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Edifying   Listen
adjective
Edifying  adj.  Instructing; improving; as, an edifying conversation.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Edifying" Quotes from Famous Books



... history of good men who began life with 2s. 11d., and died leaving a quarter of a million, made by selling soft goods and attending church, and with other books relating pathetic anecdotes of boys who died young and, before they died, delighted society with observations of the most edifying character on the shortness of life. We had rather have been a horsedealer and kept ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... you to see everything that has part or lot in African frailty. Go everywhere, see everything. Bring your notes to me, and I will select such fragments of the broken commandments as suit my purpose, which is, as always, the edifying of the human race. Only this time I mean to purge it as ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens

... wrong text under the title Ueber Goethe's Faust. At the fifty-third page I came to a dead stop. Except quite incidentally neither Goethe nor Faust had as yet been mentioned. These fifty-three pages had been entirely devoted to what seemed to my rather unmetaphysical mind a not very luminous or edifying dissertation on the difference between Ansicht and Einsicht—between mere Opinion and true critical Insight; and, as far as I could discover, the only conclusion as yet arrived at was that the writer possessed an exclusive ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... his authors; and Grotius confessed, that it is unknown to the Mahometans themselves. Lest it should provoke their indignation and laughter, the pious lie is suppressed in the Arabic version; but it has maintained an edifying place in the numerous editions of the Latin text, (Pocock, Specimen, Hist. Arabum, p. 186, 187. Reland, de Religion. Moham. l. ii. c. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... not consider it necessary to correct the mistake of his saintly visitor, and requested her to be seated. With perfect readiness she accepted the invitation, and began at once to discourse in an edifying way. ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... first my boy remembered nothing, except the woodpile on which he tried his axe, and a closet near the front door, which he entered into one day, with his mother's leave, to pray, as the Scripture bade. It was very dark, and hung full of clothes, and his literal application of the text was not edifying; he fancied, with a child's vague suspicion, that it amused his father and mother; I dare say it also touched them. Of the Smith house, he could remember much more: the little upper room where the boys slept, and the narrow stairs which he often rolled down in the ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... edifying state, "remove from the patient all persons who might be troublesome to you; keep with you only the necessary witnesses—a single person if need be; desire them not to occupy themselves in any way with the processes you employ and the effects which result from them, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... presented on the pages of inspiration or in the preached word, which is the great instrumentality employed by the Holy Spirit, in bringing men to Christ, and in feeding and nourishing and strengthening and edifying the church which has thus been gathered to Him. And so both Peter in speaking about the "sincere milk of the word," and Paul in referring to the "strong meat," by which term he characterizes the deeper spiritual truths of revelation, are leading ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark

... the yellow omnibus was waiting for some of us as we dawdled about in the school-room, titivating; the masters nowhere, as usual on a Sunday morning; and some of the boys began to sing in chorus a not very edifying chanson, which they did not "Bowdlerize," about a holy Capuchin friar; it began ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... ready to obey any orders I should receive. The conversation I heard was far from edifying, but I was too much engaged in thinking of my own project to attend ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston

... there appeared a little brochure called 'English Lucian,' but it proved to be nothing more edifying than a few 'modern dialogues' between a vintner and his wife, between 'a reformer of manners,' his wife and a captain of the guards, and between a Master of Arts and 'a lady's woman.' Of the humorous satire of Lucian himself there was no ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... and without daring to utter a word in his own defence, he stood by, while Father Francis told how many times he had yawned over the "Lives of the Martyrs;" and how he had refused to read, longer than one hour, a most edifying commentary of the Fathers ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... are writings inspired by God, containing a true history of facts, in which we are deeply concerned—a true recital of the laws given by God to Moses, and of the precepts of our blessed Lord and Saviour, delivered from his own mouth to his disciples, and repeated and enlarged upon in the edifying epistles of his Apostles; who were men chosen from amongst those who had the advantage of conversing with our Lord, to bear witness of his miracles and resurrection—and who, after his ascension, were assisted and ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... few points I have observed with more pleasure in her than all that concerns the office which brings me to her in this private and confidential manner. All that breaks from her, in our t'ete-'a-t'etes, upon the subject of dress, is both edifying and amiable. She equips herself for the drawing-room with all the attention in her power; she neglects nothing that she thinks becoming to her appearance upon those occasions, and is sensibly conscious that her high station ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... are few, if any, who would be so illiberal as to wish for the exclusion from the sacred volume of all those books or passages which, though neither genuine nor perhaps edifying, have remained in the Canon of Scripture for many centuries. Any serious attempt to reconstruct the Canon would raise a theological storm which would not subside in this century. The work could never be done ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... was that Jeremy received six strokes on the hand with a ruler. Mr. Cole was not good at this kind of thing, and twice he missed Jeremy's hand altogether, and looked very foolish. It was not an edifying scene. Jeremy left the room, his head high, his spirit obstinate; and his father remained, puzzled, distressed, at a loss, anxious to do what was right, but unable to touch ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole

... verse. When she comes home, she commends the sermon for the Scripture, and two hours. She loves preaching better than praying, and of preachers, lecturers; and thinks the week day's exercise far more edifying than the Sunday's. Her oftest gossipings are sabbath-day's journeys, where (though an enemy to superstition), she will go in pilgrimage five mile to a silenced minister, when there is a better sermon in her own parish. She doubts of the virgin Mary's ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... exhibited for the first time, long before the doors were open, the little back street was filled with a fashionable mob, including ladies of the highest rank. An admission by noble non-subscribers with notes, gold, and cheques in hands, was begged for with a polite insinuating humility that was quite edifying. A hatful of ten-guinea subscriptions was thrust upon the unwilling secretary at the door with as much eagerness as if he had been the allotter of shares in a ten per cent railway in the day of Hudsonian guarantees. And it must be observed that this crowd included ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... tastes with weddings, wassail, and sly frolics of all sorts. And as his personal recollections ran back nearly three score years into the perspective of the village history, his fund of local anecdote was copious, accurate, and edifying. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... was followed by the pious Madame Le Clerc, now Princesse Borghese, who was sighing deeply and loudly. After her came limping the godly Talleyrand, dragging his pure moiety by his side, both with downcast and edifying looks. The Christian patriots, Gravina and Lima, Dreyer and Beust, Dalberg and Cetto, Malsburgh and Pappenheim, with the Catholic Schimmelpenninck and Mohammed Said Halel Effendi,—all presented themselves as penitent sinners imploring absolutions, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... arrangements had been perfected to receive the returns by messenger and private wire. The Whig bulletin over the way had already massed a constituency extending to the Temple lawn, which, in default of definite news, it was edifying with views of foreign travel and cartoons bearing on the larger issues of the election. Within doors the telegraph operator was already installed at the ancient table which had graced the grand-paternal distillery, and William Irons ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... of the chief eunuch, which some time after there was occasion to open, was discovered an acknowledgment of many pounds of gold received by him from Cyril, through Paul, his sister's son. Nestorius was abandoned by the court, and eventually exiled to an Egyptian oasis. An edifying legend relates that his blasphemous tongue was devoured by worms, and that from the heats of an Egyptian desert he escaped only into the hotter ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... for while the giant and other savage talked together, these two kept up a lively confab between themselves, which, as neither could understand a word the other was saying, must have been highly entertaining and edifying to both. A few minutes before, while playing about the hill, Bushie had found an old stone hatchet, and picking it up, had brought it to his red friend to have him fit a handle to it, which the young brave, with mingled pity and good humor, was now busy in doing—the edifying interchange of thought ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... these sore against my will, for I would rather see thy sister reading some edifying book than passing her time on such vanities as these are used ...
— Legend of Moulin Huet • Lizzie A. Freeth

... concluded this moving address, Miss Lee extended one of her well-shaped hands to Mr. Pennington Brown—who grasped it warmly, for he was deeply moved by so edifying an exhibition of affectionate and dutiful unselfishness—and with the other applied her ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... He had even set his heart on rivalling Bourdaloue and Bossuet. Though an avowed freethinker, he had sate up all night at sea to compose sermons, and had with great difficulty been prevented from edifying the crew of a man of war with his pious oratory. [31] He now addressed the House of Peers, for the first time, with characteristic eloquence, sprightliness, and audacity. He blamed the Commons for not having taken a bolder line. "They have been afraid," ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... bell, and told his valet he might go out for the night, and his house-keeper and maid they might go to bed, which they did at the top of the house, as we supposed. The sequel proved that to be doubtful, and that they must have had a most edifying night. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... Helen returned with Fanny—she had taken her into the upper galleries. Yet the private dreams of Miss Winchelsea, already vivid and concrete enough, became now realistic in the highest degree. She figured that pleasant young man, lecturing in the most edifying way to his students, herself modestly prominent as his intellectual mate and helper; she figured a refined little home, with two bureaus, with white shelves of high-class books, and autotypes of the pictures of Rossetti and Burne-Jones, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... She could repeat, in quite an attractive style, many fine passages from Homer, Virgil, Milton, Shakspeare, Pope, Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, and a host of lesser lights in the poetic hemisphere—and could quote from and criticise the philosophy and style of Bulwer with the most edifying self-satisfaction imaginable—not to enumerate her many other ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur

... have so continued to concern ourselves, and why the fond observer of the footprints of genius is likely so to continue, with a body of discussion, neither in itself and in its day, nor in its preserved and attested records, at all positively edifying. The answer to such an inquiry would doubtless reward patience, but I fear we can now glance at its possibilities only long enough to say that interesting persons—so they be of a sufficiently approved and established interest—render in some degree interesting whatever ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... and acquaint me with every passage that is of concern to you; beginning with your account how both of you spent your time when in Kent; for you must know we are all taken with your duty to your parents, and the discretion of the good couple, and think you have given a very edifying example of filial piety to all who shall hear your story; for if so much duty is owing to parents, where nothing can be done for one, how much more is it to be expected, where there is power to add to the natural obligation, all the comforts and conveniences ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... few months a plague had come amongst us that we had heard much about, and now caused us much trouble—a plague of lice. It is not an edifying subject, but anyone can understand how the itching caused many a sleepless night. We were not to blame. When we no longer were able to change our clothes, we could not guard against the vermin that had become ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo

... above mentioned, the priest who came was an Italian Jesuit, the Reverend Father G——. He held his little audience entranced with a fund of edifying stories and interesting replies to the questions asked. The calm serenity of the night, the gentle, refreshing breeze that came from a neighboring wood of pine-trees, the beautiful glitter of the flitting glow-worm, and the rich perfume wafted from the purple ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... which belonged to her everlasting peace, before the present disease had taken root in her constitution. In my visits to her, I went rather to receive information than to impart it. Her mind was abundantly stored with divine truths, and her conversation was truly edifying. The recollection of it will ever produce a thankful sensation in ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond

... specifically, of the thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, and powers of the earth:—of the thrones, stable, or "ruling," literally right-doing powers ("rex eris, recte si facies"):—of the dominations—lordly, edifying, dominant and harmonious powers; chiefly domestic, over the "built thing," domus, or house; and inherently twofold, Dominus and Domina; Lord and Lady:—of the Princedoms, pre-eminent, incipient, creative, and demonstrative powers; thus poetic and mercantile, in the "princeps carmen deduxisse" ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... a work of art; they almost inevitably drag in irrelevant gabble as to whether this or that personage in it is respectable, or this or that situation in accordance with the national notions of what is edifying and nice. Fully nine-tenths of the reviews of Dreiser's "The Titan," without question the best American novel of its year, were devoted chiefly to indignant denunciations of the morals of Frank Cowperwood, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... in them but the unexpected, and that brings its joys and terrors, its laughter and its tears. Here a great deal of unrestrained human nature is given free play, and the results are exciting if not edifying. Let us spend an evening, but not a night—that is too much ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes

... arbitrarily erected the new building out of the old materials of their own Convention were obliged to send for an army to support their work: like brave gladiators, they fought it out in the streets of Paris, and even massacred each other in their house of assembly, in the most edifying manner, and for the entertainment and instruction of their Excellencies the foreign ambassadors, who had a box in this constitutional amphitheatre ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Woodvilles against the Earl of Warwick III Wherein Master Nicholas Alwyn visits the Court, and there learns Matter of which the Acute Reader will judge for himself IV Exhibiting the Benefits which Royal Patronage confers on Genius,—also the Early Loves of the Lord Hastings; with other Matters Edifying and Delectable V The Woodville Intrigue prospers—Montagu confers with Hastings, visits the Archbishop of York, and is met on the Road by a strange Personage VI The Arrival of the Count de la Roche, and the various Excitement produced ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... both at Kilwinning and Dalry; and if it has no respect to Protestant principles, I doubt it's but another dose o' the radical poison in a new guise." Mr. Icenor, however, thought that "the observe on the great Doctor Drystour was very edifying; and that they should see about getting him to help at the summer ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt

... After this despatch follows one from M. Bratiano, the Roumanian Secretary of State, finding fault with M. Calargi for his unfriendly tone towards Austria, and here is his edifying reply on that point. 'Let me satisfy you (vous rassurer) as to the consequences that might arise from the handing in of this document. Written on paper without any mark, deprived of every official or individual character, bearing ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... America all their lives. Miss Jacobi has certainly rather a Jewish type of face, and she has the clear olive complexion of the Italian. Well, you will see them for yourself on Sunday, for they are regular church-goers, though Mr. Jacobi's behaviour during service is not always edifying. They have seats near us, and it irritates me dreadfully to see him lounging and yawning while other people are saying ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... a cleaver as he lay in his bed, and thereafter dispatched him with a three-sided dagger. He then went in to his father and confessed his fault. "Then you had best kill me too," said the father; to whom the son, "Sir, I have done enough." He was hanged at Maidstone, full of penitence and edifying discourse. The elegy ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... Pope, "myself disremimbers the particlar passidges they allidge out ov them ould felleys," says he, "though sure enough they're more numerous nor edifying,—so we'll jist suppose that a heretic was to find sich a saying as this in Austin, 'Every sensible man knows that thransubstantiation is a lie,'—or this out of Tertullian or Plutarch, 'the bishop ov Rome is a common imposther,'—now tell me, ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... sons should deny it. And the reflection that the Prince of Wales was to have had the Government and the Duke of York the command of the army during his illness, makes this representation of his actual state, when coming from them, more peculiarly proper and edifying. I bless God it is yet some time before these matured and ripened virtues will be visited upon us in the ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... sound of the vesper bell the company broke up, some of the graver sort going to evening prayers, where, with half shut eyes and shining countenances, they made a most orthodox and edifying portion of a Lenten congregation; others to their own homes, to tell over the occurrences of the fight and feast, for the information of the family circle; and some, doubtless, to the licensed freedoms of some tavern, the door of which ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... respect to the Seventh Day. This was additional proof of the absurdity of the attempted amalgamation of Judaism and Christianity. But what he dealt most fully with was the indiscriminate selection of what were very properly termed the "Lessons" from the Hebrew Bible. It was, he said, far from edifying to hear some chapters read out from the lectern without comment; though fortunately the readers were as a rule so imperfectly trained that the most objectionable passages had their potentiality of mischief minimized. He concluded his indictment ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore

... it should be so, she at once tried to impress me with the fact that she did not wish me to think she 'could not be aroused.' This woman several times hinted that she had learned a great amount that was not edifying at boarding school, and I always felt that, with proper encouragement, she ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... the licence, as well as to partake of the pleasures, of the time. We learn, from a poem of his enemy Milbourne, that Dryden's person was advantageous; and that, in the younger part of his life, he was distinguished by the emulous favour of the fair sex.[14] And although it would not be edifying, were it possible, to trace instances of his success in gallantry, we may barely notice his intrigue with Mrs. Reeve, a beautiful actress, who performed in many of his plays. This amour was probably terminated before the fair lady's retreat to a cloister, which seems to ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... comes to his neat little parlour to write sermons, to marry, or to bury, as the case may require. Never were better or kinder people than his host and hostess; and there is a reflection of clerical importance about them since their connection with the Church, which is quite edifying—a decorum, a gravity, a solemn politeness. Oh, to see the worthy wheeler carry the gown after his lodger on a Sunday, nicely pinned up in his wife's best handkerchief!—or to hear him rebuke a squalling child or ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... have ever"—-"My good FADLADEEN!" exclaimed the Princess, interrupting him, "we really do not deserve that you should give yourself so much trouble. Your opinion of the poem we have just heard, will I have no doubt be abundantly edifying without any further waste of your valuable erudition."—"If that be all," replied the critic,—evidently mortified at not being allowed to show how much he knew about everything but the subject immediately before him—"if that be all that ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... expression; and, lifting up the book which was lying on her lap, Ada opened it at the required page, and ended the discussion by saying, "I shall consider it my duty to inform Mrs. Elder of your charming sentiments; in the meantime, kindly excuse me from continuing such highly edifying conversation." With that she bent her head over the French grammar, and soon appeared thoroughly engrossed in the conjugation of the verb avoir, to have, while her mischievous school-mate turned away with a light shrug ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... of their own lives, which they will be compelled to reconsider from a fresh point of view. As an interpreter of Scripture also, Mr. Robertson nowhere appears to greater advantage. While not ignoring difficult points, he is always looking for, and never fails to find, that which is profitable and edifying." ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... to ring down the curtain. The last days of the fair were not edifying. Scenes of riot and debauch, of violence and lawlessness disgraced the assembly. Its usefulness as a gathering for trade purposes had passed away. It became a nuisance and a disgrace to London. In older days the Lord Mayor used to ride in ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... national repose of manner which we were to see so often again, south as well as north, and which I find it so beautiful to have seen. In a Europe abounding in volcanic Italians, nervous Germans, and exasperated Frenchmen, it was comforting, it was edifying to see those Castilian peasants so self-respectfully self-possessed ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... semble qu' on soit dans un enfer, et que ce soient tout autant de diables dechaines."—But enough of this unedifying scene, of which the Abbe Geramb gives a similar account. If we contrast with it the majestic and edifying ceremonies of the Roman church, we shall feel grateful to God for having preserved us from such disorders. I shall merely add from Thevenot, that the Christians are called to office at the holy Sepulchre by boards struck with iron, as we are for ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs

... corresponding to the entire clergy of Protestant churches). Then there were such unworthy charlatans as the pardoners and professional pilgrims, traveling everywhere under special privileges and fleecing the credulous of their money with fraudulent relics and preposterous stories of edifying adventure. All this corruption was clear enough to every intelligent person, and we shall find it an object of constant satire by the authors of the age, but it was too firmly established to be ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... dictation. But being, like all his race, unused to literary labour, his lively imagination continually led him astray, and as I found amusement in his so doing, it proved to be an easy matter to induce him to wander off into scenes of gipsy life, which, however edifying they might be to my reader, would certainly not have the charm of novelty to the black-eyed lady to whom they were supposed to be addressed. However, as I read over from time to time to my Rommany chal ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... first sight to be an illustration of a nursery tale, but the text describing a Witch's Sabbath, rapidly dispels the idea. Nor does a version of the popular Faust legend—"Dr. John Faustus"—appear to be edifying for young people. This and "Friar Bacon" are of the class which lingered the longest—the magical and oracular literature. Even to-day it is quite possible that dream-books and prophetical pamphlets enjoy a large sale; but ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White

... much that our insular self-satisfaction did not know, and did not care to know, of real Christian life in the Church of Rome. He dared to admit that much that was popularly held to be Popish was ancient, Catholic, edifying; he dared to warn Churchmen that the loose unsifted imputations, so securely hazarded against Rome, were both discreditable and dangerous. All this, from one whose condemnation of Rome was decisive and severe, was ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... self-discipline in the matter of the tongue, for all who name the Name of Christ. "For every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account" [Matt. xii. 36.]; "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but such as is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers" [Eph. iv. 29.]; "If any man among you seem to be devout ([Greek: threskos]), and bridleth not his tongue, that man's devoutness ([Greek: threkeia]) is vain" [Jas. i. 26.]; "Set a watch, O Lord, before my ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule

... useful to the people," we should be permitted to enjoy the extra show gratis. I took a ticket, and joined myself to a thick stream of people who belonged to every nationality and rank of life, and whose remarks and criticisms were most edifying. There were shopkeepers and their wives, only too delighted to take advantage of the mildest dissipation; gentlemen whose National Guard trousers were rendered respectable by the gray jacket or blouse of a citizen; humdrum ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy

... to the administration of the Lord's Supper. As it is not customary with your Reverences to administer it in the evening, we thought, after conference with our Reverend Brethren of the New Amsterdam congregation, and mature deliberation, that it would be more edifying to preach at the Bouwery, on such occasions, in the morning, and then have the Communion, after the ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor

... greater pleasure than the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who attended him, and from whose hands he received the sacrament. His deportment at this solemn ceremony, as related by a church dignitary, was fully edifying. He says:—"His majesty had already experienced the blessed consolations of religion, and removed the doubts his anxious attendants were entertaining, by eagerly desiring the queen to send for the archbishop, seeming, as it were, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... manner, and the clearness and force of his style. It was truly refreshing to hear such a sermon, after being so long accustomed to the dry, prosy discourses of the former curate, and the still less edifying harangues of the rector. Mr. Hatfield would come sailing up the aisle, or rather sweeping along like a whirlwind, with his rich silk gown flying behind him and rustling against the pew doors, mount the pulpit like a conqueror ascending his triumphal car; then, sinking on ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte

... This far from edifying scene was without precedent in the annals of Upper Canadian courts of justice, and was for some days the talk of the town, more especially among the members of the legal profession. The bar generally sided with the Attorney-General, and were loud ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... of their having darted into a public institution. Then no doubt it would hang together with the rest only too well. The explanation most exact would probably be that the pair had snatched a walk together (in the course of a day of many edifying episodes) for the 'lark' of it, and for the sake of the walk had taken the risk, which in that part of London, so detached from all gentility, had appeared to them small. The last thing Selina could have expected was to ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... were presently seen in the rising of all the Western tribes under the wily leadership of Pontiac, chief of the Ottawa warriors, who sought to exterminate the English and restore the supremacy of the French and Indian races. The incidents of this conspiracy of Pontiac are related in an edifying paper by the Hon. E.O. Randall, of Columbus, Ohio, contributed to the Transactions of the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... of a wide and fertile vale. Here they meditate for a while among the monuments, till the vicar comes out and joins them;—and recognizing the pedlar for an old acquaintance, mixes graciously in the conversation, which proceeds in a very edifying manner till the close of ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... the handsome young Quaker, under existing difficulties, was highly amusing. He bore the infliction of the prevailing malady with such a benign air of resignation, that it was quite edifying. Wiping the salt water from his face with a pocket-handkerchief of snowy whiteness, he exclaimed, turning to Flora, who was sitting at his feet with Josey in her arms, "Friend Flora, this sea-sickness is an evil ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... the Logos, not to the written word. And God hath set some in the Church as apostles; and some prophets; and some evangelists; and some pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." Individual souls in those days sought by very different paths to find the way from the ancient views to the Christian ones. And the one who thought he was on the right path called others heretics. In the meanwhile, the Church grew stronger ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... papa, Gussie. I only wish he were here to see the sight himself. He does not know what he is missing by being late for dinner. It is too bad that he must get the story second-hand, when he might have enjoyed the edifying sight himself if he ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... believed; prosperity generates criminal inclinations as well as adversity, and on the whole the rich are just as much addicted to crime as the poor. The progress of civilisation will not destroy crime. Many savage tribes living under the most primitive forms of social life present a far more edifying spectacle of respect for person and property than the most cultivated classes in Europe and America. All that civilisation has hitherto done is to change the form in which crime is perpetrated; in substance it remains the same. Primary Schools will not accomplish much in eliminating crime. ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... itself as the uninviting foreground; looking out contemplatively from its squalor at the inspiring view of Nouvelle Orleans, with the freighters, granaries and steamboats, three stories high, floating past; comparing its own inertia—if a city can be presumed capable of such edifying consciousness!—with the aspect of the busy levee, where cotton bales, sugar hogsheads, molasses casks, tobacco, hemp and other staple articles of the South, formed, as it were, a bulwark, or fortification of peace, for the habitations ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... false gods and senseless idols, and abolishing their barbarous human sacrifices, by which means he would preserve the souls of himself, his family, and subjects from perdition." Cortes enlarged on this and other topics in a most edifying manner, promising to communicate more particulars hereafter. Montezuma then presented a quantity of valuable ornaments of gold to our general, with a present of some gold, and three loads of mantles to each of our captains, and two loads of mantles to each of the soldiers. After ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... went to the Tombs and was lodged in a cell next door to Soko the Monk, who had nearly beaten a Chinaman to death with a pair of brass knuckles, from whom he learned much that was exciting if not edifying. ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... crown, the inward struggle in which he had trampled on every tie of affection and pleasure. Disappearing in the narrow streets, he disappears also from the pages of our narrative until, in the extraordinary vicissitudes of time, he makes his appearance again in a scene both touching and edifying. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... a lady, well-bred, dignified and courteous, who held a high place in the elect circle or Old Colonie society, and was not the less esteemed because of her straitened circumstances. Her walk and conversation were no doubt edifying, but the curriculum of her scholastic institute possibly left something to be desired in the departments of higher education. She had one available qualification for her position, however,—being an expert in making and mending quill pens. She spent much of her ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears

... perfectly intolerable, and the same thing whether empty or full; it is the smell of stale incense mixed with garlic and human odour, horrible combination of poisonous exhalations. I must say, as everybody has before remarked, that there is something highly edifying in the appearance of devotion which belongs to the Catholic religion; the churches are always open, and, go into them when you will, you see men and women kneeling and praying before this or that altar, absorbed in their occupation, and who must have ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... for the best ascetical writer. The librarian produced a copy of Arndt's True Christianity, which, though without preface or introduction, had this simple expression on the first page: "This book is more edifying than all others." ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... satisfaction, and joy purely spiritual; to exercise our most solemn thoughts, and employ our gravest discourses: all our speech therefore about them should be wholesome, apt to afford good instruction, or to excite good affections; "good," as St. Paul speaketh, "for the use of edifying, that it may minister grace ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... asleep. To think of it! to have a tall chimney towering up over a barn-gable or barn- yard, and puffing out black coal smoke, cotton-factory-wise! Pretty talk! pretty terms to train an honest and virtuous farmer to mouth! Wouldn't it be edifying to hear him string the yarn of these new words! to hear him tell of his engineer and ploughman; of his pokers and pitchforks; of six-horse power, valves, revolutions, stopcocks, twenty pounds of steam, etc.; mixing ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... their solemn old heads as they hold themselves up to us as a warning; they sermonize with edifying gravity on the impropriety of such misdemeanors; but we can trace through all this an under-current of satisfaction tenderly fatuitous, as they go back to the days of their gipsyhood, when Plancus ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... Writers of Legends and the Forgers of Miracles. In the Lives of the Saints, there is a plausible Representation of the Church Militant; and considering how naural it is for Man to be superstitious, and to love the Merveilleux, Nothing could be thought of more agreeable or edifying than to read of such Numbers of Holy Men and Women, that did not flinch from Combating themselves, and to see the noble Victories that have been obtain'd over the World, the Flesh and the Devil, in a literal Sense, as are to be met with in ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville

... only what you absolutely believed yourself. But you did not know how boundless is a child's readiness to accept what comes as from a spiritual authority, or you would have drawn the line more strongly between doctrine and opinion, fact and allegory, the true and the edifying.' ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... had concluded a discourse in the O Wahi language, which might possibly have been highly edifying, but that it was addressed to little else than empty benches,—for I did not understand him, and the minds of the few other persons present were evidently occupied with very different matters,—we returned ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... had known all that was going to happen, I wouldn't have asked you to come, old fellow. Come, give us another glass of your dog's-nose, and no more of your sermon, which isn't edifying." ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... bears examination no better. We are told that the Necrophorus in difficulties goes in search of assistance and returns with companions who assist him to bury the Mouse. This, in another form, is the edifying story of the Sacred Beetle whose pellet has rolled into a rut. Powerless to withdraw his booty from the abyss, the wily Dung-beetle summons three or four of his neighbours, who kindly pull out the pellet and return to their labours when the work ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... the greatness and goodness of his Divine Majesty; certain it is that the acknowledgment thereof, not only inwardly in our hearts, but also outwardly with our bodies, must needs be pious in itself, profitable unto us, and edifying unto others: we therefore think it meet and behoveful, and heartily commend it to all good and well-affected people, members of this church, that they be ready to tender unto the Lord the said acknowledgment, by doing reverence ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam

... when discovered) was not frequent among the chosen people, who enjoyed such peculiar manifestations of the Almighty's presence. The Scriptures seem only to have conveyed to us the general fact (being what is chiefly edifying) of the interview between the witch and the King of Israel. They inform us that Saul, disheartened and discouraged by the general defection of his subjects, and the consciousness of his own unworthy and ungrateful disobedience, despairing of obtaining an answer from the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... he was occupied in religious duties, in 'giving Francis, his servant, some directions for preparation to communicate; in reviewing his life, and resolving on better conduct[1074].' The humility and piety which he discovers on such occasions, is truely edifying. No saint, however, in the course of his religious warfare, was more sensible of the unhappy failure of pious resolves, than Johnson. He said one day, talking to an acquaintance on this subject, 'Sir, Hell ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... whole thing seriously; what vulgar types! what square, bony faces. Don't their low, stupid expressions contrast oddly with their wings? Do you see that little chap twisting his mouth and rolling his eyes? His air of contrition is quite edifying. The other day he was caught stealing fagots from a neighbor. . . . And look at that other one who has lost his wings! What an unlucky accident! He is stooping to pick them up, and tucks them under his arm like a cocked hat. The idea is a happy one! But thank ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... your mind. Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour. Let him that stole steal no more, let no corrupt conversation proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice. And be ye kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould

... months, I found and read and wondered at it; and whence I have now reproduced it for the wonder of others. And you and your dear brother have, by this cycle of operations, built up a contrast very edifying to examine in detail. The man whom you would not care to have to dinner, on the one side; on the other, the Reverend Dr. Hyde and the Reverend H. B. Gage: the Apia ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of this Preface was travelling in Germany, when he chanced to meet with a book, entitled, The History of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, from the Meditations of Anne Catherine Emmerich, which appeared to him both interesting and edifying. Its style was unpretending, its ideas simple, its tone unassuming, its sentiments unexaggerated, and its every sentence expressive of the most complete and entire submission to the Church. Yet, at the same time, ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... the defence of the country from the dangers threatened by Popish intrigues at home and abroad. Even Burton, whom no one will suspect of partiality to the Church, and whose animus against the ministers often overcomes his historic judgment, in writing of what he calls the 'edifying ceremony' of the absolution of the lords, says: 'It must be conceded to their enemies that it was a solemn farce; and whatever there might be in words or the surface of things, there would be, when these Earls were restored, a power in the ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison

... reminds me of the long grace in Latin which the priests said before meals, and which the hungry people couldn't understand. The horses are hinting broadly that oats would be more edifying. If it were Monday, I'd wager you a plum that they would all leave your oats to eat ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... of his horse, rolling in the sand, with his yataghan, pistols, and turban scattered around him, he rises quietly, and exclaims, 'Allah is great!' I know a Christian would have expended his wrath in a variety of anathemas highly edifying, and close by wishing his unfortunate steed in a much warmer climate than the Mohammedan has any idea of. I am a poor church-man: let me emulate the philosophy of the simple child of the desert, and when I fall into trouble bear ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... the shower and started drying himself. Up to now, he thought, he had depended on Dr. Thomas O'Connor for edifying, trustworthy and reasonably complete information about psionics and psi phenomena in general. He had looked on O'Connor as a sort of living version of an extremely good edition of the Britannica, ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... to have done this; Bischofswerder and Woellner never left him for a moment, as they said the Invisible Fathers had commanded them to tarry with the much-loved brother in these first days of trial and temptation, and to elevate and gladden him with edifying conversations and ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... are printed in the country. Here is one selected at random, 'The Life of St. Jacintha.' It lies on a young girl's work-table. A knitting-needle marks the place at which the gentle reader left off this morning. Let us turn to the passage. It is sure to be highly edifying. ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... asked him the reason why the well bore the name of this favourite disciple of St. Francis. He informed me it was because of a very edifying little miracle, which for all its charm had unfortunately never found a place in the collection of the Fioretti. I begged him to oblige me by telling it, which he proceeded to do ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... been divided twice within twenty-three years. In spite of these handicaps, however, the church has prospered financially, numerically and spiritually. Dr. J. Milton Waldron took formal charge of Shiloh Baptist Church on the 6th of June 1907 and has labored with success in edifying his congregation and extending the influence of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... old Christian verdict that if Hamlet had been a good and resolute man he would have killed his uncle out of hand, whether at prayers or anywhere else, and would then have married Ophelia, put his mother in a nunnery, and lived happily ever after.[162] And to that edifying assumption, Mr. Feis adds the fantasy that Shakspere dreaded the influence of Montaigne as a deterrent from the retributive slaughter of guilty ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson

... chased by officers with warrants, and had been designated as a traitor in a proclamation to which Marlborough himself had been a party. [65] It was not without reluctance that the stanch royalist crossed the hated threshold of the deserter. He was repaid for his effort by the edifying spectacle of such an agony of repentance as he had never before seen. "Will you," said Marlborough, "be my intercessor with the King? Will you tell him what I suffer? My crimes now appear to me in their true light; and I shrink with horror from the contemplation. The thought of them is ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... every afternoon to the Rue du Chevalier Bayard, where it happened curiously that Mr. Fairfax came even oftener than usual just at this time. In the evening she stayed at home—not caring to keep her engagements in society without her husband's escort—and resigned herself to the edifying companionship of Miss Granger, who was eloquent upon the benighted condition of the Parisian poor as compared with her model villagers. She described them sententiously as a people who put garlic in everything they ate, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... children; and, while they encourage them, when they are alone, by suitable and well-timed praise, they should rarely repeat what they have said, or speak of what they have done, to others, in their presence. This is injurious to the child, betrays vanity in the parents, and is not very edifying to others. The singing of a young raven may be music to its parents, but to us it is like the cawing ...
— Charles Duran - Or, The Career of a Bad Boy • The Author of The Waldos

... furtherance of this good work, through the agency of missionaries exclusively devoted to it, who were to establish their residence among the natives, and win them to the true faith by their instructions, and the edifying example of their own lives. It was with the design of ameliorating the condition of the natives, that she sanctioned the introduction into the colonies of negro slaves born in Spain. This she did on the representation that the physical constitution of the African was much better ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... the private life of the King added to the respect inspired by his personality. His morals were absolutely irreproachable. His wife, Marie Therese of Savoy, died the 2d of June, 1805; he never remarried, and his conduct had been wholly edifying. The sacrifice he made to God, in renouncing the love of women, after he lost his well-beloved Countess of Polastron by death in 1803, was the more meritorious, because, apart from the prestige of his birth and rank, he remained attractive longer than men of his age. No such scandals as had ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... is robbed of its force, and the necessity is exalted to a work of freedom, to an ethical law. The transient and negative nature of all things is transformed in the State into an expression of the ethical will. War, often painted by edifying speech as a state in which the vanity of temporal things is demonstrated, now becomes an element whereby the ideal character of the particular receives its right and reality. War has the deep meaning that by it the ethical health of the nations is preserved and their finite aims uprooted. And ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... turning, they did not pursue the downward road without compunction. Many good people might say of them, "There, but for the grace of God, goes myself." But it was not from the point of view of a Baxter or a Bunyan that Defoe regarded them, though he credited them with many edifying reflections. He was careful to say that he would never have written the stories of their lives, if he had not thought that they would be useful as awful examples of the effects of bad education and the indulgence of restlessness and vanity; but he enters into their ingenious ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... appointment, it is required that he choose such a one as will dispense the divine mysteries faithfully. These should be dispensed for the good of the Church, according to 1 Cor. 14:12, "Seek to abound unto the edifying of the Church"; and the divine mysteries are not committed to men for their own meed, which they should await in the life to come. Consequently he who has to choose or appoint one for a bishop is not bound to take one who is best simply, i.e. according to charity, but one ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... follows a hushing up and wiping up among the juvenile population, and a series of remarks commences from the various shelves of a very edifying and instructive tendency. One says that the woman did not seem to know where anything was; another says that she has waked them all up; a third adds that she has waked up all the children, too; and the elderly ladies make moral reflections on the ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... for the most part, came forth to join sanctimony with Tammany scoundrelism. It was an edifying union, yet did not comprise all of the forces linked in that historic coalition. The Church, as an institution, cast into it the whole weight of its influence and power. Soaked with the materialist ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... end, "and perhaps rather more than all, that is known of the life of the blessed St. Neot." His connection with the series ceased. But his curiosity was excited. He read far and wide in the Benedictine biographies. No trace of investigation into facts could he discover. If a tale was edifying, it was believed, and credibility had nothing to do with it. The saints were beatified conjurers, and any nonsense about them was swallowed, if it involved the miraculous element. The effect upon Froude may be left to his own words. ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... value of "national character" as compared with the precious metals, will be very edifying to the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... that nothing but the most reverential feeling of the sacredness of the subject can secure us from falling into dangers not to be lightly regarded, not merely in regard to facts, but in respect also to comments and reflections; but with this caution such an article may be rendered eminently edifying ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... now introduce our reader to the interior of the fisher's cottage mentioned in CHAPTER eleventh of this edifying history. I wish I could say that its inside was well arranged, decently furnished, or tolerably clean. On the contrary, I am compelled to admit, there was confusion, there was dilapidation,there was dirt good store. Yet, with all this, there was about the inmates, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... go to his club, where he had no real appointment, but to avoid spending the afternoon with his mother, who, though a little hurt at his leaving her, was also somewhat relieved by being rid of him. They maintained toward one another an attitude which their friends found beautiful and edifying; but, like artists' models, they found the attitude fatiguing, in spite of their practice ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... or two, then came softly back, and began to rumple his cousin's hair; whereupon an exciting struggle ensued, which brought them both down on to the floor, and ended with the edifying spectacle of the preacher sitting flushed and triumphant ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery

... that many causes and many temperaments go to the making of drunkards. I have read a story by the late Sir Walter Besant, in which he presents the specific craving as if it were a specific magic curse. The story was supposed to be morally edifying, but I can imagine this ugly superstition of the "hereditary craving"—it is really nothing more—acting with absolutely paralyzing effect upon some credulous youngster struggling in the grip of a developing habit. "It's no ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... already in New York, in part to see a volume of my short stories through the press—which you may or may not have read, in its elaborate "gift-book" form, under the title of The Aspirants,—and in part about less edifying employments. I was trying to forget Elena, and in Lichfield it was not possible to induce such forgetfulness without affording unmerited pleasure for gabbling busybodies.... It was not in me to apologise, except in a letter, where the wording and interminable tinkering with phraseology ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... theory which I shall examine is the moralistic or Platonic. According to this, art is an image of the good, and has value in so far as through expression it enables us to experience edifying emotions or to contemplate noble objects. The high beauty of the "Sistine Madonna," for example, would be explained as identical with the worth of the religious feelings which it causes in the mind of the beholder. The advantage of art over life is supposed to ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... employment, he exhibited to his fellow-workmen an edifying example of industry and temperance, by which many of them profited. He also published a little work of a sceptical tendency, which procured him introductions to some eminent men, but which he afterward lamented as one of the greatest errors ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... him a young Indian lad, the son of a man of some note among his people, very bright and comely, and handsomely apparelled after the fashion of his tribe. This lad hath a ready wit, readeth and writeth, and hath some understanding of Scripture; indeed, he did repeat the Lord's Prayer in a manner edifying to hear. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... Possibly. But surely problems of justice, equity, and right ought never to have been mixed up with commercial and industrial interests, whether with the connivance or by the carelessness of the holders of a vast trust who needed and should have merited unlimited confidence. It is neither easy nor edifying to calculate the harm which transactions of this nature, whether completed or merely inchoate, are capable of inflicting on the great community for whose moral as well as material welfare the Supreme Council was laboring in ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... is history itself that speaks." 40 We can found no philosophy on the observation of four hundred years, excluding three thousand. It would be an imperfect and a fallacious induction. But I hope that even this narrow and dis-edifying section of history will aid you to see that the action of Christ who is risen on mankind whom he redeemed fails not, but increases 41; that the wisdom of divine rule appears not in the perfection but in the improvement ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... of such materials that some early Christian forger thought it edifying to compose the work which is supposed to contain the correspondence of Seneca and St. Paul. The undoubted spuriousness of that work is now universally admitted, and indeed the forgery is too clumsy to be even worth reading. But it is worth ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... night after night, the one or other part of the camp is entertained by the edifying spectacle of natives being thrashed, tents being burnt, and white people surrounded by ferocious crowds who can scarcely be kept back from carrying out their desire for vengeance by a small truncheon and ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz

... had responsibilities; not for other people's children, for whom he would only be concerned to provide entertainment. But even if the book was meant for no wider circle than the home, one would still feel that the moral teaching was overdone. It should be possible to be edifying without losing one's sense of humour. When Juno, the black servant, was struck by lightning and not quite killed, she "appeared to be very sensible of the wonderful preservation which she had had. She had always been attentive whenever the Bible was read, but now she did not appear ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne

... snapping, and Jean Paul's teeth biting his tongue to keep from uttering words "unbecoming an officer and a gentleman;" for "being overhauled by a girl" after he had "made a confounded fool of himself trying a land-lubber's stunt" was not a role which seemed in any degree an edifying one to him. ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... of Basil are his De Spiritu Sancto, a lucid and edifying appeal to Scripture and early Christian tradition, and his three books against Eunomius, the chief exponent of Anomoian Arianism. He was a famous preacher, and many of his homilies, including a series of lenten lectures on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... which his migration has landed him. On these points Hector is not quite convinced: he still thinks that the British are apt to make merits of their stupidities, and to represent their various incapacities as points of good breeding. English life seems to him to suffer from a lack of edifying rhetoric (which he calls moral tone); English behavior to show a want of respect for womanhood; English pronunciation to fail very vulgarly in tackling such words as world, girl, bird, etc.; English society to be ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... house of his industrious parents became a meeting place of the rich and illustrious, who were anxious to have as a son-in-law the young Issa, who was already celebrated for the edifying discourses he made in the name of ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch

... been one or two scandals about the Orpheum which had reached the public Press—scandals of a not particularly edifying character. But Pinto had managed to ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace

... will have informed you of the circumstances of our misfortune. Happily his cruel disease left the king in possession of his senses till the last moment, and his end was very edifying. The new king seems to have the affection of his people. Two days before the death of his grandfather, he sent two hundred thousand[2] francs to the poor, which has produced a great effect. Since he has been here, he has ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... As soon as this edifying chapter was ended, Mr. Effingham commenced the solemn rites for the dead. At the first sound of his voice, a calm fell on the vessel as if the spirit of God had alighted from the clouds, and a thrill passed through the frames of the listeners. Those solemn words of the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... themselves produced in the way of devotional literature is chiefly limited to edifying booklets and biographies of their own members; writings which were distinguished rather by their pious tenor and sincerity than by daring or ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... Paulina. On the one hand, her pride, as the head of a religious establishment, was flattered by the extreme regularity of the Lady Paulina in conforming to the ritual of her house; this example of spiritual obedience and duty seemed peculiarly edifying in a person of such distinguished rank. On the other hand, her womanly sensibilities were touched by the spectacle of early and unmerited sorrow in one so eminent for her personal merits, for her extreme ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... Egypte, dans l'annee 1546, et les annees suivantes. Par G. Lues d'Aramon, Ambassadeur de France a Constantinople. Paris, 1739. 3 vols. 4to.—This relates chiefly to the manners and customs; other pieces are contained in these volumes, which relate, in a manner more minute than important and edifying, the various journies in France, of the Kings of France, from Louis the ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... she had received an order from heaven to do so; and in her opinion nothing could displease God if the motive were laudable. The Countess taking advantage of the sacred authority of her unexpected accomplice, led her on to make a kind of edifying paraphrase of this axiom of morality: "The ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant

... practical influence which a belief in the survival of the human soul after death exercises on the life and conduct of the Central Melanesian savage. To him the belief is no mere abstract theological dogma or speculative tenet, the occasional theme of edifying homilies and pious meditation; it is an inbred, unquestioning, omnipresent conviction which affects his thoughts and actions daily and at every turn; it guides his fortunes as an individual and controls his behaviour as a member of a community, by inculcating a respect for the rights of others and ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... Meditations," collected by the Reverend Henry Bull, when the real world, as Anthony knew it, laughed and rippled and twinkled outside in the humming summer air of the lawn and orchard; or to have to listen to godly discourses, however edifying to elder persons, just at the time when the ghost-moth was beginning to glimmer in the dusk, and the heavy trout to suck down his supper in the glooming pool in the meadow below ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... merits and intercession if we conform to his precepts—whether members of the Church of England, or any other communion—we shall be saved and obtain the blessedness of heaven? We may prefer, and reasonably prefer, our own mode of worship, believing it to be most edifying; but we have no right to quarrel with those who conscientiously differ from us about outward forms and ceremonies which do not ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... as tolerable human beings; there would be great rejoicings over the conversion of alleged Jews, and terrible descriptions of the death-beds of prominent infidels with boldly invented last words,—the most unscrupulous lying; there would be the appallingly edifying careers of "early piety" lusciously described, or stories of condemned criminals who traced their final ruin unerringly to early laxities of the kind that leads people to give up subscribing to ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... Dorn had come into the family. Gertrude liked him because Eleanore made fun of him. He did not seem to her like a man; he reminded her rather of the languishing angels she embroidered. He brought her all his religious tracts and edifying pamphlets, but she could not grasp the language. He took her to the Methodist revivals, but the noisy gnashing of teeth at these meetings terrified her, and after a few times it was impossible to persuade her to go back. He also recommended that she read the Bible, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... ties, or home relationships, hardly seemed in harmony with the Rat! Still, in this case, it was perhaps very debatable ground as to which was the more pernicious, the old woman or the son! Ostensibly, she kept a little variety store; but her business, if report were true, was the edifying occupation of school mistress—the children graduating under her tuition being ranked by common consent as the most ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... emptying his goblet with satisfaction. And, rising to his firm and graceful height, he strolled away toward the salon where play progressed amid the most decorous and edifying of atmospheres. ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... Bonneville's supervision of the industrious and frolicsome community of beavers, of which he has given so edifying an account, he succeeded in extricating himself from the Wind River Mountains, and regaining the plain to the eastward, made a great bend to the south, so as to go round the bases of the mountains, and arrived without further incident of importance, at the old place of rendezvous ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... sancity. Later on they became more generous, but they clung with tenacity to the Brown Scapular and the First Sunday of the month. I am quite sure they have turned somersaults in their graves since the introduction of the myriad devotions that are now distracting and edifying the faithful. But they could make, and, alas! too often perhaps for Christian modesty, they did make, the proud boast that they kept alive the people's faith, imbued them with a sense of the loftiest morality, and ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... and their passionate sympathies, throw light on each other, and the agreeable pages achieve a double end, without ever affecting the real unity of the book. Thus handled, biography, so often the drudge of literature, rises into its high places and becomes a delight instead of an edifying or informing necessity. ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... man you,' said our host. 'I have been there twice. The first time was in the days of the Rump, when Lambert brought in his division to overawe the Commons. I was then quartered at the sign of the Four Crosses in Southwark, then kept by a worthy man, one John Dolman, with whom I had much edifying speech concerning predestination. All was quiet and sober then, I promise you, and you might have walked from Westminster to the Tower in the dead of the night without hearing aught save the murmur of prayer and ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle



Words linked to "Edifying" :   enlightening, unedifying



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