"Irreverence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... few, so very few, where the throng is thick and the battle fierce. It saddens me to see good fellows trampling one another down, growing hard and ungenerous. And then the vulgarity, the irreverence: they are almost identical, I think. One grows very sick and sorry at times amidst the cruelty and the baseness that threaten to destroy one's courage and one's hope. I know that human nature has in it a germ of nobility that will save it, in the long run, but meanwhile things ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... and sincere piety, refused to follow Milton into Heaven. "Of the agents in the poem," he says, "the chief are such as it is irreverence to name on slight occasions." And again:—"The characters in the Paradise Lost which admit of examination are those of angels and of man." It is impossible not to respect Johnson's attitude, but later critics have found it difficult to follow ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... of questions on various mysteries in the universe. The meaning of the title would be better expressed by "Questions put to God," but we are told that such a phrase was impossible on account of the holiness of God and the irreverence of questioning Him. One question was, "Who has handed down to us an account of the beginning of all things, and how do we know anything about the time when heaven and earth were without form?" Another question was, "As Nu-ch'i had no husband, how ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... angel-gifts that had fallen like dew upon us—and passed forth between the tall stone gate-posts, as uncertain as the wandering Arabs where our tent might next be pitched. Providence took me by the hand, and—an oddity of dispensation which, I trust, there is no irreverence in smiling at—has led me, as the newspapers announce while I am writing, from the old Manse into a Custom House! As a story-teller, I have often contrived strange vicissitudes for my imaginary personages, but none ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the fleurs-de-lis, he had published his Lettres persanes, an imaginary trip of two exiled Parsees, freely criticising Paris and France. The book appeared under the Regency, and bears the imprint of it in the licentiousness of the descriptions and the witty irreverence of the criticisms. Sometimes, however, the future gravity of Montesquieu's genius reveals itself amidst the shrewd or biting judgments. It is in the Lettres persanes that he seeks to set up the notion of justice above the idea of God himself. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... injustice to the Republican Party when he lays this irreverence for the past to their charge. As he seems to think that he alone has read books and studied the lessons of antiquity, he will be pleased to learn that there are persons also in that party who have not neglected all their opportunities in that kind. The object ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... not be a European change. Society may not be cast into the furnace, as it has been by those struggles, wars, and revolutions, which were essential to the working of the iron temperament of Europe. But Providence, if we may so speak without irreverence, evidently delights in the variety, multitude, and novelty of its highest expedients. If no two great portions of the physical world are like in form, climate, product, and even in the colouring of their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... assured in the times when the spiritual saturnalia were allowed than now. The irreverence which was not dangerous then, is now intolerable. It is a bad sign for a man's peace in his own convictions when he cannot stand turning the canvas of his life occasionally upside down, or reversing it in a mirror, as painters do with their pictures that they may judge the ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... no children, and therefore never feel the difficulties of supporting them. Heaven forbid that so humble an individual as myself should question their wisdom, or say anything about them that should seem to smack of irreverence; but I do believe that (with one or two exceptions I have in my mind) the system they have introduced among us is the Greatest Humbug in the universe. In the meantime poor Paterfamilias (who is the last man, they flatter themselves, to find this out) stands ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... temper is very dangerous among us, for it flatters all the worst instincts of men—indiscipline, irreverence, selfish individualism—and it ends in social atomism. Minds inclined to mere negation are only harmless in great political organisms, which go without them and in spite of them. The multiplication ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wise as is patient furrowed earth and her blundering children. A rough earth-hint, a Rabelaisian ditty, a gross amazing jest, a chuckle of deep Satyric humour;—and the monstrous "thickness" of Life, its friendly aplomb and nonchalance, its grotesque irreverence, its shy shrewd common-sense, its tough fibres, and portentous indifference to "distinction"; tumbles us over in the mud—for all our "aloofness"—and roars over us, like a ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... shocked at this irreverence; 'it's David's—Michael Angelo's David!' He gave her Mabel's note. 'I can't write back because my hands are all charcoaly,' she explained; 'but you can say, "My love, and I will if I possibly can;" and, oh yes, tell her I had a letter from him ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... without the least idea of irreverence, "lowers his neck and then lifts it up again, raises up the hair-like feathers on his crop, and spreads out his tail like a fan. He then addresses the assembled birds, who strut about with their wings half opened, and answer him ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... played "medicine dance." This, to us, was almost what "playing church" is among white children, but our people seemed to think it an act of irreverence to imitate these dances, therefore performances of this kind were always enjoyed in secret. We used to observe all the important ceremonies and it required something of an actor to reproduce the dramatic features of the dance. The real dances occupied a day and a night, and the program ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... could not deny that this reading and expounding of the Scriptures by the ignorant and unlearned led almost invariably to those other sins of blasphemy and irreverence which curdled the very blood in his veins. Again and again had his heart burned within him to go forth amongst the people himself; to take upon himself and put in practice the office of evangelist, which ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... mere mention of her name, he would fall into deep reverie, lasting sometimes for hours. And although he contracted two marriages afterward, they were simply marriages of convenience, to which, after their termination, he frequently referred flippantly, sometimes with irreverence, for they ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... skin tingle and glow slightly and almost painlessly; and, bowing submissively, as if to meet his companion's jesting mood, began to recite the CONFITEOR. The episode ended well, for both Heron and Wallis laughed indulgently at the irreverence. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... her neighbour as herself, or profess to; but she went to church regularly and made all the responses, pleasing the clergy, and deriving some solace herself from the occupation—at least she always said the services were soothing. She was genuinely shocked by a sign of irreverence, and would sing the most jingling nonsense as a hymn with perfect gravity and without perceiving that there was any flaw in it. In these matters she showed no originality at all. She would repeat "my duty towards my neighbour ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... From afar, you might trace the divine agency on its way. But to touch, to handle it, with these fleshly hands:—well! for Monseigneur, that was by no means to believe because the thing was "incredible, or absurd." He had smiled, not certainly from irreverence, nor (a prelate for half his life) in conscious incredulity, but only in mute surprise, at an administration of divine graces—this administration in which he was a high priest—in itself, to his quite honest thinking, so unfitting, so improbable. And was ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... the kitchen and surveyed the rejected delicacy with mournful eyes. Then a new idea occurred to her, and, with no thought of irreverence, she murmured to herself, "I don't believe the Christ Child would have cared whether He had turkey or rabbit for dinner. I'm going over and get that passle of half-starved German kids to eat ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... prescribed them,—that in fact it had risen with indignation at the word imprisonment,—that it had commanded a political resistance and nothing more, and that the severity and odium of the precautionary measures used were occasioned by the zealous responsibility of the national guard, more than to the irreverence of the Assembly. La Fayette guarded, in the person of the king, the dynasty, its proper head, and the constitution—a hostage against the republic and royalty at the same time. Maire du palais, he intimidated by the presence of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... gift of God, so precious, so inspiring, is treated with such utter irreverence and contempt in the calculations of us mortals as this same air of heaven. A sermon on oxygen, if one had a preacher who understood the subject, might do more to repress sin than the most orthodox discourse to show when and how and why sin came. A minister gets up in a crowded lecture-room, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... nothing for the bishop in this matter." So much he spoke in anger, and then he corrected himself. "I crave the bishop's pardon, and yours as his messenger, if in the heat occasioned by my strong feelings I have said aught which may savour of irreverence towards his lordship's office. I respect his lordship's high position as bishop of this diocese, and I bow to his commands in all things lawful. But I must not bow to him in things unlawful, nor must ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... preserved from complete collapse by remembering that it was not irreverence, but simply spiritual ignorance on the part of Anne that was responsible for this extraordinary petition. She tucked the child up in bed, mentally vowing that she should be taught a prayer the very next day, and was leaving the room with the light ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... they be quiet,'" said my father, as if unconsciously uttering his own reflections. But he was a little cunning, and would say things like that when, fearful of irreverence, he wanted to turn the ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... and his family after the ark landed," whispered Shif'less Sol to Henry, in a tone that was far from irreverence. But Paul said aloud: ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... however, "excellent well," in its restricted constitutional form; she has all the venerable, splendid accessories—and I hope "Albert the Good" may have founded a long race of good kings; but it would not do for us;—a race cradled in revolution, and nurtured on irreverence and unbelief, as regards the divine right of kings and the law of primogeniture. To us it seems, though a primitive, an unnatural institution. We find no analogies for it, even in the wildest venture of the New World. It is true the buffalo herd has its kingly commander, ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... with a fierce hurt challenge in his eyes for irreverence and incredulity and even perhaps good-natured jeers, but Garry, sensing something big and unfamiliar, held out his hand. Kenny wrung it ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... to treat so noble a work as the Flying Dutchman with any irreverence; but if it is worth understanding Wagner's art, and the slow processes of its transition from the baldness and ultra-conventionality of Rienzi to the richness and simplicity and directness of Tristan, we must realize clearly ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... longing for ignoble things; The strife for triumph more than truth; The hardening of the heart, that brings Irreverence for the ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... return, and, with foreign acquirements, become the pioneer of African civilization. It is attempted to reconcile us to this "good from evil," by stopping inquiry with the "inscrutability of God's ways!" But we should not suffer ourselves to be deceived by such imaginary irreverence; for, in God's ways, there is nothing less inscrutable than his law of right. That law is never qualified in this world. It moves with the irresistible certainty of organized nature, and, while it makes man ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... peculiarities of Shakespeare when mediocre French writers and critics began to find in his "barbarities" an excuse for irreverence at the expense of Racine, but he never tires of reiterating his admiration for the country of Locke and Hume, of Bolingbroke and Newton. A hundred phrases could be gathered from his correspondence extending over half a century, in which this ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... he undid his parcel, and after carefully enveloping his own violin in the paper, took the old wife of the soutar, and proceeded to perform upon her a trick which in a merry moment his master had taught him, and which, not without some feeling of irreverence, he had occasionally practised upon ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... loved him. "I ought not to have done it," she thought, "but I meant what was right, and I could have loved him—— Oh, I did love him afterwards—only I never could tell him, and——" Further thoughts led the way to irreverence, even to something worse. They were wrong thoughts, thoughts against faith and truth and right; there was no place for such thoughts in Rose's heart. She moved now, and opened drawers and dusted and put together a few things—paper-knives, ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... human shreds and patches kneeling by the bedside of the dying murderer, to pray some comfort into his passing soul. But his "gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it," while through Helen ran a cold shudder of disgust at the familiarity and irreverence of the ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... that I might be impressed by the sound as well as by the knowledge o' th' fact—"for," saith I, a-hammering away on a shoe for Joe Pebbles's brown nag King Edward (though I had often reasoned with Joe on account o' th' name, first because o' its irreverence, second on account o' th' horse not being that kind o' a horse, as 'twas a mare)—"for," saith I, as I made th' shoe, saith I, "'tis sure a great wickedness to steal a lass's sweetheart away from her!" saith I. And so 'twas; but, for all I could do, I could not feel angered ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... heavenly fire that warmed her inmost soul. Not alone, but cared for—sheltered, protected, loved. "Oh," breathed Rosemary, with her eyes shining; "Father, dear father—my father, taking care of me!" Then, in her thought, she added, without dreaming of irreverence, "I think God ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... cobbler,—more noted for brocades than brains,—or the refined Miss Blood,—her grandfather was third-cousin to some Revolutionary major,—more distinguished for shallowness than for spirit,—does he not smile in his sleeve, with great irreverence for the brocades and the birth, at the easy way in which the old fellow has wheedled them into his power by tickling their conceit and vanity? He creeps into all sorts of corners, and lurks in the smallest of hiding-places. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... form of the term; it appeals too much to my senses and my imagination; it is religion set to music and painting, and artistic religion does not suit me. The incessant passing of people through the church, too, disturbs one, and gives an unpleasant air of irreverence to the whole.... I think I might like to go to a cathedral for afternoon service, much as I like to spend my Sunday leisure in reading Milton, though I should not be satisfied to make my whole devotional exercises consist ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... people is himself, so also are his ministers." Consequently, there can be no doubt that the wicked sin by exercising the ministry of God and the Church, by conferring the sacraments. And since this sin pertains to irreverence towards God and the contamination of holy things, as far as the man who sins is concerned, although holy things in themselves cannot be contaminated; it follows that such a sin ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... be just, and it is my duty to be so. This mark of irreverence towards the Queen is the only one for which Mademoiselle de la Valliere can be blamed; but she would never have done such a thing of her own accord; it was all the fault of the Marquise, blinded as she was ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... enthusiasm—and knew it. If the crowd had been composed of Americans, we should have anticipated an unhappy time for Smith; but good, loyal Canadians, by the limitations of temperament, could get no further than a spirit of manifest irreverence. ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... involuntary irreverence brought abundant grace with it. The glimpse and the revelation wrought their miracles silently and irresistibly, not by the slow processes of growth which Nature demands for her enterprises, but with the sudden swiftness ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Boers concealed in the kopjes opened a brisk fire at long range on the naked figures, but did not hit anyone nor prevent them all from bringing the punt safely to our side: a dashing exploit, of which their regiment—the 'Cockyolibirds,' as the army, with its customary irreverence, calls us on account of the cock's feather cockades we wear in our hats ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... much, has been written concerning Roumanian funerals. That they are showy, almost to irreverence, and that the exposure of the face of the corpse in its glazed coffin is repulsive, there can be no doubt, but they are not one whit worse than the lugubrious processions with their 'arrangements' ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... and contempt of Leigh Hunt as a writer, is not so much owing to his shameless irreverence to his aged and afflicted king—to his profligate attacks on the character of the king's sons—to his low-born insolence to that aristocracy with whom he would in vain claim the alliance of one illustrious friendship—to his paid panderism to the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... pleasure of turning a week-day into a Sunday, dominated every other sentiment. Along the line of the boulevards, the spectators on the balconies almost seemed disposed to applaud; here, in the populous districts, irreverence was still more frankly manifest. Jests, blackguardly wit at the expense of the dead man and his doings, known to all Paris, laughter raised by the tall hats of the rabbis, the pass-word of the council experts, all were heard in the air between two rolls of the drum. Poverty, forced ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... it scarcely possible to describe the scene without a certain mixture of the ludicrous, no feeling of irreverence crossed my mind at the time. On the contrary, my sympathies were greatly drawn out towards these our poor fellow-creatures; and there was something most instructive in the sight of them there assembled to enjoy those highest ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... some or even many fruits excellently fitted for the support of life might not subserve that purpose? And as those creatures might conceive (as we know) that some fruits, even many, fail to come to the full perfection of fruit life, may not we without irreverence conceive (as higher beings than ourselves may know) that a planet or a sun may fail in the making? We cannot say that in such a case there would be a waste or loss of material, though we may be unable to conceive how the lost sun ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... of the so-called civilised world is spreading a deep distrust, a deep irreverence of every man towards his neighbour, and a practical unbelief in every man whom you do see, atones for itself by a theoretic belief in an ideal human nature which you do not see. Such a temper of mind, unless it be checked ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... present a manuscript to one of those sons of fortune who are dignified with the appellation of patrons, instead of reaping that applause and advantage with which he had regaled his fancy, had the mortification to find his performance treated with infinite irreverence and contempt, and, in high dudgeon and disappointment, appealed to the judgment of another critic, who, he knew, had no veneration ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Remington intended no irreverence; indeed, he could not tell what he did intend, or what it was which prompted his ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... manifest from their habit of referring to her in private as "Mother Schwellenposch!" Edna, who was scarcely more beloved, was known as "Princess Four-eyes," in allusion to her pince-nez. Daphne found it hard at times to refrain from joining them in this irreverence, but, while she saw the Queen's and Edna's weak points as clearly as her companions—and indeed more clearly than any of them—her sense of loyalty kept her silent. She might laugh when she was alone, and frequently did, but that was a relief ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... forced him to take shelter in its porch, as evening service was about to begin: and the defiant looks of the elect as they pushed past him one by one, had impelled him to assert his rights as a Christian, and push in too. The stupid ranting irreverence of the pastor, and the snuffling satisfaction of the flock, were soon, however, too much for him, and in a very short time he was again—where we find him—out ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... From all such irreverence and frivolity, good Lord, deliver me! Let me ever remember that Thou "desirest truth in the inward man." "In the hidden parts" help me ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... MERC. With what irreverence this lubber speaks of the Gods! My arm shall soon chastise this insolence; I shall have a fine game with him, stealing his name as ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... mirthfulness,—for Nature has its humorous side also,—that we lose our grasp of its completeness in wonder at its details, and our sense of its unity is clouded by its marvellous fertility. There may seem to be an irreverence in thus characterizing the Creative Thought by epithets which we derive from the exercise of our own mental faculties; but it is nevertheless true, that, the nearer we come to Nature, the more does it seem to us that all our intellectual endowments are merely the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the King," repeated Commines; and added, without thought of irreverence, "Let him fall into the hands of God and not ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... hundred crowns for convoy from Duchess Margaret. Culemburg was serving the cause of religious freedom by defacing the churches within his ancestral domains, pulling down statues, dining in chapels and giving the holy wafer to his parrot. Nothing could be more stupid than these acts of irreverence, by which Catholics were offended and honest patriots disgusted. Nothing could be more opposed to the sentiments of Orange, whose first principle was abstinence by all denominations of Christians from mutual insults. At the same time, it is somewhat revolting to observe the indignation with which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his cousin, Mrs. Arthur Severn, has become more and more indispensable to him: she sits at the head of the table and calls him "the coz." An eminent visitor was once put greatly out of countenance by this apparent irreverence. After obvious embarrassment, light dawned upon him towards the close of the meal. "Oh!" said he, "it's 'the coz' you call Mr. Ruskin. I thought you were saying' ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... Puritans alone keep their lips unpolluted by breach of the third commandment, while the common exclamation of good God! scrupled by few people on the slightest occurrences, and apparently without any temptation in the world, is no less than gross irreverence of his sacred name, whom we ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of the word "theological," or as contrasted with "scientific" or "positive." The child does not worship either father or mother, dog or doll. On the contrary, nothing is more curious than the absolute irreverence, if I may so say, of a kindly-treated young child; its tendency to believe in itself as the centre of the universe, and its disposition to exercise despotic tyranny over those who could crush it ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... you driving at?" I asked in a passion. I put my hat on my head (he never offered a seat to anybody), and as he seemed for the moment struck dumb by my irreverence, I turned my back on him and marched out. His vocal arrangements blared after me a few threats of coming down on the ship for the demurrage of the lighters, and all the other expenses consequent upon the delays arising from ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... with the feeling—"I was glad when they said unto me we will go into the House of the Lord;" "I love the place, O Lord, wherein Thine honour dwells." All slovenliness in the performance of the service, all irreverence, or signs of inattention, and indifference, are tokens of a want of thankfulness. We should get this thought fixed in our minds when we enter Church,—I have come here to-day mainly to thank God for His great goodness to me, and to all men. I have come also to ask for certain ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... mind was not unpoetical, has done his utmost, by interesting his reader in our native commodity by interspersing rural imagery, and incidental digressions, by clothing small images in great words, and by all the writer's arts of delusion, the meanness naturally adhering, and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and manufacture, sink him under insuperable oppression; and the disgust which blank verse, encumbering and encumbered, superadds to an unpleasing subject, soon repels the reader, however willing ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... Indelicacy or irreverence is unpleasant in itself, and yet when complication is added to it few of us can avoid laughing, and I am afraid that some considerably enjoy objectionable allusions. To tell a man to go to h—-, or that he deserves to go there, is merely coarse and profane abuse, but when a labourer is found by ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... work. I offer it to those enthusiastic admirers of Wagner who are unable to follow his ideas, and do not in the least understand the dilemma of Wotan, though they are filled with indignation at the irreverence of the Philistines who frankly avow that they find the remarks of the god too often tedious and nonsensical. Now to be devoted to Wagner merely as a dog is devoted to his master, sharing a few elementary ideas, appetites and emotions with him, and, for the rest, ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... principles with the form of absolution in the Visitation of the Sick. This was, in Mr. Cleaver's opinion, sophistry almost as bad as Newman's, and Froude's tutorship came to an end. There was no quarrel, and, after a tour through the south of Ireland, where he saw superstition and irreverence, solid churches, well-fed priests, and a starving peasantry in rags, Froude returned for a farewell visit to Delgany. On this occasion he met Dr. Pusey, who had been at Christ Church with Mr. Cleaver, and was then visiting Bray. Dr. Pusey, however, was ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... given in Florence in 1828, but in spite of the favor of the court, and the open rancor of the friends of the Classic School, it failed; at Turin, where the Adelchi was tried, Pellico regretted that the attempt to play it had been made, and deplored the "vile irreverence of the public." ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... the expression Mon Dieu! so common in French narratives, had pronounced it so badly that Lizzy exclaimed, "Mon Doo? He would not know himself what you meant!" The laugh which it was impossible to repress, did not diminish her compunction at what she feared her pupils would regard as irreverence on her part. I believe I always cherished sufficient affection for my teachers, and yet I was not a little astonished on accompanying Lizzy to school one day, to see as we turned the corner of a street a rush of girls with unbonneted heads, to greet their young teacher for ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... portraits, which they regarded with insular irreverence (what were French knights and dames to them?), then without awe spread the contents of their wallets on the board, and feasted in serenity ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... greater achievements do not possess: it is absolutely pure in thought, word and suggestion. If it is filled with nonsense, that nonsense at any rate is innocent. It is modest, cleanly and without malice or irreverence. A worthier and nobler work might have been written; a purer work could ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... we have already spoken fully; but we may here add, that, in addition to former offences of a public and private nature, Elkanah, in the Prologue to the "Emperor of Morocco," acted in March 1681-2, had treated Dryden with great irreverence.[16] Shadwell had been for some time in good habits with Dryden; yet an early difference of taste and practice in comedy, not only existed between them, but was the subject of reciprocal debate, and ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... sold least during the season, and asking him candidly whether he would not like to be paid the divine honors now going begging from one big seller to another; for the decay of author-worship must be as much from the indifference of the authors as from the irreverence of the readers. If such a low-selling author did not seem to regard it as rather invidious, then pay him the divine honors; it might be a wholesome and stimulating example; but perhaps we should afterward have the demigod on our hands. Something might be safelier done by writing, ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... first of imposing silence, traversed in its turn the Piazza of St. Peter's: this was the dinner procession. The people received it with the usual bursts of laughter, without suspecting, for all their irreverence, that this procession, more efficacious than the former, had just settled the election of the ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that it isn't any worse. He might have made it so," replied Reuben, shocked by his neighbour's irreverence, yet too modest to dispute ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... began to giggle like children at the entrance of the foreigner and never took their eyes off us. Later, individual monks came running round the shrines, beating a gong as though to call the attention of the deity, and shouting a few words of perfunctory praise or prayer. Irreverence more complete I have not seen even in Italy, nor beggary more shameless. Such is the latter end of the gospel of Buddha in China. It seems better that he should sit deserted in his Indian caves than be dishonoured by ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Emphasis is placed upon denominationalism, and more heart-burnings have been caused amongst the men in consequence of the divisions amongst the Churches than amongst the home folks at the fancied increasing irreverence and indifference of the men regarding the things that are esteemed sacred. The men give evidence of being disposed to stand outside of all human creeds. Their query is not 'Are you a member of a certain religious organization?' but 'Are you ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... mounds with people who had once lived, though we were careful, having been so instructed, not to step on the graves. To ramble about there and puzzle ourselves with the names and dates, was like turning over the pages of a curious old book. We had not the least feeling of irreverence in taking the edge of the grave-yard for our playground. It was known as "the old burying-ground"; and we children regarded it with a sort of affectionate freedom, as we would a grandmother, because ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... he passed through Italy without desiring, or deserving, the plenary indulgence which abolished the guilt or penance of the sins of the faithful. The Roman pope was offended by this neglect; accused him of irreverence to an image of Christ; and exhorted the princes of Italy to reject and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... sometimes badly injured because it has become a code of honor in a gang of boys to thus express their derision. The members of a Protective Association of Jewish Peddlers organized at Hull-House related daily experiences in which old age had been treated with such irreverence, cherished dignity with such disrespect, that a listener caught the passion of Lear in the old texts, as a platitude enunciated by a man who discovers in it his own experience thrills us as no unfamiliar phrases can possibly do. The Greeks are filled ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... has anger on our soul? A. Anger begets in our souls impatience, hatred, irreverence, and too often the ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 3 (of 4) • Anonymous
... therefore the infinite cannot be that element which imparts to pleasure some degree of good. But now—admitting, if you like, that pleasure is of the nature of the infinite—in which of the aforesaid classes, O Protarchus and Philebus, can we without irreverence place wisdom and knowledge and mind? And let us be careful, for I think that the danger will be very serious if we ...
— Philebus • Plato
... youth, and had been a never-failing source of curiosity to me. It was Gustave Dore's "Christian Martyrs," and I had once been deprived of pudding at the nursery dinner, because I had remarked (with irreverence wholly unintentional) that one of the lions seemed ill, and anxious to "climb up the wall and get away from the nasty martyrs." Thus it is that children are misunderstood by their elders! and now, as I gazed at the same picture on the monastery wall, I felt again all the old, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... letter I had ever had from Martin, and it melted me like wax over a candle. I have it still, and though Martin is such a great man now, I am tempted to copy it out just as it was written with all its appearance of irreverence (none, I am sure, was intended), and even its bad spelling, for without that it would not be Martin—my boy who could never learn ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... to him, a religion for humanity, a religion which, unlike the spectral Christianity about him, should permeate and regulate the whole organisation of men. And the feeling is one with which a Catholic must sympathise, in an age when—if we may say so without irreverence—the Almighty has been made a constitutional Deity, with certain state-grants of worship, but no influence over political affairs. In these matters his aims were generous, if his methods were perniciously mistaken. In his theory of Free Love alone, borrowed like the rest from the Revolution, ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... ignoble things; The strife for triumph more than truth; The hardening of the heart that brings Irreverence ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... you understood it, dear old sceptic!" returned Balder, with affectionate irreverence, throwing his arm across his father's broad shoulders. "I say that every soul of right capacity, living for culture, and not afraid of itself, will at last reach that highest point. It is the sublime goal of man, and no ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... metropolis of the district; it flamed with gin-palaces; a multitude were sauntering in the mild though tainted air; bargaining, blaspheming, drinking, wrangling: and varying their business and their potations, their fierce strife and their impious irreverence, with flashes of rich humour, gleams of native wit, and racy phrases of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... thing they are not nearly so superior as they suppose they are. They think "Irreverence for the dreams of youth" always comes from "the hardening of the heart." But youth has some fantastic as well as some noble dreams, so that docility is a better quality than independence in a very young person. If a worldly minded mother ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... does not involve that flippant irreverence for the past that so often is associated with it. It offers no encouragement to the chase after vagaries in which so many moderns indulge, as though all that is old were belated and all that is novel were true. The idea ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... There is an Obededom in the lists of David's Levites in Chronicles who is probably the same man. He did not fear to receive the ark, and, worthily received, the presence which had been a source of disaster and death to idolaters, to profanely curious pryers into its secret, and to presumptuous irreverence, became a fountain of unbroken blessing. This twofold effect of the same presence is but a symbol of a solemn law which runs through all life, and is especially manifest in the effects of Christ's work upon men. Everything has two handles, and it depends on ourselves ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Miles and Bea, early in autumn. They had received her with cries, with dusting of chairs, and a running to fetch water for coffee. Miles stood and beamed at her. He fell often and joyously into his old irreverence about the lords of Gopher Prairie, but always—with a certain difficulty—he added something ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... pithy criticism on William Blake, who was a forceful protestor against the old theology, Mr. Brooke passes on to Burns and Cowper. Of the exquisite satire of Holy Willie's Prayer, despite its "irreverence and immorality," which are after all but matters of opinion, Mr. Brooke says that it "weakened the worst doctrines of Calvinism far more than ten thousand liberal sermons have done." Cowper weakened Calvinism too, though he did so unintentionally. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... of loving may be well enough for God," retorted Dorothy with no thought of irreverence, "but for man it is dangerous. Whom man loves he should cherish. A man who has a good, obedient daughter—one who loves him—will not imprison her, and, above all, he will not refuse to speak to her, nor will he cause her to suffer and to weep for lack of that love which ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... generous integumental upholstery dying of consumption was more than the Venetian sense of humor could endure with equanimity. The opera ended with shrieks of laughter instead of the lachrymal flood which the music and the dramatic situation called for. This spirit of irreverence had been promoted, moreover, by the fact that the people of the play wore conventional modern clothes. The lure of realism was not strong in the lyric theatres half a century ago, when laces and frills, top-boots and plumed hats, helped ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... not to ascend, otherwise it will wreak circular mischief instead of illumining. You are requested simply to recollect that there is another beside you who sees the object obliquely, and then you will not be surprised by his irreverence. What if, in the end, you were conducted to a like point of view? Self-worship, it has been said, is preferable to no trimming of the faculty, but worship does not necessarily cease with the extinction of this of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... presumeth to reach persons eminent in dignity or worth, unto whom special veneration is appropriate. This adjoineth sauciness to scurrility, and advanceth the wrong thereof into a kind of sacrilege. 'Tis not only injustice, but profaneness, to abuse the gods. Their station is a sanctuary from all irreverence and reproach; they are seated on high, that we may only look up to them with respect; their defects are not to be seen, or not to be touched by malicious or wanton wits, by spiteful or scornful tongues: the diminution of their credit is a public mischief, and the State itself doth suffer in their ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... their native soil nowadays, as they used to be in the old stage-coach times, when it was a long day's journey to London. One might as well be a vegetable at once if one is to be pinned down to one particular spot of earth. Why, the Twelve Apostles," exclaimed Mabel, innocent of irreverence, for she meant certain ancient and fast-decaying oaks so named, "see as much of life as your fine old English gentleman. Men have wider ideas nowadays. The world is hardly ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... transgression because some sudden calamity, surprising him, has caused this habitual transgression to be also a final one. Could the man have had any reason even dimly to foresee his own sudden death, there would have been a new feature in his act of intemperance—a feature of presumption and irreverence, as in one that, having known himself drawing near to the presence of God, should have suited his demeanour to an expectation so awful. But this is no part of the case supposed. And the only new element in the man's act is not any element of special immorality, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... that their understandings became fully possessed with the whole spirit and purpose of them; and he, therefore, bade that they should be buried with his body, as though such holy precepts could not without irreverence be left to circulate in mere lifeless writings. For this very reason, they say, the Pythagoreans bade that their precepts should not be committed to paper, but rather preserved in the living memories of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... with them, these traits have been characteristic of those I have met. But it is not my lack of reverence that I intended to write about, it is the contradictory way in which those who are under their charge view this matter. The practical, effective and active irreverence of professing Christians astonishes as much as it puzzles me. They believe, or assume to believe, in the sacredness of the ministry and in the reverence due ministers as such; how do they show it? It seems to me that the architectural custom of elevating the pulpit above the heads of ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... being severe when one hears irreverence poured forth from reverend lips? I do not mean merely irreverence for the Catholic Creeds; that to my mind-God forgive me if I misjudge him- seemed to me only one fruit of a deep root of irreverence for all things as they are, even for all things ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... questioned and argued, in no spirit of irreverence, but simply with the logic of her race, and the sweet reasonableness that is a vital element of the Hindu faith at its best. But, after that final confession, Aunt Julia, pained and bewildered, had retired from the field. And Lilamani, flung back ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... him to, or rather what Gods he puts him above. And Glaucus took no exception to being praised at the expense of his art's patron deities; nor yet did they send any judgement on athlete or poet for irreverence; both continued to be honoured in Greece, one for his might, and the other for this even more than for his other odes. Do not be surprised, then, that when I wished to conform to the canons of my art and find an illustration, I took an exalted one, ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... control and moderation, I found the character and manners of the people gentler and sweeter than I had been led to believe they were. No loudness, brazenness, impertinence; no oaths, no swaggering, no leering at women, no irreverence, no flippancy, no bullying, no insolence of porters or clerks or conductors, no importunity of bootblacks or newsboys, no omnivorousness, of hackmen,—at least, comparatively none,—all of which an American ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... illogical aspersing his last pieties (the almost certain inspirations of the Holy Spirit) with juggle and prevarication. Nor are the words ill-fitted to the matter, the bold design being suited with a conform irreverence of language. But I do not love to rake long in a puddle. To take a view in particular of all your factious labours would cost more time than I am willing to afford them. Wherefore I shall stride over all the rest and pass ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... people of a Territory wanted slavery they would have it, and if they did not, they would not let it be forced on them, was fully justified by the facts of American history. It has been characteristic of the American people that, without irreverence for law, they have not allowed it to stand in the way of their natural development: they have not, as a rule, driven rough-shod over law, but have quietly allowed undesirable laws to fall into ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... stretch your matter out, here and there, "with solemn specious nonsense about something unconnected with the story." No "padding" for Miss Austen! in fact, madam, as you were born before Analysis came in, or Passion, or Realism, or Naturalism, or Irreverence, or Religious Open-mindedness, you really cannot hope to rival your literary sisters in the minds of a perplexed generation. Your heroines are not passionate, we do not see their red wet cheeks, and tresses dishevelled in the ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... by quoting examples, but scarcely described in general terms. It has been said of that class of American humorists of which Artemus Ward is a representative that their peculiarity consists in extravagance, surprise, audacity and irreverence. But all these qualities have characterized other schools of humor. There is the same element of surprise in De Quincey's {568} anticlimax, "Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other which, perhaps, at the time he thought little of," as in Artemus's truism that ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... with morning mist. It was blinding the sun with a matinal oblation of incense. A crew of the profane should not interfere with such act of worship. Sacrilege is perilous, whoever be the God. We were instantly punished for irreverence. The first "rips" came up-stream under cover of the mist, and took us by surprise. As we were paddling along gently, we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of a boiling rapid. Gnashing rocks, with cruel foam upon their lips, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... the end of religion is to pay God reverence and honor. Now it would savor of irreverence towards a superior, if one were to offer him that which properly belongs to his inferior. Since then whatever man offers by bodily actions, seems to be directed properly to the relief of human needs, or to the reverence ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... acknowledge this announcement in some way, speech, or bow, or something, because before my immobility he made a slight movement in his chair which smacked of impatience. "I am afraid, Senor, that you are affected by the spirit of scoffing and irreverence which pervades this unhappy country of France in which both you and I are strangers, I believe. Are you a young man ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... tirelessly about the sick room, damping cloths, filling the ice-bag, infiltering drops of nourishment, was: "God is good!" and these words, far from breathing a pious resignation, voiced a confidence so bold that it bordered on irreverence. Their real meaning was: Richard has still ever so much work to do in the world, curing sick people and saving their lives. God must know this, and cannot now mean to be so foolish as to WASTE him, by letting ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... Each fact of deepening sorrow in that divine tragedy, the betrayal,(154) the mental anguish, the sacred agony,(155) is made the subject of remarks characterized no less by coarseness of taste and unfairness, than to the Christian mind by irreverence. Instead of his heart being touched by the majesty of our Saviour's sorrow, Celsus only finds an argument against the divine character of the adorable sufferer.(156) The wonders accompanying Christ's death are ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... and to the best of our judgment a successful one. The verses are easy, and, though rather in the ballad style, are free from any palpable irreverence. The plates are after the works of masters, and in the style, both of drawing and colouring, remind one of the severe and simple effect of old ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... that deform the pure faith of a Christian 220 should possess a greater immunity from ridicule than stories of witches, or the fables of Greece and Rome. But there are those who deem it profaneness and irreverence to call an ape an ape, if it but wear a monk's cowl on its head; and I would rather reason with this weakness ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... incautious. It could indeed hardly be otherwise. Fresh bleeding from the sword of Rome, and still trembling at her anathema, the reformed churches were little likely to remember any of her benefits, or to regard any of her teaching. Forced by the Romanist contumely into habits of irreverence, by the Romanist fallacies into habits of disbelief, the self-trusting, rashly-reasoning spirit gained ground among them daily. Sect branched out of sect, presumption rose over presumption; the miracles of the early Church were denied and its martyrs forgotten, though their ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Sweet Primal Truth to awaken from the sleep of negligence and selfish love of yourselves, and to offer humble and continual prayers, with many vigils, and with knowledge of yourselves, because the world is perishing through the crowding multitude of iniquities, and the irreverence shown to the sweet Bride of Christ. Well, then, let us give honour to God, and our toils to our neighbour. Ah, me, do not be willing, you or the other servants of God, that our life should end otherwise than in mourning and in sighs, for by no other means can be appeased the wrath of God, which ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... your duties by making the necessary arrangements for my father's funeral. Unhappily, I must begin my reign by disobeying my father's commands. I cannot allow this simple and modest funeral to take place. The world would not understand it, and would accuse me of irreverence. No, he must be interred with all the honors due to a king. That is my desire; see that ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... confirmed. It was an impression which did away with all remorse for my treacherous presence at his table. He was that terrible type, the Silly Cynic, his aim a caustic commentary on all things and all men, his achievement mere vulgar irreverence and unintelligent scorn. Ill-bred and ill-informed, he had (on his own showing) fluked into fortune on a rise in land; yet cunning he possessed, as well as malice, and he chuckled till he choked over the misfortunes of less astute speculators in the same boom. Even now I cannot feel much compunction ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... 1) My lot be still to lead The life of innocence and fly Irreverence in word or deed, To follow still those laws ordained on high Whose birthplace is the bright ethereal sky No mortal birth they own, Olympus their progenitor alone: Ne'er shall they slumber in oblivion cold, The god in them is strong and grows ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... Nor is the prophane irreverence of this conduct more striking than its ingratitude. When from reading that our Saviour was "the brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his person, upholding all things by the word of his power," we go on to consider the purpose ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... ideal to which hope promised her supreme satisfaction, the same wayward longing will often find a way; as in a sacred place amid the purest and most exquisite meditations of the soul, there will suddenly flit inexplicable shadows of irreverence, with echoes of incongruous ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... man the creatures dared to personate! I hate the whole thing, Sutherland. It is full of impudence and irreverence. Perhaps the wretched beings may want another thousand years' damnation, because of the injury done to their character by the homage of men who ought to ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... remarkably healthy young woman appeared in a brilliant skirt, and an indescribable hat with ostrich feathers on her woolly head. She sat herself down close beside me and went to sleep at the beginning of the sermon—not out of irreverence, I am persuaded, but from heat. In this state she continued swaying to and fro to the end of the discourse, occasionally drooping, as though she meant to make a pillow of my shoulder, which she would certainly have done, but for a more modestly clad ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... utterly fruitless. But the possible danger of exposing a Constitution, framed and adopted in the earlier and more conservative days of the Republic, to be torn in pieces in these times of lawless irreverence and change, is too great for any wise man willingly to encounter. The very equality of the States in the Senate, which was won by the revolutionary sacrifices and valor of the smaller States, now almost forgotten, would, in the judgment of your Commissioners, be thereby greatly ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... blossoming all over, out of and into the stillness, the loneliness, and the chill rigor of winter. Though authoritative in his class without any effort, he was indulgent to everything but conceit, slovenliness of mind and body, irreverence, and above all handling the Word of God deceitfully. On one occasion a student having delivered in the Hall a discourse tinged with Arminianism, he said, "That may be the gospel according to Dr. Macknight, or the gospel ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... of a gorgeous spectacle, the joy of making a Sunday of a weekday, dominated every other feeling. As the procession passed along the boulevards, the spectators on the balconies almost applauded; here, in the populous quarters, irreverence manifested itself even more frankly. Coarse chaff, vulgar comments on the dead man and his doings, with which all Paris was familiar, laughter called forth by the broad-brimmed hats of the rabbis and the solemn "mugs" of the council of wise men, filled the air between two drum-beats. ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... dimly, the saddled form of a horse plunging and struggling in the flood, making vain effort to clamber out, then whirling helplessly away—swept out of sight around the shoulder of bluff, and borne on down the tossing waves of the torrent. Men mean no irreverence when they call upon their Maker at such times, even in soldier oath. It is ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... The covetousness and irreverence of the churchmen in former times are well exemplified in another tale given in the same old jest-book, No. lxxi, which, with spelling modernised, goes thus: "Sometime there dwelled a priest in Stratford-on-Avon, of small learning, which undevoutly sang mass and ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... now in the life which, moment to moment, is his own. The extreme sense of this may take on the expression of the pantheistic mood, as here in Shelley's words, without any logical irreverence: for pantheism is that great mood of the human spirit which it is, permanent, recurring in every age and race, as natural to Wordsworth as to Shelley, because of the fundamental character of these facts and the inevitability of the knowledge of them. The most arrogant thought ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... one of course Berenger could not love, but the rigid bareness, and, as he thought, irreverence of the Calvinist, and the want of all forms, jarred upon one used to a ritual which retained much of the ancient form. In the early years of Elizabeth, every possible diversity prevailed in parish churches, according to the predilections of rector ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he cannot change or influence, an outcast of the streets, a boy whom the mere animal appetites have turned into a small fiend. Never having had his mind awakened, evil is this creature's good; avarice, irreverence, and vindictiveness, are his nature; sorrow has no place in his memory; and from his brutish propensities the philosopher can take nothing away. The juxtaposition of two people whom such opposite means have put in the same ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... discussion of business questions, it played a trivial and apologetic part in public affairs. And this was done not out of contempt but respect. The hold of the old religious organisations upon men's respect was still enormous, so enormous that there seemed to be a quality of irreverence in applying religion to the developments of every day. This strange suspension of religion lasted over into the beginnings of the new age. It was the clear vision of Marcus Karenin much more than any other contemporary influence which brought it back into ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... grim, more often wondering why his boots, that never creaked before, should creak on those particular boards, and feeling a quiet curiosity, without the least mixture of fear or awe as to what old Squaretoes intended to say to him. But all feeling of irreverence ceased when, shown into the baronet's room, and the door closed, Sir Miles rose with a smile, and cordially shaking his hand, said, dropping the punctilious courtesy of Mister: "Ardworth, sir, if I had a little prejudice ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... indirect effect of Arnold's school of thought may indeed, now, we think, be traced in the general distrust of hitherto received opinions, which, but little tinged in England it is true with either licentiousness or irreverence, is nevertheless characteristic ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... N. disrespect, disesteem, disestimation[obs3]; disparagement &c. (dispraise) 932, (detraction) 934. irreverence; slight, neglect, spretae injuria formae [Lat][Vergil], superciliousness &c. (contempt) 930. vilipendency|, vilification, contumely, affront, dishonor, insult, indignity, outrage, discourtesy &c. 895; practical joking; scurrility, scoffing, sibilance, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the sister kiss upon the other cheek. In spite of her there flitted through Marcia's brain the verse, "Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." Then she was shocked at her own irreverence and tried to put away a ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... to Mary's head like wine. This seemed a miracle, performed for her. Unconscious of irreverence, she thought that surely the saints had worked this wonder. She forgot that, because ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... did far more than any of his predecessors to envelop the Dead Sea legends in an atmosphere of truth—Adrian Reland, professor at the University of Utrecht. His work on Palestine is a monument of patient scholarship, having as its nucleus a love of truth as truth: there is no irreverence in him, but he quietly brushes away a great mass of myths and legends: as to the statue of Lot's wife, he treats it warily, but applies the comparative method to it with killing effect, by showing that the story of its miraculous renewal ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... execution, to another nobleman, a passage somewhat resembling this, with which, I believe every reader will be pleased, though it is so serious and solemn that it can scarcely be inserted without irreverence. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... and method of instruction used by some of the earliest laborers in this field left something to be desired in point of adaptedness to the savage mind. Without irreverence to the great name of Jonathan Edwards, there is room for doubt whether he was just the man for the Stockbridge Indians. In the case of the Rev. Abraham Pierson, of Branford, in New Haven Colony, afterward founder of Newark, we have an illustration ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... of Plato, Socrates speaks of the notion of explaining myths by etymological guesses at the meaning of divine names as "a philosophy which came to him all in an instant". Thus we find Socrates shocked by the irreverence which styled Zeus the son of Cronus, "who is a proverb for stupidity". But on examining philologically the name Kronos, Socrates decides that it must really mean Koros, "not in the sense of a youth, but signifying the pure and garnished mind". Therefore, when ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... quietly accept the situation as he understood it, and she saw already the steadying power of an unselfish, unfaltering purpose. He appeared by years an older and a graver man, and when he sat by her during the service in the wide parlor, there was not a trace of his old flippant irreverence. Whatever he now believed, he had attained the higher breeding which respects ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... speaks even more bitterly of Meyerbeer's irreverence and theatric sensationalism: "'Les Huguenots' and the far weaker production 'Le Prophete' are, we think, all the more reprehensible (nowadays especially, when too much stress is laid on the subject of a work, and consequently on the libretto of an opera), because the Jew has in these pieces ruthlessly ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... centuries; in instances in which he is represented, it is as the companion of St. Paul. The Virgin never appears as the subject of any special reverence. Sometimes, as in pictures of the Magi bringing their gifts, she is seen with the child Jesus upon her lap. No attempt to represent the Trinity (an irreverence which did not become familiar till centuries later) exists in the catacombs, and no sign of the existence of the doctrine of the Trinity is to be met with in them, unless in works of a very late period. Of the doctrines of Purgatory and Hell, of Indulgences, of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... was Saint Teresa, of whom William James, in his "Varieties of Religious Experience," says: "Her idea of religion seems to have been that of an endless amatory flirtation—if one may say so without irreverence—between the devotee and the Deity." Although this estimate of St. Theresa's saintliness will doubtless be shocking to the people who think they are pious, we take an optimistic view of it, and suggest that the saint's idea of religion is far more ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... none of my readers will be shocked at the seeming irreverence of my book, for that intimacy with the "Lord" was characteristic of the negroes. They believed implicitly in a Special Providence and direct punishment or reward, and that faith they religiously tried to impress ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... begins to be weak that it fears an occasionally lighter treatment of semi-sacred subjects, and it is impossible to convey an accurate idea of the spirit prevailing at this hamlet of sanctuary without attuning oneself somewhat to the more pagan character of the place. Of irreverence, in the sense of a desire to laugh at things that are of high and serious import, there is not a trace, but at the same time there is a certain unbending of the bow at Montrigone which is not ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... taste, the Cardinal Bibbiena introduces an elaborate discussion of the different sorts of jokes, which proves the high value attached in Italy to all displays of wit. It appears that even practical jokes were not considered in bad taste, but that irreverence and grossness were tabooed as boorish. Mere obscenity is especially condemned, though it must be admitted that many jests approved of at that time would now appear intolerable. But the essential point to be aimed at then, as now, was the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds |
