"Impiety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... true, universally, in our land. Why should not the Slave Power make colossal strides over the continent? "There is no North." A sordid, truckling, cowardly, compromising spirit, is everywhere seen. No insult or outrage, no deed of impiety or blood, on the part of the South, can startle us into resistance, or inspire us with self-respect. We see our free coloured citizens incarcerated in Southern prisons, or sold on the auction-block, for no other crime than that of being found on Southern soil; and ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... a taboo. When the Gauls captured Rome the Flamen of Jupiter went up into the Capitol with the garrison. He might not leave Rome, it would have been impious. But the other flamens nd the Vestals left Rome, the Vestals were months at Caere. It is not impiety for a Vestal to be outside the city walls over night, it is merely forbidden by the ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... Parthenon, and a colossal one of Zeus, his masterpiece, also of ivory and gold, for Olympia; accused of having appropriated some of the gold intended for the statue of Athena he was acquitted, but was afterwards charged with impiety for carving his own likeness and that of Pericles on the shield of the goddess, and was thrown into prison, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... son Nadab; and after he had reigned two years, he was killed by Baasha, who usurped the crown and destroyed the whole race of Jeroboam, a man remarkable for his impiety.—All the succeeding kings of Judah were descendants of Rehoboam, which fulfilled the promise made by God to David, that he would "establish his house and the throne of his kingdom for ever:" this was a declaration that the Messiah was to be a ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... word that could not but please Luther's friends, who so hoped for his support. 'May the duke prevent an innocent man from being surrendered under the cloak of piety to the impiety of a few. This is also the wish of Pope Leo, who has nothing more at heart than that ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... father stood petrified. Voltaire, Antichrist, Archfiend of impiety—and in the hands of his ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... remains,—that Jesus, at that supreme moment, when He was bound to leave no misunderstandings, made the plainest claim to divinity, and could have saved His life if He had not done so. Either Caiaphas, in his ostentatious horror of such impiety, was right in calling Christ's words blasphemy, and not far wrong in inferring that Jesus was not fit to live, or He is the everlasting 'Son of the Father,' and will 'come ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... asked with steady scorn. "Are you indeed a priest?" And then her invective was loosened, and her voice shrilled and mounted as her anger swayed her. "What a snake have I harboured here!" she cried. "Blasphemer! You show me clearly whence came the impiety and ungodliness of Giovanni d'Anguissola. It had the same source as your own. It was suckled ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... instinct of racial isolation, or how he had passed from admiration of British ways into entire abandonment of Jewish. She was spared, too, the knowledge that latterly her own Fanny had slid with him into the facile paths of impiety; that they had ridden for a breath of country air on Sabbath afternoons. They had been considerate enough to hide that from her. To the old clo'-woman's crude mind, Henry Elkman existed as a monster of ready-made wickedness, and she believed even that he had been married in church and baptized, despite ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... its complacent absurdity, combined with his nervousness, made him almost hysterical. Yet again, it seemed to him that something of the mystery and inviolability of the past now invested that degraded dust, and it would be an equal impiety to disturb it. Miss Eversleigh, again believing his agitation caused by the memory of his old patron, tactfully hurried him away. Yet it was a more bitter thought, I fear, that not only were his lips sealed to his charming companion on the subject in which they could sympathize, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... this excellent poem is to demonstrate the self-existence of an eternal mind, from the created and dependent existence of the universe, and to confute the hypothesis of the Epicureans and the Fatalists, under whom all the patrons of impiety, ancient and modern, of whatsoever denomination may be ranged. The first of whom affirm, the world was in time caused by chance, and the other, that it existed from eternity without a cause. 'Tis true, both these acknowledge the existence of Gods, but by their absurd and ridiculous description ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... you shall have heard the impiety, Which of such passing goodness was the meed, Woman take warning from this perfidy, And let none make a lover's word her creed. Mindless that God does all things hear and see, The lover, eager his desires to speed, Heaps promises and ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... which the Universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable." The acknowledgment of this fact is religiousness; the contrary of it is irreligiousness and anthropomorphistic arrogance, even if it appears in the name of religiousness. "Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... place their hopes in sensual enjoyment. They despair of truth. But the world will not be abandoned to despair. The Stoics rebuke the impiety which is blended with sensualism, and place their hopes on virtue. But it is unattainable virtue, while their God is not a moral governor, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the greatest love and patience, and took him to task with affectionate mildness when he transgressed the laws of taste or feeling. The Indians all despised the white settlers, whom they thought stupid and cowardly, and they expected to drive them beyond the sea. They despised them for their impiety, and Tecaughretanego once said to Smith, "As you have lived with the white people, you have not had the same advantage of knowing that the Great Being above feeds his people and gives them their meat in due season, as we Indians ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... charge, the eyes of men are bent upon us, and we must answer before that Judge.... He preserved us in the darkness of our mothers' bosom, He provided our food in their breasts, and instructed us to use the same, when we knew Him not, He hath nourished us in the time of blindness and of impiety; and will He now despise us, when we call upon Him, and preach the glorious Gospel of His dear Son our Lord ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... addressing Sydney, with a grim smile—'justice has its due at last, and the diabolical villain has gone to his final account. Summon some scavenger to collect the vile remains, and bury them in a dung-hill. To give them Christian, decent burial would be treason to man, sacrilege to the Church, and impiety to God!' ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... that when he manifests himself by his word, men should follow according to their vocation and commandment. Now so it is, that God, by that great Pastor our Lord Jesus, now manifestly in his word calls us from all impiety, as well of body as of mind, to holiness of life, and to his spiritual service; and for this purpose he has erected the throne of his mercy among us, the true preaching of his word, together with the right administration of his sacraments: but what our obedience is, ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox
... every dwelling, as the symbol and embodiment of divine protection. To save these images, when every thing else was given up for lost, was always the object of the last desperate effort of the husband and father. AEneas in this case asked his father to take these images, as it would have been an impiety for him, having come fresh from scenes of battle and bloodshed, to have put his hand upon them, without previously performing some ceremony of purification. Ascanius took hold of his father's hand. Creusa followed behind. Thus arranged they ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... friends of Pope and Bolingbroke, and Warburton and Mallet were the leaders of the several parties. Mr. Burney asked him then if he had seen Warburton's book against Bolingbroke's philosophy!'No, sir; I have never read Bolingbroke's impiety, and therefore am not ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... out to them in boats. The cause of the high tide and flood and of that which befell the Persians was this, as the Potidaians say, namely that these same Persians who perished by means of the sea had committed impiety towards the temple of Poseidon and his image in the suburb of their town; and in saying that this was the cause, in my opinion they say well. The survivors of his army Artabazos led away to Thessaly to join Mardonios. Thus it fared with ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... people; whilst beneath the shade of the tree of liberty was instituted universal slavery; and that the most Christian, as well as the most civilized of all nations, had fallen down to the lowest limits of impiety and barbarism. ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... secret horrors, such is their reverence to their religion; nor will their bodies be long exempted from their share of trouble; for if they do not very quickly satisfy the priests of the truth of their repentance, they are seized on by the Senate, and punished for their impiety. The education of youth belongs to the priests, yet they do not take so much care of instructing them in letters, as in forming their minds and manners aright; they use all possible methods to infuse, very early, into the tender and flexible minds of children, such opinions ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... every bad man is a Whig; every man who has loose notions. The Church was all against this family. They were, as I say, glad to encourage any friends; and therefore, since their accession, there is no instance of any man being kept back on account of his bad principles; and hence this inundation of impiety.' I observed that Mr Hume, some of whose writings were very unfavourable to religion, was, however, a Tory. JOHNSON. 'Sir, Hume is a Tory by chance, as being a Scotchman; but not upon a principle of duty; ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... these sacred and venerable representations of saints and angels—for as sacred and venerable they had been taught to consider them—with very different feelings. The antiquary may be permitted to regret the necessity of the action, but to Magdalen Graeme it seemed a deed of impiety, deserving the instant vengeance of heaven,—a sentiment in which her relative joined for the moment as cordially as herself. Neither, however, gave vent to their feelings in words, and uplifted hands and eyes formed their only mode of expressing them. The page was about ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... name Jhesus Maria, was declared to prove that she was cruel, "seeking the shedding of blood, seditious, and a blasphemer of God." The tenor is the same to the end: Blasphemy, superstition, pernicious doctrine, impiety, cruelty, presumption, lying; a schismatic, a heretic, an apostate, an idolator, an invoker of demons. These are the conclusions drawn by the most solemn and weighty tribunal on matters of faith in France. The precautions taken to procure a full and trustworthy judgment, the appeal to ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... records of those memorable days: "The very face of heaven did manifestlie speak what comfort was brought to this country with hir—to wit, sorrow, dolour, darkness and all impiety—for in the memorie of man never was seen a more dolorous face of the heavens than was at her arryvall ... the myst was so thick that skairse micht onie man espy another; and the sun was not seyn to shyne two days ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... put upon him such an invisible pressure as to present him the choice of orthodoxy or beggary. Thus they disapproved of Euripides permitting his characters to indulge in any sceptical reflections, and discountenanced the impiety so obvious in the 'Prometheus Bound' of Aeschylus. It was by appealing to this sentiment that Aristophanes added no little to the excitement against Socrates. They who are doubting themselves are often loudest in public denunciations of a similar ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Tolerations of diverse Religions, or of one Religion in segregant shapes. He that willingly assents to this, if he examines his heart by daylight, his conscience will tell him he is either an Atheist, or an Heretigal, or an Hypocrite, or at best a captive to some lust. Poly-piety is the greatest impiety in the world." With such frank avowals on the part of those who had borne so much in the attempt to make themselves comfortable in their exile to these hard regions, that they might here try to work out their harder problem, it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... how pleasant they were, and how fascinating was their conversation! A host of brilliant thoughts sprang to their lips, and all their ideas were steeped in pleasure. And it was because the breath of Thais was on them that all they said was love, beauty, truth. A delightful impiety lent its grace to their discourse. They thoroughly expressed all human splendour. Alas! all that is but a dream. Thais is dying! Oh, how easy it will be to me to die of her death! But canst thou ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... imagine that the son of a carpenter was to be the Saviour of their country, for they expected the Messiah to appear surrounded with all the splendour of secular magnificence. They were hypocritical and selfish; they had been repeatedly rebuked by Christ for their impiety; and, as they marked His increasing favour with the multitude, their envy and indignation became ungovernable. They accordingly seized Him at the time of the Passover, and, on the charge that He said He was the Son of God, He was condemned as a blasphemer. [27:2] ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... enough to induce nine-tenths of all readers, at least in our own country, to avert their faces and close their ears. To have no religion, though scandalous enough, is an idea they are partly used to: but to have no God, and to talk of religion, is to their feelings at once an absurdity and an impiety. Of the remaining tenth, a great proportion, perhaps, will turn away from anything which calls itself by the name of religion at all. Between the two, it is difficult to find an audience who can be induced to listen to M. Comte without an insurmountable prejudice. But, to be just to any opinion, ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... However respersive the blow and nigh on infernal the fall, The chastisement drawn down on us merited: are we of worth Amid our satanic excrescences, this, for the less than a call, Will Earth reprime, man cherish; the God who is in us and round, Consenting, the God there seen. Impiety speaks despair; Religion the virtue of serving as things of the furrowy ground, Debtors for breath while breath with our fellows in service we share. Not such of the crowned discrowned Can Earth or humanity spare; Such not the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... duty to the children is obvious and plain, but the child's duty to its parents is something subtler and more spiritual. It is to be more delicately, more religiously, regarded. No one, without impiety, can meddle with it from the outside, or interfere in its fulfilment. This and much more I said to my wife when we came to talk the matter over after Tedham left us. Above all, I urged something that came to me so forcibly ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... Quakers, and his success had a little turned his head. In one passage of his writings he had taken rank as Reeve's equal and representative, and had put himself on a level with "the Commissionated." It was an awful act of impiety. "For," says Muggleton, "as John Reeve was like unto Elijah, so am I as Elisha, and his place was but as Gehazi, and could stand no longer than my will and pleasure was." Claxton had been formally blessed, therefore he could never be damned, but excommunicated he could be and was. ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... periods; they groaned as the intensity of her fervor pressed upon them for response that they could not shape in words; they wept, they shouted, they prophesied, and over them swept ever the witchery of her wonderful voice, preaching impiety—the worship ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... of men who had now the sacred element of fire. But he knew that Prometheus had stolen this fire even from his own altar and had given it to men. And he thought on how he might punish the great Titan god for his impiety. ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... indisposition she revealed to Julia alone. "That young lady keeps me on thorns. I never feel secure she will not say or do something extravagant or unusual: she seems to suspect sobriety and good taste of being in league with impiety. Here I succeed in bridling her a little; but encounter a female enthusiast in her own house? merci! After all, there must be something good in her, since she is your friend, and you are hers. But I have something more serious to say before you go there: it is about her ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Edinburgh, had conceived a mortal antipathy to the name and character of Milton. His reason was, because the prayer of Pamela, in sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, was, as he supposed, maliciously inserted by the great poet in an edition of the Eikon Basilike, in order to fix an imputation of impiety on the memory of the murdered king. Fired with resentment, and willing to reap the profits of a gross imposition, this man collected, from several Latin poets, such as Masenius the jesuit, Staphorstius, a Dutch ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... am Tu-Kila-Kila, how dare you, not being yourself Korong, and not having broken off the sacred bough, as I did, venture to attack me? You wish to set aside all the customs of Boupari. Are you not ashamed of such gross impiety?" ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... exercise a great influence over the vulgar, but even to extort the half-contemptuous admiration of scholars. Yet it was long before he ceased to be tormented by an impulse which urged him to utter words of horrible impiety in the pulpit.[4] Bunyan was finally relieved from the internal sufferings which had embittered his life by sharp persecution from without. He had been five years a preacher when the Restoration put it in the power of the Cavalier gentlemen and clergymen ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... their liberty they naturally became exasperated and turned against their dastardly oppressors. But from their point of view it was absolutely necessary to find out if the Spaniards were mortal. If they were not, it would be an act of impiety ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... Parsee friends for out-door worship, since it is well known that the ancient Persians not only permitted few temples to be erected to their gods, and held in abhorrence all painted and graven images, but they laid it to the charge of the Greeks, as a daring impiety, that "they shut up their gods in shrines and temples, like puppets in a cabinet, when all created things were open to them and the wide world was their dwelling-place." It was probably religious zeal, even more than revenge against the Greeks, that induced the burning ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... young child, and leave him as successor to the throne upon his death. And Basiliscus, deserted by all, fled for refuge to the same sanctuary as formerly. And Acacius, the priest of the city, put him into the hands of Zeno, charging him with impiety and with having brought great confusion and many innovations into the Christian doctrine, having inclined toward the heresy of Eutyches. And this was so. And after Zeno had thus taken over the empire a second time, he carried out his pledge to Harmatus formally by appointing his ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... creed, that holds possible the lasting and intimate union of the first, purest, highest, noblest, and most celestial powers of soul and spirit, with confirmed appetencies, foul and degrading lust, cowardice, cruelty, meanness, hypocrisy, avarice, and impiety! You,—in a strong attempt made to hold up to execration the nature of Byron as deformed by all these hideous vices,—you, my friend, reverently unveiled the countenance of the mighty dead, and the lineaments struck remorse into the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Chateau de Senanges was proudly placed near the summit of the "Holy Hill," and had suffered terrible depredations when the church at Fourvieres was sacked, and the shrine desecrated with that ingenious impiety which is characteristic of the French; but it still retained somewhat of its former heavy grandeur. The chateau was much too large for the needs, tastes, or ambition of its present owner, who was too wise, if even he had been of an ostentatious ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... acquirements of, i. 542; account of the early life of, i. 542-545; estate purchased by, in Virginia—appointed second major-general by the second continental Congress, i. 545; remarks of Mrs. Mercy Warren on the personal appearance of (note), i. 586; disgust of Washington at the impiety of, i. 617; a personal interview proposed to, by Burgoyne, at Boston Neck, i. 630; sent to New York to disarm the tories, ii. 35; ambition of, ii. 37; letter of, to Washington, in relation to the Long-Island tories, ii. 38; headquarters of, in New York, ii. 43; appointed by Congress commander-in-chief ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... seeds of it within them, with abhorrency. I would think if we were circumspect in this, the worse the world is, we might be the better, the worse the times are, we might spend it better, the more pride we see, it might make us the more humble, the more impiety and impurity abound, it might provoke us to a further distance from, and disconformity with, the world. Thus, if we were wise, we might extract gold out of the dunghill, and suck honey out of the most poisonable weed. The surrounding ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... erected over his grave, where afterwards the parish church was built. See the story at large in Mr. Edw. Jones's Welsh Music. But we may reasonably conclude that this is all a fable, both when we consider the impiety of building a church for divine worship over the grave of a dog, an impiety not consistent with the genius of that age; and when we consider, also, that the establishment of parochial cures, and the building of our country churches in Wales, began soon after the dispersion ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... we began the religious exercises which those of our Society are wont to conduct in the plazas for the benefit of those, who through hindrances, carelessness, or impiety, fail to attend the sermons. The discourses were delivered in the Castilian language, in the principal plaza of Manila, beneath some of the principal buildings, which were then occupied (while the royal edifices were being finished) ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... public mourning followed, which lasted six days, and Cambyses accompanied the corpse to the tomb. Cyrus now claimed to be the legitimate successor of the ancient Babylonian kings and the avenger of Bel-Merodach, who was wrathful at the impiety of Nabonidus in removing the images of the local gods from their ancestral shrines to his capital Babylon. Nabonidus, in fact, had excited a strong feeling against himself by attempting to centralize the religion of Babylonia in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... millionaires should be richer than all the other Americans put together. Such a status, growing out of our political equality and our material prosperity, must evince a divine purpose to any one intimate with the designs of Providence, and it seemed a kind of impiety to doubt its perfection. I excused the misgivings which I could not help seeing in the Altrurian to his alien traditions, and I was aware that my friends had done so, too. But, if I could judge from myself, he must have left ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... might be witnesses of his terror and of his punishment. He then conveyed him to the iron throne which he had prepared for the scene of his vengeance. It was there that, being devoured by degrees, Dakianos by his dreadful sufferings gave a terrible example of the punishment due to ingratitude and impiety. The serpent afterwards returned to his cavern without having done the least hurt to any person, and all the inhabitants of Ephesus loaded it with ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... on the neck of her remorse and returning fondness, that wish treading almost on the brink of impiety, but still held back by the strength of her devotion to her lord, that 'father, mother, nay, or both were dead', rather than Romeo banished. If she requires any other excuse, it is in the manner in which Romeo echoes her frantic grief and disappointment in the next scene at being banished ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... artist's chief design; however, as it was Mr. Hogarth's intention, in the history before us, to encourage virtue and expose vice, by placing the one in an amiable light, and exhibiting the other in its most heightened scenes of wickedness and impiety, in hopes of deterring the half-depraved youth of this metropolis, from even the possibility of the commission of such actions, by frightening them from these abodes of wretchedness; as this was manifestly his intention, it cannot be deemed a deviation from the subject. By the skirmish ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... concealed from thy sire and reveal naught to him lest he slay thee. So I hid it from him and I abode on this wise for a term of days when the old woman died, and the people of the city redoubled in their impiety[FN321] and arrogance and the error of their ways. One day, while they were as wont, behold, they heard a loud and terrible sound and a crier crying out with a voice like roaring thunder so every ear could hear, far and near, "O folk of this city, leave ye your fire worshipping and adore ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... "What impiety, Tournebroche, my boy," he exclaimed, when we reached the staircase. "What blasphemies! Have you felt all the odium in the maxims of that philosopher? He pushes atheism to a joyous frenzy, which makes me wonder. But this indeed renders him almost innocent, for being ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... heard with reverence. Let those who cannot nicely, and with certainty, discern the difference between the tones of hypocrisy and those of sincerity, never presume to laugh at all, lest they should have the miserable misfortune to laugh in the wrong place, and commit impiety when they think they ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... millions sterling; yet they affected to appear as deliverers among the people whom they were thus cruelly plundering; and they distributed portraits of Buonaparte, with the blasphemous inscription, "This is the true likeness of the holy saviour of the world!" The people, detesting the impiety, and groaning beneath the exactions of these perfidious robbers, were ready to join any regular force that should come to their assistance; but they dreaded Cardinal Ruffo's rabble, and declared they would resist him as a banditti, who came only for the purpose of pillage. Nelson perceived that ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... hut with trembling steps, and, arguing like his elder brother, resolved to say nothing of what he had seen, lest he should awake in Martin that daring curiosity which he almost deemed to be allied with impiety. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... proposal within reasonable limits. Power, popularity, and praise quickly aroused all that was warped and excessive in his nature, and very soon, as he showed at the end of the year 37, he entertained an idea which must have seemed to the Romans a horrible impiety. His wife died soon after he became emperor. Another marriage seemed obligatory, and he decided that he would marry ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... desire of innovation, hatred of prejudices, and love of knowledge: he was destined to be the standard-bearer of destruction; his genius, although not the most elevated, yet the most comprehensive in France, has hitherto been only judged by fanatics or his enemies. Impiety deified his very vices; superstition anathematised his very virtues; in a word, despotism, when it again seized on the reins of government in France, felt that to reinstate tyranny it would be necessary first to unseat Voltaire from his high position in the national opinion. Napoleon, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... these letters. Between two impending law-suits how shall we muster courage to keep on the even tenor of our way? Even our staunch friend, the anonymous Public, torments us with frequent accusatory epistles, charging us with dulness, impiety, and irreverence for American institutions. All these we must lay on the back of our Englishman, whose compatriots we confess are apt to assume a latitude of style hardly tolerated among us. In the mean time, gentle Public, respected Cockney, and worthy ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... been beaten by them in an engagement, though they could not effect a public co-operation in their designs, procured volunteers from all quarters allured by the hope of plunder. The state of the Fidenatians alone determined on renewing hostilities; and as if it would be an impiety to commence war unless with guilt, after staining their arms with the blood of the new settlers there, as they had on a former occasion with that of the ambassadors, they join the Veientians. After this the leading ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... undeniable, that in ten thousand ways, as if by a malicious agency, we mortals are woefully put out and tormented; and that, too, by things in themselves so exceedingly trivial, that it would seem almost impiety to ascribe them to the august gods. No; there must exist some greatly inferior spirits; so insignificant, comparatively, as to be overlooked by the supernal powers; and through them it must be, that we are thus grievously annoyed. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... new conuertite building on hope, Loue makes folks hardy, alas the flesh is fraile, Dispences now a little with the Pope: And fr[o] restrictions giues her heart more scope. O Liberty, Author of heresie. Why with such violent wing dost thou assaile, To hurry vertue to impiety. ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... reported as follows: "Plaies are banished for a time out of London, lest the resort unto them should ingender a plague, or rather disperse it, being already begonne. Would to God these comon plaies were exiled for altogether as seminaries of impiety, and their theatres pulled downe as no better than houses of baudrie. It is an evident token of a wicked time when plaiers wexe so rich that they can build suche houses. As moche I wish also to our comon beare baitinges used on ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... end that they should do one another good; more or less, according to the several persons and occasions; but in no wise hurt one another; it is manifest that he that doth transgress against this her will, is guilty of impiety towards the most ancient and venerable of all the Deities." How gladly would I believe this! That injustice is impiety, and indeed the supreme impiety, I will hold with my last breath; but it were the merest affectation of ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... her impiety—for such it should be called—it did not arise from arrogance, nor was it based in any way upon the higher learning of her period. Simply she did not possess the religious instinct. She understood it ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... as heav'n, love ocean-wide, thy lovely form will don; What time love will encounter love, license must rise wanton; Why hold that all impiety in Jung doth find its spring, The source of trouble, verily, is centred ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... short, the one leads to all that is grand, sublime and splendid in the universe; the other to all that is little, groveling[14] and dark. The one is the parent of the most pure and ardent piety; the genuine progeny of the other are impiety and atheism. And, in fine, the one confers on its votary the most sincere, permanent, and exalted delight; the other continual disappointment, and ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... arguments for these monks to discuss in their assemblies, they repaid this kindness by rousing common hostility against me; and now by suggestions, from their pulpits, in public meetings, before mixed multitudes, with great clamourings they declaim against me; they rage with passion, and there is no impiety, no heresy, no disgrace which they do not charge me with, with wonderful gesticulations—namely, with clapping of fingers, with hands outstretched and then suddenly drawn back, with gnashing of teeth, by ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... ... Most surely it concerns Francois Paradis. Hast Thou already guessed it, O Mary, full of grace? How might she frame this her desire without impiety? That he should be spared hardship in the woods ... That he should be true to his word and give up drinking and swearing ... That he return in ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... on logical results of their own making. In our conventional readiness to reverence the mother and disown the mistress as social institutions, we are apt to ignore, as though the mere suggestion were an impiety, the fact that in their instincts and affections they have often much in common. It is one of Nature's kindest and wisest economies; yet perhaps the woman treasures it secretly, because it is a quality of her sex scarcely to be understood ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... influence to a system fraught with such consequences. The system positively denies the distinction between good and evil. It declares that we can not sin; that we are God, and God can not offend against himself; that sin is all simply an old lie; that impiety, immorality and vice of frightful mien are wedded in eternal decrees, and that man can not ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... doubts into some minds. It was asserted, however, that this English woman was rich, and that she had passed her life in traveling through every country in the world, because her family had thrown her off. Why had her family thrown her off. Because of her natural impiety? ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the Cyrenaics. In his odes, especially those written on public occasions, he uses, as all public men did, the language of the national religion. But both in religion and in philosophy he remains before all things a man of the world; his satire is more of manners and follies than of vice or impiety; and his excellent sense keeps him always to that "golden mean" in which he sums up the lesson of Epicurus. As a critic he shows the same general good sense, but his criticisms do not profess to be original or to go much beneath the surface. In Greek literature he ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... is instinctive and ferocious. Written law follows it closely, and is in more or less harmonious agreement with it. Hence we see that great-hearted men, or men of brilliant genius, have almost all been accused of impiety, and, like Socrates, the son of Phenaretes, and Benoit Malon, have been smitten by the tribunals of their country. And it may be stated that a man who has not, at the very least, been sentenced to imprisonment does little credit to ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... not only stand under a falling house, but pull it down upon us; and we are not only executed (that implies guiltiness), but we are executioners (that implies dishonour), and executioners of ourselves (and that implies impiety). And we fall from that comfort which we might have in our first sickness, from that meditation, "Alas, how generally miserable is man, and how subject to diseases" (for in that it is some degree of comfort that we are but in the state common to all), we ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... and the destroying of trust in our own act of confession. For a man will hardly go to mass without guilt, if he thinks his forgiveness sure because he has confessed, rather than because God is merciful; nay, this is altogether an impiety. The summa summarum[22] is, "Blessed are all they that put their trust in the Lord." [Ps. 2:12] When you hear this word, "in the Lord," know that he is unblessed who puts his trust in anything whatsoever ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... upon Margaret and implored her forgiveness, denouncing the woman who had followed him. He cursed her in horrible words. Even Abdul was surprised at their impiety. Once, when Abdul laid his fine fingers on his burning forehead, Michael took his hand eagerly and tried to kiss it. The next instant he rejected it and with the strength of delirium threw it from him and tried to get out ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... answer in writing upon it, and again shut himself in. The oracle had spoken: 'Wretched Romans, whither have ye strayed, and gone far from hope in God to put your trust in the Franks? Your city and your religion will perish together. You abandon the faith of your fathers and embrace impiety. Woe unto you in the day of judgment.' The words spread like wildfire and enflamed the excited crowd within and around the monastery. Anathemas, cursing all supporters of the union in the past, in the present, and ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... least and lowest Matters, and unregardful and cruel in important and everlasting Concerns, is, with regard to the Divine Being, a moral Impossibility; 'tis beneath human Nature and Prudence, and the Practice of a good Man; And yet these Doctrines teach this horrible impiety concerning the great ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch
... soul, full of mere vacant hearsay and windy babble, is and was no image of Heaven's Law; whom it never struck that Heaven had a Law, or that the Earth—could not have what kind of Law you pleased! Human Statute-books, accordingly, are growing horrible to think of. An impiety and poisonous futility every Law of them that is so made; all Nature is against it; it will and can do nothing but mischief wheresoever it shows itself in Nature: and such Laws lie now like an incubus ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... the Pope and the doctrines of men, consciences are miserably ensnared and vexed, especially in this illustrious German nation. If he should revoke these books, what would it be but to add force to tyranny, and to open, not merely the windows, but the doors to so great impiety? In that case, Good God, what a cover of wickedness and tyranny would he not become! A third class of his books had been written against private persons, those, namely, who had labored to protect the Roman tyranny and to undermine the piety which he had taught. In these he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... Addison. Besides the many Reasons I have already given in Relation to the French, I might add, that their Language is less fit for Tragedy, and the Servitude of their Rhime enervates the Force of the Diction. And as for Our Comedies, they are so full of Lewdness, Impiety and Immorality, and of such complicated perplexed Plots, so stuffed with Comparisons and Similies, so replenished with Endeavours at Wit and Smartness, that I cannot forbear saying, that whoever sees or reads them for Improvement (I make some Exceptions in this Censure) will find a contrary ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... rob us of ourselves, we take no mark Though round about us thousand trumpets clang! What moves thee, if the senses stir not? Light Kindled in heav'n, spontaneous, self-inform'd, Or likelier gliding down with swift illapse By will divine. Portray'd before me came The traces of her dire impiety, Whose form was chang'd into the bird, that most Delights itself in song: and here my mind Was inwardly so wrapt, it gave no place To aught that ask'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... of the two was as hot and earnest about the "Divine Right of Kings" as the parson who, less than forty years ago, preached a sermon to prove that the great cholera visitation of 1849 was a direct chastisement of the impiety of the Royal Mint in dropping the letters D.G. from the first florins of Queen Victoria issued in that year. He bewailed his sad fate in being called over to Ireland by family affairs at such a moment, and evidently did not know that ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... avowal. The burlesque erudition in which he sometimes indulged implies no more than the merest smattering of knowledge; whereas his acquaintance with blackguard haunts and industries could only have been acquired by early and consistent impiety and idleness. He passed his degrees, it is true; but some of us who have been to modern Universities will make their own reflections on the value of the test. As for his three pupils, Colin Laurent, Girard Gossouyn, and Jehan Marceau—if ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... existed no antechamber, no delay; disdaining the ordinary forms of etiquette, he paced slowly through the various apartments, until, with no usher to announce him, he reached that of Ali. The latter, whose impiety by no means saved him from superstitious terrors, rose hastily from the divan and advanced to meet the holy sheik, who was followed by a crowd of silent courtiers. Ali addressed him with the utmost respect, and endeavoured even to kiss his right hand. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Consalvi, in case he should suffer any violence during his journey. It was only with trembling and prayer that he had set foot on the volcanic soil of France, which, from a distance, seemed alive with impiety and terror. The unfailing respect with which he had been treated had comforted him somewhat. Whenever he visited a church, the Parisians followed him with mingled curiosity, sympathy, and veneration: they knelt to him as he passed them, and received with all decorum his apostolic benediction. ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... yielded to the progressive developments and revelations of time. It was the opinion of Socrates, for example, that the problem of the natural world was unavoidably concealed from mortals, and that it was a sort of presumptuous impiety, displeasing to the gods, for men to pry into it. If Newton himself had lived in that age, it is probable that he would have entertained the same opinion. It is certain that the problem in question would then have been as far beyond the reach of his powers, as beyond those ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... other hand, what had science done for religion? Simply this: Copernicus, escaping persecution only by death; Giordano Bruno, burned alive as a monster of impiety; Galileo, imprisoned and humiliated as the worst of misbelievers; Kepler, accused of "throwing Christ's kingdom into confusion with his silly fancies"; Newton, bitterly attacked for "dethroning Providence," ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... seize his right of love, and do a deed, that would render his name famous as the Athenian youth, who to get a fame, though an inglorious one, fired the temple of their gods. But his rage abating by consideration, that impiety dwelt not long with him: and he ran over a number more, till from one to another, he reduced himself, to a degree of moderation, which presenting him with some flattering hope, that give him a little ease: it was then that ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... under the grand silence of midnight, she decided alone her son's future, the spirit of the Basque ancestors passed, sombre and jealous also, disdainful of the stranger, fearful of impiety, of changes, of evolutions of races;—the spirit of the Basque ancestors, the old immutable spirit which still maintains that people with eyes turned toward the anterior ages; the mysterious antique spirit by which ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... as awful towards Omnipotence as the austere divinity of Milton. It would be presumption in me, however, to undertake the defence of any question in theology; but I have not been sensible to the imputed impiety, while I have felt in many passages influences that have their being amid the shadows and ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... Know that the middle way Is dearest unto God, and they thereon who wend, They shall achieve the end; But they who wander or to left or right Are sinners in his sight. Take to thy heart this one, this soothfast word— Of wantonness impiety is sire; Only from calm control and sanity unstirred Cometh true weal, the goal of ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... for the Trent affair. Men of Manchester, Englishmen, what reception can you give this man? He is the friend of General Butler. He is the friend of that so-called gospel preacher, Cheever. His impudence in coming here is only equalled by his cruelty and impiety." ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold
... was much wailing and lifting up of hands below stairs. Both uncles and aunts saw that the ruin of Bessy and her family was as complete as they had ever foreboded it, and there was a general family sense that a judgment had fallen on Mr. Tulliver, which it would be an impiety to counteract by too much kindness. But Maggie heard little of this, scarcely ever leaving her father's bedside, where she sat opposite him with her hand on his. Mrs. Tulliver wanted to have Tom ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... manifestations of devotion and enthusiasm by which the throne was surrounded, the Duchess of Berry regarded the future with entire confidence. Inclined by nature to optimism, the young and amiable Princess believed herself specially protected by Providence, and would have considered as a sort of impiety anything else than absolute faith in the duration of the monarchy and in respect for the rights of her son. Had any one of the court expressed the slightest doubt as to the future destiny of the CHILD OF MIRACLE, he would have been looked upon as an alarmist or a coward. The royalists were simple ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... trance she soon awaked; and Peregrine, having testified his pleasure and affection, went upstairs, and presented himself before his godfather and aunt. Mrs. Trunnion rose and received him with a gracious embrace, blessing God for his happy return from a land of impiety and vice, in which she hoped his morals had not been corrupted, nor his principles of religion altered or impaired. The old gentleman being confined to his chair, was struck dumb with pleasure at his appearance; and, having made divers ineffectual efforts to get ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... carried his point. With fine consistency, the conclave established that it was proper for the general public to "say it," provided "go to heaven" should in all cases precede it. This prefix was pronounced a perfect disinfectant, removing all odour of impiety or insult; and, with the exception of Georgie Bassett (who maintained that the minister's words were "going" and "gone," not "go"), all the boys proceeded to exercise their new privilege so lavishly that ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... replied with a sudden turn of her masked face and a murmur of surprise and protest against this impiety. A low, merry laugh came out of the Monk's cowl, and the Huguenotte let her form sink a little in her chair with ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... established the dead man's innocence. Sirven, a Protestant, declared guilty of the murder of his Roman Catholic daughter, was beggared and banished; Voltaire succeeded, after eight years, in effecting the reversal of the sentence. La Barre was tortured and decapitated for alleged impiety. Voltaire was not strong enough to overpower the French magistracy supported now by the French monarch. He turned to Frederick with a request that he would give shelter to a colony of philosophes, who should through the printing-press make a ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... of Athens we meet with the term asebeia—literally: impiety or disrespect towards the gods. As an established formula of accusation of asebeia existed, legislation must have dealt with the subject; but how it was defined we do not know. The word itself conveys the idea that the law particularly had offences against public ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... communion with them, have a right to be reckoned the ministers of religion, or to dispense any of its ordinances. Both having attempted to rob the Church of Christ of her privileges, the latter consummates the impiety of one who sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God; and the former, by giving to an earthly monarch the place over His Church which belongs to Christ alone, being an accomplice in crime, approves. Against these systems, that the blinded ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... gentle. I proceeded to answer myself thus: 'Perhaps it has been of advantage, as it has given weight to what you said: you could not, perhaps, have talked with such authority without it.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; I have done more good as I am. Obscenity and Impiety have always been repressed in my company[908].' BOSWELL. 'True, Sir; and that is more than can be said of every Bishop. Greater liberties have been taken in the presence of a Bishop, though a very good man, from his being milder, and therefore not commanding such awe. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... the sacred city whose name was so frequently on his mother's lips. For Dona Luisa, the French nation was Lourdes. In her discussions with her sister and other foreign ladies who were praying that France might be exterminated for its impiety, the good senora always summed up her opinions in the same words:—"When the Virgin wished to make her appearance in our day, she chose France. This country, therefore, cannot be as bad as you say. . . . When I see ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... however, they and their labourers were addressed in terms of respectful sympathy and flattery, as the victims of the rapacity of their landlords—on whom were poured the full phials of Anti-corn-law wrath. The following are some of the scalding drops let fall upon their devoted heads—"Monster of impiety!" "inhuman fiend!" "heartless brutes!" "rapacious harpies!" "relentless demons!" "plunderers of the people!" "merciless footpads!" "murderers!" "swindlers!" "insatiable!" "insolent!" "flesh-mongering!" "scoundrel!" "law-making landlords!" "a bread-taxing oligarchy!"[29] Need we say that the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... procession is ordered by the King and the Superintendents in conjunction; but the contest is managed by the King alone. He also manages all the contests of the torch-race; and to speak broadly, he administers all the ancestral sacrifices. Indictments for impiety come before him, or any disputes between parties concerning priestly rites; and he also determines all controversies concerning sacred rites for the ancient families and the priests. All actions for homicide come ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... impiety, loathsome and dread, With a chaos of darkness our Spain overspread, Thou wast the first light which dispell'd with its flames The hell-born obscurity, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... moral character, in the pursuance of his base intrigues, committed an act of sacrilege by entering the house of Csar, disguised as a woman, during the celebration of the mysteries of the Bona Dea, to which men were never admitted. He was tried for the impiety, and, through the efforts of Cicero, was almost convicted, though he managed to escape by bribery. He was ever afterward a determined enemy of the great orator, and, by the aid of Pompey, Csar, and Crassus, finally succeeded in having ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... their being universally charged with murder, robbery, and vices the most shocking to nature, every one, it was pretended, whom they received into their order, was obliged to renounce his Savior, to spit upon the cross,[*] and to join to this impiety the superstition of worshipping a gilded head, which was secretly kept in one of their houses ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... visited all the holy places for the good of his soul, and was almost tempted to wish that his father and mother were dead, so that he might free them from purgatory by his pious observances. Yet he was shocked by the impiety of the Italian churchmen and the scandalous stories about popes Alexander VI and Julius II, the latter of whom was just then engaged in his warlike expeditions into northern Italy. The evidences of immorality ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... nothing above a simple Priest. "Episcopacy, says he[583], that is to say the preheminence of a Pastor, is not contrary to the Divine right. It is incumbent on him who thinks otherwise, that is, who accuses the whole ancient Church of folly and impiety, to prove his opinion. That Episcopacy[584] was received by the whole Church appears from the general councils, which have always had great authority with all devout men; witness the national and provincial councils, where we find certain marks of the Episcopal ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... kinsmen slain, How should not we, who see, shun such a crime— We who perceive the guilt and feel the shame— O thou Delight of Men, Janardana? By overthrow of houses perisheth Their sweet continuous household piety, And-rites neglected, piety extinct— Enters impiety upon that home; Its women grow unwomaned, whence there spring Mad passions, and the mingling-up of castes, Sending a Hell-ward road that family, And whoso wrought its doom by wicked wrath. Nay, and the souls ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... the moment terrified at his denunciations; but no sooner had he left the church than he ordered the altar at which the saint had stood to be demolished; and a priest to proclaim and command the adherence of all persons to whatever pope their duke had adopted; but this impiety was signally visited, for the priest fell down dead at the altar as he was uttering the words. Also the dean, under whose auspices St. Bernard's altar had been destroyed, fell sick immediately, and died ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... needed no warning, as the impiety of striking a white man was forbidden in a larger book than the Bible—the book of ignorance. He disappeared through the houses and was a mile out of Princess Anne, driving fast, before the new man had raised his ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... steel or powder, held themselves justified in doing so, if possible, by vituperation, culumny, and every engine of moral torture. But a far more terrible weapon, and one which made Vesalius rage, and it may be for once in his life tremble, was the charge of impiety and heresy. The Inquisition was a very ugly place. It was very easy to get into it, especially for a Netherlander: but not so easy to get out. Indeed Vesalius must have trembled, when he saw his master, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... this extraordinary-looking being, who stood like a statue—with the exception of its arms, which it continued slowly to wave up and down in a series of mysterious signs, as if it would bar our progress in that direction; indeed, if I may not be accused of impiety by saying so, it reminded me of the angel with the flaming sword, stationed at the entrance of Eden to prohibit the return of our first parents,—though I am very certain that the idea must have been original so far as the Australian necromancer—for such, we concluded, was the character ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... not as one would say, healthy; but so sound as things that are hollow: thy bones are hollow; impiety has made a ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... to be supplied by the imagination of the reader. Even in such a narrative poem as Belshazzar the movement is staccato; we are invited to contemplate a series of moments; and if the subject is impiety and swift retribution, we are left to infer the fact from the evidence presented; there is neither editorial introduction nor moralizing conclusion. Similarly with The Two Grenadiers, a presentation of character in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... false predictions, or vain interpretations of dreams, some of them are fulfilled, either this is occasioned by chance or it is the work of the devil, who is often permitted by God to deceive those whose foolishness and impiety lead them to address themselves to him and place their confidence in him, all which the wise lawgiver, animated by the Divine Spirit, justly repressed ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... Order, the Islands of Malta and Gozo, ceded by the Emperor to the warrior friars for no other price than the annual tribute of a goshawk such as are native to the island. Old and worn he retired to Majorca, living off the products of the estates belonging to his commandery situated in Catalonia. The impiety and the vices of the hero horrified the family and scandalized the island. Three young Moorish girls and a Jewess of great beauty were his companions in the guise of servants where they occupied a whole ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... impiety; sin &c. 945; irreverence; profaneness &c. adj.; profanity, profanation; blasphemy, desecration, sacrilege; scoffing &c.v. [feigned piety] hypocrisy &c. (falsehood) 544; pietism, cant, pious fraud; lip devotion, lip service, lip reverence; misdevotion[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... reality. What is more, it is a result that we may look for equally among the formalists of established sects, and among the descendants of those who once deserted the homes of their fathers in order to escape from the impiety of so meretricious an abuse of the substance of godliness. In the case of the latter, appearances occupy the mind more than that love of God which is the one great test of human conversion from sin to an improving state of that ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... grammarians deny that any departure from such uniformity is allowable; yet, if the singular be put first, a plural pronoun may sometimes follow without obvious impropriety: as, "So Judah was carried away out of their land."—2 Kings, xxv, 21. "Israel is reproved and threatened for their impiety and idolatry."—Friends' Bible, Hosea, x. "There is the enemy who wait to give us battle."—Murray's Introductory Reader, p. 36. When the idea of plurality predominates in the author's mind, a plural verb is sometimes used before a collective noun that has the singular article an or a; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... administered; and decrees have been fulminated against many provinces, in order to check this. In fact, they have attained that object; but the result of this most fatal error has been the increase of impiety in an astonishing manner, and there are a great number of villages where few go to mass, and more than the third part refuse to take the communion—which is probably also the cause of the increase in criminality which has been noted. But a short time ago, during the government ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... religion. Her father seemed a puppet at its prayers, the choir a row of surpliced dolls, the organ an empty voice. Only at the end, when silence fell on the kneeling worshippers, did she wake with a start of contrition to the knowledge of her impiety, and blush between her little hands at her concentration upon the suspected sorrow of the young doctor. But in that night and that morning Lily ran forward towards Maurice, set her feet upon the line that divides men from women. She knew that she had done so only when she next encountered ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... beatus—is one who has not to dread the sea. Augustus, whose success had blessed not only his own country, but the whole world, had—not the least of his blessings—given to the seamen a calmed sea—pacatum mare. Lamenting at Virgil's departure for Athens, he rebukes the impiety of the first mariner who ventured, in the audacity of his heart, to go afloat and cross the briny barrier interposed between nations. He esteems a merchant favoured specially by the gods, should he twice or thrice a year return in safety from an Atlantic ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... religious enthusiasm, who had the care of their poultry and domestic animals, of which she was accustomed to inquire, one by one, if they loved God; when, not receiving an immediate answer in the affirmative, she would instantly put them to death, telling them that their impiety deserved no better fate. [ Juchereau, 45. A great mortification to these excellent nuns was the impossibility of keeping their white dresses clean among their Indian patients, so that they were forced to ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... with that design; but the sheriff of Air had, in the night-time, put a garrison of soldiers in the church to keep him out. Hugh Campbel of Kinzeancleugh with others of the parish were exceedingly offended at such impiety, and would have entered the church by force; but Mr. Wishart would not suffer it, saying, "Brethren, it is the word of peace which I preach unto you, the blood of no man shall be shed for it this day; Jesus Christ is as mighty in the fields as in the church, and he himself, while ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... meet by themselves, to consult concerning public affairs, as if they were impatient of the counsels and experience of their fathers. No country can prosper, where the ordinary mode of transacting the business connected with the root of the government, commences with this impiety." ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... small part because they had been city-dwellers back on Earth. There was one place where trees grew like banyans, and it was utterly impossible to penetrate them. They swerved aside. There was another spot where giant trees like sequoias made a cathedral-like atmosphere, and it seemed an impiety to speak. But Holden reported tonelessly in the walkie-talkie, and assured Jones and Al and Jamison that ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... tearing forth with ravenous bounds to flesh the fangs of his desires in bleeding virtue and innocence? Does the greatest satisfaction man is capable of here, the highest blessedness he can attain to, consist in drunkenness, gluttony, dishonesty, violence, and impiety? If he had the appetite of a tiger or a vulture, then, thus to wallow in the offal of vice, dive into the carrion of sensuality, abandon himself to revelling in carnivorous crime, might be his instinct and his happiness. But by virtue of his humanity man loves his fellows, enjoys the scenery of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the Church judges only by the outward. God absolves as soon as He sees penitence in the heart; the Church when she sees it in works. God will make a Church pure within, which confounds, by its inward and entirely spiritual holiness, the inward impiety of proud sages and Pharisees; and the Church will make an assembly of men whose external manners are so pure as to confound the manners of the heathen. If there are hypocrites among them, but so well disguised ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... years later her daughter was to be the first subject inoculated in England. She made rapid progress notwithstanding the opposition of the medical profession, and the ignorance and credulity of the public. The clergy vituperated her for the impiety of seeking to control the designs of Providence. Preaching in 1722, the Rev. Edward Massey, for example, affirmed that Job's distemper was confluent small-pox, and that he had been inoculated by the Devil. Lady Montagu, however, gained many supporters among the higher classes. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... murmuring, "Disaster?" Ortrud speaks with impressive mystery close to her ear: "Could you but comprehend what marvellous manner of being is the man—of whom I say but this: May he never forsake you through the very same magic by which he came to you!" Elsa starts away from Ortrud, in horror at such impiety,—disbelief in the highest. But in a moment her displeasure gives way to sadness and pity for the darkness in which this other woman lives. "Poor sister!" she speaks, most gently, "you can hardly conceive how unsuspecting is my heart! You have never known, belike, the ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... criminal trial a mine of gold for the jurymen. No law is any longer obeyed save only this one, that nothing is given for nothing. All virtues have vanished; in their stead the awakened man is saluted by impiety, perfidy, lewdness, as new denizens. "Alas for thee, Marcus, with such a sleep and such an awakening!"— The sketch resembles the Catilinarian epoch, shortly after which (about 697) the old man must ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... white,—and the disappointed fury of Ixion (taking shadow for power), mingle in the moral meaning of this and its collateral legends; and give an aspect, at last, not only of foolish cunning, but of impiety or literal "idolatry," "imagination worship," to the dreams of avarice and injustice, until this notion of atheism and insolent blindness becomes principal; and the "Clouds" of Aristophanes, with the personified "just" and "unjust" sayings in the latter part of the ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... how they have beaten him because he would not let them steal, also what dire woes they were going to work upon Polyphemus. In spite of their protests Silenus is believed: Ulysses promises, if set free, to erect shrines in Greece for the Cyclops, besides dwelling upon the impiety of attacking innocent strangers: Polyphemus replies that he does not care for shrines, and as for impiety he is independent of Zeus; which gives occasion for a glorification of the life of nature. They are driven into the cave to ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... elevated feeling, when the soul is upheld by a strange tranquility, which is really more passionate and less controllable than emotions far exceeding it in violence. He felt that there would be indelicacy, if he ought not rather to call it impiety, in his stealing upon Hilda, while she was thus beyond her own guardianship, and surprising her out of secrets which she might afterwards bitterly regret betraying to him. Therefore, though yearning to know what had happened, he resolved to ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... quaintly preposterous panegyric ever penned—he prefixed to it a long explanatory note, in the course of which he characterizes Don Juan as a "monstrous combination of horror and mockery, lewdness and impiety," regrets that it has not been brought under the lash of the law, salutes the writer as chief of the Satanic school, inspired by the spirits of Moloch and Belial, and refers to the remorse that will overtake him on his death-bed. To which Byron, inter alia: "Mr. Southey, with a ...
— Byron • John Nichol |
