"Worldly-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... however highly estimated by the naturalist and the antiquary, were held in derision by the worldly-minded Tim. Surety, who exclaimed against the folly of expending money in the purchase of articles of no intrinsic value, calculated only to gratify the curiosity of those inquisitive idlers who affect their admiration of every uninteresting ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... "do you go to vespers. I am so weary that I will remain here, yet not to rest but to speak to Sister Marie, of whom I have had a very bad report, for I am told that she prates like a worldly-minded woman." ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... chaste sobriety of her black gown; buttons were tolerated merely as buttons, without vain thought of ornament; and the strange little bonnet, which she perched above hair whose natural coquetry of curl was austerely sleeked away, was of a composition so harshly ugly that more worldly-minded women shuddered at the sight. The worldly-minded, indeed, were prone to the criticism that the material of Mrs. Weatherwax's garments was beyond cavil, but this surely was her own concern. It were sheer impertinence to finger the texture of ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... than that,' broke in Mrs. Carnaby, almost with cheerfulness, her countenance already throwing off the decorous shadow, like a cloak that had served its turn. 'I hope I am neither foolish nor worldly-minded.' ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... subjects to obedience, overawe refractory nobles, or check the tyranny of an irresponsible sovereign, could hardly fail to be productive of some good effects when wielded by disinterested men, and with singleness of purpose. [Sidenote: Its corruptions and dangers.] But in the hands of worldly-minded and ambitious prelates, such as too many of the Popes undoubtedly were, this usurped prerogative of interference in the affairs of foreign states became an engine of mighty evil, and in the course of time it was felt to be such an intolerable yoke ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... something discreditable but delightful. Certainly her customary clear expression of candor was not there, and its place was taken by a kind of suppressed and frightened pleasedness, which would have led a more worldly-minded audience to the instant conviction of ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... be compelled to draw upon you for five hundred dollars more." So! (Putting down letter.) If we were given to pride and vainglory, we might well be puffed up with the fame of our works and the contagion of our example: yet I fear that, with the worldly-minded, this praise of charity to others is only the prayerful expectation of some personal application to the praiser. ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... furnace below." And the greatest of American preachers, Henry Ward Beecher, in the same revival, gathered about him the hard-headed business men of New York City and together they prayed that wicked playwrights and worldly-minded theater-goers might be brought to a realizing sense of the shame of their conduct, and that the houses of their frivolous vice might be converted into temples of Christian worship. Again, those who would not heed the solemn warnings ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... one follows up dancing; if it is not the peculiar social tie that binds dancers together; if it is not the incentive to intellectual growth and equipment, what is it? A secret lies hid away somewhere in the institution of the modern dance, that makes it the chiefest attraction of worldly-minded and often of base-hearted people. What is that secret? Ah, my friend, it is the appeal to the most sacred instincts and passions of a man and of a woman! This appeal is peculiar to the modern dance by the accident of physical contact that men and women assume ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... that characterises him even when, as here, he shows himself most narrow), all are watchmen "whose eyes God doth open, and whose conscience he pricketh to admonish the ungodly." And with the full consciousness of this great duty before him, he sets himself to answer the scruples of timorous or worldly-minded people. How can a man repent, he asks, unless the nature of his transgression is made plain to him? "And therefore I say," he continues, "that of necessity it is that this monstriferous empire of women ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been rejected by the "star." I wiped the mourning dew from William's brow, laid my face against his and wept in silent sympathy. I saw something worse than disgrace staring us in the face—William deprived of his definition, William just a man like other men. I had come of a worldly-minded family who supported the church and sustained a polite it somewhat distant relation to Heaven. Religion was our relief like the Sabbath day, but it was never our state of being. And I was blandly ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... friend, and that he had not accepted him as one with whom he sympathized upon the deeper questions of feeling and conduct. Byron, for his part, recognized in Shelley the purest nature he had ever known. "He was the most gentle, the most amiable, and least worldly-minded person I ever met; full of delicacy, disinterested beyond all other men, and possessing a degree of genius joined to simplicity as rare as it is admirable. He had formed to himself a beau ideal of all that is fine, high-minded, and noble, and he acted up to this ideal ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... was left her. The physician said that her health was too slender to admit of the exhaustion attendant upon nursing her own babe. The husband would not hear of such a thing for a moment. And her husband's mother older-hearted and more worldly-minded than even he, openly sneered at the idea of one in her position degrading herself into ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... Sawley'," said I, "I may be blamed by worldly-minded persons for what I am going to do; but I am a man of principle, and feel deeply for the situation of your amiable wife and family. I bear no malice, though it is quite clear that you intended to make me the sufferer. Pay me fifteen ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... and ambitious girl, and with a mother's guiding hand removed she became impatient under the restraints which her stern old father, Don Alphonso, placed upon her. At sixteen she was an impetuous, worldly-minded, and very vain though very dignified young lady. Then her father, fearful as to her future, sent her to a convent, with orders that she should be kept ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... till I resembled the 'man of Diogenes,' I concluded that here, at least, my pockets might be tolerably safe from the diving of a friendly hand. Philosophers, I was told by my friend the introducer, had souls above money; their thoughts were too sublime and contemplative for such worldly-minded concerns. I should have a great deal of instruction for little or nothing; I had only to pay my two guineas per annum, and the business was done; the gate of science was open, and nothing farther ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... circumstances where they had every opportunity of intimate friendship, sympathy, whatever you like to call it: who could doubt what would happen? The more so, as there was no one to suggest that it might happen; no one to watch them or warn them, or waken them with worldly-minded hints; or else to rise up, after the fashion of so many wise parents and guardians and well-intentioned friends, and indignantly shut the stable door after ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik |
