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Profanation   /prˌɔfənˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Profanation

noun
1.
Blasphemous behavior; the act of depriving something of its sacred character.  Synonyms: blasphemy, desecration, sacrilege.
2.
Degradation of something worthy of respect; cheapening.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Profanation" Quotes from Famous Books



... and intensely characteristic of them was the fact that no one did so. The awful reverence for death which would have impelled an Englishman of almost any social position to feel indignation and instantly put a stop to what he would consider a profanation, was absolutely unknown to all those engaged in that perfunctory rite. A certain amount of trouble and disturbance would have been caused by dislodging the culprit, and each man there felt only this; that it didn't matter a straw, and that there ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... passed muster among the relics of the cloister for the tears of the blessed saint. The venerable guardian of St. Bridget probably expected the interference of her patroness—she of Holyrood might, perhaps, hope that David Ruzzio's spectre would arise to prevent the profanation. But Mrs. Policy stood not long in the silence of horror. She uplifted her voice, and screamed as loudly as Queen Mary herself when the dreadful deed was in the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... Graecia was closed at the end of the sixth century B.C., owing to the persecution of the civil power, but other communities existed, keeping up the sacred tradition.[28] Mead states that Plato intellectualised it, in order to protect it from an increasing profanation, and the Eleusinian rites preserved some of its forms, having lost its substance. The Neo-Platonists inherited from Pythagoras and Plato, and their works should be studied by those who would realise something of the grandeur and the ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... from the civil power, but the Apparitor of the Archbishop of Paris seized them, and conveyed them to the Ecclesiastical Prison; and, in three days more, they were tried and convicted of a scandalous profanation, by assuming to themselves the names, characters, and appearances, of an holy apostle and a blessed angel, with an intent to deceive a pious and well-meaning woman, and to the scandal of religion. On this they were condemned to be publicly whipped, burnt on the shoulder by a hot iron, with the ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... of men—to trace, I say, the outward and the visible signs of sacraments, of polity, of discipline, up to the inward spiritual realities upon which they depend, which they impart and represent to faith, or shelter from profanation; to study the workings of the hidden life of the Church by those developments which, in all ages and countries, have been its necessary modes of access to human feeling and apprehension; to systematise ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby

... men whose looks are a profanation to any good woman. Ned Bannister, of the Shoshones, was one of them. He looked at his cousin, and his ribald eyes coasted back to bold scrutiny of this young woman's charming, buoyant youth. There was Something in his face that sent a flush of ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine

... footman is expressed by the pen of an abigail,—and the one not a Humphrey Clinker, nor the other a Winifred Jenkins,—and we are expected to admire the result as a good imitation of a lively, intelligent, well-bred American young lady! We protest against the profanation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... failings of those who are just emerging from heathenism in our own days. The First Epistle to the Corinthians administers rebukes for schism, fornication, idolatrous tendencies, misuse of spiritual gifts, profanation of the worship of God, and misbelief. And even the Saints at Ephesus, who are addressed as if they had made great advance in the understanding of the mysteries of the faith, are warned to abstain from lying, violent anger, stealing, foul speaking, and unkind behaviour (Eph. iv. 25-32). From ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge

... forth his description of the blasphemy of the infidels, the desolation of the sacred places, and the misery of the Christians. He had seen the very ministers of God insulted, beaten, even put to, death: he had seen sacrilege, profanation, cruelty; and as he described them, his voice became stifle, and his ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... also in our age that God winks at the profanation of the mass, a horrible abomination that fills the whole earth, and at ungodly teachings and other offenses which have hitherto been in vogue in religion. But when men live so together that they ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... T. C. against the Profanation of the Sabbath by Barbers, Shoe-cleaners, &c. had better be offer'd to the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... as well as of political anarchy and social disorganization. Each new success of its unholy work, necessarily inflicted a new pang on the heart of the sorrowing Spouse of Christ. Day after day, she had to weep afresh over some new profanation of her sanctuaries, some new desertion of her faithless children, some aggravated treason against her God. Nor was it only the ravages of heresy that she had to lament, but perhaps still more, the disloyalty of too many among her still nominal adherents. While a vast number of her disciples ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... therefore, that he himself must have been labouring under an illusion as to the distance. He almost gave way to an impulse to thrust his bayonet through the corpse; but a dead body, seen under the shadows of night, inspires a certain air of imposing solemnity, which repels profanation; and this, acting upon the spirit of the sentinel, hindered him from yielding to ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... The family of the chief do not build tombs; and that now raised over the place where the late prince was buried is dedicated as a temple to Siva, and was made merely with a view to secure the place from all danger of profanation.[13] ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... this strange capture convoyed into Genoa—so the tale goes—they were afraid, and crowded round the old Admiral, demanding wherefore he made war on the Church, and some shouted sacrilege and others profanation, while others again besought him with tears what it meant. And he answered, so that all might hear, that it meant that his galleys were stronger than those of ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... human voice, the utterance of a great language, had been supreme. The air was full of intonations and cadences; not of the echo of smashing blows, of riven armor, of howling victims and roaring beasts. The spot is, in short, one of the sweetest legacies of the ancient world; and there seems no profanation in the fact that by day it is open to the good people of Arles, who use it to pass, by no means in great num- bers, from one part of the town to the other; treading the old marble floor, and brushing, if need be, the empty benches. This familiarity ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... intent—yes—to kill. But he, having yet something to say, takes refuge at the altar; and there even a maddened mob dare not molest him. But the prize goes to a rising star, young Sophocles; and presently the Gods' Messenger is formally accused and tried for "Profanation of the Mysteries." ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... my tale.—Before this profanation, And ere its ancient glories were out short all, A poor hard-working Cobbler took his station In a small house, just opposite the portal; His birth, his parentage, and education, I know but little of—a ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... fitted in perfectly to the second ideal possibility. To get married with a view to turning into domestic beings, would be a failure, a trouble, an interruption, a desecration, and a bore; to get married merely to go on as they were at present, would, in the eyes of Alfieri, have been a profanation of the poetry of their situation, a perfectly unnecessary ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... effect. The magistrate was acquainted with the girl, and the mother laughed at having duped me so easily. I was summoned, but did not appear before the court, and a writ was on the point of being issued against my body, when the complaint of the profanation of a grave was filed against me before the same magistrate. It would have been less serious for me if the second affair had been carried before the Council of Ten, because one court might have saved me from ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... a pretty woman, whom he deserved, by fighting for; and the other has been fighting in the Peninsula many a long day, "by Shrewsbury clock," without gaining anything in 'that' country but the title of "the Great Lord," and "the Lord;" which savours of profanation, having been hitherto applied only to that Being to whom "'Te Deums'" for carnage are the rankest blasphemy.—It is to be presumed the general will one day return to ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... virtuous woman betrayed. She spurned with indignant pride the glittering offers of the miscreant who wrought her ruin. She recoiled with abhorrence from his loathsome caresses; cursed in bitter agony his unmanly deed, and brooded over her misfortune, until the loss of her reason followed the profanation ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... taught him that Irene had more social importance than he guessed; her marriage would be something of an event. Heaven grant that he might read no journalistic description of the ceremony! Few things more disgusted him than the thought of a fashionable wedding; he could see nothing in it but profanation and indecency. That mattered little, to be sure, in the case of ordinary people, who were born, and lived, and died, in fashionable routine, anxious only to exhibit themselves at any given moment in the way held to be good form; but it was hard to think that ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... were the Jews terrified, and they fortified Judaea, and cryed unto God with great fervency, and humbled themselves in sackcloth, and put ashes on their heads, and cried unto the God of Israel that he would not give their wives and their children and cities for a prey, and the Temple for a profanation: and the High-priest, and all the Priests put on sackcloth and ashes, and offered daily burnt offerings with vows and free gifts of the people, Judith iv. and then began Josiah to seek after the God of his father David: and after Judith had slain ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton

... of whipping Dash." Whipping Dash!!! Well have I said that Dick was as saucy as a lady's page or a king's jester. Talk of whipping Dash! Why, the young gentleman knew perfectly well that I had rather be whipt myself twenty times over. The very sound seemed a profanation. Whip my Dash! Of course I read master Dick a lecture for this irreverent mention of my pet, who, poor fellow, hearing his name called in question, came up in all innocence to fondle me; to which grave remonstrance the hopeful ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford

... only their manners, but their natures, are inverted, and nothing remaining with them of the dignity of poet, but the abused name, which every scribe usurps; that now, especially in dramatic, or, as they term it, stage-poetry, nothing but ribaldry, profanation, blasphemy, all license of offence to God and man is practised. I dare not deny a great part of this, and am sorry I dare not, because in some men's abortive features (and would they had never boasted the light) it is ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson

... colours through the air: Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see The dew bespangling herb and tree. Each flower has wept and bow'd toward the east Above an hour since: yet you not dress'd; Nay! not so much as out of bed? When all the birds have matins said And sung their thankful hymns, 'tis sin, Nay, profanation to keep in, Whereas a thousand virgins on this day Spring, sooner than the lark, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... Catholic Churches, and this not as a consequence of importing the vessels of the sanctuary, which are often of trifling value and often left behind. The intention of the robbery is therefore to possess the hosts, and their future profanation is the only possible object. Now, before it can be worth while to profane the Eucharist, one must believe in the Real Presence, and this is acknowledged by only two classes, the many who love Christ and some few who hate Him. But He is not profaned, at least not intentionally, ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... usual rock and dirge. These Comparison Songs are always full of soul. They have sprung into being in times of deepest feeling, taken shape when hearts were as finely wrought moulds which left their impress upon them. And to hear them chanted without any soul is somehow a pitiful thing, a sort of profanation, like the singing of sacred ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... an unheard of crime, which hitherto the most perverse Governments have not dared to meditate. The First Consul is too well acquainted with sentiments of the Diplomatic Body accredited to him not to be fully convinced that every one of its members will behold, with profound regret, the profanation of the sacred character of Ambassador, basely transformed into a minister of plots, snares, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... him my suspicions, my gropings for the truth, and the checks encountered in the search, and give him the results of my long inquiry. Everything has its appropriate and harmonious reason. I am too fully persuaded of this to believe that the Philanthus commits her profanation of corpses merely to satisfy her appetite. What does the empty stomach mean? May it not—Yes!—But, after all, who knows? Well, let us ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... like profanation to see her exquisite work tortured and murdered. She snatched the cambric from Alison, and set to work to make another perfect stitch herself. At that moment there came the sudden and terrible pain—the shooting agony up the arm, followed by the partial paralysis of ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade

... temple at Delphi, the most venerated place in all Greece, whither flowed from century to century all kinds of offerings, and where, no doubt, enormous treasure was deposited. Such was, in the opinion of the day, the sanctity of the place, that, on the rumor of the projected profanation, several Greeks essayed to divert the Gallic Brenn himself, by appealing to his superstitious fears; but his answer was, "The gods have no need of wealth; it is they who distribute it ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... dwelling in booths, wearing fringes, and shaking the palm branch. (2) Violation of a negative commandment not so punished. (3) Violation of a negative commandment the penalty for which is death at the hands of the court, and being "cut off" by divine agency; for example, profanation of the divine name or false oath. In cases of the first class a penitent is as good as one who never sinned. In the second class he is even superior, because the latter has not the same prophylactic against pride. In the third class the penitent is ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... baptism. The king came, and the pretended bishop began to read the service, the assistants looking gravely on, until the squealing of the pig brought all gravity to an end. The king was not pleased; but the historian thinks the reason was, not any objection which he had to such a profanation, but to his not happening to be in a mood for ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... them up in his unwashed fingers, turns them—oh, profanation!—round and round, in order to display their various merits, descants on the delicacy of the workmanship, the sharpness of the chiseling, the pure water of the brilliants, and the fine taste displayed ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... "I enjoy seeing Memling with Signor Carlino, playing classical music with him, discussing a Kempis with him, although this affection he has recently developed for a Kempis seems a profanation, when you consider that he believes in nothing. Je suis catholique autant qu'on peut l'etre lorsqu'on ne l'est pas, but when I hear an unbeliever like your brother read a Kempis so feelingly, I very nearly lose my faith in Christianity as well. I like ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

... hastened to shake up the cushion, and efface the appearance of any one having occupied that sacred seat; although King Charles himself, considering the youth and beauty as well as the affliction of the momentary usurper of his hallowed chair, would probably have thought very little of the profanation. She then hastened officiously to press her support on Edith, as she paced the hall apparently in ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... misuse, misusage, misemployment[obs3], misapplication, misappropriation. abuse, profanation, prostitution, desecration; waste &c. 638. V. misuse, misemploy, misapply, misappropriate. desecrate, abuse, profane, prostitute: waste &c. 638; overtask, overtax, overwork: squander &c. 818. cut blocks with a razor, employ a steam engine to crack a nut; catch at a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... have been proceeded against in a most summary manner; that the Negro witnesses had been treated with too much consideration; that "the law requires no oath to be administered to them; and, indeed, it would be a profanation of it to administer it to a heathen in a legal form;" that "the monstrous ingratitude of this black tribe is what exceedingly aggravates their guilt;" that their condition as slaves was one of happiness and peace; that "they live without care; are commonly better fed and clothed than the poor ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... temple, to what strange uses are you come. . . . This excess of grotesqueness in profanation is more insulting surely than to be sacked by barbarians! Behold a table set for some thirty guests, and the guests themselves—of both sexes—merry and lighthearted, belong to that special type of humanity which ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... Ramsay Macdonald should walk through Westminster Hall, thrust himself, it may be, through the very piece of space that once held Charles the Martyr pleading for his life, seems horrible profanation to Dayton, a last posthumous outrage; and he would, I think, like to have the front benches left empty now for ever, or at most adorned with laureated ivory tablets: "Here Dizzy sat," and "On this Spot William Ewart Gladstone made his First Budget Speech." Failing this, he demands, if ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... of my atheism; it remains for him to justify his religion, in putting the words of Christ into a Heathen's mouth; and much more in his prophane allusion to the scripture, in the other text,—"Give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's;" which, if it be not a profanation of the bible, for the sake of a silly witticism, let all men, but his own party, judge. I am not malicious enough to return him the names which he has called me; but of all sins, I thank God, I have always abhorred atheism; and I had need be a better Christian ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... profanation of oaths! Miserable mockery of legislation! If a bare majority of the voters in any one State may, on a real or supposed knowledge of the intent with which a law has been passed, declare themselves ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

... himself, where no one since his time has dared to use spade or mattock. If an islander was impious enough to cultivate the meadow of Paao, the people believe that a terrible punishment would be the inevitable consequence of that profanation. Disastrous rains, furious torrents, would surely ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... both been clergymen, the one a Methodist preacher, the other a Dissenter. His father was a man of but little learning, whose strongest feeling was disapprobation of the Church of England, and whose "creed was so puritanical that he considered the fondling of a cat a profanation of the Lord's day." Mrs. Godwin in her earlier years was gay, too much so for the wife of a minister, some people thought, but after her husband's death she joined a Methodistical sect, and her piety in the end grew into ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... of his bosom friend. Still there was a softness, a purity, a delicacy and tenderness in this new feeling, in which the influence of sex secretly though unacknowledgedly predominated; and even while sensible it would have been a profanation of every thing most sacred and delicate in nature to have admitted a thought of love within his breast at such a moment, he also felt he could have entertained a voluptuous joy in making any sacrifice, even to the surrender of life itself, provided the tranquillity ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... Rome was a great national calamity, and it was something more: it was a profanation and a sacrilege. The literature which it evoked was a cry of anguish, a prophetic burden of despair. "Chants populaires," writes M. Emile Gebhart (De l'Italie, "Le Sac de Rome en 1527," 1876, pp. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... is to me apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious capitulation, acceptance ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... dealt with the subject; but how it was defined we do not know. The word itself conveys the idea that the law particularly had offences against public worship in view; and this is confirmed by the fact that a number of such offences—from the felling of sacred trees to the profanation of the Eleusinian Mysteries—were treated as asebeia. When, in the next place, towards the close of the fifth century B.C., free-thinking began to assume forms which seemed dangerous to the religion of the State, theoretical denial of the gods was also included under asebeia. ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... natives, finding that Heaven had no bolts in store for the Conquerors, and that their god had no power to prevent the profanation of his shrine, came in gradually and tendered their homage to the strangers, whom they now regarded with feelings of superstitious awe. Pizarro profiled by this temper to wean them, if possible, from their idolatry; ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... close behind them, was forced to overhear, so piercingly sweet was her voice. He trembled for fear some one else might hear her. It seemed like profanation that any one but God should listen to this outcry ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... "be very humble of spirit, as all the hope of man is to be food for worms." Rabbi Johanan, son of Beroka, said, "whosoever profanes God's name in secret will be punished publicly, whether it be done ignorantly or presumptuously, it is all one in the profanation ...
— Hebrew Literature

... He could at least be honest with himself, he could own the truth. He coveted what was not his, and masked his envy with a hypocrisy that now appeared contemptible. The clasp of his arms around her seemed suddenly a profanation, and he laid her down very gently on the low couch, drawing the thin coverlet over her, and went back slowly ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... improvable soul. True love, likewise, spreads this kind of mysterious sanctity round the beloved object, making the lover most modest when in her presence. So reserved is affection, that, receiving or returning personal endearments, it wishes, not only to shun the human eye, as a kind of profanation; but to diffuse an encircling cloudy obscurity to shut out even the saucy sparkling sunbeams. Yet, that affection does not deserve the epithet of chaste which does not receive a sublime gloom of tender melancholy, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... be learned from the writings of Homer of the state of medicine in his time, although we need hardly expect to find in an epic poem many references to diseases and their cure. As dissection was considered a profanation of the body, anatomical knowledge was exceedingly meagre. Machaon was surgeon to Menelaus and Podalarius was the pioneer of phlebotomy. Both were regarded as the sons of AEsculapius; they were soldiers as well as doctors, and fought before the walls of Troy. The surgery required ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... some praise of you, which you would not thank me for repeating, nor him for uttering; proclaiming it aloud, as he did, without delicacy or discrimination, in an audience where it seemed profanation to utter your name: himself utterly incapable of understanding or appreciating your real excellences. Huntingdon, meanwhile, sat quietly drinking his wine,—or looking smilingly into his glass and offering no interruption or reply, ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... into a great rage one day, lately, by a print-seller in the street, who was crying, "Here is Voltaire, the famous Prussian; here you see him, with a great bear-skin cap, to keep him from the cold! Here is the famous Prussian, for six sous!"—"What a profanation!" said she. To return to my story: M. de Chenevieres had shewn her some letters from Voltaire, and M. Marmontel had read an 'Epistle to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... in words. I didn't want him to speak. I was perfectly happy, perfectly sure, and I dreaded the publicity of an engagement. Every one talking, questioning, teasing. It would have seemed profanation. Besides—if Marjorie had really cared as I suspected, it would have been painful for her. I wouldn't let him speak until we got back to New York, and then, the very night I arrived, Aunt Mary was taken dangerously ill. She lingered a few weeks, but ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... associations as are supplied by a tap and skittle-ground;—a person of loftier and purer sentiments would have shown more reverence for the genius loci, and would have remembered that the walls were once vocal with Christian prayers, and that what in other instances would be only negligence, is profanation here. But probably the innkeeper pays his rent regularly, and we hope will be made the interlocutor in an imaginary conversation with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... genuine, though at the same time very passionate way; and as she had, to use a Scots proverb, a crop for all corn, his attentions were acceptable to her. Had she been true-hearted enough to know anything of that love whose name was for ever suffering profanation upon her lips, she would, being at least a year and a half older than he, have been too much of a woman to encourage his approaches—would have felt he was a boy and must not be allowed to fancy himself a man. But to be just, he did look to English eyes older than he was. And then ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... complains of our allying ourselves with a barbaric and half-oriental power, he is not (I assure you) shedding tears over the grave of Kosciusko. And when I say (as I do most heartily) that the German Emperor is a barbarian, I am not merely expressing any prejudices I may have against the profanation of churches or of children. My countrymen and I mean a certain and intelligible thing when we call the Prussians barbarians. It is quite different from the thing attributed to Russians; and it could not possibly be attributed to Russians. ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton

... be agreeable to see their child engulfed in the arms of a large and strong man, and covered with his bold kisses. Mrs. Dennistoun was more fastidious even than most mothers, and to her this embrace was a sort of profanation. The Elinor who had been guarded like a flower from every contact—to see her gripped in his arms by this stranger, made her mother glow with an indignation which she knew was out of the question, yet felt to the bottom of her soul. Elinor was abashed before her mother, but she was ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... invoking the terrible arbiter of war. Nor did they draw the awful sword until the Thirteen Colonies, in Congress assembled, (1774,) solemnly pledged each other to stand as one people in defence of the old local government. This was in the majesty of revolution. It is profanation to compare with this patience and glory the insurrection begun by South Carolina. She—the first time such an organization ever did it—assumed to be a nation; and then madly led off in a suicidal war on the National Government, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... when exercised upon the Scriptures, or even upon the places, persons, and forms set apart for the ministration of religion, fall within the meaning of the law which forbids the profanation of God's name; especially as that law is extended by Christ's interpretation. They are moreover inconsistent with a religious frame of mind: for as no one ever either feels himself disposed to pleasantry, or capable of being diverted with the pleasantry ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin

... little, and almost thanked the rough voyageurs for their incessant melodies, which made conversation difficult for the time, and thus left her to her own sweet silent thoughts, which seemed almost too sacred for the profanation of words. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... Greek word [Greek: iepeus], and means, "one who stands as a mediator between God and the people, and brings them to God by the virtue of certain ceremonial acts which he performs for them, and which they could not perform for themselves without profanation, because they are at a distance from God, and cannot, in their own persons, venture to approach towards him." In this sense of the word "priest," the term is not applied to the ministers of the Christian church, either by the Scripture, ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold

... senza Euridice, and the fiddle of Tartini, that Tartini with whom the devil had once come and made music. And the delight in anything so absolutely, barbarously, grotesquely, fantastically incongruous as such a performance in such a place was heightened by a sense of profanation: such were the successors of those wonderful musicians of that ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... wished to make up the number of camels which the Sultan of Aghadez took away from them. Of course, when the salt-caravan returns, an effort will be made to avenge this insult on the holy city of Aheer—this profanation of the abode of marabouts! It is singular, nevertheless, that only a year ago some neighbouring tribes, thinking these holy men had too much wealth, carried off a large number of their camels. This is the much-vaunted place amongst the credulous ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... sir, I saw them hack away the emblems of the Holy Verity; I saw the name of the Apostle Paul replaced by a convicted felon's cap. Sometimes I was actually present at the confabulations of the Section, where I heard amazing errors propounded. At last I quitted this place of profanation and went to live on the pension of a hundred pistoles allowed me by the Assembly in a stable that stood empty, the horses having been requisitioned for the service of the armies. There I sing Mass for a few of the faithful, who come to the office to bear witness to the eternity ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... unseasonable prudence, refused any longer delay. So singularly still and solitary was the plain around the house, that the sound of the bell breaking the silence had in it something startling, and appeared, in its sudden and shrill voice, a profanation to the deep tranquillity of the spot. They did not wait long—a step was heard within—the door was slowly unbarred, and the Student himself stood ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various

... character not of Antiochus but of Antichrist. The horn cast down the Sanctuary to the ground, and so did not Antiochus; he left it standing. The Sanctuary and Host were trampled under foot 2300 days; and in Daniel's Prophecies days are put for years: but the profanation of the Temple in the reign of Antiochus did not last so many natural days. These were to last till the time of the end, till the last end of the indignation against the Jews; and this indignation is not yet at an end. They ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton

... side of the bed—she was dragged by her long silken hair completely on to it again. Her beautifully rounded limbs quivered with the agony of her soul. The glassy, horrible eyes of the figure ran over that angelic form with a hideous satisfaction—horrible profanation. He drags her head to the bed's edge. He forces it back by the long hair still entwined in his grasp. With a plunge he seizes her neck in his fang-like teeth—a gush of blood, and a hideous sucking noise follows. The girl has swooned, ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... we have here the same general facts set forth under other symbols. Jerusalem, the holy city, the temple, and the two witnesses therefore correspond to the woman of chapter 12. The crowd of uncircumcised Gentiles and their profanation of the city of God for twelve hundred and sixty years correspond to the ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith

... that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners.' Turn away, refresh your soul with solitude and fill yourself with the thought of God. For only by the thought of Him can man save his soul from profanation." ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... to her. 'Each night you grow bolder,' I said. I am no different from other Gods in that I seem to have endowed you with the instinct of profanation. But at least Eve did not turn on Jehovah with the whore tricks learned from His apple. There is consolation, however, in the fact that I, too, can remain indifferent. Indifference is the wisdom ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht

... country was to pay, demolished the walls of the city, and nominated Hyrcanus to the priesthood, though without the royal diadem. The magnanimity of Pompey, in respecting the Treasures of the Temple, could not obliterate the deeper impression of Jewish hatred excited by his profanation of ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock

... 27th—Sabbath.—Heard M. Toase; went afterwards to the Madeleine; building magnificent; passed through the garden of the Tuileries; a paradise of a place; shades; walks; grass-plots; lakes; fountains; fish; statues; amusements; but, alas! what profanation of the Sabbath! ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... great pity that these six pagan authors, here mentioned to have described the famous profanation of the Jewish temple by Antiochus Epiphanes, should be all lost; I mean so far of their writings as contained that description; though it is plain Josephus perused them all as extant ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus

... the dusty and travel-worn party trod the soft carpets and brushed aside their silken hangings in their slow progress with their helpless burden to the lace-canopied and snowy couch of the young gambler, it seemed almost a profanation of some feminine seclusion. Gideon, to whom such luxury was unknown, was profoundly troubled. The voluptuous ease and sensuousness, the refinements of a life of irresponsible indulgence, affected him with a physical terror to which in his late moment ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte

... was Fray Francisco de Jess Maria. The one slain by the Moros was Fray Juan de San Nicolas; Luis de Jess says (p. 289) that this was caused by his rebuking Corralat for his profanation of the sacred articles which he had pillaged from the churches, whereupon the priest was slain by the enraged heathen. The third, Fray Alonso de San Agustin, was attacked at the same time, according to the above historian, and left for dead, but managed to make his ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various

... world-famous curiosities, the white and pink terraces, in the vicinity of Lake Rotomahana and the region of the famous geysers. The natives have a superstition that the eruption of the extinct Tarawera was caused by the profanation of foreign footsteps. It was to them a sacred place, and its crater a repository for their dead. The first earthquake occurred in this region. One side of the mountain fell in, and then the eruption began. The basin ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... of the human body; [317:2] and if they borrowed from their heathen neighbours the custom of making a cross upon the forehead, they would of course be ready to maintain that they thus only redeemed the holy sign from profanation. Some of them were, perhaps, prepared, on prudential grounds, to plead for its introduction. Heathenism was, to a considerable extent, a religion of bowings and genuflexions; its votaries were, ever and anon, attending to some little rite or form; and, because of the multitude of ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... converting into grass and flower. And then, to apply their figure, man in the brothel, jail, or on gibbets, is in the way to all that is lovely and true. Such reminds us of the ravings of lunatics. It is the climax of profanation of the moral government of God. Let those who fear no God, but have wives and children and property to lose, reflect upon the propriety of lending their influence to a system fraught with such consequences. The system positively denies the distinction between good and evil. It declares ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various

... curses which one such imprecation has drawn upon them, the anger of heaven which began from that time to burst upon this nation, the ruin of Jerusalem which followed soon after—the carnage of their citizens, the profanation of their temple, the destruction of their republic, the visible character of their reprobation which their unhappy posterity bear to this day, that universal banishment, that exile of sixteen hundred years, that slavery through all the earth—and all ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser

... thing which your husband's brother has proposed to you to do is a sacrilege and a profanation. I own to you freely that I look on what I have done toward thwarting your relative in this matter as an act of virtue. You cannot expect me to think it a serious obstacle to a union predestined in heaven, that your son is the squire's heir, and that ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... used to be—though, personally speaking, she takes after her father. Mrs. Fairlie had dark eyes and hair, and her elder daughter, Miss Halcombe, strongly reminds me of her. Miss Fairlie played to us in the evening—not so well as usual, I thought. We had a rubber at whist, a mere profanation, so far as play was concerned, of that noble game. I had been favourably impressed by Mr. Hartright on our first introduction to one another, but I soon discovered that he was not free from the social failings ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... profanation, methinks, and a no less absurdity. Would Sir T. Brown, before weighing two pigs of lead, A. and B., pray to God that A. might weigh the heavier? Yet if the result of the dice be at the time equally believed to be a settled ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... your arm, dear; I am so tired. It's such a perfect night, that it seemed a shame to stay indoors. The Major has been admiring 'The Flowery Way.' It certainly looks its best to- night." She turned towards Major Humphreys with her light, cynical laugh. "My son declares that it is profanation to allow ordinary, commonplace mortals to walk up those steps! He always escorts my visitors round by another way. He is ungallant enough to say that he has never yet seen a girl whom he would care to watch walk up those steps in the moonlight. She would have to be quite ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... was already irreparably disfigured when General Lyautey came to Morocco; but ferocious old Sale, Phenician counting-house and breeder of Barbary pirates, had been saved from profanation by its Moslem fanaticism. Few Christian feet had entered its walls except those of the prisoners who, like Robinson Crusoe, slaved for the wealthy merchants in its mysterious terraced houses. Not till two or three years ago was it completely pacified; and when it opened its gates to the infidel ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... only difference between a marriage of this character and prostitution is, that society, rotten to its heart, pulpits afraid to cry aloud against crime and vice, and the church conformed to the world, have made such a profanation of marriage respectable. To put it in other words, when two people determine to live together as husband and wife, and evade the consequences and responsibilities of marriage, they are simply engaged ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... suitable demur on account of the Cardinalesque colour, allowed to pass, on paying a handsome duty. These liveries at first produced a great sensation in Rome, not only amongst the hierarchy, who were jealous of the profanation, but with the populace, both within and without the walls: from the prince to the peasant, every body had something to say about them. As they paced along the streets the men stared in silent admiration, while ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... with the legal proceedings attached to a homicide case, exchanged puzzled glances. In the presence of their beloved dead, this man's unsympathetic attitude seemed almost a profanation. The policeman, in passing through the office on his way to the door, had let drop the remark that murder had been committed, yet none of the employes could bring himself to believe that an alien hand had fired the mortal bullet. No visitor ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... a formal reply to this appeal. But, had she attempted it, perhaps the old recollections, the long-repressed feelings of childhood, youth and womanhood, might have gushed from her heart in words that it would have been profanation to utter there. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... much stronger if everything was open sea between England and the Atlantic, and if SKATES AND COD-FISH swam over the fair land of Ulster. Such jobbing, such profligacy, so much direct tyranny and oppression, such an abuse of God's gifts, such a profanation of God's name for the purposes of bigotry and party spirit, cannot be exceeded in the history of civilised Europe, and will long remain a monument of infamy and shame to England. But it will be more useful to suppress the indignation which the very name of Ireland inspires, and ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... religion, how comes it to pass, that whilst they make so much ado and move every stone against us for our modest refusing of obedience to certain ordinances of men, which in our consciences we are persuaded to be unlawful, they manumiss and set free the simony, lying, swearing, profanation of the Sabbath, drunkenness, whoredom, with other gross and scandalous vices of some of their own side, by which God's own commandments are most fearfully violated? This just recrimination we may well use for our own most lawful defence. Neither do we hereby intend any man's shame (God ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... Cobb—who had formed the acquaintance at West Point—to make a visit in his home. He had not been there many days before he manoeuvred to establish a private military retreat for himself in the affections of Mrs. Cobb. So that his presence became a profanation to Georgiana, whose reverence for her heroic father burns like an altar of sacred fire, and whose nature became rent in twain between her mother's suitor and ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen

... elaborate performances seemed like empty babble. Worse than that, they 'devise musical instruments like David.' But how unlike him in the use they make of art! What a descent from the praises of God to the 'idle songs' fit for the hot dining-halls and the guests there! Amos was indignant at the profanation of art, and thought it best used in the service of God. What would he have said if he had been 'fastened into a front-row box' and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... or when the higher altar platform was extended to reach the desks on which lie the Gospels and Epistles. At any such times the slabs over the burial vaults may have been broken or laid aside and never replaced. It is also possible that they were intentionally removed in order to guard against profanation of the tombs by enemies in time of war or by West Indian pirates, who captured and sacked stronger cities than Santo Domingo. In 1655 when an English fleet under Admiral William Penn appeared before the city and landed ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... of all things. It is true, the fault is not his, so much as theirs who have consented to this profanation, but that is the way of the world. But, I say, there's no small bit of people coming. Any one would say that nothing had changed since last year. The same distinguished persons, the same elegant costumes, the crowding ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various

... cuirass. Papillon admired everything, most of all the great cool dairy, which had once been a chapel, and where the piscina was converted to a niche for a polished brass milk-can, to the horror of Angela, who could say no word in praise of a place that had been created by the profanation of holy things. A chapel turned into a storehouse for milk and butter! Was this how Protestants valued consecrated places? An awe-stricken silence came upon her, and she was glad when Denzil remembered that they would have barely time to walk ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... other men at noon or at night, vastly other, sunnier men, with abundance of quip and jest and playful sally with the acid personal tang. But from warm beds of repose! We avoid each other's eyes, and one's subdued "please pass that sirup pitcher!" is but tolerated like some boorish profanation of ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... skilled in."[32] So says the author of "Representative Men." "Evil," according to old philosophers, "is good in the making; that pure malignity can exist is the extreme proposition of unbelief. It is not to be entertained by a rational agent. It is Atheism; it is the last profanation." "The divine effort is never relaxed; the carrion in the sun will convert itself into grass and flowers; and man, though in brothels, or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way to all that is ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... prudence the Church warns us not to risk turning edification into a scandal. Therefore I will not speak, sir, of that wherewith I have been fed on the steps of sanctuaries. But, without violating the chaste modesty of my soul, and without exposing to profanation the sacred mysteries, I'll show you God overawing human reason, I'll show you it by the philosophy of pagans, and by the tittle-tattle of ungodly persons. Yes, sir, I'll make you avow that you recognise Him, ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... "Every enormity, every profanation, every atrocious crime, which zeal, revenge, and cruel policy are capable of influencing mankind to commit, stain the dreadful registers of this unhappy period. More than five thousand persons of all ranks perished ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss

... is required to make her home clean, artistic, and comfortable. She places upon it the stamp of her character, industry, and good taste. She supplies it with things that delight the senses and point the way to culture. To such a home the crude and the bizarre are a profanation. She administers her home as a sacred trust in the interests of her family and never for exhibition purposes. Her home is an expression of herself, and her children will carry into life the standards that she ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... Mr. Castleford could have prevailed over the fear of profanation in the mind of my father, who was, in his old- fashioned way, one of the most reverent of men, and could not bear to think of holy things being approached by one under a stigma, nor of exposing his son to add to his guilt by taking and breaking further pledges. However, he was struck by his friend's ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... vanished, I no longer saw anything, ... or more truly I saw, O my God, one thing alone. "Heavens, how can I speak of it? Oh no! human words cannot attain to expressing the inexpressible. Any description, however sublime it might be, could be but a profanation of the unspeakable truth. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... keynote of all the debased forms of Gnosticism. According to Eliphas Levi, certain of the Gnostics introduced into their rites that profanation of Christian mysteries which was to form the basis of black magic in the Middle Ages.[111] The glorification of evil, which plays so important a part in the modern revolutionary movement, constituted the creed of the Ophites, who worshipped the Serpent ([Greek: ophis]) because he had ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... from the statutes of several states in reference to blasphemy and profanation of the Sabbath, commenting on each as he ran them through:] Pursuing the thread of his discourse, he said: Every American should see to it that all these laws are done away with ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... between England and the Atlantic, and if SKATES AND COD-FISH swam over the fair land of Ulster. Such jobbing, such profligacy, so much direct tyranny and oppression, such an abuse of God's gifts, such a profanation of God's name for the purposes of bigotry and party spirit, cannot be exceeded in the history of civilised Europe, and will long remain a monument of infamy and shame to England. But it will be more useful ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... offenders to pay a fine for the use of the poor.[296] Sometimes they commuted a penance for money to go to church-repair or to the parish poor.[297] The churchwardens or overseers of the poor accounts also mention fines received for profanation of the Sabbath and for offences during service time.[298] The Star Chamber often condemned offenders, especially enclosers of cottage land and engrossers of corn, to fines for the benefit of the poor.[299] Finally, most parishes derived some income ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware

... cross the Pyrenees and to possess themselves of the whole Iberian peninsula. In Spain public opinion blamed the feeble king and the detested favorite for this profanation of the country's soil, and in the recriminations that ensued at court Prince Ferdinand warmly espoused the popular side. Riots followed. Charles IV, to save Godoy, abdicated and proclaimed Ferdinand VII (17 March, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... question to Rex directly, to be decided by his mysterious art. It would have been a relief to him if the decision had chanced to be contrary to his own vague forebodings, but on the other hand, it seemed like a profanation of his love to explain the situation to his friend. He never spoke of Hilda, and Rex did not know ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... she would not. She never wanted to be alone—she who had been so fond of solitude such a short time ago. She was afraid of herself—afraid to think—afraid of that dim future that was drawing so very near. Every feeling of heart and soul revolted at the thought of that loveless marriage—the profanation of herself seemed more than she ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming

... fate of being converted into a barrack for French prisoners. May repose and blessings attend the ashes of the patriotic statesman who, amongst his last services to Scotland, interposed to prevent this profanation! ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... is no choice left to me. It would be profanation to take persons in such a mood to make vows, and kneel to receive God's grace, which they evidently make light of. Whoever will not come and ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the important city of Catana, which was now made the head-quarters of the armament. Here an unwelcome message greeted Alcibiades. After his departure from Athens, Thessalus, the son of Cimon, preferred an indictment against him in consequence of his profanation of the Eleusinian mysteries. The Salaminian, or state, trireme was despatched to Sicily, carrying the decree of the assembly for Alcibiades to come home and take his trial. The commander of the Salaminia was, however, instructed not to seize his person, but to allow him to sail ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith

... profitable and wholesome laws as have been formerly enacted for God and His people. Improve what was well begun by others before you, and not perfected by them.' Under this latter head he dwelt on the possible abuse of the Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and the irreligious profanation ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... profanation of the Lord's day, and sat down and contemplated the old Aztec god, who had been deified for his wisdom, and could not but regret the change that had been imposed upon these imbecile Indians. The next Sabbath after this was the national anniversary of the miraculous apparition; but, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... vulgar hands, defaced by the coarse jests of polite society, its sanctity forever missed. The temple has been invaded, its white floors trodden by feet from muddy alleys, the gods thrown down. Is not the temple as much ruined when this profanation has been accomplished, as if the walls had fallen? I will not be misunderstood as doubting, for one moment, the purity of soul of American girls as a whole; but I assert, that the result of which I have spoken is terribly common in our large cities, and that it ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... there, I never heard of a "Charlesina." I suppose "Caroline" and "Charlotte" sufficed; or perhaps, while Whigs disliked the name (at least before that curious purifier of it, Fox), Tories shrank from profanation thereof. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... did—that "the destruction of beauty is a sacrilege and a sin." This is undoubtedly a fair account of what Mr. Ruskin means in certain portions of his writings, and he is not the only one who has suffered "anguish," little short of despair, at certain "works of profanation." Mr. Bayne quotes Mr. Ruskin's passionate words about the befouling and desecration of the "pools and streams" around Carshalton. Now, it would not be easy, perhaps, to prove that God made those "pools and streams," still lovely in their degradation, in a sense in which he did not make the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... succeeded by the kingdom of the God of heaven, which shall never be destroyed (chaps. 2, 7); (2,) in the protection and deliverance of God's faithful servants from the persecution of heathen kings and princes (chaps. 3, 6); (3,) in the humbling of heathen monarchs for their pride, idolatry, and profanation of the sacred vessels belonging to the sanctuary (chaps. 4, 5). Thus we see that the first three of these six chapters (2-7) correspond to the last three taken in an inverse order—the second to the seventh, the third to the sixth, and the fourth to the ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... city and seaport, business shrewdness was linked with sensuality and profanation, and a great temple of Venus was built, where one thousand priestesses were required to lead a life of religious infamy to make money for their despicable masters. There were constant importations of new girls from Lesbos and the other Grecian isles. Then as now the devices ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various

... secret associations is the profanation by them of the oath of God. We regard such profanation as the natural result of their secrecy. When associations of men endeavor to keep secret their operations from generation to generation, they ...
— Secret Societies • David MacDill, Jonathan Blanchard, and Edward Beecher

... am so seldom honoured in this way in a morning, that I was hardly ready. Donnellan, there's the tea; don't mind waiting. These gentlemen will perhaps join us." And then he looked hard at Aby, as though he trusted in Providence that no such profanation would be ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... city officers are secular priests of Our Lady Springfield. Their failure in duty is a profanation of her name. A yearly pledge of the first voters is taken in her presence like the old Athenian oath of citizenship. The seasonal pageants march to the statue's feet, scattering flowers. The important outdoor festivals are given on the edge of her hill. All the roads lead ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... and beams of wood, and these they threw into the gaps as fast as they were made. The churches were stripped of all their stone statues, and these too were piled in the breaches. The besiegers were greatly horrified at what they declared to be profanation; a complaint that came well from men who had been occupied in the wholesale murder of men, women, and children, and in the sacking of the churches of their own religion. Don Frederick anticipated a quick and easy success. ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty

... in his lot with the people of God, it had needed the utmost exercise of the strong restraint which he imposed on himself, as far as outward acts were concerned, to keep him from crying out against what seemed to him to be a profanation of God's ordinances. After old Mr Hollister's death, when others fell in with the new order of things, and one after another of his old friends found his place in the church, he kept back and remained a spectator, even when he would gladly have ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson

... revealed himself to Moses, as the Eternal 'I AM,' the Self-existent One; and, after the first discouraging interview of his messengers with Pharaoh, he renewed his promise to them, by the awful name, JEHOVAH—a name till then unknown, and one which the Jews always held it a fearful profanation to pronounce."—G. Brown. "And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the LORD: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty; but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them."—SCOTT, ALGER, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... and appliances, and not an argument against her rights as contrasted with the rights of man. What! usurp an exclusive control—then degrade the modes of exercising power, and after that say the degradation is reason why the usurpation should continue unchallenged. What profanation of the very powers of thought is that! On the contrary, I am prepared to say that I see no reason, I never have seen any reason, why there might not be changes introduced in your modes of taking the sense of the community, of ascertaining public opinion upon public measures, of making ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... excursion to that part of Yorkshire, Arthur, not long since. A very pleasant trip—apart from the painful associations connected with the ruin and profanation of a sacred place. There is no doubt about the revenues. I know the value of that productive part of the estate which stretches southward, away from the barren region round the house. Let us return for a moment to Romayne, ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... become so overladen with mere embellishments as to make the prescribed church-form difficult of recognition in its borrowed garb, for it had become a mere jumble of sound. Musicians, indeed, carried their profanation so far as to take secular melodies as the themes for masses and motetts. These were often called by their profane titles. So the name of a love-sonnet or a drinking-song would sometimes be attached to a miserere. The council of Trent, in 1562, cut at these evils with ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... two had spoken during all this time. Both felt the magic of the place so strong upon them that speech seemed profanation. The flight of the little birds, however, loosened the spell. Hildegarde spoke, but softly, almost under her breath. "Captain! Do you see the lizard? Look at him, on the log there! The greenness of him! soul ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards

... through the second anteroom. There was on the table, between a vase full of visiting-cards and an inkstand, a chased silver chest. It was Madame Arnoux's. Then he experienced a feeling of tenderness, and, at the same time, as it were, the scandal of a profanation. He felt a longing to raise his hands towards it, and to open it. He was afraid of ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... bespangling herb and tree: Each flower has wept, and bow'd toward the east, Above an hour since; yet you are not drest; Nay, not so much as out of bed; When all the birds have matins said, And sung their thankful hymns; 'tis sin, Nay, profanation, to keep in; When as a thousand virgins on this day, Spring sooner than the lark, to ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... praise answer us with characteristic simplicity, "We only did our duty," or "We were bound in honor," they express the religious character of their patriotism. Which of us does not feel that patriotism is a sacred thing, and that a violation of national dignity is in a manner a profanation and ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... it were a meritorious thing to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, much more would it be a pious act to rescue the sacred spot from the profanation of infidels. This was the conviction that changed the pilgrim into a warrior,—this the sentiment that for two centuries and more stirred the Christian world to its profoundest depths, and cast the population of Europe in wave after wave ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... would he have thought, if any person had told him, that, before the expiration of the century in which he lived, the French themselves would, in perfect hatred of Christ, destroy the finest churches of France? At their profanation of his favorite church of St. Bertin, in the town of St. Omer's, that is said to have happened which Victor Vitensis relates to have happened in the persecution of the Vandals, (Hist. Pers. Van. 31:) "Introeuntes maximo cum furore, corpus Christi et ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... parallel, inviting every intelligent mind to study their features and character, in adapting them to his own uses, and, in so doing, to even embellish—if such a thing be possible—such exquisite objects with his own most ingenious handiwork. Indeed, it is a profanation to do otherwise; and when so to improve them requires no extraordinary application of skill, or any extravagant outlay in expense, not to plan and to build in conformity with good taste, is an absolute barbarism, inexcusable in a land like ours, and among a population claiming ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen

... flirting with grim death, after losing all their other beaux—did once occasionally say, when the world assembled together, that they wondered the ashes of the Dedlocks, entombed in the mausoleum, never rose against the profanation of her company. But the dead-and-gone Dedlocks take it very calmly and have ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... real desolation before. He rushed to the wide chasm which now admitted the winds and rains of heaven to the shrine which his adoration and reverence had consecrated with a tenderness so absorbing. Oh! what ruin—what profanation—what an irreparable havoc of all his treasure! And the tree, too—gone, blasted. Tears of passionate despair rained from his eyes: he wrung his hands, he stamped, raved, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... how prodigal she was of tender words! Words which she would perhaps have withheld if Allan had been by her side. What passionate avowals of her affection she made, so sweet, so thrilling, that it would be a kind of profanation to write them. ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr

... bottles and scraps of paper were defacing the hill turf, and when she turned to get to the water's edge she found the rushy coverts trampled on every side. From somewhere among the trees came the sound of singing—a silly music-hall catch. It was a sharp surprise, and the girl, in horror at the profanation, was turning ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... justice, and great rewards were offered to anyone, whether citizen, slave, or resident foreigner, who gave information concerning this or any similar crime. At first nothing was disclosed as to the mutilation of the Hermae, but other recent acts of profanation were brought to light, and among these was mentioned a derisive parody of the great Eleusinian Mysteries, alleged to have been performed in the house of Alcibiades, and elsewhere. The enemies of Alcibiades, who were both numerous and powerful, ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell



Words linked to "Profanation" :   debasement, violation, irreverence, sacrilege, degradation, desecration, profane



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