"Unbelief" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possessions? With other difficulties of an obvious kind, these presented themselves to the poet with renewed force when his only chance of happiness depended on being able to believe in a future life, and reunion with the beloved dead. Unbelief had always existed. We hear of atheists in the Rig Veda. In the early eighteenth century, in the age of ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... not separate from his Divine Source and never has been. He is, in reality, one with the Infinite. The separation which he feels and experiences is mental, and is due to his blindness and unbelief. Man can never be separated from Spirit, for he himself is Spirit. He is an integral part of one complete whole. He lives and moves and has his being in God (Universal, Omnipresent Spirit), and God ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... really a test of faith, and that there would be no credit in believing a thing in which there were no difficulties. Credo quia impossibile; I repeated Tertullian's words at first doggedly, at last triumphantly. I fasted as penance for my involuntary sin of unbelief. I remembered that the Bible must not be carelessly read, and that St. Peter had warned us that there were in it "some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest unto their own destruction". I shuddered at the "destruction" to the edge of which my unlucky ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... asked, her low voice full of pain, "than that your uncle should send you away because of your UNbelief?" This word, "unbelief," stood for a very definite thing in New Canaan—a lost and hopeless condition of the soul. "It seems to me, the idea is ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... moments in human experience, moments when even the Christian is so haunted by the demon of unbelief, when the dire enemy of God and man takes advantage of some unpropitious circumstance, some painful affliction, to taunt the soul, already almost crushed, and to inquire, with fiendish malignity, "Where is now thy God?" that if not wholly ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... souls of others. It was only now that he saw how large a share in the obstruction of God's Kingdom had been played by the love of the elder and the parent, by the carefulness, the fussy care, of good men and women. He had wandered in wildernesses of unbelief, in dangerous places of doubt and questioning, but he had left his wife and children safe and secure in the self-satisfaction of orthodoxy. To none of them except to Eleanor had he ever talked with any freedom of his new apprehensions ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... dared to confess what. God bless him! he did study the case: he warned me to delay interment; and, three days after, my daughter opened her eyes and spoke. She had been entranced, catalepsed, no more—though, had it not been for this stubborn unbelief of a father's heart, she had been entombed! But it harrows me to think of this! Are you better now, and quite reassured as to the object of your alarm? I have watched your career with strong interest since that time, my young friend, and let me congratulate ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... inspiration to the artist, amorous desires to young people, clear ideas to thinkers, the joy of life to everybody, and it also allows one to eat heartily (which is one of the greatest pleasures). A sick stomach induces scepticism unbelief, nightmares and the desire for death. I have often noticed this fact. Perhaps I would not kill myself, if my digestion had been good ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... which hurt, let us drop them out, changing the thought quickly to the sweetness, simplicity, and gentleness of the Man-Jesus. If we have questionings, let us cease to question, and say with the man of old, "Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief." ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... the era of change is over, and that ours is an era of conservation and repose. But probably it would pain Lord Hugh Cecil if he realized (what is certainly the case) that ours is only an age of conservation because it is an age of complete unbelief. Let beliefs fade fast and frequently, if you wish institutions to remain the same. The more the life of the mind is unhinged, the more the machinery of matter will be left to itself. The net result of all our political ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... matter. How ever much the understanding may be satisfied of the truth of the proposition by the arguments of Berkeley and others, we no sooner go out into actual life, than we become convinced, in spite of our previous scepticism or unbelief, of the real existence of the table, the chair, and the objects around us, and of the permanence and reality of the persons, both body and mind, with whom we have intercourse. If we were not, we should soon become indifferent to their pleasure and pain, and in no ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... slowly, belief and unbelief competing in her mind, and when it was closed again Prescott insisted upon knowing at once if Miss Catherwood ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... had read Renan's 'Life of Christ,' and had been deeply impressed by it, and I had said that there was a splendid chance for a 'Life of Christ' as vivid and as personal from the point of belief as Renan's was from the point of unbelief." This book he wrote, but was not satisfied with it, and has refused to publish it, although only last year a firm of publishers offered him three thousand pounds (fifteen thousand dollars) for the ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... more things it has loved. And if the thoughts and feelings on which my doubt reposes have become vaster and purer than those that support your faith, then shall the God of my disbelief become mightier and of supremer comfort than the God to whom you cling. For, indeed, belief and unbelief are mere empty words; not so the loyalty, the greatness and profoundness of the reasons wherefore we ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... other's face again. 'Stony!' he cried. 'It's not possible. You are lying. It's utterly incredible. Stony! Then this explains?' He did not doubt even while the words of unbelief ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... was sufficient to convince all men whose hearts had not been hardened in unbelief. God said, "As for the unbelievers, it is the same with them whether you admonish them or do not admonish them; they will not believe. God hath sealed up their hearts, their ears, and their eyes; and ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... great deal about the danger that your post of secretary to Mr. Poole involves and am not sure that the state of indifference is not the worst state of all. One day you will find that indifference has passed into unbelief, and you will write to me (if we continue to write to each other) in such a way that I shall understand that you have come to regard our holy religion as a tale fit only for childhood's ears. I write ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... He evidently concurred in the opinion, that all nations which did not acknowledge the Christian faith were destitute of natural rights; that the sternest measures might be used for their conversion, and the severest punishments inflicted upon their obstinacy in unbelief. In this spirit of bigotry he considered himself justified in making captives of the Indians, and transporting them to Spain to have them taught the doctrines of Christianity, and in selling them ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... "that you, without seeing, can really carve anything true to form and line." In her voice was incredulity and unbelief. ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... distinctly; her words; her looks; my utter unbelief. I remembered, too, that it had not saved me from a momentary sense of revolt against that inflexible intention of a treachery which was to be another step toward the inheritance of the earth. I had rejected the very idea, and here it had come; it was confronting me with all ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... are troubled with unbelief, if this plague have entered your heart, permit me to suggest a remedy. Humility is the first step, sincere piety towards God the second, let these be followed by that for which the Bereans were ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... something went, the jacket was off, and there was I feelin' as if every stroke I took was as wide as the mainyard. I had no time to repent, only to thank God. And wasn't it more than I deserved, sir? Ah! He can rebuke a man for unbelief by giving him the desire of his heart. And that's a better rebuke than tying him ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... where nature and grace are separate from one another, and where the common laws of nature are burst through, and the material universe is made as it were the bondslave of the unseen. The impiously meant assertions of unbelief are fulfilled in a sense which unbelievers little look for; and they who cry out in their hatred of miracles, that all things are governed by unchanging law, may learn that in truth unchanging laws do rule over all, although those laws have a range ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... strange that in that day when Christ came, admitting that there was a Christ, such a character could have come at all—in the time of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, when all was ceremony and unbelief?" ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... always prominent in the Doctor's letters; indeed, it would seem that the son rather enjoyed a little logical fence with the old gentleman, and a passing lunge, now and then, at his severities; still weltering in his unbelief, but wearing it more lightly (as the father saw with pain) by reason of the great crowd ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... alive the flickering flame of Christianity. The Middle Ages were indeed dark for Christianity, as unbelief, ignorance, and faithlessness prevailed. But the monasteries were centers of ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... that Grace Itself can reach this grief? With a feeble voice and a woeful eye— "Lord, I believe," was the sinner's reply, "Help Thou mine unbelief."' SOUTHEY. ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you were surrounded," he repeated sharply, "and it's no time, Captain Colden, for unbelief! Mr. Willet, Tayoga and I saw the signals of the enemy, but Black Rifle here has looked upon the warriors themselves. They're led too by the French, and the best of all the French forest captains, St. Luc, is ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Luther in their doctrine of Infant Baptism. If a child, said Luther, was prayed for by the Church, he was thereby cleansed from his unbelief, delivered from the power of the devil, and endowed with faith; and therefore the child was baptised as a believer.33 The Brethren rejected this teaching. They called it Romish. They held that no child could be a believer until he had been instructed in the faith. They had no belief in ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... will embrace in its infinite scope the awakening to consciousness; the universal past consciousness of the universe. May not both theist and atheist find in this line of thought a partial answer to the oft recurring modern prayer, "Help thou mine unbelief."—From the Religio-Philosophic Journal. ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... all this discussion, I am still at the agnostic point. Tell me, first, what Jesus can be proved to have been, said, and done, and I will say whether I believe him, or in him,[46] or not. As Dr. Wace admits that I have dissipated his lingering shade of unbelief about the bedevilment of the Gadarene pigs, he might have done something to help mine. Instead of that, he manifests a total want of conception of the nature of the obstacles which impede ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... mortals,"(22) was not therefore considered a heretic. He never suffered for uttering his honest convictions: on the contrary, as far as we know, he was honored by the people among whom he lived and taught. Nor was Plato ever punished on account of his unbelief, and though he, as well as his master, Sokrates, became obnoxious to the dominant party at Athens, this was due to political far more than to theological motives. At all events, Plato, the pupil, the friend, the apologist of Sokrates, was allowed to teach at ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... because I MUST! I will humble myself in dust and ashes, and accept all—all. Anything is better than Nothingness! I will be the lowest of lay brethren, and in solitude and silence, make atonement for my unbelief. It is the only way, Walden!—for me, it is the only way! To Her!" And he pointed up to the picture of the Virgin and Child—"To Her, my vows! As Woman, she will pity me—as ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... faith that Bunyan's similitude no longer seems a verisimilitude. The pages abound with quaint, humorous, and lifelike touches;—as where Diabolus stations at Ear-Gate a guard of deaf men under old Mr. Prejudice, and Unbelief is described as "a nimble jack whom they could never lay hold of";—but as compared with the 'Pilgrim's Progress' the allegory is artificial, its elaboration of analogies is ponderous and tedious, and its ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... they narrowly escaped murder. But why extend the gruesome list? In view of their mad fury, so fatal to their benefactors, one is tempted to exclaim: Unglaube du bist nicht so viel ein ungeheuer als aberglaube du! "Of the twin monsters, unbelief and superstition, the more to be ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... man could remember, and this is the story of how the house got the better of the man. The man came into the house and lighted a fire in the room under the haunted one, and took off his boots and set them On the hearth, and stretched out his feet and warmed him self. For a time he prospered in his unbelief; but a little while after the night had fallen, and everything had got very dark, one of his boots began to move. It got up off the floor and gave a kind of slow jump towards the door, and then the other boot did the same, and after that the first boot jumped again. And thereupon it struck ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... In spite of father's unbelief and mother's indifference, at the time I married I was as simple—ay, in my heart, as devout—as any girl in a parsonage. The other thing hadn't soaked into me. Whenever I could escape from our stifling rooms ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... and unbelief in any good results to come from it are not, unfortunately, confined to the English essayists. I am not sure but the notion is growing in what is called the intellectual class, that it is a mistake to intrust the government to the ignorant many, and that it can only be ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... my mind from unbelief!" retorted brother Jorgen, and he stroked his face gravely. "But a man can't very well help thinking. And what does a man see round about him? Sickness and death and halleluiah! We live, and we live, I tell you, Brother Jeppe—and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... instrument of my own punishment? But how can I receive this doctrine? for here, before my eyes, is not the innocent suffering as much, if not more, than the guilty, even granting that I am so? And if I am perversely incredulous, is not here my son restored to me, as if to reward my unbelief? It is a mysterious maze, and I shall never get out of it; a curse to know that the most we can ever know is, that we know—nothing. Yet I will go on with this marriage. Pale as that brow is, I must see it encircled by the coronet of a countess; I must see her, as she ought to be, high ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... of their respective countries. Nay, all sentimental unbelievers, had they not been provoked by the ill-judged bigotry of their adversaries, would have adhered unanimously to the same maxims. If their unbelief proceeds from a consciousness of the weakness and limited state of the human understanding, the constant result of true learning and philosophy, they will be the more firmly convinced of the great utility and absolute necessity of a public form of ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... oval cheeks, their tendency to be too fat, to have a belly and heavy limbs. Their close-sitting dark hair. And above all, their sharp, almost acrid, mocking expression, the silent curl of the nose, the eternal challenge, the rock-bottom unbelief, and the subtle fearlessness. The dangerous, subtle, never-dying fearlessness, and the acrid unbelief. But men! Men! A town of men, in spite of everything. The one manly quality, undying, acrid fearlessness. The eternal challenge of the un-quenched human soul. Perhaps too acrid and challenging today, ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... Nothing but shouts and exclamations of joy were heard, while she drew still nearer and nearer to the vessel. In the meantime, the greatest part fell down at the feet of Father Xavier, and, confessing they were sinners, unworthy the company of a man so holy, asked him pardon for their unbelief. But the Father, in great confusion for being treated in this manner, escaped out of their hands as soon as possibly he could, and shut himself up within the cabin, in conclusion, the chalop came up with the ship; and it was observed, that though the waves were in great agitation, she came right ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... room. She was not only staggered, she was also thoroughly ashamed. A boy suddenly butted by a lamb, which he had believed he might torment with impunity, could not have felt more astonished. A convert brought face to face with the livid wounds which, in her days of unbelief, she had inflicted upon a Christian martyr could not have felt more deeply dejected and penitent. Like a flash, an old emotion of childhood had filled her breast; an old emotion that seemed only to have gathered strength in the intervening years,—that blind, unthinking and dependent love of ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... faith strong and dominant, will not easily fall out with one another about intrusions on each other's territory, especially in the presence, as at this day, of the common foe. When the Canaanite and the Perizzite are in the land, and Unbelief in militant forms is arrayed against us, it is more than folly, it is sin, for brethren to be turning their weapons against each other. The common foe should make them stand shoulder to shoulder. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... comparison with the blackness of the man who, looking into His face, sees nothing there that he should desire. Beside the mountain belching out its sulphurous flame the little pimple of a molehill is nought. And so, says Christ, heaven heads the count of sins with this—unbelief ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... shewn you, with Cornelius; and so it was with those wise men. They were worshippers (as is supposed) of the one true God, though in a dim confused way: but they had learnt enough of what true faith was, and of what true greatness was, too, not to be staggered and fall into unbelief, when they saw the King of the Jews, whom they had come so many hundred miles to see, laid, not in a palace, but in a manger; and attended not by princesses and noblewomen, but by a poor maiden, espoused to a carpenter. ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... these Mysteries in their glory," continued my friend, "you should go into the small towns in the provinces, uncontaminated with railroads or unbelief. There they last several days The stage is the town, the Temple scene takes place in the church, the Judgment at the city hall, and the procession of the Via Crucis moves through all the principal streets. The ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... was no comment from around the table—no sound of any kind. But each man was evaluating the information after his own fashion. The key thought, no doubt, other than a natural and instinctive moment of sheer unbelief, was that this marked a giant, forward lunge in world history. And also, no doubt, in this group of responsible men, there was a common question: It would appear that our world had at last come to grips with the universe around it. Was ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... tongues befouled with calumny! Christian lips blistered with falsehood! Christian hearts overflowing with hate! Christian, pens reeking with ridicule because other Christians sought to do their needy fellows good! No wonder that faith grew weak and unbelief ran riot through all the land when men looked upon the spectacle! The present may excuse, for charity is kind; but the future is inexorable and writes its judgments with a pen hard-nibbed! But let us not anticipate. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... shalt have to take birth in a wretched order of creatures. If thou thinkest, O king, that this world is nothing and that the next world is the shadow of a shadow, the myrmidons of Yama in the infernal regions will convince thee, dispelling thy unbelief.'"'" ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... he said. "Not that I don't feel thankful for having had the refusal of so very 'igh-class an opportunity; but, as I'm situated at present—what with the state of trade, and unbelief so rampant, and all—I'm obliged to ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... that evening gone once more to the Baillies' Barn in her husband's absence; for the words of unbelief he had uttered in the Job-like agony of his soul, had haunted the heart of his spouse, until she too felt as if she could hardly believe in a God. Few know what a poor thing their faith is till the trial comes. And in ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... that, in popular religious teaching, there was a franker conception of this position—a position which, as I have said, is really implied in the Theodicies of all the Divines. Popular unbelief—and sometimes the unbelief of more cultivated persons—rests mainly upon the existence of evil. We should cut at the roots of it by teaching frankly that this is the best of all possible Universes, though not the best of all imaginable ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... Church in that region was to be from other seed and stock. The region of Louisiana alone, destined a generation later to be included within the boundaries of the great republic, retained organized communities of French descent and language; but, living as they were in utter unbelief and contempt of religion and morality, it would be an unjust reproach on Catholicism to call them Catholic. The work of the gospel had got to be begun from the foundation. Nevertheless it is not to be doubted that remote memories or lingering traditions of a better age survived to aid the work of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... hopeless of extricating her gentle troop from destruction, the Queen heard the new tumult far away, and felt the close press yielding on one side. The word 'traitor' ran along like a quick echo from mouth to mouth, repeated again and again, sometimes angrily, sometimes in tones of unbelief, but always repeated, until there was scarcely one man in a hundred thousand whose lips had not formed the syllables. Eleanor saw her husband and his companions with their drawn swords moving in the air, on the knoll; she heard the stinging word, and ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... last-mentioned temple, built of huge square blocks of tufa, to which the marble plan of Rome was fastened by metal hooks, may still be seen in the church; and it is interesting as being the last pagan temple which remained in use in Rome. Here was the last struggle of paganism with the unbelief which itself inspired. The gods of the Pantheon had lost all significance. The worship of abstract qualities, such as Concord and Victory, or of the personification of a local providence in the city of Rome itself, could not satisfy the longing of the human soul. As ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... we watch the work of negation upon the soul of man. His life has capitulated to the Spirit that denies, and the unbelief is as bitter as it is hopeless. "Doubt had darkened into Unbelief; shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you have the fixed, starless, Tartarean black." "Is there no God, then; but at best an absentee God, sitting ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... women? But though women may hide their troubles more carefully, their heart aches as much as ours, when they whisper to themselves, "Lord, Ibelieve, help thou my unbelief." ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... An awful thing it was, with the dead lying in the chamber above, to wrestle with the unbelief of the living. But it seemed as if the spirit of her mother had passed into her spirit, giving her strength to speak with words not her own. What if, in the inscrutable purposes of Heaven, this hour of death was to be to him an hour of ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... his lips still moved. A look of unbelief and vast surprise dawned on his face. Followed a sharp, convulsive shudder. And in that moment, without warning, he saw Death. He looked clear-eyed and steady, as if pondering, then turned to Polly. His hand moved impotently, as if to reach hers, and ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... altar bears a crucified Image disturbing to perfect complacency in one's self and the world? Our resuscitated Spirit was not a pagan philosopher, nor a philosophising pagan poet, but a man of the fifteenth century, inheriting its strange web of belief and unbelief; of Epicurean levity and fetichistic dread; of pedantic impossible ethics uttered by rote, and crude passions acted out with childish impulsiveness; of inclination towards a self-indulgent paganism, and inevitable subjection to that human conscience ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... to why such things should be; but that they are, is indubitable. The miracles enacted now are silent ones, and are worked in the heart and mind of man alone. Unbelief is nearly supreme in the world to-day. Were an angel to descend from heaven in the middle of a great square, the crowd would think he had got himself up on pulleys and wires, and would try to discover his apparatus. Were he, in wrath, to cast destruction upon ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... passionate joy, yet filling her with a peace and security she had never known, either in the old farmhouse or since the long-ago day when all her brave castles of youth and love had crashed down into the dust. Gone now was unbelief, and disdain, and fear of terror that stalked by night; a rock was at her back, there was a hand to hold in the blackest darkness. Never any more need she feel fear and spiritual loneliness. Withal, there was the passionate joy of adventure, of exploration in sweet, unknown lands of the heart, ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... once; you gave me unbelief. I had no choice but to grow hard again. 'Tis my misfortune and my misery That every hand whose friendly ministry My poor heart craves, is held—withheld—by him; And I must freeze that I may ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... to argue with Fallowfield. All your own best hits were turned aside by the target of his cynicism and unbelief, while his sophistries and sarcasms often came home. Like old wounds, they would begin to shoot and rankle in after years, just when it was most important and profitable ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... lowered his sword-arm, and for a full minute he stood and stared at Joseph. His jaw was fallen and the grim firmness all gone from his face, and replaced by amazement, then unbelief followed by inquiry; then unbelief again. The pallor of his cheeks seemed to intensify. At last, however, he ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... indulging in wild speculations about the chance belief of some ancient chief or patriarch, transmitted across continents and seas and even across the great gulf that has always divided the Aryan from the Semitic civilization and preserved through ages of darkness and unbelief, saw in it the common yearning of the human soul to find rest on a loving Father's almighty arm; yet when our oriental missionaries and scholars found such fundamental truths of their own religion as the common brotherhood of man, and that love is the vital force of all religion, ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... the Gentiles. Could a man count on God and how far? Could he rely on God supporting him, on God wishing to have him in this world and the next? No, not with any certainty. It comes to a fundamental unbelief in God, resting, as Jesus saw, on an essential misconception of God's nature; and this resulted in the spoiling of life. Men did not use God. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also," Jesus said (Luke 12:34); and it ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... the man looked down at her; at first angrily, resentfully—then with an expression wherein surprise and unbelief were mingled. He ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... trail bucking, the marks of frostbite, the stubby beard, the tiny icicles that still clustered on his eyebrows; while these traces of hardship tugged at her heart they were forgotten when she saw the expression that overshadowed his face. Wonder and unbelief and longing were all mirrored there. She took a shy step forward to see what riveted his gaze. And despite the choking sensation in her throat she smiled—for she had taken off her little, beaded house moccasins ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... O dreamer, that in them alone consists the enjoyment of a finite existence: know that through the virtuous use of those five senses, earthly happiness is attainable! Dost thou still tremble in thy unbelief? Arise, Balsamo, and behold ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... principles likewise help us to understand wherein consists the guilt and criminality of unbelief. People are sometimes disposed to fancy that God has arbitrarily selected this one thing, believing in Jesus Christ, as the means of salvation, and do not distinctly see why and how non-belief is so desperate and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the beginning!" he shouted in my ear, with more heat than blank unbelief should be guilty of. "The bricks were carried up to the houses beforehand. These swine of Hindus! We shall be gutting ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... personification. Not being satisfied with "the wheel of the law," it personified both the hub and the spokes. It began with the spirit of kindness out of which all human virtues rise, and by the power of which the Buddhist organization will conquer all sin and unbelief and become victorious throughout the world. This personification is called the Maitreya Buddha, the unconquerable one, or the future Buddha of benevolence, the Buddha who is yet to come. Here was a tremendous ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... manner altered in a trice, as if by magic. Barbarian as he was, he was quite astute enough to guess that Europeans cared nothing in their hearts for all his mumbo-jumbo. He believed in it himself, but they did not, and their very unbelief made ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... his love of country and loathing of the Church that would bring it into subjection are two sides of the same national quality that has made and will always make every Englishman of his type such another as he was in belief and in unbelief, patriot and priest-hater; and no part of the design bears such witness to the full-grown perfection of his creator's power and skill as the touch that combines and fuses into absolute unity of ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... hurried to town, talking all the way. She came back in record time but by the time she had her hands in Mrs. Sears' dishpan Green Valley was already buzzing with astonishment. Some were shaking their heads in utter unbelief, some were smiling and one or two who had slept badly were ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... holy hill of Tabor, where Jehovah will bring about what is further to happen; he, however, objects to this, and insists that the prophetess herself shall go with him. This is regarded as a caprice of unbelief, because the prophetess is thought to have exhausted her mission when she transmitted the command of the Deity to His instrument: she has appeared for no end but to make it known through her prophecy that Jehovah alone brings everything to pass. In the song ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... creditable to his ingenuity; he was not to be deprived of the pleasure of telling them. So I was compelled to listen; and, being in an indulgent mood, I did not spoil his pleasure by letting him see or suspect my unbelief. If he could have looked into my mind, as I stood there in an attitude of patient attention, I think even his self-complacence would have been put out of countenance. You may admire the exploits of a "gentleman" cracksman ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... hearing this anecdote, must have betrayed the scepticism we felt, for the Colonel proceeded to a corner of the room, and produced the identical Umbrella. Of course, such a proof was irresistible, and we were compelled to do penance for our unbelief by lending the gallant Colonel a sovereign, for "the Bank was closed." We thought the anecdote cheap ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... men; the adroit peculation and wilful embezzlement of the public money; those monopolizing speculations and voluntary insolvencies so ruinous to the community at large; and, above all, those shocking atrocities so common in our country of unbelief—the legal dissolution of the matrimonial tie, and the wanton tampering with life in its very bud; all these are humiliating facts sufficient to convince any impartial mind that there can be no social virtue, no morality, no true ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... alone, but on courage, prudence, and skill. Even if, by ill fortune, she were to fail on a later day, the fault would not be hers, but would be God's punishment of French ingratitude. 'Let us not harm, by our unbelief or injustice, the help which God has given us so wonderfully.' Unhappily the French, or at least the Court, were unbelieving, ungrateful, unjust to Joan, and so she came to die, leaving her work half done. The Archbishop of Embrun said that Joan should always be consulted in ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... fear and unbelief. It was this fearfulness of unbelief that caused the Israelites to turn back, and not go into Canaan when Caleb and Joshua assured them that God would help them to possess the land. They lost sight of God, and feared the giants and walled cities, and ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... NATURE.' I thought I was long ago sufficiently 'grounded and stablished' in this Doctrine. But God Almighty is continually pouring down cataracts of testimony upon me to convince me of this fact. 'Lord I believe, help thou,' not 'mine unbelief,' but me to overcome the rascality of mankind." His partner Miller, on the other hand, is inclined to be more philosophical and suggests to Whitney that "we take the affairs of this world patiently and that the little ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... creed he was in theory without caste and not to be defiled by European touch, but the practises of most folk fall behind their professions. A hundred yards ahead of us Maga was talking and gesticulating furiously, evidently railing at Kagig's wooden-headedness or unbelief. Monty ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... things which were incredible, and seemed impossible with men, these God predicted by the Spirit of prophecy as about to come to pass, in order that, when they came to pass, there might be no unbelief, but faith, because of their prediction." (Apol. I. ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... and personal as well as social reform is at an end. Perhaps it may be permissible to say that of all forms of Determinism the most irrational is that optimistic form which deprecates discontent with things as they are as a mark of "unbelief." ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... an unconditional submission, which they call faith. Doubts arise sooner or later in the breast of every one who has the power of thinking and reverence for the truth; and then even when we are on the right road, to overcome our faith, the terrors of doubt and unbelief arise and disturb the tranquil development of ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... boys, who appeared naked with their bodies painted black, like ghosts, and performed a wild dance.[29] On the following day one of them was generally sent as a present to each Senator. Some boys in the neighbourhood wished to shake Democritus's unbelief, so they dressed themselves in black with masks like skulls upon their heads and danced round the tomb where he lived. But, to their annoyance, he only put his head out and told them to go away and stop ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... acquaintances had fallen fighting against the Garibaldians and she knew that Anastase was speaking of a very near possibility when he talked of being killed. There were many chances that he was telling the truth, and she felt how deeply she should regret her unbelief if he should indeed meet his fate before ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... the children of those who are in the Covenant, and died in their infancy, by his just judgment, under the curse, for the manifestation of his justice; and this without any regard to the repentance or the faith of the first, or the impenitence and unbelief of the others. They pretend that for the execution of this decree God makes use of means by which the Elect are necessarily and inevitably saved, and the Reprobate necessarily ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... The first lesson which we have to draw from the contrast between the boundlessness of the gift and the narrow limits of our individual possession and experience of it, is the lesson of penitent recognition and confession of the unbelief which lurks in our strongest faith. 'Lord I believe, help Thou mine unbelief,' should be the prayer ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... was due to the circumstance that the child had once burst into tears at a look from the officer, which the latter employed to call the children to order, if they were inattentive, or exhibited signs of unbelief when he had not expected it. After this Hermy was so evidently his darling that there was no further chance for Hermy's younger sister, who had at first promised to be the favourite, and I shall never forget the soft, almost motherly, caressing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... it to him. His face still held the look of doubt and unbelief as he looked at the ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... by rights one ought still to be living in peace and harmony with God and the world. You begin to feel yourself marked out, to feel yourself in a mysterious antagonism to other men, to every-day and decent men, and the abyss of irony, unbelief, opposition, knowledge, and feeling which cuts you off from the world yawns deeper and deeper; you are lonely, and from then on all possibility of understanding is over. What a fate! Suppose your heart sufficiently alive, sufficiently affectionate ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... conditions which existed in New York City, although upon ordinary subjects they had the greatest respect for my truthfulness and conservativeness, having known me in business for a good many years, they would look at me with pity for my misguided opinions. While they would mildly express unbelief at my statement to my face, when they got behind my back they would shake their heads and say, "Crittenton has gone crazy, do you know he even believes now that girls are held in slavery in New York City, against ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... wildest desires of their passions, published their profane and polluted creed amongst all orders of the people, and the natural and terrible consequences ensued. Ignorant before, they became like unto their teachers, demons in their unbelief,—demons in one common envy and hatred of all degrees above them, or around them, whose existence seemed at all in the way of even their slightest gratification: mutual spoliation and destruction covered the country. How often has the tale been told me by noble refugees, sheltered ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... visions; who forbade his child to be nursed on fast-days; and who believed himself to be inspired. After six years of wretchedness poor Hortense petitioned for a separation and a division of property. She quitted her husband's home and took refuge first in a nunnery, where she showed her unbelief, or her irreverence, by mixing ink with holy-water, that the poor nuns might black their faces when they crossed themselves; or, in concert with Madame de Courcelles, another handsome married woman, she used to walk through the dormitories in the dead ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... it, to come to him, who hath taken it on himself, after the breach of all commands. Ye have this retreat, this refuge to flee unto, a new command to come unto the Son, and have life; but after this disobedience of the Son, you have none. There is nothing after unbelief, but ye are turned over, or rather left over, in the hand of the law and divine justice. Therefore it is the most dangerous and damnable thing to disobey this. It is to refuse the very remedy of sin. Consider also what ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Hebrews, where he tells us that the people of the Jews, after a forty years' patience and endeavour to do them good by the means appointed for that purpose, their end was to be cut down, or excluded the land of promise, for their final incredulity. 'So we see that they could not enter in, because of unbelief.' 'Wherefore,' saith he, 'I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart, and they have not known my ways; so I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.' As who should say, I would they should have entered in, and for that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... tendency of all symbols to petrify or evaporate, and either process is fatal to them. They soon repudiate their mystical origin, and forthwith lose their religious content. Then comes a return to the fresh springs of the inner life—a revival of spirituality in the midst of formalism or unbelief. This is the historical function of Mysticism—it appears as an independent active principle, the spirit of reformations and revivals. But since every active principle must find for itself appropriate ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... the ever-beautiful Rothesay line—which Elspie led to claim the paternal embrace. Olive looked up at her father with her wistful, pensive eyes, in which was no childish shyness—only wonder. He met them with a gaze of frenzied unbelief. Then his fingers clutched his wife's arm with the grasp of an ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... descended from the Father alone. It was the undying controversy concerning the relations and the attributes of the three Members of the Trinity; and the insoluble question was destined to break up Greek and Catholic Church alike into numberless sects and shades of belief or unbelief; and over this Christological controversy, rivers of blood were to flow in both ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... a relatively long time in maintaining its integrity and its solidarity, it must enjoy a relative isolation. In a literal sense it must be beyond easy reach of those antagonistic forces which constitute for it the outer world of unbelief and darkness. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Frederick stimulates these heretical Saxons in their wicked unbelief. He, who it is well known, laughs and mocks at every religion, even his own—attended, yesterday, the Protestant church, to show our people that he is a protector ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... quarter of a century ago, in an age grown cold with unbelief and deadened by inexplicable dogmas, the Theosophical Society has found adherents numerous enough to make it widely known, and enthusiastic enough to give it momentum and make it a living force. The proclamation of its ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... unhappy, lonely woman, now suing in vain for pardon at your feet; by having been the occasion of the death of your brother by marriage—her husband and my friend? Say, madam, are you yet satisfied, or will you have more victims to your unbelief?" ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... purposely handicapped by singular limitations or unusual incapacities. God has not designedly made the religious life as hard as possible. The arrangements for the spiritual life are the same as for the natural life. When, in their hours of unbelief, men challenge their Creator for placing the obstacle of human frailty in the way of their highest development, their protest is against the order of Nature. ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... general we may say it is in a state of unbelief. Now, the proclamation of the great facts of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ according to the Scriptures will break up that condition of unbelief and produce a conviction of the truth of the gospel. When the mind is changed from a state of unbelief to one of hearty belief the birth of the mind is complete. But the mind is only a part of man. The heart must be born again. What is the normal state of the unregenerate heart? It is ...
— The Spirit and the Word - A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational - Interpretation of the Word of Truth • Zachary Taylor Sweeney
... suspect had hitherto been rejected by Captain Grey, came home with force to his heart, and I heard him say as he took Mr Crisp's hand, "I believe! I believe! and I pray that He will help my unbelief." ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... state, clothed with immortality and with a formally boundless power of taxation, is so often seduced into engaging in transactions of credit which are never self-discharged.(535) The social diseases of panics and of extravagant enterprises stand in the same relation to credit that unbelief and superstition do to ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... my purpose to take a few of these substitutes for Atheism by the aid of which some persons seek to mark themselves off from a declared and reasoned unbelief. As outstanding examples of this one may take two men of no less eminence than Herbert Spencer and Professor Huxley. Both of these men have rendered great service to advanced thought, but both have only succeeded in repudiating Atheism by misstating ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... barren, artificial expediency and benevolence! She erred in ignorance and inexperience; but he against the bitter fruit of knowledge, in wilful tampering with truth—reluctantly, misgivingly—selfishly cozening his conscience, hardening himself in unbelief, applying salve to the old vital stab to his independence. He had erred with an egotistical and presumptuous conceit of protecting and defending the young full life which would have found for itself an outlet, and flown ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... as very curious that she should assert her unbelief. He was too nonplussed to go on immediately. Then he supposed it was part of the joke, and proceeded to give ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... was the unbelief and impiety of these hated Galileans, causes of offence which could only be expiated by the death of the guilty. "Their enemies," says Tertullian, "call aloud for the blood of the innocent, alleging this vain pretext for their hatred, that they believe the Christians to ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... Unitarianism defined. Unitarians not Infidels. Explaining the Bible and Explaining it away. Unitarianism not mere Morality. Unitarianism Evangelical Christianity. Unitarianism does not tend to Unbelief. Dr. ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... another room and opened a secret door. I saw him pour a liquid from a large bottle labeled, "Satan's Malaria Cure." It contained a mixture of unbelief, ridicule, and self-righteousness. He filled a small vial with sugar pellets and saturated them with the mixture from ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... divination of a soothsayer in the years agone. My mother was a woman of too much intelligence and force of character to nourish an average superstition; but prophecies fulfilled will temper, though they may not shake, the smiling unbelief of the most hard-headed skeptic. Mother's moderate skepticism was not proof against the strange fulfillment of one prophecy, which ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... understood not, when the angel stooped, Whispering, 'Live on! for yet one joyless soul, Void of true faith in human happiness, Waits to be won by thee, from unbelief.' ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... consequences of your obstinate unbelief," answered the marabout, making a sign to ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... Greek philosophical criticism had lent its aid to Greek philosophical discovery in this destruction of the national faith. It sustained by many arguments the wide-spreading unbelief. It compared the doctrines of the different schools with each other, and showed from their contradictions that man has no criterion of truth; that, since his ideas of what is good and what is evil differ according to the country in which he lives, they can have ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... for the general unbelief is found in the peculiarities of the apostles and exponents of the new departure. A division into schools and cliques, the out-cropping of personality, exclusiveness, and internal criticism, statements ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... No: their hats stick fast to their ungracious heads, as if they grew there; and—impious varlets that they are, and worse than the heathen Indians!—they eye our reverend pastor with a peculiar scorn, distrust, unbelief, and utter denial of his sanctified pretensions, of which he himself immediately becomes conscious; the more bitterly conscious, as he never knew nor dreamed ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... may describe the scent of the rose, but that does not define the rose itself. I cannot separate the rose from its color or form or odor, any more than I can divorce music from the instrument. These vague and incomplete definitions have had much to do with the unbelief in the world. Tom Paine wrote a book which he called the 'Age of Reason' on the premise that reason does away with God. ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... analysis, be found to consist; its only necessary limit will be proven contradictions in the propositions submitted to it; for, then, no evidence can justify belief, or even render it possible. But no other difficulties, however, great, will justify unbelief, where man has all that he can justly demand,—evidence such in its nature as he can deal with, and on which he is accustomed to act in his most important affairs in this world (thus admitting its validity), and such in amount as ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... knowledge of the world, a waxed moustache, and a superficial tendency to atheism. He was always delighted to air his views, and he fixed the shocked waiter now with a glittering eye as he proceeded to recite his unbelief at some length. ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... clenched fist down on the arm of his chair; he pushed his face forward and fixed Ewbert with the vitreous glitter of his old eyes. Ewbert found him terrible, and he had a confused sense of responsibility for him, as if he had spiritually constituted him, in the charnel of unbelief, out of the spoil of death, like some new and fearfuler figment of Frankenstein's. But if he had fortuitously reached him, through the one insincerity of his being, and bidden him live again forever, he must not forsake ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... with a saving faith in the intentions and actual dispositions of the whole moral being in any one individual? Never will God reject a soul that sincerely loves him: be his speculative opinions what they may: and whether in any given instance certain opinions, be they unbelief, or misbelief, are compatible with a sincere love of God, God can only know.—But this I have said, and shall continue to say: that if the doctrines, the sum of which I believe to constitute the truth in Christ, be Christianity, then Unitarianism is not, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... or not in his estimate of his close relationship with God is for each person to decide; but his theory of the disasters that would follow unbelief in his divinity leads to serious difficulties if accepted literally. For not only was Jesus in error when he insisted that salvation depended upon belief, he was also reconciled to eternal suffering for unbelievers. ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... in a comical, sideway fashion, and gave a little chuckle of unbelief; but Mellicent looked quite depressed by this reception of her grand news, ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... the Sidneys, it is true, were sixteenth-century ideals. Eighteenth-century ideals were proverbially low. England, then, had not recovered from the frivolities inaugurated after the Restoration. The slackness and unbelief among the clergy, and the looseness of morals in society were notorious, but this degeneration could not have been universal. There are always a few Noahs and their families left to repeople the world with righteousness after a deluge ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... court with a quick step; for, notwithstanding his steady unbelief, the image of his gentle wife posted on her outer watch hurried his movements. The rap he gave at the door, on reaching the apartment of those he sought, was loud as ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... precisely on our subject, or rather a legend, not an anecdote. You reproach me with unbelief, you see, you say, yet you don't believe. But, my dear fellow, I am not the only one like that. We are all in a muddle over there now and all through your science. Once there used to be atoms, five senses, four elements, and then ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... atheist, he was as stubbornly contentious for his unbelief as any Scotch Covenanter ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson |
