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Idolater   Listen
noun
Idolater  n.  
1.
A worshiper of idols; one who pays divine honors to images, statues, or representations of anything made by hands; one who worships as a deity that which is not God; a pagan.
2.
An adorer; a great admirer. "Jonson was an idolater of the ancients."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Idolater" Quotes from Famous Books



... true faith as a crowning merit or demerit, the only question is, Do his good works outweigh, by so much as a hair, his evil works? If so, he goes to the right; if not, he must take the left. The solitary trace of fatalism or rather favoritism is this: that no idolater, once in hell, can ever possibly be released, while no Islamite, however wicked, can be damned eternally. The punishment of unbelievers is everlasting, that of believers limited. The opposite of this opinion ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... the classical writers. But with his mind full of the deep and intricate questions of metaphysics and theology, and his poetical taste always owing allegiance to Vergil, Ovid, and Statius—keen and subtle as a schoolman—as much an idolater of old heathen art and grandeur as the men of the Renaissance—his eye is yet as open to the delicacies of character, to the variety of external nature, to the wonders of the physical world—his interest in them as diversified and fresh, his impressions ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... missionaries than even the arrival of companions from their beloved native land, was a visit of a Burman who having read the "two little books" from the press of Mr. Hough, came to inquire further into the new religion. When Mr. Judson first heard from the lips of an idolater the confession that "God is a Being without beginning or end, not subject to old age or death, but who always is,"—his feelings were indescribable and overpowering. Here at length was a germination of that seed they had so long been sowing ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... was another. But it was not upon these men, but upon their greater colleague, that the eyes of all the barbarian warriors and statesmen were fixed. Leo, bishop of Rome, had come, on behalf of his flock, to sue for peace from the idolater. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... of what she wished to secure herself (see page 344), does not seem to have disturbed her. It is clear from this that, even after she was wedded to Jacob the monotheist, she remained a heathen and idolater, though she concealed ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... As the idolater gives what he loves best to the shrine of the object of his worship, so the lover is not content to see perfection in his mistress, he must be ever trying to add to her adornment. She does not need it for his pleasure, it ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... denomination to criticize another whose creed is equally foolish. A Christian thinks that the Koran, the Divine revelation announced by Mohammed, is but a tissue of impertinent dreams and impostures injurious to Divinity. The Mohammedan, on his side, treats the Christian as an idolater and a dog; he sees but absurdities in his religion; he imagines he has the right to conquer his country and force him, sword in hand, to accept the faith of his Divine prophet; he believes especially that nothing is more ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... rather a childish way, with blue eyes and fair hair. She is not my ideal among women, but no man ever marries his ideal. The man who has sworn by eyes as black as a stormy midnight and raven hair generally unites himself to the most insipid thing in blondes, and the idolater of golden locks takes to wife some frizzy-haired West Indian with an unmistakable dip of the tar-brush. When will ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... enlarged the minds of his subjects, removing from them many prejudices; but the nation was not intended by the divine founder to be politically or commercially great, but rather to preserve the worship of Jehovah. Moreover, the daughter of Pharaoh was an idolater, and her influence, so far as it went, tended to wean the king from his religious duties,—at least to make him ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord

... his wife! She made him do it! Skinner's wife was both his idol and his idolater. He 'd never been an idol to any one but her. No one but Honey had ever even taken him seriously. Even the salesmen, whom he paid off, looked on him only as a man in a cage. But to his wife he was a hero. When he entered their little ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge

... exaction of a lawful tribute, in the constitution, became tyranny and oppression in the management. Men were sold like beasts, and Christians enslaved to Pagans at cheap pennyworths. To conclude, the king of Cochin, an idolater, but tributary to the crown of Portugal, was suffered to confiscate the goods of his ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... lives there, heaven! beneath thy dread expanse, One hopeless, dark idolater of chance, Content to feed, with pleasures unrefined, The lukewarm passions of a lowly mind; Who, mouldering earthward, 'reft of every trust, In joyless union wedded to the dust, Could all his parting energy dismiss, And call this ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... Edward Knowell too, and may, With the safe conscience of good manners, use The fellow's error to my satisfaction. Well, I will break it ope (old men are curious), Be it but for the style's sake and the phrase; To see if both do answer my son's praises, Who is almost grown the idolater Of this young Wellbred. What have we ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson

... Virgin and Child, in a little tabernacle or case of silver filagree, of Italian work, she paid five pounds. This was to be set before her on the table and prayed to. Mrs Margaret would not have put it quite in that plain form of words, for no idolater will ever admit that he addresses the piece of wood or stone; but it was what she really did without admitting it. Alas for the worshipper whose god has to be carried about, and requires dusting like any other ornament! "They that make them are like ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... God or Christ or some holy name, of some evil spirit to come out of a person; it was performed on a heathen as an idolater, and eventually on a child as born in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... the first time in his life he found himself in the presence of an idolater. Cudjo belonged to a tribe of African fire-worshippers, from whom he had been stolen in his youth; and, although the sentiment of the old barbarous religion had smouldered for years forgotten in his breast, this night it had burst forth again, kindled by the terrible ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... of the nations of South America, to consider as synonymous the denominations of 'Christian,' 'reduced,' and 'civilized;' and those of 'pagan,' 'savage,' and 'independent.' The reduced Indian is often as little of a Christian as the independent Indian is of an idolater. Both, alike occupied by the wants of the moment, betray a marked indifference for religious sentiments, and a secret tendency to the worship of nature and her powers. This worship belongs to the earliest infancy ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... the late Mr. Mark Pattison, a strong sympathiser with Milton's politics, in complete agreement if not with his religious views, yet with his attitude towards dominant ecclesiasticism, and almost an idolater of him from the purely literary point of view. In "Eikonoclastes," Milton's reply to Eikon Basilike, Mr. Pattison says, and I do not care to attempt any improvement on the words, "Milton is worse than tedious: his reply is in a tone of rude railing ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... I was seized with a profound and sorrowful disgust for humanity. You can not imagine the fetichism of the tombs. The real Parisian is more of an idolater than a negro is! It made me long to lie down in ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... short I would put myself in the position of the educated Englishman who does quite honestly receive a mere impression of idolatry. Incidentally, I may remark, it is the educated Englishman who is the idolater. It is he who only reverences the place, and does not reverence the reverence for the place. It is he who is supremely concerned about whether a mere object is old or new, or whether a mere ornament is ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... his imagination, his essential nobility or meanness, are thus disclosed more effectually than by any other means. A man with high ideals, who admires wisely and nobly, is never wholly base though he may fall into great vices. A man who worships the baser elements is in truth an idolater though he may have never bowed ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... is the world. In my eyes you too, if not an infidel, are an idolater. I conceive that you ignorantly worship; in all things you appear to me too superstitious. Sir, your god, your great Bel, your fish-tailed Dagon, rises before me as a demon. You, and such as you, have raised him ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... the Church.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Whatever authority, whatever reason, restores ecclesiastical peace to the adulterer and the fornicator, the same will be bound to come to the aid of the murderer and the idolater in their repentance. ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... my cell!" he cried. "Have I lived here so long to have it polluted by a vile Trinitarian—a follower of the rascal Athanasius? Wretched idolater, learn once for all, that the Logos is in truth an emanation from the Deity, and in no sense equal or co-eternal with Him! Out with you, I say, or I will dash out your brains with ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... beguiled, and from heaven I stole away his young heart to mine. Through me did he become idolatrous; and through me it was, by languishing desires, that he worshipped the worm, and prayed to the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to him; lovely was its darkness; saintly its corruption. Him, this young idolater, I have seasoned for thee, dear gentle Sister of Sighs! Do thou take him now to thy heart, and season him for our dreadful sister. And thou"—turning to the Mater Tenebrarum, she said—"wicked sister, that temptest and hatest, do thou ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various



Words linked to "Idolater" :   pagan, idolatry, infidel, heathen



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