months ago I was yet a prisoner of the league of European despots in far Asia, and the sympathy which your glorious ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... excepting only the trunk.[27] It happens sometimes that the parts of these double persons quarrel with each other, especially while eating and drinking, when each claims the best and largest portions for himself. This species of mankind is distinguished for great piety, another difference between it and the ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... weakness of human reason as well as its strength, its province, and its limits. If he can be an unbeliever, he will be too profound and large-minded to ridicule religion or to act against it; he is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in his infidelity. He respects piety and devotion; he even supports institutions as venerable, beautiful or useful, to which he does not assent; he honors the ministers of religion, and it contents him to decline its mysteries without assailing or denouncing them. He is a friend of religious ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser

... itself to do evil, and all its leading forces, wealth, party, and piety, join in the career, it is impossible but that those who offer a constant opposition should be hated and maligned, no matter how wise, cautious, and well planned their course may be. We are peculiar sufferers in this way. The community has come to hate its reproving Nathan so bitterly, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... the sea surrounding them; in their cool, sober moments of reflection; in the silence and solitude of the deep, during the long night-watches, when all their holy home associations were thronging round their hearts; in the spontaneous piety and devotion of the last hours of so long a voyage; in the fullness and the frankness of their souls; when there was naught to jar the well-poised equilibrium of their judgment—under all these circumstances, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... is from one of his combinations, apparently, that the October Mirabelle, now celebrated and no less perfumed than the summer Mirabelle, owes its origin. He went to mass rather from gentleness than from piety, and because, as he loved the faces of men, but hated their noise, he found them assembled and silent only in church. Feeling that he must be something in the State, he had chosen the career of warden. However, he had never succeeded in loving any woman as much as a tulip ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... while the latter imagined that their opponents were as destitute of wit, of wisdom, and of virtue, as they were of hair. A man's locks were the symbol of his creed, both in politics and religion. The more abundant the hair, the more scant the faith; and the balder the head, the more sincere the piety. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... Annandale men. They came to the field meetings 'out of mere curiosity, to see a minister preach in a tent, and people sit on the ground'—in a spirit not unlike that in which the people used to gather at Peblis to the Play or Christ's Kirk on the Green, to mingle a pinch of piety and priestly Moralities with a bellyful of carnal delights. It was not until the preacher had denounced them as 'offspring of thieves and robbers,' that some of them began to 'get ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie

... one whom the greatest painter of the age has pronounced to be the fairest of the fair—the Lady B. F. This new Helen is, we understand, of a respectable family, niece to a late dean, distinguished for piety much and virtu more. It was reported that the niece was a great heiress, but after the proposal had been made, it was discovered that Virtu had made away with every shilling of her fortune. This made no difference in the eyes of her inamorato, who ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... of them were among the most stupendous creations of structural art. To temples rather than palaces were the resources and energies of the kings devoted, and successive monarchs found no more splendid outlet for their piety and ambition than the founding of new temples or the extension and adornment of those already existing. By the forced labor of thousands of fellaheen (the system is in force to this day and is known as the corve) architectural piles of vast extent could be erected ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... he had seen, one thing is certain; he returned after one mysterious voyage with great wealth, a sword-wound through his middle, ruined health, and a desire for respectability, social position, and a reputation for piety. It had been he who had built the immense house which, in my childhood, was shaded by huge gnarled trees, under which crops of beautiful but poisonous toadstools ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... words. In fact, there was much in Adam Colfax that made for his resemblance to the heroes of the Old Testament, his rigid piety, his absolute integrity, his willingness to fight in what he thought a just cause, his stern joy when the battle was joined, and his belief—perhaps not avowed—in the doctrine of an eye for an eye and a ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler

... must first have a fellowship in religion. No men could be partners in great works who were separated by a different form of worship. This decision procured not only salvation for Ludwig's guest, but the praise of piety for Ludwig himself, who, as soon as Harald had gone to the holy font, accordingly strengthened him with Saxon auxiliaries. Trusting in these, Harald built a temple in the land of Sleswik with much care and cost, to be hallowed ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... their country's laws depended on the mercy of any man, or when even bad citizens were judged by princes. But we still prefer that princes should be well-mannered gentlemen, and therefore it is sincerely to be hoped that Zadkiel's prediction, so far as it relates to piety and benevolence, may be fulfilled, should this 'royal native' live to mount the throne. As for mercy, it is a goodly quality even in these days and in this country; for if the law no longer tolerates cruelty to men, even on the part of princes, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... of cruelty for its own sake—which John was: and he was not personally a libertine. Of his father's virtues, bravery and honesty, there was not a trace in him. He covered his sins with an embroidered cloak of exquisite piety. The bad qualities of both parents were inherited by him. To his mother's covetous acquisitiveness and ingrained falsehood, he joined his father's unscrupulous exactions and ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt



Words linked to "Piety" :   devoutness, dutifulness, impiety, godliness



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