"Impious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man bowed and left the room; but Melissa remained behind, feeling as if the floor had opened in front of her. He, whose ardent assurance she had just now believed, that he had been forced to shed the blood of an impious wretch, in obedience to an overpowering fate, was capable of allowing the noblest of men to be beheaded, unjudged, merely to please a mercenary favorite! His confession, then, had been nothing but a revolting piece of acting! He had endeavored to vanquish the disgust ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... had first to walk some little distance along it; and scarcely had he descended into it for that purpose, when he found himself in the front of a band of revellers, who were returning from some scene of impious festivity. They were arrayed in holiday guise, as far as they studied dress at all; the symbols of idolatry were on their foreheads and arms; some of them were intoxicated, and most of them ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... bless; No more would slav'ry bind a hopeless train, Of human victims, in her galling chain; Mercy the hard, the cruel heart would move To soften mis'ry by the deeds of Jove; And av'rice from his hoarded treasures give Unask'd, the liberal boon, that want might live! The impious tongue of falshood then would cease To blast, with dark suggestions, virtue's peace; No more would spleen, or passion banish rest And plant a pang in fond affection's breast; By one harsh word, one ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... dimly scan, Through the dark medium of life's feverish dream; Yet dare arraign the whole stupendous plan, If but that little part incongruous seem. Nor is that part, perhaps, what mortals deem; Oft from apparent ill our blessings rise. O then, renounce that impious self-esteem, That aims to trace the secrets of the skies: For thou art but of dust; be ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... because they do not make use of the light they have received, and do not reason deductively; they have only sought to gratify their curiosity, or to gain credit for their discoveries; and do not some of them lose themselves in their speculations, and become impious, even so as to recognize no other God than ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... whose person we have murdered, whose honor we have disparaged, whose purposes we have destroyed, whose joys we have lessened, whose passion we have made ineffectual, and whose love we have trampled under our profane and impious feet. ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... necessity of His nature as that by which He extirpates the sinners of His people. The "sinful kingdom" forms the contrast with the righteous kingdom; the article being here used in a generic sense. Similar are Is. x. 6: "I send him against impious people, and against the people of My wrath (wheresoever there are such) I give him command;" and Ps. xxxiii. 12: "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom He hath chosen for His inheritance;" on which latter passage Michaelis ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... or three, but mine is the oldest. A flood came—sent by the gods, for the woman was impious. The king must ride with her into the sea and leave her there, himself to come back, and so save ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... It is not her vain enmity I fear, Another foe alarms Hippolytus. I fly, it must be own'd, from young Aricia, The sole survivor of an impious race. ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... the Madeleine, at a funeral, when the door opens, and the corpse advances in a gap of daylight, all is changed. Like a superterrestrial antiseptic, an extrahuman disinfectant, the liturgy purifies and cleanses the impious ugliness ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... would not repel him. But soon the paintings of warlike action—of knights, and horses, and mighty deeds done with battle-axe, and broad-sword, which adorned the—panels all round, drove him forth even from this heaven of the damned; yet not before the impious thought had arisen in his heart, that the brilliantly painted and sculptural roof, with the gilded vine-leaves and bunches of grapes trained up the windows, all lighted with the great shining chandeliers, was only a microcosmic repetition of the bright heavens and the glowing earth, ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... we read a nobler passage than that in which this accomplished writer appeals to the French sentiment of national unity to justify our Northern people in their mighty struggle to subdue this 'impious revolt.' Americans themselves, though fully imbued with the instinctive feeling which it defends, could not more forcibly have presented the point. And, indeed, if we may believe the statements now prevalent, attributing to eminent ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... enjoy'd not long The triumph of his impious wrong: The vengeance of the god soon found him, And in a rocky dungeon bound him. There, sightless, chain'd, in woful tones He pour'd his unavailing groans, Mingled with all the blasts that shriek Round Athos' thunder-riven peak. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... magnanimity and illusions might have bound him to support James II., dethroned and fugitive; but no obligation of that sort existed in the case of a prince who had left England at his nurse's, breast, and who had grown up in exile. In the Athalie of Racine, Joad (Jehoiada) invokes upon the impious queen: ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... a city, a nation, an empire, but a religion; Rome, which replied to a suggestion that the people of Latium should be admitted to citizenship, "Thou hast heard, O Jupiter, the impious words that have come from this man's mouth. Canst thou tolerate, O Jupiter, that a foreigner should come to sit in the sacred temple as a senator, as a consul?" Rome welcomed later the barbarians from the woods of Germany not only as citizens and consuls, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... were willing to be a slave, his voluntariness, so far from lessening the guilt of the "owner," aggravates it. If slavery has so palsied his mind and he looks upon himself as a chattel, and consents to be one, actually to hold him as such, falls in with his delusion, and confirms the impious falsehood. These very feelings and convictions of the slave, (if such were possible) increase a hundred fold the guilt of the master in holding him as property, and call upon him in thunder, immediately to recognize him as a MAN, and thus break the sorcery ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... think," he said to him after a pause, "you scurvy clown, that you are to be always interfering with me, and that you are to be always offending and I always pardoning? Don't fancy it, impious scoundrel, for that beyond a doubt thou art, since thou hast set thy tongue going against the peerless Dulcinea. Know you not, lout, vagabond, beggar, that were it not for the might that she infuses into ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... from you without remorse, without the obloquy to which I am now exposed. Oh, my dearest L——! Mine, do I still dare to call you? Yes, mine for the last time, I must call you, mine I must fancy you, though for the impious thought the Furies themselves were to haunt me to madness. My dearest L——, never more must we meet in this world! Think not that my weak voice alone forbids it: no, a stronger voice than mine is heard—an injured wife reclaims you. What a letter have I just received...!—from.....Leonora! ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... and wished me good-bye, as though she had not heard a word of my impious hope; but, in the very doorway, where I attended her, she turned round for an instant, and declared in a ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... change and invention were frowned upon. New devices were regarded as impious. The typewriter was tolerated; the telephone was regarded with shame. The Ancestors had not made use of such things....Malcolm Lightener let no instrument for adding efficiency pass untried. It was the same in office and in shop. The plant was modern ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... failed to make all the noise she could to disturb my reading and conversation with Phoebe. She could not be persuaded that her daughter was really in any danger, until the doctor told her that her case was hopeless; then the grief of the mother burst forth, and she gave way to the most frantic and impious complainings. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... one of a race of men of whom we, happily for us, have seen very little, but whose influence has been the curse of Roman Catholic countries. He was, like Sixtus the Fourth and Alexander the Sixth, a politician made out of an impious priest. Such politicians are generally worse than the worst of the laity, more merciless than any ruffian that can be found in camps, more dishonest than any pettifogger who haunts the tribunals. The sanctity of their profession has an unsanctifying influence on them. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this page with even a description of the oaths and curses with which he mixed his language. Christy was disgusted with him; and while he still continued his impious ravings, he sent a midshipman with an order to Mr. Makepeace who was in charge of the hose pipe on board of the Raven. While Captain Bristler was pouring forth anathemas that made the blood of the loyal officers ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... is wise," he told himself. "God is merciful. He knows what is best for all of us. What are we poor impotent grasshoppers, that we dare pray to Him to change His great purposes? It is idle. It is impious.... While the child lives there will be security for no one. If it dies, there will be peace and rest and the beginning of content. The mother must be gone already, so the dark chapter of our lives will be closed at last God is all wise. God ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... rather unhappy substitute for Accidia ([Greek: akedeia]), the gloomy and impious despair and indifference to good living and even life, of which sloth itself is ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... pained, and he was almost out of patience with the apostle for writing things which came so handy to the lips of the unregenerate. He commenced an industrious search for a text which should completely annihilate the impious carpenter, when that individual ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... harangues on traditional subjects. Other youths had shown greater aptitude for this kind of eloquence; he did not often carry off a prize; but among his proud recollections was a success he had achieved in the form of a rebuke to an impious voluptuary who set up a statue of Diana in the room which beheld his debauches. Here was the nemesis of a system of education which had aimed solely at the practical, the useful; having always laboured to produce the man perfectly equipped ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... to "make it out." It's so very plain.' Then a little hastily, as if afraid of having said something that sounded like impious fault-finding, 'Anybody's alarming who is so—so much talked about, and so—well, ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... of all foes! O thou of the Vrishni race, at the beginning of the Yuga, there sprang from thy lotus-like navel, Brahma himself, and lord of all mobile and immobile things, and whose is this entire universe! When the dreadful Danavas Madhu and Kaitava were bent on slaying Brahma, beholding their impious endeavour thou wert angry, and from thy forehead, O Hari, sprang Sambhu, the holder of the trident. Thus these two foremost of the deities have sprung from thy body in order to do thy work! Even Narada it was who hath told me this! O Narayana, thou didst, in the forest of Chaitraratha, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... where night dims heaven, I, to the torrid zone where mid-day burns, And where stiff winter, whom no spring resolves, Fetters the Euxine Sea with chains of ice; Scythia and wild Armenia had been yok'd, And they of Nilus' mouth, if there live any. 20 Rome, if thou take delight in impious war, First conquer all the earth, then turn thy force Against thyself: as yet thou wants not foes. That now the walls of houses half-reared totter, That, rampires fallen down, huge heaps of stone Lie in our towns, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... impious and unjust; What vain designs they form! Their hopes are blown away like dust, Or ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... had seen there had utterly converted him to a belief in the fury of Lurgha and he had been frightened out of his simple wits, fleeing without making the search he had intended. But Lurgha had seen him there, had read his impious thoughts.... ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... stopped her ears. "Don't tell me that he has ordered this impious, cruel, cowardly act. He is a lion: and this comes from the heart of cowardly curs. What is to be done, woman? tell me; for you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... and Bonaparte must have agreed about some new measure to indirectly chastise impious writers, the Senators Garat, Jaucourt, Roederer, and Demeunier, four of the members of the senatorial commission of the liberty of the Press, were sent for, and remained closeted with Napoleon, his Minister Portalis, and Cardinal Caprara for two hours. What was determined ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... waxing hotter and hotter, "or a 'lady' such as his wife is, the Jezebel daughter of an Ahab father!—brought up in the impious atrocities of France, and the debaucheries of Naples, where, though she keeps it close here, she abode with that vile woman whom ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... me this as you would challenge my reply," said the monk, shaking his head. "It is as you say, but it is not within our office to bury the impious dead, nor those who in life were excommunicate and ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... understood thoroughly—probably because it was her own weak side—and out-Heroded Herod, or, rather, out-mysticised the mystic, finishing up with some spiritual marriage, which, if it is anything at all, is impious. What right have we to make bargains for the Beyond, about which ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... the "Clouds" of Aristophanes, with the personified "just" and "unjust" sayings in the latter part of the play, foreshadow, almost feature by feature, in all that they were written to mock and to chastise, the worst elements of the impious "'dinos'" and tumult in men's thoughts, which have followed on their avarice in the present day, making them alike forsake the laws of their ancient gods, and misapprehended or reject the true words of ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... Aryan race of India, death is Yama, the soul of the first man, departed to be the king of the subterranean realm of the subsequent dead, and returning to call after him each of his descendants in turn. To the good he is mild and lovely, but to the impious he is clad in terror and acts with severity. The purely fanciful character of this thought is obvious; for, according to it, death was before death, since Yama himself died. Yama does not really represent death, but its arbiter and messenger. He is the ruler over the dead, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... coffee-room had been of ghosts and apparitions, and nearly everybody present had contributed his mite to the stock of information upon a hazy and somewhat thread-bare subject. Opinions ranged from rank incredulity to childlike faith, one believer going so far as to denounce unbelief as impious, with a reference to the Witch of Endor, which was somewhat marred by being complicated in an inexplicable fashion with ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... at leisure for employments which deserve to be recorded with greater commendation. About this time, many socinian writers began to publish their notions with great boldness, which the presbyterians, considering as heretical and impious, thought it necessary to confute; and, therefore, Cheynel, who had now obtained his doctor's degree, was desired, in 1649, to write a vindication of the doctrine of the Trinity, which he performed, and published ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... never be trustworthy (for when a friendship has been dissolved, a second friendship formed with others becomes, owing to its character, a matter of reproach); but if we have been in name friends of the Romans, but in fact their loyal slaves, and have suffered impious treatment at the hands of those who have tyrannized over us, receive us, your former allies, and acquire as slaves those whom you used to treat as friends, and shew your hatred of a cruel tyranny ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... sculpture of affairs of exchange on the outside of buildings, but gave some strong evidence of his dislike of affairs of exchange within them. And yet there might surely be a heroism in such affairs; and all commerce become a kind of selling of doves, not impious. The wonder has always been great to me, that heroism has never been supposed to be in anywise consistent with the practice of supplying people with food, or clothes; but rather with that of quartering oneself upon them for food, and stripping them of their clothes. Spoiling ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Castlewood family and to its chief, and she worshipped and loved Esmond, if that could be, more than ever she had done. She doubted not for one moment of the success of his scheme, to mistrust which would have seemed impious in her eyes. And as for Beatrix, when she became acquainted with the plan, and joined it, as she did with all her heart, she gave Esmond one of her searching bright looks. "Ah, Harry," says she, "why were you not the head of our house? You are the only one fit to ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... and fire shall league together, angry heaven to earth respond, Strong Poseidon with his trident break thy impious-vaunted bond; Where thou passed, with mouths uncounted, eating up the famished land, With few men a boat shall ferry Xerxes to the Asian strand. Haste thee! haste thee! they are waiting by the palace gates for thee; ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... a mirror, catching and reflecting images all around it. Remember that an impious, profane or vulgar thought may operate upon the heart of a young child like a careless spray of water upon polished steel, staining it with rust that no efforts ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... party, would not have passed it over in silence. He was indeed sharp against us, but yet no cruel enemy; for our own people tell this story of him, that one day, walking about the city of Chalcedon, Maris, bishop of the place; was so bold as to tell him that he was impious, and an enemy to Christ, at which, they say, he was no further moved than to reply, "Go, poor wretch, and lament the loss of thy eyes," to which the bishop replied again, "I thank Jesus Christ for taking away my sight, that I may not see thy impudent visage," ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... fled from his protection—and you have dared—insidiously, and meanly have dared, to screen your disobedience beneath this sacred roof. You have prophaned our sanctuary with your crime. You have brought insult upon our sacred order, and have caused bold and impious defiance of our high prerogative. What punishment is adequate ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... "in his ideal Republic, denies toleration to the impious, i.e., to those who did not accept the State religion. Even if they remained quiet and peaceful, and carried on no propaganda, they seemed to him dangerous by the bad example they gave. He condemned them to be shut up in a house where they might learn wisdom (sophronisteria)—by ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... if this other thing that we ask for ourselves be not useful for our beatitude, we do not merit it; and sometimes by asking for and desiring such things we lose merit for instance if we ask of God the accomplishment of some sin, which would be an impious prayer. And sometimes it is not necessary for salvation, nor yet manifestly contrary thereto; and then although he who prays may merit eternal life by praying, yet he does not merit to obtain what he asks for. Hence Augustine says (Liber. Sentent. Prosperi sent. ccxii): ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... interpreted in a thousand wrong ways in conformity with ideas already familiar. The experiments above described, finding a public mind which had never discovered a fact or conceived an idea at all analogous, were of course ungraciously received. It was held to be impious, even to surmise that animals could have been formed through any instrumentality of an apparatus devised by human skill. The more likely account of the phenomena was said to be, that the insects were only developed from ova, resting either in the fluid, ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... this point the Jews fancy foolish things. They interpret the sons of God to signify demon-lechers by whom that impious generation was begotten, and that they were called the sons of God by reason of their spiritual nature. The more moderate ones, however, refute such folly and represent the sons of the mighty. This has been aptly disproved by ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... or Demigod For Britain's ancient Genius mov'd (If our afflicted land Have expiated at length the guilty sloth Of her degen'rate sons) Shall terminate our impious feuds, And discipline, with hallow'd voice, recall? 30 Recall the Muses too Driv'n from their antient seats In Albion, and well-nigh from Albion's shore, And with keen Phoebean shafts Piercing th'unseemly birds, Whose ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... some frigid skeptic, therefore, dare To doubt the all-prevailing power of prayer; As if 'twere ours, with impious zeal, to try To shake the purposes of Deity; Pause, cold philosopher, nor snatch away The last, the best, the wretched's surest stay. Look round on life, and trace its checkered plan, The griefs, the joys, the hopes, the fears of man; Tell me, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... have added such abundance of things upon every subject. Among lady critics, some have found out that Mr. Gulliver had a particular malice to maids of honour. Those of them who frequent the church, say his design is impious, and that it is depreciating the works of ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... insults. It is possible that, in his haughty pride, Frederick will take no notice of this command. But it will be otherwise with the generals and commandants of this usurper. They have been commanded by the emperor to leave their impious master, and not to be the sharers ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... stead Safar), Zu 'l-ka'adah and Zu-'l-Hijjah (Nos. 1 or 2; 7,11 and 12) the yearly peace, during which a man might not kill his father's murderer. The idea must have taken deep root, as Arab history records only six "impious (or sacrilegious) wars," waged despite the law. Europeans compare it with the Treuga Dei (truce of God) a seven-years peace established about A.D. 1032, by a Bishop of Aquitaine; and followed in A.D. 1245 by the Pax Regis (Royal Peace) under Louis VIII. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... "Such impious ignorance I think I never heard of!" said Miss Phoebe, rigidly. "I should think the—a—family a most unprofitable one for you to ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... every word which proceeds from the mouth of God; as it is said, "By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth" (Ps. xxxiii. 6). The following story is also told: In the hour when Nimrod, the impious, cast Abraham into the midst of the fiery furnace, Gabriel said before the blessed God, "Lord of the world, I will go down and cool the flame, and deliver the righteous One from the furnace of fire." The blessed God said to him, "I am the ONE in this world, and he is the one in his ...
— Hebrew Literature
... all grand? That proclamation in Egypt, for instance, in which he said he was the Man of Fate who had been foretold in the Koran, and that all resistance was impious and vain! If it had not happened four years before Bonaparte went to Egypt, I ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... hiding-place, because when you were in one valley you could not see into the next, and the devil always leaped into the one that you were not in. As to the pestilence, it was sent as a judgment because the people had these impious dealings with the Evil One; but the devil could put an end ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... of that,' he answered, 'and I wouldn't dare,' he added soberly enough. And even as I had spoken there came to me the same feeling that he had expressed. It was as though something passed out of the grey rock that struck my heart as a hand strikes an impious lip. We turned away—uneasily, and faced Thora coming through a breach on ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... domestic altar or oratory. There are some careless Christians among the Filipino people, vicious and scandalous because of their evil habits; there are even some who are ignorant of the most necessary things of their religion: but there are no unbelievers or impious ones among them—unless some few, relatively insignificant in number, who have become vitiated and corrupted in foreign countries, and afterward have returned to their country. Even these latter have hitherto, because of a certain feeling of shame that they retain, taken ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... the king, and all his mandates are good. This is no meet time for marriage festivities, when the Lord of the World and all the Aryan power goes forth to war. Yet as soon as the impious rebels amongst the Hellenes shall be subdued, I will rejoice to bestow my sister upon whatsoever fortunate servant the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... impious chain, And calculates the price of pain; Weighs agony in sordid scales, And marks if death ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... that these folks charge me with, I cannot answer them, because I do not remember them; my memory is but weak, as old men's use to be; but, methinks, they seem to be the seed of the Dragon; they send forth of their mouths whole floods of impious inventions against me, and lay to my charge things which I am not guilty of, which hath caused some of my friends to forsake me, and look upon me as a stranger: my brother Good-works broke his heart when he heard ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... there were only cottages to visit, and poor people to preach to—whether he had been ordained to the ministry merely to wear soft clothing and sit in king's houses. These questions were considered by all the curates as, to the last degree, audacious and impious. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... wooden spire, and the inequality of the towers produce rather an unfavourable effect. During the revolution, this august edifice was converted into a sulphur and gunpowder manufactory, by which impious prostitution, the pillars are defaced, and broken, and the whole ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... yet, I fear, though the most moral plays are incapable of doing much good, the turn of others may make a mischievous impression, by embodying in verse, and rendering apt for the memory, maxims of an impious or profligate tendency. In this point of view, there is, at least, no edification in beholding the horrible crimes unto which OEdipus is unwillingly plunged, and in witnessing the dreadful punishment he sustains, though innocent of all moral or intentional guilt, Corneille has ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... innocent, benevolent woman made no impression upon these cruel men. When at night they saw her kneeling at her prayers, they taunted her with gross and impious mockery; and when she sunk to sleep, they would waken her by their loud and drunken orgies: if she remonstrated, they answered, "The enemies of the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... immediately arrested and thrown into jail, where I passed a most uncomfortable night, being unable to sleep because of the profanity of my fellow-prisoners, two clergymen, whose theological training had given them a fertility of impious ideas and a command of blasphemous language altogether unparalleled. But along toward morning the jailer, who, sleeping in an adjoining room, had been equally disturbed, entered the cell and with a fearful oath warned ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... preach the possibility of inventing perpetual motion or a machine with a soul in it, as was lately and vainly attempted in our good city of Lynn,—where, however, it may be said, they do succeed in making soles to what resemble machines. It is not for us to be either so enthusiastic, impious, or uncharitable as to prophesy that human ingenuity will ever endow its creations with anything more than the rudest semblance of that self-directing vitality which characterizes the most servile of God-created machinery. The human mechanic must be content, if he can approach ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... good, condemned, we Might have run on to kinder destiny. But as the leader of the herd fell first A sacrifice, to quench the raging thirst Of inflamed vengeance for past crimes, so none But this white, fatted youngling could atone, 30 By his untimely fate, that impious smoke, That sullied earth, and did Heaven's pity choke. Let it suffice for us that we have lost In him more than the widow'd world can boast In any lump of her remaining clay. Fair as the gray-eyed ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... Caesar near his home To claim the key to every heart in Rome! He spoke: in nameless awe I heard his voice,— 'Give love, that is my due, to him—thy choice,— But know, oh faithless one, ere day expires, All vain these tears for him thy heart desires!' Anon a Christian band (an impious horde), With shameful cross in hand, attest his word; They vouch Severus' truth—and, to complete My doom, hurl Polyeucte beneath his feet! I cried, 'O father, timely succour bear!' He heard, he came, my grief was now despair! He drew his dagger—plunged it in the breast Of him, my ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... sleeve, his soul, immediately after his death, when passing over the pointed bridge, would fall for ever into the abyss. He has been told even worse things: If ever you have doubts about this sleeve, one dervish will treat you as impious; another will prove to you that you are an insensate fool who, having all possible motives for believing, have not wished to subordinate your superb reason to the evidence; a third will report you to the little divan of a little province, and ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... evidences of their holy vocation; and they are not at liberty to admit the irreligious or incompetent to ecclesiastical offices. In the sight of the Most High the ordination to the pastorate of an individual morally and mentally disqualified is invalid and impious. ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... terrible. He fancied that he was under sentence of reprobation, that he had committed blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, that he had sold Christ, that he was actually possessed by a demon. Sometimes loud voices from heaven cried out to warn him. Sometimes fiends whispered impious suggestions in his ear. He saw visions of distant mountain tops, on which the sun shone brightly, but from which he was separated by a waste of snow. He felt the Devil behind him pulling his clothes. He thought that the brand of Cain had been set upon him. He feared that he was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... our greatest glory. But if your ministers sport with human rights, if neither the voice of justice, the principles of the constitution, nor humanity will restrain them from shedding human blood in an impious cause, 'we will never submit.' We ask peace, liberty and safety, and for this we have laid our prayer at the feet of the king as a loving father." The battles at Lexington, Concord and Ticonderoga preceded the second meeting of Congress in May, 1775. Their plea for justice ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... thy charms my bosom fire, And waste my soul with care; But ah! how bootless to admire, When fated to despair! Yet in thy presence, lovely fair, To hope may be forgiv'n; For sure 'twere impious to despair, So ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... fail in their intent; for at courts, where fools are sometimes favoured and backbiters preferred, a lie lacks not credit. Nor did Feng keep from shameful embraces the hands that had slain a brother; pursuing with equal guilt both of his wicked and impious deeds. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... was that the Will of God was inscrutable and absolute; that it was man's duty to follow where God's hand led; and, if God's hand led towards violent excitements and extraordinary vicissitudes, that it was not only futile, it was impious to turn another way. Fatalism is always apt to be a double-edged philosophy; for while, on the one hand, it reveals the minutest occurrences as the immutable result of a rigid chain of infinitely predestined causes, on the other, it invests the wildest incoherences of conduct or of circumstance ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... we, O God! with impious will, Have made these Negroes turn Thy mill! Their human limbs with chains we bound, And bade them whirl Thy mill-stones round; With branded brow and fettered wrist, We bade ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... as well as their ancient claims upon that kingdom, led Henry to join that alliance which the pope, Spain, and Venice had formed against the French monarch. A herald was sent to Paris, to exhort Lewis not to wage impious war against the sovereign pontiff; and when he returned without success, another was sent to demand the ancient patrimonial provinces, Anjou, Maine, Guienne, and Normandy. This message was understood to be a declaration ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... her off and railed and raved at her. "I will not go away," he cried in wild passion. "I will not allow my own son to raise an impious ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... paralysis. In such a paroxysm of dissolution That son of mine was born; by that first act Heading the monstrous catalogue of crime, I found fore-written in his horoscope; As great a monster in man's history As was in nature his nativity; So savage, bloody, terrible, and impious, Who, should he live, would tear his country's entrails, As by his birth his mother's; with which crime Beginning, he should clench the dreadful tale By trampling on his father's silver head. All which fore-reading, and his act of birth Fate's warrant ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... as they tried mechanically to arrange it; to see her stand, alternately leering and scowling by the bedside, an incarnate blasphemy in the sacred chamber of death, was to behold the most horrible of all mockeries, the most impious of all profanations. No loneliness in the presence of mortal agony could try me to the quick, as the sight of that foul old age of degradation and debauchery, defiling the sick room, now tried me. I determined to wait alone by the ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... destroying arm, And age, like distance, lends a double charm; In dim cathedrals, dark with vaulted gloom, What holy awe invests the saintly tomb! There pride will bow, and anxious care expand, And creeping avarice come with open hand; The gay can weep, the impious can adore, From morn's first glimmerings on the chancel floor Till dying sunset sheds his crimson stains Through the faint halos of the irised panes. Yet there are graves, whose rudely-shapen sod Bears the fresh footprints where ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... people of America should enjoy peace, liberty, and safety, but that the government of the individual States, that particular municipal establishments, might enjoy a certain extent of power, and be arrayed with certain dignities and attributes of sovereignty? We have heard of the impious doctrine in the Old World, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the New, in another shape that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political ...
— The Federalist Papers
... the very dregs of paganism,' as Sanderson has it (he instances the Latin 'sacrament,' the Greek 'mystery'), which the Holy Spirit has not refused to employ for the setting forth of the glorious facts of our redemption; and, reversing the impious deed of Belshazzar, who profaned the sacred vessels of God's house to sinful and idolatrous uses (Dan. v. 2), has consecrated the very idol-vessels of Babylon to the ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... the Anglo-Saxons open the graves; the idea of death haunts them as much as it did their pagan ancestors; they look intently at the "black creatures, grasping and greedy," and follow the process of decay to the end. They address the impious dead: "It would have been better for thee very much, ... that thou hadst been created a bird, or a fish in the sea, or like an ox upon the earth hadst found thy nurture going in the field, a brute without understanding; ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Among our spirits of audacity, Nor in our gainefull proiects do we care For what is pious, but for what we dare. Good humble men, who haue sincerely layd Saluation for their hope, we call afraid. But if you will vouchsafe a patient eare, You shall perceiue, men impious haue ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... has given them a broader and finer conception. No less does the reverent student believe that God created the earth, but he no longer thinks of God as working, as man works. He no longer feels that it is impious to attempt to read God's plan in His work; to see how this work has arisen, to see, if may be, what ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... I see thy virtue, and commend it; I know my error, seeking thy dishonour, But the respectless, reasonless command Of my inflamed love, bids me still try, And trample under foot all piety; Yet, for I will not seem too impious, Too inconsiderate of thy seeming grief, Vouchsafe to be my mistress: use me kindly. And I protest I'll strive with all my power, That lust himself ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... as long as I am able, the Roman Church, notwithstanding that I have already done so; for this is the most important duty you have to fufil in the sight of God and men. This is the true Spouse of Christ which he bought with his blood. This is the robe without seam, which the impious Jews would have torn, but could not. This is that ship of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, agitated and tossed by varied fortunes of the winds, but sustained by the Omnipotent God, so that she could never be submerged or shipwrecked. With ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... political economy, they are incarnate devils! Can there be anything more impious, in fact, than to teach the proletaire that he is wronged in his labor and his wages, and that, in the surroundings in which he lives, his ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... Vain, impious words! The goddess came In likeness of an ancient crone, With grizzled locks and tottering frame, And spoke with ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... scholasticism—a frigid reproduction of lifeless forms copied technically and without inspiration from debased patterns. Pictures became symbolically connected with the religious feelings of the people, formulas from which to deviate would be impious in the artist and confusing to the worshipper. Superstitious reverence bound the painter to copy the almond eyes and stiff joints of the saints whom he had adored from infancy; and, even had it been otherwise, he lacked the skill ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... distorted all his face, He showered his anger with a tongue of fire. O cruel words that stung my boyish pride! O dagger words that stabbed my very soul! I strove, but fury mastered—up I sprang, And felt a giant as I stood before him. My breath was hot with anger;—impious boy— Frenzied—forgetful of his silvered hairs— Forgetful of her presence, too, I raved, And poured a madman's curses on his head. A moan of anguish brought me to myself; I turned and saw her sad, imploring face, And tears that quenched the wild fire ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... of these Lectures.[22] Let it suffice to say here that though such bold phrases as "God became man, that we might become God," were commonplaces of doctrinal theology at least till after Augustine, even Clement and Origen protest strongly against the "very impious" heresy that man is "a part of God," or "consubstantial with God.[23]" The attribute of Divinity which was chiefly in the minds of the Greek Fathers when they made these statements, was ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... to Mr. Darwin, it may be observed that he is addressing the general public, and opposing the ordinary and common objections of popular religionists, who have inveighed against "Evolution" and "Natural Selection" as atheistic, impious, and directly conflicting with the ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... real value and meaning. Nevertheless, this too produced good results; for the greatest possible care was taken to fix the Canon of these books; to settle, as far as possible, the exact time at which the Divine guidance was supposed to have ceased; after which it was impious to claim a Divine teaching; when their sages were left to themselves, as they fancied, with a complete body of knowledge, on which they were henceforth only to comment. Thus, whether or not they were right in supposing ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... permission for those members of the Church of England who had sacrificed every thing in his cause to meet privately in some modest oratory, and to receive the eucharistic bread and wine from the hands of one of their own clergy; but he did not wish his residence to be defiled by such impious rites. Doctor Dennis Granville, who had quitted the richest deanery, the richest archdeaconry and one of the richest livings in England, rather than take the oaths, gave mortal offence by asking leave to read prayers to the exiles of his own communion. His request was refused; ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... until Cole Campbell came down the next day was the Stinging Lizard road even mentioned. It was gone, they all knew that, and all their prayers and tears could not bring back one rock from its grade; and yet somehow Wunpost felt guilty, as if his impious words had brought down this disaster upon his friends. He rushed feverishly about in the blazing sun, trying to undo the most imminent damage; and Billy and Mrs. Campbell, half divining his futile regrets, went about their own tasks in silence. But when Campbell came down over the ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... dissolute; The youth, who, following his baleful steps, Reeled for the first time from intemperance; And she who had forgot her covenant, In brazen infamy and unwept shame;— The good, the bad, the impious and unjust, The energetic and the indolent, The adolescent and the venerable, Passed by, pursuant of ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... is literally "a place for the impious," not the place. But Plutarch may allude to the tortures of the wicked in the regions below, according to the ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... The clarion note of Grandmother's voice would have made the dead stir. "Ain't I showed it to you, in the paper?" To question print was as impious as to doubt ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... new piety of God and the pope, that for money they allow a man who is impious and their enemy to buy out of purgatory the pious soul of a friend of God, and do not rather, because of that pious and beloved soul's own need, free it for ...
— Martin Luther's 95 Theses • Martin Luther
... soldiers of Napoleon; and it was now a ruddy brown, tanned by wind and weather. It went queerly by fits and starts, as though rheumatic and stiff in the joints from age; but it served the whole neighborhood, which would have thought it almost as impious to carry grain elsewhere as to attend any other religious service than the mass that was performed at the altar of the little old gray church, with its conical steeple, which stood opposite to it, and whose single bell ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... are also overloaded with Indian superstitions and a crude cosmology, which pass under the name of Buddhism. Accordingly, Buddhist scholars have confused not seldom the doctrine of the Buddha with these absurdities, and thought it impious to abandon them. Kaiseki,[FN121] for instance, was at a loss to distinguish Buddhism from the Indian astronomy, which is utterly untenable in the face of the fact. He taxed his reason to the utmost to demonstrate the Indian ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... an impious king in the land of Ui Neill at that time, Ainmire son of Colgan his name. He impressed the tribelands and the septs under a grievous tax. So Beoit went, a-fleeing from that king, into the land of the Connachta, to Cremthann son of Lugaid son of Dallan King of ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... replied. And while old Peter in amazement stood, Gave the hot spirits to his boiling blood: - How he, with oath and furious speech, began To prove his freedom and assert the man; And when the parent check'd his impious rage, How he had cursed the tyranny of age, - Nay, once had dealt the sacrilegious blow On his bare head, and laid his parent low; The father groan'd—"If thou art old," said he, "And hast a son—thou wilt remember ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... country also was estranged from me. Had I died begging for my country, even unsuccessfully, that would have been worship, acceptable to the gods. But theft is never worship—how then can I offer this gold? Ah me! I am doomed to death myself, must I desecrate my country with my impious touch? The way to put the money back is closed to me. I have not the strength to return to the room, take again that key, open once more that safe—I should swoon on the threshold of my husband's door. The only ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... public, nor talked over openly, not committed to packed committees, nor endangered by rivalry. We should reap the benefits of the blessings that belong to us with enjoyment,[4] not entering upon dangerous wars nor impious civil disputes. These two drawbacks are found in every democracy: the more powerful, desiring first place and hiring the weaker men, turn everything continually upside down. They have been most frequent in our epoch and there is ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... the first time old Joel Quimbey appeared as a law-breaker, and was duly fined by the worshipful county court fifty cents for each oath, that being the price at which the State rates the expensive and impious luxury of swearing in the hearing of a justice of the peace, and which in its discretion the court saw fit to adopt in ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... would be easy, making this his headquarters, to explore their resources and natural productions, he therefore went to the chief of Subuth and suggested to him, that since he had turned away from the foolish and impious worship of false gods to the Christian religion, it would be proper that the chiefs of the neighboring islands should obey his rule; that he had determined to send envoys for this purpose, and if any of the chiefs should refuse to obey this summons, to compel them to do so by force of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... and you powers, Whom I, expostulating, have profaned; I see what's equal with a prodigy, A great, a noble Roman, and an honest, Live an old man!—— Enter LEPIDUS. O Marcus Lepidus, When is our turn to bleed? Thyself and I, Without our boast, are almost all the few Left to be honest in these impious times. ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... removed from us as unworthy to breathe even the same air, and regard the most distant communication with them as an indignity and disgrace offered to ourselves. This is considering the difference not in the individual, but in the very species; a height of insolence impious in a Christian society, and most absurd and ridiculous ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... but their poor Countries too? Their Countries;—well, their Countries did not hate Beelzebub, in his various shapes, ENOUGH. Their Countries should have been in watch against Beelzebub in the shape of Bruhls;—watching, and also "praying" in a heroic manner, now fallen obsolete in these impious times! ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... descends on earth in the form of lightning, but which men were not themselves to produce. He who—like the Prometheus of the Greeks—discovers the method of artificially kindling a flame, and communicates this discovery to other men, is impious, has stolen the forbidden fruit from the sacred tree, is accursed, and the wrath of the gods pursues ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... metaphysical doctrine, but not without culling from the master's thoughts conclusions, such that they leave all that is spiritual and immortal without defense, together with all the legitimate inferences to be derived from the principles he taught, however impious ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Anselmo teaching music, I offer'd her—'tis true, unholy love; And I by Perez was thrust out with shame, Spurn'd with contumely as the door was closed, With threats if ever I appear'd again, To blazon forth my impious attempt, and— Yet did she cozen me with melting eyes, And first roused up the demon in my breast, Then laugh'd in malice.——I hate her for it! Now as Don Gaspar, I've supplanted him, Pride and revenge, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... without it, and could only divert himself by dint of noise, tumult, and excess. It is this which led him often into such strange and such scandalous debauches, and as he wished to surpass all his companions, to mix up with his parties of pleasure the most impious discourses, and as a precious refinement, to hold the most outrageous orgies on the most holy days, as he did several times during his Regency on Good Friday, by choice, and on other similar days. The more debauched a man was, the more he esteemed him; and I have unceasingly seen him in admiration, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... wicks watch out the night; I am the booth where Folly holds her fair; Impious no less in ruin than in strength, When I lie crumbled to the earth at length, Let you not say, "Upon this reverend site The righteous groaned and ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... here; those contrivances, with Bells, being held an Impious Aping of Providence. And the only way you have of telling the Time is by the Fellows up in the Minarets calling 'em to Prayers. Some of the rich Agas have Watches, bought or stolen out of Europe; but they are usually spoilt by the Women of the Harem playing with 'em. The Dey's ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... consciousness. This opinion it seems somewhat difficult to comprehend; and no one, unacquainted with the ecclesiastical history of those ages, could imagine the height of zeal and violence with which it was then inculcated. The decree of the Lateran council calls the Monothelites impious, execrable, wicked, abominable, and even diabolical, and curses and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various |
