"Worldly-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... parsonage furnished, and keeps a team, and if one of those horses is not a trotter then I am no judge of horse flesh or of Bill, and if he don't put on an old driving coat and go out on the road occasionally and catch on for a race with some worldly-minded man, then I am another. You hear me—well, I never knew a calf was so heavy, and had so many hind legs. Kick! Why, bless your old alabaster heart, that calf walked all over me, from Genesis to Revelations. And say, we didn't get much of a breeze the next morning, did we, when we had to clean ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... it must be a coarse-spun and vulgar honesty. Those high and lofty notions of morals which you brought with you from the schools must be considerably lowered, and mixed with the baser alloy of a jealous and worldly-minded prudence. You must learn to do hard if not unjust things; and for the nice embarrassments of a delicate and ingenuous spirit, it is necessary for you to get rid of them as fast as possible. You must shut your heart against the Muses, and be content to feed your understanding with plain, household ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... duties, but preferring a religion which displayed itself in the cheerful activity of a regular life, rather than in any overstrained attention to devotional routine. It was only natural that his enemies should charge him with being worldly-minded, and should insinuate that with him religion was only an instrument of government, and an element in policy. It need not lessen our respect for him that his religious faith showed itself more in lavish charity, and in a cheerful energy, ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... regret to be compelled to draw upon you for five hundred dollars more." So! (Putting down letter.) If we were given to pride and vainglory, we might well be puffed up with the fame of our works and the contagion of our example: yet I fear that, with the worldly-minded, this praise of charity to others is only the prayerful expectation of some personal application to the ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... being placed on the same level with this begging fraternity: "I was no prophet," he says, "neither was I a prophet's son." And so when the people exclaimed in astonishment: "Is Saul also among the prophets?" they did not mean: "How is it that such a worldly-minded man finds himself in the company of such pious people?" Their meaning is better represented in a question like this: "How comes a person of such distinction to find ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... however highly estimated by the naturalist and the antiquary, were held in derision by the worldly-minded Tim. Surety, who exclaimed against the folly of expending money in the purchase of articles of no intrinsic value, calculated only to gratify the curiosity of those inquisitive idlers who affect their admiration of every uninteresting ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... this proud, worldly-minded man going to humble himself, and repent, and be forgiven? And was I to be defrauded thus of my just revenge? Should he pass away to an eternal life of holiness and joy,—while I, stained through him and for his sake with sins innumerable, sank ever lower ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... remote from those of true Christianity in the religious professors of Calvinism, on the mass of ignorant, sordid, unreflecting, and worldly-minded persons, who are taught these doctrines, its worst influences are seen to operate; and, as the country was notoriously demoralized at the close of the Cromwellian dictatorship, when Calvinistic divines had enjoyed a long and ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... which topped his prie-dieu of carved oak. He knelt in his own enclosure to the right of the altar, with his guards and his immediate household around him, while the court, ladies and cavaliers, filled the chapel. Piety was a fashion now, like dark overcoats and lace cravats, and no courtier was so worldly-minded as not to have had a touch of grace since the king had taken to religion. Yet they looked very bored, these soldiers and seigneurs, yawning and blinking over the missals, while some who seemed more intent upon their devotions ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but there was a large body of Presbyterians in the Church who desired a change. In {126} the ritual and ceremonies many "rags of popery" had been retained, which the extreme reformers wished to tear away. But Elisabeth was a worldly-minded woman, impatient of theological disputes. Though circumstances had made her the champion of Protestantism in Europe, she kept many Catholic notions, disapproved, for example, of the marriage of priests, and hated sermons. She was jealous of her prerogative in the State, and in the Church she ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... remarkable for her great personal attractions; and for two seasons, had been considered as the belle of the Irish metropolis. She was, at that period, a high-spirited and generous-minded girl, easily provoked, and as easily appeased—proud of her beauty and her accomplishments, which her worldly-minded parents were in hopes would be bartered for a coronet. Rainscourt was also, at that time, one of the handsomest, if not the handsomest man in Ireland, with the advantage of polished manners, talent, and ancient birth. Received and courted in every society, he was as indefatigable in ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... serious was it that all the bright prospects in which he had for some days been basking of the re-establishment of his family upon a securer basis than it had occupied for generations would vanish like a vision. He was not more worldly-minded than are other men, but he did fondly cherish a natural desire to see the family fortunes once more in the ascendant. The projected marriage between his daughter and Edward Cossey would have brought this about most ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... only repassed the gates considerably affected, but overpowered with an indescribable dread of impending death. I was now possessed with a servile love of God, arising from fear; an anxiety to please and obey him, to an infinite degree. Alas! even at this early age, how worldly-minded, how pitiful, ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... that she was on the side of the poet, not of the worldly-minded persons who advocated the law, business, money-making. She did not dread the prospect of being a poor man's wife. To be the wife of a poet, a man of courage and ambition and nobleness of heart, was far more to her. The turning point in Lowell's life was past; and he had ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... their civil privileges and their social rights; yet are they everywhere polite and affable. They indulge in few or no recriminations; are faithful to old associations; more considerate of the prejudices of others than others are of theirs; not more worldly-minded and money-loving than people generally are; and, everything considered, they surpass all nations in courtesy, affability, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... awhile unsupported, walking the world in bloomered loneliness—till a like event overtook her. Such is the end of every maid's revolt! But Irene, to this day, retains more of her student seriousness than her more worldly-minded friend. Her face is of the round cherubic type, and her large heavy-lidded eyes have a touch of demureness veiling humour no less deep than Luccia's, but more reflective, chuckling quietly to itself, though on occasion I know no one better ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... very good to us, will be more good, if we allow Him! Worldly-minded people think they can manage so much better than God. We must trust. Our weapons must be prayer and faith, and our only standard the Bible. As soon as we leave these weapons and take to "knowledge of the world," and other people's clumsy prejudices as our guides, we must inevitably ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... the original, Simon-Pure Progressives disapproved of this collusion, declaring that it represented a "deal," and that the Progressive Party, which had come into existence as a rebuke of Machine politics, ought never to soil itself by entering into a "deal." Nevertheless, the will of the more worldly-minded prevailed, and they probably thought that there would be a better chance to have the Republicans nominate Roosevelt if he were already the nominee of the Progressives. But they were disappointed. They nominated Roosevelt and ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... our estimate of Bishop Watson's character simply from such samples as these, we might conclude that he was a covetous, unreasonably discontented, and worldly-minded man. But this would be a very unfair conclusion to arrive at. The Bishop gives us only one, and that the weakest side of his character. He was most highly esteemed by some of his contemporaries, whose good opinion was well worth having. Gibbon pays him a very high compliment, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... to be Christians and a light in the world are neglectful of home, of husband and children, they bring Christianity into disrepute. Wives are commanded to be sober. Instead of sobriety how often we see them gay, silly, foolish and worldly-minded. Their thoughts are trashy, and their conversation the same; talking about one another, busybodies, no depth of thought or feeling of their mission in life, but are concerned more about the fashions and society than the duties of home. Such characters disgrace the cause of ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... There are thousands of things he might be—ought to be—except our librarian. He has an odd, displaced look behind the great desk. He looks as if he had gotten in by mistake and was trying to make the most of it. He has a business-like, worldly-minded, foreign air about him—a kind of off-hand, pert, familiar way with books. He does not know how to bend over—like a librarian—and when one comes on him in an alcove, the way one ought to come on a librarian, with a great folio on his knees, he is—well, ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... weightier matters, and went on down to Prudence with never so much as a reproving shake of the head for the worldly-minded young twins. ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... matches in the market,” meaning, of course, millionnaires who could provide their brides with country and city homes, yachts, and the other appurtenances of a brilliant position. Now, the unfortunate part of the affair is, that such a worldly-minded maiden will in good time be obliged to make her début, dine, and dance through a dozen seasons without making a new acquaintance. Her migrations from town to seashore, or from one country house to another, will be but changes of scene: the actors will ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... too fastidious and worldly-minded. If they love one another it doesn't matter a particle how old they are nor how poor. Women never should marry for money..." Amy caught herself up short as the words escaped her, and looked at her husband, who replied, with ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... church once on Sundays in winter, and twice in summer, and she had a certain very short period of each day devoted to Bible reading; but at Loring she was not reckoned to be among the religious people. Indeed, there were those who said that she was very worldly-minded, and that at her time of life she ought to devote herself to other books than those which were daily in her hands. Pope, Dryden, Swift, Cowley, Fielding, Richardson, and Goldsmith, were her authors. She read the new novels as ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... himself most narrow), all are watchmen "whose eyes God doth open, and whose conscience he pricketh to admonish the ungodly." And with the full consciousness of this great duty before him, he sets himself to answer the scruples of timorous or worldly-minded people. How can a man repent, he asks, unless the nature of his transgression is made plain to him? "And therefore I say," he continues, "that of necessity it is that this monstriferous empire of women (which among all enormities ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... secluded corner. They looked a little out of place—and felt it—amid this more or less gay company. But the drains of the Grand Hotel were known to be beyond question, and, coming to Rome so late in the season, the Reverend Canon Ebley felt it was wiser to risk the contamination of the over-worldly-minded than a possible attack of typhoid fever. The belief in a divine protection did not give him or his lady wife that serenity it might have done, and they traveled fearfully, taking with them their own jaeger sheets among ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... St Michel once more assumed the character of a fortress and had to defend itself against the Huguenots when its resources had been drained by these worldly-minded shepherds, and it is not surprising to find that the abbey which had withstood all the attacks of the English during the Hundred Years' War should often fall into the hands of the protestant armies, although in every case ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... heaping up earthly treasures, or in anxious care. These are the same plant, only the one is growing in the tropics of sunny prosperity, and the other in the arctic zone of chill penury. The one is the sin of the worldly-minded rich man, the other is the sin of the worldly-minded poor man. The character is the same in both, turned inside out! And, therefore, the words, 'ye cannot serve God and Mammon,' stand in this chapter in the centre ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... for the first time in his life to tamper with the course of justice, in order to shield his wife from persecution by a former husband who reappears after being supposed dead. Bulwer's novel of "Paul Clifford," with its final situation of the worldly-minded judge, Sir William Brandon, learning that the highwayman whom he is in the act of sentencing is his own son, and dying of the knowledge, was also well known to Stevenson, and probably counted for something in the suggestion of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is described by one person as being "a genuine priest, very good looking and able bodied, and with much apparent practice in the world." He was far too much of a student and worker to be altogether so worldly-minded as ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... repeated an observation which, from its obviousness and importance, must have been frequently made—viz. that the impoverishing of the clergy, and bringing their incomes much nearer to a level, would not cause them to become less worldly-minded: the emoluments, howsoever reduced, would be as eagerly sought for, but by men from lower classes in society; men who, by their manners, habits, abilities, and the scanty measure of their attainments, would unavoidably be less fitted for their station, and less ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... they please go to the workhouse; they know that it is for them the door of heaven. For my part, I am worldly-minded; I fear God, but yet more I fear the hell of poverty. To be destitute is the last depth of misfortune in society as now constituted. I am a man of ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... designation to its true origin, and might indeed totally mistake the nature and object of the institution, attributing to it aims neither consistent with the ascetic life of the departed prelate, nor with the pious and intellectual objects of its founders. The counsels of these worldly-minded persons prevailed. The Jolly Club was never instituted,—at least, as an association for the reprinting of old books of divinity, though I am not prepared to say that institutions more than one so designed may not exist for other purposes. The object, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... any discrepancy between a parent's teaching and example. If we are professors of religion, and they see us worldly-minded, grasping after riches, pleasures and honors; the dupes of ungodly fashion, manifesting a malicious spirit, indolent, prayerless, and indifferent to their spiritual welfare, what do they infer but that we are hypocrites, ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... "I may be blamed by worldly-minded persons for what I am going to do; but I am a man of principle, and feel deeply for the situation of your amiable wife and family. I bear no malice, though it is quite clear that you intended to make me the sufferer. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... her black gown; buttons were tolerated merely as buttons, without vain thought of ornament; and the strange little bonnet, which she perched above hair whose natural coquetry of curl was austerely sleeked away, was of a composition so harshly ugly that more worldly-minded women shuddered at the sight. The worldly-minded, indeed, were prone to the criticism that the material of Mrs. Weatherwax's garments was beyond cavil, but this surely was her own concern. It were sheer impertinence to finger the texture ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... know and feel impatient of the "second best." And this inherent strain of poetry in him tempered the active and practical side of his character, making wealth and position, and all those things which the worldly-minded seek, seem of slight value to him at times. It induced in him many and very varying moods. It carried him back often, even now in the strength of his young manhood, to the fine fancies and exquisite unreason of the fairy ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... their company. Worldly, plotting minds cannot understand the spiritual and the holy; sinful souls are out of harmony with the virtuous; the children of darkness cannot find peace with the children of light. And not only is there a lack of sympathy in the worldly-minded for the men and women who are led of God, but there is often positive hatred for them—a hatred which spends itself in actual, persistent persecution. To be devout, to refrain from sinful words and sinful deeds, to shun the ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... worldly-minded. John ist very bad to-night. I be in a hurry to go back to him, and ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... book, both popular and useful in its way. Mankind, it seems, will have a Church and a Bible of some sort; why not go to work and make a Church and a Bible of their own? Accordingly they have gone to work, and in a very short time have prepared a variety of ungodly religions, so various that the worldly-minded man who can not be suited with one to his taste must be very hard to please. Discordant and contradictory in their positive statements, they are agreed only in negatives; denying the God of the Bible, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... was willing to attribute all that had appeared, particularly of late, in contradiction of this lady's present professions, to some political motives of Commissioner Falconer, whom she disliked for his conduct to Buckhurst, and whom she was completely willing to give up as a worldly-minded courtier. But whilst the manners of the mother operated thus with Rosamond in favour of her moral character, even Rosamond's easy faith and sanguine benevolence could not see or hear any thing from the daughters that confirmed Mrs. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... one finishing stroke, and the prize is yours. Your uncle cannot, you find, live long: could he but be persuaded to leave his property to Gerald or to you, with only a trifling legacy (comparatively speaking) to Morton, that worldly-minded and enterprising person would be utterly prevented from marrying a penniless and unknown foreigner. Nothing but his own high prospects, so utterly above the necessity of fortune in a wife, can excuse such ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
