"Desecrate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... soul? Teaching him that his lips, Uttering their native earthquake and eclipse, Could never so avail To rend from hem to hem the ultimate veil Of this most desolate Spirit, and leave it stripped and desecrate, - Nay, never so have wrung From eyes and speech weakness unmanned, unmeet; As when his terrible dotage to repeat Its little lesson learneth at your feet; As when he sits among His sepulchres, to play With broken toys your hand has ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... is a principle of conduct dating back to Him who of old declared burial of the dead a corporal work of mercy. It is the mark, neither of the Christian individual nor nation, to disrespect a body nor desecrate its resting place. The fact that in life it was tenanted by the soul of an enemy is no justification for dishonoring it; for He who is Infinite Truth and Justice declares "Love thy enemy; do good to those who hate you, and bless those who persecute ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... waited?—beside our open graves. Death to the Feringhi! Let them no longer desecrate our land. Let us forget that they ever were. They be few, and we be many. ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... I don't want to desecrate God's Day," Uncle William answered, accepting the rebuke, "but that is a lamentable letter to get. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... through the main aisle with his splendid retinue, every eye was bent upon him and every whisper hushed. Proceeding straight up to the high altar, he bent his knee before the God whose name he was now so soon to desecrate. Then the archbishop raised from the altar a crown of gold glittering with precious jewels, and placed it reverently upon the monarch's brow. The sacred rite of consecration over, the monarch rose and turning was met by a herald of Charles V., who came from his master ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... precious relic, but he was not able. It appeared as if some powerful spell held it firmly together; and it has remained unopened down to the present time. May it remain so until the last awful day, and may the impious hand of avarice or curiosity never desecrate these holy ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... friend Mulrady, that when these lands were given to my ancestors by Charles V., the Bishop of Monterey laid a curse upon any who should desecrate them. Good! Let us see! Of the three Americanos who founded yonder town, one was shot, another died of a fever—poisoned, you understand, by the soil—and the last got himself crazy of aguardiente. Even the scientifico,[1] who came here years ago ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... misuse, misusage, misemployment[obs3], misapplication, misappropriation. abuse, profanation, prostitution, desecration; waste &c. 638. V. misuse, misemploy, misapply, misappropriate. desecrate, abuse, profane, prostitute: waste &c. 638; overtask, overtax, overwork: squander &c. 818. cut blocks with a razor, employ a steam engine to crack a nut; catch at a straw. Adj. misused &c. v. Phr. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... sooner. Only, my own right name has been complained of for want of euphony ... Ba ... now and then it has—and Mr. Boyd makes a compromise and calls me Elibet, because nothing could induce him to desecrate his organs accustomed to Attic harmonies, with a Ba. So I am ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... oh! that were impossible for the very basest fiend to do. But I was wrong to desecrate the word, and say I love her. No, no; I tell you I hate her, I loathe her; but in spite of hatred, in spite of loathing, she exercises over my imagination an irresistible fascination—a fascination you can never feel in that ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... no morrow to this final dream That paints the past so wonderfully fair; No rising sun shall desecrate that gleam Of fragile colour hanging on the air. Enshrined in sunset are all things that seem Happy and ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... to be "too fast" and forward, and are more exposed to undesirable acquaintances than in ordinary society. And I have, besides that, special objections to bazaars connected with charitable or religious purposes. It seems to me that they desecrate the religious object by their undesirable features, and that they take the reality out of all charity by getting people to think that they are doing a good action, when their true motive is amusement for themselves. Ruskin has put all this far better than I can ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... it methodically," the orator continued. "To-day is Friday, and in an hour it will be ended. If we begin on Saturday, we may be tempted to desecrate the Sabbath; therefore, as good citizens, I pray that you will first consider your duty to your God, and not forget to keep holy His day. The soldiers will be here on Monday. Let us begin our work then, and finish it before the ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... of particulars as to the burial customs of various nations, we find mention made of an odd way in which the natives of Thibet dignify their great people. They do not desecrate such by giving them to the earth, but retain a number of sacred dogs to devour them. Not less strange was the fancy of that Englishwoman, a century or two back, who had her husband burnt to ashes, and these ashes reduced to powder, of which ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... fee—not to mention the best man's scarf-pin. And I should hate," Ned added sentimentally, "to see 'the touch of a woman's hand' desecrate the sublime ugliness of the ancestral home. Think of such ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... Sunday afternoon. The quiet of the holiday was noticeable even on the mountains where, hand in hand, the little comrades walked. They were nicely washed and arrayed in Sunday clothing, because Bacha Filina would not suffer anybody to desecrate Sunday. Everyone who could, had to go to the next town to church, though it was almost two hours' walk. He himself seldom went; he was not able to take long walks. Once a timber fell on his foot in the woods and from that time on he ...
— The Three Comrades • Kristina Roy
... Marigold—why, I could never discover—and Marigold had the lowest opinion of Timbs. It was an offence for Marigold to desecrate the garden by his mere footsteps; to touch a plant or a flower constituted a damnable outrage. On the other side, Timbs could not approach my person for the purpose of rendering me any necessary physical assistance, ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... Sophia, leaving their homes and goods to be plundered. A hundred thousand persons rushed in and locked and barred all the church doors behind them. They trusted that the conqueror would not dare to desecrate so holy a place. Abashed before the holiness of God, he would bow down in the dust and leave them in peace. And according to a prophecy the angel of God would descend from heaven in the hour of need and rescue the church and ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... London publisher reprinted the work, with eighty pages interpolated, wherein, with an utter disregard to common delicacy toward the dead or self-respect in the living, unauthentic gossip is made to desecrate the reticent and consistent tone of the work, pervert its spirit, and detract from its harmonious attraction and truth. A greater or more indecent and unjustifiable liberty was never taken by a publisher with a foreign work; it was an insult to the memory of Washington ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Is wiser than his time. For him the hemlock shall distil; For him the axe be bared; For him the gibbet shall be built; For him the stake prepared. Him shall the scorn and wrath of men Pursue with deadly aim; And malice, envy, spite, and lies, Shall desecrate his name. But Truth shall conquer at the last, For round and round we run; And ever the Right comes uppermost, And ever is ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... seek With rippling sound, in soft recurrent ways, The perfect song, or in remoter days Theocritus have hymned you in glad Greek; But I am not as they,—and dare not speak Of you unworthily, and dare not praise Perfection with imperfect roundelays, And desecrate the ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... day and month by month the King pushed on with his armies, hoping to come at last on Time. Sometimes they encamped at night near palaces of beautiful design or beside gardens of flowers, hoping to find their enemy when he came to desecrate in the dark. Sometimes they came on cobwebs, sometimes on rusted chains and houses with broken roofs or crumbling walls. Then the armies would push on apace thinking that they were closer upon the track ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... says Love, "all that I ask, Is just thy hand-clasp. Could I brush thy cheek As zephyrs brush a rose leaf, words are weak To tell the bliss in which my soul would bask. There is no language but would desecrate A joy so great. ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... have read that the fishermen on the shores of the Baltic are remarkably superstitious, and careful not to desecrate any of their saints' days. They never use their nets between All Saints' and St. Martin's, as they would be certain not to take any fish throughout the year. On Ash Wednesday the women neither sew nor knit, for fear of bringing ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... Nelson on the doorstep. "I beg of you all to disperse to your homes and don't desecrate the Sabbath by ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... anxiously; "on the wedding-day no pious bride must desecrate her lips by kissing or partaking of food before going to the altar. Only devout thoughts should fill her heart; and she ought to pray and implore the saints to vouchsafe happiness to her. Let me go, therefore, and fulfil my ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... an actor can have is to witness the pitiful performance with which all other actors desecrate the stage. In order to give himself this pleasure he will often forsake the sunniest Broadway corner between Thirty-fourth and Forty-fourth to attend a matinee offering by his less gifted brothers. Once during the lifetime of a minstrel joke one comes to scoff and remains ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... no prescribed channel, they flow into no immortal mould. It is this fiery gleam on the surface of matter hot from chaos, which the multitude honor as the highest manifestation of genius. But this is to desecrate a word which implies constructive power of the first order. Form is its highest expression. Without the shaping faculty, which artistically rounds to perfection, no glitter of decoration, nor even force and fire of expression, can keep the work from falling into ruins. If ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... heights and behold the hills and vales all around thickly dotted with these rude reminders of our universal fate. It is but as yesterday since the Turk occupied these lands, and was in the habit of making it particularly interesting to any "dog of a Christian" who dared desecrate one of these Mussulman cemeteries with his unholy presence; but to-day they are unsurrounded by protecting fence or the moral restrictions of dominant Mussulmans, and the sheep, cows, and goats of the "infidel giaour" ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... and from the Ka'aba itself, and began winging erratic courses all about the Forbidden City. Men, birds, and animals alike, all shared the terror of this unheard-of outrage when—according to ancient prophesy—the Great Devils of Feringistan should desecrate the holy places. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... these be souls Such as in life were vile, Risen again from the nethermost coals To harry the earth a while; Versed in wickedness, old in sin, Never was hell could hold them in, And back they hasten in droves and shoals To desecrate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... occurred to him to visit Mrs Allcraft, and to worry her with his complaints. He hurried to her house, and forced himself into her presence. We will not follow him, for grief is sacred; and who that had the heart of man, would desecrate the hearth hallowed by affliction, deep and terrible as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... but wait until they feel my power; wait until I choose to direct them, and—hey, presto—they walk in my paths, not their own. Now I have made up my mind on one point. I have not the faintest idea how it is to be managed; but managed it shall be. Susan Drummond and her father are not to desecrate the Towers with their commonplaceness, their shallowness, and vulgarity. The Lorrimers are still to live here; and Nell's heart is not to be broken. For the sake of the ugly duckling I do this. How, I know not; but I turn all the ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... the rabble dissolute That desecrate thy poet's grave?'" read Otto, and the musical poem was at an end. All were enchanted with it. Otto alone made some small objections: "The Muses ought not to come with 'trumpets and drums,' and so many expressions similar to 'give a blow ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... or west, live yet a natural life, round which the vine clings, and which the elm willingly shadows. Man would desecrate it by his touch, and so the beauty of the world remains veiled to him. He needs not only to be spiritualized, but naturalized, on the soil of earth. Who shall conceive what kind of roof the heavens might extend over him, what seasons minister to him, and what employment dignify his life! ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... a door and stick a cigar in its mouth, to blow up and poison wells, to desecrate graves, to smash open vaults and rob the corpses which lay there, and then to kick the bones in all directions and use the coffins as cess-pools—these things I have seen with my own eyes. Is this war? It is the work of ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... Mr. Wheatman," he said. "You must meet them to-morrow. The young rascal cries out whenever I desecrate him with my touch. It would have served him right to have christened ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... of his congregation adorned the walls of Plymouth church with their private paintings. Their object, of course, in doing so was not to honor God, but their pastor. But if the portraits of men were no desecration to that church, how can the portraits of Saints desecrate ours?(279) And what can be more appropriate than to surround the Sanctuary of Jesus Christ with the portraits of the Saints, especially of Mary and of the Apostles, who, in their life, ministered to His sacred person? ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... Height will be with us too, for I promised to have luncheon with him again," she exclaimed, as Miss Lindsey began to insert her into an evening wrap made of a priceless old Paisley shawl which "Fashions" had also tempted Miss Elvira to desecrate with ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... buy our entrance to this guild by a long probation. Why should we desecrate noble and beautiful souls by intruding on them? Why insist on rash personal relations with your friend? Why go to his house, or know his mother and brother and sisters? Why be visited by him at your own? Are these things material to our covenant? ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Gaul is at our gates. Vaterland is in danger: my weiss is then for war. France, led by a despot, is about to desecrate the Rhine. His imperial bees are swarming, but we shall send him back with his bees in his bonnet, and a bee's mark (BISMARCK) on the end of his nasal organ. France wars for conquest; Prussia never. When FREDERICK the Great captured Silesia from a Roman without any apparent pretext, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... Ibn-Sadif. None in the camp knew of the Annunciation, of that fair, sacred day when the birds will not even build their nests lest their labour desecrate its holiness." ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... smile forever. Even In their dances!—desecrate Thus this high and noble art Which a ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... Because he was a stranger and an infidel, so has he been told of dark things done to those who desecrate ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... interior of the cabin and the contents of the wash-hand basins. The solemn hero of tragedy plays Scrub in the farce. This is "very tolerable and not to be endured." The Noble Lord is almost the only writer who has prostituted his talents in this way. He hallows in order to desecrate; takes a pleasure in defacing the images of beauty his hands have wrought; and raises our hopes and our belief in goodness to Heaven only to dash them to the earth again, and break them in pieces the more effectually from the very height they have ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... not afraid to desecrate such a place with your horrid vices—I mean the iron things—and furnace and litter?" asked Mary. She had sunk down upon an anvil, on which lay a newspaper, the first seat that she could find, and thence surveyed the ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... who desecrate my couch, And draw my blood to sate your appetite, You know not rest, on Sabbath day or feast— Your feast it is when ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... That you could think them, believe them! No, Karen, it was not well. Not only are you dear to me for yourself; there is another bond. You were dear to him. You were beside me in the hour of my supreme agony. You desecrate our sacred memories when you allow small suspicions and fears to enter your thoughts of me. So much has failed me in my life. May I not trust that my child will ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... pathetic significance and force as he learnt to appreciate the affection that had subsisted between the father and child, and foresaw too plainly that the time must come when some rude shock would shatter all Madelon's early beliefs, and desecrate, as it were, her tenderest memories. There was something so sad in this certain retribution that must fall upon her innocent head, as the child of such a father, something so touching in her anomalous position, left all friendless and lonely in the ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... in church at all, it can only be done with intentional irreverence; and it is painful to think that even at the present day there are people in whom a feeling of reverence and decency is so far lacking as to lead them to desecrate places of worship. The Vicar of Lancaster, at his Easter vestry meeting in 1913, complained of bank-holiday visitors to the parish church who ate their lunch, smoked, and wore their hats while looking round the building. It is absurd to suppose that these ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... Forum? These Volscian and Sabine mountains, so lovely in the Italian sunlight, had often had his eye rested upon them! I began to love the soil for his sake, and felt that the presence of this one holy man had done more to hallow it than all that the long race of emperors and popes had done to desecrate it. ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... secret, be recorded for the instruction of future generations. They, however, have no influence on the course of worldly events. They are known only to silent eyewitnesses, and soon fall into oblivion. But hypocrisy, illusion, and bigotry stalk abroad undaunted; they desecrate what is noble, they pervert what is divine, to the unholy purposes of selfishness, which hurries along every good feeling in the false excitement of the age. Thus it was in the years of this plague. In the fourteenth ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... who know religion to be the truth of humanity—its own truth that sets it free—not binds, and lops, and mutilates it! who see God to be the father of every human soul—the ideal Father, not an inventor of schemes, or the upholder of a court etiquette for whose use he has chosen to desecrate the name ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... out in the office in my suit-case. I brought it with me, thinking you might need it—hoping you might, I mean;" and he smiled. "I have kept it always near me; partly because I wanted the comfort of it, partly because I was afraid some one else might find it, and desecrate our secret with ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... ever comes into my possession, it will be so guarded that no stray foot shall desecrate ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... sad old companion, who had taken his stand on the very site which they proposed to cover with a marble floor, shook his head and frowned, and the young man and the Lily deemed it almost enough to blight the spot and desecrate it for their airy temple that his dismal figure had thrown its shadow there. He pointed to some scattered stones, the remnants of a former structure, and to flowers such as young girls delight ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... more than one reason why a man should torture himself and starve himself and maim and desecrate and horribly defile himself. At first sight, the reason sounds improbable, but consideration will confirm it. It is vanity, of an iron-bound kind, that ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... is over, some restitution of his property is made to the dead, and odd articles, such as brass bowls or a gun or a shield or sword, are placed in a sacred cave, which none dare desecrate by entering to remove anything. These caves are high up on the mountain-sides, and are said to be full of sacred offerings, which have accumulated there ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the chief justice, with somewhat of an old Puritan feeling in his breast. "No good can come of men who desecrate the house of God." ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... covered with ornaments. The Spaniards had the grace to respect these, as they had been previously enjoined by the Inca; but they required that the plates which garnished the walls should be all removed. The Peruvians most reluctantly acquiesced in the commands of their sovereign to desecrate the national temple, which every inhabitant of the city regarded with peculiar pride and veneration. With less reluctance they assisted the Conquerors in stripping the ornaments from some of the other edifices, where the gold, however, being mixed with a large proportion of alloy, was ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... at the right time, or fight when it's wise—all in one afternoon." Rolf set out for the north carrying a bombastic (meant to be reassuring) message from Hampton that he would annihilate any enemy who dared to desecrate the waters ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... crowned with Crawford's equestrian statue of Washington. The right hand of the rider, lifted against the sky, points a prophetic finger toward the southwest. Dark, and motionless, and grand, it is the one symbol belonging solely to the Union, which they have not dared to desecrate; which they have strangely chosen to consider neither as an insult nor ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... shrink up, her face would become peaked and pitiful, she would seem like a child of ten. Sometimes Thyrsis could laugh her out of such a mood by telling her of her "beady black eyes"; and she did not like to desecrate her eyes. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... different—fanatics, too, but with a new sort of fanaticism—new to them, I mean—the kind that made the French revolutionists destroy everything their ancestors had set value on. There are plenty of Arabs so full of this disease of Bolshevism that they would make it easy for me to desecrate what others believe is holy ground. But these idiots of English are worse than the Turks! They have stopped all excavation. They are so afraid of Bolshevism that, if they could, they would imitate Joshua and make ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... well afterwards. It was the day when an annual saturnalia of vulgar vice usurps and pollutes the open downs at Epsom. Bertram did not care to see it, he said—the rabble of a great town turned loose to desecrate the open face of nature—even regarded as a matter of popular custom; he had looked on at much the same orgies before in New Guinea and on the Zambesi, and they only depressed him: so he stopped at Brackenhurst, and went for a walk instead in the fresh summer meadows. ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... while, in other communes, we will get rid of this authoritatively through our missionary representatives. We will close the churches, demolish the steeples, melt down the bells, send all sacred vessels to the Mint, smash the images of the saints, desecrate relics, prohibit religious burials, impose the civil burial, prescribe rest during the decadi[2133] and labor on Sundays. No exception whatever. Since all positive religions deal in error, we will outlaw them all: we will exact from Protestant clergymen ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... I-Gos acknowledged the royal sally. "Ey, ey, O-Tar," squeaked the ancient one, "I-Gos goes out not upon pleasure bound; but when one does ruthlessly desecrate the dead of I-Gos, ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Cutting, "I do not intend upon this floor to answer the remark which the gentleman from Kentucky has thought proper to employ. It belongs to a different region. It is not ere that I will desecrate my lips with undertaking to retort in ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... God hath giv'n me arms indeed, Worthy a God, and such as mortal man Could never forge; I go to arm me straight; Yet fear I for Menoetius' noble son, Lest in his spear-inflicted wounds the flies May gender worms, and desecrate the dead, And, life extinct, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... by Mr. Mitchell's opinion about the best manner of giving my readings; for, as I do it for money, I shall do it in the way most likely to be profitable. At the same time, I shall certainly use my best endeavor to have the business so arranged as to desecrate as little as possible the great works of the master, in the exposition and illustration of which I look for infinite pleasure and profit of the highest order, whatever my meaner gain ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... its idea. The latter is easily inferred from the reason stated, [Pg 188] viz., that the priests should be holy to their God. The servants of God must represent His holiness; they are, therefore, not allowed, by so close a contact with sin, to defile or desecrate themselves either inwardly or outwardly. Although the inward pollution may be prevented in individual cases by a specially effective assistance of divine grace, yet there always remains the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... do not desecrate 'the eternal God-word, love!' There is little enough of that in the business that goes by its name now-a-days. I am a lady—I cannot use the right word. But it is none the less the thing I mean because it calls blasphemously on God Almighty to help ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... desecrate, O labour-wounded feet and hands, O blood poured forth in pledge to fate Of nameless lives in divers lands, O slain and spent and sacrificed ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... bright June sunshine. A stone sun-dial stood upon one of the velvet lawns, engraved with the legend "Tempus fugit," and various creaking basket and beehive chairs stood about, while no tennis net was permitted to desecrate the appearance of complete repose that the green garden presented ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... was the repugnance felt for the slayer of a Brahmana that to even talk with him was regarded a sin. To instruct such a man in the truths of the Vedas and of morality was to desecrate religion itself. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... From which to hurl the traitor? Standing now, Where once he stood, in patriotic might, With the fresh laurel wreath upon his brow, And Freedom burning on his lip of flame; Does Pity plead forgiveness for his shame? Then bear him thence, like Manlius, and be just— Or go to Vernon's shade, and desecrate its dust. ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... of smoke that vail the sight of heaven; Black piles of stones which yesterday were homes; And raw black heaps which once were villages; Fair towns in ashes, spoiled to suage thy spleen; My temples desecrate, My priests out-cast;— Black ruin everywhere, and red,—a land All swamped with blood, and savaged raw and bare; All sickened with the reek and stench of war, And flung a prey to pestilence ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... was most vulnerable, he hurt her. Oh, where she was delivered over to him, in her very soft femaleness, he seemed to lacerate her and desecrate her. She pressed her hands over her womb in anguish, whilst the tears ran down her face. And why, and why? Why was ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... the snarling men as at some repulsive beasts, horrified that they should thus desecrate the quiet of his Pascherette's death-bed. He was not the Milo of old now. His memory had flown back through the years to the time when he was a youth of position and great promise in his own land; when, instead of being the cast-off servant of a beautiful ingrate, he numbered his own servants ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Ridicule is one of the most deadly of weapons, but it never harms those who have the hardihood of getting down to basic facts and classifying things and ideas according to their true value. Why should we be guided by the wit and sarcasm of indolent voluptuaries who daily desecrate ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... barren error. What do I want more after having experienced this? What do you want of me after having experienced this with me? Let the tear of a beloved woman mingle with this joy, and what else can we desire? Do not let us desecrate our own selves. Let us look upon the world through the medium of contempt alone. It is worth nothing else; to found any hope on it would be deceiving our own hearts; it is BAD, BAD, THOROUGHLY BAD: only the heart of a FRIEND, the tears of a woman, ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... signs of intellectual barrenness and the vicious pandering to lower appetites, consequent upon the trading spirit of literature, we note with regret the growing tendency to desecrate beautiful subjects by using them as materials for burlesque. We have had a Comic History of England—one of the dreariest and least excusable of jokes, and capable of for ever vulgarizing in the young mind the great deeds and noble life ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... that I'd rather starve than desecrate the home of my ancestors—that I'd sooner end my days in a London garret than level a single wall for my own benefit—what then? Would you put me down as ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... multiply obstacles to their advance; the King of Naples and the Viceroy of Italy were to march upon Vienna and make Austria tremble in the heart of her capital before the timid million of her Allies, who measured their steps as they approached Paris, should desecrate by their presence the capital of France. When informed of the vast project, which, however, was but the dream of a moment, I immediately recognised that eagle glance, that power of discovering great resources in great calamities, so peculiar ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... fog. After we had felt our way beyond the mouth of the river we were forced to paddle north-west by north, in blind reliance on our compass. Sounds there were none. Involuntarily we lowered our voices. The inadvertent click of the paddle against the gunwale seemed to desecrate ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... Julius had arrived, and was helping Sophia to hang the holly and mistletoe. But Sandal knew that his soul shrank from the nephew he had called into his life; knew that the sound of his voice irritated him, that his laugh filled him with resentment, that his very presence in the house seemed to desecrate it, and to slay for him the ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... always—ever since I first met you. I feel now as though every thought, every hour, every event of the last five months has been a preparation for this moment. On one point, however, I have never wavered. We can't desecrate our love by some odious law-suit. If this life were all, it would be different. But it isn't all. It seems as though we are not to be everything to each other. Yet we can be more than everything—we can be one existence even if ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... is carried to things outward as well as inward. His gall rises at a new church with a high-pitched roof; a full-breasted black silk waistcoat is with him a symbol of Satan; and a profane jest-book would not, in his view, more foully desecrate the church seat of a Christian than a book of prayer printed with red letters and ornamented with a cross on the back. Most active clergymen have their hobby, and Sunday observances are his. Sunday, however, is a word ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... worlds were distinct and separate—that which had been, from that which was to be. To what a bold and adventurous enterprise he had pledged his life!—to unveil the mysteries in which he had participated—to desecrate the altars he had served—to denounce the goddess whose ministering robe he wore! Slowly he became sensible of the hatred and the horror he should provoke amongst the pious, even if successful; if frustrated in his daring attempt, what penalties might he not incur for an offence hitherto ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... my thanks, ye reverend senators! That ye have lent your credence to these proofs; And if I be indeed the man whom I Protest myself, oh, then, endure not this Audacious robber should usurp my seat, Or longer desecrate that sceptre which To me, as the true Czarowitsch, belongs. Yes, justice lies with me,—you have the power. 'Tis the most dear concern of every state And throne, that right should everywhere prevail, And all men in the world possess their own. For there, where justice ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... paper that does not herald some outrage committed on a matron on her way to church, or the little girl gathering wild flowers on her way to school; yet you cannot go so low down in the scale of being as to find men who will enter our churches to desecrate the altars or toss about the emblems of the sacrament; because they have been educated with some respect for churches, altars and sacraments. But where are any lessons of respect taught for the mothers of the ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... tall tree lie Troy's chief and captains and Iulus fair, And wheaten platters for their meal supply ('Twas Jove's command), the wilding fruits to bear. When lack of food has forced them now to tear The tiny cakes, and tooth and hand with zest The fateful circles desecrate, nor spare The sacred squares upon the rounds impressed, "What! eating boards as well?" ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... place on a Friday. Joshua knew it would pain the people deeply to be compelled to desecrate the holy Sabbath day. Besides, he noticed that the heathen were using sorcery to make the heavenly hosts intercede for them in the fight against the Israelites. He, therefore, pronounced the Name of the ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... hospitals, and for other secular purposes. It was a natural outcome of such practices that the succeeding generation should go a step further and do infinitely worse. If God-fearing men did not scruple to desecrate consecrated churches, was it likely that their godless ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... civil warfare, and the Duc de Lesdiguieres represented to the King the ardent desire of the Protestants to conclude a peace, all their efforts were impotent to counteract the pernicious counsels of the Prince, which were destined to darken and desecrate all the after-reign of Louis XIII. Marie then endeavoured to dissuade the King from heading his troops in person; or, should he persist in this design, at least to forego that of leaving her in the capital, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... administration was truly national in its scope, its objects, and its results. His views of the sacred nature of the trust imposed upon him by his fellow-citizens were too exalted to allow him to desecrate the power with which it clothed him to the promotion of party or personal interests. Although not unmindful of the party which elevated him to the presidency, nor forgetful of the claims of those who yielded sympathy and support to the measures of his administration, yet in all his doings ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... were settled in London. Charles himself was personally popular; he had been the ally of England in the late French war; and when in his supposed character of leader of the anti-papal party in Europe he allowed a Lutheran army to desecrate Rome, he had won the sympathy of all the latent discontent which was fermenting in the population. France, on the other hand, was as cordially hated as Spain was beloved. A state of war with France was the normal condition of England; and the reconquest of it the universal dream ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... should reject them if, in return, I were to lead a nameless, disreputable, and obscure existence. I will sooner die of starvation as a Princess Dowager von Reuss than live in opulence as Marianne Meier. This is my last word; and now, sir, begone! Do not desecrate this room by your cold and egotistic thoughts, and by your heartless calculations! Honor the repose of the dead and the grief of ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... confident I am Thy life is one of very little ease; Albeit men mock thee with their similes And prate of being "happy as a clam!" What though thy shell protects thy fragile head From the sharp bailiffs of the briny sea? Thy valves are, sure, no safety-valves to thee, While rakes are free to desecrate thy bed, And bear thee off—as foemen take their spoil— Far from thy friends and family to roam; Forced, like a Hessian, from thy native home, To meet destruction in a foreign broil! Though thou art tender yet thy humble bard Declares, O clam! thy ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... inter-related with every other thought, deed, word, sentiment, passion and prayer of every other living thing in all eternity. We have an ideal to maintain, and if we are untrue or fail, we interrupt, we desecrate the everlasting scheme of the universe. We will therefore be held responsible for our manner of living,—for the sum total of our existence. We have a purpose to fulfill, a responsibility to sustain. If we are ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... groining and fret-work, and alights finally and fatally on a red chimney-top. He might as well have built a Gothic aisle at an entrance to a coal wharf. We have no scruple in saying that the man who could desecrate the Gothic trefoil into an ornament for a chimney has not the slightest feeling, and never will have any, of its beauty or its use; he was never born to be an architect, and never ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... smote him; with his crude and clumsy banter he had contrived to tune her thoughts to sadness. He would have given worlds to undo that blunder; to show her that he had meant neither a rudeness nor a wish to desecrate her reticence, but only an indirect assurance of gratitude to her for suffering him and willingness to serve her within the compass of his poverty-stricken powers. For in retrospect his invitation assumed the proportions of an importunity, an egregious ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... awakening, when your mind is free, you can so direct your attention as to receive joy instead of gloom, love instead of hate. You can exclude the thought of evil or you can yield and allow the tempter to desecrate your shrine. Whichever choice you make, these first moments of your day's living will color the whole course of the coming hours. The feeling first accepted and welcomed will more or less continue and form ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... God, and therefore a "means of grace." The Lord's seal is upon his ministry. How we impoverish ourselves by separating these precious gifts from their Giver? We desecrate many a fair shrine by emptying it of God. We turn many a temple into just a common house. When we think of our friend let us link him to our Father, and fall upon our ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... was meant, but always perverted and misunderstood. While this spirit lasts, there can be no hope of the achievement of high things, for men will not open the secrets of their hearts to us, if we intend to desecrate the holy, or to broil themselves upon ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... fancies. It is painted in lugubrious white, and its pillars have false bases in a palpable imitation of veined red marble. Its pure and early form, the Latin cross, is gone, its fine old stalls are hidden in a gallery, and at the altar Corinthian columns desecrate its ancient Romanesque. Yet in spite of the incongruities the atmosphere of the church is truly that of its dim past. There are the low broad arches, the great, supporting pillars that are massive buttresses; ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... disregard, slight, trifle with, set at naught, pass by, push aside, overlook, turn one's back upon, laugh in one's sleeve; be disrespectful &c adj., be discourteous &c 895; treat with disrespect &c n.; set down, put down, browbeat. dishonor, desecrate; insult, affront, outrage. speak slightingly of; disparage &c (dispraise) 932; vilipend^, vilify, call names; throw dirt, fling dirt; drag through the mud, point at, indulge in personalities; make mouths, make faces; bite the thumb; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and the produce of the land brought to the central storehouse. The new settlers showed a measureless cunning and industry in reclaiming worthless soil; and so eager were they for land at last, that the Cistercians were even said to desecrate churchyards, and to encroach on the borders of royal forests. They grew famous for the breeding of horses according to the exacting taste of the day, learned in the various species of palfreys and sumpter horses and knight's chargers and horses for ambling ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... said Mrs Proudie; "and now what do you mean to do? This is Thursday, and of course the man must not be allowed to desecrate the church of Hogglestock by performing ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... homebodies than these little wrens are not among the feathered tribe. Once let the hand of man desecrate their nest, even before the tiny speckled eggs are deposited in it, and off go the birds to a more inaccessible place, where they can enjoy their home unmolested. Thus three or four nests may be made ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... Boone, therefore, in September, commenced his march for the West, (as we shall presently relate), the choice regions which he had examined three years before, were known to numbers, and settlers were preparing to desecrate the silent and beautiful woods. Nor did the prospects of the English colonists stop with the settlements of Kentucky. In 1773, General Lyman, with a number of military adventurers, went to Natchez and laid out several townships in that vicinity; to which point emigration set so ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... those voices, so long slumbering, would break their silence, that the forms which look down from these walls behind and around me, would walk forth. and that their sabres would once more be drawn from their scabbards, to drive from this sacred temple fanatical men, who desecrate it more than did the changers of money and those who sold doves, the temple of the living ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... now in mourning, but tomorrow, covered with laurels, she will have extinguished the last of the tyrants who now desecrate her soil. Then she will invite you to a single association, so that our motto may be 'Unity in South America.' All ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... terrible rage. He furiously brandished his hammer, with intent to annihilate the boaster. This the gods would not permit, however, and they quickly threw themselves between the irate Thunderer and their guest, imploring Thor to respect the sacred rights of hospitality, and not to desecrate their ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... like their follies and sins. Or those who are much engaged in worldly business, who confess they do not give that attention to religion which they ought to give; who neglect the ordinances of the Church; who desecrate the Lord's day; who give little or no time to the study of God's word; who allow themselves in various small transgressions of their conscience, and resolutely harden themselves against the remorse which such transgressions ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... into general intelligence, sound morality, and, in particular, a reverence for the Constitution and the laws; and then our country shall continue to improve, and our nation, revering his name, and permitting no hostile foot to pass or desecrate his resting-place, shall be the first to hear the last trump that ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... and relics of their tribe in a large circle, placing plenty of furs and food, with pipes, beads and arrows in the center, and cover them high with stones and earth that wild beasts could not move. And they placed the Manitou's mark on this mound that no foe would dare to desecrate. Then turning their faces from their once happy home they sought a new one, and people to help them revenge this deed and recover their land. Winding their way to the land of snow and ice they saw approaching a band of warriors covered with emblems of peace, and, leaving their ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... dart strike you through. But if you are dead and indifferent to your own miserable soul, think that in this sin you cannot sin alone; think that you are dragging down to the nethermost abyss others besides yourself. Remember the wretched victims of your infamous passions, and tremble while you desecrate and deface for ever God's image stamped on a fair human soul. Think of those whom your vileness dooms to a life of loathliness, a death of shame and anguish, perhaps an eternity of horrible despair. Learn something of the days they are forced to spend, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... pinions, how tender is the sighing breath of thy lips, how beyond all things glorious is the vibration of thy lightest whisper! Remain aloft, thou Choicest Essence of the Creator's Voice, remain in that pure and cloudless ether, where alone thou art fitted to dwell. My touch must desecrate thee, my voice affright thee. Suffice it to thy servant, O Beloved, to ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... the great king is a sufficient protection for this house," said Napoleon. "My soldiers have a profound respect for true greatness; they will not dare to desecrate this sanctuary. Be my guide, my friend. Let me see the sitting-room ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... "Damn it, Henry, he'd desecrate it! He'd tear up my cornfields and meadows and put factories and mills in their place! That's what he'd do!" He turned sideways and leant against the lintel of the window so that he was looking at his son. "There ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... e celebrate desecrate supplement liquefy petroleum rarefy skeleton telescope tragedy gayety lineal renegade secretary deprecate execrate implement maleable promenade recreate stupefy tenement ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... he wasn't drunk—like the rest," Mr. Murphy answered anxiously. "'Twould be a sin to desecrate that lovely body ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... surprised at it; nobody noticed it as a thing out of the common course of events. And this, too, in a city where the Sabbath proprieties are sternly insisted upon; where some twenty pulpits deal out anathemas upon all who "desecrate the Lord's day;" where simple notices of meetings for moral purposes even can scarcely be read; where many count it wrong to speak on that day for the slave, who knows no Sabbath of rest, or for the drunkard, who, imbruted by his appetites, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... wheels over the stiffening road. Or was it merely the fanciful echo of an idea that only at that moment sprung up in his mind? If it was real it came from the street parallel with the one he was in. Who could be driving out at this time? What other buggy than his own could be found to desecrate this Christian Sabbath? An irresistible thought impelled him at the risk of recognition to quicken his pace and turn the corner as Richard Demorest drove up to the Independence Hotel, sprang from his buggy, throwing the reins over the dashboard, and ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... that at the altar—'joined together by God!' As likely as not two human creatures who hate each other, and are standing there swearing those impossibilities for some political purpose and advantage of their family. They desecrate the word love. Love is for us, Paul, who came together because our beings cried, 'This is my mate!' I should say nothing of it—oh no! if it had no pretence—marriage. If it were frankly a contract—'Yes, ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... when that great captain of the Gauls, Brennus, led his forces through Italy and Greece, there were in his troop two French nobles, one named Felsinus, the other named Bono, who seeing the wicked designs of Brennus to invade and desecrate the temple of Delphos, after his great conquests, withdrew their forces and passed into Asia with ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the Constitution and laws; and that we improved to the last, that we remained free to the last, that we revered his name to the last, that during his long sleep we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place, shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... life than that which had suggested it; for in the soul of man there is ever a hunger and thirst for the highest, however much he may abuse his soul. At the worst, there remains always that which "a man may waste, desecrate, never ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... Ages, which depicted the devil fleeing from holy water, were not perhaps quite so benighted as our superior modern culture has led us to suppose. For that "hatred of goodness exaggerated to the point of paroxysm," that impulse to desecrate and defile which forms the basis of black magic and has manifested itself in successive phases of the world-revolution, springs from fear. So by their very hatred the powers of darkness proclaim the existence of the powers of light and their own impotence. In the cry of the demoniac: "What ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... of Divine Wisdom. The direct contrary course has been taken in the synagogue of antichrist, I mean in that forge and manufactury of all evil, the sect which predominated in the Constituent Assembly of 1789. Those monsters employed the same, or greater industry, to desecrate and degrade that state, which other legislators have used to render it ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... marbles for new villas, that shall surpass the old in splendor, you never dream that the shadow of death is hanging over your halls. Forgetful of the tomb, you lay the foundation of your palaces. In your mad pursuit of pleasure you rob the sea of its beach and desecrate hallowed ground. More even than this, in your wickedness you destroy the peaceful homes of your clients! Without a touch of remorse you drive the father from his land, clasping to his bosom his household gods and his ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... ashes of the parents and grandparents of the present chief, who, with his followers, were not long ago driven to Lundu; and their former settlement being deserted, it has been the employment of some of the rascals here to rob these graves of their contents, and to desecrate the repose of the dead. The Orang Kaya of Lundu complained to me sadly, but mournfully, on this account, and said that if he could not find redress from the rajah, he must obtain it himself by taking the heads of those who had disinterred the bones of his ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... still feel that a holy cycle of time had passed; but I live only according to one record of time, and my New Year falls always on the 1st of January. Atonement is a sacred day to me; I could not desecrate it. Our services are magnificently beautiful, and I should feel like a culprit if debarred from their holiness. As to fasting, you and I have agreed that any physical punishment that keeps our thoughts one moment from God, ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... honest to hide it from her. She had said that she would have nothing to do with Edward Cossey, but she was well aware that the matter was still an open one. What should she do, what ought she to do? Abandon her love, desecrate herself and save her father and her house, or cling to her love and leave the rest to chance? It was a cruel position, nor did the lapse of time tend to make it less cruel. Her father went about the ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... to a beauty of the Palais Royal than to a heroine, and which contrast strangely with the chaste characters she represents. Tell her that I desire her to abstain from such follies; she must not desecrate the buskin by the minauderies of a soubrette.[1] For the rest, I rely entirely on you, Talma. The eyes of Europe are fixed on Erfurt at this moment, and your ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach |
