"Impiety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attention can discover; it is much too fine for vulgar eyes. In manners, this line is good-breeding; beyond it, is troublesome ceremony; short of it, is unbecoming negligence and inattention. In morals, it divides ostentatious puritanism from criminal relaxation; in religion, superstition from impiety; and, in short, every virtue from its kindred vice or weakness. I think you have sense enough to discover the line; keep it always in your eye, and learn to walk upon it; rest upon Mr. Harte, and he will poise you, till you are able to go alone. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... threw doubts into some minds. It was asserted, however, that this English-woman was rich, and that she had passed her life in traveling through every country in the world, because her family had thrown her off. Why had her family thrown her off? Because of her natural impiety? ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... are spoken by Philolaches from inside (perhaps in a low voice, to ask Tranio how matters are going on). On this, Tranio turns it to good account, by pretending that the Ghost is calling out to him for his supposed impiety in daring to knock at ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... so, oftentimes calling to mind and remembering the selfsame thing, I cannot sufficiently marvel at the great madness of some men, at so great impiety of their blinded hearts, lastly, at so great a licentious desire of error, that they be not content with the rule of faith once delivered us, and received from our ancestors, but do every day search and seek for new doctrine, ever desirous to add to, to change, and ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... affection (to use his own termes) The true and reall upholder of Learned endeavors. This, therefore, beeing left unto mee, as a Legacie unto your Lordship (pardon my presumption, great Lord, from so meane a man to so great a person) I could not without some impiety present it to any other; such a sad priviledge have the bequests of the dead, and so obligatory they are, more than the requests of the living. In the hope of this honourable acceptance I will ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... impiety, loathsome and dread, With a chaos of darkness our Spain overspread, Thou wast the first light which dispell'd with its flames The hell-born obscurity, glorious ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... nor insincere, you surely do not expect that the millennium is to be brought about by the triumph of what are called liberal opinions; nor by enabling the whole of the lower classes to read the incentives to vice, impiety, and rebellion which are prepared for them by an unlicensed press; nor by Sunday schools, and religious tract societies; nor by the portentous bibliolatry of the age! And if you adhere to the letter of the Scriptures, methinks the thought of that consummation for which you look, might serve rather ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... exhibited in the history of the world, is to be found in France at the era of the first Revolution, when Christianity was publicly abjured, and the goddess of Reason substituted for the God of the Bible. But that even this fearful outburst of impiety did not proceed from the universal prevalence of Speculative Atheism among the great body of the people; that there still existed in the heart of society some germs of religious feeling, and certain instinctive or traditionary beliefs which operated as a restraint and check even during ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... the island, and in the neighbouring islands, the inhabitants choose those deities for the objects of their worship, who, they think, are most likely to protect them, and to supply all their wants. If, however, they are disappointed in their expectations, they deem it no impiety to change their divinity, by having recourse to another, whom they hope to find more propitious and successful. In general, their notions concerning Deity are extravagantly absurd. With regard to the soul, they believe it, according to Mr. Anderson, to be both immaterial and immortal; but he acknowledges, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... she spoke, with a censure no doubt deserved, of thriftlessness and ingratitude. These indeed are tokens of a spirit of discontent which we cannot view with composure, especially in the light of late events in the unhappy country of France—the prey of impiety and revolution. ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... probable Maxims to hinder the Growth as well as Irreligion and Impiety as of Popery ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... forbade any city or individual to do this. To this refusal he attached the phrase "unless I grant permission "; but he added: "I will not grant it." Least of all did he assume to have been insulted or to have been impiously treated by any one. (Men were already calling such a procedure impiety, and were bringing many suits based on that ground.) He would not hear of any such indictment being brought for his own benefit, though he paid tribute to the majesty of Augustus in this matter also. At first he would not punish ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... it concerns Francois Paradis. Hast Thou already guessed it, O Mary, full of grace? How might she frame this her desire without impiety? That he should be spared hardship in the woods ... That he should be true to his word and give up drinking and swearing ... That he return in ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... said St. Hildegarde ([Cross] 1178), "shall have its hour; the last of the seven epochs symbolized by the seven days of creation has arrived, the judgments of God are about to be accomplished; the empire and the papacy, sunk into impiety, shall crumble away together.... But upon their ruins shall appear a new nation of God, a nation of prophets illuminated from on high, living in poverty and solitude. Then the divine mysteries shall be revealed, and the saying of Joel shall be fulfilled; the Holy Spirit shall shed abroad upon the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... existence was a curse to the neighbourhood in which he dwelt. At an early age he came into possession of a large property, which he spent in the gratification of every base and lawless passion. His life, as far as I can learn, was one unmixed course of cruelty, lust, and impiety, unredeemed by one noble aspiration, one generous, unselfish action. He died suddenly, in the prime of life, in the midst of one of his riotous midnight orgies, and the house has ever since been deserted. It is said, and believed by our good towns-folks, that ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... a cobbler, rose by degrees to be a colonel, and though a person of no parts either in body or mind, yet made by Cromwell one of his pageant lords. He was a fellow fit for any mischief, and capable of nothing else; a sordid lump of ignorance and impiety, and therefore the more fit to share in Cromwell's designs, and to act in that horrid murther of his Majesty. Upon the turn of the times, he ran away for fear of Squire Dun [the common hangman], and (by report) is since ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... of his bestial inheritance into purity and light; and thus if a man can inherit evil from evil progenitors by the law of God, he is not a free agent in the matter; and it thus becomes a piece of sad impiety, or worse, to say that it was inconceivable agony to God to bear the sins which his ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... charms?—dare not to think of it— Shocking impiety;—the num'rous systems Which gay creation spreads, bright blazing suns, With all th' attendant planets circling round, Are not worth half the radiance of her eyes. She's heav'n's peculiar care, good spir'ts hover Round, a shining band, to guard ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... Trent affair. Men of Manchester, Englishmen, what reception can you give this man? He is the friend of General Butler. He is the friend of that so-called gospel preacher, Cheever. His impudence in coming here is only equalled by his cruelty and impiety." ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold
... cried she; "and the chastisement for my impiety is not delayed. Will you still force me to obey you? Shall I be dragged to the altar, in spite of myself, at the very hour ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... Baron burgess of Edinburgh; The idolatry of the mass particularly occupied his attention, as he saw some remarkable for zeal and godliness drawn aside by it; both in public and private he exposed its impiety and danger; his labours succeeded so far, as to draw off some and alarm many others: In a conversation upon this subject at the laird of Dun's house in presence of David Forrest, Mr. Robert Lockhart, John Willock and William Maitland junr. of Lethington, he gave such satisfactory ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be, that the whole is greater than a part, that two and three make five, is pretending to stop the ocean with a bulrush. Will you set up profane reason against sacred mystery? No punishment is great enough for your impiety. And the same fires which were kindled for heretics will serve also for the destruction of ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... Ham broke into my locker last night, and is roaring drunk again; can't find the jug; will log him every time now—No religious exercises to-day; women are complaining of my impiety, but a man can't feel resigned when he has just lost a four-gallon jug of the best ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... Further (I mean) than carrying on Some self-advantage of their own: For if the Dev'l, to serve his turn, Can tell troth, why the Saints should scorn, When it serves theirs, to swear and lye; 125 I think there's little reason why: Else h' has a greater pow'r than they, Which 't were impiety to say. W' are not commanded to forbear Indefinitely at all to swear; 130 But to swear idly, and in vain, Without self-interest or gain For breaking of an oath, and lying, Is but a kind of self-denying; A Saint-like virtue: and from hence 135 Some have broke oaths by Providence ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Babbiano, and work too, if you do it as well as this. Come; the men are here now. Let us go forward whilst they are at their prayers. But we must not disturb them," he added, more seriously. "I will not be guilty of an impiety. We can lie in wait for ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... extraordinary-looking being, who stood like a statue—with the exception of its arms, which it continued slowly to wave up and down in a series of mysterious signs, as if it would bar our progress in that direction; indeed, if I may not be accused of impiety by saying so, it reminded me of the angel with the flaming sword, stationed at the entrance of Eden to prohibit the return of our first parents,—though I am very certain that the idea must have been original so far as the Australian necromancer—for such, we concluded, was ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... nationality, when the realization of the idea of humanity on the planet cannot be filled without it, is a rebellion against the eternal truth of God—it is a sacrilege! The recognition of such violation were participation; opposition to such impiety is religion!' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... clergy, I believed that it was done for the express purpose of my condemnation. Stunned by this fear like one smitten with a thunderbolt, I daily expected to be dragged before their councils or assemblies as a heretic or one guilty of impiety. Though I seem to compare a flea with a lion, or an ant with an elephant, in very truth my rivals persecuted me no less bitterly than the heretics of old hounded St. Athanasius. Often, God knows, I sank so deep in despair ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... of them, I assure you. But I may not publish them, nor reveal secrets; the result might be a suit for impiety in ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... private advantage; its unhallowed disregard of every moral and religious bond; the systematic perjury so naturalised in a great seminary of religious education; the apathy with which the injustice was tolerated by the state and the impiety tolerated by the church. Copleston made a wretched reply, but more than twenty years passed before the spirit of reform overthrew the entrenchments of academic abuse. In that overthrow, when the time came, Mr. Gladstone was called to play a part, though hardly at ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... high-minded men, on its shores. In every settlement of this kind,—no matter how choice the original materials,—vice will soon preponderate over virtue, intemperance over sobriety, knavery over honesty, oppression over liberty, and impiety over godliness. The natives will see just enough of christianity to hate and shun it; finding that its fruits are generally bad—that it has no restraining influence upon the mass of its nominal ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... because they had been city-dwellers back on Earth. There was one place where trees grew like banyans, and it was utterly impossible to penetrate them. They swerved aside. There was another spot where giant trees like sequoias made a cathedral-like atmosphere, and it seemed an impiety to speak. But Holden reported tonelessly in the walkie-talkie, and assured Jones and Al and Jamison that ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... it would seem, to enter upon the evening's drama. Tall, graceful as always, with a magnetic force behind his languor, he impressed Kate as a man whom few women would be able to resist; whom, indeed, it was a sort of folly, perhaps even an impiety, to cast ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... dexterous secrecy, that Dr. Delany was six months in his house before he knew it. He was not only careful to hide the good which he did, but willingly incurred the suspicion of evil which he did not. He forgot what himself had formerly asserted, that hypocrisy is less mischievous than open impiety. Dr. Delany, with all his zeal for his honour, has justly condemned this ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... seen that very identical picture of all those engaging qualities in bed with a rake at a bagnio, smoaking tobacco, drinking punch, talking obscenity, and swearing and cursing with all the impudence and impiety of the lowest and most abandoned trull ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... (as one would say) healthy: but so sound, as things that are hollow; thy bones are hollow; Impiety has made a feast ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Pagans was soon succeeded by resentment; and the most pious of men were exposed to the unjust but dangerous imputation of impiety. Malice and prejudice concurred in representing the Christians as a society of atheists, who, by the most daring attack on the religious constitution of the empire, had merited the severest animadversion of the civil magistrate. They had separated themselves (they gloried in the confession) ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... which the poet here holds up to judgment, is very unlike the life of Franklin, all whose service was in obedience to God's laws, whether in snatching the lightning from the skies or the sceptre from tyrants; and yet it is evident that the verse which pictured Epicurus in his impiety suggested the picture of the American plenipotentiary in his double labors of science ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... tongues to every language; they are never angered, though they groan; the acrimony of the aggressor is not in them, but rather the softness and tenuity of light, which penetrates and warms and illumines. To their eyes Doubt is neither an impiety, nor a blasphemy, nor a crime, but a transition through which men return upon their steps in the Darkness, or advance into the Light. This being so, dear pastor, let ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... clergy and monks.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, ii. 158. See post, April 14, 1775, where Johnson said:—'Sir, there is a great cry about infidelity; but there are in reality very few infidels.' Yet not long before he had complained of an 'inundation of impiety.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... mocked in the palace of Herod by the impious creatures of his court! This was, without doubt, one of the most sensible insults which Jesus Christ received. But do not suppose, Christians, that this act of impiety ended there. It has passed from the court of Herod, from that prince destitute of religion, into those even of Christian princes. And is not the Savior still a subject of ridicule to the libertine spirits which compose them? They worship Him ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... her sanctity. The incredulous, who did not see things in the same light, thought that the face was artificial, and that it presented one of those holy frauds which have so frequently furnished weapons to impiety. But they were partly mistaken: the nuns had thought proper to cover the face of the saint with a mask, and to clothe her from head to foot, in order to skreen from the eyes of the public the hideous spectacle of ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... three days the ceremony lasts, after which the mountains are objects of pilgrimage till the twenty-eighth day of August. For the rest of the year the summits are held to be shut, the gods being then in conclave, to disturb whom were the height of impiety. A pleasing coincidence of duty and pleasure, that the scaling of the peaks should be enjoined to pilgrims at the times of easiest ascent! Preparatory to the procession all the paths of approach are repaired. It was this repairing ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... felt that in any emergency she was thus sure of one faithful friend. "A lone woman" in Margaret's position has in these days numberless objects of interest of which Margaret never dreamed. She would have thought it a kind of impiety to advise her minister, or meddle in church affairs. These simple parents attended themselves to the spiritual training of their children—there was no necessity for Sunday Schools, and they did not exist. She was not one of those women whom ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... him that it was by way of returning thanks to Heaven for the benefits they received; and was indeed an ancient and religious custom, which they could not, with a safe conscience, or without impiety, omit. ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... preferment. From the bar of the Praetorian praefects, he raised himself to the honors of quaestor, of consul, and of master of the offices: the council of Justinian listened to his eloquence and wisdom; and envy was mitigated by the gentleness and affability of his manners. The reproaches of impiety and avarice have stained the virtue or the reputation of Tribonian. In a bigoted and persecuting court, the principal minister was accused of a secret aversion to the Christian faith, and was supposed to entertain the sentiments of an Atheist ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... found such ample provision, and that according to the word of God, for comely order against confusion; for peace and unity of the Church against schism and division; for truth of the faith against all error and heresy; for piety and unblamableness against all impiety and scandal of conversation; for equity and right against all mal-administrations, whether ignorant, arbitrary, or tyrannical; for the honor and purity of all Christ's ordinances against all contempt, pollution, and profanation; for comfort, quickening, and encouragement ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... another, till the latter took up the ground, that though the saints were not omnipresent, yet God, who was so, imparted to them the prayers offered up, and then they used their interference with Him to grant them. 'That is, father, (said C. in reply)—excuse my seeming levity, for I mean no impiety—that is; I have a deaf and dumb wife, who yet understands me, and I her, by signs. You have a favour to ask of me, and want my wife's interference; so you communicate your request to me, who impart it to her, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... is the case in all other things, that at some times and to some persons only it is better to die than to live; yet that these men for whom it is better to die—this probably will appear wonderful to you—may not, without impiety, do this good to themselves, but must await ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... he was told that it was none other than King Evelake who accompanied Joseph of Arimathea to Britain. And on a certain occasion, the King had approached the Holy Grail nigher than was reverent and, for his impiety, God had punished him with blindness. Thereupon he repented and, entreating God earnestly, had obtained his petition that he should not die until he had seen the spotless knight who should be descended from him in the ninth degree. (This his desire was fulfilled later when Sir Galahad ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... memorable days: "The very face of heaven did manifestlie speak what comfort was brought to this country with hir—to wit, sorrow, dolour, darkness and all impiety—for in the memorie of man never was seen a more dolorous face of the heavens than was at her arryvall ... the myst was so thick that skairse micht onie man espy another; and the sun was not seyn to shyne two days ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... carpenter in the "Miller's Tale," who glories in his incredulity of aught besides his credo, and who yet is afterwards befooled by the very impostor of whose astrological pursuits he had reprehended the impiety. "Men," he says, "should know nothing of that which is private to God. Yea, blessed be alway a simple man who knows nothing but only his belief." In his little work "On the Astrolobe," Chaucer speaks with calm reasonableness of superstitions in which his spirit has no faith, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... him" (he is alluding to the Cardinal), "through a mist; and if my simple statement anywhere clears away that mist, they may almost resent my truth-speaking as an impiety." As indeed they did—and do. Some of his own friends, indeed, urged him not to publish the book, but ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... there was a moral degeneration degrading them to the level of beasts. With an apparent aspiration after social and humanitarian reform, there was a corruption of the public conscience and a hardening of the public heart. London was the living picture of this startling contrast. Impiety, iniquity, impurity, and injustice were at their height here, and either England must forfeit her position among the nations, or the Almighty would interpose. The Almighty was about to interpose, and the consummation of London's ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... there are scarce any now, will be a pretty dialogue by Cr'ebillon; a strange imperfect poem, written by Voltaire when he was very young, which with some charming strokes has a great deal of humour manqu'e and of impiety estropi'ee; and an historical romance, by him too, of the last war, in which is so outrageous a lying anecdote of old Marlborough, as would have convinced her, that when poets write history they stick as little to truth in prose as in ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... in an article which has become almost historic for its virulence. Poor Lady Morgan was accused of bad taste, bombast and nonsense, blunders, ignorance of the French language and manners, general ignorance, Jacobinism, falsehood, licentiousness, and impiety! The first four or five charges might have been proved with little difficulty, if it were worth while to break a butterfly on a wheel, but it was necessary to distort the meaning and even the text of the original in order to give any ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... unnecessary to multiply quotations, but here is one more: "The author of this book is a Christian like you; his faith is that of a Catholic deeply and strongly convinced; therefore his mission is not to deny dogmas, but to combat impiety under one of its most dangerous forms, that of erroneous belief and superstition.... Away with the idol which hides our Saviour! Down with the tyrant of falsehood! Down with the black god of the Manichaeans! Down with the Ahriman of the old idolaters! Live God alone and His incarnate Logos, Jesus ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... pursuance of his base intrigues, committed an act of sacrilege by entering the house of Csar, disguised as a woman, during the celebration of the mysteries of the Bona Dea, to which men were never admitted. He was tried for the impiety, and, through the efforts of Cicero, was almost convicted, though he managed to escape by bribery. He was ever afterward a determined enemy of the great orator, and, by the aid of Pompey, Csar, and Crassus, finally succeeded in having him condemned for putting ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... cross, without inscription, was all that indicated its place hereafter to the mother. Athanase lived and died in shadow. No voice was raised to blame the rector; the bishop kept silence. The piety of the mother redeemed the impiety of the son's ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... presently ask questions or make remarks with which he could hardly deal without committing himself in some direction. His conscience was not quite at rest. Henrietta's pain had not, he thought, served any good purpose; but he did not want to say so, lest he should acquire a reputation for impiety and lose his practice. He believed that the general practitioner who attended the family, and had called him in when the case grew serious, had treated Henrietta unskilfully, but professional etiquette ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... little girl on the point of death, whom Biard had asked her parents to give him for baptism. "Take her and keep her, if you like," was the reply, "for she is no better than a dead dog." "We accepted the offer," says Biard, "in order to show them the difference between Christianity and their impiety; and after giving her what care we could, together with some instruction, we baptized her. We named her after Madame the Marquise de Guercheville, in gratitude for the benefits we have received from that lady, who can now rejoice that her name is already in heaven; for, a few days after baptism, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... be difficult to point out any defects and excesses of which Byron was guilty at this period beyond what were common to other fashionable young men of rank and leisure, except a spirit of religious scepticism and impiety, and a wanton and inexcusable recklessness in regard to women, which made him a slave to his passions. The first alienated him, so far as he was known, from the higher respectable classes, who generally were punctilious in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... the earlier stages of the romantic movement. So late a poet as Bowles delighted to stress the "churchman's ardor" of the poet. [Footnote: See his verse on Southey and Milton.] Southey also was ready to exhibit his punctilious orthodoxy. Yet poor Southey was the unwitting cause of the impiety of his brothers for many years, inasmuch as Byron's A Vision of Judgment, with its irresistible satire on Southey, sounded the death-knell of the narrowly ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... employment outside the country; whereon an officer standing by said to him that that appeared a pretty shabby thing, to take pay and dodge duty. The remark sank deep; he changed his mind, and served with great gallantry. It seems to me now almost an impiety to record, but, knowing my father's warm love for the South, I hazarded to the marine captain a doubt as to his position. He replied that there could be no doubt whatever. "All your father's antecedents are military; there is no military spirit in the ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... O Arjuna! have passed through many transmigrations. I know all these. Thou dost not know them.... For whenever there is a relaxation of duty, O son of Bharata! and an increase of impiety, I then reproduce myself for the protection of the good and the destruction of evil-doers. I am produced in every age for the purpose of establishing duty.... Some sacrifice the sense of hearing and the other senses in the fire of restraint. Others, by abstaining from food, sacrifice life ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... la Cassette replied with a sudden turn of her masked face and a murmur of surprise and protest against this impiety. A low, merry laugh came out of the Monk's cowl, and the Huguenotte let her form sink a little in her chair with a ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... doubtless have been thus overborne. History tells us of many greater statesmen than he, but of few better men. Disinterested almost to a fault, stainless in his private character as well as unquestioned in his public integrity, truly religious in a time given over to atheism and impiety, conscientious even to the smallest matters in public as well as private life, and moderate when everything about him was in extremes,—well might Madame de Stael be proud of her father, and fond ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... on Warwick's breast, he continued, "And how camest thou to learn that Margaret disowns a deed that, if done by her command, would render my union with her cause a sacrilegious impiety to ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... whole tree with all its fruits, the whole man as he is descended from Adam. In it are included body and soul, will, reason and understanding. Both inwardly and outwardly, it is still under the sway of unbelief, impiety and disobedience. Man is called old, not because of his years; for it is possible for a man to be young and strong and vigorous and yet to be without faith or a religious spirit, to despise God, to be greedy and vainglorious, ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... of an inner brightness which not even the 'malignity of fortune,' the 'impiety of men,' the tragedy of his mother's death, the imprisonment of his sister, and the ever-present sorrow of his father, 'the poor gentleman fallen into misery and misfortune through no fault of his own,' could wholly overcloud. The boy had been ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... divinity. In short, the one leads to all that is grand, sublime and splendid in the universe; the other to all that is little, groveling[14] and dark. The one is the parent of the most pure and ardent piety; the genuine progeny of the other are impiety and atheism. And, in fine, the one confers on its votary the most sincere, permanent, and exalted delight; the other ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... his part with prodigious boldness and impiety, told the king that there was a private and a public conscience; that his public conscience as a king might not only dispense with, but oblige him to do that which was against his private conscience as a man; and that the question was not whether ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... other price than the annual tribute of a goshawk such as are native to the island. Old and worn he retired to Majorca, living off the products of the estates belonging to his commandery situated in Catalonia. The impiety and the vices of the hero horrified the family and scandalized the island. Three young Moorish girls and a Jewess of great beauty were his companions in the guise of servants where they occupied a whole wing of the Febrer mansion, which was much larger at that time ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... inhumanly murdered for the sport and pleasure, the noise and nonsense, nay, I may say the profane cursing and swearing, of those who have the effrontery to call themselves, with all these bloody doings, and with all this impiety about them—Christians!' Moreover, this ungenerous diversion was the bane and destruction of thousands, who thus dissipated their patrimonial fortunes. That its attractions were irresistible is evident from the difficulty experienced in suppressing the practice. Down to a very recent date ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Pastorly Mildness, Charity and Good Nature, gives us the basest language, and with the most scurillous expression, sometimes raging and even foaming at mouth, taxing the little liberty has always been us'd, with horrid horrid Blasphemy, Prophaneness, and Damnable Impiety; when Reason must inform every one we intend nothing of the matter, besides the poor priviledge Poetica Licentia: and pretending to prove this with false Quotations, unnatural Mistakes, and Hypocritical Hypotheses, I resolv'd to controvert him, and endeavour to prove that 'tis meerly his ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... until at last, by my friends and aid of such as followed gold more than right or virtue, I banished him from Bordeaux, and he, poor gentleman, lives no man knows where, in some distressed discontent. The gods, not able to suffer such impiety unrevenged, so wrought, that the king picked a causeless quarrel against me in hope to have my lands, and so hath exiled me out of France for ever. Thus, thus, sir, am I the most miserable of all men, as having a blemish in my thoughts for the wrongs ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... lie the sands that have buried cities and fertile country. Here Mr. Shaw supposes Pima lay (perhaps upon the river of Kiria). At Pima itself, in A. D. 644, there was a story of the destruction of a city lying further north, a judgment on the luxury and impiety of the people and their king, who, shocked at the eccentric aspect of a holy man, had caused him to be buried in sand up ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... afield in the ether of reverie that he lost sight of all things of earth? If he had suffered deeply on account of her, was not this suffering the expiation of the immense joys she had bestowed upon him? Was it not the ordinary vengeance of human fate which forbids absolute happiness as an impiety? If the law of Christianity forgives those who have much loved, it is because they have also much suffered, and terrestrial love never became a divine passion save on condition of being purified by tears. As one grows intoxicated by breathing the odor of faded roses, Rodolphe again became so by ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... crime— We who perceive the guilt and feel the shame— O thou Delight of Men, Janardana? By overthrow of houses perisheth Their sweet continuous household piety, And-rites neglected, piety extinct— Enters impiety upon that home; Its women grow unwomaned, whence there spring Mad passions, and the mingling-up of castes, Sending a Hell-ward road that family, And whoso wrought its doom by wicked wrath. Nay, and the souls of honoured ancestors Fall from their place of peace, being bereft Of funeral-cakes and ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... Whig; every man who has loose notions. The Church was all against this family. They were, as I say, glad to encourage any friends; and therefore, since their accession, there is no instance of any man being kept back on account of his bad principles; and hence this inundation of impiety.' I observed that Mr Hume, some of whose writings were very unfavourable to religion, was, however, a Tory. JOHNSON. 'Sir, Hume is a Tory by chance, as being a Scotchman; but not upon a principle of duty; for he has no principle. ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... themselves in their melancholy contemplation, they went away, followed by the multitude with silence and sympathy, till they had mounted upon the cart which they had brought with them into the town. But from that time every one began to speak of the impiety of leaving the bones so wofully exposed; and after the skirmish at Drumclog, where Robin M'Coul, the eldest of the two striplings above spoken of, happened to be, when Mr John Welsh, with the Carrick men that went to Bothwell-brigg, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... these lives, or of their faculty for judging of evidence, we must at least give them credit for being earnest men, incapable of what would have been in their eyes, and ought to be in ours, not merely falsehood, but impiety. Let the reader be sure of this—that these documents would not have exercised their enormous influence on the human mind, had there not been in them, under whatever accidents of credulity, and even absurdity, an element of ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... free from this superstition. Popes and priests had taught their followers to pray against the evil influences of comets and other celestial portents; Luther and Melanchthon had condemned in no measured terms the rashness and impiety of those who had striven to show that the heavenly bodies and the earth move in concordance with law—those 'fools who wish to reverse the entire science of astronomy.' A long interval had elapsed between the time when the Copernican theory was struggling for existence—when, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... new peril of American life. It is the gory horn of the snapdragon. Added to our genius for boastfulness and impiety, it is a crowning defect. Ye would think that our chief aim was the cuspidor. Showers of expectoration and thunder claps o' profanity and braggart gales o' Yankee dialect!—that's the moral weather report that she sends back to England. ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... the upland bogs at Budweis, escorted by mere curses. What a life is the soldier's, like other men's; what a master is the world! Aulic Cabinet is not all-wise; but may readily be wiser than the vulgar, and, with a Maria Theresa at his head, it is incapable of truculent impiety like that. Neipperg, guilty of not being a Eugene, is not hanged as a traitor; but placed quietly as Commandant in Luxemburg, spends there the afternoon of his life, in a more commodious manner. Friedrich had, of late, rather admired his movements on the Neisse River; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... chose to reward his labors, and his zeal in defense of the Church; and thus, the previous storms calmed, God took him, triumphant over impiety and injustice, from this life to that which is eternal, with a holy and enviable death. This occurred on the last day of December in the year 1689, when he was seventy-eight years of age, most of these employed in the service of God our Lord. [160] He was given honorable burial at the steps of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... difficulty). The King wished to say that the gods would not suffer the impiety of his sister ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... connected with the Sophists, and with the generation the morality of which had been unsettled by the violence of faction and the fury of the Peloponnesian war. Still there is no reason for saying that he preached moral scepticism or impiety. Probably he did not intend to preach anything, but to please his popular audience and to win the prize. The line quoted against him, "My lips have sworn, but my mind is unsworn," read in its place, has nothing in it immoral. Perhaps he had his moods: ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... of Bharata! piety languishes and impiety is in the ascendant, I create myself. I am born, age after age, for the protection of the good, for the destruction of evil-doers, and the ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... those which are least frequently preserved. The reason doubtless is that they take up a good deal of room, and become absurdly old-fashioned long before they become interesting. The old coach of which I speak was bequeathed, with other heirlooms, to my father, who, I may say without filial impiety, proved altogether unworthy of it. He left it in a shed near a pond, into which it subsequently fell, its disjecta membra being presumably at the ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... stand gazing down in sorrowful reproach upon what you regard as my unpardonable impiety, little dream of the fiery ordeal that consumed my childlike, beautiful faith, as flames crisp and blacken chaff. I am alone, and must ever be, while in the flesh; and I hoard my pain, sparing the ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... resembling that of Euripides and Lycophron afterward, but strikingly opposite to the delicacy and respect with which she is always handled by Homer, who never admits reproaches against her except from her own lips. He was smitten with blindness, and made sensible of his impiety; but, having repented and composed a special poem formally retracting the calumny, was permitted to recover his sight. In his poem of recantation (the famous Palinode now unfortunately lost) he pointedly contradicted ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... laughter, what merriment! There is nothing so interesting as a regiment. It is our country in its youthful and vigorous aspect. All the ineptitude, the turbulence, the superstition at times, and at times the impiety of the country as represented in the individual, disappears under the iron rule of discipline, which of so many insignificant figures makes an imposing whole. The soldier, or so to say, the corpuscle, ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... by what she saw. Opposite the third verse of the first chapter of Genesis: "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light," he had written: "Three days before the sun!" Her heart seemed to shrivel, to grow small in her breast, at the thought of her husband being guilty of such impiety. Ceasing her pretence at sewing, she walked out of the house into the yard. Standing there under the stars she said aloud, as if some one, THE One, could hear her: "He doesn't mean to do wrong.... I KNOW he doesn't!" But when she re-entered the room he was still at it. His beautiful writing, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... not dare, if thus they dare Be impudent to Heaven, and play with prayer, Play with that fear, with that religious awe, Which keeps men free, and yet is man's great law! What can they but the worst of Atheists be Who, while they word it 'gainst impiety, Affront the throne of God with their false deeds? Alas! this wonder in the Atheist breeds. Are these the men that would the age reform, That Down with Superstition cry, and swarm This painted glass, that sculpture, to deface, But worship pride ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... is all a lie; wolves do not speak; no animal speaks." The inspector, to refute him, unwisely alluded to the Scripture account of Balaam's ass in the twenty-second chapter of Numbers; whereupon, the dominie nearly swooned at the impiety of comparing that inspired animal with a secular beast like Grimm's wolf. For some time after, the inspector was bombarded with anonymous letters, accusing him of habitually sitting in the scorner's ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... charity, of throwing it away on the idle claims of humanity, where it would no longer peer in monumental pomp over their heads,—and that, too, when on the point of death themselves, in articulo mortis, oh! it would be madness, waste, extravagance, impiety!—Thus worldlings feel and argue without knowing it; and while they fancy they are studying their own interest or that of some booby successor, their alter idem, are but the dupes and puppets of a favourite idea, a phantom, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Heine seeks. Connecting links are left to be supplied by the imagination of the reader. Even in such a narrative poem as Belshazzar the movement is staccato; we are invited to contemplate a series of moments; and if the subject is impiety and swift retribution, we are left to infer the fact from the evidence presented; there is neither editorial introduction nor moralizing conclusion. Similarly with The Two Grenadiers, a presentation of character in circumstance, a translation of pictorial details ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... should allow those bodies which may contain the souls of our parents, or of our brothers, or of those allied with us by some tie, or of men at all events, to be safe and unmolested; and we ought not to fill[51] our entrails with victuals fit for Thyestes. How greatly he disgraces himself, how in his impiety does he prepare himself for shedding human blood, who cuts the throat of the calf with the knife, and gives a deaf ear to its lowings! or who can kill the kid as it sends forth cries like those of a child; or who can feed upon ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... secret horrors, such is their reverence to their religion; nor will their bodies be long exempted from their share of trouble; for if they do not very quickly satisfy the priests of the truth of their repentance, they are seized on by the Senate, and punished for their impiety. The education of youth belongs to the priests, yet they do not take so much care of instructing them in letters, as in forming their minds and manners aright; they use all possible methods to infuse, very early, ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... yet as satisfactory also, since it set him free to fix his mind, without lurking suspicion of indecorum, upon the large promise of the future. He could give rein to his eagerness, to his high sense of expectation, while remaining innocent of impiety towards persons and places holding, until now, first claim on his obedience and affection. All this fell in admirably with his natural bent. Self-reliant, agreeably egotistical, convinced of the excellence of his social and mental equipment, Tom was saved from excess of conceit by a lively desire ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... a pretext for so doing is shown by the fact that they had to fix upon the poem which he had written on the death of his friend Hermias many years before, and base upon it—as having the form of the paean, sacred to Apollo—a charge of impiety. Aristotle, recognizing the utter flimsiness of the charge, and being unwilling, as he said, to allow the Athenians to sin a second time against philosophy, retired beyond their reach to his villa at Chalcis in Euboea, where he died of stomach disease ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... character out more explicitly and more at length, but even he could not have made her more living or more tragic, or represented more subtly in her relation to Oedipus both the mother's protecting love and the mother's authority. As for her "impiety," of which the old commentaries used to speak with much disapproval, the essential fact in her life is that both her innocence and her happiness have, as she believes, been poisoned by the craft of priests. She and Laius both "believed a bad oracle": her terror and her love for her husband made ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... could be any harm in taking such a liberty, we entered the pagoda unceremoniously, and one of our artists set to work sketching the bronze image which the natives worship as a deity, a figure not quite three inches in height; but the Hindoos were shocked at our impiety, and soon ousted the Admiral and his party. Close by was a little tank or pool of water, beautifully spangled over with the leaves and flowers of the water-lily. Here several groups of Indian girls had assembled ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... of the young man flushed at this question. His own undisguised impression was, that his mother had cherished a guilty love for another than her husband. He felt the almost impiety of such a belief, but he could not resist the conviction that forced itself on his mind; the letter in her handwriting spoke for itself; and though the idea was full of wretchedness, he was unable to conquer it. Whatever his own ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... it was deemed sacrilege to doubt these pandects in any one particular; even the errors, that had crept into them with time, were beheld with reverential awe; he that ventured to reason upon them, was looked upon as an enemy to the commonwealth; as one whose impiety drew down upon them the vengeance of these adored beings, to which alone imagination had given birth; not contented with adopting the rituals, with following the ceremonies invented by themselves, one community waged war against another, to oblige ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... error or an offence to society. It was wrong socially, or it was wrong intellectually. Greece therefore had no place for religious fervour. It was tolerant almost to indifference. Athens might arraign Anaxagoras for impiety or Socrates for heresy, but these charges were either mere pretexts or were viewed simply in their social bearing. When a Hebrew speaks of a valley full of dry bones, and of life being breathed into them, we know that he ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... is shocking to Greek feeling. As the play goes on, this is subtly and delicately indicated by the attitude of the chorus. They enter overflowing with pity. They are slowly chilled and alienated by the hero's violence and impiety; but they nobly decline, at the last crisis, the mean advice of Hermes to desert Prometheus and save themselves; and in the final crash ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... us who have had decent parents would shrink from wishing that our father and mother had been somebody else whom we never knew; yet it is held no impiety, rather, a graceful mark of instruction, for a man to wail that he was not the son of another age and another nation, of which also he knows nothing except through the easy process of an imperfect imagination and ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... conclave established that it was proper for the general public to "say it," provided "go to heaven" should in all cases precede it. This prefix was pronounced a perfect disinfectant, removing all odour of impiety or insult; and, with the exception of Georgie Bassett (who maintained that the minister's words were "going" and "gone," not "go"), all the boys proceeded to exercise their new privilege so lavishly that they tired ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... holds possible the lasting and intimate union of the first, purest, highest, noblest, and most celestial powers of soul and spirit, with confirmed appetencies, foul and degrading lust, cowardice, cruelty, meanness, hypocrisy, avarice, and impiety! You,—in a strong attempt made to hold up to execration the nature of Byron as deformed by all these hideous vices,—you, my friend, reverently unveiled the countenance of the mighty dead, and the lineaments struck remorse into ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... with a team when teams were needed for much more important matters struck the cynical foreman as a gross impiety. The humor of the thing was too tremendous to be enjoyed alone; he yelled to a man who was driving by in a motor truck filled with milk cans to stop and hear the joke. Archie's soul burned within him. That a man of ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... appearance of virtue in the beginning of his reign. In less than eight months, however, every trace of moderation and clemency vanished; while furious passions, unexampled avarice, and capricious cruelty, reigned uncontrolled; and pride, impiety, lust, and avarice, appeared in all ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... book but that of the mind, would be found no ward if you should die tomorrow, yet it is a great hazard, methinks, to see so sweet a disposition guarded with no more, amongst a people whereof many make it their religion to be superstitious in impiety, and their behaviour to be affected in all manners. But God, who only knoweth the periods of life and opportunities to come, hath designed him, I hope, for his own service betime, and stirred up your providence to husband him so ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
