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Irreverent   Listen
adjective
Irreverent  adj.  Not reverent; showing a lack of reverence; expressive of a lack of veneration; as, an irreverent babbler; an irreverent jest.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Irreverent" Quotes from Famous Books



... are those who feel that to speak of religion on a week-day reveals a lack of the sense of the fitness of things, while other good people are quite sure that it is a wholly irreverent thing to speak of business on a Sunday. We tend to dwell alternately in two sets of apartments, the practical and ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope

... irreverent. You must continually bear in mind the fact that he didn't know the meaning of the word; that he knew nothing about the Bible, nor dreamed that the words which so delighted him were those of inspiration, sounding down through ...
— Three People • Pansy

... fence and a scant ten feet of sidewalk. And then to learn afterwards of a dozen most exciting events, each distinctly out of the ordinary, which might have been used as excuses for two dozen calls and as many sensations! As Captain Zeb Mayo, the irreverent ex-whaler, put it, "That fog shook Didama's faith in the judgment of Providence. 'Tain't the 'all wise,' but the 'all seein'' kind she talks about ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... her lay violent hands on this propensity; and she once said that if her religion could not stand her saying a funny thing now and then it was not worth much. But, whatever she might say or write of this character, one never felt that it betrayed any irreverent lightness of spirit. The undertone of her life was so deeply reverential, so thoroughly pervaded with adoring love for Christ, that it made itself felt through all her lighter moods, like the ground-swell of the sea through the ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... with sharp features shadowed by a mass of flowing, curling hair—the kind of hair that has come to be called "musical" by the irreverent. The sweep of an abnormal brow gave emphasis to the sudden jut of deep eye sockets, and a dull, sallow skin gave emphasis to the subtle sinister light, of the ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard

... public enough walnuts, anyway, scattered, as they were, across the public road! But Colin couldn't get over it for some time, and I suspected that he was the more sensitive from his recently—owing, doubtless, to his distinguished Gallic appearance—having been profanely greeted by some irreverent boys with the word "Spaghetti!" However, there was balm for our wounded feelings a little farther along the road, when a companionable old farmer greeted ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... achievements of our great undertaking. We shall be able to point to you in proof that zeal for knowledge may thrive even under the pressure of secular callings; that mother-wit does not necessarily make a man idle, nor inquisitiveness of mind irreverent; that shrewdness and cleverness are not incompatible with firm faith in the mysteries of Revelation; that attainment in Literature and Science need not make men conceited, nor above their station, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... Sammett's garden, which was once Angermann's, famous for its company, kings, composers, poets, wits, and critics, all mingling there in discordant harmony. Now it is overrun by Cook's tourists in bicycle costumes, irreverent, chattering, idle, and foolish. Even Wagner has grown gray and the Ring sounded antique to me, so strong were the ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... excursions to a close. Like Vikings of old (under a figure) we have harried the country round, and (in a sense) ravished its many charms. We have explored shrines consecrated by olden memories, enriched by the associations of centuries; but (unlike the Vikings), we have done this in no irreverent spirit, and with no predatory purpose. We have carried off our hoards of treasure, but we have left no ill traces behind us of our raid. No burning monasteries or homesteads have marked our track; no orphaned children or widowed wives follow us with their execrations. Enriching ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... sink the man in the military man. He had all a soldier's virtues, the "chevalier without fear and without reproach," but he was glorified by a whole galaxy of excellences which soldiers too often lack. He was pure of speech and of habit, never intemperate, never obscene, never profane, never irreverent. In domestic life he was an absolute model. Lofty command did ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... better with two eyes than I can with one, as far as that goes. I don't believe they wear 'em for seein' at all. Take that man there," pointing to a long, lank Canadian in a yellow ulster, whom the irreverent smoking-room had already christened "The Duke of Labrador." "Look at him! He didn't wear a sign of one until this mornin'. If he needed it to see with he'd have worn it before, wouldn't he? Don't tell ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... he was admirably indifferent. He never thought of speculating about what people thought of Mr. Helwyse; but to his own approval—something not lightly to be had—he was by no means indifferent. Towards mankind at large he showed a kindly but irreverent charity, which excused imperfection, not so much from a divine principle of love as from scepticism as to man's sufficient motive and faculty to do well. Of himself he was a blunt and sarcastic critic, perhaps because ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... reviewer, 'is an inflated jargon, composed of terms picked up in all countries, and wholly irreducible to any ordinary rules of grammar and sense. The sentiments are mischievous in tendency, profligate in principle, licentious and irreverent in the highest degree.' The first part of this accusation was only too well founded, but the licentiousness of which Lady Morgan's works were invariably accused in the Quarterly Review, can only have existed in the mind ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... lucky the Colonel is not here. Never speak of the big drum in that irreverent tone to him, I pray. It would well-nigh give him a fit. The big drum is his fetish, though he nearly smashed it himself ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... observation in an undertone, no doubt touching the intimacy between the ducal carriage and Tom-Jim-Jack—a remark which, as it might have been irreverent and dangerous, Ursus took care not ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... end of the service, when Butler had been admitted minister of the kirk of Knocktarlitie, with all its spiritual immunities and privileges, David, who had frowned, groaned, and murmured at Knockdunder's irreverent demeanour, communicated his plain thoughts of the matter to Isaac Meiklehose, one of the elders, with whom a reverential aspect and huge grizzle wig had especially disposed him to seek fraternisation. "It didna become a wild Indian," David said, "much less ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... down the bel-lind; simebody's klink klink, O don't be shoo-shoo!" Naturally this differs on the different railways. On the New York Central, where the road-bed is quite perfect and the steel rails continuous, I have heard this irreverent train give the words of a certain popular revival hymn after this fashion: "Hold the fort, for I am Sankey; Moody slingers still. Wave the swish swash back from klinky, klinky klanky kill." On the New York ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... town—and a town in the desert—that is to say, in a place useless for any other purpose; a secure place indeed, for we may be sure that the ground occupied by these poor tombs runs no risk of being coveted—not even in the irreverent times of the future. No, it is on the other side of Cairo—on the other bank of the Nile, amongst the verdure of the palm-trees, that we must look for the suburb in course of transformation, with its villas of the invading foreigner, ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... evident a general attitude of expectancy. Something was coming, and everyone wanted to be sure and get it. Sometimes it was humorous, and a ripple of laughter would go over the audience. Those who heard about it were apt to be shocked and to consider it irreverent. It is doubtful whether anyone who was present ever had that feeling. Sometimes it was pathetic, and there was suspicious fumbling in pockets. Sometimes it was soul-stirring, and one could see the forms quiver and grow tense. Most often it was that calm, quiet, yet forceful ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold

... underneath the thin flooring, as though roused by her irreverent merriment, the big car shook itself awake with a roar and splutter of indignation. But the sliding doors were thrown open, and its rage died down at the prospect of release. It began to ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... in its effects upon individuals, the result of the system in Ceylon has been apathy almost approaching to infidelity. Even as regards the tenets of their creed, the mass of the population exhibit the profoundest ignorance and manifest the most irreverent indifference. In their daily intercourse and acts, morality and virtue, so far from being apparent as the rule, are barely discernible as the exception. Neither hopes nor apprehensions have proved a sufficient restraint on the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... chere, what a serious derangement of his organism!" Michael broke in with irreverent laughter. "When all's said, the heart is a practical machine—even the heart of a lover, and a little of it must have been left below for ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... they drank is a criterion, the good name of the ship was established. Then the assembly adjourned to the sitting room and—yes, even the front parlor. Not since the days when that sacred apartment had been desecrated by the irreverent city boarders, during the Howes regime, had its walls echoed to such whoops and shouts of laughter. The children played "Post Office" and "Copenhagen" and "Clap in, Clap out," while the grown ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... a special jar or basket, in a separate store-house, and is never taken out until tesvino and meat have been offered to it. If this were neglected, it would eat the Indian's soul. If anything happens to hikuli—for instance, if irreverent mice eat it—the owner fears that he may be made crazy as a punishment for his failure to guard it. If anyone should steal hikuli, he would be sure to go crazy, unless he returned the plant to its original owner. He must also kill an ox and make a big feast, in order to set ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... party, to relate that incident, for it was the kind of thing that Mark Twain was not likely to record, or even to remember. Doctor Church was a deacon with orthodox views and did not approve of Mark Twain; he thought him sinful, irreverent, profane. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... idea of her. Bridget Rendle had been a girl too, younger perhaps than the other one; but Bridget had dipped into the waters of life, and sorrow and sin had closed over her. The two girls were as far apart as the poles, it seemed almost irreverent to think of them ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson

... was Andrew Johnstone, a terror to evil-doers and so prone to carry out all the law and the prophets by physical force that he had earned, among the irreverent youth of the community, the name of ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith

... could not prevent his old generals from grumbling and looking sullen, his young nobles from venting their spleen, sometimes in curses and sometimes in sarcasms, and even his common soldiers from holding irreverent language round their watchfires. His enemies rejoiced with vindictive and insulting joy. Was it not strange, they asked, that this great prince should have gone in state to the theatre of war, and then in a week have gone in the same state back again? Was it necessary that all that vast ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... knowledge goes, the planet Neptune. Of course, when it was expanded to that immense distance, it must have been very thin indeed, thinner than our clumsy human senses can even conceive of. An American would say, too thin; but I put Americans out of court at once as mere irreverent scoffers. From the orbit of Neptune, or something outside it, the faint and cloud-like mass which bore within it Caesar and his fortunes, not to mention the remainder of the earth and the solar system, began slowly to converge and ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... common for theologians to deny all such assertions as these last. They hold it irreverent to say that God owes anything to his creatures. They accumulate responsibility upon man, but deny responsibility to God. But in doing this they take from the Almighty all moral character. Calvinism, especially, makes of the Deity infinite power and infinite will. But no ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... the late August-time," said John Gayther, as the two sat down to rest in the summer-house after a long stay in the garden. "I have a singular feeling, which I hope is not irreverent, that the great Creator is pleased with me for having brought this work to perfection, and the thought gives me ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... we have noticed cannot be defended. Its irreverent use of scripture quotations, and loose wit, are not to be overlooked, but there was no advocacy of atheism in it. Indeed we must look upon Rabelais as acting the part of a reformer. If he had sought simply popularity and the favor of the court and ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... way at the slightest breeze, just as you may see Asiatics doing in our "land of mist and snow." But the natives regard those unhappy exotics with a fanatical pride, pointing them out to all comers as living witnesses to the perfection of the climate; they would gladly stone any irreverent stranger who should suggest a comparison between their sacred shrubs and the giants of Indian seas. The only inhabitant of the place who ever attained any eminence any where (he really was a good tailor), bequeathed a certain sum for the beautifying of the renowned allee, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... preached to the people every day during this time of suspense, telling them of the sins that had moved God to give them up to their foolish passion, so as to put them in fear, and lead them to repentance. One of these sins was vanity, and love of finery and pleasure; and another was their irreverent behaviour at church. They did repent heartily; and before the emperor's men had time to do more than begin to try some of the ringleaders, there came other messengers at full speed, bringing his ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... the groves of Montmorency. The old verbal tyranny of the French Academy, the painted wreaths sold at cemetery-gates, the colored plates of fashions, powdered hair, and rouged cheeks, typify and illustrate this irreverent ambition to pervert Nature and create artificial effects; they are but so many forms of the theatrical instinct, and proofs of the ascendency of meretricious taste. It is this want of loyalty to Nature, and insensibility to her unadulterated charms, which constitute the real barrier between the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... juicy soup (as soon as it comes into contact with the latter). That person who is endued with intelligence, who waits upon his superiors, and who has his passions under control succeeds in knowing all the rules of morality and never disputes with what is accepted by all. An ungovernable, irreverent, and sinful person of wicked soul perpetrates sin in seeking his well-being by ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... abruptly, if he never shrank from the publicity he was thus giving Laura. "Madame Recamier was not quite pleased," I said, "that Canova had modelled her bust, even from imagination. Do you never shrink from permitting irreverent eyes to look on Laura's beauty? Think of men as you know them. Would you give each of them her miniature, perhaps to go with them into scenes of ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... of a traveller upon the subject be deemed hasty or irreverent, I beg to quote Bishop Tomline's opinion. He says—"Great objections have been made to the clauses which denounce eternal damnation against those who do not believe the faith as here stated; and it certainly is to be lamented that assertions of so peremptory ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... alone, me alone!... Gentlemen, my head aches ..." His brows contracted with pain. "You see, gentlemen, I couldn't bear the look of him, there was something in him ignoble, impudent, trampling on everything sacred, something sneering and irreverent, loathsome, loathsome. But now that he's dead, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... really were Mr Keith's Friend—as if they knew each other, and were not strangers at all, but each understood what the other would like or dislike, and they wanted to please one another. I hope I am not irreverent in writing so, but really it did seem like that. And I never saw anything like ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... any one in the range of his vision appeared drowsy he would turn round and glare till the offender roused into consciousness. The children and young people stood in awe of him, and there was a perfect oasis of good behavior surrounding his pew. Once some irreverent young men thought it would be a joke to pretend to "conviction ob sin," and to seek religious counsel of old Tobe, but they came away scared half out of their wits, one of them declaring that he smelt brimstone a week afterward. The Rev. ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... is this!-Well may irreverent, unthinking youth despise, instead of revere, the hoary head which the wearer is so much ashamed of. The lady boasts a relationship to you, and Mr. B. and, I think, I am very bold. But my reverence for years, and the ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... follow her? She knew how to talk and make excuses. How sweetly she could talk. Had she no anxiety about her own salvation? On thinking it over, he could not remember ever having heard her say anything irreverent or impure. When she sat opposite him at table, quieter now than she had ever been before, and mutely raised her big eyes to the ceiling, she looked exactly like the pictures of the Virgin Mary whose heart is pierced with seven swords owing to her grief for her Son. Oh, no, she was no bad ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig

... who understood the temper of the public and of the Government, and was naturally loth to awaken any more "reasonable doubts" in the mind of the Chancellor with regard to whether a "scriptural drama" was irreverent or profane. The new "Mystery" was revised by Gifford and printed, but withheld from month to month, till, at length, "the fire kindled," and, on the last day of October, 1821, Byron instructed John Hunt to "obtain from Mr. Murray Werner: ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... feelings. The friends of the old should not give a churlish welcome to the new, nor those of the new forget the old. It is hard to blend the two, either in individual life or in a wider sphere of thought or act. The seniors think the juniors revolutionary and irreverent; the juniors think the seniors fossils. It is possible to unite the shout of joy and the weeping. Unless a spirit of reverent regard for the past presides over the progressive movements of this or any day, they will not lay a solid foundation for the temple of the future. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... AUSTIN]. Note that mode Of faltering out that, when a lady passed, He, having eyes, did see her! You had said— "On such a day I scanned her, head to foot; Observed a red, where red should not have been, Outside her elbow; but was pleased enough Upon the whole." Let such irreverent talk ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... began to come these rumors affecting Burleigh's integrity; then the determination to send Loring to look after this new boon companion with whom Burleigh was consorting; then a dispatch from old Colonel Stevens, "Old Pecksniff," as the irreverent youngsters called him, the commander at Fort Emory on the outskirts of Gate City, telling of a tremendous storm that had swept the Laramie plains and the range of the Medicine Bow and Rattlesnake Hills, just after Lieutenant Dean had been sent forth with a small party ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... be a vain task to seek anywhere in nature for evidence of Divine action, such that no one could sanely deny it. God will not allow Himself to be caught at the bottom of any man's crucible, or yield Himself to the experiments of gross-minded and irreverent inquirers. The natural, like the supernatural, revelation appeals to the whole of man's mental nature and not ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... trifle dark and wet, the previous evening. Raindrops on the roof waked us shortly before three. We hoped it was but a passing shower. At daylight, however, the rain was pouring profusely. Wealthy actually cried; Ellen scolded a little; Halstead made certain irreverent remarks; while Gram sought to inculcate resignation ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... completely distort our vision of the external world. Society as a whole has yet to fight its way through an almost impenetrable forest of sexual taboos." Drysdale's words have lost none of their truth even to-day: "There are few things from which humanity has suffered more than the degraded and irreverent feelings of mystery and shame that have been attached to the genital and excretory organs. The former have been regarded, like their corresponding mental passions, as something of a lower and baser nature, tending to degrade and carnalize man by their physical appetites. But we cannot ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... sometimes thought that he carried it to a pernicious excess: I am sure, at least, that I was unable to keep pace with him." With Shelley study was a passion, and the acquisition of knowledge was the entrance into a thrice-hallowed sanctuary. "The irreverent many cannot comprehend the awe—the careless apathetic worldling cannot imagine the enthusiasm—nor can the tongue that attempts only to speak of things visible to the bodily eye, express the mighty ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... in as great force as the very decrees of the papal chair. If any be so bold as to remonstrate to their decisions, they will bring him on his knees to a recantation of his impudence. They shall pronounce as irrevocably as an oracle, this proposition is scandalous, that irreverent; this has a smack of heresy, and that is bald and improper; so that it is not the being baptised into the church, the believing of the scriptures, the giving credit to St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Hierom, St. Augustin, nay, or St. Thomas Aquinas himself, that shall ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... Victor Hugo, one cannot help remembering that the public did not show itself wildly appreciative of either of these defenders. So, too, when Oscar Wilde works himself up over the persecutions of Dante, Keats and Byron, we are minded of the irreverent crowds that followed Wilde and his lily down the street. When the poet is too proud to complain of his own wrongs at the hands of the public, it is easy for him to strike in defense of another. As the last century wore on, this vicarious indignation more and more took the place of a personal outcry. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... saying the wrong thing," said the girl, in a repentant voice; "but, truly, I didn't mean to be irreverent—I only wanted you to know how pat the doctor reels off the scientific phrases; and"—assuming an important air—"I guess I know that Christian Science is the 'new tongue' spoken of in the Bible. I've been to the service all summer; auntie went ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... loving hands of a votary of the god, inspired by the immortals. She gazed spell-bound on the form which, though human, transcended humanity as eternity transcends time, as the light of the sun transcended the blazing beacon on Pharos; and she said to herself that it was impossible that an irreverent hand should be laid on this supremely lovely statue, crowned with the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... hall door ready to greet the incomer, before she was halfway up the stairs. The cat never got down for the wrong person, and she never neglected to meet any and every member of our family who might be entering. The irreverent scoffer may call it "instinct," or talk about the "sense of smell." I ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... audacious and irreverent in expression, but it was remarkably popular in New England at that time. The writer is now one of the editors of a popular Boston periodical, and would be one of the last, I have no doubt, to induce a Northern soldier to withdraw ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... seemed to him at issue, and he was drawn in both directions—now by the beauty, order, and deep symbolism of the Catholic ritual, now by the spirituality and earnestness of the men among whom he lived. At one moment the worldly pomp, the mechanical and irreverent worship, and the gross and vicious habits of many of the clergy repelled him; at another the reverence and conservatism of his nature held ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... Bonaventure remarks, that this animal, by the respect it manifested during the celebration of the Sacred Mysteries, taught the Christians the deep reverence with which they ought to assist at Mass, and at the same time passed a deserved censure on those who are irreverent ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... met his match, how did he die?" pursued the irreverent piou-piou—a little wiry man, black as a berry, agile as a monkey, tough and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... Infinite on the closing act of the day. He saw the hurried and unfeeling dumping of bodies into the holes awaiting them. Then his heart grew big with something unspeakable as he noted how in all that irreverent and unsympathetic action the American and English soldiery alone were serving as brother for brother. In the long trenches prepared for them their dead were laid with reverent dignity and gentleness. Each one's place was carefully marked with a numbered slab that in a future day ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... to this irreverent Cavalier, convalescent at home from a machine-gun bullet through his shoulder, and hero-worshipper of his Colonel, that Andrew Lackaday owed his shy appearance at Mansfield Court. He was proud of the boy, a gallant and efficient soldier; Lady ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... out of the church was still slender and flexile, virginal. Doctor Crosson mopped his brow at the atrocity of his thoughts this morning. The springtime air was to blame. The windows were open for the first time. The breeze that lolled through the church had no right there. It was irreverent and frivolous. It was amused at the people. It rippled with laughter at the preacher's heavy effort to start a jealousy between the pangs of the flesh and the ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... in ridiculing some of the favourite themes of our teachers; and I recollect one subject particularly, which at one period afforded us repeated merriment. It may seem irreverent in me to give the account, but I do it to show how things of a solemn nature were sometimes treated in the Convent, by women bearing the title of saints. A Canadian Novice, who spoke very broken English, one day remarked that she was performing some duty "for the God." This peculiar expression ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk

... possible. But James's irreverent style is hardly suited in parts for her ladyship's ears. You, dear child, must make an improved copy of the letter. Your own good taste will tell you which sentences require to be altered or expunged. Here and there you may work in a neat compliment to your father; as coming ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various

... Prynne's? Or, must she receive those intimations—so obscure, yet so distinct—as truth? In all her miserable experience, there was nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense. It perplexed, as well as shocked her, by the irreverent inopportuneness of the occasions that brought it into vivid action. Sometimes the red infamy upon her breast would give a sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister or magistrate, the model of piety and justice, to whom ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... wonder that he hardly realized the truths of his present situation. The man-of-war, in which everything was His Majesty's, sustained this feeling, and it was too sudden a change to expect such a man to abandon all his most cherished notions at a moment's warning. The irreverent exclamation of Captain Truck shocked him, and he did not fail to show as much by the disgust pictured ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... retired to the kitchen, and the former said hi his irreverent way, "Blamed ef Abigail ha'nt got more devils into her'n Mary Magdalene had the purtiest day she ever seed! I should think, arter a life with her fer a mother, the bad place would be a healthy and delightful clime. The devil a'n't ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston

... Dick Boar" was Mr Dockett's extremely irreverent style of allusion to His Majesty ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt

... Mother'—the players and dramatists, finally, who crowded round Hogarth's sketch of his 'Beggars' Opera,' with portraits, and gazed on Davison's likeness of Mrs. Clive:—how could poor Horace have tolerated the sound of their irreverent remarks, the dust of their shoes, the degradation of their fancying that they might doubt his spurious-looking antiquities, or condemn his improper-looking ladies on their canvas? How, indeed, could he? For those parlours, that library, were peopled in his days with all those who could ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... their common fate with a certain Indian stoicism and Western sense of humor that for the time lifted them above the vulgar complacency of their former fortunes. There was a deep-seated, if coarse and irreverent resignation in their philosophy. At the beginning of the calamity it had been roughly formulated by Billings in the statement that "it wasn't anybody's fault; there was nobody to kill, and what couldn't be reached by a Vigilance Committee there was no use resolootin' over." When the Reverend Doctor ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte

... Beg no questions. St. Paul to you may be infallible, But Science is so unaccommodating, If not irreverent, she'll not accept His ipse dixit as an axiom. Here, in our civilized society, Is an increasing host of single women Who do not find the means of livelihood In the employments you call feminine. What shall ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... term, a great moral teacher; they are inconsistent with Mr. Besant's account of the "unbroken lines of writers," of whom Rabelais was one, but not the first, all having the same characteristics, all "irreverent," having "no strong convictions," "like children for mockery, mischief and lightness of heart;" and finally, they are so improbable in themselves, and so unsusceptible of proof, that, uttered as they are with the solemnity of communications from an unseen world, they produce much the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... proceeds to wonder what the lizard has to do with the Romans. For this he has been quite properly laughed at by Dr. Holmes, because he has resorted to an artifice and has failed to create an illusion. Indeed, Dr. Holmes is somewhere so irreverent as to remark that a gill of alcohol will bring on a psychical state very similar to that suggested by Emerson; and Dr. Holmes is accurately happy in his jest, because alcohol does dislocate the attention ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... amusingly associated with "Old Town," the former San Diego, three miles from the present city. He had offended Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, by his irreverent wit, and was punished by exile to this then almost unknown region, which he called "Sandy Ague," chiefly inhabited by the flea, the horned toad, and the rattlesnake. Mr. Ames, of the Herald, a democratic paper, asked Derby, a stanch whig, to occupy the editorial chair during a brief absence. ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... cheek, and he was looking at her like as any one but a fool might have known he would look; and the Doctor, he saw it too, and looked at me and grinned; and if I had been God, that grin should have been his last. No, I don't mean to be irreverent, but it's ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit

... no means impressed with the solemnity of the proposed effect, but, on the contrary, received the proposition in a most irreverent manner, and laughed at it very heartily, Mr Crummles abandoned the project in its birth, and gloomily observed that they must make up the best bill they could with combats and hornpipes, and so stick to ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... scandal; it arrested no decay; it allayed no distemper, and it certainly did not settle the peace of the Church. Inside the Church the bishops were supine, the parochial clergy indifferent, and the worshippers, if such a name can properly be bestowed upon the congregations, were grossly irreverent. Nor was any improvement in the conduct of the Church service noticeable until after the Revolution, and when legislation had conceded a somewhat shabby measure of toleration to those who by that time had become rigid, traditional, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... great appreciator of poetry—at all events of his nephew's; and an irreverent remark on 'Sordello', imputed to a more eminent contemporary, proceeded, under cover of a friend's name, from him. But he had his share of mental endowments. We are told that he was a good linguist, and that he wrote on finance under an assumed name. He was also, apparently, an accomplished ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... and spirit, were focussing itself upon one passionate desire that his child might live. Not that he consciously prayed. What was there that he could pray to, or for? Laws did not stop their working, to prolong one baby life. Useless to ask for mere futilities. Useless and totally irreverent to insult the Deity by suggesting to Him, however prayerfully, that He had made a bad mistake; that, were His attention only called to the mistake, doubtless He would be glad to set it right while time still remained to Him. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... the wealth which she affected to despise was eating into the soundness of her character, not by its splendour, but by the style of life which it had seemed to produce as a necessity. She knew that she was gradually becoming irreverent, scornful, and prone to ridicule; but yet, knowing this, and hating it, she hardly knew how to break from it. She had seen so much of the blacker side of human nature that blackness no longer startled her as it should do. She had been the prize at which so many ruined spendthrifts ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... of England have nobly shown their good will and hearty sympathy with the Americans, and their sincere desire for the settlement of our difficulties. 'If praying would do you Americans any good,' said an irreverent acquaintance last Sunday, 'you will be gratified to learn that a force of a thousand-clergymen-power is constantly at ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... will 'tend him, turn and turn about," continued Mrs. Benton, ignorant of Marty's irreverent remark. "He's to be put into Mr. Ma'sh's room at the quarters, and I'll take this first night's job. I shall begin it with a dose of picra, and the first page of the Westminster catechism; and ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond

... surpass in beauty those of Shakspeare (Angiolina, Myrrha, Anna): they said that Faliero wanted interest, that Sardanapalus was a voluptuary; that Satan in "Cain" did not speak as a theologian (how could he?), that there were irreverent tendencies in his sacred dramas—and ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... in sending it to our American friends, we were obliged to explain that though the Irish peasants interlard their conversation with saints, angels, and devils, and use the name of the Virgin Mary, and even the Almighty, with, to our ears, undue familiarity and frequency, there is no profane or irreverent intent. They are instinctively religious, and it is only because they feel on terms of such friendly intimacy with the powers above that they speak of them ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... of hearing Mother Martha's story would be a poor one indeed, if I allowed her to begin a fresh string of questions. Accordingly, I dismissed the inquiries about the clergy of the Established Church with the most irreverent briefness, and recalled her attention forthwith to the ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... before meat'? But, I pray thee, Sir Robin, who said there was cheese in my wallet? Nay, is there like to be cheese in a wallet already containing five-and-twenty holy Ladies on their way back from Vespers? Out upon thee for a most irreverent little glutton! I fear me thou hast not only a high look, thou hast also a proud stomach; just the reverse of the great French Cardinal who came, with much pomp, to visit us at Easter time. He had a proud look and ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... politician, tall and thin and oppressively taciturn, who seemed to be stricken dumb by the weight of an immemorial ancestry or by the sense of his own importance; and who was not less cold than dumb, so that irreverent jokers reported that persons might freeze to death in his presence if they came too near ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... irreverent interpolation, I well knew. I opened my door. O'Keefe stood outside laughing. The Suwarna, her engines silent, was making fine headway under all sail, the Brunhilda skipping in her wake cheerfully with half ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... thinks it can speak, think, and act without having to render an account needs the somewhat stern tonic of these seven dramas; it may be chastened into some sobriety and learn to be a little less flippant and irreverent. ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... not for man even to guess what thoughts may have passed through the mind of Christ when He sighed over the very defect which He was healing. But it is surely not irreverent in us to say that our Lord had cause enough to sigh, if He foresaw the follies of mankind during an age which was too soon to come.—How men, instead of taking the spirit of His miracles and acting ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... Lowell speaks of always seemed to hedge him round like the divinity that doth hedge a king. What man was he who would lay his hand familiarly upon his shoulder and call him Waldo? No disciple of Father Mathew would be likely to do such a thing. There may have been such irreverent persons, but if any one had so ventured at the "Saturday Club," it would have produced a sensation like Brummel's "George, ring the bell," to the Prince Regent. His ideas of friendship, as of love, seem almost too exalted for our earthly conditions, ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... hat, who understood something of the conversation, was indignant at Caesar's irreverent ideas. He asked him if he understood Latin, and Caesar told him no, and then, in a strange gibberish, half Latin and half Italian, he let loose a series of facts, dates, and numbers. Then he asserted that all artistic things ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... Charles king, was in open contempt of the usages and rights of the nation. He evaded the urgent demands of the Castilians for a convocation of cortes; for it was his opinion, "that freedom of speech, especially in regard to their own grievances, made the people insolent and irreverent to their rulers." [29] The people, of course, had no voice in the measures which involved their most important interests. His whole policy, indeed, was to exalt the royal prerogative, at the expense of the inferior orders of the state. [30] And his regency, short as it was, and highly beneficial ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... with his irreverent yet admiring biographers, at the early escapades of the married boy—the visit to Dublin at the height of the agitation for Catholic emancipation, the printing of his Address to the Irish Nation, and his trick of scattering it by flinging copies from his balcony ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... commandments in the new Church of St. Katharine in the Regent's Park! How Emily and I gloated over the imitation of them when we replaced the hideous old tables, and how exquisite we thought the initial I, which irreverent youngsters have likened, with some justice, to an enormous overfed caterpillar, enwreathed with ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the use of all this," broke in the irreverent "Kid." "Do we have to stand there and have war ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday

... to the coming of her family was no small matter. She was outrageously rebellious, flagrantly irreverent, and for every outburst Lilly bled her ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... edifice, rich in picturesque memories, and blending into one complex harmony elements contributed by a long series of centuries. And you, wretched French revolutionists, with your love of petty precision, and irreverent radicals and utilitarians, with your grovelling material notions, propose to level, and destroy, and break in upon my delicious reveries. No old Hebrew prophet could be more indignant with the enemy who threatened ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... intimidated from proceeding, this demonstration only made Sir Roger the more determined. To have so desperate and irreverent a population coming about his house and woods now presented itself in a much more formidable aspect than ever. So, next day, not only were the placards once more hoisted, but rewards offered for the discovery of the offenders, attended ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... four nations claiming to have forged his work for him, the shocking old doubt will raise its snaky head once more—whether this forger, who rests in so much darkness, might not, after all, be of English blood. Tom, it may be feared, is known to modern English literature chiefly by an irreverent mention of his name in a line of Peter Pindar's (Dr Wolcot) fifty years back, where he ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... fairly within the old hemlocks, and in one of the most primitive, undisturbed nooks. In the deep moss I tread as with muffled feet, and the pupils of my eyes dilate in the dim, almost religious light. The irreverent red squirrels, however, run and snicker at my approach, or mock the solitude with their ridiculous ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... said Mr. Cope gravely. 'Another thing I was going to say was, that this irreverent economy of the Guardians, in allowing no lesson-books but the Bible, seems to have, after all, been blest to him in his knowledge of it, like an antidote to the evil ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge

... expected to exhibit the finely balanced critical sense of a Matthew Arnold. Mark Twain was often accused in the first years of his international reputation of a characteristically American lack of reverence. He is often irreverent. But here again the boundaries of his irreverence are precisely those which the national instinct itself has drawn. The joke stops short of certain topics which the American mind holds sacred. We all have ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... earnest about that girl," said Poppins. Poppins had an offhand, irreverent way of speaking, especially on subjects which from their nature demanded delicacy, that was frequently shocking ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope

... that a young man's strongest recommendation is his respectability. Some young men, apparently successful, may be flashy in dress, loud in manner, disrespectful to women and irreverent toward sacred things. But the young man who is respectable always wears best. The way a young man carries himself in his private life ofttimes means much to him in his business career. No matter where he is, or in whose company, respectability, and all that it implies, ...
— The Young Man in Business • Edward W. Bok

... service. This makes five daily services in church, two English, two Chinese, and one Dyak. We clothed all the candidates in a new suit of cotton garments with a bright-coloured handkerchief for their heads. It would be considered very irreverent for Easterns to uncover their heads in church. I taught the school-children to sing 'Veni, Creator Spiritus' at this baptism, while the clergy were arranging the candidates and sponsors round the font. The font was wreathed with flowers by my children. There was quite a full church, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... observe this ceremony, but he often wipes his fingers upon his pantaloons. It occurs to me, however, that I do not wisely pursue this theme; for the mysteries of Domingo's craft are no fit subject for the gratification of an irreverent curiosity. Those words ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... within the House of Lords and Commons it is irreverent, and half a breach of privilege, (far from my thoughts,) to consider as Jacobin. This party has always denied the existence of such a faction, and has treated the machinations of those whom you and I call Jacobins as so many forgeries and fictions of the minister and his adherents, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the dignity of physical science, and of the happiness of those who are devoted to it for the healing and the help of mankind, I never have meant to utter, and I do not think I have uttered, one irreverent word. But against the curiosity of science, leading us to call virtually nothing gained but what is new discovery, and to despise every use of our knowledge in its acquisition; of the insolence of science, in claiming for itself a separate function of that human mind which in its perfection is one ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... presented petitions for representation of the clergy in parliament, for the administration of the Communion in both kinds to the laity, for the suppression of irreverent language about the Sacrament, and for sanctioning the marriage of the clergy. The first was ignored; the two next were embodied in Acts of Parliament; the last was deferred for a year. The session was rounded off in January by a general ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... railroad passenger, but the botanist, the geologist, the poet, really see the country, and that, to the former, "a miss is as good as a mile." In a word, the tendency of circumstances has been to make our people superficial, irreverent, and more anxious to get a living than to live mentally and morally. This tendency is no way balanced by the slight literary culture common here, which is mostly English, and consists in a careless reading of publications of the day, having the ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... life. In Ibn Khall. (iii. 104) we find notices of a book "Kitab Nujaba al-Abna" Treatise on Distinguished Children, by Ibn Zakar al- Sakalli (the Sicilian), ob. A. D. 1169-70. And the boy-Kazi is a favourite role in the plays of peasant-lads who enjoy the irreverent "chaff" almost as much as when "making a Pasha." This reminds us of the boys electing Cyrus as their King in sport (Herodotus, i. 114). For the cycle of "Precocious Children" and their adventures, see Mr. Clouston ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... the two time-worn awnings had been fixed to my windows by the obliging janitor. The Tampico had come and gone, and had come again. Its arrivals, and departures were, as usual, always commented upon by Mawkum, generally in connection with "That Bunch of Dried Garlic," that being the irreverent way in which he spoke of his ivory-tinted Excellency. Otherwise the lighthouse, and all that pertained to it, ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... "Born irreverent," scrawled Mark Twain on a scratch pad, "—like all other people I have ever known or heard of—I am hoping to remain so while there are any reverent irreverences left to make fun of." —[Holograph manuscript of Samuel L. Clemens, ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain

... "what did you say was the name of this place, and where away does it lay from 'Frisco?" In very choice Castilian, as Lanky declared, the priest rejoined that he did not understand the language in which Booden was speaking. "Then bring on somebody that does," rejoined that irreverent mariner, when due interpretation had been made. The padre protested that no one in the village understood the English tongue. The skipper gave a long low whistle of suppressed astonishment, and wondered if we had drifted down to Lower California in ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... Majesty's protection. The Cossack even donned his uniform cap with the gold double eagle in order to impress the natives with a sense of our official importance. But although the head-dress was at once removed by irreverent hands and passed round with some amusement, I regret to say that its effect (from an awe-inspiring point of view) was ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... De Carti with intention, and had perhaps exaggerated a little Mrs. Dixon's respectful manner. He knew such incidents cheered his father, who could never look at these subjects from a proper point of view, and, as people said, sometimes made the strangest remarks for a clergyman. This irreverent way of treating serious things was one of the great bonds between father and son, but it tended to increase their isolation. People said they would often have liked to asked Mr. Taylor to garden-parties, and tea-parties, and other cheap entertainments, if only he had not been such ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... than I should have done in confessing grave sins, particularly when the graces I had to reveal were great. I thought they did not believe me, and that they were laughing at me. I felt it so much,—for I look on this as an irreverent treatment of the marvels of God,—that I was glad to be silent. I learned then that I had been ill-advised by that confessor, because I ought never to hide anything from my confessor; for I should find great security if I told everything; and if I did otherwise, I might at ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... Middle Ages; it diminishes at the Renaissance, and Rabelais, drawing up a list of some remarkable books in St. Victor's library, inscribes on it, between the "Maschefaim des Advocats" and the "Ratepenade des Cardinaux," the works of the subtle doctor under the irreverent ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... the olden time—the fire-worshippers or sun-worshippers—never deigned to bow to one another: they bowed to none but the Deity. They took not the Great Spirit's name in vain; nor did they mention it save in a whisper, and with bowed head. He regretted that since coming in contact with the irreverent and blaspheming white men, his people had lost much ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... his knees and went to drink at the spouting rock lip. It was decided now, this thing he had been holding half-heartedly in abeyance. There would be no more dallying with temptation, no more rebellion, no more irreverent stumblings in the dark valley of doubtful questions. More especially, he would be vigilant to guard against those backslidings that came so swiftly on the heels of each spiritual quickening. His heart was fixed, so ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... the golf club. A striking proof of his abandonment to obscurity was his adoption of a most undignified, rakish, little soft hat, reserving the "plug" for Sundays and state occasions. Billy was beginning to enjoy Elmville, though that irreverent burgh had neglected to crown him with ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... all her faults, she was a pious and noble woman. She meant to train him for the Lord, and therefore when she saw young Ishmael mocking at the festival of his weaning, she besought her husband to send away the irreverent son, whose influence might ruin the consecrated Isaac. Hagar, with a generous provision for her wants, was a fugitive; and the Most High approved the solicitude of a mother for an only child, around whose destiny ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley

... Christians, including her ladyship of Canore and her husband and daughters, whose curiosity had been more than amply satisfied. The cheers changed from enthusiasm to irony as the irregular procession moved towards the doors, and an irreverent Secularist at the back of the hall jumped on his seat and shouted, with an unmistakable Old ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... features over again, and change the dead colouring of the whole. In general, I will only say, that I have written nothing which savours of immorality or profaneness; at least, I am not conscious to myself of any such intention. If there happen to be found an irreverent expression, or a thought too wanton, they are crept into my verses through my inadvertency; if the searchers find any in the cargo, let them be staved or forfeited, like contrabanded goods; at least, let their authors be answerable for them, as being but imported merchandise, and ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... and irreverent mention of religion. I will not here debate what compliment a man pays to his own understanding by the profession of infidelity; it is sufficient to my purpose that he runs the risque of giving the cruelest offence to persons of a different temper; for, if a loyalist would be greatly affronted ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... of the people, and their inclination to a sort of materialism, led them to abandon the symbolic representations of the Deity, and to depict the Father with the form and lineaments of an aged man, many of which irreverent paintings, as far back as the twelfth century, are to be found in the religious books and edifices of Europe.[137] But, after the period of the renaissance, a better spirit and a purer taste began to pervade the ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... bear, ... and I see them only at certain hours, ... except, of course, my sisters. And then as you have 'a reputation' and are opined to talk generally in blank verse, it is not likely that there should be much irreverent rushing into this room when you are known to ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... Erskine! Who ever heard of such an irreverent nickname applied to that good and great man? "The laddies couldna be his sons," thought the woman. She made no further inquiry, and the boys escaped scot free. The culprit afterwards entered the service of the East India Company. ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... colored marbles and mosaics, spendthrift of light and gilding; on every side shone the signs and seals of predatory wealth. Its walls were like costly confectionery, its ornaments insolent, its waste criminal. Every decorative feature was hot, restless, irreverent, and cruel, quite the sort of avenue one might expect to find in his walk towards the glittering woman of the ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... stout man with a long black beard and hair falling below his shoulders, clothed in silk of gold and purple, waving a censer, monotoning the prayers in a high Russian tenor, with one eye on the choir of sanitars, one eye on the candles blown by the wind, the breeze meanwhile playing irreverent jests on his splendid skirts of gold. Then there was the congregation in three groups. The first group—two generals, two colonels, four or five other officers, the Sisters (Sister K—— bowing and crossing herself incessantly, Anna Petrovna ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... Hence he had to prepare for the worst, and still, as far as he could, to try to pacify these rivals; but to reconcile an American and an Englishman, two men hostile to one another from their birth, one endowed with real insular prejudice, the other with the adventurous, irreverent spirit of his country, was no easy task. When the doctor thought of their eager rivalry, which in fact was one of nationalities, he could not help, not shrugging his shoulders, but lamenting human weakness. He would often talk to Johnson ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... ride a buckjumper; which makes a party of resourceful bushmen stand helpless in the presence of flood or fire, till marshalled by some hero of the croquet lawn; above all, which makes the isocratic and irreverent Australian fawn on the 'gentleman,' for no imaginable reason except that the latter says 'deuced' instead of 'sanguinary,' and 'by Jove' instead of 'by sheol.' Go to; I'll no more on't; it hath made ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... indisputably written by him (in the "Prologue" to the "Legend of Good Women"); nor is the value of this statement reduced by the negative circumstance, that in the extraordinary tag (if it may be called by so irreverent a name) to the extant "Canterbury Tales," the "Romaunt of the Rose" is passed over in silence, or at least not nominally mentioned, among the objectionable works which the poet is there made to retract. And there seems at least no necessity for giving in to the conclusion ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... he found himself divested of that princely character, he was completely at a loss. The trouble was that he had no sense of humour. So he found it impossible to gossip with plebeian unknowns, or engage in card-games with irreverent middle-class artisans and drummers. He could not even carry on a flirtation with any of the pretty girls! He had attempted it with one of them; but, after a very few minutes, she had left him with her chin in the air, and an exclamation ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... irreverent remark. He looked around the place and saw that they were alone. Then he said, very earnestly, "Mr. Finnegan, may I have a ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair

... irreverent voice or uncouth charm I call up the departed. Soul of Albert! Hear our soft suit, and heed my milder spells: So may the gates of Paradise unbarr'd Cease thy swift toils, since haply thou art one 15 Of that innumerable company, Who in broad circle, lovelier than the rainbow, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... simple question. Why do you render those who spend their lives in your service so extremely ridiculous? That may be just the fashion of your humour; but is it fair to persist as you do? There is, for instance, my old friend BENJAMIN CHUMP, little BEN CHUMP as we used to call him in the irreverent days, before his face had turned purple or his waistcoat had prevented him from catching stray glimpses of his patent-leathered toes. Little BEN was not made for the country, that was certain. A life of Clubs and dinner-parties would have suited him to perfection. In his Club ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various

... would not be counted a crime by God, who loved all His creatures. Mother always stuck to it that Injuns were God's creatures—which brought Buddy squarely against the incredible assumption that God must love them. He did not in the least mean to be irreverent, but when he watched those painted bucks his opinion of God changed slightly. He decided that he himself was neither pure nor full of faith, and that he would not pray just yet. He would let God go ahead and do as He pleased about it; except that Buddy would never let those ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower

... wealth always bestows on its possessors—and which is surely as necessary to the Church as to any other public corporation, to the end that she may carry out efficiently the affairs of her vast mission; keep up her dignity amid an irreverent world; shield her oppressed; relieve her poor members, and strike respect into powerful sinners, who would not only scorn but trample on her too, if she had nothing but words to oppose ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby

... speech before the face of their parents and mothers-in-law. And I have seen them as visitors in the temples. Because"—the man's voice shook with feeling—"I have in my house a girl with the blood of the East in her veins and the influence of the West in her life. She is rebellious, rude and irreverent. Only this morning, when I gave warning what vengeance the great Buddha would send upon her for impiety, did she not toss her red head and laughingly scoff in my face." At this point I arose and rang for tea and my visitor continued: "Ah, I tremble at her ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... the agreed-upon duty was paid. Then there was the Starch Monopoly, a very profitable one because starch was a new delight which soon enabled Elizabethan fops to wear ruffed collars big enough to make their heads—as one irreverent satirist exclaimed—'look like John ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... the prayer and in the midst of the second hymn that a more pronounced titter from the back seats drew his attention. He raised his head to cast a reproving glance at the irreverent, but the sight that met his eyes turned that look into one of horror. 'Lias had just entered the church, and with every mark of beastly intoxication was staggering up the aisle to a seat, into which he tumbled in a drunken heap. The preacher's ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... of the Church were quite willing to admit that the roots of water lilies were in the mud, and there was no conspiracy to conceal the existence of the mud. Mark Twain's coarseness, however, is more than that of Cervantes or Shakespeare. Neither Cervantes nor Shakespeare is ever irreverent. ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... John went direct to Rouen. The barons of Normandy had decided to support him, and on April 25 he was invested with the insignia of the duchy by the archbishop, Walter of Coutances, taking the usual oath to respect the rights of Church and people. His careless and irreverent conduct during the ceremony displeased the clergy, as his refusal to receive the communion on Easter day, a week before, had offended Bishop Hugh of Lincoln, who came a part of the way with him from Chinon. As the lance, the special symbol ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... to follow the story. The orchestra, playing several queer looking fiddles, drums, clarinets and other instruments, is employed to assist in the interpretation, and produces the most dreary and monotonous sounds without the slightest trace of theme or melody or rhythm. While I don't want to be irreverent, they reminded me of a slang phrase you hear in the country about "the tune the old cow died of." Hindu music is worse than that you hear in China or Japan, because it is so awfully solemn and slow. The Chinese and Japanese give you a lot of noise if they ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... to say anything Irreverent? Should I ever dream of Irreverence? What can you mean? And never let me ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... dissenting clergy of England have nobly shown their good will and hearty sympathy with the Americans, and their sincere desire for the settlement of our difficulties. 'If praying would do you Americans any good,' said an irreverent acquaintance last Sunday, 'you will be gratified to learn that a force of a thousand-clergymen-power is constantly at ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... not given to flushing, had colored at Miss Gibbie's words. She pressed her lips firmly together and looked around the room as if asking for Christian forbearance for so irreverent a speech as had just been ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher

... not tell him that the madman, as men called him, lay wrestling in prayer with the Father of lights. The old highlander was not irreverent, but the thing would have been unintelligible to him. He could readily have believed that the supposed lunatic might be favoured beyond ordinary mortals; that at that very moment, lost in his fit, he might be rapt in ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... restore you to His Church,' responded she, out of the fulness of her heart. The next moment she feared lest this answer to his blessing might be irreverent, wrong—might hurt him as coming from his daughter, and she threw her arms round his neck. He held her to him for a minute or two. She heard him murmur to himself, 'The martyrs and confessors had even more pain to ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell



Words linked to "Irreverent" :   disrespectful, impious, irreverence, reverent, sacrilegious, pert, blasphemous, awless, spirited, impertinent, godless, saucy



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