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Worldliness   /wˈərldlinəs/   Listen
Worldliness

noun
1.
The quality or character of being intellectually sophisticated and worldly through cultivation or experience or disillusionment.  Synonyms: mundaneness, mundanity, sophistication.
2.
Concern with worldly affairs to the neglect of spiritual needs.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Worldliness" Quotes from Famous Books



... homes or in our synagogues with the social, political and industrial problems upon which was riveted the attention of the men of light and leading. To most of us the faith of our fathers seemed little more than a medley of needless restraints, other-worldliness, and hostility to ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... sharp enough to see through its contradictions and absurdities; he has no dread of losing what he never valued; his sense of antiquity, of history, is nil; and his life supplies him with excitement enough without the stimulants of 'other-worldliness.' Religion has been on the whole irrationally presented to him, and the result on his part has been an irrational breach with the whole moral and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... William, and, I am thankful to add, with the Princess of Prussia, mother of the future King. It is a striking and consoling and instructive proof that what is called the world, the great world, is not necessarily worldly in itself, but only by that inward worldliness which, as rebellion against the spirit, creeps into the cottage as well as into the palace, and against which no outward form is any protection. Forms and rules may prevent the outbreak of wrong, but cannot ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... was strange, that, never having seen Alice but once, I should have felt such a deep and complete conviction of her goodness and purity, of the angelic nature of the spirit which was shrouded in that fair form, that as the idea of guilt in her intercourse with Henry, so now, that of worldliness, of ambition, or of indelicacy, in having made this secret marriage, never presented itself to my mind. Perhaps it might yet turn out well; he might grow to love and to prize her, and she would stand between him and me like an angel of peace. He could not but admire the faultless beauty of her ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... She thought dancing and card-playing dangerous pastimes—only rough people did such things when she was a girl in Vermont—and "worldliness" only another word for wickedness. According to her conception of education, one should learn, not think; and above all, one must not enquire. The history of the human race, as it lay behind one, was already explained; and so was its destiny, which lay before. ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... of the visible churches that tells most against them today in the minds of educated men is not worldliness or unfaithfulness; it is their inability to shake off their untenable position as judges of others. The "Church" in Jesus' day judged him unfit to live. Upon Luther, Wesley, and many of the best servants of the human race the churches to which they belonged passed similar ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell

... the primitive virtues of probity, sincerity, and godly zeal. These were the qualities which obtained for him the celebration of Spenser in his "Shepherd's Calendar," where he is designated by the name of Algrind, and described as a true teacher of the Gospel and a severe reprover of the pride and worldliness of the popish clergy. The lines were written during the period of the prelate's disgrace, which is allegorically related ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... mother and Aunt Nettie and little brother, to the Reverend MacGill with his fascinating smile and good works, to everybody—the whole town—the whole world. Even to Genevieve Hicks, though she seemed so self-satisfied with her white fox furs and giggling ways and utter worldliness—yet, there were many things likeable about Genevieve if you didn't let yourself get prejudiced. And Missy didn't ever want to let herself get prejudiced—narrow and harsh and bigoted like so many Christians. No; she wanted to be a sweet, loving, generous, ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... felt the sweetness of her lovely character. The secret of this change was known to but few, and they kept it sacred. Not even Mrs. Loring, the good-hearted aunt, who loved her with a mother's maternal fondness, was admitted into her confidence, for she felt that mere worldliness would bruise her heart by contact. But the change, though its causes were not seen, was perceived as something to love, by Aunt Phoebe, who felt for her niece a daily ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur

... that their best chance of success in life lay in creating a sensation. Of what use can it be to create a sensation? Who profits by it? What influence can this sort of thing have upon the morals of a great and vital nation? If Christ with His warnings against worldliness were to come down to-day, after giving Him one hearing the crowd would not crucify Him, they ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith

... religion" there is no reason to suppose that he would not one day have been a cabinet minister. However, as it was, Mrs. Mortemer died cherishing with her last breath a profound conviction that her son would soon be a bishop. That he was not likely to become a bishop was due to the fact that with all his worldliness, with all his wealth, with all his love of wire-pulling, with all his respect for rank he held definite opinions and was not afraid to belong to a minority unpopular in high places. He had too a simple piety that made his church a power ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... and worldliness, are always found in company; but it is sometimes difficult to determine which of the two goes first, and draws the other after it. You seldom meet a man who neglects this great salvation, and neglects also the gains and the pleasures of life. Those who ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... afforded to earnest believers in even the worst forms of Christianity are of great practical advantage to them. What deductions must be made from this gain on this score of the harm done to the citizen by the ascetic other-worldliness of logical Christianity; to the ruler, by the hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness of sectarian bigotry; to the legislator, by the spirit of exclusiveness and domination of those that count themselves pillars of orthodoxy; to the philosopher, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... frivolity and worldliness at Fallkill traveled to Philadelphia in due time, and occasioned no little ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... distance, but the rebuke of his own conscience kept him mute. He felt that his communion with these holy men was in seeming only, and it shamed him to contrast their quiet service of the Eternal with the turbid worldliness ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... dear?" returned Chapman, with a sigh. "A ball a year ought to satisfy any respectable family." Chapman was indeed becoming alarmed at his wife's extravagance and weakness for society. Her worldliness he feared would bring him to grief ere long. The last ball had entailed the expense of new carpets; and the young gentlemen had quite taken possession of the house, which they held until after daylight, and then went home in a very unsteady condition of the ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams

... boys brought up with the best surroundings in a Massachusetts village, where the college atmosphere prevailed. He had his boyish pleasures and his trials, his share of that queer mixture of nineteenth century worldliness and almost austere Puritanism, which is yet characteristic of many ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... perfect a type of national government has only once been reached in the history of the human race. And in spite of the seeds of evil in its own impatience, and in the gradually increasing worldliness of the mercantile body; in spite of the hostility of the angry soldier, and the malignity of the sensual priest, this government gave to Europe the entire cycle of Christian art, properly so called, and every highest Master of labour, architectural, scriptural, or pictorial, practised ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... garments of excessive fineness, either to attire themselves, as if they were the brides of men, or to bestow them on people outside." One must admit that here and there in the writings of the period, there are references to this worldliness in some monasteries; but whatever may have been the state of things at a later date, there does not seem to be evidence of graver misdeeds in these early years of monasticism in England. Bede uses perhaps unnecessary severity in speaking ...
— Early Double Monasteries - A Paper read before the Heretics' Society on December 6th, 1914 • Constance Stoney

... been schooled in the art of acting, but not in the art of dissimulation; she had been of the world without having been worldly; and sometimes she was as frank and simple as a child. And worldliness makes a buffer in times like these. Cathewe thanked God for his own shell, toughened as it had been in the war ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... song of conversion in the portion of the cantata in which the new air is placed. It is clear from the original preface[2] that he thought of her as an impulsive woman who would naturally be carried from worldliness into the ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... up the slumbering gift that is lying unused, and seek to gather and train and band together as many as we can, to be God's remembrancers, and to give Him no rest till He makes His Church a joy in the earth. Nothing but intense believing prayer can meet the intense spirit of worldliness, of ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray

... all the more powerful in that it is directed against foibles more than against vices. Many a reader who will reject Swift's portrait of man as a libel, cannot but feel a twinge at Thackeray's delicate pencillings. After dwelling on the worldliness, the hypocrisy, the self-seeking of the inmates of Queen's Crawley, how softly but how terribly he scourges them! "These honest folks at the Hall, whose simplicity and sweet rural purity surely show the advantage of a country life over a town one." His praise is the severest cut of all. ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... is rather unobtrusive than obscure. I mean a singular unworldliness of thought and feeling; a cherished idealism; an inborn magnanimity. Not the unworldliness of the study and the cloister, or the other-worldliness of such poets as Dante and Milton, but the unworldliness of a man of the world, the idealism that is closely allied with humour. And it is in this union and not elsewhere that the "breadth" of Shakespeare, of which we hear so much, is found. This unworldliness is elusive, ubiquitous, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... Children! is there any heart so sheathed in worldliness, or benumbed by sorrow, or hardened in its very nature, as to feel no gentle thrill responding to these terms? Surely, in some way these little ones have "touched the finer issues" of our being, and given us an unconscious ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... up many things for Sarka, though it piled higher upon his shoulders the weight of his responsibilities. The other-worldliness of Lunar, called now Luar, explained her mastery of the Gnomes, and through them the cubes, and her knowledge of the omnipotent qualities of the white flames of the Moon's core, which might have been, it came to Sarka in a flash, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... a grimace behind his hand, which I fancy he did not mean his father to see. Then, he went on, "'They say' that Mr Whitefield is so fanatical and extravagant in preaching against worldliness, that he counts it sinful to smell to a rose, or to eat ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... and the other, at times, of defiant irreverence. It was Pierce whose visits Toombs most enjoyed at his own home, with whom he afterward talked of God and religion. The good bishop lived to bury the devoted Christian wife of the Georgia statesman, and finally, when the dross of worldliness was gone, to receive into the Methodist Church the bowed and weeping figure of ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... in delight, "and if I should ever—-. Yet no, Isabella and I cannot be compared. My husband will never be numbered among the admirers of another woman, like your detestable brother-in-law. Besides, he is wasting time with Cordula. Her worldliness repels Eva, it is true, but I have heard many pleasant things about her. Alas! she is a motherless girl, and her father is an old reveller and huntsman, who rejoices whenever she does any audacious act. But he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... hardness and the worldliness were produced, if they existed at all, by the hardness of the circumstances into which I was thrown, and the worldliness of the persons with whom I ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... straightening himself up and speaking in a dignified tone, "yes, I'm fixin' to do better. I'm preparin' fer to shake worldliness. I'm done quit so'shatin' wid deze w'ite town boys. Dey've been a goin' back on me too rapidly here lately, an' now I'm ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris

... brutishness, simply by calculations of pleasure and pain, by observing what actions would pay in the long run and what would not; and so learnt to conquer his selfishness by a more refined and extended selfishness, and exchanged his brutality for worldliness, and then, in a few instances, his worldliness for next-worldliness. I hope I need not say that I do not believe this theory. If I did, I could not be a Christian, I think, nor a philosopher either. At least, if I thought that human civilisation had sprung from such a dunghill as that, I should, ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley

... sufficient is known to show us that it was once a very famous abbey, and a place of instruction for many royal and noble ladies, in its early days the discipline of the Benedictine rule seems to have been well maintained, though in later years faith grew cold and worldliness prevailed within its walls, as indeed it did in many another monastery and nunnery, so that when the old order changed giving place to new, the people of the country, especially in what was once the original kingdom of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins

... and He who is greater than the conscience, can tell where worldliness prevails. Each heart must answer for itself, and at its own risk. That our souls are committed to our own keeping, at our own peril, in a world so mixed as this, is the last reason we should slumber over the charge, or betray the trust. If only that outlet to the Infinite is kept open, the inner ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... dualism, its formalism, its tendency to transform the moral opposition of natural and spiritual into an external opposition between two natural worlds, present and future, and thus to substitute "other-worldliness" for worldliness, instead of substituting unworldliness for both—all these characteristics were the natural results of the fact that the idea of Christianity, in its first abstract form, could not include, and therefore necessarily became opposed to, the forms of social life and organization ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... keeps me in a rather nervous state of breathless apprehension as to what she may say or do next. I cannot talk much, either to her or Charles Greville; neither of them understands a word that I say. Her utter unusualness perplexes me, and his ingrain worldliness provokes me; but I listened with great pleasure to some political talk between Charles Greville, Mr. Grote, and the Italian patriot, Prandi. You know that, fond as I am of talking, I like listening better, when I can hear what I think worth listening to. I was delighted ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... home—some joyous with the mirth of children, the hopefulness of youth, the serene happiness of useful and contented men and women;—some shadowed by recent sorrow, where perhaps patriots, as in the olden time, learn to endure for the sake of a beloved country;—or others, perchance, where worldliness, discord, and egotism have severed hearts that should be united. God grant the number of the latter may be few! Happy should we be, could we know that our arrival would bring one more smile to the lips of the gay, a single ray of support or consolation to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... the summer in the mountains,—a sojourn recommended for her mother's health; and in the autumn she had somewhat abruptly decided to go East to boarding-school at Farmington. During the brief months of her absence she had marvellously acquired maturity and aplomb, a worldliness of manner and a certain frivolity that seemed to put those who surrounded her on a lower plane. She was only seventeen, yet she seemed the woman of thirty whose role she played. First there were murmurs, then sustained applause. I scarcely recognized her: she had taken wings and soared far above ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the shimmer and sparkle of beautiful silks and jewels, the prestige of "carriage trade," the distinction of presence of some of the customers and their wealth and their freedom in buying—all the worldliness of the most moneyed city of the United States here perpetually passes before the eyes of Zettas in their $1.20 muslin waists so carefully scrubbed the midnight before, and of Alices who have had breakfasts for 10 cents. Is it surprising that they should adopt the New York shop-window-display ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt

... in a time of great activity and change, and intense worldliness. "Men run to and fro and knowledge is increased." Would that we could feel that there is an increase also in integrity and virtue, and respect for Religion. We all know that it is not so. So far as we can form accurate ideas of the social ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... acquainted with Catherine's natural good qualities, and more and more attached to his home, had Mr. Beaufort, with the generosity of true affection, desired to remove from her the pain of an equivocal condition by a public marriage. But Mr. Beaufort, though generous, was not free from the worldliness which had met him everywhere, amidst the society in which his youth had been spent. His uncle, the head of one of those families which yearly vanish from the commonalty into the peerage, but which once formed ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the Revolution is dominated by political and practical interests; it deals frankly with this present world, aims to find the best way through its difficulties, and so appears in marked contrast with the theological bent and pervasive "other worldliness" of Colonial writings. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... showed her a photograph of his work. She looked at it long. For an instant her worldliness dropped from her. She glanced shrewdly at Lewis's face. He met her eyes frankly. Then she ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... mysterious power that brings the infinite within us into contact with the infinite that surrounds us. She became the sinner awakening to repentance, and yearning for the atoning peace of the cloister, a Magdalen of Art, touched on the high road of worldliness and frivolity by the mystic sublimity of the Beautiful; and she cast herself at the feet of Him, the supreme Master, as the most victorious of men, lord of the mystery that moves ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... from that excellent man the Reverend Lawrence Grills, Minister of the chapel in May Fair, which she frequented; and how her views were very much changed by circumstances and misfortunes; and how she hoped that a past life spent in worldliness and error might not incapacitate her from more serious thought for the future. She described how in former days she had been indebted to Mr. Crawley for religious instruction, touched upon the Washerwoman of Finchley Common, which she had read with the greatest profit, and asked about Lady Emily, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... lean sunburnt cheeks. Ethel clung always to his affection. She wanted that man, rather than any other in the whole world, to think well of her. When she was with him, she was the amiable and simple, the loving impetuous creature of old times. She chose to think of no other. Worldliness, heartlessness, eager scheming, cold flirtations, marquis-hunting and the like, disappeared for a while—and were not, as she sate at that honest man's side. O me! that we should have to record ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... learning, artists were free to give greater importance to secular subjects, and an element of worldliness, and even of immorality, invaded the realm of art as it invaded the realms of ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... positive and eternal bliss, should be the Chinese form of the Indian faith is equally intelligible. After a like manner it is the humanism of our Protestant preaching today from which men are defecting into utter worldliness and indifference on the one hand and returning to mediaeval and Catholic forms ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... kind of Etonian, with much good that he had got from Eton, with something better, not to be got at Eton or any other school. He had those pleasant manners and that perfect ease in dealing with men and with the world which are the inheritance of Eton, without the least tincture of worldliness. I remember well the look he then had, his countenance massive for one so young, with good sense and good feeling, in fact, full of character. For it was character more than special ability which marked him out from others, and made ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the saints his heart was touched. His eyes were opened to the vanity of life and the reality of eternity compared with the worldliness of the life he had been leading. Inspired with enthusiasm at the lives of the saints, he said, "What they have done, I can do." The event of his life proved the earnestness of ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola

... had dropped in the harness and younger men were taking up the relay race. They were men, he feared, who were not to be altogether trusted; men beguiled by dangerous novelties of trend. With worldliness of thought pressing always forward; with atheism increasing, they were compromising and, it seemed to him, giving way cravenly, ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... than to destroy, and that, before the fabric of truth, superstition would crumble away of itself. The little he taught her sounded to Noemi's puzzled ears mere Christianity instead of controversial Calvinism. And, moreover, he never blamed her for wicked worldliness when she yawned; but even devised opportunities for taking her out for a walk, to see as much life as might be on a market-day. He could certainly not forget—as much as would have been prudent—that she was a high-born lady; ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... soul! behold her: what decorous calm! She, with her week-day worldliness sufficed, Stands in her pew and hums her decent psalm With decent dippings at the name of Christ! And she has mov'd in that smooth way so long, She hardly can believe that she ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... from encouraging the materialist's view of life. It has no place for monks or hermits, who think they can serve God best by renouncing the world; but, on the other hand, it sternly rebukes the worldliness that knows no ideal but sordid pleasures, no God but Self. It commends to us the golden mean—the safe line of conduct that lies midway between the rejection of earthly joys and the worship of them. ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... occupation. Mavis made her some tea, and the girl (who was called "Lil") prevailed upon her hostess to accept cigarettes. If the girl had been typical of her class, Mavis would have had nothing to do with her; but although Lil made a brave show of cynicism and gay worldliness, Mavis's keen wits perceived that these were assumed in order to conceal the girl's secret resentment against her habit of life. Mavis, also, saw that the girl's natural kindliness of heart and refined instincts entitled ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... admitted that they are only needed, longed for and obtained, after a period of spiritual decline and general worldliness. A Church that is alive and active needs no revival. A lifeless Church does. Better then, far better, to use every right endeavor to keep the Church alive and active, than permit it to grow cold and worldly, ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding

... no other piece of modern English, prose or poetry, in which there is so much told, as in these lines {'The Bishop orders his Tomb'}, of the Renaissance spirit,—its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin. It is nearly all that I said of the Central Renaissance in thirty pages of the 'Stones of Venice' put into as many lines, Browning's ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... "Irreverence for the dreams of youth" always comes from "the hardening of the heart." But youth has some fantastic as well as some noble dreams, so that docility is a better quality than independence in a very young person. If a worldly minded mother inculcates worldliness in her daughter, the daughter certainly ought to stand firm against the teaching; but if the daughter merely thinks she would rather read Browning than go to a party which her mother wishes her to attend, I think it is best for her to go to ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... feeling was as sensitive to the mark of subserviency which the payment of tribute kept ever before them as the Roman authorities were to the slightest suspicion of revolt against their sway. In none of his words had Jesus so clearly asserted the simple other-worldliness of his doctrine of the kingdom of God as in his answer to the question about tribute. For him loyalty to the actual earthly sovereign was quite compatible with loyalty to God, the lower obligation was in fact a summons to be scrupulous also to render to God his due,—a duty ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees

... Denton it was different. He was thoroughly astonished and amazed. It was the first time in his life that he had ever heard a word from his father's lips that was not freighted with the so-called wisdom of worldliness. ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon

... looked at Lancelot with one of those kindly thoughtful smiles, which came over him whenever his better child's heart could bubble up through the thick crust of worldliness. ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... manner as suggested that it should be scraped off with a knife, but with experience gaining a certain specious knowledge of forms. How the over-mature child at school had assimilated her uncanny young worldliness, it would have been less difficult to decide, if possible sources had been less numerous. The air was full of it, the literature of the day, the chatter of afternoon teas, the gossip of the hour. Before she was fifteen she saw the indiscretion of her childish frankness, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... him as a father, and here nothing disturbed his serenity. It is true that, from an appreciation of the lustre which would reflect back upon himself from allowing his son to become a decidedly fashionable young man, he had encouraged him in extravagance, dissipation, and heartless worldliness; he had brought him up to be supercilious, expensive, unprincipled, and useless. But then, he was gentlemanlike, dignified, and sought after; and now, the father reflected, with satisfaction, that, if he could accomplish his well-conceived scheme, he would pay his ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... awoke to remorse; she saw herself disloyal to her man, her sovereign and bread-winner, in whom (with what she had of worldliness) she took a certain subdued pride. She expatiated in reply on my lord's honour and greatness; his useful services in this world of sorrow and wrong, and the place in which he stood, far above where babes and innocents could hope to see or criticise. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... outside the Kingdom or to those within it. The birds are continually carrying off the seed from thoughtless and hardened hearers; opposition and persecution and temptation still scorch up the seed in others; and worldliness and love of money still choke that which was beginning to grow well in many hearts. And we can see all these characters, in those who were first called to be members of the Church of Christ. The Jews, generally, in all places ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge

... cherished the delight of that moment from that day to this. It was the first thing I did the other day to go and hunt up that shop and hand in my hat to have it ironed. I said when it came back, "How much to pay?" They said, "Ninepence." In seven years I have acquired all that worldliness, and I am sorry to be back where I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the rose upon her bosom; her face was glorified by its expression. And Clotilda's ill-concealed scorn and jealousy not only detracted from her queenly beauty, but the flower paled as it touched her breast—pride and worldliness, and every selfish passion, had swayed her being too long, to be repressed at a moment's notice—like the fumes of poison, they were taking away the life of the precious rose. It was impossible that the contrast should not be noticed: comparisons were made which filled the mind of the despotic ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins

... from your Lord flits past you, like the idle wind through an archway, because you are not listening for His voice. If we kept down the noise of that 'household jar within'; if we silenced passion, ambition, selfishness, worldliness; if we withdrew ourselves, as we ought to do, from the Babel of this world, and 'hid ourselves in His pavilion from the strife of tongues'; if we took less of our religion out of books and from other people, and were ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... when Thomson's Seasons was published, which was in 1730, the third year of George II., that life which had burned on in the hidden corners of the church in spite of the worldliness and sensuality of its rulers, began to show a flame destined to enlarge and spread until it should have lighted up the mass with an outburst of Christian faith and hope. I refer to the movement called Methodism, in the midst ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... and vexed that she did not like Polly any more than in a cousinly way. Whether Polly was right in saying that Joanna was romantic or not, Polly had not a particle of romance in her constitution, though much was flourishing, fresh, and fragrant, in pure, commonplace, selfish, good-natured worldliness, for it is a mistake to suppose that quality (without hypocrisy) has not its attractive guise. Without knowing herself romantic, Joanna was apt to quarrel in her own mind with cleverer girls, accomplished girls, pleasant girls, even good ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... the rounds after his death which neatly illustrates his lack of worldliness. His modesty was proverbial, and once Daubigny, on introducing him to an American picture dealer, warned him not to ask less than five thousand francs for the first picture he sold to the man. The American went to Daumier's atelier, and seeing a picture on the easel, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... ugly thoughts for a time. You may go on wantonly in sin, and worldliness, and self-will. And then, by way of falling deeper still, you may take up with some false sort of religion, which makes people fancy that they know God, and are one of His elect, while in works they deny Him, and their sinful ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... fantastic and painful in its plot. Balzac's ideal woman, the Pauline of the Peau de Chagrin, is here placed in a situation revolting even to a Parisian audience; but the selfish worldliness of the rich and noble is contrasted with the pure disinterestedness of a poor working girl in all of Balzac's strongest, most searching style. The denouement is well brought about and satisfactory, but scarcely atones for the outrageous ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden

... (1706-90), who was strictly contemporary with Edwards, was a contrast to him in every respect. As Edwards represents the spirituality and other-worldliness of Puritanism, Franklin stands for the worldly and secular side of American character, and he illustrates the development of the New England Englishman into the modern Yankee. Clear rather than subtle, without ideality ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... to Mr. Bowen. I wanted to study his face, and as I listened in silence, the conversation between the pastor and this member of his flock was a new and beautiful revelation to me. The one seemed to help the other, while no stain of worldliness marred the even flow of their words. After awhile Mrs. Blake handed the minister a well-worn Bible. He opened it and turned the leaves thoughtfully, pausing at last at the 103d Psalm. I looked at Mr. Bowen while Mr. Lathrop was reading. His lips were ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... be a sign of something deeper? Here it is not a sign. Why not? Will it ever be so? To put the case in its short, simple, concrete form, how can a 'flirt' exist when by all the laws of the universe beauty should surely be a sign not of instability, insipidity, unspirituality, worldliness, shallowness, ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson

... of recreation which, in themselves might be harmless, and, under certain circumstances, unobjectionable, but they have become associated with worldliness and godlessness, and have proved snares and temptations to many a young heart and life; and, therefore, the law of love would lead you to avoid them, discountenance them, and in no way give encouragement to others to participate ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... charming lightness on all the incongruities of life, always, too, in kindly spirit. No foible is too trifling for Chaucer's quiet observation; while if he does not choose to denounce the hypocrisy of the Pardoner and the worldliness of the Monk, he has made their weaknesses sources of amusement (and indeed object-lessons as well) for all ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... wicked; and a solution was sought in the doctrine of a Messianic kingdom, until Christianity with its proclamation of a future life set the question entirely aside. By its appeal to what has been aptly termed "other-worldliness," Christianity immeasurably intensified human responsibility, besides rendering clearer its nature and limits. But according to Lessing, yet another step remains to be taken; and here we come upon the gulf which separates him from men of the stamp of Theodore Parker. For, says Lessing, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... was full of old curiosities which had never been redeemed. These, and more recent specimens, told the story of many a faithless pilgrim. In the footwear department I saw many a "preparation of the gospel of peace" which had been pawned for shoes of worldliness, and elsewhere I saw the garments of truth which had been girt about the loins of the saints, but which had been exchanged for ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris

... haunting glimpses of a tireless small figure toiling, sweating, always moving toward a far-off goal as with the inevitable directness of a fixed law. She marveled at the patience of his strength, and she loved his gentleness, his sweetness that had a flavor of other-worldliness in it. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... not think it worth while to continue the conversation. She had little or nothing of Nora's belief in the other-worldliness of Oxford. At this period, some thirty odd years ago, the invasion of Oxford on the north by whole new tribes of citizens had already begun. The old days of University exclusiveness in a ring fence were long done with; the days of much learning and simple ways, when ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... in 1676; "but have you better hearts than your forefathers had?" Thomas Walley's "Languishing Commonwealth" maintains that "Faith is dead, and Love is cold, and Zeal is gone." Urian Oakes's election sermon of 1670 in Cambridge is a condemnation of the prevalent worldliness and ostentation. This period of critical inquiry and assessment, however, also gives grounds for just pride. History, biography, eulogy, are flourishing. The reader is reminded of that epoch, one hundred and fifty years ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... Canada a few years ago, when everybody had money, wrote letters to one of the London papers about us. Commenting on our worldliness, he said: "The people of Western Canada have only one idea of hell, and that is buying ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... might. Poor Reginald, contemplating bitterly her many little complacencies to his rival, set them down hastily to an appreciation of that rival's worldly advantages, which was not quite a just sentence. It was true, and yet it was not true; other feelings mingled in Phoebe's worldliness. She did, indeed, perceive and esteem highly the advantages which Clarence could give her; but she had not the objections to Clarence himself that the others had. She was willing, quite willing, to undertake the charge of ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... of the same period. The first gathering appears to be altogether worldly: the second has nothing of the world about it. Yet, he says, Mary Godolphin lived her life at Court without being tainted by any shadow of worldliness, whilst many a man went up to those solemn assemblies with the world raging furiously within ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham

... to act otherwise than as your best friend, Vincy, when I say that what you have been uttering just now is one mass of worldliness and inconsistent folly." ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... feelings which every one should cultivate at times, if only temporarily, the lasting calling of some. Thus one prayed his whole life long, or was engaged in contemplation, and relieved others of the necessity of performing these duties. The consequence was, that the latter sank as deeply in worldliness and want of the interior spirit as the former were plunged in idleness and hypocrisy. But, on the other hand, when, in our day, the printer relieves the writer of a portion of the labor which might be his, the personal development of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... delicate of Pope's delineations with one of Mr. Browning's elaborate psychological studies. Remember how many pages of acute observation are required to set forth Bishop Blougram's peculiar phase of worldliness, and then turn to Pope's descriptions of Addison, or Wharton, or Buckingham. Each of those descriptions is, indeed, a masterpiece in its way; the language is inimitably clear and pointed; but the leading thought ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... to his cousin Jane. He received the visits of his new neighbours civilly, and accepted their invitations; but the conduct of these people towards the disinherited girls made him secretly repel their advances towards his prosperous self. It appeared to show such barefaced worldliness and selfishness, that he shrank from the most insinuating speeches and the most ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... indictment was recognised by the audience at whom it was personally directed, however little disposed they might be to act individually on his appeal. On the other hand however, it is a striking fact that the charges brought are almost exclusively of worldliness, laxity, indiscipline, unbecoming in pastors and in ministers of the Gospel of Christ—though these charges were pressed home relentlessly; not at all of that rampant immorality and vice of which the clergy were so freely accused in ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... a quarrel, but the order is so entirely opposed to the monastic spirit. What I mean is—well, their worldliness is repugnant to me—fashionable friends, confidences, meddling in family affairs, dining out, letters from ladies who need consolation.... I don't mean anything wrong; pray don't misunderstand me. I merely mean to say that I hate their meddling in family affairs. Their confessional ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... first repented when he was found out. You could talk of religion or morality to such a man; and by the artist side of him, by his lively sympathy and apprehension, he could rise, as it were dramatically, to the significance of what you said. All that matter in religion which has been nicknamed other-worldliness was strictly in his gamut; but a rule of life that should make a man rudely virtuous, following right in good report and ill report, was foolishness and a stumbling-block to Pepys. He was much thrown across the Friends; and nothing can ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the brother of Jabaster; and he advanced, and pressed him to his bosom. Had it been Miriam, Alroy might have at once expired; but the presence of this worldly man called back his worldliness. The revulsion of his feelings was wonderful. Pride, perhaps even hope, came to his aid; all the associations seemed to counsel exertion; for a moment he ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... intae a ferry tarry (commotion)," but Mains was distinctly pleased to see a little touch of worldliness, just enough to keep the new minister in touch with humanity. "It 'll be queer stuff oor lads canna lift, an' a 'll gie ye a warranty that the' 'll no be a cup o' the cheeny broken," and then Saunderson conducted ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... beginning to look almost like a lady, and he attributed this pleasing effect to the fact that she was now unable to commit any of her former atrocities of color. He respected her, too, for wearing her weeds with an air of genial worldliness. There was something about Mrs. Wilcox that evaded the touch of sorrow; but from certain things—food, clothes, furniture—she seemed to catch, as it were, the sense of tears, suggestions of the human tragedy. She was peculiarly sensitive to interiors, and ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair

... abolished. The marriage of the clergy must be checked, so that the property of the Church should not be dissipated. The whole body of churchmen, from the priest to the archbishop, must be redeemed from the immorality and worldliness which degraded them in the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... a strange sensation, of the hopelessness that comes from greed and acute worldliness, uncombined with any, even subconscious, conception of other possibilities ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... Marcher is pretty certain; and his one indisputable book of general literature, the De Nugis Curialium, exhibits many—perhaps all—of the qualifications required: a sharp judgment united with a distinct predilection for the marvellous, an unquestionable piety combined with man-of-the-worldliness, and a toleration of human infirmities. It is hardly necessary to point out the critical incompetence of those who say that a satirist like Map could not have written the Quest and the Mort. Such critics would make ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... solitary occasion, whereon her father's voice had instructed her in knowledge, spoken to her in sympathy, or guided her footsteps to religion. Still, habituated as she long had now become to this daily martyrdom of heart, and sorely bruised by coarse and common worldliness as had been every fibre of her feelings, she could not help perceiving that things got worse and worse, as the knight grew richer and richer; and often-times her eyes ran over bitterly for coldness ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... of Chiquita's passionate longing for the man she loved; a thing which the worldliness of the life she had lived hitherto had taught her to be too extravagant to exist anywhere outside of books, but which was true nevertheless. Her intuition told her this in the face of all the world ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... some sophomores for a freshman, an incident which humiliated him terribly. He became known as something of a prodigy—a senior who was surely no more than sixteen—and he was often shocked at the worldliness of some of his classmates. His studies seemed harder to him—he felt that they were too advanced. He had heard his classmates speak of St. Midas's, the famous preparatory school, at which so many of them had prepared for college, and he determined after his graduation to enter himself at St. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... here, where an aged city had tried to conquer the country and had failed, for the spirit of woods and open spaces, of water and trees and wind, survived among the very roofs. The conventions of the centuries, the convention of puritanism, of worldliness, of impiety, of materialism and of charity had all assailed and all fallen back before the strength of the apparently peaceful country in which the city stood. The air was soft with a peculiar, undermining ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... generally happens in our day? Worldliness wars upon the sentiment of family, and I know of no strife more impassioned. By great means and small, by all sorts of new customs, requirements and pretensions, the spirit of the world breaks into the domestic sanctuary. What are this stranger's rights? its titles? Upon what does it rest its peremptory ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... wife of the preceding, elder of M. de Vandenesse's daughters, and sister of Charles and Felix. Like her husband and cousin, during the early years of the Restoration, she was a brilliant type of the period, combining, as she did, godliness with worldliness, occasionally figuring in politics, and concealing her youth under the guise of austerity. However, in 1828, her mask seemed to fall at the moment when Madame de Mortsauf died; for, then, she wrongly fancied herself the object of Eugene de Rastignac's ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... moved into the living-room. Warrington longed to sit beside Patty, but of a sudden he had grown diffident. It amused him to come into the knowledge that all his address and worldliness would not stand him in good stead in the presence of Patty. Words were no longer at his command; he was no longer at his ease. He was afraid of Patty; and he was very, very lonely. That empty house over the way was no longer ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... glanced at him with unaffected welcome, but the air of one who was looking upon his face for the first time. It was not until he had spent a full hour in doleful self-commiseration, that his sense of worldliness came to his relief. In a flash, he was joyously convincing himself that her pose during the presentation was artfully—and very properly—assumed. He saw through it very plainly! How simple he had ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... man of science. The Arabs have a proverb that a man is more the son of the age in which he lives than of his own father. This was not so with Columbus; he hardly seems to belong at all to his age. At a time when there was never more of worldliness and self-seeking; when Alexander Borgia was Pope; when Louis the Eleventh reigned in France, Henry the Seventh in England, and Ferdinand the Catholic in Arragon and Castille—about the three last men in the world to become crusaders—Columbus was penetrated with the ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps

... you will excuse me, I will go up to my room. You can drop in, and look over those papers before you go. However, stay as late as it is agreeable for you to do so." Walter Jerrold understood him. Already captivated by Helen's beauty and worldliness, his decision was made. ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... we were, and he had told the dear old infant he was bent on coming to see us, and the dear old infant had directly wanted to come too; and so he had brought him. "And he is worth—not to say his sordid expenses—but thrice his weight in gold," said Richard. "He is such a cheery fellow. No worldliness about ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... women were in all outward conduct unchanged, the conventionalities of life were maintained, the graces were not lost, the observances of the duties of charities and of religion were even emphasized, but worldliness had eaten the heart out of them, and they were "dead souls." The tragedy of the withered life was a thousand-fold enhanced by the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... if they were overwhelmed with kindness, it was merely to excite a belief that they were the constant care and companions of her leisure hours. When they grew up they became the mere instruments of her ambition. The fate of one of them will show how their mother's worldliness ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... for instance, is supposed to be the golden age of Catholicism; but what seems to have filled it, if we may judge by the witness of Dante? Little but bitter conflicts, racial and religious; faithless rebellions, both in states and in individuals, against the Christian regimen; worldliness in the church, barbarism in the people, and a dawning of all sorts of scientific and aesthetic passions, in themselves quite pagan and contrary to the spirit of the gospel. Christendom at that time was by no means a kingdom of God ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... kingdom of God by Jesus in Galilee: iv. 12-xiii. 58.—The call of the four fishermen, Jesus preaches and heals (iv.). The Sermon on the Mount—Jesus fulfils the law, the deeper teaching concerning the commandments (v.). False and true almsgiving, prayer and fasting, worldliness, trust in God (vi.). Censoriousness, discrimination in teaching, encouragements to prayer, false prophets, the two houses (vii.). The ministry at Capernaum and by the lake is illustrated by the record of many works of Messianic healing power (viii.-ix.), the apostles are ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan

... attractions of her childhood were passed, she could have no hold on him or his such as would have been hers had she grown to be a woman beneath his roof. There was a thoughtfulness too about her,—a thoughtfulness which some, perhaps, may call worldliness,—which made it impossible for her not to have her own condition constantly in her mind. In her father's lifetime she had been driven by his thoughtlessness and her own sterner nature to think of these things; and in the few months that had passed between her father's ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... for that. If you had not coupled it with the condition that I should, like a coward, desert helpless and unfortunate women to whom my word is given, I would have fulfilled your best hopes and ambitions, and have made your age glad with my grateful love and service. In your cold-hearted worldliness you have overreached yourself, and you wrong yourself more than me, even though I perish in the streets. But I won't starve. Mark my words: I'll place the Atwood name where you can't, with all your money, and I shall ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... found out of sermons,—a manner of speech which, when tried by the sure test of natural, animated conversation, must be pronounced absurd and abominable. It is a wonder of wonders, that, in spite of such drawbacks, an individual here and there has been reclaimed from worldliness to the love ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Mrs. Appleditch, "the worldliness of the lower classes is quite awful. But they are spared for a day of wrath, poor things! I am sure that accident on the railway last Sabbath, might have been a warning to them all. After that they can't say there is not a God that ruleth in ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... Swift, exhibited most un-clerical traits of worldliness and in his work there is the refined, suggestive indelicacy, not to say indecency, which we are in the habit nowadays of charging against the French, and which is so much worse than the bluff, outspoken coarseness of a Fielding or a Smollett. ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... may depart, Youth flies—love dies—and from the joyous heart Hope's gushing fountain ebbs too soon away, Nor spares one drop for that disastrous day, When from the barren waste of after life, The weariness, the worldliness, the strife, The soul looks o'er the desert of its way To the green gardens of its early day: The paradise, for which we vainly mourn, The heaven, to which our ling'ring eyes still turn, To which ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler

... people in Charlottesville praised the piety and, above all, the prudence of Mrs. Grey—"Such a young and beautiful woman to be so entirely weaned from worldliness and self-love and so absorbed in worship ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... goods. Christ did not suffer, like Prometheus, for having bestowed or wished to bestow any earthly blessing: the only blessing he bequeathed was the image of himself upon the cross, whereby men might be comforted in their own sorrows, rebuked in their worldliness, driven to put their trust in the supernatural, and united, by their common indifference to the world, in one mystic brotherhood. As men learned these lessons, or were inwardly ready to learn them, they recognised more and more clearly in Jesus ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... spelling-out of what nature has written, which gives its poetry to peasant life. Here one has conventional worldly notions and habits without instruction and without polish, surely the most prosaic form of human life; proud respectability in a gig of unfashionable build; worldliness without side-dishes. Observing these people narrowly, even when the iron hand of misfortune has shaken them from their unquestioning hold on the world, one sees little trace of religion, still less of a distinctively Christian creed. Their belief in the Unseen, so far as it manifests itself ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... with his humor. He was the foremost of English sentimentalists, and he had that taint of insincerity which distinguishes sentimentalism from genuine sentiment, like Goldsmith's, for example. Sterne, in life, was selfish, heartless, and untrue. A clergyman, his worldliness and vanity and the indecency of his writings were a scandal to the Church, though his sermons were both witty and affecting. He enjoyed the titilation of his own emotions, and he had practiced so long at detecting the latent pathos that lies in the expression of dumb things and of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... was told that only to those who were about to take their leave of earth was it given to know those spirits of fountain and forest that offered their voices, on behalf of nature, in praise of the Great Spirit. To those of grosser sense, on whom the weight of worldliness still rested, this halcyon was ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... then, from the plain words of Scriptures, that there are vast numbers of evil spirits continually tempting men, each of them to some particular sin; to worldliness, for instance, for we read of the spirit of the evil world; to filthiness, for we read of unclean spirits; to falsehood, for we read of lying spirits and a spirit of lies; to pride, for we read of a spirit of pride;—in short, to all sins which a man CAN ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... military skill and great ambition, but he was not a courtier in any sense of the word and could not be compared in Urraca's eyes with her carpet knight, Don Gomez. So she was loath to change her mode of life, and he was in a state of constant irritation at her worldliness; and as a natural consequence of it all, after a year of turmoil ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... she had gone that I thought how astounding it would have been to me to hear a girl of her age show such an acquaintance with worldliness and scheming, had I not been personally so much concerned about one of the objects of her remarks. She certainly was a strange girl. But strange as she was it was a satisfaction to think that the ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... people stood some way off in a meadow, has just been entirely renovated; but, as with some English churches, the more closely a piece of old work is copied, the more palpably does the modern spirit show through it, so here the opposite occurs, for the old-worldliness of the place has not been impaired by much renovation, though the intention has been to make everything as ...
— The Samuel Butler Collection - at Saint John's College Cambridge • Henry Festing Jones

... the wrath to come. He bowed in thankfulness, even while he wept their loss, to the Power that had borne his little ones to a brighter world, while her life gained new austerity from the thought that they had been taken from her as a judgment on her worldliness and idolatry. She loved to dwell upon the sufferings of the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, and emulate their rigid lives, forgetting that it was the dark persecution of the times in which they lived that left this impress upon their characters. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... something superior to you American women—she has solidity and brain-power. That is why the English man is superior to the American. Now, ladies, you, with your pretty faces, your charming manners, your vitality, and shall I say it? your worldliness, have boys who are—well, equal to what you consider the English girl to be. Of course it is always unsafe to generalise, but as you generalise yourselves and sweepingly assert that the English girls are born idiots, I want you to understand from a man who has not come here to tell you lies, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... dangers of it, and that they were going to serve our Lord, have found themselves in ten worlds at once, without knowing what to do, or how to help themselves. Youth and sensuality and the devil invite them and incline them to follow certain ways which are of the essence of worldliness. They see these ways, so to speak, ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... house, heard his father's wrathful comments upon him, and saw his bright sister Agnes broken down by all the heaviness of a first despair. You may imagine his passionate denunciation of the spirit of worldliness, which would, for its own mean ends, separate those whom the divine sacrament of Love had joined together. No less easily may be pictured the angry, yet half-compassionate reception of his vehemence, the contemptuous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... answer. I spend many hours of prayer and study upon every sermon I preach, and seek to deliver it in the power of the Holy Spirit. Then after having cast myself utterly upon Him, it is simply crushing to know that at times the message falls upon deaf ears. The tide of worldliness sweeping over the churches is at the root of the whole matter. Many to whom I preach are saved, but oh, so few surrendered! They want just enough of Christ to help them in times of trouble, to make sure of heaven being their ultimate goal, and just as much of this world as they can possibly carry ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright

... your allegiance. Be half for God, and half for the world. Live partly for the world to come, and partly for this present world. By no means throw overboard religion altogether, but let it have its proper place, let it stand side by side with self-pleasing and worldliness. ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton

... we have the beginnings of the movement. He has been called "the first modern scholar and man of letters." Repudiating the other-worldliness ideal and the scholastic learning of his time, [4] possessed of a deep love for beauty in nature and art, a delight in travel, a desire for worldly fame, a strong historical sense, and the self-confidence to plan a great constructive work, he began the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... full measure of lay perfection the complexion of Levite godliness was superadded by election to the deaconate in the Baptist Church, it will readily be seen that two young people, in whom the hard worldliness of wealth and easy conditions had not bred home agnosticism, were material for all the credulities of parent worship. Kate, a year older than Wesley, soon encountered the influences which gave the first shock to her faith ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... the fact that he has represented the chivalrous and the gallant attitudes toward love with nearly equal sympathy, it is the fact that in an era of militant naturalism and of renascent moralism he has blithely adhered to an affection for unconcerned worldliness and has airily played Congreve in the midst of all the clamorous, serious, disquisitive bassoons of the ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... his purpose; but he met him with a text of St. Mark, "There is no man that hath left house or brethren or sisters or father for my sake, but he shall receive an hundred-fold." On this the elder Maisonneuve, deceived by his own worldliness, imagined that the plan covered some hidden speculation, from which enormous profits were expected, and therefore withdrew his opposition. [ Faillon, La ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... must remember, had been a man of excessive social vanity; and much as he despised mankind, he certainly still liked to enjoy its admiring consideration. Mme. d'Albany, on the other hand, had been brought up in the full worldliness of a canoness of Ste. Wandru, and had grown accustomed to a certain amount of state and of luxury; and these worldly tendencies, thrown into the background by the passion, the poetry which sprang up with the irresistible force of a pressed down spring during her married ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... a girl who on her fifteenth birthday resolves to make herself useful in the world; but who, forgetting that her home where she is needed is her proper sphere of action, is betrayed into worldliness, while her simple loving cousin Isabel, without pretension or self-consciousness, delights in serving those near her and in ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks

... in her from extreme worldliness to a life of piety and prayer was deep and permanent. Hers was no half-way character. While she was of the world, she pursued its follies with entire devotion of heart; and when she once renounced it as unsatisfying, and unworthy of her ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... Miss Buchanan. She reached across the table and shook his hand. 'I like you, Mr. Kane,' she said. 'I think you are a good man; and, don't forget, in spite of my worldliness, that if I weren't sure of that, all your millions wouldn't have made me think of ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... ever reaching her father were now faint, and her poor little stock of eggs and bread looked like folly to her new-born worldliness. ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... circumstances. Alfieri pursued an ideal, slowly formed, but strongly fashioned and resolutely followed. Of wealth he had plenty and to spare, but he disregarded it, and was a Stoic in his mode of life. He was an unworldly man, and hated worldliness. Goldoni, but for his authorship, would certainly have grown a prosperous advocate, and died of gout in Venice. Goldoni liked smart clothes; Alfieri went always in black. Goldoni's fits of spleen—for he was melancholy now and then—lasted a day or two, and disappeared before a change of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... out by stating that the foregoing pastors are constrained to bear witness to what they 'conceive to be a fact of our time; viz., That the prevailing standard of piety, among the professed people of God, is alarmingly low; that a tide of worldliness is setting in upon us, indicating the rapid approach of an era, such as is foretold by Paul in his second letter to Timothy, in the words, "In the last days perilous times shall come."' These conclusions are reached, not by comparisons with former times, but ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith

... of Morhange's face was so powerful that I scarcely noticed his opponent. In that transfigured countenance, no trace of worldliness remained. ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... needn't believe me." But just before reaching the house she again turned and faced him. "It hurts, Brent," she faltered, "to know you are thinking unkind things of me! Your own worldliness makes you ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... missed the vital, the significant fact of existence. I supposed that it was because the history of his early years was known to but few and that the men with whom he came into contact, nice enough fellows at the clubs, friends of Jack Ballard, had taken his worldliness for granted. He had missed the filthy story perhaps, or if he had heard it, had ignored its point and turned away to topics he understood. Business, too, had taken some of his time and Marcia had taken more. The clubs, I had inferred, had not greatly interested ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs



Words linked to "Worldliness" :   otherworldliness, mundanity, outwardness, naivete, mundaneness, externality, worldly, sophistication, quality



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