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Idolatrous   /aɪdˈɑlətrəs/   Listen
Idolatrous

adjective
1.
Relating to or practicing idolatry.
2.
Blindly or excessively devoted or adoring.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Idolatrous" Quotes from Famous Books



... statesmen like Buys and Barneveld had learned in the school of William the Silent—the opposition-party were denounced as bolsterers of Papists, and Papists themselves at heart, and "worshippers of idolatrous idols." ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... wrinkled line of whose visage we can read the stormy passions that have chosen religion for their outlet. Woe to the wretch that shall seek mercy there! At his back is slung an axe, wherewith he goes to hew down the carved altars and idolatrous images in the Popish churches; and over his head he rears a banner, which, as the wind unfolds it, displays the motto given by Whitefield,—Christo Duce,—in letters red as blood. But the tide is now ebbing; ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... showing a good example to the natives. I did so, on my part, very regularly until Christmas Eve, when having witnessed the ceremonies of the midnight mass, I determined on remaining at home in future. I shuddered with horror at the idolatrous rites, as they appeared to me, which were enacted on that occasion. The ceremonies commenced with the celebration of mass; then followed the introduction of the "Infant Jesus," borne by four of the choristers, ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean

... line and plummet will never sound his depth. You often speak of his strength; but, Leo, hardness is not always strength; and he is hard, hard. I never saw a man with a chin like his, who was not tyrannical, and idolatrous of his own will. My dear, such men are as uncomfortable to live in the same house with, as a smoky chimney, or a woman with shattered nerves, or creaking doors, or draughty windows. They are a sort of everlasting east wind that never veers, blowing always to the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... frequently to Treherne, but he was a quick observer, and he saw we had set up an idol for ourselves in this child, he cautioned us, but Gabrielle shivered—yes, shivered with dismay, at the bare suggestion he hinted at—that God was a "jealous God," and permitted no idolatrous worship to pass unreproved. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... began to leave Luther's own monastery, and the students and citizens to tear down the images of the saints in the churches. The Lord's Supper was no longer celebrated in the form of the Mass, since that was declared to be an idolatrous worshiping of the bread and wine. Then Carlstadt reached the conclusion that all learning was superfluous, for the Scriptures said plainly that God had concealed himself from the wise and revealed the truth unto babes. He astonished the tradespeople by consulting them in regard ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... as jests among civilized men." Possibly these giants, trolls, rakshases, demons, once belonged to that class of spirits who could, in popular belief, enter at pleasure into stocks and stones and other objects of idolatrous veneration. ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous

... they acknowledged indeed an obligation on the conscience which required obedience to the sovereign, but at the same time they held that the obligation came to an end as soon as the sovereign contravened the known will of God: an idolatrous sovereign, so said the preachers, could be deposed and punished:—should the supreme Head put off the reform which was required by God's law, the right and the duty of executing it ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... essence; so that a man may be denied the privilege of reading the Bible, or of propagating or entertaining any opinions contrary to the Church of Rome—he may be thrown into prison, and put to torture, for refusing to subscribe to its dogmas, or to worship according to forms which he holds to be idolatrous—and yet he enjoys freedom of conscience. So, according to the teachings of modern Calvinism, man is a free agent, notwithstanding all the circumstances which surround him, with all his sensations, emotions, desires, purposes, volitions and ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson

... whom death no terror brings; If these, with new devotedness, we see In Gothic fury baring the keen glaive, Turk, Arab, and Chaldee! All, who, between us and the Red Sea wave, To heathen gods bow the idolatrous knee, Arm and advance! we heed not your blind rage; A naked race, timid in act, and slow, Unskill'd the war to wage, Whose far aim on the ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... The betrayal of India is much worse than the injustice done to the Boers. The Boers fought and bled for their rights. When therefore, we are prepared to bleed, the right will have become embodied, and idolatrous world will perceive it and ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... all to the winds for him, burns the world; if, for solely the desperate rapture of belonging to him, she consents of her free will to be one of the nameless and discoloured, he shines in a way to make the marrow of men thrill with a burning envy. For that must be the idolatrous devotion ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... feature of the Erewhonian Musical Bank system (as distinct from the quasi-idolatrous views which coexist with it, and on which I will touch later) was that while it bore witness to the existence of a kingdom that is not of this world, it made no attempt to pierce the veil that hides it from human eyes. It is here that almost all religions ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... been suggested by Bryant, though, I believe, not noticed by any writer on popular customs, that the Good Friday cakes, called Buns, may have originated in the cakes used in idolatrous worship, and impressed with the figure of an ox, whence they were called [Greek: boun]. The cow or bull was likewise, as Coleridge (Lit. Rem. vol. ii. p. 252.) has justly remarked, the {245} symbol of the Cosmos, the prolific ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various

... their gold; a free license given to all acts of inhumanity and lust, the earth reeking with the blood of its inhabitants: and this execrable crew of butchers, employed in so pious an expedition, is a modern colony, sent to convert and civilize an idolatrous ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... life has been exalted above its just and proper level, and depressed below it, by the slaverers and the vituperaters, solely because they cannot get at it; the former are idolatrous from hope, the latter devilish in despair; and the result we are familiar with, in caricatures portraying this sort of life alternately as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... your kind, notwithstanding all you have said concerning the nature and powers of man. How is it that you can desire that mankind should remain any longer under the dominion of the same gross and pernicious errors that have for so many ages oppressed them! Only consider the horrors of an idolatrous religion in Egypt and Assyria, in Greece and in Rome—and do you not desire their extermination?—and what prospect of this can there be, but through the plain authoritative ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... occurred since the first commencement of Christianity.' He explained that 'there were nations still existing in a distant portion of the globe in a state of the wildest barbarism. Ignorant savages were they, with many cruel and idolatrous customs, who were cannibals and murderers, and given up to the worst vices of the heathen. Their abject and pitiable state, he told us, the Lord God had witnessed with Divine commiseration, and had determined that the light of Christian love should shine upon their darkness, and that Almighty wisdom ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat

... fowls;—though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... the devil was making havoc among our possessions, the most illustrious abbey of Turpenay, of which I am at present the unworthy ruler, had a heavy trial on concerning the settlements of certain rights with the redoubtable Sire de Cande, an idolatrous infidel, a relapsed heretic, and most wicked lord. This devil, sent upon earth in the shape of a nobleman, was, to tell the truth, a good soldier, well received at court, and a friend of the Sieur Bureau de la Riviere; ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... But it does puzzle me why you, who are a Christian, should talk one half-hour as you have been talking to that poor girl, and the next go for information about the next life to poor old disappointed, broken-hearted Solomon, with his three hundred and odd idolatrous wives, who confesses fairly that this life is a failure, and that he does not know whether there is any next life ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... could lift up your hand, even with the sign which my house holds idolatrous, and say a few words of prayer, I should then feel consecrated to whatever ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... shrine, to find to their dismay that they had omitted to bring either chalice or wine for the Eucharist. Several of the monks were sent into the town to buy these, but in all Corseul they could find no one willing to sell either cup or wine, because of the hostility of the idolatrous folk of the place. At last the Saint performed a miracle to provide these necessaries, but he never forgave the insult to his religion, and while he founded monasteries broadcast over his diocese he avoided Corseul, and as Christianity ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... superstition; they had to promote the propagation of the notions of monotheism; of the divine origin of man, and of the duties incumbent upon him to practice justice, charity, rectitude, and piety; they had to protest incessantly against polytheism, and against all and every idolatrous and superstitious creed, as adverse and injurious to the development of the principles of revealed religion; they had to confirm these theories by making themselves the exemplars of a religious life, and by bearing witness to them, when necessary, by their ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio

... reflected upon the waters. All these different Buddhas, be they gods or men, beasts, birds or snakes, are to be honored. Indeed, they are both honored and worshipped in the Nichiren pantheon. Besides the historic Buddha, this sect, which is the most idolatrous of all, admits as objects of its reverence such personages as Nichiren, the founder; Kato Kiyomasa, the general who led the army of invasion in Korea and was the persecutor of the Christians; and Shichimen—a word which means seven points of the compass or seven ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... young man in London had the right to be bumptious and didactic, Henry had. And yet he remained simple, unaffected, and fundamentally kind. But he was very serious. His mother and aunt strained every nerve, in their idolatrous treatment of him, to turn him into a conceited and unbearable jackanapes—and their failure to do so was complete. They only made him more serious. His temper was, and always had been, ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... dark burnt colour. And though he does indeed speak of it as being of an extravagant weight and size, in which circumstance perhaps he was misled: yet he mentions another of a moderate size, which fell in Abydos, and was become an object of idolatrous worship in that place; as was still another, of ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King

... marvel of insight and acute analysis; for it will fit in with, and explain his outside observation of those Catholics with whom he has actually come in contact, far better than the preposterous notions that were in vogue fifty years ago. It represents them not as monstrously wicked and childishly idolatrous; but as narrow, extravagant, out-of-date, albeit, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... maintained an existence for about two hundred and fifty years. Its story is instructive and sad. Many passages of its history are recitals of the struggles between the pure worship of Jehovah and the idolatrous service of the deities introduced from the surrounding nations. The cause of the religion of Jehovah, as the tribes of Israel had received it from the patriarch Abraham and the lawgiver Moses, was boldly espoused and upheld ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... Representations of them. Ormazd the special Guardian of the Kings. Lesser Deities subject to Ormazd: Mithra, Serosh, Vayu, Airyanam, Vitraha, etc. The six Amshash-pands: Bahman, Ardibehesht, Shahravar, Isfand-armat, Khordad, and Amerdat. Religion, how far idolatrous. Worship of Anaitis. Chief Evil Spirits subject to Ahriman: Alcomano, Indra, Caurva, Naonhaitya, Taric, and Zaric. Position of Man between the two Worlds of Good and Evil. His Duties: Worship, Agriculture, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... this earthly sphere. But even the "plait-cutter," so well known to the reader of newspapers, the collector of garters, and similar desperadoes, require a relic, a fetich which they apparently worship. To the same category belongs the idolatrous cult which some men, especially artists—but also madmen—practise with female pictures and statues (more especially with heads). In this case the fundamental feeling of the love of beauty, which we know as an essential factor of purely spiritual eroticism, ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... the same observances, as of old—for the change was in nothing save the name only—they became Christians by handfuls;—yea, by cityfuls. What marvel, I pray you? But how shall we call this Church of Rome, that thus bewrayed her trust, and sold her Lord again like Judas? An idolatrous Christianity—nay, rather a baptised idolatry! God hath writ her name, Mistress Blanche, on the last page of His Word; and it is, Babylon, Mother ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt

... we have frequent notices in the Old Testament, as of that raised by Jacob at Lug, afterwards named Bethel; a pillar was also raised by him at the grave of Rachel. The Gentiles set up pillars for idolatrous purposes. The Paphians worshipped their Venus under the form of a white pyramid, and the Brachmans the great God under the figure of a little column of stone. Many large stones are found at this day in Wales and Cornwall, which are supposed to have been raised by the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various

... The hind that would be mated by the Lion Must die for loue. 'Twas prettie, though a plague To see him euerie houre to sit and draw His arched browes, his hawking eie, his curles In our hearts table: heart too capeable Of euerie line and tricke of his sweet fauour. But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancie Must sanctifie his Reliques. Who comes ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... It is put into the gravest language. "Thou sufferest the woman Jezebel." This is most significant. There is no worse character named in the whole Old Testament. She not only represented the worst adulterous uncleanness in herself, but she was the national leader energetically fostering unclean idolatrous practices among the people. Jezebel pulled God's light-holder nation down to the lowest moral level it ever reached. She brazenly dominated king and people, and remained stubbornly ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon

... Judah remained in peaceful possession of their land, the reformation of Josiah would hardly have penetrated to the masses; the threads uniting the present with the past were too strong. To induce the people to regard as idolatrous and heretical centres of iniquity the Bamoth, with which from ancestral times the holiest memories were associated, and some of which, like Hebron and Beersheba, had been set up by Abraham and Isaac in person, required a complete ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... speak a word, owing to the awful dread with which I trembled whenever near the villain, who fulfilled all the duties of a faithful and tender father, and of a good citizen, whilst the night veiled his monstrous iniquity. Madelon, dutiful, pure, confiding as an angel, clung to him with idolatrous affection. The thought often struck like a dagger to my heart that, if justice should one day overtake the reprobate and unmask him, she, deceived by the diabolical arts of the foul Fiend, would assuredly die in the wildest agonies of despair. This ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... scrambled, but Hamilton had not been met abroad for weeks, and from him there was always something to learn; whereas from even the most brilliant of women—she shrugged her shoulders; and her eyes, as they dwelt on Hamilton, gradually filled with an expression of idolatrous pride. The new delight of self-effacement was one of the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... all these plans were made were in the mean time discouraged by the long absence of their leader. They had no idea how much he was doing for them, and in their folly they forgot his teachings, and began to practise the idolatrous customs they had seen in Egypt. On descending the mountain, Moses found them worshipping the golden image of a calf. It is not to be wondered at that, as the historian says,[11] "Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... Sheridan, when he attended her as a clergyman to prepare her for death; and Delany mentions it not with doubt, but only with regret. Swift never mentioned her without a sigh. The rest of his life was spent in Ireland, in a country to which not even power almost despotic, nor flattery almost idolatrous, could reconcile him. He sometimes wished to visit England, but always found some reason of delay. He tells Pope, in the decline of life, that he hopes once more to see him; "but if not," says he, "we must part as all human ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... whom in childhood I dedicated to my altars. This is he that once I made my darling. Him I led astray, him I beguiled, and from heaven I stole away his young heart to mine. Through me did he become idolatrous; and through me it was, by languishing desires, that he worshiped the worm, and prayed to the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to him; lovely was its darkness; saintly its corruption. Him, this young idolator, I have seasoned for thee, dear gentle Sister of Sighs! ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... worship saints; they invoke them; they only ask their prayers[308]. I am talking all this time of the doctrines of the Church of Rome. I grant you that in practice, Purgatory is made a lucrative imposition, and that the people do become idolatrous as they recommend themselves to the tutelary protection of particular saints. I think their giving the sacrament only in one kind is criminal, because it is contrary to the express institution of CHRIST, and I wonder how the Council ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... children, does not give them the sacred writings in their own tongue; it would surely be better to see them good Protestants, if these would lead them to be so, than entirely ignorant of God's message to man. For my part, I would much prefer to see the Africans good Roman Catholics than idolatrous heathen. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... indispensable; viz. for the sanction of oaths, and as a channel for gratitude not pointing to a human object. If so, the answer is easy: religion was degrading: but heavier degradations would have arisen from irreligion. The noblest of all idolatrous peoples, viz. the Romans, have left deeply scored in their very use of their word religlo, their testimony to the degradation wrought by any religion that Paganism could yield. Rarely indeed is this word employed, by a Latin author, in speaking of an individual, without more or less ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... laugh at the pains of death. Great fear will fall upon them who saw the dead so raised. This time the telegraphs will be muffled, and the news is kept back from the nations as much as possible; but astonishment ends not here, for over the destroying and now idolatrous city of Jerusalem hangs a peculiar cloud, and voices peal as thunder through the air, to call the attention of the multitudes. And when every eye is skyward, the cloud moves and opens, as a chariot of fire and glory, and rising in majesty and composure up above roofs, ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... of it the more strange it becomes. They branded Charles the First a Papist because he permitted his queen, who was born and bred a Catholic, to attend Holy Mass. Now we have our newly-formed government not alone countenancing Popery, but actually participating in a supposedly pagan and idolatrous form of worship." ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... at Eton together. Geoffrey, four years the senior, a member of "Pop," and an athlete of many colours, found himself one day the object of an almost idolatrous worship on the part of a skinny little being, discreditably clever at Latin verses, and given over to the degrading habit of solitary piano practicing on half-holidays. He was embarrassed but touched by a devotion which was quite incomprehensible ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... was considered by the Puritans to be idolatrous, has for many centuries been so universal that it may prove of interest to contrast the rites, ceremonies and quaint beliefs of foreign lands with those ...
— Myths and Legends of Christmastide • Bertha F. Herrick

... a boy I came here for the first time, brought by my father on account of the religious character of the place, if I may call anything idolatrous by such a name. But the city, when you get into it, will disappoint you. It is like Constantinople, very beautiful to look at from the Bosporus, or the Golden Horn; but its dirty, narrow streets disgust you. I am afraid ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... ancient ceremonial, as like as we can make it, to that of the earlier and purer ages of the Church, when Christianity was still, as it were, fresh from the hand of its Creator, ere yet it had been debased and defiled by the idolatrous innovations of the Church of Rome. For so we confess ourselves bound by links of gratitude to the Apostles, and the successors of the Apostles, and to all which has been best, purest, and truest in the ages since. So we confess that we worship the same God-man of whom Apostles preached, ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... followers: "When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains."(32) When the idolatrous standards of the Romans should be set up in the holy ground, which extended some furlongs outside the city walls, then the followers of Christ were to find safety in flight. When the warning sign should be seen, those who would escape must make no delay. Throughout the land of Judea, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... up on a little bronze pedestal. The fat man's eyes, or so much of them as one might see, were fixed upon this thing with a kind of stupid intensity; one could have fancied him paying tribute to some idolatrous shrine. The captain watched him with an equal earnestness; so might the Roman mob have hung upon the reading of the sacred entrails; and there was about it the air of a well-practised, familiar rite. At last my ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... with the principles upon which the Christian conversion was established by the early missionaries. Thus, Gregory, in a letter from Rome, in 601, directed that the idolatrous temples in England should not be destroyed, but turned into Christian churches, in order that the people might be induced to resort to their customary places of worship; and they were even allowed to kill cattle as sacrifices to God, as had been their ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent

... flat-lands of Asia Minor, a perfect infatuation, on the subject, appears to have possessed the early oriental nations, and they carried the idea into the valley of the Nile, and, indeed, wherever they went. It appeared to be the substitute of idolatrous nations, on alluvial lands, for an isolated hill, or promontory. It was at such points that Baal and Bel were worshipped, and hence the severe injunctions of the sacred volume, on the worship established in the oriental world "on high places." ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... and his adherents to think that the pope is the Church. He suffers him to feel secure and to enjoy his dignity and title. But in fact God has excommunicated the pontiff, because he rejects the Word and establishes idolatrous worship. ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... took it for granted, for example, that in the large cities most of the poverty and all the drunkenness, crime, and political corruption were due to the perverse qualities of this foreign people—qualities accentuated and emphasized in every evil direction by the baleful influence of a false and idolatrous religion. It is hardly too much to say that he had never encountered a dissenting opinion on this point. His boyhood had been spent in those bitter days when social, political, and blood prejudices were fused at white heat in the public ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... uplifted Cross of unsullied light that it shall be as the sun rising out of darkness! Oh, I would have churches built gloriously, with every possible line of beauty and curve of perfect architecture in their fabrication;—but I would have no idolatrous emblems,—no superstitious ceremonies within them,—no tawdry reliquaries of gems—no boast of the world's wealth at all; but great Art,—the result of man's great Thought rendered and given with pure simplicity! I would have great music,—and more than all I would have thanksgiving always! ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... pursuit on this occasion; but Mrs. Woodford soon after was told that the Major had caught Peregrine listening at the little south door of the choir, had collared him, and flogged him worse than ever, for being seduced by the sounds of the popish and idolatrous worship, and had told all his sons that the like chastisement awaited them if they presumed to cross the threshold of ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of the emigration two-fold—religious and commercial; chiefly religious, for "converting and civilizing the idolatrous ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... mention made of St. Vitus, or any of the other mediatory saints, which is accounted for by the circumstance, that, at this time, an open rebellion against the Romish Church had begun, and the worship of saints was by many rejected as idolatrous. For the second kind of St. Vitus' dance, Paracelsus recommended harsh treatment and strict fasting. He directed that the patients should be deprived of their liberty, placed in solitary confinement, and made to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... idolater out of his difficulties! The old man is of my colour and nation and I wish to sarve him, but as one who denied all his gifts, in the way of religion, it would have come hard to do so. That animal seems to give you great satisfaction, Sarpent, though it's an idolatrous beast at the best." ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... my onslaught destroyed by a simple policy of non-resistance. In vain do I redouble the violence of the language in which I proclaim my heterodoxies. I rail at the theistic credulity of Voltaire, the amoristic superstition of Shelley, the revival of tribal soothsaying and idolatrous rites which Huxley called Science and mistook for an advance on the Pentateuch, no less than at the welter of ecclesiastical and professional humbug which saves the face of the stupid system of violence and robbery which we call Law and Industry. Even atheists reproach me with infidelity ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... herself for Lucy Robarts? Could she give up her chair of state in order to place thereon the little girl from the parsonage? Could she take to her heart, and treat with absolute loving confidence, with the confidence of an almost idolatrous mother, that little chit who, a few months since, had sat awkwardly in one corner of her drawing-room, afraid to speak to any one? And yet it seemed that it must come to this—to this—or else those day-dreams of hers ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... persecution was nevertheless directed into other channels. Parliament passed an act that no person should sit in either House, unless he had previously taken the oath of allegiance and supremacy, and subscribed to the declaration that the worship of the Church of Rome was idolatrous. Catholics were disabled from prosecuting a suit in any court of law, from receiving any legacy, and from acting as executors or administrators of estates. This horrid bill, which outlawed the whole Catholic population, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... month of her childhood in Wiltshire, and had made of Elinor an exacting friend, always ready to take offence, and to remain jealous and sulky for days if one of her sisters, or any other little girl, engaged her cousin's attention long. On the other hand, Elinor's attachment was idolatrous in its intensity; and as Marian was sweet-tempered, and more apt to fear that she had disregarded Elinor's feelings than to take offence at her waywardness, their friendship endured after they were parted. ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... of the city, no trace of the idolatrous shrine, on the huge mound which rises thirty or forty feet above the plain. But it is thickly covered with trees: poplars and oaks and wild figs and acacias and wild olives. A pair of enormous veterans, a valonia oak and a terebinth, make a ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... been thwarted. In every direction he was driven to yield. And yet now he had to undergo rebuke from his own son, because one of those inward plaints would force itself from his lips! Of course this girl was to be taken in among the Pallisers and treated with an idolatrous love,—as perfect as though "all the blood of all the Howards" were running in her veins. What further inch of ground was there for a fight? And if the fight were over, why should he rob his boy of one sparkle ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... the deprivation, not merely of the good name, but of the skin of the offender. The adherents of modern theological systems dismiss these objects of the love and fear of a hundred generations of their equals, offhand, as "gods of the heathen," mere creations of a wicked and idolatrous imagination; and, along with them, they disown, as senseless, the crude theology, with its gross anthropomorphism and its low ethical conception of the divinity, which satisfied ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... Austrians have taken a great deal of ruining, first and last! Their relation to the then Sea-Powers, especially to England embarked on the Cause of Liberty, fills one with amazement, by no means of an idolatrous nature; and is difficult to understand at all, or to be patient ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... not interject here in full testimony the nevertheless fact that such a pagan city as Rome, or licentious Corinth or idolatrous Ephesus were lifted into cleanness and moral decency, not by legislative action, by reorganization of local conditions, but by the regeneration of one individual at a time until the divine sanity and personal spirituality enthroned in them built up societies, ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman

... was sent out to the land of the Indians, preaching the Gospel of Salvation. "The Lord working with him and confirming the word with signs following," the darkness of superstition was banished; and men were delivered from idolatrous sacrifices and abominations, and added to the true Faith, and being thus transformed by the hands of the Apostle, were made members of Christ's household by Baptism, and, waxing ever with fresh increase, made advancement in the blameless ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... throw up some earthwork round the camp. It seems to have been the resting-place of the ark and probably of the non-combatants, during the conquest, and to have derived thence a sacredness which long clung to it, and finally led, singularly enough, to its becoming a centre of idolatrous worship. The rude circle of unhewn stones without inscription was, no doubt, exactly like the many prehistoric monuments found all over the world, which forgotten races have raised to keep in everlasting remembrance forgotten fights and heroes. It ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... several of the clergy and gentry in his cell; among others, by the Popish priest whom he had robbed, Father O'Flaherty, before mentioned, who attended him likewise in his last moments (if that idolatrous worship may be called attention), and likewise by the Father's patron, the Bavarian Ambassador, his ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Osi'ris scrupled not to offer sacrifices to Jupiter; the Persian, the Indian, and the German, bowed before the Roman altars; but the sons of Abraham refused to give the glory of their God to graven images, and were regarded by their idolatrous neighbours at first with surprise, and afterwards with contempt. 3. The appearance of the Messiah in Palestine, and the miraculous circumstances of his life, death, and resurrection, did not fill the world with their fame, because his preaching was principally addressed to his countrymen, the ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... the vigour of Lord Mansfield, the authority which he had, during many years, enjoyed, passed to a third judge, Lord Thurlow. Everybody knows what a dominion that eminent judge, Lord Eldon, exercised over the peers, what a share he took in making and unmaking ministries, with what idolatrous veneration he was regarded by one great party in the State, with what dread and aversion he was regarded by the other. When the long reign of Lord Eldon had terminated, other judges, Whig and Tory, appeared at the head of contending factions. Some of us can well remember the first ten days of October, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... responding to the appeal "call me pet names, dearest." The unrelenting gun was the stern cannoneer's lady love. He kissed it with unwashed, mustached lip. In rude and rough devotion he was ready to die rather than abandon the only object of his idolatrous homage. Consistently he baptized the life-devouring monster with blood. Affectionately he named it Mary, Emma, Lizzie. In crossing he Alps, dark night came on as some cannoneers were floundering through drifts of snow, toiling at their gun. They would not ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott

... nourished on the Thirty-Nine Articles, but they know their business as well as if they had been trained in heathen lands,—which is saying a good deal, for everybody knows that heathen servants wait upon one with idolatrous solicitude. However, from the quality of the cheering beverage itself down to the thickness of the cream, the thinness of the china, the crispness of the toast, and the plummyness of the cake, tea at Rowardennan Castle ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... people who were even then carrying the remains of their great ancestor, Joseph, to rest with his fathers, he yet conquered the last natural yearning and withdrew from the sight and sympathy of men to die alone and unattended, lest the idolatrous feeling, always ready to break forth, should in death accord him the superstitious reverence ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... of the East by the West. In the New World it was found existent by the early discoverers, and then held a high place in the regards of the native race which had reached the furthest towards civilization; but Spanish bigotry looked with horror on everything that stood connected with an idolatrous religion, and the pyramids of Mexico were first wantonly injured, and then allowed to fall into such a state of decay, that their original form is by some questioned. A visit to the plains of Teotihuacan ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... purpose for which we are commanded to cherish it, is that thereby we may become like Him in whom we trust. 'They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.' That is the key to the degradations that inhere in idolatrous worship, and that principle is true about all worship—as the god so is every one that trusteth in it. 'As the mountains are round about Mount Zion,' God is round about the people that are ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Abjuration the priest was ordered to swear that the sacrifice of the mass and the invocation of the Blessed Virgin and the saints were damnable and idolatrous. In other words, the priest was ordered to apostatize, or fly ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... nations, when they made an attack in battle: at such time they used to cry out, El-El, and Al-Al. This Mahomet could not well bring his proselytes to leave off: and therefore changed it to Allah; which the Turks at this day make use of, when they shout in joining battle. It was, however, an idolatrous invocation, originally made to the God of war; and not unknown to the Greeks. Plutarch speaks of it as no uncommon exclamation; but ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... nations, to be hated, pillaged, and exterminated; at other times he permits these same nations to exercise over his favorite people the greatest of cruelties. He delivers them into the hands of their enemies, who are likewise the enemies of God himself. Idolatrous nations become masters of the Jews, who are left to feel the insults, the contempt, and the most unheard-of severities, and are sometimes compelled to sacrifice to idols, and to violate the law of their God. The race of Abraham ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... for the Prince of Orange and a free Parliament, raised a large body of horse, took possession of Worcester, and evinced their zeal against Popery by publicly breaking to pieces, in the High Street of that city, a piece of sculpture which to rigid precisians seemed idolatrous. Soon after the Convention became a Parliament, Robert Harley was sent up to Westminster as member for a Cornish borough. His conduct was such as might have been expected from his birth and education. He was a Whig, and indeed an intolerant and vindictive Whig. Nothing would satisfy him but ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... spiritual conditions of the world around him to have full allowance made for it. No melodramatic display of warring elements, such as the white-robed Second Adventist imagines, can meet the need of the human heart. The thunders and lightnings of Sinai terrified and impressed the more timid souls of the idolatrous and rebellious caravan which the great leader was conducting, but a far nobler manifestation of divinity was that when "the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... with my father in early youth, no sooner had he taken over the Collection than he became like a pagan priest dedicated to a temple. He mixed up these Roman halfpence with the honour of the Carstairs family in the same stiff, idolatrous way as his father before him. He acted as if Roman money must be guarded by all the Roman virtues. He took no pleasures; he spent nothing on himself; he lived for the Collection. Often he would not trouble ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... carpeted with scarlet, and supported on columns covered with gold. On St. Bartholomew's day a large concourse of people assembled, each one fell on his knees as he arrived, and remained praying towards the sun; but Carpini and his companion refused to join in this idolatrous worship of the sun. Then Cunius was placed on the imperial throne, and the dukes and all the assembled multitudes having done homage ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... book, the clergyman's fee, the clerk, and the pew-woman, paid by the bridegroom. And thus we see how a pair of lovers, blind with the one object of lovers in view; and a miserly uncle, all on edge to save himself the expense of supporting his niece; and an idolatrous old admiral, on his back with gout; conduced in turn and together to the marriage gradually exciting the world's wonder, till it eclipsed the story of the Old Buccaneer and Countess Fanny, which it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... people who worshipped it. His own ancestors had been pagans, but never heathen. They had worshipped a living God, not a wooden one, and the boy turned in sadness, and some horror, from the spectacle of these idolatrous Delawares. Then his eyes lighted with pleasure, for there, near the door, stood Fire-Flower and Fish-Carrier. True, they were not now telling their boastful but harmless tales of mighty hunting and prowess, but their friendly faces still looked ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson

... becoming Sabbath-day pace, two by two, down the Chandni Chouk. They present an instructive comparison to the straggling groups of heathen damsels who watch them curiously as they walk past and then proceed to chant idolatrous songs, apparently in a spirit of wanton raillery at the Christian maidens and their simple, un-ornamented attire. The fair heathens of Delhi have a sort of naughty, Parisian reputation throughout the surrounding ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... have been, he relapsed into his former life when he was removed from his office by Solomon, who filled all position with new incumbents at his accession to the throne. Finally he abandoned his idolatrous ways wholly, and became so pure a man that the was favored by God with the gift of prophecy. This happened on the day on which the man of God out of Judah came to Jeroboam, for the grandson of Moses is none other than the old prophet at Beth-el who invited ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... is called among men," answered Leila, with firmness, "but it is the faith of the ONE GOD, who protects His chosen, and shall avenge their wrongs—the God who made earth and heaven; and who, in an idolatrous and benighted world, transmitted the knowledge of Himself and His holy laws, from age to age, through the channel of one solitary people, in the plains of Palestine, and by the ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... with me this evening. Antoinette, forgetful of idolatrous practices, devoted the concentration of her being to the mysteries of her true religion. The excellence of the result affected Pasquale so strongly that with his customary disregard of convention he insisted on Antoinette being ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... countenance, which beamed with such a divine beauty, all aglow with the happy consciousness of his ardent admiration, that it seemed the face of a seraph; and in his heart, if not on his knees, he bent in worship, almost idolatrous, at her feet. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... the way of the self-complacent—the way of those who, being comfortably situated and prosperous, are opposed to change; the past, they say, was wise for it produced the present and the present is good—let us alone. Fools of this type may be called idolatrous fools, worshiping the Past; or static fools, contented with the Present; or cowardly fools, opposed to change, fearful of the Future. A third way to be a fool—which is also alluring—is the opposite of the foregoing; it is the way of those who ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski

... one green place far down in the valley: it is called En Rogel. Adonijah feasted there, who was killed by his brother Solomon, for asking for Abishag for wife. The Valley of Hinnom skirts the hill: the dismal ravine was a fruitful garden once. Ahaz, and the idolatrous kings, sacrificed to idols under the green trees there, and "caused their children to pass through the fire." On the mountain opposite, Solomon, with the thousand women of his harem, worshipped the gods of all their nations, "Ashtoreth," and "Milcom, and Molech, the abomination ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... with hunger, dainty meats that had been offered to idols were set before him, which he would not touch. It was not in itself unlawful to eat of such meats, as St. Paul teaches, except where it would give scandal to the weak, or when it was exacted as an action of idolatrous superstition, as was the case here. Being brought a second time before the tribunal, he would give no other answer to all the questions put to him, but this: "I am a Christian." He repeated the same while on the rack, and ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... approved by the judgment of the spectator, appeals irresistibly to his sympathies, if he be not more than usually cold-hearted: and I remember well that, though myself a faithful son of the Scotish church, I was once seduced by such an occasion into an involuntary act of idolatrous compliance with popery. It was at Orleans: the day was splendid: the bells proclaimed a festival: a vast procession of a mixed composition, religious and military, was streaming towards the cathedral; and by ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... recognized for such, and an involuntary apprehension of spiritual existence, already insisted on at some length. And you will see more and more clearly as we proceed, that the deliberate and intellectually commanded conception is not idolatrous in any evil sense whatever, but is one of the grandest and wholesomest functions of the human soul; and that the essence of evil idolatry begins only in the idea or belief of a real presence of any kind, in a thing in which there ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... its own sake, and the only object of his study was to find a means of living longer than other men. All the aims and desires and complex reasonings of his being tended to this simple expression—the wish to live. To what idolatrous self-worship Keyork Arabian might be capable of descending, if he ever succeeded in eliminating death from the equation of his immediate future, it was impossible to say. The wisdom of ages bids us beware of the man of one ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... senor caballero of my soul. I engage the honour of a gentleman that she shall have every consideration at my hands which her virtues merit. No more"—he looked at the sullen beauty between him and the Englishman—"No more, for that would be idolatrous; and no less, for that would be injustice. Vaya, senor caballero, vaya V|d| con Dios." Manvers nodded ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett

... souls, with what vigor he crams Down Erin's idolatrous throats, till they crack again, Bolus on bolus, good man!—and then damns Both their stomachs and souls, if they dare cast ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... bestowed upon him. Thus we see that Roman Catholicism is more zealous, more enthusiastic, more turbulent, in Ireland, more artistic in Italy, more philosophic in Germany, more literary and discursive in France, more idolatrous in the States of South America, more reserved and modest, more decent and tolerant, less ambitious in its aspirations, and less audacious in its polemics, in England than in any other part ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... and a few huts scattered about, inhabited by natives. As far as we could judge, these so-called Christian natives were but little raised above their still heathen countrymen, while the effect of the religion they had assumed was to make them more idolatrous and superstitious than before. The priests, however, were very civil, but there was nothing to tempt us to remain at their stations; we therefore, after gaining the information we required, pushed on and camped in our usual way. We agreed that our father had probably acted ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... the Church of Rome in a way which did not promise much hope of reconciliation. He had grounded his attack upon the letters A.M.D.G., which he had seen outside a Roman Catholic chapel, and which of course stood for Ad Mariam Dei Genetricem. Could anything be more idolatrous? ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... overgrown with huge timber in the midst of a dense forest, far remote from any settlement, and near the crater of a long extinct volcano, on whose perpendicular walls, 300 or 400 feet high, were aboriginal paintings of warlike and idolatrous processions, dances, and other ceremonies, exhibiting like the architectural sculptures on the temples, a state of advancement in the arts incomparably superior to all previous examples. And as the good Padre had proved veracious and accurate on this matter, ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez

... "And the idolatrous chief priest of the heathen, standing on a lofty mound, strove like Balaam to curse the people of God, and to bind their ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... Herbert and his successors, in their devotional lyrics, gave a whole new province to English poetry, they left the idolatrous government of the older provinces undisturbed. Dramatic and narrative poetry went on in the old way, and drew their inspiration from the old founts. Year by year, as our native poetic wealth increased, ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... relentless in her hatred of the prophet. So furious was she when Ahab told her what had been done that day, that she sent a message to Elijah, telling him that before another day had passed she would have his life. Prophet though he was, Elijah quailed before the threat of the idolatrous queen, and fled for ...
— The Man Who Did Not Die - The Story of Elijah • J. H. Willard

... despatched detachments various ways to lay waste the country round. The Hindoos of Beejanuggur committed the most outrageous devastations, burning and razing the buildings, putting up their horses in the mosques, and performing their idolatrous worship in the holy places; but, notwithstanding, the siege was pushed with the greatest vigour, the garrison held out with resolution, hoping that at the approach of the rainy season, the enemy would be necessitated ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... many a believer, had taken up the distinctions of sect rather than of religion, and, zealous in the faith he knew, had thought it incumbent on him to insult the Catholics where they seemed to him idolatrous. ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge

... French Protestant minister of the 17th century, in his treatise entitled La Religion Catholique Romaine Institute par Nama Pompile, demonstrates that "the Papists took their idolatrous worship of images, as well as all their ceremonies, from the old heathen religion." Bishop Stillingfleet of the English church and a writer of considerable eminence in the 17th century, said, in reference to the complaisant spirit of the early church towards the Pagans, that ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill

... patiently borne, in ages of virtuous simplicity. A very numerous part of our countrymen spend their most susceptible age in those countries, where despotic manners remarkably prevail. They are themselves, when invested with office, treated by the natives with an idolatrous degree of reverence, which teaches them to expect a similar submission to their will, on their return to their own country. They have been accustomed to look up to personages greatly their superiors in rank and riches, with awe; and to look down on their inferiors in property with supreme contempt, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various

... horse and a Roundhead in buff, From roaring Jack Cavee, with money little enough, From beads and such idolatrous ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... Greeks. But these distant possessions added more to the reputation than to the power of the Latin emperor; nor did he risk any ecclesiastical foundations to reclaim the Barbarians from their vagrant life and idolatrous worship. Some canals of communication between the rivers, the Saone and the Meuse, the Rhine and the Danube, were faintly attempted. [112] Their execution would have vivified the empire; and more cost and labor were often wasted in the structure of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... the Giver, a mind entrusted with high powers, and uncontrolled affections, who, in the waywardness of youth, cast unreservedly at the shrine of idolatrous love, her all of earthly hopes, then wandered forth with naught but their ashes, in the treasured urn of past remembrance, seeking to cover that with the mantle of the world's ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... theatre. These were red-letter days in her life. Chinese plays are mostly very stupid. Often immoral, and almost invariably connected with idolatry, they are a snare to some of the people when they want to break with everything idolatrous. But to the little country girl the theatre was all that could be desired, and gave her much pleasure. She understood little of what she saw and heard there, but was carried away with ...
— Everlasting Pearl - One of China's Women • Anna Magdalena Johannsen

... your heart to tell you. You know what is the darling wish of my heart. But, Alice, if I thought that Mr Grey was to you Hyperion,—if I thought that you could marry him with that sort of worshipping, idolatrous love which makes a girl proud as well as happy in her marriage, I wouldn't raise a little finger ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... ingenious, learned, and satisfactory. The highest praise is given to the Statue, as a work of art of the second century.[177] Its identity seems to be yet a subject of disputation:—but M. Revet considers it as "the representation of some idolatrous divinity." The opinion of its being a representation of Bacchus, or of Apollo, or of a Constellation, he thinks might be regulated by a discovery of some emblem, or attribute, found in the vicinity of the Statue. Two other plates—lithographised—relating ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... therefore, a letter of introduction. Failing that, he should write a letter introducing himself—a fervid, an idolatrous letter, not without some excuse for the writing of it: the hero's seventieth birthday, for instance, or a desire for light on some obscure point in one of his earlier works. Heroes are very human, most of them; very easily touched by praise. Some of them, however, are bad at answering letters. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... Cypress being an accompaniment of Venus in the annual processions, in which she was supposed to lament over the funeral of Adonis; a ceremony which obtained over all the eastern world from great antiquity, and is supposed to be referred to by Ezekiel, who accuses the idolatrous woman ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... deride my belief, I shall guess you one of those who need a figure-head to remind them of a vessel's sex. There are minds which find a certain romance in figure-heads. To me they seem a frigid, unintelligent device, not to say idolatrous. I have known a crew to set so much store by one that they kept a tinsel locket and pair of ear-rings in the forecastle and duly adorned their darling when in port. But this is materialism. The true personality ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... place that greatest of miracles called conversion. Nevertheless, every missionary has ever to guard against a most subtle and deadening influence which may be likened to poisonous gas in the enemy's country, lulling him to a condition wherein the idolatrous practices of the people around, instead of stirring him to greater activity, come to be regarded as customs of the nations amongst whom he lives, ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... chivalry. There the stern Kempe-warriors of the North stand like stone images, and the gentle gleam and the more refined breath of Christianity have not as yet penetrated their iron armor. But little by little a light dawns in the old Teutonic forest; the ancient idolatrous oak-trees are felled, and we see a brighter field of battle where Christ wars with the heathen. This appears in the saga-cycle of Charlemagne, in which what we really see is the Crusades reflecting themselves with their religious influences. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... the Talmud exhibits a subtile mode of reasoning, which the Jews adopted when the learned of Rome sought to persuade them to conform to their idolatry. It forms an entire Mishna, entitled Sedir Nezikin, Avoda Zara, iv. 7. on idolatrous worship, translated ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... any sect or people which should separate itself from the communion of mankind, and claiming the exclusive possession of divine knowledge, should disdain every form of worship, except its own, as impious and idolatrous. The rights of toleration were held by mutual indulgence: they were justly forfeited by a refusal of the accustomed tribute. As the payment of this tribute was inflexibly refused by the Jews, and by them alone, the consideration of the treatment which they experienced from the Roman ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... that Bertram, arrogant, wayward, and heartless, does not justify this ardent and deep devotion. But Helena does not behold him with our eyes; but as he is "sanctified in her idolatrous fancy." Dr. Johnson says he cannot reconcile himself to a man who marries Helena like a coward, and leaves her like a profligate. This is much too severe; in the first place, there is no necessity that we should reconcile ourselves to him. In this consists a part of ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... Lord of hosts (xix. 18); and when Nebuchadnezzar led away the first captivity, many of the people had fled from Palestine to the old "cradle of the nation." Jeremiah (xliv) went down with them to prophesy against their idolatrous practices and their backslidings; and Jewish and Christian writers in later times, daring boldly against chronology, told how Plato, visiting Egypt, had heard Jeremiah and learnt from him his lofty monotheism. Doubt was thrown in the last century upon the continuance of the Diaspora in ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... the year 600, the countries bordering upon the native land of our Saviour, to the east and south, had not yet received his religion. Arabia was the seat of an idolatrous religion resembling that of the ancient Persians, who worshipped the sun, moon, and stars. In Mecca, in the year 571, Mahomet was born, and here, at the age of forty, he proclaimed himself the prophet of God, in dignity as superior to Christ as Christ had been to ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... thus acquired of his own worth made him credit the excessive and almost idolatrous adoration that was paid to his understanding; which but for this increased self-complacency, must have necessarily recalled him from his aberrations. For the present, however, this universal voice was ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... thwart the crown, and to compel the convocation of the States-General. In that way alone could the people hope to resist the encroachments of the crown, and to claim any recognition of popular rights. The people, accustomed to the almost idolatrous homage of rank and power, were overjoyed in having, as the leading advocate of their claims, a prince of the blood. The court was greatly exasperated. It was determined that the high-born leader of the revolutionary party should feel the heaviest weight ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... love Jehovah, serving Him with reverence, and keeping His claims steadily before the children (vi.). To do this effectively, Israel must uncompromisingly repudiate all social and religious intercourse with the idolatrous peoples of the land, and Jehovah their God will stand by them in the struggle (vii). In the past the discipline had often indeed been stern and sore, but it had come from the hand of a father, and had been intended ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... wish to keep these manners and graces to themselves, together with a superabundance, good for nobody, of all other advantages; and that thus, instead of being the preservers of a beautiful and genial flame, good for all, and in due season partakeable by all, they would hoard and make an idolatrous treasure of it, sacred to one class alone, and such as the diffusion of knowledge renders it alike useless and ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt

... famine, are all suppressed here, but painted with terrible vividness in the Book of Jeremiah. At last the fatal day came. On the north side a breach was made in the wall, and through it the fierce besiegers poured—the 'princes of the king of Babylon,' with their idolatrous and barbarous names, 'came in, and sat in the middle gate.' It was night. The sudden appearance of the conquerors in the heart of the city shot panic into the feeble king and his 'men of war' who had never ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... deflects our love as that either it does not pass, by means of the creature, into the presence of the Christ, or is turned away from the Christ by the creature, then we have fallen beneath the sweet level of our lofty privilege, and have won for ourselves the misery due to distracted and idolatrous hearts. Love to one who has done what He has done for us is in its very nature exclusive, and its exclusiveness is all-pervasive exclusiveness. The centre diamond makes the little stones set round it all the more lustrous. We must love Jesus Christ all in all or not at all. Divided love incurs ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... all shall esteem Zion's welfare as their own, then copious influences of the Spirit shall be shed upon the churches, which like a purifying fountain shall cleanse the servants of the Lord. Nor shall this cleansing influence stop here; all old idolatrous prejudices shall be rooted out, and truth prevail so gloriously that false teachers shall be so ashamed as rather to wish to be classed with obscure herdsmen, or the meanest peasants, than bear the ...
— An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens • William Carey

... with his head, so he said, politely, 'Will some of you immense, raw people pick up my jealous head for me, and kindly put it on?' Snub-nosed Hilda" ["Ah, you've caught it now, young lady," from Archie] "being nearest, handed him his head, which had rolled to her idolatrous feet. The hysterical gnome immediately clapped it on—wrong side before. 'Never mind,' he said. 'Now I can go to school, or from school, just as I like, and nobody will ever know what I'm doing.' The dumpy party then went ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow

... impossibility of escaping it) which is the foundation of the Protestant Reformation, and which was the doctrine accepted by the vast majority of the Anglicans of my youth, before that backsliding towards the "beggarly rudiments" of an effete and idolatrous sacerdotalism which has, even now, provided us with the saddest spectacle which has been offered to the eyes of Englishmen in this generation. A high court of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, with a host of great lawyers in battle array, is and, for Heaven knows how ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... of every Church, with its redemption and sacraments, excludes the teaching of Christ; most of all the teaching of the Orthodox Church with its idolatrous observances. ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... applies even to laws of a higher character, such, e. g. as a law proclaiming an unjust war; forbidding the introduction of the Bible into public schools; requiring homage or sanction to be given to idolatrous services by public officers, etc., etc. Such laws do not touch the mass of the people. They do not require them either to do or abstain from doing, any thing which conscience forbids or enjoins; and therefore their duty in the premises may be limited ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... the prevalence of an idolatrous spirit. In the churches and chapels, and even in private families, were innumerable images of saints, pictures of the Virgin, relics, crucifixes, &c., designed at first to kindle a spirit of devotion among the rude and uneducated, but gradually becoming objects of real adoration. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... Jacobite, and idolatrous gew-gaws. And I heartily wish a law were enacted, under severe penalties, against drinking any punch at all. For nothing is easier, than to prove it a disaffected liquor. The chief ingredients, which are brandy, oranges, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... with a lavish plenteousness, and no doubt the household enjoyed the fun and feasting all the more because of that dismal season of a few years back, when all Christmas ceremonies had been denounced as idolatrous, and when the members of the Anglican Church had assembled for their Christmas service secretly in private houses, and as much under the ban of the law as the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... aspect of nations. Idolatrous temples have crumbled at her touch, and guilt owned its deformity in her presence. The darkest habitations of earth have been irradiated with heavenly light, and the death shriek of immolated victims changed for ascriptions of praise to God and the Lamb. Envy and Malice have been rebuked by her ...
— The Story of Mattie J. Jackson • L. S. Thompson

... Germany, where a Jew, on a Rhine boat, inspired or increased his aversion to works of sacred art, as being "idolatrous." About 1542-43 he was reading with pupils at Cambridge, and was remarked for the severity of his ascetic virtue, and for his great charity. At some uncertain date he translated the Helvetic Confession of Faith, and he was more of a Calvinist than a Lutheran. In ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... is true that these inner feelings may be long hidden from outer vision, or there may be an endeavour to satisfy their cravings by the vigorous exercise of all the religious ceremonies that have been revealed to them in their idolatrous or pagan surroundings; but when they can be induced to speak out and unburden their very souls, their bitter wailing cry is one of dissatisfaction and unrest. Happy is the missionary who can so win the confidence of a people thus dissatisfied, that they will reveal to him their heart's ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... God, not according to his appointment, but their own inventions—the direction of their false prophets, or their idolatrous kings, or the usages of the nations round about them. The tradition of the elders was of more value and validity with them than God's laws by Moses. This our Saviour applies to the Jews in his time, who were formal in their devotions, and wedded to their own inventions; and pronounces ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... The idolatrous worship of her brother for the painter caused her to suffer still more as she comprehended, with the infallible perspicacity of antipathy, the immense dupery. She read the very depths of the souls of the two old comrades of Beaumont. She knew that in that friendship, ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... of Shagpat, lo! he had a vision of Shagpat, hairier than at their interview, arrogant in hairiness; his head remote in contemptuous waves and curls and frizzes, and bushy protuberances of hair, lost in it, like an idolatrous temple in impenetrable thickets. Then the yearning of the Barber seized Shibli Bagarag, and desire to shear Shagpat was as a mighty overwhelming wave in his bosom, and he shouted, 'The Sword of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... slave owner ever lived, and his servants regarded him with almost idolatrous affection, while his love of justice, his hospitality, his fairness to all and his winning personality disarmed enmity and gave him many of his truest and warmest friends from among his ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.

... of this great historic figure was a revelation. He seemed different from everybody else, almost a being from another world. I suppose that my admiration of Mr. Gladstone, which some have considered idolatrous, is to be dated from that hour. Thirty years afterwards I still regarded him as my political leader, and ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... a somewhat similar reason the veneration of relics is prevalent among Moslims. Islam indeed provides an object of worship but its ceremonies are so austere and monotonous that any devotional practices which are not forbidden as idolatrous are welcome to ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... from Paradise of Adam and Eve, Satan and his followers did not return to Hell, but remained on earth, the fallen angels becoming the evil gods of various idolatrous nations and Satan engaging in every kind of evildoing which he knew would vex the Powers of Heaven. All the time he was troubled by the thought of the heavenly foe who he had been told would one day appear on earth to crush ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... predicted system" [popery], says a pamphleteer, "is an idolatrous one, any treaty with it must be opposed to God's will, and call down his wrath upon those nations who have commerce with it: more particularly upon nations wherein its hideous deformities are most signally manifested. ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... sympathetic as I had expected. He was so much shocked about the crucifix and about Dennis praying for Barney's soul, that he could think of nothing else. He didn't seem to think that he would have fever, but he said he feared we had small reason to reckon on the prayers of the idolatrous ascending to the throne of grace. He told me a long story about the Protestant martyrs who were shut up in a dungeon under the sea, on the coast of Aberdeenshire, and it would have been very interesting if I hadn't been thinking ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... daughter, and this daughter had not died like her two sons. She lived, she throve in the freshness of childhood, and Elizabeth loved her with idolatrous tenderness! ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach



Words linked to "Idolatrous" :   loving, idolatry



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