"Atheism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Atheism, by which I mean a disbelief of a Supreme Being, and consequently of a future state, under whatsoever title it shelters itself, may likewise very reasonably deprive a man of this cheerfulness of temper. ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... ranked with that Oedipus Colonaeus which glorified the sun-set of his illustrious predecessor: but yet, Protestant as I am, I cannot discover that it is in the least obscure. Faith, Hope, Charity, the Five Senses, Heresy, Judaism, Paganism, Atheism, and the like, which in inferior hands must have been mere lay figures, are there instinct with a dramatic life and energy such as beforehand I could hardly have supposed possible. Moreover, in spite of Dr. Lorinzer's odd encomiums, each allegory as it ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... Deity—he whose feet glowed as brass in a furnace, whose eyes were as a flame of fire, and whose voice was as the sound of many waters. Any man would have fallen as dead before such a personage as is here described. Men may talk atheism, but it is the atheism of the lips and of a coward heart, an atheism that would flee appalled before the burning footsteps of the Deity, and the irresistible conclusion would ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... the spiritual world. Possessing as we do this mysterious nature, throbbing with the attraction of the eternal sphere, who shall say that it touches no spiritual confines,—that it has communion only with the beings that we see? It is a dull atheism which repudiates all such intimations as superstitious or absurd. To speak more distinctly, I allude to the consoling thought which springs up almost intuitively, that the departed may, at times, see us, and be present ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... learned 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 mean time, he has been presented to the grand jury as a public nuisance, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... trust as were of constant integrity and good affection to the cause, and of blameless conversation? And again, if we consider how in place of these, within these two years, have succeeded, for unity, division, for order, confusion, for purity of worship, outward contempt; for the power of godliness, atheism and profaneness; for purging of the ministry, judicatories and armies, sinful mixtures; for zeal, lukewarmness and toleration,—it is too palpable that we are far gone on in the way of declining, having lost much of that which we had attained, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... 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, were soon held by almost all on board. A fortunate event happened ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... the only university of importance not under some form of denominational control, and for this reason had, perhaps, more than the usual share of extreme liberalism, or atheism, as it was at that time considered amongst the students; and one of my classmates, a man a couple of years older than myself, and of far more than the average intellectual power, made an active propaganda of the most advanced opinions. He also introduced Philip James Bailey's "Festus" to our attention, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the comprehension of all. He was the author of an exhaustive work, entitled, Mishne Torah, the "Second Law," which was eagerly copied and extensively disseminated. He also wrote many philosophical treatises leveled against atheism, and designed to prove that God produced the world from naught, and at the age of fifty gave to the world his great work, Moreh Nebuchim ("Guide of the Perplexed"), to which Rabbi Judah ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... ceremony deification, but there is not the smallest intention of identifying the person deified with the Supreme Being, and odd as it may seem, the worship of such "gods" is compatible with monotheism or atheism. In China, Shang-ti is less definite than God[105] and it does not appear that he is thought of as the creator of the world and of human souls. Even the greater Hindu deities are not really God, for those who ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... foundation and you will not erect a tower of Babel, nor build upon sand. If all Christian sects were united with the centre of unity, then the scattered hosts of Christendom would form an army which atheism and infidelity could not long withstand. Then, indeed, all could exclaim with Balaam: "How beautiful are thy tabernacles, O Jacob, ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... its most illustrious members,—by the fervid Augustin, by the subtle Aquinas, by the all-accomplished Pascal. The warning has been given in vain. That close alliance which, under the disguise of the most deadly enmity, has always subsisted between fanaticism and atheism is still unbroken. At one time, the cry was,—"If you hold that the earth moves round the sun, you deny the truth of the Bible." Popes, conclaves, and religious orders, rose up against the Copernican heresy. But, as Pascal said, they could not prevent the earth from moving, or themselves ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... civilization disappear. The world is abandoned to fear, misery, and despair, and there is no help, for retributive justice marches on with impressive solemnity. Imperial despotism, disproportionate fortunes, unequal divisions of society, the degradation of woman, slavery, Epicurean pleasures, practical atheism, bring forth their wretched fruits. The vices and miseries of society cannot be arrested. Glory is succeeded by shame; all strength is in mechanism, and that wears out; vitality passes away; the empire is ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... referring to the writ De Heretico Comburendo, under which heresy and blasphemy were punishable by burning alive, and which was abolished in 1677, without abridging the jurisdiction of Ecclesiastical Courts "in cases of atheism, blasphemy, heresie, or schism, and other damnable doctrines and opinions," adds that "In this state of things, the Court of Queen's Bench took upon itself some of the functions of the old Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... 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 ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of that eternal and unfounded fear that knowledge will cause the disappearance of the religious feeling. With profound conviction and judging by himself, Bacon said: "A little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth a man's mind about to religion." Such is true philosophy, "subordinate to the object," attentive to the object, listening to the voices of the world and only anxious to translate them into human language: "that is true philosophy which renders the ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... is a Tory by chance, as being a Scotchman; but not upon a principle of duty, for he has no principle. If he is anything, he is a Hobbist.' Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 30. Horace Walpole's opinion was very different. 'Are not atheism and bigotry first cousins? Was not Charles II. an atheist and a bigot? and does Mr. Hume pluck a stone from a church but to raise an altar to tyranny?' Letters, v. 444. Hume wrote in 1756:—'My views of things are more ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... prevent fraud; (3) To require men to 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
... "Weltraetsel," my translation into German of Romanes' "Thoughts on Religion" should have appeared. From this book it was evident that Haeckel and his associates could no longer count this man among their number since he—a life-long seeker after truth—had abandoned atheism for theism, and died a believing Christian. Troeltsch and the "Reichsbote" asked whether Haeckel had purposely concealed this fact, and Schmidt now explains that Haeckel first became acquainted with the "Thoughts on Religion" through him ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... or 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, for or against the Christian religion, were presented to the First Consul ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century, in the decadence of the great revolutionary period. General theories are everywhere contemned; the doctrine of the Rights of Man is dismissed with the doctrine of the Fall of Man. Atheism itself is too theological for us to-day. Revolution itself is too much of a system; liberty itself is too much of a restraint. We will have no generalizations. Mr. Bernard Shaw has put the view in a perfect epigram: "The ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... given repeated proofs that he was not the enemy of liberty, brought precipitately and ignominiously to the block without any substantial proof of guilt, as yet disclosed—without even an authentic exhibition of motives, in decent regard to the opinions of mankind; when I find the doctrines of atheism openly advanced in the convention, and heard with loud applauses; when I see the sword of fanaticism extended to force a political creed upon citizens who were invited to submit to the arms of France as the harbingers of liberty; when I behold the hand of rapacity outstretched ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... "To the Lord Chancellor." While the poem stands as a masterpiece of lyric invective it did not mend matters for Shelley in England. In many of his other poems his detractors saw nothing but the glorification of revolution, incest, and atheism. When he wrote a satirical drama on so delicate a subject as the unhappy affairs of Queen Caroline, even his publisher turned against him. Yet the charm and beauty of Shelley's purely lyric pieces was such that he must ever stand as one of the foremost poets of England. Either his "Adonais" or the ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... anecdote will 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.
... of the spiritual life. To be unable to see the divine in man, is to have the eyes blinded to the divine anywhere. Deception in the sphere of love shakes the foundation of religion. Its result is atheism, not perhaps as a conscious speculative system of thought, but as a subtle practical influence on conduct. It corrupts the fountain of life, and taints the whole stream. Despair of love, if final and complete, would be despair of God; ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... most dangerous enemies, we must work tirelessly to weaken its influence, and in order to accomplish this, it is necessary to use all our efforts to implant in the Christian intellectual class ideas of atheism, scepticism, dissension and to call forth religious disputes among the newly-formed groups and ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... germ of Religion. Arising, like all other kinds of knowledge, out of the action and interaction of man's mind, with that which is not man's mind, it has taken the intellectual coverings of Fetishism or Polytheism; of Theism or Atheism; of Superstition or Rationalism. With these, and their relative merits and demerits, I have nothing to do; but this it is needful for my purpose to say, that if the religion of the present differs from that of the past, it is because the ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... 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. ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... elements of Shelley's thought I may perhaps mention his atheism. Shelley called himself an atheist in his youth; his biographers and critics usually say that he was, or that he became, a pantheist. He was an atheist in the sense that he denied the orthodox conception of a deity who is a voluntary creator, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... "only solid basis of public liberty and happiness." General Washington said it was "one of the great pillars of human happiness, and the firmest prop of the duties of men and citizens." What could we gain by exchanging it for Deism, or Atheism, or Ingersollism? Infidelity proposes to break down the altars of prayer, take away our Bibles and our days of worship, shut up the doors against all our Sunday-schools and turn more than a million of children into the streets, away from sweet song and moralizing influences, ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... throw a veil of romance over the transaction, but this was the plain matter of fact. Then Anaxagoras had been driven out of Athens for his revolutionary notions; and Diogenes had been accused, like the Christians, of atheism. The case had been the same in more recent times. There had been that madman, Apollonius, roaming about the world; Apuleius, too, their neighbour, fifty years before, a man of respectable station, a gentleman, but a follower ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... of Paine's subsequent career, "The Rights of Man" and "The Age of Reason," were written in Europe, but they were read throughout America. The reputation of the "rebellious Staymaker" has suffered from certain grimy habits and from the ridiculous charge of atheism. He was no more an atheist than Franklin or Jefferson. In no sense an original thinker, he could impart to outworn shreds of deistic controversy and to shallow generalizations about democracy a personal fervor which transformed them and made ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... what clever people?" cried Alyosha, completely carried away. "They have no such great cleverness and no mysteries and secrets.... Perhaps nothing but Atheism, that's all their secret. Your Inquisitor does not believe in God, that's ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... requesting them to help him. When it so happened that any incautious correspondents acceded to this appeal, Shelley fell with merciless severity upon their feeble and commonplace reasoning. The little pamphlet of two pages was entitled "The Necessity of Atheism"; and its proposed publication, beyond the limits of private circulation already described, is proved by an advertisement (February 9, 1811) in the "Oxford University and City Herald". It was not, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... this designation to his horse; but in Europe, where we do not associate closely with the horse, the dog naturally takes the foremost place in our affections. The very highest praise yet given to this animal is probably to be found in Bacon's essay on Atheism. "For take an example of a dog," he says, "and mark what a generosity and courage he will put on when he finds himself maintained by a man, who is to him in place of a god, or melior natura, which courage ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... 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 on ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... "What's 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 see realized, and he ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... materialism and philosophy of healthy common science through the sceptical disintegration of metaphysics. He announced the atheistic society which was soon to come into existence, inasmuch as a society of avowed atheists could exist, as an atheist could be an honest man, as man was not degraded by atheism, but ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... 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 ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... was a Man went into one of these thinking Engines, but he came wiser out than he was before; and I am persuaded, it would be a more effectual Cure to our Deism, Atheism, Scepticism, and all other Scisms, than ever the Italian's Engine, for Curing the Gout by cutting ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... convincing than many arguments against modern Christianity, was not generally known. The orthodox were apt to content themselves with shuddering at the mention of his name; very few troubled themselves to think or inquire how this man had been driven into atheism. Had they done so they might, perhaps, have treated him more considerately, at any rate they must have learned that the much-disliked prophet of atheism was the most disinterested of men, one who had the courage of his opinions, a man of ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... power), mingle in the moral meaning of this and its collateral legends; and give an aspect, at last, not only of foolish cunning, but of impiety or literal "idolatry," "imagination worship," to the dreams of avarice and injustice, until this notion of atheism and insolent blindness becomes principal; and the "Clouds" of Aristophanes, with the personified "just" and "unjust" sayings in the latter part of the play, foreshadow, almost feature by feature, in all that they were written to mock and to chastise, the worst elements of the ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... found among the books of the curate Meslier a printed manuscript of the Treatise of Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambray, upon the existence of God and His attributes, and the reflections of the Jesuit Tournemine upon Atheism, to which treatise he added marginal notes signed ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... unfavourable. 'The Gospel had been preached to them,' he said, 'but they were neither Papists nor Protestants—of no religion, but full of pride and iniquity. There was nothing but infidelity, infidelity, infidelity!—atheism, atheism!—no religion, no religion!' What such tiger-like slaughterers of women and children, such ruthless destroyers, could have meant by religion is a puzzle ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... an analogous position with regard to republicanism. Just as atheism is a private affair which concerns the individual conscience, so a republican form of government is a private affair which interests only a part of the bourgeoisie. Certainly, by the time that socialism draws near to its day of triumph, atheism will have made immense progress, and ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... historically influential perhaps, but at least romantic and interesting and worthy of considerable respect, when the old religion in the time of Julian roused itself for a last spiritual protest against the all-conquering 'atheism' of the Christians. I omit Plotinus, as in earlier chapters I have omitted Plato and Aristotle, and for the same reason. As a rule in the writings of Julian's circle and still more in the remains of popular belief, the tendencies of our fourth ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... mingle with goodness and happiness? What has been the resource of the Christian intellect against that mystery of evil which baffled the questioner in the book of Job, and drove Lucretius to virtual atheism, and left Marcus Aurelius in doubt whether there be gods or not? The resource of the Christian thinker has been his belief that Jesus Christ was God incarnate. Here was a soul which was sinless and holy, which loved sinners so ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... 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 existence and its pleasures ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... 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 Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... symbolized the Church of England. Sixteen years later this opening portion of an unpublished Lecture was rewritten and printed in The Courier (Aug. 31, 1811), with the heading 'An Allegoric Vision: Superstition, Religion, Atheism'. The attack was now diverted from the Church of England to the Church of Rome. 'Men clad in black robes,' intent on gathering in their Tenths, become 'men clothed in ceremonial robes, who with menacing countenances drag some reluctant victim to a vast idol, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... within their province to denounce political agitators when charging a grand jury. Chief Justice Ellsworth, in a charge delivered in Massachusetts, denounced "the French system-mongers, from the quintumvirate at Paris to the Vice-President and minority in Congress, as apostles of atheism and anarchy, bloodshed, and plunder." In charges delivered in western Pennsylvania, Judge Addison dealt with such subjects as Jealousy of Administration and Government, and the Horrors of Revolution. Washington, then in private life, was so pleased with the ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... swept over France, and which the Jacobins rode and directed until it dashed even them upon the rocks. Squalor came forth and consorted with cleanliness; vice crept from its dens and sat down by the side of purity in high places; atheism took its stand at the altar, and ministered with ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody, and tyrannical democracy. On the side of religion, the danger of their example is no longer from intolerance, but from atheism: a foul, unnatural vice, foe to all the dignity and consolation of mankind; which seems in France, for a long time, to have been embodied into a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... doctrines we will let speak for themselves in his own words, trusting thereby to give the reader an opportunity of knowing who and what Spinoza really was. One man shrinks with horror from him as an Atheist. Voltaire says, that he was an Atheist, and taught Atheism. Another calls him "a God-intoxicated man." We present him a mighty thinker, a master mind, a noble, fearless utterer of free and noble thoughts, a hard-working, honest, independent man; as one who, two centuries ago, gave forth to the world a series of thinkings which have crushed, with resistless ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... 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
... of the will, says Saint Climaque.... There is a sort of real presence infused into those who command us...." Let us be careful not to fall "into the crafty opposition of liberal Catholicism.... Liberalism, in its consequences, is social atheism.... Unity, in Roman faith, is not sufficient; let us labor together in the unity of the Roman spirit; for that, let us always judge Rome with the optimism of affection.... Each new dogmatic definition produces its own advantages: ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... barrow away nature's curse, and other fables of the schoolmen beside," added he, in that daring fashion which afterwards obtained for him (and never did good Christian less deserve it) the imputation of atheism. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... witches are "puffed up with 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 offence, ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... Science. Again, to quote Bacon—we shall hear enough from the moderns by-and-by—"This I dare affirm in knowledge of Nature, that a little natural philosophy, and the first entrance into it, doth dispose the opinion to atheism; but, on the other side, much natural philosophy, and wading deep into it, will bring about men's ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... which is the universal foundation of religions. By this appeal to a higher power Robespierre hoped to strengthen the State at home and abroad. In the latter purpose he succeeded; and the solemn renunciation of atheism impressed the world. It was very distinctly a step in the Conservative direction, for it promised religious liberty. There was to be no favour to churches, but also no persecution. Practically, the advantage was for the Christian ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... What mortal sins are opposed to Faith? A. Atheism, which is a denial of all revealed truths, and heresy, which is a denial of some revealed truths, and superstition, which is a misuse of religion, are opposed ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 3 (of 4) • Anonymous
... Westminster, who began by wishing the Temporal Power to be erected into an article of faith, ended by ardently desiring some kind of tacitly accepted modus vivendi with the Italian kingdom, such as that which Cavour proposed. Cardinal Manning was sorry to see the Italians being driven to atheism and socialism, and so he had the courage to change his mind. In 1861 he was in the opposite camp, but there was not wanting then a section of learned and patriotic ecclesiastics who desired peace. It was said that their efforts were rendered sterile by the great organisation ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... votaries one opinion of enormous value in its struggle for power. Originally and properly an association for the practice and spreading of religion, the corporation had succeeded in making itself an object of worship. One great reason why atheism took root in France was the impossibility, induced by long habit, of distinguishing between religion and Catholicism, and of conceiving that the one may exist without the other. The by-laws of the church had become ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... speech is indistinct and difficult. Nevertheless he is constantly haranguing any one who will listen to him, abusing his physicians, or preaching—with a monkey-like impudence rather than with reasoned clearness—radicalism in politics and atheism in religion. He makes bad jokes, and if any one pleases him he endeavours to caress him. He remembers recent events during his residence at Rochefort asylum, but only two scraps of his life before that date, ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Drozdov, an old friend and comrade of the late General Stavrogin's, known to us all here as an extremely stubborn and irritable, though very estimable, man (in his own way, of course), who ate a great deal, and was dreadfully afraid of atheism, quarrelled at one of Varvara Petrovna's parties with a distinguished young man. The latter at the first word exclaimed, "You must be a general if you talk like that," meaning that he could find no word of abuse worse ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... concerns religion, all the Japonians, excepting some few who make profession of atheism, and believe the soul mortal, are idolaters, and hold the transmigration of souls, after the doctrine of Pythagoras. Some of them pay divine worship to the sun and moon; others to the Camis, those ancient kings of whom we have made mention; and ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... 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. And there is hardly any single generalization in this ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Atheism by establishment, what, v. 310. ought to be repressed by law, vii. 35. schools of, set up by the French regicides at the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... and the man who denies, there is only a step. All philosophy is related to atheism. After having told Brigitte that I suspected her past conduct, I began to regard it with ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... 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 ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... circumstances of hundreds and thousands of the classes of whom we are speaking. From the cradle to the grave, might not their influence in the direction of Religious Belief be summarised in one sentence, "Atheism made easy." Let my readers imagine theirs to have been a similar lot. Is it not possible that, under such circumstances, they might have entertained some serious doubts as to the existence of a benevolent God who would thus allow His creatures ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... more strictly economical finances and in the general spirit of government. The Federalist opposition, criticizing every act with bitterness and continually predicting ruin, found that under the "Jacobins" the country remained contented and prosperous and was in no more danger of atheism or the guillotine than it had been under Adams. So matters went on, year after year, the Federal government playing its part quietly and the American people carrying on their ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... receive such information. The primary interest of the missionaries was in the practical and everyday duties of the Christian life, in the great problem of getting men and women to put away the superstitions and narrowness and sins springing from polytheism or practical atheism, and getting them started in ways of godliness. The training schools for evangelists were designed to raise up practical workers rather than speculative theologians. Missionaries considered it their duty (and ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... of several novels and books of travel. Although her record in intelligence and morals is good, John Croker, who regularly reviewed her books, accuses her works of licentiousness, profligacy, irreverence, blasphemy, libertinism, disloyalty and atheism. There are twenty-six pages of this in one review only, and any paragraph would be worth the quoting for its ferocity. After this attack it was Macaulay who said he hated Croker like "cold ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... as the religion of a man who died in his thirtieth year, and whose habits of thinking were such, that his opinions must have been in a state of constant change. Coleridge says in a letter: "His (Shelley's) discussions, tending towards atheism of a certain sort, would not have scared me; for me it would have been a semitransparent larva, soon to be sloughed, and through which I should have seen the true image—the final metamorphosis. Besides, I have ever thought that sort of atheism the next ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... second place, we object to universal foreordination because it leads to Pantheism, a phase of Atheism. Pantheism as Pantheism may be viewed statically or dynamically. The static Pantheist assumes that all properties are properties of one substance. This was the feature of the vedanta system of Hindu philosophy, which holds ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... reading at this time so limited as might be expected from the foregoing. The study of Shelley's poetry had led me to read pretty nearly all the English lyric poets; Shelley's atheism had led me to read Kant, Spinoza, Godwin, Darwin and Mill; and these, again, in their turn, introduced me to many writers and various literature. I do not think that at this time I cared much for novel reading. Scott seemed to me on a par with Burke's speeches; that is to say, too ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... vain had Voltaire for years cried, 'Ecrasez l'infame,' and Rousseau preached that the youth would all be wise and pure, if only the kind of education which he had had in the religious schools were made impossible. There was for many minds no alternative between clericalism and atheism. Quite logically, therefore, after the downfall of the Republic and of the Empire there set in a great reaction. Still it was simply a reversion to the absolute religion of the Roman Catholic Church as set forth by the Jesuit party. There was no ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... 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 flowed from ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... concluded at last, "has entered Halle almost like the triumphant Entry to Jerusalem. A concourse of pedants escorted him to his house. Lange [his old enemy, who accused him of Atheism and other things] has called to see him, and loaded him with civilities, to the astonishment of the old Orthodox." There let him rest, well buttoned in gaiters, and avoiding to mount stairs.... "Madame de ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... other modification besides this one."—Priestley's Gram., p. 113. "The verb is palpably nothing else but the tie."—Neef's Sketch, p. 66. "Does he mean that theism is capable of nothing else except being opposed to polytheism or atheism?"—Blair's Rhet., p. 104. "Is it meant that theism is capable of nothing else besides being opposed to polytheism, or atheism?"—Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 307. "There is no other method of teaching that of which any one is ignorant, but by means of something already known"—DR. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... one redundant pang! one unneeded cross! Hush the secret atheism! He gave His Son for thee! He calls Himself "thy Father!" Whatever be the trial under which thou art now smarting, let the word of a gracious Saviour be "like oil thrown on the fretful sea;" let it dry every rebellious tear-drop. "He, ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... visit to Russia at the invitation of Catherine the Second. At that time he was an atheist, or at least talked atheism: it would be easy to prove him either one thing or the other from his writings. His lively sallies on this subject much amused the Empress, and all the younger part of her Court. But some of the older courtiers suggested that it was hardly prudent to allow such unreserved exhibitions. The Empress ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... bestows spiritual gifts, God's [1] presence and providence. St. Paul stood where Socrates had stood four hundred years before, defending himself against the charge of atheism; in the place where De- mosthenes had pleaded for freedom in immortal strains [5] ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... began by corrupting the marchioness's religious views, to pervert her into crime. The marquis was one of those libertines so rare at that time, a period less unhappy than is generally believed, who made science dependent upon, atheism. It is remarkable that great criminals of this epoch, Sainte-Croix for instance, and Exili, the gloomy poisoner, were the first unbelievers, and that they preceded the learned of the following age both, in philosophy and in the exclusive ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... materialism of things is on the face of things; it does not require any science to find it out. A man who has lived and loved falls down dead and the worms eat him. That is Materialism if you like. That is Atheism if you like. If mankind has believed in spite of that, it can believe in spite of anything. But why our human lot is made any more hopeless because we know the names of all the worms who eat him, or the names of all the parts of him that they ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... gentleman was undoubtedly a man of genius—full of ideal beauty and enthusiasm. And yet there was some defect in his understanding by which he subjected himself to the accusation of atheism. In his dispositions he is represented to have been ever calm and amiable; and but for his metaphysical errors and reveries, and a singular incapability of conceiving the existing state of things as it practically affects the nature and condition of man, to have possessed many of ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... institution 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 loud and fierce. One supplementary impeachment may be said in a certain sense to connect both, ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... live long; but the reason is, that it is the characteristic of immorality to tie down man in the chains of the senses, and this shews that it has nothing in common with the spiritual nature of poetry. For the same reason, a poem based upon atheism, although it might attract attention for a time, would meet with no permanent response in the human breast; religion being Truth, and poetry ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... in their criticisms of each other. "I did not like that expression of yours, planetary foundlings," said the Mistress. "It seems to me that it is too like atheism for a good Christian like you ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the extreme unpopularity of the Constitutional Party in Spain, and the stigma of irreligion fixed to it by the priests, aided to foster Roland's belief that he was supporting a beloved king against the professors of those revolutionary and Jacobinical doctrines which to him were the very atheism of politics. The experience of a few years in the service of a bigot so contemptible as Ferdinand, whose highest object of patriotism was the restoration of the Inquisition, added another disappointment to those which had already embittered the life ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... delimitation of 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
... king and the hereditary lords, the best scheme of government, began to grow lukewarm. When it became evident that the New Era was to end in bloodshed, instead of universal peace and good-will towards men,—that the Rights of Man included murder, confiscation, and atheism,—that the Sovereignty of the People meant the rule of King Mob, who seemed determined to carry out to the letter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... origin, and as living emblems of Omnipotence. Ignorance, whose constant error it is to look only to the last term of every series of causes, and which charges Impiety on all who venture to ascend one term higher, and Atheism on all who dare to explore several terms (though every series implies a first term), would easily be persuaded by a crafty priesthood to consider a beneficent river as a tangible branch of the Godhead. But we now know that the waters which flow down a river, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... essence would not suffer from the new philosophy. Larger horizons extended before the human intellect. The soul expanded in more exhilarating regions than the old theologies had offered. The sense of the Divine in Nature, instead of dwindling down to atheism, received fresh stimulus from the immeasurable prospect of an infinite and living universe. Bruno, even more than Spinoza, was a God-intoxicated man. The inebriation of the Renaissance, inspired by golden visions of truth and knowledge close within man's grasp, inflamed with joy at escaping ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... 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: but soft and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... have borne good as well as evil fruit. While your siren eloquence has led some doubting Thomases into the barren desert of Atheism, you have driven others to seek a better reason for their religious faith than barbarous tradition and the vote of ecumenical councils. Bigotry has quailed beneath the ringing blows of your iconoclastic hammer, dogmatism become more humble and the priesthood ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann |
