"Unbeliever" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unbelief is to shut men out from the fruition, of which faith is the necessary and only condition. It is no avenging and arbitrarily imposed exclusion, but the necessary result of self-made disqualification, which brings on the unbeliever the doom, 'Thou shalt not eat thereof.' The blessings of the religious life on earth, and the glories of its perfection in heaven, are only enjoyable through faith. These are not so plainly visible to the unbelieving ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the street knew to be Peter's even when they failed to recognize the surtout and straight-brimmed high hat. Had any doubting Thomas, however, walked beside him on his way up Broadway to his rooms on Fifteenth Street, and had the quick, almost boyish lift of Peter's heels not entirely convinced the unbeliever of Peter's youth, all questions would have been at once disposed of had the cheery bank teller invited him into his apartment up three flights of stairs over the tailor's shop—and he would have invited him ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... enough, too. For faith does not make a man impeccable; he may believe rightly, and live badly. His knowledge of what God expects of him will not prevent him from doing just the contrary; sin is as easy to a believer as to an unbeliever. And he who pretends to have found religion, holiness, the Holy Ghost, or whatever else he may call it, and can therefore no longer prevaricate against the law, is, to common-sense people, nothing but a sanctified humbug ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... that is so faithfully enforced upon us, is it not? The Churches are all so lenient? And Society is so kind?—so gentle in its estimate of its friends? Our Church, for example, has never persecuted a sinner?—has never tortured an unbeliever? It has been so patient, and so unwearying in searching for stray sheep and bringing them back with love and tenderness and pity to the fold? And Churchmen never say anything which is slanderous or cruel? And we all follow Christ's teaching so accurately? Yes!—Ah well—I wonder! ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... year or two ago, the precincts around Moulay Idriss and El Kairouiyin were horm, that is, cut off from the unbeliever. Heavy beams of wood barred the end of each souk, shutting off the sanctuaries, and the Christian could only conjecture what lay beyond. Now he knows in part; for, though the beams have not been lowered, all comers may pass under them to the ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... consideration, indulgence: he throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason as 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; ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... both enormously, though not until about ten years ago. My principal reading is religion, science, and philosophy, with an occasional standard novel, or a modern novel of the 'improper' type by way of relaxation. I became a convinced and militant rationalist about five years ago, but have been an unbeliever since I left school. I was anemic and threatened with bowel complaint at the age of 7, and was in consequence taken abroad for my health. I am now strong and vigorous, with great powers of endurance, and enjoy all forms of sport and exercise, particularly hunting, pig-sticking, and polo. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... keeps no accounts, nor need to do so All Italy was in his hands Every one sees what you seem, few perceive what you are God of wrath who had decreed the extermination of all unbeliever Had industry been honoured instead of being despised History is but made up of a few scattered fragments Hugo Grotius Idle, listless, dice-playing, begging, filching vagabonds Ignorance is the real enslaver of mankind Innocent ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... staring now at the lake, now at the rocks, now at the distant masses of vapor, now right at the Great Carbuncle itself, yet seemingly as unconscious of its light as if all the scattered clouds were condensed about his person. Though its radiance actually threw the shadow of the unbeliever at his own feet, as he turned his back upon the glorious jewel, he would not be convinced that there was the least ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... struggling unbeliever with rich mud plastered in his eyes have a tendency to evoke keen appreciation from the yellow races, who are supposed to be devoid ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... "all the torments which that most abominable, ugly scarecrow of a rascally unbeliever has made you endure, are nothing in comparison to the tortures you are doomed to suffer when you are compelled to leave that miserable carcase, and that time you must be aware cannot be far off. Then consider what a life you will lead in ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... orator as we have heard. The address embodied the usual arguments offered in favor of this cause, and were put in a forcible and convincing manner. We say convincing, because such a speaker would convince the most obdurate unbeliever against ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... things, we say, we know are true; and because we know they are true, come amongst us, even though you do not believe them, and find out for yourself whether they be true or not. And the man is better worth having when he comes in an unbeliever, and wins to the knowledge of the truth, than is the facile believer who acknowledges everything and never gets a real grip upon truth at all. We believe that truth is only found by seeking, and that the true bond is the love of truth, and ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... did not believe in the pope, which was, that among other doctrines of his, he taught, that he could not commit an error, and that now, though a pope should see any one of his predecessors had erred, he could not say this, for fear that he also should appear to be an unbeliever. This friend also told me, that the patriarch wondered how I should pretend that I held to the Christian religion, and still converse in such abusive terms against it; and I also wondered, that after he saw this, he should ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... life he had lived an unbeliever in ME. Now your military intelligence grasps it. My brother Ronald, the runner of the Pawnee Indian, head-flattening system of education, and his wife, especially his wife, the daughter of a lay brother of ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... good citizen. If there is ever to be a perfect state of society on earth, it must come from simple obedience to the precepts of the Bible, obedience full and universal. No man can conceive of any thing more glorious and excellent than this. We may boldly challenge the unbeliever to name a corrupt passion in the heart or a vicious practice in the life that could remain. Let every man love God with all his heart and his neighbor as himself, and bolts and bars, prisons and penitentiaries, would be unnecessary. One might safely journey around the world unarmed and unattended, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... a willing unbeliever, a man who has sinned against the clearest light, a gambler, a libertine, an embodiment of selfishness? Can it be that Annie Walton will ever receive even friendship from one so stained, knowing the additional fact that I plotted against her and sought for my own senseless gratification ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... of the highest degree of unworth. Etymologically, the word means unbeliever, and its present signification may be regarded as theology's noblest contribution to ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... possessions, incantations, and charms. He was persuaded that Satan could appear to mankind in the shape of animals, and in the human form. Had any one doubted the possibility of these appearances, he would at that time have been called an atheist and an unbeliever in the existence of God and of separate spirits. Thus he argues, that 'If sin can make one who was sometimes a glorious angel in heaven now so to abuse himself as to become, to appearance, as a filthy frog, a toad, a rat, a cat, a fly, a mouse, or a dog, to serve its ends upon a poor mortal, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the lid of the churn to see if there were any signs of butter, "it's an everlastin' shame. Jim Hockson's a young feller in good standin' in the Church, an' Millie Botayne's an unbeliever—they say ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... Lady of the Broken Lances," said the Crusader, "I would not that the Turks were more courteous than they are Christian, and am well pleased that unbeliever and heathen hound are a proper description for the best of them, as being traitor alike to their God and to the laws of chivalry; and devoutly do I trust that I shall meet with them in the front rank of our army, beside ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... you set your heart? On the mere joys of earth! You sue for the hand of an unbeliever, the daughter of an unbelieving heretic; you go over to Fostat—nay, hear me out—and place your brain and your strong arm at the service of the infidels—it is but yesterday; but I, I, the shepherd of my flock, will not suffer that he who is the highest in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a man from doing wrong deeds in his future life, but calls upon him to repair as far as possible the wrongs and injuries he has done in his past life. In talking about two of the leading members of a certain religious denomination an unbeliever recently remarked: "If these men would pay me what they owe me I would have more confidence in Christianity." We saw then how consistent it was that God requires man to correct his past life as far as he can. It forces confidence in the hearts of the unsaved ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... fallacious, but as sure as though [and still surer than if] God by a new miracle would declare from heaven that it was His will to grant forgiveness. But of what advantage would these miracles and promises be to an unbeliever? And here we speak of special faith which believes the present promise, not only that which in general believes that God exists, but which believes that the remission of sins is offered. This use of the Sacrament consoles godly ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... true, it is an awful truth for the Infidel, for it sweeps away the last vestige of a foundation of his hope for eternity. The only reason any unbeliever in Revelation could ever give, or that modern Rationalists do give, for their hope of a happy eternity, is the analogy of nature—the alleged constant progress of all things toward perfection in this world. It is an awkward ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... answered Malvoisin, readily, "our brother here present hath already sworn to the truth of his accusation in the hand of the good Knight Conrade de Mont-Fitchet; and otherwise he ought not to be sworn, seeing that his adversary is an unbeliever, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... himself and shuts the beautifully chased brazen door with quite an angry slam. The day previous was the anniversary of Krishna's birth, and the blood of sacrificial goats and bullocks is smeared profusely about the altar. It is, probably, the enormity of an unhallowed unbeliever in one god, thrusting his infidel head inside the temple at this unseemly hour of the morning, while the blood of the mighty Krishna's sacrificial victims is scarcely dry on the walls, that arouses the righteous wrath of the old heathen ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... "If one does not subscribe to the creeds, he is written down a heretic. I have laughed at folly, and so have won the reputation of being an unbeliever. Yet, Wayland, if we ride forth to a savage death to-morrow, no one will meet it with more faith in Christ than I. The years indeed have not left me spotless, but I have never wavered from the great truths my mother taught me. I know not the future, lad, but I believe there is ever mercy ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... about things supernatural, and I have found also among them the same hesitation or inability to believe without questioning in all that is laid down in the name of tradition that we see among ourselves. The will to believe is temperamental and general, but the unbeliever is found among the Bantu as well ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... generous man, not instructed in divine truth and guarded by divine grace, might easily fall. But to break through the ties of allegiance, merely because the Sovereign was unfortunate, was not only wicked, but dirty. Could any unbeliever offer a greater insult to the Scriptures than by asserting that the Scriptures had enjoined on Christians as a sacred duty what the light of nature had taught heathens to regard as the last excess of baseness? In the Scriptures was to be found the history of a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Otoo keeping his dreary vigil under the dripping mangoes. Truly, he had made a better man of me. Yet he was not strait-laced. And he knew nothing of common Christian morality. All the people on Bora Bora were Christians; but he was a heathen, the only unbeliever on the island, a gross materialist, who believed that when he died he was dead. He believed merely in fair play and square dealing. Petty meanness, in his code, was almost as serious as wanton homicide; ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... no other issue, about which the souls of men are divided so clearly and definitely into two opposite camps. The question of the existence of a "parent of the universe" does not divide them so clearly; because it always remains possible for any unbeliever in a spiritual unity of this absolute kind to use the term "parent," if he pleases, for that incomprehensible "substance" under the dominion of space and time which takes the triple form of the "substance" out of which the ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... all? Out, out, upon the love that cannot trust! O Aranyani, surely thy love is very small, and a mere imitation and counterfeit of love: for as a rule, true love is tested by its power of putting faith in what it loves. See, then, thou unbeliever, I will try to bring the future before thy very eyes, and as I did before, when I told of the life that lay before thee by thyself, so now will I paint for thee another picture, to show thee an image of that life that thou wilt forfeit, by ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... a doubting Thomas of the first water," he said. "Stand behind me, you confounded unbeliever. Kink your back a little and look over that stone you set for a mark. Do you see anything that ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... resolved, however, to communicate his errand to some churchman, as he felt something burdened in conscience at the idea of his master being attended by an unbeliever. ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... that this is a holy war, and that God himself sanctions it. He spares nothing precious when He has a work to do. No life is too valuable for Him to cut short, when any of His designs can be furthered by doing so. But I could talk a month and not have done, you wicked unbeliever. ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... saying. Then again, there were members who possessed the gift of prophecy—a very valuable endowment. It was not the power of predicting future events, but a gift of impassioned eloquence, the effects of which were sometimes marvelous: when an unbeliever entered the assembly and listened to the prophets, he was seized with uncontrollable emotion, the sins of his past life rose up before him, and, falling on his face, he confessed that God was among them of a truth. Other members exercised gifts more like ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... doesn't she marry again?' It is curious how refinement brings out the same feelings under all 'dispensations.' I apologized to Yussuf for inadvertently returning the Salaam aleykoum (Peace be with thee), which he said to Omar, and which I, as an unbeliever, could not accept. He coloured crimson, touched my hand and kissed his own, quite distressed lest the distinction might wound me. When I think of a young parsonic prig at home I shudder at the difference. But Yussuf is superstitious; ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... her showing Sylvia, aged ten, how to write with planchette. With an outbreak of temper, for which he had afterwards apologized to his wife, he had forbidden her ever to mention her damn unseemly nonsense to his children again. He himself was a stout unbeliever in individual immortality, teaching his children that the craving for it was one of the egotistic impulses ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... and the unbeliever and the servant of the true God is this; it is that the latter has experienced a complete turning away from self. This only difference is all the difference in the world. It is the realisation that this goodness that I thought was within me ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... work alluded to in his footnote drew on him a severe criticism from Dr. Priestley ("Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever," p. 75), yet it seems to have been Priestley himself who, in his quotation, first incorporated into Paine's text the footnote added by the editor of the American edition (1794). The American added: "Vide Moshiem's (sic) Ecc. History," which Priestley ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... dull succession of commonplace and sinful men this radiant and unique Figure. Account for Christ, all you unbelievers! The question of to-day, round which all the battle is being fought, is the person of Jesus Christ. If He be what the Gospels tell us that He is, there is nothing left for the unbeliever worth a struggle. 'What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He?' The Jews said, 'Thou art a Samaritan!' We say, 'Thou art the Christ; the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... been tempted to buy a share by that unbeliever Owlett,' groaned the minister, his honest affection for Lizzy having quickened to its intensest point during these moments of risk to her person and name. 'That's why she's here,' he said to himself. 'O, it will ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... in the west, and the ever watchful Mustapha declares it is time they started for the city. They have enjoyed a ride on the ship of the desert, as the camel is called, admired the Arabian steeds, which all the money of an unbeliever or Christian dog could not purchase, and looked ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... thing to be remembered, then, by Christian and unbeliever alike, when they come to speak of Christianity, is that these things are not the matters in debate. They are the facts to be explained, to be accounted for. In all argument they themselves must ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... no more," replied the inflated boor, "if these negotiations are all that you have to talk of." The disgusted envoy took him at his word, and returned to Najib with a report of the interview. "Is it so?" said the premier. "Then we must fight the unbeliever; and if it be the pleasure of the Most High God, ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... his head was on the pillow, the strain of his stoicism gave way. Then first he felt alone, utterly alone; and the loneliness went into his soul, and settled there, a fearful entity. The strong stoic, the righteous unbeliever burst into a passion of tears. Sure they were the gift of the God he did not know!—say rather, of the God he knew a little, without knowing that he knew him—and they somewhat cooled his burning heart. But the fog of a fresh despair streamed ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... water, you black-and-tan galoot!" replied the Sheik of the Outfit, with that ready repartee which distinguishes the Unbeliever. ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... was as largely developed on his head as on his Uncle Frederick's. "But there is little use," she said, "in talking to an unbeliever like you on the subject:—but this I have to say, now that you are going to Craigduff, beware of Units! (Edward, recollect you are not to explain.) Mark my words, Beware of Units! And now, good-night! You are to go, you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... see it in thy dreams, fair unbeliever! And leave me unto mine, if they be dreams, That take such shapes before me, that I see them; These effable and ineffable impressions Of the mysterious world, that come to me From the elements of Fire and Earth and Water, And the all-nourishing ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... all account the crowd of nonsensical objections to Papal supremacy, drawn from imaginary possibilities. Suppose a Pope, for example, were to abolish all the canons at a single stroke; suppose him to become an unbeliever; suppose him to go mad; and so forth. 'Why,' De Maistre says, 'there is not in the whole world a single power in a condition to bear all possible and arbitrary hypotheses of this sort; and if you judge them by what they can do, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... corner of the scaffold. He uttered a long religious speech of contrition. Once, he said, he had been nearly drowned: but God preserved him for this great day of confession and repentance. But 'no unbeliever in the guilt of Gowrie,' says Calderwood, 'was one whit the more convinced.' Of course not, nor would the death of Henderson—which they clamoured for—have convinced them. They said, falsely, that Sprot was really ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... on in inevitable sequence. No modifying influence is possible. Can a breath move Mount Kaf? The chosen of Allah shall believe; the rejected of Allah shall deny. Every believer's bower is blooming for him in Paradise; every unbeliever's bed is burning for him in hell. And nothing whatever can avail to change the persons or the total number ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... lament the want of that absolution, without which no sinner can be safe."—"If it be so material," says Square, "why don't you present it him of your own accord?" "It hath no virtue," cries Thwackum, "but to those who have sufficient grace to require it. But why do I talk thus to a heathen and an unbeliever? It is you that taught him this lesson, for which you have been well rewarded in this world, as I doubt not your disciple will soon be in the other."—"I know not what you mean by reward," said Square; "but if you hint at that pitiful memorial of our friendship, which ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... church does not pretend to understand, and never attempts to explain,—the prophecy of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse; two cabalistic clavicules, reserved, no doubt, in Heaven, for the exposition of the Magian kings; closed with Seven seals for all faithful believers; and perfectly clear to the unbeliever initiated ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... of a character and extent unmatched in history. The founder of the Faith, Mohammed, taught from 622 to 632. He succeeded in imbuing his followers with the passion of winning the world to the knowledge of Allah and Mohammed his prophet. The unbeliever was to be offered the alternatives of conversion or death, and the believer who fell in the holy wars would be instantly transported to Paradise. Men who actually believe that they will be sent to a blissful immortality after ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... bound to produce those arguments fairly and forcibly. But to this young boy's piercing mind, the arguments against Christianity seemed stronger than those which were brought forward to refute them. Thus the lad became, not a positive unbeliever, but an honest doubter. He now sought earnestly for other ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... hole right through the helmet of Jimmy, the unbeliever. The fact that there was not also a hole through his head was due to his forethought in having put on a tam-o'-shanter underneath. The net result was a truncated "toorie." Wullie's bullet had struck his helmet at a more obtuse angle, ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... numbered, that the oil was waxing low in the lamp of life. The end, the awful, mysterious end, was drawing near; and she who was called was making no such preparations as the Christian makes to answer the dread summons. As she had lived, she meant to die—an avowed unbeliever. More than once Mary had taken courage, and had talked to her grandmother of the world beyond, the blessed hope of re-union with the friends we have lost, in a new and brighter life, only to be met by the sceptic's cynical smile, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... that Philip had heard definitely stated was that the unbeliever was a wicked and a vicious man; but Weeks, though he believed in hardly anything that Philip believed, led a life of Christian purity. Philip had received little kindness in his life, and he was touched by the American's desire to help him: once when a cold kept him ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... uses earthly means like any unbeliever. Outwardly they look alike. Nevertheless there is a great difference between them. I may live in the flesh, but I do not live after the flesh. I do my living now "by the faith of the Son of God." Paul had the same voice, ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... not understand John. He, so quick-sighted; he who meeting any sorrow looked steadily up at the Hand that smote him, knowing neither the coward's dread nor the unbeliever's disguise of pain—surely he must see what was impending. Yet he was as calm as if he saw it not. Calm, as no man could be contemplating the supreme parting between two who nearly all their lives had been not two, but ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... others to give, and I was redeemed. I lived a Christian mother to bring my children up for Christ—they are all here with me to bless you this day, and their children on earth, and their children's children are growing up to bless you." "And I," said another, "was an unbeliever. In the pride of my intellect, I thought I could demonstrate the absurdity of Christianity. I thought I could answer the argument from miracles and prophecy; but your patient, self-denying life was an argument I never ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "'But he is an unbeliever,' cried the youth, fingering a great knife which hung in his belt. 'Were I to be the judge, he would lose not only his merchandise, but his life also, if he did ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... came to the point the lady finally decided that it was impossible. He was not at one with her in religious matters. He could speak lightly of her evangelical creed—it seemed he scoffed in "Fors" at her faith. She could not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever. To her, the alternative was plain; the choice was terrible: yet, having once seen her path, ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... Jesus in dealing with his doubts saved Thomas from being an unbeliever. It is a great thing to have a wise and faithful friend when one is passing through an experience of doubt. Many persons are only confirmed in their scepticism by the well-meant but unwise efforts that ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... this also, and Levin had to go to confession. To Levin, as to any unbeliever who respects the beliefs of others, it was exceedingly disagreeable to be present at and take part in church ceremonies. At this moment, in his present softened state of feeling, sensitive to everything, this ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... evils rose out of the antagonism of the two great parties; primarily, in the mere fact of the existence of an antagonism. To the eyes of the unbeliever the Church of Christ, for the first time since its foundation, bore the aspect of a house divided against itself. Not that many forms of schism had not before arisen in it; but either they had been obscure and silent, hidden among the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... he is careful from the first to distinguish between matters of faith and matters of devotion. In questions of faith doubt is forbidden. With regard to questions of devotion the unbeliever, to use a colloquial expression, is not necessarily damned. Three conditions are necessary if a question is to be considered as one of devotion: first, it must be edifying; second, it must be probable and attested by popular report or the testimony of the ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... ever in holiness and happiness,—"righteous and holy still."—He also repeats the assurances of his sudden appearance to reward "every man according as his work shall be." The recompense which he brings will be of debt or justice to the impenitent unbeliever; but wholly of free grace to the believer; for the works of each class shall follow them, as decisive evidence of their respective ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... and whom he loves he will chasten, as he chastened Jacob of old, till he has made him understand that honesty is the best policy; and that whatever false prophets may tell you, there is not one law for the believer and another for the unbeliever; but whatsoever a man sows, that shall he reap, and receive the due reward of the deeds done in the body, whether they be ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... all things do not edify. [10:24]Let no one seek his own but the good of another. [10:25]Whatever is sold in the market eat, asking no questions for conscience' sake; [10:26]for the earth is the Lord's and all it contains. [10:27]But if an unbeliever invites you and you wish to go, eat whatever is set before you, asking no questions for conscience' sake. [10:28]But if any one says to you, This has been offered to an idol, eat not for his sake that informed you, and for conscience' sake. ...
— The New Testament • Various
... intelligent unbeliever in the Providential government of the world has just said to me in discussing this greatest of calamities which has occurred in our nation's history, "Where is your benevolent God?" I answered "He still lives and guides the affairs ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... continu'd as long as he liv'd. He had been, I imagine, an itinerant doctor, for there was no town in England, or country in Europe, of which he could not give a very particular account. He had some letters, and was ingenious, but much of an unbeliever, and wickedly undertook, some years after, to travesty the Bible in doggrel verse, as Cotton had done Virgil. By this means he set many of the facts in a very ridiculous light, and might have hurt weak minds if his work had been published; but it ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... sculptures and pavements and mosaics of the Cosmas family who lived and worked between six and seven hundred years ago. On the other side of the hill, near the Circus, Saint Augustine taught rhetoric for a living, though he knew no Greek and was perhaps no great Latin scholar either—still an unbeliever then, an astrologer and a follower after strange doctrines, one whom no man could have taken for a future bishop and Father of the Church, who was to be author of two hundred and thirty-two theological treatises, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... simplicity no longer satisfied the religious wants of the time, those who strictly adhered to it, and rejected modern inventions, were regarded by the devotees as impious, just as an evangelical Protestant of the present day is regarded as an unbeliever in Catholic countries. At all events, from such a party no very strong reaction against Jesus could proceed. The official priesthood, with its attention turned toward political power, and intimately connected ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... a foreigner and an unbeliever," retorted Herhor, "hence this speech. But we Egyptians understand that when the people and the soldiers cease to reverence the scarabs, their sons will cease to fear the ureus (the serpent). From contempt of the gods is ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... dead, while the wonderful brain was busy with thoughts that stirred the profoundest depths of his nature. There are beliefs that come to us at which reason may laugh, but which it can not shake or disturb. There are questions that the glib unbeliever may ask that we can not answer. But away down in our hearts is a faith which the whole world can not remove, and which can be uprooted only by ourselves. Woe to him who dares lay ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... The conditions change and the thought is outworn: if the phrase that clothed the old thought remains and is used glibly as a verbal counter, then you have Cant, and the longer the phrase is parrotted by an unbeliever, the more venomous does the virus of cant become. To the fishers—childlike men—many of the old Methodist turns of speech are vital; to a cultured man the husk of words may be dry and dead, but ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... predicted that he would become the apostle of Deism in France. This prediction he fulfilled. "Voltaire was," says Lord Brougham, "through his whole life, a sincere believer in the existence and attributes of the Deity. He was a firm and decided, and an openly declared unbeliever in Christianity; but he was, without any hesitation or any intermission, a Theist." His open declaration of disbelief in the inspiration of the Bible, and his total rejection of the dogmas of Christianity, laid him open to the malignant attacks and misrepresentations ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... an unbeliever, I hear, sir," returned Griffin, "We have offered him all the religious consolation we could; but he seems ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Sultan decorates the front. Our attempt to pass into the second court was less successful: Mustapha being a great coward, he was afraid to offer the sentinels a bribe; yet I have no doubt that the sight of a gold dollar never fails to gain admission for the unbeliever, whether Jew or Christian. Turning away from this forbidden paradise, we proceeded to examine a fine old plane tree, in the trunk of which three people live and keep a coffee-shop. A grove of plane, ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... dispersion and redemption of the Jewish people, which we find throughout the Bible. With that good book you all are or should be familiar—it is a delightful book, view it in any manner you please. Let the unbeliever sneer and the philosopher doubt, it is certain that the most important events predicted by the prophets have come to pass, giving an assurance which is stripped of all doubt, that what remains to be fulfilled, will be fulfilled. In what direction are we to look for the missing ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... to every unbeliever in this town about his soul's salvation," said the deacon; "I've always made it a matter of duty. Christ came to preach salvation, and I'm following His example, ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... out the symbolic word "God" altogether,—the facts remain. The true scientific spirit must reverence and adore the power that lies behind creation. It is as inconsistent for the bacteriologist to be an unbeliever as it is for the Christian Scientist to deny the value of bacteriology. Medicine is infinitely farther advanced than Christian Science, and yet Christian Science has grasped some truth that the natural scientist has stupidly missed. When ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... have succeeded so speedily in curing Maltravers of his diseased enthusiasm: a crude or sarcastic unbeliever he would not have listened to; a moderate and enlightened divine he would have disregarded, as a worldly and cunning adjuster of laws celestial with customs earthly. But Lumley Ferrers, who, when he argued, never admitted a sentiment or a simile in reply, who ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... finds Christianity, and Catholic Christianity, to account most satisfactorily for the world and especially for the moral world within; and thus, by what Newman calls "powerful and concurrent" reasons, he finds himself inexorably committed to the dogma of the Incarnation. To the unbeliever, this method seems disingenuous and perverse; for the unbeliever is, as a rule, not so greatly troubled to explain the world to himself, nor so greatly distressed by its disorder; nor is he generally concerned (in modern terms) to "preserve values." He does not consider that if certain emotional ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... utter any more heresies? I am an unbeliever in Raphael's 'Transfiguration'—the scream of that devil-possessed boy, in the lower part of the figure of eight (a stolen boy too), jars the whole music of the composition. On Michael Angelo's great ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... countless errors of faith which have misled mankind, there is none more dangerous, or more common, than that of confounding the forms of religion with religion itself. Too often, alike to believer and unbeliever, this has proved the one fatal mistake. Many an honest and earnest soul, feeling the deep needs of a spiritual life, but unable to separate those things which the heart would accept from those against which the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... an unbeliever!" exclaimed Burrell, whose temper could no longer brook the taunting curses of the old man, and whose coward spirit quailed beneath them, "hold thy foul tongue, lest I pluck it from between thy teeth. Had I been a circumcised Jew, and ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... disciples themselves, with this expression, "He that hath ears to hear let him hear." But among all neglects of preaching, none is so fatal as that of sleeping in the house of God. A scorner may listen to truth and reason, and in time grow serious; an unbeliever may feel the pangs of a guilty conscience; one whose thoughts or eyes wander among other objects may, by a lucky word, be called back to attention; but the sleeper shuts up all avenues to his soul; he is "like the deaf adder, that hearkeneth not to the voice of the charmer, charm he ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... I knew, to be sure, that somehow Chandon had made a mess of things—turned unbeliever, ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... unbeliever went to the temple and prostrated himself before the altar and prayed the gods to forgive ...
— The Madman • Kahlil Gibran
... lady well known in London, and not a little addicted to lion-hunting, peremptorily refused, saying, "no, nor any of the likes of her!" And another of Father Nolan, a well-known priest, who died at the age of ninety-seven. When someone remonstrated with him on his association with an avowed unbeliever in Christianity, like Mr. Morley, Father Nolan replied, "Oh, faith will come with time!" The same excellent priest, when he came to call on Mr. Gladstone, here at Abbeyleix, on his arrival from the Earl of Meath's, pathetically and patriarchally ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... an unbeliever, a materialist, yourself," was the bold retort. "Do as you please, but you can't drag me into your money calculations." The swift slam of the door left ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... you, dear brother," he wrote, "for your ardour regarding your brother's eternal happiness. Believe me, the time will come when we shall understand each other. You hold converse with me as with an unbeliever—one who insists on understanding, on having proofs, who has not been schooled by experience. And the contrary of all this is my real feeling. Am I not more resigned in the matter of understanding and proving than yourself? Perhaps I am foolish in not ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... she, smiling; "then, unbeliever, I shall convince you. Attend closely to all that ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... Willoughby, or myself;" observed the chaplain, with a little more importance of manner than it was usual for one so simple to assume. "I do not believe the ministry was instituted to be brow-beaten by tribes of savages, any more than it is to be silenced by the unbeliever, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... having heard so much said of Johnson's slovenliness and roughness. I have preserved nothing of what passed, except that Crosbie pleased him much by talking learnedly of alchymy, as to which Johnson was not a positive unbeliever, but rather delighted in considering what progress had actually been made in the transmutation of metals, what near approaches there had been to the making of gold; and told us that it was affirmed, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... shoals. Belarab backed up Hassim. Ningrat was very angry and reproached Belarab for keeping him, Ningrat, short of opium to smoke. He began by calling him "O! son," and ended by shouting, "O! you worse than an unbeliever!" There was a hullabaloo. The followers of Tengga were ready to interfere and you know how it is between Tengga and Belarab. Tengga always wanted to oust Belarab, and his chances were getting pretty good before ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... contending sects of our purer religion united to deny her. Her husband and herself had resided many months in Turkey, where even the Sultan's countenance was gracious to them; in that pagan land, too, was Ilbrahim's birthplace, and his Oriental name was a mark of gratitude for the good deeds of an unbeliever. ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... reaching the caravan a double security seemed to arise from the Armenian proving to be the accepted lover of Fatima; and Zuleikha, although deeming it a degradation for a daughter of Ali to unite her destinies with an unbeliever, was herself too strongly in the bondage of love to withhold her consent. Then how happy were they all! and what precautions were taken for their safety! Nevertheless, they were overtaken by the angry ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... but there is little doubt that the Turk does not believe in our professed determination to defend him by force of arms in the event of a future conflict between Russia and the Sultan in Asia Minor. Notwithstanding our professed sincerity, the Turk has become an unbeliever in the faith of treaties and political engagements; he believes most thoroughly that should "British interests" require the sacrifice of honour, England will somehow or other manage to slip through the Ottoman fingers, and escape from her alliance when called ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... and a good Mohammedan will not only refrain from eating pork, but will not hunt the wild boar or help carry it home for fear the contact might defile him. Wine is of course forbidden, though I have heard that in the Philippines food over which the shadow of an unbeliever has passed need not be thrown away, the Moros there being more thrifty and perhaps less fanatically devout than ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... carried on by priests of all religions, for their own power and profit; from this absurd and false principle flow the commonplace, insipid jokes, and insults upon the clergy. With these people, every priest, of every religion, is either a public or a concealed unbeliever, drunkard, and whoremaster; whereas, I conceive, that priests are extremely like other men, and neither the better nor the worse for wearing a gown or a surplice: but if they are different from other people, probably it is rather on the side of religion and morality, or, at least, decency, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... early of certain things one must not do: such as saluting with the left hand, which is the dishonourable one of the pair, and refraining carefully, when in a temple or mosque, from touching anything at all, because for an unbeliever to touch is to desecrate. I was told also that a Mohammedan grave always gives one the points of the compass, because the body is buried north and south with the head at the north, turned towards Mecca. ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... in these matters, my lord. But I have heard that man must make a deity of something. The worse sort of unbeliever, they say, lives in the present and burns incense to himself. The better sort, having no future to believe in, ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... mused the Hon. Sam, "in lieu of the dog of an unbeliever we have a dark analogy in that ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... and now dismembered by your own disciples, are you glad you came to earth, or do you still think God forsook you, and did you, too, die an unbeliever? The crucifixion will never be understood until men know that its worst agony consisted in the disbelief which first of all doubts God and then must, by all reason, doubt itself. The resurrection comes when we discover that we are God ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... circles; now he is ragged and torn-looking; but the old Book my mother used to read says: "He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it." Some of us have yet to learn that if we would remember His face it is necessary for us to forget our own. If the unbeliever in mission work were to go to Waik-thlatemialwa, he would come away a converted man. The former witch-doctor, who for long made "havoc," but has since been born again, would tell him that during a recent famine he talked to the Unseen Spirit, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... ready, how Teacher he wasn't fit fur William Penn! And after they tole how he had up and sassed pop, and him a directer yet! And Nathaniel he tole how Absalom had heard off the Doc how Teacher he was a' UNbeliever and says musin' is the same to him as prayin'! Now think! Such conwictions as them! And then, when the wote was took, here it come out that only pop and Nathaniel Puntz woted ag'in' Teacher, and the other four they woted ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... Dr. Hull insisted upon making assurance doubly sure by pounding upon the walls and pulling up the rug in the cabinet, to prove that no sliding panel or trap-door trick was possible. There was something calculated to make an unbeliever very uneasy in the quiet confidence of these people, and the business-like way in which they went to work to make it impossible to account for any phenomenon that might appear, on any other but a supernatural theory. ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... money?' To this question the Jew replied: 'Signior Antonio, on the Rialto many a time and often you have railed at me about my monies and my usuries, and I have borne it with a patient shrug, for sufferance is the badge of all our tribe; and then you have called me unbeliever, cut-throat dog, and spit upon my Jewish garments, and spurned at me with your foot, as if I was a cur. Well then, it now appears you need my help; and you come to me, and say, Shylock, lend me monies. Has a dog money? Is it possible a cur should lend three thousand ducats? Shall I ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... given; since perchance they might think those who speak in tongues to be mad (1 Cor. 14:23), for instance the Jews deemed the apostles drunk when the latter spoke in various tongues (Acts 2:13): whereas by prophecies the unbeliever is convinced, because the secrets of his heart are made ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the law governing the prophet. And if the record is false on this account, how can we trust it in other respects? It is as easy to turn God out of all the pentateuch, and put Moses into it, as to maintain the proposition that Moses had a law of his own. Sabbatarians act the part of the unbeliever in getting the Lord out of the law that was done away, and Moses into it. All that is accredited to the Lord was His, otherwise the record is untrustworthy. If our friend's position is true, it follows that Moses is the sole author of ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... mightily triumphant about the same Martyr's reception by crowned heads, and about the competence he has become endowed with—we cull from Mr. Home's book one or two little illustrative flowers. Sir David Brewster (a pestilent unbeliever) "has come before the public in few matters which have brought more shame upon him than his conduct and assertions on this occasion, in which he manifested not only a disregard for truth, but also a disloyalty to scientific observation, ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... him in part this likeness to show how glorious a redeemed soul might become, that you might be encouraged to pray. The holy Saint Monica thus saw the blessed Augustine standing clothed in white among the angels while he was yet a worldling and unbeliever, and thereby received the grace to continue her prayers for thirty years, till she saw him a holy bishop. This is a sure sign that this young man, whoever he may be, shall attain Paradise through your prayers. Tell me, dear little heart, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... and cannot err, though He has many and strange methods of bringing about His ends. You can prove it by taking an extreme case. Go to one of the early martyrs, who lost not only property, and health, and friends, and liberty, but finally his life at the stake. The unbeliever's view would be that everything had gone against him; his own view, that God had put on him great honour in counting him worthy to suffer and die for Jesus; and you could not doubt his sincerity when you heard his hymns of praise ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... qualification. A thorn bringeth not forth figs, because it wanteth the nature of the fig-tree; and so doth the bramble the nature of the vine. Good works must come from a good heart. Now, this the unbeliever wanteth, because he wanteth faith; for it is that which purifieth the heart (Luke 6:45; Acts 15:9). Good works must come from love to the Lord Jesus; but this the unbeliever wanteth also, because he wanteth faith: For faith 'worketh by love,' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan |
