"Unspiritual" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... truth of the famous text about the Torah: "It is a tree of life to them that grasp it, and of them that uphold it, everyone is rendered happy. Its paths are paths of pleasantness and all its ways are peace." Those who have mistakenly conceived the Jewish law as something dour and rigid, unlovable, unspiritual, should study the decisions and dicta of this ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... part, but real, unorganized as yet, but conscious that that which rudely interrupts their dream of centuries possesses over them at least two advantages,—power and material prosperity,—the things which unspiritual humanity, the world over, ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... and its open contempt of all religions but its own, was for a long time extremely repellent. To his simple mind, the professionalism of the pulpit, the paid exhorter, the moneyed church, was an unspiritual and unedifying thing, and it was not until his spirit was broken and his moral and physical constitution undermined by trade, conquest, and strong drink, that Christian missionaries obtained any real hold upon him. Strange as it may ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... expressed, to be able to give much appreciative thought to anything that lay beyond the direct province of reason. Yet, on the other hand, he was too deeply religious, and too watchful an observer, not to perceive that the unspiritual and sceptical tendencies of his age were fostered by the disparagement of all suprasensual ideas. The consequence is, that he deals with the subject without ease, and with the air of an apologist. This remark does not so much relate to the miracles. Upon them ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... was simple, monotonous, and laborious; and the chance of seeing the whole neighborhood together in their best clothes on Sunday, was a thing which, in the dearth of all other sources of amusement, appealed to the idlest and most unspiritual of loafers. They who did not care for the sermon or the prayers, wanted to see Major Broad's scarlet coat and laced ruffles, and his wife's brocade dress, and the new bonnet which Lady Lothrop had ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... cannot be a Christian unless he be circumcised.' The other would be in danger of replying, 'He cannot be a Christian if he is.' There may be as much formalism in protesting against forms as in using them. Extremes meet; and an unspiritual Quaker, for instance, is at bottom of the same way of thinking as an unspiritual Roman Catholic. They agree in their belief that certain outward acts are essential to worship, and even to religion. They only differ as to what these acts are. The Judaiser who says, 'You must be circumcised,' and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... main characteristics of Adrian, surnamed van Goorl; Adrian the superstitious but unspiritual dreamer, the vain Sybarite, the dull poet, the chopper of false logic, the weak and passionate self-seeker, whose best and deepest cravings, such as his love for his mother and another love that shall be told of, were really little more than a reflection of his own ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the same ecstasy; only, on Alice's face it was more luminous, more conscious, and at the same time more abandoned, as if all subterfuge had ceased in her and she gave herself up, willing and exulting, to the unspiritual sense that flooded her. ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... tried solitude. On asking to be shut up in a cell, he had said to himself: "The thought of Glory is a temptation of my unquickened and unspiritual nature. It has already betrayed me into an act of cowardice and inhumanity, and it will drive me out into the world and fling me back again, as it drove out and flung back Brother Paul." But the result of his solitude was specious and deceitful. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... was in certain spiritual—or, to be more precise, unspiritual—moods he refused to shave, but wore the stubble on his chin, either by way of mourning or defiance, as the case might be. On this Sabbath he presented a ferocious chin to the congregation, after having waited patiently for all of the resigners to ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... speculate on the creation of things or the end of them. He was not troubled to account for the origin of man, nor did he seek to know about his hereafter. He meddled neither with physics nor metaphysics [2]. [Sidebar] Subjects on which Confucius did not treat.— That he was unreligious, unspiritual, and open to the charge of insincerity. The testimony of the Analects about the subjects of his teaching is the following:— 'His frequent themes of discourse were the Book 1 Mencius, II. Pt. I. ii. 23-28. 2 'The contents of the Yi-ching, ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... Raes de la Riviere, lord of Heers. On July 5, 1465, there was to be unbroken silence in all sacred edifices. Heers and his followers proclaimed that every priest who refused to chant should be thrown into the river. Mass was said under those unpeaceful and unspiritual conditions, and the presence of the French envoys gave new heart to the bishop's opponents. A treaty was signed between the Liegeois and Louis; wherein mutual pledges were made that no peace should be concluded with Burgundy in which ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... than to believe that all that heavenly orchestration is going on while Xerxes is possibly in an Apocalyptic hell, and his hosts either bearing him company or wandering aimlessly about in the same stupid, stolid, unmoral, unspiritual condition in which they were the moment they were engulfed in those blue waters. Why, Nero fiddling while Rome was burning is a pleasant memory ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... the too-small looking-glass. There was utter satisfaction in each gesture of that whole operation, as if her spirit, long starved, were having a good meal. In this rapt contemplation of herself, all childish vanity and expectancy, and all that wonderful quality found in simple unspiritual natures of delighting in the present moment, were perfectly displayed. So, motionless, with her hair loose on her neck, she was like one of those half-hours of Spring that have lost their restlessness and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the sole accredited agent of the Eternal God, relaxes its hold upon the ever-expanding life of Humanity, all those developments of human nature which cease to be amenable to its control come to be regarded as mundane, as unspiritual, as carnal, as matters with ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... what they love or could have loved, Though accident, blind contact, and the strong Necessity of loving, have removed Antipathies—but to recur, ere long, Envenomed with irrevocable wrong; And Circumstance, that unspiritual God And Miscreator, makes and helps along Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,[502] Whose touch turns Hope to dust,—the dust we ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... said, "I feel about discouraged. Of what use is all our praying and longing for the Holy Spirit, when our own church members are so cold and unspiritual that all His influence is destroyed? You know I made a special plea to all the members to come out to-night, yet only a handful were there. I feel like giving up the struggle. You know I could make a better living in literary work, and the children could ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... expect to determine, without a telescope, the magnitude and distance of the stars, as to expect to obtain health, harmony, and holiness through an unspiritual and unhealing religion. Christianity reveals God as ever-present Truth and Love, to be utilized in healing the sick, in casting out ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... seems to know, that we mourn or rejoice, and if she could feel with us she would; but she cannot quite do so. Like Ariel, she would be grieved with the grief of Gonzalo, were her affections human. She has then a wild, unhuman, unmoral, unspiritual interest in us, like a being who has an elemental life, but no soul. But sometimes she is made to go farther, and has the same kind of interest in us which Oberon has in the loves of Helena and Hermia. When we are loving, and on the verge of such untroubled ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Mr. Haley glared at Polk for an hour out here on my porch, when he interrupted us in one of our Epworth League talks, in such an unspiritual manner that Polk said he felt as if he had been introduced to the Apostle Paul while he was still Saul of Tarsus. I had to pet the Dominie decorously for a week before he regained his benign manner. Of course, however, it was trying to even a highly spiritual nature like his to have Polk ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... lend a peculiar charm to its boldness; we have the soul of courage without the rough outside which so often accompanies it; and his diction, being on a level with his themes, never offends that fine detecting spiritual taste which instinctively takes offence when spiritual things are viewed through unspiritual moods and clothed in words which smack of the senses. Combine all his characteristics, his intrepidity of disposition and intellect, his deep experience of religious truth, the sad earnestness of his faith, his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... with the lowest of my brethren, sharing with them the same Divine life." Yet our Divinity is only realised as we recognise that same Divinity in others. You may remember that exquisite story of Olive Schreiner, breathing the very essence first of the unspiritual, and then of the spiritual life. In the first case a woman, pure and spotless, her garments shining with whiteness, and her feet shod as with snow, went up to the Gates of Heaven and trod the golden streets. And as she trod them in her shining robes the ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... evangelistic efforts by their worldly lives. When Jesus Christ was on earth, it is recorded, 'He could there do no mighty works because of their unbelief, save that He laid His hands on a few sick folk and healed them.' A faithless Church, a worldly Church, a lazy Church, an unspiritual Church, an un-Christlike Church—which, to a large extent, is the designation of the so-called Church of to day—can clog His chariot-wheels, can thwart the work, can hamper the Divine Worker. If the Christians of Manchester were revived, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... When the avalanche swedged and came to rest I found myself on top of the crumpled pile without bruise or scar. This was a fine experience. Hawthorne says somewhere that steam has spiritualized travel; though unspiritual smells, smoke, etc., still attend steam travel. This flight in what might be called a milky way of snow-stars was the most spiritual and exhilarating of all the modes of motion I have ever experienced. Elijah's flight ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... the Hermit and his influence on the Crusades, and in the same capacity it was he who exposed the fabrication of the queen's letters. Indeed he was so sturdy a critic that he scorned to read the fictitious Hardenberg, although the work contains good material. He more than shared the unspiritual temper of the school, and fearing alike the materialistic and the religious basis of history, he insisted on confining it to affairs of state. Having a better eye for institutions than his master, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... commandment of the creative artist, has been a friend and leader in the life of the spirit: to Mr Arnold he was only a sort of unspiritual innkeeper. To Mr Arnold, Maurice de Guerin, with his second-hand Quinetism, was a friend and leader in the life of the spirit; others scarcely find him so. "This is this to thee and that ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... Christian belief and practice, so serious, or so violent, as to answer to the notion of a great corruption or perversion of the Primitive Religion? Was there ever a time, what was the time, when Christianity was not that which Protestants protest against, as if formal, unspiritual, self-righteous, superstitious, and unevangelic? If that time cannot be pointed out, is not "the Religion of Protestants" a matter, not of past historical fact, but of modern private judgment? Have they anything to say in defence of their idea of the Christianity of the first centuries, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... its waste places with stars, and fills all its abysses with blazing glories. 'If light so much conceals, wherefore not life?' Let us hold fast by a deeper wisdom than is born of sense; and though men, nowadays, seem to be willing to go back to the 'eternal sleep' of the most unspiritual heathenism, and to cast away all that Christ has brought us concerning that world where He has been and whence He has returned, because positive science and the anatomist's scalpel preach no gospel of a future, let us try to feel as well as to believe that it is life, with all its stunted capacities ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren |
