"Atheism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... respect they were more successful than in the former, and I regret to say that atheism made immense strides among the educated class. They had some profound thinkers among them: Tchernyshevsky, Dobroluboff, Mikhailoff, besides Herzen and Ogareff, the two men who brought out the Kolokol in London in the ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... books of the curate Meslier a printed manuscript of the Treatise of Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambray, upon the existence of God and His attributes, and the reflections of the Jesuit Tournemine upon Atheism, to which treatise he added marginal notes signed ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... illustrious members,—by the fervid Augustin, by the subtle Aquinas, by the all-accomplished Pascal. The warning has been given in vain. That close alliance which, under the disguise of the most deadly enmity, has always subsisted between fanaticism and atheism is still unbroken. At one time, the cry was,—"If you hold that the earth moves round the sun, you deny the truth of the Bible." Popes, conclaves, and religious orders, rose up against the Copernican heresy. But, as Pascal said, they could not prevent the earth from moving, or themselves from ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a system we have long ago given our opinion. In its higher forms, "Shint[o] is simply a cultured and intellectual atheism; in its lower forms it is blind obedience to governmental and priestly dictates." "Shint[o]," says Mr. Ernest Satow, "as expounded by Motooeri is nothing more than an engine for reducing the people ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... his element. In the opening chapter of his polemic he had cited from Voltaire's works, especially from the famous Pucelle, a number of passages that seemed peculiarly well-fitted to justify the charge of atheism. Thanks to his unfailing memory, he was able to repeat these citations verbatim, and to marshal his own counter-arguments. But in Marcolina he had to cope with an opponent who was little inferior ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... themselves; for, after all, the atheistic professors have but little power; you statesmen, who sometimes talk of your belief in God, you undermine His authority far more deeply than those professors, by the bad example of your practical atheism. You who imagine you believe in the Godhead of Christ are, in reality, prophets and priests of the false gods. You serve them, as the idolatrous Hebrew princes served them, in high places, in the presence of the people. You serve, ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... world was told it ought to reject some doctrines, and retain others which seemed as difficult of comprehension; when one tenet was pronounced idolatry, and to doubt another declared damnation—the world either exploded or recoiled: it went too far or it shrank back; plunged into atheism, or relapsed into popery. It was thus the reformation was checked in the first instance. Its supporters were the strong-minded and intelligent; and they never, and least of all in those days, formed the mass. ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... refers, according to the marginal note (though they are not named in the text), to these Elders as examples of "affected atheism," "where the windows of the soul are of very set purpose closed"; "they turned away their mind and cast down their eyes, that they might not see heaven nor remember just judgments." St. Hippolytus on v. 61 quotes Prov. xxvi. 27 very appositely. The fall of the Elders shews the need for our ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... Timothy. One did not reach him, or so it was reported by members of the family who, out of old-time habit or absentmindedness, would drive up once in a blue moon and ask after their surviving uncle. Such were Francie, now quite emancipated from God (she frankly avowed atheism), Euphemia, emancipated from old Nicholas, and Winifred Dartie from her "man of the world." But, after all, everybody was emancipated now, or said they were—perhaps not quite ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... his influence is unfavourable to the development of ardent religious feeling among the Chinese people generally; and he prepared the way for the speculations of the literati of medieval and modern times, which have exposed them to the charge of atheism. Secondly, Along with the worship of God there existed in China, from the earliest historical times, the worship of other spiritual beings,— especially, and to every individual, the worship of departed ancestors. Confucius recognised ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... "Undiluted Atheism, theft and immorality.... I know of no language sufficiently potent to express fully my absolute detestation of what I believe to be the most poisonous doctrine ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... man's hardening his heart against the distresses of his fellow-creatures; nor do I believe it can ever have such effect on a truly benevolent mind. Nothing less than a persuasion of universal depravity can lock up the charity of a good man; and this persuasion must lead him, I think, either into atheism, or enthusiasm; but surely it is unfair to argue such universal depravity from a few vicious individuals; nor was this, I believe, ever done by a man, who, upon searching his own mind, found one certain exception to the general rule." He then concluded ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... and vital throughout Western Europe for six centuries, had been shattered and nullified, and its place taken, in the lands that saw the great liberation, by Calvinism, Lutheranism, Puritanism and atheism, none of which could exert a guiding and redemptive influence on the dazed hordes that had at last come up into the light ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... after the government by a single person." In consequence he was banished from London in 1654, and on Oliver's death was returned to parliament December 30,1658, as burgess for Reading. An attempt to exclude him on charges of atheism and ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... that it is the characteristic of immorality to tie down man in the chains of the senses, and this shews that it has nothing in common with the spiritual nature of poetry. For the same reason, a poem based upon atheism, although it might attract attention for a time, would meet with no permanent response in the human breast; religion being Truth, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... "to examine into and report upon the South Yorkshire Miners"! And on the same day it was determined to get up a Soiree. This gathering, held in Gower Street, was memorable because it was attended by Mrs. Annie Besant, then notorious as an advocate of Atheism and Malthusianism, the heroine of several famous law cases, and a friend and colleague of Charles Bradlaugh. Mrs. Besant was elected a member a few weeks later, and she completed the list of the seven who subsequently wrote "Fabian Essays," with the exception of Graham ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century, in the decadence of the great revolutionary period. General theories are everywhere contemned; the doctrine of the Rights of Man is dismissed with the doctrine of the Fall of Man. Atheism itself is too theological for us to-day. Revolution itself is too much of a system; liberty itself is too much of a restraint. We will have no generalizations. Mr. Bernard Shaw has put the view in a perfect epigram: "The golden ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... atheism seems The most insulting kind, For, though the tongue says, God is love, The ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... term introduced by Max Muller to imply the denial of gods (Sans. deva), on the analogy of Atheism, the denial of God. Max Muller used it particularly in connexion with the Vedanta philosophy for the correlative of ignorance or nescience (Gifford lectures, 1892, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... not accept certain doctrines of the Church; others who deny the divinity of Christ, without, however, separating themselves from the Protestant Church; others, again, who believe in God, but do not believe in any Church; others—and amongst these are many of the cleverest men—who openly profess atheism. In consequence of this state of things, the Catholic party has a natural ally in the Calvinists, who as fervent believers and inflexible conservers of the religion of their fathers, are much less widely separated from the Catholics than from a large party of ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... be determined without demonstrative reasoning. Human life is not yet so well known, as that we can have it. And take the case of a man who is ill. I call two physicians: they differ in opinion. I am not to lie down, and die between them: I must do something.' The conversation then turned on atheism; on that horrible book, Systeme de la Nature; and on the supposition of an eternal necessity, without design, without a governing mind. JOHNSON. 'If it were so, why has it ceased? Why don't we see men thus produced around us now? Why, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... mine, and what's mine's me own,"' observed Bundy, and during the laughter that greeted this definition Slyme was heard to say that Socialism meant Materialism, Atheism and Free Love, and if it were ever to come about it would degrade men and women to the level of brute beasts. Harlow said Socialism was a beautiful ideal, which he for one would be very glad to see realized, and he was afraid it was altogether too good to be practical, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... of positivism and atheism has been able to overthrow everything but Satanism, and it cannot make ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... of date—does not belong to the world of to-day. And when a thing is once of the past, it cannot be called back, do what you will. Nothing will ever bring in that kind of thing again. It is all very well to go to church and that sort of thing; I should be the last to encourage the atheism that is getting so frightfully common, but really it seems to me such extravagant notions about religion as you have been brought up in must have not a little to do with the present sad state of affairs—must ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... up, and never calls them by other: that sings psalms when he is drunk, and cries "God mercy" in mockery, for he must do it. He is one seems to dare God in all his actions, but indeed would out-dare the opinion of Him, which would else turn him desperate; for atheism is the refuge of such sinners, whose repentance would be only to ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... see that the present mode of dealing with it is a failure and likely to be worse. If you have gunpowder, you should not put it under hydraulic pressure. You should not stir it up and hold matches to it to see if it is there. That is what prosecutions and imprisonments on charges of atheism and so on do. It is stirring up the powder and trying ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... must kill each other—or convert each other. I used to think all Christians were hypocrites, and I felt quite mildly towards them really. But I know you are sincere—and my soul is mad against you. In the same way you used, I suppose, to think that all atheists thought atheism would leave them free for immorality—and yet in your heart you tolerated them entirely. Now you know that I am an honest man, and you are mad against me, as I am against you. Yes, that's it. You can't be angry with bad ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... intelligence.[2] If we believe the former, the ancient deism of China approached the purity of the Christian religion; if we listen to the latter, the absurd fetichism of the multitude degenerated amongst the educated, into systematic materialism and atheism. In answer to the peremptory texts quoted by one party, the other adduced the glosses of accredited interpreters, and the dispute of the missionaries who had lived in China and knew Chinese, had to be settled ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... of that day differed from ours in the means, though not in the end. They at least referred to their Bibles, and rather more than was required; but superstition is as mad as atheism! Many of the puritans confused their brains with the study of the Revelations; believing Prince Henry to be prefigured in the Apocalypse, some prophesied that he should overthrow "the beast." Ball, our tailor, was this very prophet; and was so honest ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... man who doubts and the man who denies there is only a step. All philosophy is akin to atheism. Having told Brigitte that I suspected her past conduct, I began to regard ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... to the House, or had he, after refusing to take it, behaved with less violence, I doubt if he would have made any name in Parliament. The House was determined to fight Bradlaugh, and it is not to be wondered at, for he paraded his atheism, and his views on other matters, in the most repulsive manner possible. But Bradlaugh did not run the risk of fighting down mere prejudice. Had he taken the oath, he would only have won the ear of the House by proving ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... 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 play, foreshadow, almost feature by feature, in all that they were written to mock and to ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... is only apparent, or else of a loose character. You can say, for instance, "That is Manichasism," or "It is Arianism," or "Pelagianism," or "Idealism," or "Spinozism," or "Pantheism," or "Brownianism," or "Naturalism," or "Atheism," or "Rationalism," "Spiritualism," "Mysticism," and so on. In making an objection of this kind, you take it for granted (1) that the assertion in question is identical with, or is at least contained ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Egypt are easy compared with both processes in the temperates of Europe. This is noticed by every traveller. Hence probably Easterns have never studied the artificial Euthanasia which is now appearing in literature. See p. 143 "My Path to Atheism," by Annie Besant, London: Freethought Publishing Company, 28, Stonecutter Street, E. C., 1877, based upon the Utopia of the highly religious Thomas Moore. Also "Essay on Euthanasia," by P. D. Williams, Jun., and Mr. Tollemache in ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... scant and uncertain evidence, accept a theory that shocks the reason and the moral sense of mankind, and which leads naturally to infidelity and atheism, and takes away even our hope of immortality? Later in this volume we will consider more fully the alleged proofs from these ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... elsewhere, in the graces of polished eloquence; but the subjects treated are, it is to be feared, of increasing importance, not abroad only, but in England; and in fact one Lecture, the fourth, is in a large measure occupied with forms of atheism which owe their chief support to English authors. In that Lecture the Author shows that the spiritual origin of man cannot "be put out of sight beneath details of physiology and researches of natural history," ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... of the college. It was long, however, before he returned to an Oxford where only the buildings were the same. Twenty years from this date an atheistic treatise might have been written with perfect impunity by any Fellow of any college. Nobody would even have read it if atheism had been its only recommendation. The wise indifference of the wise had relieved true religion from the paralysis of official patronage. But in 1849 the action of the Rector and Fellows was heartily applauded by the Visitor, Bishop Phillpotts, the famous ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... fate has awaited the germ of Religion. Arising, like all other kinds of knowledge, out of the action and interaction of man's mind, with that which is not man's mind, it has taken the intellectual coverings of Fetishism or Polytheism; of Theism or Atheism; of Superstition or Rationalism. With these, and their relative merits and demerits, I have nothing to do; but this it is needful for my purpose to say, that if the religion of the present differs from that of ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... all the forms of the theistic argument. And this knowledge they had every opportunity to use. Many of their works that have come down to us are either apologies or else answers to critics of Christianity, who attacked its doctrines from the stand-point of either polytheism or atheism. In maintaining the Christian doctrine of God against these opponents, the theistic argument would seem to be a most natural weapon for one who was confident of its validity. But the fact is, that in most of these apologies no such reasoning is employed, and ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... statement: that it is bold and spirited to appeal to the future. Now, it is entirely weak and half-witted to appeal to the future. A brave man ought to ask for what he wants, not for what he expects to get. A brave man who wants Atheism in the future calls himself an Atheist; a brave man who wants Socialism, a Socialist; a brave man who wants Catholicism, a Catholic. But a weak-minded man who does not know what he wants in the ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... mingle with goodness and happiness? What has been the resource of the Christian intellect against that mystery of evil which baffled the questioner in the book of Job, and drove Lucretius to virtual atheism, and left Marcus Aurelius in doubt whether there be gods or not? The resource of the Christian thinker has been his belief that Jesus Christ was God incarnate. Here was a soul which was sinless and holy, which loved sinners so as to die ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... with whom he is dealing, that often you feel the ethic atmosphere of the books to be pure and bracing, almost beyond the standard of biblical and Christian. But in his "Diderot and the Encyclopaedists," such fine severity is conspicuously absent. Mr. Morley is so deeply convinced that atheism is what we all most need just now, that when he has—not halting mere infidels, like Voltaire and Rousseau—but good thorough-going atheists, like Diderot and his fellows, to exhibit, he can hardly bring himself to injure their exemplary influence with ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... in antagonism to their own countrymen.... The old method of government—of police supervision, of private espionage, of imprisonment, of exile, of political silence—has been tried, and the result is discontent and extensive conspiracy. We fear that even the confession of sensualistic atheism by Solovieff will not prevent his memory from being cherished by thousands of his countrymen. They will forget everything, save his desire to endow them with more freedom. Whatever his faults, they will consider ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... than the faults and shortcomings of men, to be by its very nature responsible for all the economic evils of the day. "Down with the Stars and Stripes" is their cry. "Abolish religion and the present form of marriage." "Atheism and free-love must reign supreme." Then, trusting that workingmen will admire anything, provided that it be adorned in sufficiently glowing colors, they paint such fabulous pictures of ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... 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
... the greatest peril of this age. We may find one here and another there who, with atheism at his heart, is still upright in life. But break down the belief in God, and what the morals of the people shall be, let that nation answer which set upon her altars now nearly a hundred years ago the image of the goddess of reason. Let faith in God fall out of the young ...
— Is The Young Man Absalom Safe? • David Wright
... of enormous value in its struggle for power. Originally and properly an association for the practice and spreading of religion, the corporation had succeeded in making itself an object of worship. One great reason why atheism took root in France was the impossibility, induced by long habit, of distinguishing between religion and Catholicism, and of conceiving that the one may exist without the other. The by-laws of the church had become as sacred as the primary duties of piety; and the injunction ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... time his liberi pensieri were distasteful to him and unsatisfactory; for atheism makes a curse a mere rattle of dry peas in a fool's bladder, as it makes a blessing a mere flutter of a breath. Messer Nellemane for the first time felt that the old religion has its advantages over agnosticism; it gave you a hell for your ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... mighty army of foul Spirits shrieked Disherited of earth! For she hath fallen On whose black front was written Mystery; 330 She that reeled heavily, whose wine was blood; She that worked whoredom with the Daemon Power, And from the dark embrace all evil things Brought forth and nurtured: mitred Atheism! And patient Folly who on bended knee 335 Gives back the steel that stabbed him; and pale Fear Haunted by ghastlier shapings than surround Moon-blasted Madness when he yells at midnight! Return pure Faith! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... simply say I do not know!" What pleasure could any man find in taking from a human, heart a living faith and putting in the place of it the cold and cheerless doctrine "I do not know"? Many who call themselves agnostics are really atheists; it is easier to profess ignorance than to defend atheism. ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... on account of his attachment to that general religion which perhaps I hate, I shall take care to punish, because I may punish when I think proper. Therefore, connivance being an engine of private malice or private favor, not of good government,—an engine which totally fails of suppressing atheism, but oppresses conscience,—I say that principle becomes, not serviceable, but dangerous to Christianity; that it is not toleration, but contrary to it, even contrary to peace; that the penal system to which it belongs ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the lip of Catiline. He was not even superstitious. Self-vanity and confidence in his own powers, and long impunity in crime, had hardened him, had maddened him, almost to Atheism. Yet he dared not attack the sacred prejudices of the men, whom, but for that occurrence, he had yet hoped to win to their ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... serener confidence in human nature, amid all the shame and downfall of such hopes in France. And that still profounder loss of delight in Nature herself,—that viewing of all things "in disconnection dull and spiritless," which, as it has been well said, is the truest definition of Atheism, inasmuch as a unity in the universe is the first element in our conception of God,—this dark pathway also was not without its outlet into the day. For the God in Nature is not only a God of Beauty, but a God of Law; his unity can be apprehended in power as well as in glory; and Wordsworth's mind, ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... cross-roads throughout the country. The people were grossly ignorant, and altogether neglected. Scepticism and irreligion prevailed, until Wesley and Whitfield sprang up to protest against formalism and atheism. They were pelted with rotten eggs, sticks, and stones. A Methodist preacher ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... referring to Mr. Gladden's remarks, said there was nothing so painful to her as the lack of faith in republicanism among cultivated American gentlemen. Political atheism seemed to be rife among them. What wonder that political corruption exists to such an extent, when the clergymen, the doctors, professors of colleges, members of churches, the educated and cultivated, refuse to exercise the rights of citizenship by going ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... athlete at the Isthmian games; not in the torrent of Demosthenes, dark with self-love and the spirit of vengeance; not in the fitful philosophy and intemperate eloquence of Tully; not in the genial libertinism of Horace, or the stately atheism of Lucretius. No! these must not be our masters; in none of these are we to seek the way of life. For eighteen hundred years the spirit of these writers has been engaged in weaponless contest with the Sermon on the Mount, and those two sublime ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... supposition that the origin of things, or the mystery of existence [i.e. the fact that anything exists at all], admits of being explained by the theory of Theism in any further degree than by the theory of Atheism. Next it was shown that the argument "Our heart requires a God" is invalid, seeing that such a subjective necessity, even if made out, could not be sufficient to prove—or even to render probable—an objective existence. And with regard to the further argument that ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... of much atheism, not only an atheism of atheists, but a more terrible atheism of Christians, an unconscious atheism, whose roots have struck far into many souls whose last breath would be spent in denying it. So, I repeat, it is a mistaken Christianity which allow men to cherish a blind belief in the ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... the unsoilable fame of Shakespeare. In that land you,—who, according to your own showing, started for the race of life full of high hopes and inspiration to still higher endeavor—you have been, poisoned by the tainted atmosphere of Atheism which is slowly and insidiously spreading itself through all ranks, particularly among the upper classes, who, while becoming every day more lax in their morals and more dissolute of behavior, consider themselves far too wise and 'highly cultured' to ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Book with this Title criticised.—He declares that Darwinism is Atheism, yet its Founder a Theist.—Darwinism founded, however, upon Orthodox Conceptions, and opposed, not to Theism, but only to Intervention in Nature, while the Key-note of Dr. Hedge's System is Interference.—Views and Writings of St. Clair, ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... cried, 'Ecrasez l'infame,' and Rousseau preached that the youth would all be wise and pure, if only the kind of education which he had had in the religious schools were made impossible. There was for many minds no alternative between clericalism and atheism. Quite logically, therefore, after the downfall of the Republic and of the Empire there set in a great reaction. Still it was simply a reversion to the absolute religion of the Roman Catholic Church as set forth by the Jesuit party. There was ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... Victoire, Misson sailed from Rochelle to the West Indies, and Caraccioli lost no opportunity of preaching to young Misson the gospel of atheism and communism, and with such success that the willing convert soon held views as extreme as those of his teacher. These two apostles now began to talk to the crew, and their views, particularly on the rights of private property, were ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... of the revolution, as it was understood in France and in Europe, had to wait for Shelley for its complete expression. Freedom is the breath of his work—freedom not only from the tyranny of earthly powers, but from the tyranny of religion, expressing itself in republicanism, in atheism, and in complete emancipation from the current moral code both in conduct and in writing. The reaction which had followed the overthrow of Napoleon at Waterloo, sent a wave of absolutism and repression all over Europe, Italy returned under the heel of Austria; the Bourbons were ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... disappears with the realization that all truth, all knowledge, all reason, are subservient to the search for God. The struggle between the wish to believe and the temptation to think caused real distress of mind to many thinkers of the nineteenth century. The choice seemed to lie between atheism and blind submission to authority. "Let us humbly take anything the Bible says without trying to understand it, and not torment ourselves with arguments," said Charles Kingsley. "One word of Scripture is more than a hundred ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... against Papacy, aim, many of them, at the destruction of regal power. The philosophers,' he goes on, 'are insupportable, superficial, overbearing, and fanatic. They preach incessantly, and their avowed doctrine is atheism—you could not believe how openly. Don't wonder, therefore, if I should return a Jesuit. Voltaire himself does not satisfy them. One of their lady devotees said of him, "Il est bigot, c'est un deiste!"' French politics, he professes a few years afterwards, must end in ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... in their earlier and simpler forms. Traces of all the things that seem most un-Greek can be found somewhere in Greek literature: voluptuousness, asceticism, the worship of knowledge, the contempt for knowledge, atheism, pietism, the religion of serving the world and the religion of turning away from the world: all these and almost all other points of view one can think of are represented somewhere in the records of that one small people. And there is hardly any single generalization in this chapter ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Improbability that a Religion claiming a Distinct Derivation from Jewish Sources would Borrow from a far-off Heathen System—The Contrast of Christ's Loving Recognition of the Father in Heaven with the Avowed Atheism of Buddhism—The General Spirit of the System Forbids all Thought of Borrowing from it—Points ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... being proved, is of very great consequence to religion; that the world is full of certain persons who believe only what cannot be doubted; that the great heresy of the world is no longer Calvinism and Lutheranism, but atheism. There are all sorts of atheists—some real, others pretended; some determined, others vacillating, and others tempted to be so. We ought not to neglect this kind of people; the grace of God is all-powerful; we must not despair of bringing them back by good arguments, and ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... own Superlative Judgements" and run madly after Scot, Hobbes, and Osborne. It was, in truth, a danger to religion that he was trying to ward off. One of the fundamentals of religion was at stake. The denial of witchcraft was a phase of prevalent atheism. Those that give up the belief in witches, give up that in the Devil, then that in the immortality of the soul.[18] The question at issue was the reality of the ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... all the big chunks that would not go through the fine mesh of his prejudices. He abhorred falsehood, cruelty, skepticism, sectarianism, and narrowness, and his sermons were unconscious mixtures of hand-picked truth and eloquent legends, ruthless denunciations of misunderstood people and views, atheism toward the revelations of all the sciences (particularly the science of biblical criticism, which he hated worse than he hated Haeckel), and a narrowness that kept trying to sharpen itself into a ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... requesting them to help him. When it so happened that any incautious correspondents acceded to this appeal, Shelley fell with merciless severity upon their feeble and commonplace reasoning. The little pamphlet of two pages was entitled "The Necessity of Atheism"; and its proposed publication, beyond the limits of private circulation already described, is proved by an advertisement (February 9, 1811) in the "Oxford University and City Herald". It was not, however, actually ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... the carders of the wool, and selecting the proper subsidiary arts which are necessary for making the web. The royal science is queen of educators, and begins by choosing the natures which she is to train, punishing with death and exterminating those who are violently carried away to atheism and injustice, and enslaving those who are wallowing in the mire of ignorance. The rest of the citizens she blends into one, combining the stronger element of courage, which we may call the warp, with the softer element of temperance, which we may imagine to be the woof. These she binds together, ...
— Statesman • Plato
... To escape atheism and despair, let us remember that the Creator and Ordainer of the circumstances of life is not chance or Nature, but the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... forefathers and contemporaries, and unmindful of thorns and stumbling-blocks, strike out into paths of their own. The sceptics end in the infidelity which asserts the problem to be insoluble, or in the atheism which denies the existence of any orderly progress and governance of things: the men of genius propound solutions which grow into systems of Theology or of Philosophy, or veiled in musical language which suggests more than it asserts, take the shape ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... edition of "Les Pensees," the only editions of "Les Provinciales" of recent date are the miserable publications of Charpentier and the Didots. Editions of Voltaire and Rousseau are numerous, elaborate, and elegant; for atheism is pardoned much more easily than abhorrence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... my soul was perplexed with 'unbelief, blasphemy, hardness of heart, questions about the being of God, Christ, the truth of the Word, and certainty of the world to come; I say, then I was greatly assaulted and tormented with' atheism; but now the case was otherwise, now was God and Christ continually before my face, though not in a way of comfort, but in a way of exceeding dread and terror. The glory of the holiness of God did at this time break ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... otherwise; but have not a little reason for thinking that the same physiological ends might have been differently achieved. The one doctrine limits the possibilities of creation; the other denies the implied limit. Which, then, is most open to the charge of covert Atheism? ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... purified and freed from many an ancient abuse. In most countries of western Europe and in our own land one may now believe as he wishes, teach such religious views as appeal to him, and join with others who share his sympathies. "Atheism" is still a shocking charge in many ears, but the atheist is no longer an outlaw. It has been demonstrated, in short, that religious dogma can be neglected in matters of public concern and reduced to a question of ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... Away from belief in God's judgments and a future state, our arguments against suicide may be good logic, but they make poor rhetoric for those who need them most. Men are wonderfully imitative in killing themselves. Once the practice is come in vogue, it becomes a rage, an epidemic. Atheism and Materialism form the best nidus for the contagion of suicide. It is a shrewd remark of Madame de Stael: "Though there are crimes of a darker hue than suicide, yet there is none other by which man seems so entirely to renounce the ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... by persons unborn. Yet enough might be said to astonish the heavens, and to make them horribly afraid (Jer 2:12). 1. By this act of these two, the whole world became guilty of condemnation and eternal judgment (Rom 5). 2. By this came all the blindness, atheism, ignorance of God, enmity and malice against him, pride, covetousness, adultery, idolatry, and implacableness, &c., that is found in all the world. By this, I say, came all the wars, blood, treachery, tyranny, persecution, with all manner of rapine and outrage that is found among the sons ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and the End of the Rebellion. The Eastern Church and Council of Nice. Salvation in Christ not Limited to this Life. Contributions of Science to Religion. History of the Doctrine of a Future Life. Atheism and its Exponents. Formula of Baptism. The Universalists as a Christian Sect. General Review. Recent ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... it as the Venetians to their inestimable charge. But the most frequent maladies are such as proceed from themselves, as first when religion and God's service is neglected, innovated or altered, where they do not fear God, obey their prince, where atheism, epicurism, sacrilege, simony, &c., and all such impieties are freely committed, that country cannot prosper. When Abraham came to Gerar, and saw a bad land, he said, sure the fear of God was not in ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... for the atheistical systems admitted gods as demi-gods or dummy gods, and in point of fact became very superstitious. Yet are both founder-worship and superstition rather the growth of later generations than the original practice. The atheism of the Jain means denial ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... is your religion my son?" inquired the Archbishop of Rheims. "Pardon, monseigneur," replied Rochebriant; "I am ashamed of it." "Then why do you not become an atheist?" "Impossible! I should be ashamed of atheism." "In that case, monsieur, ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... Therefore, Atheism in the People is the most invincible obstacle to the establishment and consolidation of that sublime form of government, the idol of all ages, the tendency of all perfect civilization, the dream of every sage, ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine
... political affairs, he began by corrupting the marchioness's religious views, to pervert her into crime. The marquis was one of those libertines so rare at that time, a period less unhappy than is generally believed, who made science dependent upon, atheism. It is remarkable that great criminals of this epoch, Sainte-Croix for instance, and Exili, the gloomy poisoner, were the first unbelievers, and that they preceded the learned of the following age both, in philosophy and in the exclusive study of physical science, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the question,—expressing his apprehension, lest the example of France, which had, at a former period, threatened England with the contagion of despotism, should now be the means of introducing among her people the no less fatal taint of Democracy and Atheism. After some eloquent tributes of admiration to Mr. Fox, rendered more animated, perhaps, by the consciousness that they were the last offerings thrown into the open grave of their friendship, he proceeded to deprecate the effects which the language of his Right Honorable Friend ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... asylum. Meanwhile, a great deal of excitement is agitating Ludgate Hill, where an atheistic editor runs a paper that propounds (with all the usual insults at Christ, which culminate in an attack on the method of the birth of Christ) the creed of atheism. A particularly slanderous attack on the Virgin Mary results in an ardent Roman Catholic throwing a stone through the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... atheism if newspapers dare to print such interviews,' Father Oliver said; and he threw the paper aside angrily. 'And it was I,' he continued, dropping into his armchair, 'that drove her into this atheistical country. I ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... abandoned only in the towns under the influence of the central European materialistic civilisation. In the villages unbelief is unknown. In our green fields, under our dark-blue heaven, in our little white houses and wooden cottages, on the banks of our murmuring brooks and magnificent rivers, atheism is unknown. Every family in a house is regarded as a little religious community. The head of the family presides over this community and prays with it. When I tell you that, I tell you my personal experience. I was born ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... often been tempted already, to fancy that reason is the enemy, and not the twin sister of faith; to oppose revelation to science, as if God's two messages could contradict each other; to widen the Manichaean distinction between secular and spiritual matters, so pleasant to the natural atheism of fallen man; to fancy that they honour God by limiting as much as possible His teaching, His providence, His wisdom, His love, and His kingdom, and to pretend that they are defending the creeds of the Catholic Church, by denying to them any practical or real influence on ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... Atheism." This quotation is made with admirable felicity and force by Dr. Whewell, page 378 of Bridgewater Treatise on Astronomy and General Physics considered with ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... would be hard to discover how, upon his own conception of the nature and limits of reason, such a proof could ever be given. It has been said that it is no flaw in Butler's argument that he has left atheism as a possible mode of viewing the universe, because his work was not directed against the atheists. It is, however, in some degree a defect; for his defence of religion against the deists rests on a view of reason which would for ever preclude a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... sounded, and that all this aerial pomp,—this strange silence,—was just the pause, the supreme moment before the angels descended," he mused, with a half-smile at his own fancy, for though something of a poet at heart, he was much more of a cynic. He was too deeply imbued with modern fashionable atheism to think seriously about angels or Resurrection trumps, but there was a certain love of mysticism and romance in his nature, which not even his Oxford experiences and the chilly dullness of English ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... lost his way in seeking her,—"the light that led astray" being by both friends mistaken for hers. That in his scepticism he proceeded any farther than Lord Byron, or ever suffered his doubting, but still ingenuous, mind to persuade itself into the "incredible creed" of atheism, is, I find (notwithstanding an assertion in a letter of the noble poet to this effect), disproved by the testimony of those among his relations and friends, who are the most ready to admit and, of course, lament his other heresies;—nor should I have felt that I had any right to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Lord Sellingworth undoubtedly improved his wife's mental capacities, enlarged the horizon of her mind, and gave her new interests, without specially intending it he injured her soul. For he increased her worldliness and infected her with his atheism. She had always been devoted to the world. He continually suggested to her that there was nothing else, nothing beyond. All sense of mysticism had been left out of his nature. What he called "priestcraft" ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... dusts the painted windows, may yet find time to bend in prayer before the altars he helps to keep beautiful, may yet find a heart to wonder at the spirit which the temple holds as an envelope holds a letter. Reversing the process of mind which seems to lead so many medical students to atheism, Dr. Levillier had found that the more he understood the weaknesses, the nastinesses, the dreary failures, the unimaginable impulses of the flesh, the more he grew to believe in the existence, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... audacious scamp set up, according to Bradford, "a schoole of atheisme, and his men did quaff strong waters and comport themselves as if they had anew revived and celebrated the feasts of y^e Roman Goddess Flora, or the beastly practises of y^e madd Bachanalians." The charge of atheism in this case seems based on the fact that Morton used the Book of Common Prayer, but as for the rest, there is no question that this band of silken merry-makers imported many of the carnival customs and hereditary pastimes of Old England to the stern young New England; ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... the time when Luther's new doctrines began to be popular, by a man of great reputation for learning, Pierre Bunel, who 'well foresaw, by his penetration, [11] that this budding disease would easily degenerate into an execrable atheism.' Old Pierre Montaigne, a very pious man, esteemed this work very highly; and a few days before his death, having fortunately found it among a lot of neglected papers, commanded his son to translate it from 'that kind of Spanish ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... amplified copy of Iago and Richard; but the copy is distorted as well as amplified. There is no air of reality in Franz: he is a villain of theory, who studies to accomplish his object by the most diabolical expedients, and soothes his conscience by arguing with the priest in favour of atheism and materialism; not the genuine villain of Shakspeare and Nature, who employs his reasoning powers in creating new schemes and devising new means, and conquers remorse by avoiding it,—by fixing his hopes and fears on the more pressing emergencies of worldly business. ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... of the new Sovereigns, he had the largest share of the confidence of the clergy. Shrewsbury was certainly a Whig, and probably a freethinker: he had lost one religion; and it did not very clearly appear that he had found another. Halifax had been during many years accused of scepticism, deism, atheism. Danby's attachment to episcopacy and the liturgy was rather political than religious. But Nottingham was such a son as the Church was proud to own. Propositions, therefore, which, if made by his colleagues, would infallibly produce a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... admiration of successful fraud and violence, to an imitation of the excesses of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody, and tyrannical democracy. On the side of religion, the danger of their example is no longer from intolerance, but from atheism: a foul, unnatural vice, foe to all the dignity and consolation of mankind; which seems in France, for a long time, to have been embodied into a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... every real man must, in one way or another, fight a great battle. . . . Especially I feel indebted to Abbot's article. Truly he 'says, that the great question of the coming days is,—theism, or atheism? Not whether Jesus is our Master, the chief among men, but whether the God in whom Jesus believed really exists; and, by consequence, whether the immortality which lay open to his vision is but a dream ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... the hereditary lords, the best scheme of government, began to grow lukewarm. When it became evident that the New Era was to end in bloodshed, instead of universal peace and good-will towards men,—that the Rights of Man included murder, confiscation, and atheism,—that the Sovereignty of the People meant the rule of King Mob, who seemed determined to carry out to the letter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Cockburn's) were to be admitted without proof: (1) Mind exists; (2) matter exists; (3) every change indicates a cause. Nowadays the most orthodox of metaphysicians would admit that this limitation of position by no means implied atheism. But seventy years ago it would have been the exception to find an orthodox metaphysician who did admit it; and Lockhart, or rather Baron von Lauerwinkel, was perfectly justified in taking the view which ordinary ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... modesty for impudence, and countrified ways for town ribaldry, and by removing their character as far as possible from cowardice and effeminacy, even if that should make people get very near to audacity and foolhardiness. And some even make superstition a plea for atheism, and stupidity a plea for knavery, perverting their nature, like a stick bent double, from inability to set it straight. But the basest disowning of flattery is to be disagreeable without any purpose in view, and it shows an altogether inelegant and clumsy unfitness for social intercourse to ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... was led on to examine more attentively what I doubt not was in my thoughts long before, viz. the concatenation of argument by which the mind ascends from its first to its final religious idea; and I came to the conclusion that there was no medium, in true philosophy, between Atheism and Catholicity, and that a perfectly consistent mind, under those circumstances in which it finds itself here below, must embrace either the one or the other. And I hold this still: I am a Catholic by virtue of my believing in a God; and if I am asked why I believe in a God, I answer ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... or good-natured, or charitable, or gentle-minded, he could never have thought of erasing from the hearts of mankind the knowledge of God and the comfortable faith in His fatherly care, or been guilty of "the atrocious wickedness of diffusing atheism through the land." Horne goes on to charge this "atrocious wickedness" against Smith too. "You would persuade us," he says, "by the example of David Hume, Esq., that atheism is the only cordial for low spirits and the proper antidote against the fear of death, but surely ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... persecuted in Holland, when he first published his opinions. Voetius, a bigot of great influence at Utrecht, accused him of atheism, and had even projected in his mind to have this philosopher burnt at Utrecht in an extraordinary fire, which, kindled on an eminence, might be observed by the seven provinces. Mr. Hallam has observed, that "the ordeal of fire was the great purifier of books and men." This persecution of science ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... understood. The simplest of preachers must some day encounter the old lady who accosted, so it is said, a former Bishop of Chester, who, at great pains to be lucid, had unfolded the argument against the errors of atheism, with the words, "Well, my lord, I must say as I think there is a God after ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... explanations, known to the priests and the more learned, which, resolving the personages of the Pantheon into the powers of nature, reconciled the apparent multiplicity of gods with monotheism, or even with atheism. So far, however, as outward appearances were concerned, the worship was grossly polytheistic. Various deities, whom it was not considered at all necessary to trace to a single stock, divided the allegiance of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... it is that his majesty is pleased to clothe himself with so many titles and names for us. He considers what our necessity is, and accordingly expresses his own name. I think nothing doth more hold forth the unbelief of men, and atheism of our hearts, than the many several titles that God takes in scripture. There is a necessity of a multitude of them, to make us take up God; because we staying upon a general notion of God, rather frame ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... 'Thy speech, O Yajnaseni, is delightful, smooth and full of excellent phrases. We have listened to it (carefully). Thou speakest, however, the language of atheism. O princess, I never act, solicitous of the fruits of my actions. I give away, because it is my duty to give; I sacrifice because it is my duty to sacrifice! O Krishna, I accomplish to the best of my power ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... help to show his bright and sparkling disposition: At dinner with a large party of famous men and women, a French scientist annoyed all the rest by loudly arguing for atheism, and proclaimed his belief that there is no God. "Very good soup this," struck in Sydney Smith. "Yes, monsieur, it is excellent," replied the atheist. "Pray, sir," continued Smith, "do you believe in a cook?" The ounce of wit was ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... Fathers, some of them at least, if what were objected against them were of no more force. His Philosophy is too rational to be weak'ned by Sophistry, his Divinity too solid to be shook by Heresie: He seems to have been predestinated to Glory, and the appointed Instrument to deliver us from Popery, Atheism, Deism, and Socinianism, with all those spurious Sectaries which have been spawned into the Worlds: What can resist the Power of his Arguments? And who is able to abide his Force. But to return, I think the Controversie, ...
— A Letter to A.H. Esq.; Concerning the Stage (1698) and The - Occasional Paper No. IX (1698) • Anonymous
... abandoned to fear, misery, and despair, and there is no help, for retributive justice marches on with impressive solemnity. Imperial despotism, disproportionate fortunes, unequal divisions of society, the degradation of woman, slavery, Epicurean pleasures, practical atheism, bring forth their wretched fruits. The vices and miseries of society cannot be arrested. Glory is succeeded by shame; all strength is in mechanism, and that wears out; vitality passes away; the empire is weak from ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the interference of God, in thus making the former enemies of his worship pay homage to his ministers, after a long reign of atheism and persecution. ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... at this time so limited as might be expected from the foregoing. The study of Shelley's poetry had led me to read pretty nearly all the English lyric poets; Shelley's atheism had led me to read Kant, Spinoza, Godwin, Darwin and Mill; and these, again, in their turn, introduced me to many writers and various literature. I do not think that at this time I cared much for novel reading. Scott ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... wax-light Phantasmagory, kindly hidden from you is an Abyss, of Black Doubt, Scepticism, nay Sansculottic Jacobinism; an Orcus that has no bottom. Think of that. 'Groby Pool is thatched with pancakes,'—as Jeannie Deans's Innkeeper defied it to be! The Bottomless of Scepticism, Atheism, Jacobinism, behold, it is thatched over, hidden from your despair, by stage-properties judiciously arranged. This stuffed rump of mine saves not me only from rheumatism, but you also from what other isms! In this your ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... them, as the people of Tartary, or the Terra Australia, are to us. And therefore as we draw giants and anthropophagi in those vacancies of our maps, where we have not travelled to discover better; so those wretches paint lewdness, atheism, folly, ill-reasoning, and all manner of extravagancies amongst us, for want of understanding what we are. Oftentimes it so falls out, that they have a particular pique to some one amongst us, and then they immediately interest heaven in their ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... in the practice of its followers in Ceylon is the name or the existence of an omnipotent First Cause recognised in any portion of their worship. MAUPIED has correctly described Buddhism both in Ceylon and China as a system of refined atheism (Essai sur l'Origine des Peuples Anciens, ch. x. p. 277), and MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE gives the weight of his high authority in the statement that "The most ancient of Baudha sects entirely denies the being of a God; and some ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... He was the author of an exhaustive work, entitled, Mishne Torah, the "Second Law," which was eagerly copied and extensively disseminated. He also wrote many philosophical treatises leveled against atheism, and designed to prove that God produced the world from naught, and at the age of fifty gave to the world his great work, Moreh Nebuchim ("Guide of the Perplexed"), to which Rabbi Judah Charizi ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... demand his head. 4. Robespierre endeavours to acquit himself of the charges brought against him by the deputy Louvet. 6. Report in the assembly of disturbances in the department of Mayence and Loire. Three hundred millions of assignats issued with new emblems. A discourse upon Atheism pronounced by Dupont, and applauded by the convention. The Princess de Rohan-Rochefort is sent to prison for having written to the ex-minister Bertrand. 7. The battle of Gemappe—the Austrians are defeated by superior ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... only university of importance not under some form of denominational control, and for this reason had, perhaps, more than the usual share of extreme liberalism, or atheism, as it was at that time considered amongst the students; and one of my classmates, a man a couple of years older than myself, and of far more than the average intellectual power, made an active propaganda of the most advanced opinions. He also introduced Philip James Bailey's "Festus" ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... less naught To leave gods in profession and in thought, Than in her love and life; for therein lies Most of her duties and their dignities; And, rail the brain-bald world at what it will, 190 That's the grand atheism that reigns in it still. Yet singularity she would use no more, For she was singular too much before; But she would please the world with fair pretext: Love would not leave her conscience perplext: Great men that will have ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... Republic is to combine the Socialism of 1848 with the Atheism of 1793, the National workshops with the worship of Reason, and to join hands, I suppose, with the extemporised 'Republic of Brazil' in a grand propaganda which shall secure the abolition, not only of all the thrones in Europe, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... prejudices is the suspicion attaching to the extraordinary discoveries of philosophy and science. Diabolic inspiration (as in our age infidelity and atheism are popular outcries) was a ready and successful accusation against ideas or discoveries in advance of the time. Roger Bacon, Robert Grostete, Albert the Great, Thomas of Ercildoun, Michael Scot—eminent ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... reject facts, because we cannot comprehend the reasons of them. He who allows himself to be guilty of such folly, if he seeks to maintain his consistency, will be plunged, sooner or later, into the dreary gulf of atheism. Common sense, philosophy and religion alike teach us to receive all undoubted facts in the natural and the spiritual world, with becoming reverence; assured that however mysterious to us, they are all most beautifully harmonious ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... the true inference would be that both doctrines are meaningless aggregations of words, and therefore not capable of being in any true sense either 'believed' or 'disbelieved.' So again the view of the external world suggests to Newman 'atheism, pantheism, or polytheism.' Almighty benevolence has created a world of intelligent beings, most of whom are doomed to eternal tortures, and having become incarnate in order to save us, has altogether failed in His purpose. The inference is, says Fitzjames, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... form which subsequent Christian apologetics adopted. As a nickname the term "agnostic'' was soon misused to cover any and every variation of scepticism, and just as popular preachers confused it with atheism (q.v.) in their denunciations, so the callow freethinker—following Tennyson's path of "honest doubt''—classed himself with the agnostics, even while he combined an instinctively Christian theism with a facile rejection of the historical ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... did not humbly sue for a gift from his father's bounty: he claimed a share of the property as of right. The terms are significant; "Give me the portion of goods that falleth ([Greek: to epiballon meros]) to me." The phrase faithfully depicts the atheism of an unbelieving human heart; the fool hath said in his heart, "No God." He has become brutish: as swine gather the acorns from the ground, heedless of the oak from which they fell; alienated men snatch ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... the prisoners was no sinecure. Many of them were deeply tainted with the foul atheism engendered by the Revolution; many more with the practical atheism that comes of reckless living. Scenes of cruelty and depravity would occasionally take place, only too likely where a large number of men were left so much to themselves. Yet there ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... weakness of females. Fathers of families * * * *. Every man was intimidated. Every feeling man wept, because all were the victims of the caprice of this insolent upstart, who made an ostentation of atheism and ferocity." ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... Sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the rites and usage of the said church, &c. is founded on falsity in matter of fact, is repugnant to the laws of England, contrary to the charter of the Proprietors, is an encouragement to atheism and irreligion, destructive to trade, and tends to the depopulation and ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... die, who live. This is the fear, this is the saving care That makes me leave false honours, and that share Which fell to me of this frail world, lest by A frequent use of present pleasures I Should quite forget the future, and let in Foul atheism, or some presumptuous sin. Now by their loss I have secur'd my life, And bought my peace ev'n with the cause of strife. I live to Him Who gave me life and breath, And without fear expect the hour of death. If you like this, bid joy ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... Man went into one of these thinking Engines, but he came wiser out than he was before; and I am persuaded, it would be a more effectual Cure to our Deism, Atheism, Scepticism, and all other Scisms, than ever the Italian's Engine, for Curing the Gout by cutting off ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... times of our era, the sneers and taunts of atheism and agnosticism have been directed at the humble believer, who bows down in submission and questions not. The fathers of the Church, such as Augustine and Chrysostom and Thomas of Aquinas and, at a later time, Luther, and Calvin, and Knox, and Newman, despite the war of creeds, have attacked ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... "Everywhere equality before the law—Nature is not different in that respect, nor better than we": a fine instance of secret motive, in which the vulgar antagonism to everything privileged and autocratic—likewise a second and more refined atheism—is once more disguised. "Ni dieu, ni maitre"—that, also, is what you want; and therefore "Cheers for natural law!"—is it not so? But, as has been said, that is interpretation, not text; and somebody might come along, who, with opposite intentions and modes of interpretation, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... so few, crying for help from God against this deceitful adversary, through daily experience of the atheism, hypocrisy, ignorance, misconceptions of God and of his ways, and deceitfulness of our hearts, might sufficiently put it out of doubt ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... fearful apprehension a general dereliction of religious principles and practice among our fellow-citizens, a visible and prevailing impiety and contempt for the laws and institutions of religion, and an abounding infidelity, which in many instances tends to atheism itself. The profligacy and corruption of the public morals have advanced with a progress proportionate to our declension in religion. Profaneness, pride, luxury, injustice, intemperance, lewdness, and every species of debauchery ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... in the bone, and my character is fundamentally reverent and religious. The religion of my fathers underwent in me a kind of metamorphosis and became something which would indeed have appeared like rank atheism to them, but which was nevertheless full of the very essence of true religion—love, reverence, wonder, unworldliness, and devotion to ideal truth—but in no way ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... but thought itself is inconsistent with their effort; their very praises of the heroism of their victims are inconsistent with it. There is a gaping incongruity between the obsolete German romanticism and the new German atheism which exploited it, between their talk about Siegfried and their talk about the struggle for life. And there is the same incongruity between the cubist effort to see the visible world as a mechanical process and art itself. The cubist seems to force himself with a savage ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... since Calvin's day Protestantism had been almost extirpated in France, so that the gradual growth of the spirit of enquiry, still proceeding below the surface, had brought it to a point beyond Protestantism. It was atheism that Voltaire stood for, and with the vast majority of the people of France from that day to this the alternative lay between rigid Catholicism on one hand and rigid atheism on the other. The innumerable shades of transition between these ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... far as to reply to my present answer. I know you have been used in controversies to have the last word, and in this I shall not baulk your ambition; for notwithstanding any defect of my plea in favour of atheism I mean to join issue upon your replication, and by no means, according to the practice and language of the lawyers, to put in a rejoinder. Should your arguments be defectively answered by me, should your learning and your reasoning be more conspicuous than mine, I shall ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... attestation to what others had long ago discerned for them,—the sky's brightness,—we do not thank them; or thank them only in so far as, even in uttering this last remnant of truth, they are more commendable than those who have sunk from apathy to atheism, and declare, in their dark and hopeless backgrounds, that heaven is ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Tradition and of authority had become weaker, Lutheranism was reduced to a dogmatic chaos. By the application of the principle of private judgment, certain leaders began to call in question, not merely individual doctrines, but even the very foundations of Christianity, and, in a short time, Atheism and Naturalism were recognised as the hall-mark of ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... was talking to Uncle Tom about it, begging him to go, and he was half consenting though reluctant. Reverdy was all delight over the prospect, and it was an opportunity for me to be with Isabel. She had never become a communicant of any church. But she abhorred atheism. It denied the love that she saw in nature, the divinity that permeated the human mind; the law she sensed in growth and decay; the spirit of beauty that reigned everywhere to her imagination. We were at one on this ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... 1846 the Whigs nominated him for Congress. The Democrats nominated the pioneer Methodist preacher, Peter Cartwright, who used the Washington's birthday address against Lincoln and even the charge of atheism, which had no worthy foundation, for Lincoln was profoundly religious, though he never united with any church. He said that whenever any church would inscribe over its altar as the only condition for membership the words of Jesus: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... Atheist from the beginning of it. The materialism of things is on the face of things; it does not require any science to find it out. A man who has lived and loved falls down dead and the worms eat him. That is Materialism if you like. That is Atheism if you like. If mankind has believed in spite of that, it can believe in spite of anything. But why our human lot is made any more hopeless because we know the names of all the worms who eat him, or the names of all the parts of him that they eat, is to a thoughtful mind somewhat ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... aggressive and positive. I, too, am astonished at myself. I do not know my own mood, it is so clear, so sharp, so combative. Is it the spectacle of Italy, I wonder—of a country practically without religion—the spectacle in fact of Latin Europe as a whole, and the practical Atheism in which it is ingulfed? My dear friend, the problem of the world at this moment is—how to find a religion?—some great conception which shall be once more capable, as the old were capable, of welding ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... declared destroyed, and Jansenism being in disgrace, there was virtually no legal religion in France but one—that of the Roman Catholic Church. Atheism, it is true, was tolerated, but then Atheism was not a religion. The Atheists did not, like the Protestants, set up rival churches, or appoint rival ministers, and seek to draw people to their assemblies. The Atheists, though they tacitly approved the religion of ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... pique all mortals, yet affect a name? A fool to pleasure, yet a slave to fame: Now deep in Taylor and the Book of Martyrs, Now drinking citron with his grace and Chartres: Now Conscience chills her, and now Passion burns; And Atheism and Religion take their turns; A very heathen in the carnal part, Yet still a sad, good ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... or at least negative system. But Mahayanism was pulled equally strongly in the opposite direction by the popular and mythological elements which it contained and was on the whole inclined to theism and even polytheism quite as much as to atheism and acosmism. A modern Japanese writer[108] says that Dharma-kaya "may be considered to be equivalent to the Christian conception of the Godhead." This is excessive as a historical statement of the view current in India during the early centuries of our era, ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... be all right; soon manage that." Fenwick speaks with the confidence of one in a thriving trade. The deity of commerce, security, can manage all things. Insecurity is atheism in the City. "But then," he adds, "Vereker wouldn't marry, even with a house and big-fee consultations, because he's afraid his mother would hector over ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan |
