"Piety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the first and the last are concerned with the question whether monks should be allowed to read the books of the Gentiles, that is to say, the classics. He handles his theme sensibly and liberally. Piety, of course, is to come before eloquence, and there is to be choice of books. Anything of loose tendency is to be forbidden, but he would encourage the reading of Cicero, Seneca, and Aristotle's ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... Saviour was rudely carved in relief. The form was so uncouth as to be scarcely human. The head was half as wide again as the space across the shoulders, and the hands were nearly as large as the head. How many centuries ago did Christian piety raise this rough image of its hope upon the moors amidst the purple heather and ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... his boyhood's friend, Miss Haworth, Browning alluded to the future, when Penini would so need the help of "the wisdom, the genius, the piety" of his mother; and the poet adds: "I have had everything, and shall not forget." In reply to a letter of sympathy ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... of the parable surrounds us. Here is a fitting scene for such a drama of lawless violence, cowardly piety, and unconventional mercy. In these caverns robbers could hide securely. On this wild road their victim might lie and bleed to death. By these paths across the glen the priest and the Levite could "pass by on the other side," discreetly turning their heads away from any interruption ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... of peace and justice, must be pure of murder; and not listen to or look at anything pertaining to divinity in a cursory or neglectful manner, but must exist enjoying leisure from other affairs and fixing their attention on the practice of piety as the most important act.—Zonaras, 7, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... PENN did not want for learning, wisdom, or intelligence. If all the people in Europe and America were as ignorant, and in the same situation as our brethren, what would become of the world? where would be the principle or piety that would govern the people? We were stolen from our mother country, and brought here. We have tilled the ground and made fortunes for thousands, and still they are not weary of our services. But they ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... colours, all sorts of moths, and numberless strange things—leaf insects, walking-stick insects (exactly like dry twigs), and the fierce, tall, praying mantis with their mock air of meekness and devotion. Let one of the other insects stray within reach and their piety was quickly enough abandoned! One beetle about three-eighths of an inch across was oblong in shape and of pure glittering gold. His wing covers, on the other hand, were round and transparent. The effect was of a jewel under ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... and alone. It seems as if our Heavenly Father took special delight in revealing the truths of salvation to this untutored people, in a mysterious way leading them into gospel light and liberty; so that though men take pains to keep them in ignorance, multitudes of them give evidence of piety, and find consolation for their miseries in ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... period, a good military education, it was not long after he landed on the mainland before he captured a small town. The resistance which he met was soon overcome, and our high-minded pirate found himself in the position of a conqueror with a community at his mercy. As his piety now raised itself above all his other attributes, the first thing that he did was to repair to the principal church of the town, accompanied by all his men, and here, in accordance with his commands, a Te Deum was sung and services were conducted by the priests ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... army through our land, headed by the king, and officered by his polluted courtiers; led on with all the pomp and splendour which royalty could display. The king and his ministers well knew that the most formidable enemies to tyranny, oppression, and misgovernment, were the piety and stern morality of the Puritans, Nonconformists, and the small classes of virtuous citizens of other denominations; and therefore every effort was made by allurements and intimidation to debauch and demoralize their minds. Well does Bunyan say that 'wickedness like a flood is ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... virgin birth and the physical resurrection of the Christ. Without comment on the significance of this retreat upon the minimum of miracle, it must here be noted that a minority of the Church, not inferior to their brethren in learning and piety, believe that there are no tides in God's presence in Nature, that his contact with it is ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... well as its strength, its province, and its limits. If he be an unbeliever he will be too profound and large-minded to ridicule religion or to act against it; he is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in his infidelity. He respects piety and devotion; he even supports institutions as venerable, beautiful, or useful, to which he does not assent; he honours the ministers of religion, and it contents him to decline its mysteries without assailing ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... and disorderly life had never ceased in her peculiar devotion. As she could not go with the priest, she promised to be with him at least in the spirit. He left her at half-past ten in the morning, and after four hours spent alone together, she had been induced by his piety and gentleness to make confessions that could not be wrung from her by the threats of the judges or the fear of the question. The holy and devout priest said his mass, praying the Lord's help for confessor ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... side with the employment of women as beasts of burden, "in an atmosphere of filth and profligacy." The condition of too many toilers was rendered more hopeless by the thriftless follies born of ignorance. The educational provision made by the piety of former ages was no longer adequate to the needs of the ever-growing nation; and all the voluntary efforts made by clergy and laity, by Churchmen and Dissenters, did not fill up the deficiency—a fact which had only just begun to meet with State recognition. It was ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... was leaning back in her arm-chair: as the wood-fire sprang up brightly and sank again suddenly, her great deep eyes seemed to flash back the fitful gleams. It was long since she had spoken. In truth, she had been drawing largely upon her piety at first, to make herself feel interested, and, when this failed, upon her courtesy, to appear so; but she was conscious of relapses more and more frequent into the dreary regions of Boredom. Every body would agree with every body else so completely! A bold contradiction, a stinging sarcasm, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... a few days after Tecaughretanego made his prayer and offered up his tobacco, rain came and raised the Olentangy high enough to let them pass safely into the Scioto. He does not say whether he thought this was the effect of the old Indian's piety, but he always speaks reverently of Tecaughretanego's religion. He is careful to impress the reader again and again with the importance of the Indian family he had been taken into, and with the wisdom as well as ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... was disturbed only by two lingering apprehensions. The first was the insufficiency of his means to maintain the establishment which his crippled health rendered necessary. For that he could only trust the affection and piety of his children, who, he doubted not, would do their best to transmit to him, from their estates or his own, enough to secure the decencies of life in a foreign land. The other more serious apprehension was the fear that the machination of his enemies might still have power ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... to pilgrims at the foot of the hill is the actual spot, or that the six aged olive trees which it contains are those to the silent shadows of which the Saviour used to resort; but the scene cannot have been far away, and the piety which lingers with awe in the traditional ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... at the English House of Lords,' said he, 'and see so much larning, piety, talent, honour, vartue, and refinement collected together, I ax myself this here question: can a system which produces and sustains such a body of men, as the world never saw before and never will see agin, be defective? Well, I answer myself, perhaps it is, for all human institutions are so, ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... was a coquettish, vain, delicate, clever woman, with a touch of sensibility, piety and chaleur de salon; a true Parisian with all her brilliant exterior accomplishments, qualities refined by education, luxury and aristocratic surroundings, but also with all her coldness and faults; ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... of him was of a still more solid kind,—his principles, his piety, his kind heart under all its rough coating: but I need not repeat what I said,—my dear friends know ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... betake himself to the church, and kneeling before the crucifix, seek strength in fervent prayer. Feustking (who was almost his contemporary), General Superintendent in Anhalt-Zerbst, says, in the preface to his edition of his songs,—"Along with his piety Gerhardt had the devil, the false world, and the enemies of religion continually on his neck, with which he had to contend on the right and on the left, day and night. He also prayed very diligently, as earnestly ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... fervently give thanks for this blessed day of reunion, here in the old home to which we have come back from so far. Preserve it to us, O Lord, in times to come, in all its homely sweetness—in the kindliness and wisdom of its old people, in the courage and industry of its young men, in the piety and purity of this group of innocent girls——" He flapped a white wing in their direction, and at the same moment Lambert Sollas, with his fierce nod, struck the opening bars of "Auld Lang Syne." ...Charity stared straight ahead of her and then, dropping her flowers, ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... alternately lovers, courtiers and spiritual pastors; Pan, when he does not conceal under his shaggy outside the costly robes of a prince, is a strange abortive monster, drawing his attributes in part from pagan superstition, in part from Christian piety; a libel upon both. The seed sown by Petrarch and Boccaccio bore fruit only too freely. The writers of eclogues, either debarred from or incapable of originality, sought distinction by ever more and more elaborate ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... in his false, mistaken piety than others are in the truth; for he that is in an error has farther to go than one that is in the right way, and therefore is concerned to bestir himself and make the more speed. The practice of his religion is, like the Schoolmen's ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... that I was a religious man: yet undoubtedly I had all the foundations within me upon which religion might hereafter have grown. My heart overflowed with thankfulness to Providence: I had a natural tone of unaffected piety; and thus far at least I might have been called a religious man, that in the simplicity of truth ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... strange thing happened. Old Aaron Rockharrt announced at the breakfast table his intention of going to a certain church to hear a celebrated preacher, whose piety, eloquence and enthusiasm was the subject of general discussion; and he invited the two ladies to go with him. Both consented—Cora because she never willingly absented herself from public worship on the Sabbath; Rose because it was her cue to be amiable and ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... "seized in fee tail," I think lawyers call it, from time immemorial, have quietly become "St. Peter's churches," to the great edification of the Christian world, and incredible advancement of religion and piety. ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... May, 1809). Byron pretends to believe that the "Christian" Reviewers, actuated by stern zeal for piety, were making mischief in sober earnest. "Heaviside" (see last line of Byron's note) was the surgeon in attendance at the duel between Lord Falkland and Mr. A. Powell. (See 'English Bards', 1. 686, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... his family whom he wished also to capture. The two principal ladies were the sultana and the queen-mother. The queen-mother was a lady of very great distinction. She had been greatly renowned during the lifetime of her husband, the former sultan, for her learning, her piety, the kindness of her heart, and the general excellence of her character, so far as her dealings with her subjects and friends were concerned, and her influence throughout the realm had been unbounded. ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... that lovely perverseness, decide if you please upon your own fate, but let filial piety hinder you from determining too hastily respecting that of your parents and your friends. Consider what a new and unbounded scope will be afforded you, by the participation of my riches, for the exercise of benevolent and generous propensities. Your ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... obedient to the law, always makes haste to celebrate his arrival at the Holy City by an immediate visit to the Haram. If perchance he is to see the enclosure for the first time, his curiosity, in itself pardonable, derives a tinge of piety from duty. The Prince of India but illustrated the rule. He left his tents pitched close to those of the Emir El Hajj and the Scherif of Mecca, under the Mountain of Mercy, as Arafat was practically translated ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... some very successful colored missionaries in Africa, whom the Christian world has known and honored, and the letters I have received joyfully refer to them, and mention others not yet widely known, but whose work attests their wisdom, piety and usefulness. Thus one Secretary refers to a missionary, born a slave in America and educated here, as "the most scholarly man in the whole mission." Another society testifies, and our personal knowledge of the man referred to confirms the testimony, ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... leads to glory? I mean the surrendering of that life for the true faith. I feel, my lord, that in your presence I am nothing; still, in our holy Church there is the humble as well as the exalted, and your lordship will admit that the gradations of piety, and the dispensations of the higher and the lower gifts, proceed not only from the wisdom of God but ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... neglect and scorn of preaching, ariseth from the practice of men who set up to decry and disparage religion; these, being zealous to promote infidelity and vice, learn a rote of buffoonery that serveth all occasions, and refutes the strongest arguments for piety and good manners. These have a set of ridicule calculated for all sermons, and all preachers, and can be extreme witty as often as they please upon the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... thought more smoothly or orderly, and do it in cleaner, clearer, crisper English. He astounded Twichell with his faculty. You know that when it comes down to moral honesty, limpid innocence, and utterly blemishless piety, the apostles were mere policemen to Cable; so with this in mind you must imagine him at a midnight dinner in Boston the other night, where we gathered around the board of the Summerset Club: Osgood full, Boyle O'Reilly ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... fond of Japanese children. I have never yet heard a baby cry, and I have never seen a child troublesome or disobedient. Filial piety is the leading virtue in Japan, and unquestioning obedience is the habit of centuries. The arts and threats by which English mothers cajole or frighten children into unwilling obedience appear unknown. I admire the way in ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... of the best known precepts of our religion that the fold should always be open to receive the strayed sheep, these piety-professors, with this precept on their lips, took care that the strayed ones should be cruelly worried and scared ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is the Goshen of mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety? Let such a man become an evangelical preacher; he will then find it possible to reconcile small ability with great ambition, superficial knowledge with the prestige of erudition, a middling morale with a high reputation ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... of time, place, and person, must be fleshed with some pleasant passages; and to this intent I have purposely interlaced (not as meat but as condiment) many stories, so that the reader, if he do not arise religiosior or doctior, with more piety or learning, at least he may depart jucundior, with ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... things which out of many units are made into some one whole: for out of many grains is one thing made," viz. bread; "and many grapes flow into one thing," viz. wine. And therefore he observes elsewhere (Tract. xxvi in Joan.): "O sacrament of piety, O sign of unity, O ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Voltaire would say, fighting for what they thought was the truth; this was only what they thought they thought, and they were really thinking of something entirely different. They were not moved either by piety or priestcraft, but by a new and unexpected nomadism. They were not inspired either by faith or fanaticism, but by an unusually aimless taste for foreign travel. This theory that the war of the two great religions ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... hunger, the daughter fell unconscious at the Emperor's feet; he himself raised her, gave her every attention, and presenting her to the persons who witnessed this scene, praised her filial piety in ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... state of war still involves several of the European nations, as the reflections deduced from both tend to justify, as well as to excite a warmer admiration of our free constitution, and to exalt our minds to a more fervent and grateful sense of piety towards Almighty God for the beneficence of his Providence, by which its administration has been hitherto so ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... have been represented as gloomy, superstitious, severe, irrational, and of a licentious tendency. But when other systems shall have produced a piety as devoted, a morality as pure, a patriotism as disinterested, and a state of society as happy, as have prevailed where their doctrines have been most prevalent, it may be in season to seek an ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... members of the brotherhood, who were headed by Walter the Prior, solemnly, with psalms and hymns, entered the crypt in which the martyr's body lay, and removed the stones which covered the tomb. Four priests, specially conspicuous for their piety, were selected to take out the relics, which were then placed in a strong coffer studded with iron nails ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... her stand for that! Adorn your temple with her piety! But you in turn restore to me the treasure You stole at midnight ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... rose, and went to the window to dry his tears, I felt deeply moved, anal full of admiration for the virtue of De la Haye and of his pupil, who, to save his soul, had placed himself under the hard necessity of accepting alms. I cried as well as the apostle, and in my dawning piety I told him that I insisted not only upon remaining unknown to his pupil, but also upon ignoring the amount of the sums he might take out of my purse to forward to him, and I therefore begged that he would help himself without rendering ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... being given by Ethelbert, it was followed by his successors, Edric and Lothaire. The next legislator amongst the English, was Ina, King of the West Saxons, a prince famous in his time for his wisdom and his piety. His laws, as well as those of the above-mentioned princes, still subsist. But we must always remember that very few of these laws contained any new regulation, but were rather designed to affirm their ancient customs, and to preserve and fix them; and accordingly they are all ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and a difference is the one thing a small community, accustomed comfortably to scan its own intelligible averages, will not tolerate. The unusual may take on an exaggeration of these; an excess of money, an excess of piety, is understood; but idiosyncrasy susceptible to no common translation is regarded with the hostility earned by the white crow, modified among law-abiding humans into tacit repudiation. It is a sound enough social principle to distrust that which is not understood, like the ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Germany. In his "Ideas of a Philosophical History of Mankind," he attempted to display in rich and manifold variety the moral character of every nation and of every age, and, while thus creating and improving the taste for poetry and history, ever, with childlike piety, sought for and revered God ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... one of our "bearers," who is a Mohammedan, disappeared without permission or notice early in the morning, and did not report for duty that day. His piety was greater than his sense of obligation to his employers, and I saw him in the crowd earnestly going through the violent exercise which attends ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... that the "keeper of young cattle at Coneyhassett," who drove his herd over from Hingham, was moved either by piety or sarcasm to give the trail its present arresting name. However, as the herdsman did not take this route, but the back road through Turkey Meadows, it is more probable that some visitors, who detected a resemblance between this section of the country and the Holy Land, were responsible ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... northern Africa as far as Egypt, together with Moslem Spain. It originated with Mahommed ibn Tumart, a member of the Masmuda, a Berber tribe of the Atlas. Ibn Tumart was the son of a lamplighter in a mosque and had been noted for his piety from his youth; he was small, ugly, and misshapen and lived the life of a devotee-beggar. As a youth he performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, whence he was expelled on account of his severe strictures on the laxity of others, and thence wandered to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... reformers during the image-breaking in the summer of 1566. What happened on the banks of the Scheldt appeals most to the imagination; but all over Flanders the statues and the shrines, the pictures and the stores of ecclesiastical wealth, with which piety, or superstition, or penitence had enriched so many churches and religious houses, became the objects of popular fury. There had been field-preaching near Ypres as early as 1562.[*] Other parts of West Flanders had been visited by the apostles of the ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... hung a piece of blessed box, spread its ivory arms above Louise's untroubled slumber. Such simple piety touched me. I dislike bigots, but I ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The child is father of the man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.' ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... fortune to make my own. Who could speak so well of the daughter's obedience as he who was the object of her hourly solicitude? Who could behold her tenderness, her watchfulness and care and not revere the filial piety that sanctified the maid? The poor, most difficult of mankind to please, the easily offended, the jealous and the peevish, were unanimous in their loud praise of her, whose presence filled the foulest hut with light, and was the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... was ample, her conduct virtuous, and the history of her pilgrimage to Meccah and of what she undertook to execute on the way is so well-known that it were useless to repeat it." I have noted (Pilgrimage iii. 2) how the Darb al-Sharki or Eastern road from Meccah to Al-Medinah was due to the piety of Zubaydah who dug wells from Baghdad to the Prophet's burial place and built not only cisterns and caravanserais, but even a wall to direct pilgrims over the shifting sands. She also supplied Meccah, which suffered severely from want of water, with the chief requisite ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... me. How chaste should be the thought, how refined the sentiment here inscribed. May this book be dedicated to Religion, Morality and Virtue, and a deep toned piety pervade the thoughts and emotions here portrayed, which shall find a deep response in your own heart. Like these spotless pages, the mind of youth lays unoccupied, spread out for the reception of the seed committed to its trust. May it be yours to propagate high and ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... American state capital is from that of a Chinese town. Between the small circle of "old families" who still possessed widespread influence and the masses of the people there was a wide gap. The few respectable charities, generally due to the piety of some long-departed citizen, marked out very strikingly a certain number of those who were considered "deserving poor," and helped to make every one less concerned about all the rest. For all the many thousands struggling day and ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... now called Westdale. His father's family emigrated from England to America with William Penn, at his second visit, in 1699. John West married the daughter of Thomas Pearson, by whom he had ten children. Of these, Benjamin was the youngest son. His mother was a woman of great piety, and, being once in attendance upon a memorable religious revival, at which she was terribly agitated by the preaching of one Edward Peckover, an itinerant Quaker minister, was taken with premature labor, of which ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... still," but you can cease from the insolence of your own lips, and the troubling of your own passions. And all that it would be extremely well to do, even though the day were coming when the sun should be as darkness, and the moon as blood. But, the paths of rectitude and piety once regained, who shall say that the promise of old time would not be found to hold for us also?—"Bring ye all the tithes into my storehouse, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord God, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... Longfellow's "Building of the Ship," which he learned from no Heimskringla, but from the dockyards of Portland, where he played as a boy. We are willing, however, to pardon the parts which we find somewhat ineffectual, in favor of the "Nun of Nidaros," which concludes, and in its gracious piety more ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... suppliant on the beach, unconscious of their voices, prayed on with instancy and fervour, and the sound of his voice rose and fell again, and his countenance brightened and was deformed with changing moods of piety and terror. ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... amongst the Picts was followed in the next generation by the more abiding work of St. Patrick amongst the Scots of Ireland. Nay, even the Continent was indebted to British piety; though few British visitors to the Swiss Oberland remember that the Christianity they see around them is due to the zeal of a British Mission. Yet there seems no solid reason for doubting that so it is. Somewhere about the time of ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... Leibnitz's success in demonstrating his favorite doctrine, the theory of Optimism commends itself to piety and reason as that view of human and divine things which most redounds to the glory of God and best expresses the hope of man,—as the noblest and therefore the truest theory of Divine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... because of their truth, appeared to have been confirmed by laws, and some things seem to be a law of nature, which it is not any vague opinion, but a sort of innate instinct that implants in us, as religion, piety, revenge for injuries, gratitude, attention to superiors, and truth. They call religion, that which is conversant with the fear of, and ceremonious observance paid to the gods; they call that piety, which warns us to fulfil our duties towards ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... of the kitchen cabinet got it. She made this sacrifice as a matter of religious etiquette; as a thing necessary just now, but by no means to be wrested into a precedent; no, a week or two would limber up her piety, then she would be rational again, and the next two dollars that got left out in the cold would find a comforter—and she ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had all her life, before her marriage, lived in one, and wished now, she had never seen the world, or departed from a life so pure and innocent. She looked upon this fatal accident, now a blessing, to bring her back to a life of devotion and tranquillity: and indeed is a miracle of piety. Some time after this, she was brought to bed, but commanded the child should be removed, where she might never see it, which accordingly was done; after which, in due time, she took the habit, and remains a rare example of repentance and holy-living. This new penitent became the news of the ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... treatment was long remembered as one of the worst crimes committed by the Stuart administration in Scotland. Bishop Burnet, who was his cousin, describes him as "in the presbyterian principles but ... a man of great piety and virtue, learned in the law, in mathematics and in languages." He married a sister of Sir Archibald Johnston, Lord Warriston, and left a son, George, who took refuge in Holland, afterwards returning with William III. and being ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... can believe that two hundred millions of that continent, which is the mother of such a civilization, are not to have any future at all? Such a doubt would be almost blasphemy against Providence. But there is a Providence indeed—a just, a bountiful Providence, and in it I trust, with all the piety of my religion. I dare to say my very self was an instrument of it. Even my being here, when four months ago I was yet a prisoner of the league of European despots in far Asia, and the sympathy which your glorious people honours me with, and the high benefit of ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... the wickedest of all women, plainly not for mere beauty's sake, but possibly because he saw in her a congenial intellect;—faithful and loving to her and she to him, amid all the crimes of their following years;—pious with exceeding devotion and orthodoxy, and yet with a piety utterly divorced from, unconscious of, the commonest morality;—discerning and using the greatest men, Belisarius and Narses for example, and throwing them away again, surely not in weak caprice, whenever they served him too well;—conquering Persians, Vandals, Goths; all but ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... the ignorance of the culprit, refrain from bringing him to trial and punishment — a proceeding which, by the way, would cost the colony some fifteen or twenty pounds — and thus he goes on in his errors, unreproved by the wisdom or the piety of the whites. Sometimes, however, it happens that the officers who exercise the calling of Protectors of the Aborigines, anxious to prove that their post is no sinecure, make a point of hunting up an occasional law-breaker, who, being ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... a future life; and there were abundant proofs, throughout our interview, of an unrepining spirit, resignation, quiet relinquishment of the worldly benefits that were denied him, thankful enjoyment of whatever he had to enjoy, and piety, and hope shining onward into the dusk,—all of which gave a reverential cast to the feeling with which we parted from him. I wish that he could have had one full draught of prosperity before he died. As a matter of artistic propriety, it would have been delightful to see ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... preparation for more easy intercourse. But for his own part those amenities had been carried on under the heaviest spirits. If these were really Mirah's relatives, he could not imagine that even her fervid filial piety could give the reunion with them any sweetness beyond such as could be found in the strict fulfillment of a painful duty. What did this vaunting brother need? And with the most favorable supposition about the hypothetic mother, Deronda shrank ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... her uncle. He represented to her the fine flower of the Church of England—a gentleman, a scholar, an ideal physical type of the Anglican dignitary, a man of unquestionable piety and Christian charity, a personage who would be recognized for what he was by Hottentots or Esquimaux or attendants of wagon-lits trains or millionaires of the Middle West of America or Parisian Apaches. In him the branch of the family tree had burgeoned into the perfect cleric. Yet ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... babblings;' and when Napoleon scattered at the point of the bayonet the Council of Five Hundred and crushed revolution beneath his iron heel, they taught a lesson which should be heeded this day by men who are animated by a vindictive piety or a malignant philanthropy.... It is the boast of the Briton that his house is his castle. However humble it may be, the King cannot enter. Let it not be said that the liberties of American citizens are less perfectly ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... of Messrs. Bogs, Hogs, Logs, Frogs, and Company, some fifteen or twenty young gentlemen piously inclined. But our man of business is in no hurry to conclude a contract with any—no man of business is ever precipitate—and it is not until the most rigid catechism in respect to the piety of each young gentleman's inclination, that his services are engaged and his fifty dollars receipted for, just by way of proper precaution, on the part of the respectable firm of Bogs, Hogs, Logs, Frogs, and Company. On the morning of the first day of the next month, the landlady ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... not easy to determine which of the two precedes, and which gives birth to the others. Our weakness, ignorance, and depravity remind us that in the Lord, and in none but Him only, dwell the two lights of wisdom, of virtue, and of piety. It is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until after he has contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... morality, a religion that means character and virtue, whose daily experience will mean the constant increase of moral power. The Negroes, like the Athenians of Paul's day, are very religious. They revel in camp meetings and fairly wallow in revivals. But too often their piety is the mere gush of emotion, and in hideous conjunction with gross evils. They need an intelligent piety and an educated ministry. As Dr. Powell said, they ought to have 7,000 educated ministers, when now in our sense of the word educated, ...
— The American Missionary - Vol. 44, No. 3, March, 1890 • Various
... beyond the reach of a poor student," on the ground that "the better able the parents are to incur expense, the stronger pledge have we of their children being above meanness and unfeeling and sordid habits." One might go on quoting instance after instance of this piety of success, as it might be called. Time and again the words seem to come from the mouth, not of one of the inspired men of the modern world, but of some puffed-up elderly gentleman in a novel by Jane Austen. His letter ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... Pete. Pete himself would expect it, because he believed he had her promise; her mother would expect it, because she had always thought of it as a thing understood; her father would expect it, because Pete's prosperity had given him a new view of Pete's piety and pedigree; and Nancy Joe would expect it, too, if only because she was still haunted by her old bugbear, the dark shadow of Ross Christian. There was only one way to break down these expectations, and that was to speak ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... grissled head under a cowl than under a soldier's helm. A fair place was L'Ancresse in the days of Abbot Michael, false Maugher, and the Grand Sarrasin. And a good school of manners and of learning of books and piety, that may aid men in their earthly life, was the Vale Cloister. I see it now—the quiet, sober place, with its great round arches, and its seats of stone, pleasant and cool in summer, bitter cold in winter, when the wind came in sharp from the ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... that, as well. It is man's interpretation, not the fault of the religion, that has set apart six days to toil in the earth and one day to worship God. A man worships God best in his work. His work suffers if he misses worship one day in seven, to say nothing of six. I do not mean piety. A feeling of devoutness does not cover at all the sense I mean. A man's spirituality, as I would reckon it, has to do with the power he can bring into the world of matter from the great universe of spiritual force which is God, or the emanation ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... says this because the precept about honoring our parents contains the promise, "that thou mayest be longlived upon the land" (Ex. 20:12): and dutifulness comprises all kinds of almsgiving. [*Pietas, whence our English word "Piety." Cf. also inf. Q. 101, A. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... of all her efforts; and though she made them punctually and painfully, yet she stood as far off as ever from any cheerfulness; her life seemed still bleak and dreary. The only thing she did well, was what she did out of unconscious piety, the silent comforting and consoling of her father. Not a mood of his but what found a ready sympathiser in Margaret; not a wish of his that she did not strive to forecast, and to fulfil. They were quiet wishes to be sure, and hardly named without hesitation and apology. All the more ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... that there, in that beautiful city, its air vibrant with tinkling calls to faith, its halls and libraries crowded with the devout and the learned, its history and traditions alike calling on all to defend the old fair piety, in such an uncongenial air, the supporters of evolution must be overwhelmed. Almost the whole weight of the attack had to be resisted by Huxley. In the various sectional meetings he had combat after combat ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... fathers had proved themselves benefactors. For, since they knew that their existence was threatened, they had assiduously devoted themselves to works of charity and mercy, and to strengthening, especially in Rome, their reputation for piety, benevolence, and generosity. Prodigious sums were by them distributed among the poor; more than five hundred respectable impoverished Romans, who had been accused of political offences, were secretly supported by them. In this way the Jesuits, against whom the cry of denunciation ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... sharp answer. Upon this the girl called Monnica a drunkard.... Drunkard! This bitter taunt so humiliated the self-respect of the future saint, that she got the better of her taste for drink. Augustin does not say it was through piety she did this, but because she felt the ugliness ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... Gratry has remarked, "more than in any other people, there are in the English people the old man and the new."[71] The strange contrasts which are presented by the political action of this double-people are found also in the productions of its thought, in which, while the spirit of piety is displayed full of life, the spirit of irreligion is also manifested with terrible energy. A book is instanced, of materialistic tendency,[72] published in 1828, of which a popular edition was printed with a view to extend the opinions which it advocated. There was sold of this ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... accounts they gave of the new settlement, a considerable number of their countrymen resolved to go there. Among the first was Mr Crowther. He is, I am assured, a man of high intellectual powers, and of eminent piety. He persuaded other Christian Africans to accompany him. Nearly the first people he met on arriving at the new city were his mother and sisters, and they were his first converts. The greater part of the inhabitants are now Christians, ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... of "Pidgin" English. Nevertheless, neither Ignacio nor Sing Suey would fail to nod in the one case or smile broadly in the other in assent to her every proposition,—it being one of the articles of their domestic faith that peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety, could best be promoted throughout the establishment by never seeming to differ with the lady of the house. To all outward appearances, therefore, and for the first few weeks, at least, housekeeping in the ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... Cuthbert's Church. For any kirk session is far from commonplace, let alone the session of such a church as mine. Kirk sessions are the bloom of Scottish character in particular and the crown and glory of mankind in general. Piety, sobriety, severity, these are the three outstanding graces which they illustrate supremely; but interlocked with these are many other gifts and virtues in ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... "the warning comes rather late, and it would have answered the purpose better had I been allowed to continue in the narrow way of obscure poverty!" Now that the enervating influence of a more prosperous atmosphere had weakened his courage, and cooled the ardor of his piety, his faith began to totter like an old wall. His religious beliefs seemed to have been wrecked by the same storm which had destroyed his passionate hopes of love, and left him stranded and forlorn without ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... "so I shall have the happiness of dying for the faith of my fathers; thus God deigns to grant me the glory of martyrdom. Thanks, God," added she, joining her hands with less excitement but with more piety, "thanks that You have deigned to destine for me such an end, of which I was not worthy. That, O my God, is indeed a proof of Your love, and an assurance that You will receive me in the number of Your servants; for although this sentence had been notified to me, I was afraid, from the manner ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... were the gifts of the wicked, and to me abominable, so much so that I care not to be spoiled of them, still, profane man, thou shalt pay the penalty with thy life, when hereafter, the day of punishment, appointed by fate, arrives. But, that our fire, by means of which piety worships the awful Gods, may not afford its light to crime, I forbid that {henceforth} there shall be any such interchange of light." Accordingly, to this day, it is neither lawful for a lamp {to be lighted} at the fire of the Gods, ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... impossible in the society of that day. The godless tyrant Sigismondo Malatesta of Rimini built a magnificent church, and in it a chapel in honor of his beloved Isotta, who was a regular attendant at church. Vannozza built and embellished a chapel in S. Maria del Popolo. She had a reputation for piety, even during the life of Alexander VI. Her greatest maternal solicitude, like that of Adriana, was to inculcate a Christian deportment in her daughter, and this Lucretia possessed in such perfection that subsequently a Ferrarese ambassador lauded ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... of work," he said. "Look at it, ladies fair; there be jewels here as bright as your eyes, as red as your lips. Truly, I shall be famous for my piety." ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Abbey Bell tolled for five minutes, and already was the Church of the Capuchins thronged with Auditors. Do not encourage the idea that the Crowd was assembled either from motives of piety or thirst of information. But very few were influenced by those reasons; and in a city where superstition reigns with such despotic sway as in Madrid, to seek for true devotion would be a fruitless attempt. The Audience ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... interest of vision, so to speak, as an interest of reflection—that is, if you choose to reflect (for instance) upon the wondrous legend of the seven sleepers (you may see where they lie in a row), who lived together—they were brothers and cousins—in primitive piety, in the sanctuary constructed by the blessed Saint Martin (emulous of his precursor, Saint Gatianus), in the face of the hillside that overhung the Loire, and who, twenty-five years after his death, yielded up their seven souls ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... first Indian baby was baptized,—an event which, as Father Jose piously records, "exceeds the richnesse of gold or precious jewels or the chancing upon the Ophir of Solomon." I quote this incident as best suited to show the ingenious blending of poetry and piety which distinguished Father ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... mysterious thing; a baby at the end of their procession. One of the little girls could not resist, and lifted a corner of the violet silk. But her elder sister quickly slapped her, pulled her kerchief straight, and all was order and piety. ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... their summit, fall into the inclosed space, as if they wished to garland Death with vine-leaves and make it smile; over the gate, strange guardians of the tombs, two fig-trees give their shadow and fruit to recompense the piety of the passers-by, giving a fig in exchange for a De Profundis; while the ivy, stretching its wanton arms over the black cross, endeavors to clothe the austere sign of the Redemption with the jocund leaves of Bacchus, and recalls to your mind the mad Phryne who vainly tempted Xenocrates. A ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... might be expected to display. This nobleman died of a pestilential disorder at the castle, in the year 1361, greatly lamented by the inhabitants of Leicester. The order of his funeral appointed by himself, and curiously recorded by our local historians, is a pleasing proof of his good sense and piety; the body being taken in a hearse from St. Mary's near the castle, to his collegiate church as he directed, "without the pomp of armed men, horses covered, or other vanities"—and the rank of the deceased alone denoted by the magnitude of five tapers, each weighing one hundred ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... adore, the rising sun, with certain hymns. Also they salute the bright moon at night, from whom they ask for children, for the increase of their flocks and herds, for an abundant supply of the fruits of the earth, and for other things of that sort. But they practice piety and justice: and especially love peace and quiet, and have great aversion to war. As long as their king maintains peace, they show him divine honours: but if he is anxious for war, they never rest till he is slain by the enemy in battle. When the king has determined ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... are yet accessible and now and then read for their historical interest if not for any intrinsic literary value they may possess. One of these was Mrs. Sarah K. Trimmer (1741-1810), who, associated with the early days of the Sunday-school movement, wrote many books full of the overwrought piety which was supposed to be necessary for children of that earlier time. One of her books, The History of the Robins, stands out from the mass for its strong appeal of simple incident, and is still widely popular with very young readers. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... ever history preserved another such example of dauntless resolution and filial piety as Lois de ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Sins be unrepented, The Piety of this Confession saves thee. Pardon, Cleonte, my rude Thoughts of thee, [Kneels, she takes him up. I had design'd to have kill'd thee— Had not this Knowledge of thy Innocence Arriv'd before I'd seen thee next. And, Sir, your Pardon too I humbly beg, [To Ambrosio. With license ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... what they look up to with reverence; nor presume to trample on that acquired personal nobility, which they intend always to be, and which often is, the fruit, not the reward (for what can be the reward), of learning, piety, and virtue. They can see, without pain or grudging, an archbishop precede a duke. They can see a bishop of Durham, or a bishop of Winchester, in possession of ten thousand pounds a year; and cannot conceive why it is in worse hands than estates to the like ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... seem to myself to be allowing them undue honour, when I feel that our minds are really moved to a warmer devotion and more ardent piety by the holy words themselves when they are so sung than when they are not so sung; and when I recognize that all the various moods of our spirit have their proper tones in speech and song, by which they are, through ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... on for a long time in this manner, telling me the girl's ailments, and the girl's age, and the girl's doctor's stuff, and piety, and sufferings, and a great deal more. But I neither listened to her nor heeded her. I heard her, but only in a far-away manner, as I heard the traffic in the street, or the ripple of the stream at the bottom of it. What were this woman's troubles to me? I ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... "Our poor Grace!" was the only answer his questions could procure, till his grandmother rose up, and gently disengaged him from the weeping girls, led him to a seat, and with the affecting serenity which sincere piety, like oil sprinkled on the waves, can throw over the most acute feelings, she said, "My bairn, when thy grandfather was killed in the wars, and left me with six orphans around me, with scarce bread to eat, or a ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... strangely constituted. From early childhood he had been accustomed to the cant of religion; and, in many instances, impressions had been made on him that produced effects that it was easy to confound with the fruits that real piety brings forth. This is a result that we often find in a state of society in which appearances are made to take the place of reality. What is more, it is a result that we may look for equally among the formalists of established sects, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... at once, drank together, danced with the quadroons together, and got into as much mischief in three days as I ever did in a fortnight. So affairs went on until by and by they were gambling together. One night they were at the Piety Club, playing hard, and the planter lost his last quarti. He became desperate, and did a thing I have known more than one planter to do: wrote his pledge for every arpent of his land and every slave on it, and staked that. Agricole refused to play. 'You ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... at yonder lovely Virgin, arrayed in a white robe devoid of ornament; behold the meekness of her countenance, the modesty of her gait; her handmaids are Humility, Filial Piety, Conjugal Affection, Industry, and Benevolence; her name is CONTENT; she holds in her hand the cup of true felicity, and when once you have formed an intimate acquaintance with these her attendants, nay you must admit them as your bosom friends and chief counsellors, then, ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... through the Forum he saw not only the glistening monuments in their new marble veneer, but beyond these, in the far distant past, the straw hut of Romulus and the sacred grove on the Capitoline where the spirit of Jove had guarded a folk of simpler piety.[2] And down the centuries he beheld the heroes, the law-givers, and the rulers, who had made the Forum the court of a world-wide empire. The Rome of his own day was too feverish, it soon drove him back to his garden ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... mantelpiece with little painted images in glass cases: and in the proper season she made a little chapel of the months of Mary with little blue candles in her daughter's bedroom. It was impossible to tell which was the predominant factor in her aggressive piety, real affection for the uncle she desired to convert or a wicked joy ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... traveler; "pious meditation and prayer are of no avail without good be done to our fellow-men. Piety is nothing without charity; and charity consists in willing well and doing well to our neighbors. 'And now abideth faith, hope, and charity,' says the Apostle, 'but the greatest of these is charity,' Hermit, you are not wise ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... several religious services, even though our congregation was a small one. We also found out that it was not at all helpful to piety to try to worship on an empty stomach, and have been ever since in great sympathy with these who would feed the poor first, ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... burial-ground at its foot; and the place, mournfully decorated with the tombs which still jealously mark distinctions of rank amidst the levelling democracy of the grave, was kept trim with the care which comes half from piety, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mere curiosity, to see a minister preach in a tent, and people sit on the ground'—in a spirit not unlike that in which the people used to gather at Peblis to the Play or Christ's Kirk on the Green, to mingle a pinch of piety and priestly Moralities with a bellyful of carnal delights. It was not until the preacher had denounced them as 'offspring of thieves and robbers,' that some of them began to 'get ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie |
