"Impiety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and in the evil days to come, remember all I say. Out of the seed which ye sow this hour come wars, civil wars; Roman against Roman, kinsman against kinsman, brother against brother! There comes impiety, violence, cruelty, bloodshed, anarchy! There comes the destruction of the old; there comes the birth, amid pain and anguish, of the new! Ye who grasp at money, at power, at high office; who trample on truth and right to serve your selfish ends; ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... Ortrud speaks with impressive mystery close to her ear: "Could you but comprehend what marvellous manner of being is the man—of whom I say but this: May he never forsake you through the very same magic by which he came to you!" Elsa starts away from Ortrud, in horror at such impiety,—disbelief in the highest. But in a moment her displeasure gives way to sadness and pity for the darkness in which this other woman lives. "Poor sister!" she speaks, most gently, "you can hardly conceive how unsuspecting is my heart! You have never known, belike, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... despotism is inviolable—whether liberty is a revolt—whether there is no justice here below but for kings—whether there is, for the people, no other right than to serve and obey? The mere doubt is an act of impiety toward the people." ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... for its virulence. Poor Lady Morgan was accused of bad taste, bombast and nonsense, blunders, ignorance of the French language and manners, general ignorance, Jacobinism, falsehood, licentiousness, and impiety! The first four or five charges might have been proved with little difficulty, if it were worth while to break a butterfly on a wheel, but it was necessary to distort the meaning and even the text of the original in order to give any colour to the ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... considered a sacred city, and the soldiers were affected rather by the impiety of the act than by the actual destruction that was being wrought. As General Wilson and Frank rode back to the spot where General Barclay was stationed, a mass of Russian infantry moved down the hill towards the bridges, and at once ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... it was the hour which preceded the dawn. It was the culminating point of the infidelity of kings, priests, and people; the visible expression and embodiment of the mind of France, long tutored by falsehood and impiety; the letting loose of Satan on earth, that all might see and wonder at the Beast! That Revolution inscribed lessons in letters of blood for the Church and for the nations of the world to learn. Christians accordingly ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... shall send you, for there are scarce any now, will be a pretty dialogue by Cr'ebillon; a strange imperfect poem, written by Voltaire when he was very young, which with some charming strokes has a great deal of humour manqu'e and of impiety estropi'ee; and an historical romance, by him too, of the last war, in which is so outrageous a lying anecdote of old Marlborough, as would have convinced her, that when poets write history they stick as little to truth in prose as ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... founded on principles tending to the destruction of all property, to the subversion of the laws and religion of every civilized nation, and to the general introduction of a horrible system of rapine, anarchy, and impiety. Amendments to the address were moved in both houses, but they were rejected by large majorities; in the lords, by ninety-seven against twelve, and in the commons, by two hundred and seventy-seven against fifty-nine. Fox, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... against the gate of Elvira when issuing forth so vaingloriously with his army, which he now saw clearly had foreboded the destruction of that army on which he had so confidently relied. "Henceforth," said he, "let no man have the impiety ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Salmoneus. He was a king of Elis in Greece, and was so puffed up by pride that he rode through his city on a high chariot drawn by four prancing horses, waving in his hand a torch, and pretending to be Jupiter himself, wielding his thunderbolts. The Almighty Sire punished his impiety by hurling from Olympus a real thunderbolt, which deprived him of life; and now he pays the penalty of his mad pride by eternal sufferings in Tartarus. There also lies Tityus, the huge giant who, having insulted the goddess Latona, was slain by the darts of her children, Apollo and Diana, ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... met—every other stronghold of opposition taken. Woman's claim to the ballot has been shown to rest in justice on the very foundation stone of democratic government—has been, from the Christian standpoint, as completely exonerated from the charge of impiety as ever anti-slavery and anti-polygamy were, and the fact which was the slogan of the anti-suffragists still remains: the mass of the women do not want it. We do not quarrel with the fact, but state it to give the real reason for our ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... of PURIFICATION you are to understand that you are to be cleansed from impiety and prejudice before you can acquire more of the sublime knowledge in passing the other degrees, to be able to support the brilliant light of reason, enlightened by truth, of which the blazing star is ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... truth, a man eminently fitted to close an old age and to inaugurate a new, to demonstrate the paradoxical situation of the Popes by the inexorable logic of his practical impiety, and to fuse two conflicting world-forces in the cynicism of supreme corruption. The Emperors of the Julian house had exhibited the extreme of sensual insolence in their autocracy. What they desired of strange and sweet and terrible in the forbidden fruits of lust, they had enjoyed. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... nature of the wickedness perpetrated? This is but an amateur opinion, monsieur; I offer it as an individual, not as a priest speaking on the part of the Church. But it may serve to account for a real difficulty, and may be held without impiety. Of one thing at least we may rest assured as Christian men; that the souls of the dead, whether of saints or sinners, are in God's safe keeping, and walk the earth no more." Then I shook hands with M. Pierre, and we parted. And after that, reader, I went to my friend's house, and ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... early study of letters,—literae humaniores. I do not doubt the value of any honest mental labor. Indeed, since the material working of the Creator has been so far displayed to our gaze, it is both dangerous and full of impiety to resist its ennobling influence, even on the ground that His moral work is greater. But notwithstanding this, the study of language, of history, and of the thoughts of great men which they exhibit, seems to be almost necessary (as far as learning is necessary at all) for disciplining the heart, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... garments, on which mother Nature has embroidered, midst sun and rain, midst fire and steam, her own heraldic honors? Ashamed of these tokens and titles, and envious of the flaunting robes of imbecile idleness and vanity? It is treason to Nature; it is impiety to Heaven; it is breaking Heaven's great ordinance. Toil, I repeat toil—either of the brain, of the heart, or of the hand, is the only true manhood, the only true ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... that might breed mischief enough, and prevent some of their comrades from going on in their voyage to hell, whither they were all bound"—I say, I was reading this passage, not a little affected by the impiety of the rascal, for whose portrait my dead Frenchman might very well have sat, when I was terrified by an extraordinary loud explosion, that burst so near and rang with such a prodigious clear note of thunder through the schooner that I vow to God I believed the ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... contrary, it will be found, that they every-where disclaim the Impiety of such as endeavour to make a Religion to their Practices; and each upon himself, and very often make such Reflections upon each other, and, / upon his Actions, as reasonable Beings, who disbelieve not a future State of Rewards and Punishments ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... people of your father; there are your guns, here is your land. But let you and me enjoy that land together." He must have known already she was a free-eater, and there is no doubt he trembled at the thought of that impiety and of its punishment; yet he consented to what seems her bold proposal. The same day he met his own mother, who signed to him privately that he should eat free. But Liholiho (the poor drunkard who died in London) was incapable of so much daring: he hung long apart from the court ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no way of accounting for this, except that the troubles of the times, the impiety of traitors, and the peril of our sacred Union and Constitution have disturbed in their honored graves, some of the venerable fathers of the country, and summoned them forth to protest against the ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... by rousing common hostility against me; and now by suggestions, from their pulpits, in public meetings, before mixed multitudes, with great clamourings they declaim against me; they rage with passion, and there is no impiety, no heresy, no disgrace which they do not charge me with, with wonderful gesticulations—namely, with clapping of fingers, with hands outstretched and then suddenly drawn back, with gnashing of teeth, by raging, by spitting, by scratching ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... controversy now raged between the friends of Pope and Bolingbroke, and Warburton and Mallet were the leaders of the several parties. Mr. Burney asked him then if he had seen Warburton's book against Bolingbroke's philosophy!'No, sir; I have never read Bolingbroke's impiety, and therefore am ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... temples, had in one night most of them their fares mutilated. No one knew who had done it, but large public rewards were offered to find the authors; and it was further voted that any one who knew of any other act of impiety having been committed should come and give information without fear of consequences, whether he were citizen, alien, or slave. The matter was taken up the more seriously, as it was thought to be ominous for the expedition, and part of a conspiracy to bring about a revolution ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... pages of 'William, Lord Russell,' which was published in 1819, when political corruption was supreme and social progress all but impossible, Lord John gave forth no uncertain sound. 'In these times, when love of liberty is too generally supposed to be allied with rash innovation, impiety, and anarchy, it seems to me desirable to exhibit to the world at full length the portrait of a man who, heir to wealth and title, was foremost in defending the privileges of the people; who, when busily occupied in the affairs of public ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... the prince of darkness. Those fearful rites must now bind her for ever to his will. Such appeared to be her infatuation that it led her to imagine she was yet his by right of purchase, without being fully conscious of the impiety of that thought. His own power had been promised to her: true, she must die; but might she not, a spirit like himself, rove from world to world without restraint? She thought—so perilously rapid was her relapse and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... unprovoked does mischief to another for its own sake. For in every degree within these bounds, mankind knowingly, from passion or wantonness, bring ruin and misery upon themselves and others. And impiety and profaneness—I mean what every one would call so who believes the being of God—have absolutely no bounds at all. Men blaspheme the Author of nature, formally and in words renounce their allegiance to their Creator. Put an instance, ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... Nature, gives us the basest language, and with the most scurillous expression, sometimes raging and even foaming at mouth, taxing the little liberty has always been us'd, with horrid horrid Blasphemy, Prophaneness, and Damnable Impiety; when Reason must inform every one we intend nothing of the matter, besides the poor priviledge Poetica Licentia: and pretending to prove this with false Quotations, unnatural Mistakes, and Hypocritical Hypotheses, ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... the race of men who had now the sacred element of fire. But he knew that Prometheus had stolen this fire even from his own altar and had given it to men. And he thought on how he might punish the great Titan god for his impiety. ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... See xi. 3. The emperor probably speaks of such fanatics as Clemens (quoted by Gataker on this passage) mentions. The rational Christians admitted no fellowship with them. "Some of these heretics," says Clemens, "show their impiety and cowardice by loving their lives, saying that the knowledge of the really existing God is true testimony (martyrdom), but that a man is a self-murderer who bears witness by his death. We also blame those who rush to death; for there are some, not of us, but only bearing the same name, ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... of the bread and drink of the wine that Satan hath mingled. Surely, if this be so, the poet is in the right, "Audax omnia perpeti. Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas:" audacious mortals are grown to a fearful height of impiety; and we must cry out in Scripture language, and that emphatical apostrophe of the Prophet Jeremy (chap. ii. 12), 'Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid: be ye very desolate, saith the Lord.'... If you are in covenant with ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... was 18 times as far as the moon, and not, as we now know, 400; but his conclusion, like his conception of the vast extent of the sphere of the fixed stars, was far enough in advance of the popular doctrine to subject him, according to Plutarch, to a charge of impiety. ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... into other orbits. I dimly remember that we talked of Angola cats, Dresden china, Turkish chibouques, maccaroni, and Lord Byron, with whose poems this lady seemed sufficiently familiar. I improved the occasion, as the right thing to do, when talking with ladies about Byron, to find fault with his impiety, his blasphemous scepticism, his cutting sarcasm, and the unhappy frivolity which defaces the works of the man, who, with all his faults, was undoubtedly the greatest poet the nineteenth century ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... son, would take the reins and drive the solar chariot too near the earth, causing the fruits to perish, and the grass to wither, and the wells to dry up. Sometimes, too, the great all-seeing divinity, in his wrath at the impiety of men, would shoot down his scorching arrows, causing pestilence to spread over the land. Still other conceptions clustered around the sun. Now it was the wonderful treasure-house, into which no one could look and live; and again it was Ixion himself, bound on the ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... Cyrenaics. In his odes, especially those written on public occasions, he uses, as all public men did, the language of the national religion. But both in religion and in philosophy he remains before all things a man of the world; his satire is more of manners and follies than of vice or impiety; and his excellent sense keeps him always to that "golden mean" in which he sums up the lesson of Epicurus. As a critic he shows the same general good sense, but his criticisms do not profess to be original or to go much beneath the surface. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... sayest: What! have an infidel people then enjoyed the blessings of heaven and earth? Are the holy people of God less fortunate than the races of impiety? Deluded man! where then is the contradiction which offends thee? Where is the inconsistency which thou imputest to the justice of heaven? Take into thine own hands the balance of rewards and punishments, of causes and effects. Say: ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... raison d'etre for this facsimile, which to name with approbation will no doubt seem impiety to many, but which, as a personal predilection, I venture to risk—there is no Cotton! The relation between Walton and Cotton is a charming incongruity to contemplate, and one stands by their little ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... proud and egotistical, since the Self is made the centre of the universe. It is man rejoicing in himself, taking refuge in the inaccessible sanctuary of self-consciousness, and becoming almost a god. It is a triumph which is not far removed from impiety; it is a superhuman point of view which does away with humility; it is precisely the temptation to which man first succumbed when he desired to become his own master by becoming like ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... home, stands somewhat in the place of that religion which man needs in his maturer conditions. "God has given it, in its very lot," says he, "a religion of its own, the sufficiency of which it were impiety to doubt. The child's veneration can scarcely climb to any loftier height than the soul of a wise and good parent...How can there be for him diviner truth than his father's knowledge, a more wonderous world than his father's ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... keeping, We have his hand and seal to it—we - And I shall lead him easily to think How very dangerous for the state it is Not to believe. All civic bonds divide, Like flax fire-touched, where subjects don't believe. Away with foul impiety! ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... do a thousand things well; Mr. Batchgrew could do nothing well. At that very moment she conquered, and he was beaten. Yet her brown eyes and even the sturdy uplifted arm cringed to him, and asked in abasement to be forgiven for the impiety committed. From her other hand a cloth dripped foul water on to the ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... Augustus, whose success had blessed not only his own country, but the whole world, had—not the least of his blessings—given to the seamen a calmed sea—pacatum mare. Lamenting at Virgil's departure for Athens, he rebukes the impiety of the first mariner who ventured, in the audacity of his heart, to go afloat and cross the briny barrier interposed between nations. He esteems a merchant favoured specially by the gods, should he twice or thrice a year return in safety ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... noiselessly carried to a corner of the cemetery, where a black wooden cross, without inscription, was all that indicated its place hereafter to the mother. Athanase lived and died in shadow. No voice was raised to blame the rector; the bishop kept silence. The piety of the mother redeemed the impiety ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... quaintly preposterous panegyric ever penned—he prefixed to it a long explanatory note, in the course of which he characterizes Don Juan as a "monstrous combination of horror and mockery, lewdness and impiety," regrets that it has not been brought under the lash of the law, salutes the writer as chief of the Satanic school, inspired by the spirits of Moloch and Belial, and refers to the remorse that will overtake him on his death-bed. To which Byron, inter ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... the ether of reverie that he lost sight of all things of earth? If he had suffered deeply on account of her, was not this suffering the expiation of the immense joys she had bestowed upon him? Was it not the ordinary vengeance of human fate which forbids absolute happiness as an impiety? If the law of Christianity forgives those who have much loved, it is because they have also much suffered, and terrestrial love never became a divine passion save on condition of being purified by tears. As one grows ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... over for her and her father in Weimar, but must be off that day for Berlin, as they had made all their plans. It was not easy, even in drama where one has everything one's own way, to prove that she could not without impiety so far interfere with the course of Providence as to prevent Miss Triscoe's coming with her father to the same hotel where Burnamy was staying. She contrived, indeed, to persuade her that she had not known he was staying there when she telegraphed ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... against this family. They were, as I say, glad to encourage any friends; and therefore, since their accession, there is no instance of any man being kept back on account of his bad principles; and hence this inundation of impiety.' I observed that Mr Hume, some of whose writings were very unfavourable to religion, was, however, a Tory. JOHNSON. 'Sir, Hume is a Tory by chance, as being a Scotchman; but not upon a principle of duty; for he has no principle. If he ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... this respect will ever be wholly eradicated. Death and ill fortune are continual bugbears to the weak-minded, the irreligious, and the ignorant; and while such exist in the world, divines will preach upon its impiety and philosophers discourse upon its absurdity in vain. Still it is evident that these follies have greatly diminished. Soothsayers and prophets have lost the credit they formerly enjoyed, and skulk in secret now where they once shewed ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Lycophron afterward, but strikingly opposite to the delicacy and respect with which she is always handled by Homer, who never admits reproaches against her except from her own lips. He was smitten with blindness, and made sensible of his impiety; but, having repented and composed a special poem formally retracting the calumny, was permitted to recover his sight. In his poem of recantation (the famous Palinode now unfortunately lost) he pointedly contradicted the Homeric narrative, affirming that Helen had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... post to another, till the latter took up the ground, that though the saints were not omnipresent, yet God, who was so, imparted to them the prayers offered up, and then they used their interference with Him to grant them. 'That is, father, (said C. in reply)—excuse my seeming levity, for I mean no impiety—that is; I have a deaf and dumb wife, who yet understands me, and I her, by signs. You have a favour to ask of me, and want my wife's interference; so you communicate your request to me, who impart it to her, and she, by signs back again, begs me to grant ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... New Collects were appointed for the Third Sunday in Advent and for St. Stephen's Day. Both of these are distinct gains, albeit had the opinion then prevailed that to introduce into the Prayer Book anything from the pen of a living writer is an impiety, we should ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... transgression, Nor farther tempt the avenging rage of heaven. When guilt like this once harbours in the breast, Those holy beings, whose unseen direction Guides through the maze of life the steps of man, Fly the detested mansions of impiety, And quit their charge to horrour ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... be accustomed to wrong people in one point and not in another. He may care for their good opinion with regard to one point and not with regard to another. The Regent Orleans laughed at charges of impiety, libertinism, extravagance, idleness, disgraceful promotions. But the slightest allusion to the charge of poisoning threw him into convulsions. Louis the Fifteenth braved the hatred and contempt of his subjects during ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... embodies the moral experience of the community,—represents all its cherished traditions and customs, its unwritten laws of conduct, its sentiment of duty .... Now just as an offence against the ethics of the family must, in such a society, be regarded as an impiety towards the family-ancestor, so any breach of custom in the village or district must be considered as an act of disrespect to its Ujigami. The prosperity of the family depends, it is thought, upon the ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... "What impiety, Tournebroche, my boy," he exclaimed, when we reached the staircase. "What blasphemies! Have you felt all the odium in the maxims of that philosopher? He pushes atheism to a joyous frenzy, which makes me wonder. But this indeed renders him almost innocent, ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... assemblage of the clergy, I believed that it was done for the express purpose of my condemnation. Stunned by this fear like one smitten with a thunderbolt, I daily expected to be dragged before their councils or assemblies as a heretic or one guilty of impiety. Though I seem to compare a flea with a lion, or an ant with an elephant, in very truth my rivals persecuted me no less bitterly than the heretics of old hounded St. Athanasius. Often, God knows, I sank so deep in despair that I was ready ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... and I show you a man who, of whatever country or race—whether darkened by equatorial sun or blanched with the northern cold—is an equal with you before the heavenly Father, and equally with you entitled to all the rights of human nature." . . . "You cannot deny these rights without impiety. God has so linked the National welfare with National duty that you cannot deny these rights without peril to the Republic. It is not enough that you have given liberty. By the same title that we claim ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... to say she was slightly indisposed. The nature of her indisposition she revealed to Julia alone. "That young lady keeps me on thorns. I never feel secure she will not say or do something extravagant or unusual: she seems to suspect sobriety and good taste of being in league with impiety. Here I succeed in bridling her a little; but encounter a female enthusiast in her own house? merci! After all, there must be something good in her, since she is your friend, and you are hers. But I have something more serious to say before you go there: it is about her brother. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... knowledge: he was destined to be the standard-bearer of destruction; his genius, although not the most elevated, yet the most comprehensive in France, has hitherto been only judged by fanatics or his enemies. Impiety deified his very vices; superstition anathematised his very virtues; in a word, despotism, when it again seized on the reins of government in France, felt that to reinstate tyranny it would be necessary first to unseat Voltaire ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... with the Samnites, they deliver up to the enemy the officers who signed it, though (with characteristic 'slimness') not the army which the mountaineers had captured and liberated under the agreement. To destroy the temples in an enemy's country was an act of wanton impiety; Herodotus cannot understand the religious intolerance which led the Persians to burn the shrines of Greek gods. Thus religion had a restraining influence in war throughout antiquity, and in the Middle Ages. The Pope, who was believed to hold ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... Canada to join the rebellious colonists, had only a few weeks before issued an address to the people of England in which they expressed their astonishment that the British parliament should have established in Canada "a religion that had deluged their land in blood and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder, and rebellion through every part of the world." Almost simultaneously with the capture of the forts on Lake Champlain, Bishop Briand issued a mandement in which he dwelt ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... of the Impiety and Immorality of the Stage (1704) and Some Thoughts Concerning the ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... the epitaphs of the later popes, as they are found on their monuments in St. Peter's,—"flattering, false insculptions on a tomb, and in men's hearts reproach,"—epitaphs overweighted with superlatives, ridiculous, were it not for their impiety, and full of the lies and vanities of man in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... a voice shrill with passion, while Agnes uttered a loud shriek; 'By St. Barbara, young Lady, you have an excellent invention! You must personate the Bleeding Nun, truly? What impiety! What incredulity! Marry, I have a good mind to let you pursue your plan: When the real Ghost met you, I warrant, you would be in a pretty condition! Don Alphonso, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for seducing ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... not believe, what no other man living believes, that Mr. Wilkes was punished for the indecency of his publications, or the impiety of his ransacked closet. If he had fallen in a common slaughter of libellers and blasphemers, I could well believe that nothing more was meant than was pretended. But when I see, that, for years together, ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... the relationship, with an access of tenderness in voice and in adjuration. "Go, my son," he entreated. But the son stood as immovable as if he were going to remain a monument of filial impiety to all time. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... verse of the first chapter of Genesis: "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light," he had written: "Three days before the sun!" Her heart seemed to shrivel, to grow small in her breast, at the thought of her husband being guilty of such impiety. Ceasing her pretence at sewing, she walked out of the house into the yard. Standing there under the stars she said aloud, as if some one, THE One, could hear her: "He doesn't mean to do wrong.... I KNOW he doesn't!" But when she ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... of York, acting his part with prodigious boldness and impiety, told the king that there was a private and a public conscience; that his public conscience as a king might not only dispense with, but oblige him to do that which was against his private conscience ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... dexterous secrecy, that Dr. Delany was six months in his house before he knew it. He was not only careful to hide the good which he did, but willingly incurred the suspicion of evil which he did not. He forgot what himself had formerly asserted, that hypocrisy is less mischievous than open impiety. Dr. Delany, with all his zeal for his honour, has justly condemned this part ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... with his frankness, which resembled impiety now, "go back and tell Chase not to bother about the Constitution—I have that sacred instrument here, and am guarding it with great care!" But a personal discussion with Chase was compulsory, during which the granite man stood on ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... not as one would say, healthy; but so sound as things that are hollow: thy bones are hollow; impiety has made a ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... would not let them steal, also what dire woes they were going to work upon Polyphemus. In spite of their protests Silenus is believed: Ulysses promises, if set free, to erect shrines in Greece for the Cyclops, besides dwelling upon the impiety of attacking innocent strangers: Polyphemus replies that he does not care for shrines, and as for impiety he is independent of Zeus; which gives occasion for a glorification of the life of nature. They are driven into the cave to be fed ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... as deliverers among the people whom they were thus cruelly plundering; and they distributed portraits of Buonaparte, with the blasphemous inscription, "This is the true likeness of the holy saviour of the world!" The people, detesting the impiety, and groaning beneath the exactions of these perfidious robbers, were ready to join any regular force that should come to their assistance; but they dreaded Cardinal Ruffo's rabble, and declared they would resist him as a banditti, ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... They both talk a language which a believer would have been tender of putting into the mouth of a character though but in fiction. But the holiest minds have sometimes not thought it reprehensible to counterfeit impiety in the person of another, to bring Vice upon the stage speaking her own dialect; and, themselves being armed with an unction of self-confident impunity, have not scrupled to handle and touch that familiarly ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... see,' says the most reverend author, 'that for some time past the most extraordinary efforts are made in France to spread impiety, immorality, the most anti-social theories, under the pretext of spreading education. No longer as formerly, it is in newspapers and books that religion, morality, and the eternal principles of good order are attacked with the most deceitful and formidable ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... which he had prepared for the scene of his vengeance. It was there that, being devoured by degrees, Dakianos by his dreadful sufferings gave a terrible example of the punishment due to ingratitude and impiety. The serpent afterwards returned to his cavern without having done the least hurt to any person, and all the inhabitants of Ephesus loaded it ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... or impiety will indeed always express themselves through art, in brown and gray, as in Rembrandt."—Prof. JOHN ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... philosopher, who, in maintaining truth, incurred the charge of infecting the young men of Athens with impiety, and was put to death by being made to drink hemlock. His life and teaching are known to us through the writings of his ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... thus Gemiste of Lacedaemon; thus Antoine of Heraclius; thus spake they all, the high and the low alike, even George Scholarius, whom thou didst see marching last night first penitent of the Vigils. 'Why did you sign the Decree?' And they answered, 'We were afraid of the Franks.' Perjury to impiety—cowardice to perjury!... And now, son Sergius, it is said—all said—with one exception. Some of the Metropolitans, when they were summoned to sign the Decree, demurred, 'Without you pay us to our satisfaction we shall not sign.' The silver was counted down to them. Nay, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... book but that of the mind, would be found no ward if you should die tomorrow, yet it is a great hazard, methinks, to see so sweet a disposition guarded with no more, amongst a people whereof many make it their religion to be superstitious in impiety, and their behaviour to be affected in all manners. But God, who only knoweth the periods of life and opportunities to come, hath designed him, I hope, for his own service betime, and stirred up your providence to husband him so early for great affairs. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... himself to their service; and the oath he had taken, to propose whatever he thought might facilitate the accomplishment of their father's design, with honour to them and happiness to their people: these motives, which he could not resist without impiety, he hoped would absolve him from presumption; and trusting in the rectitude of his intentions, he ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... as to let the repentant heretic off with the sentence that he first be beaten with rods at the cart's end, and afterwards have his tongue cut out.[79] Even the clearest evidence of insanity did not suffice to remove or even mitigate the penalties of impiety. A poor, crazy woman, who had broken the consecrated wafer when administered to her in her illness, and had applied to it some offensive but absurd epithet, was unhesitatingly condemned to the stake. An appeal to a superior court procuring no reversal ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... moral tendency of the reflections are framed in a mood of reverence as awful towards Omnipotence as the austere divinity of Milton. It would be presumption in me, however, to undertake the defence of any question in theology; but I have not been sensible to the imputed impiety, while I have felt in many passages influences that have their being amid the shadows ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... this. To this refusal he attached the phrase "unless I grant permission "; but he added: "I will not grant it." Least of all did he assume to have been insulted or to have been impiously treated by any one. (Men were already calling such a procedure impiety, and were bringing many suits based on that ground.) He would not hear of any such indictment being brought for his own benefit, though he paid tribute to the majesty of Augustus in this matter also. At first he would not punish even such as had ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... enabled him not only to exercise a great influence over the vulgar, but even to extort the half-contemptuous admiration of scholars. Yet it was long before he ceased to be tormented by an impulse which urged him to utter words of horrible impiety in the pulpit.[4] Bunyan was finally relieved from the internal sufferings which had embittered his life by sharp persecution from without. He had been five years a preacher when the Restoration ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... extraordinary-looking being, who stood like a statue—with the exception of its arms, which it continued slowly to wave up and down in a series of mysterious signs, as if it would bar our progress in that direction; indeed, if I may not be accused of impiety by saying so, it reminded me of the angel with the flaming sword, stationed at the entrance of Eden to prohibit the return of our first parents,—though I am very certain that the idea must have been original so far as the Australian ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... and forecast for thy children!" He is a scoffer and skeptic; truly a spokesman of the Suitors in their relation to the Gods, in whom they can have no living faith; through long wickedness they imagine that there is no retribution, they have come to believe their own lie. Impiety, then, is the chief fact of this speech, which really denies the world-government and the whole lesson of this poem. Thus the divine warning is contemned, the call to a change of conduct ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... and ceremony, the monarch, the Druids, and the chiefs of the kingdom attending; and from this holy fire, and no other, was every fire in the land first lit for the winter. It was deemed an act of the highest impiety to kindle the winter fires from any other; and for this favour the head of every house paid a Scrubal, or threepence, tax, to the Arch-Druid of Samhain." [222] Another writer mentions another Irish moon-god. "The next heathen divinity which I would bring under notice is St. ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... taking place around us in the world continually? Not, indeed, that a long train of good influences has been frequently set agoing in the Sabbath school—for Sabbath schools are but of recent origin. But people have always been led along to virtue or vice, to piety or impiety, to bless the world or to prove a curse to it, by one another. A word or a look from a relative, or friend, or acquaintance, in the school or somewhere else, has often given a turn to the whole character. A word, it is said, may move a continent. Something less than a word—a look or a smile ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... Orchomenian arose and spoke thus: "You see, soldiers, the perjury and impiety of the king; and you see also the faithlessness of Tissaphernes, who, after telling us that he was a neighbour of the Greeks, and would esteem it the highest privilege to save us, and after having given us ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... with affectionate mildness when he transgressed the laws of taste or feeling. The Indians all despised the white settlers, whom they thought stupid and cowardly, and they expected to drive them beyond the sea. They despised them for their impiety, and Tecaughretanego once said to Smith, "As you have lived with the white people, you have not had the same advantage of knowing that the Great Being above feeds his people and gives them their meat in due season, as we Indians have, ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... Salome, aghast at the impiety. She half expected to see her sister struck dead at ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and I lament to say, impiety in thy words. Our duty bids us submit to earthly laws, and more than duty, reverence teaches us not to repine at the will of Providence. But I do not see the weight of this grievance against which thou murmurest, daughter. Thou art youthful, wealthy beyond the indulgence of ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... his peace-offerings;—let us imitate so great an example:—let us make our digestive receptacles a temple, to which we will consecrate the choicest goods we possess;—let us conceive no pecuniary sacrifice too great, which procures for our altar an acceptable gift;—let us deem it an impiety to hesitate, if a sauce seems extravagant, or an ortolan too dear; and let our last act in this sublunary existence, be a solemn festival in honour ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... down, of sinking it in charity, of throwing it away on the idle claims of humanity, where it would no longer peer in monumental pomp over their heads,—and that, too, when on the point of death themselves, in articulo mortis, oh! it would be madness, waste, extravagance, impiety!—Thus worldlings feel and argue without knowing it; and while they fancy they are studying their own interest or that of some booby successor, their alter idem, are but the dupes and puppets of a favourite idea, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... pass, with my heresy, between a devotee and his saint; for they often shoot their prayers at a shrine almost quite across the church. But there seems to be no violation of etiquette in so doing. A woman begged of us in the Pantheon, and accused my wife of impiety for not giving her an alms. . . . . People of very decent appearance are often unexpectedly converted into beggars as you approach them; but in general they take a "No" ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... levity and licentiousness to such a frightful degree, as even to marry his own daughter, God Almighty caused Saboon, the prince of Wa-da-i, to march against him, and destroy him, laying waste, at the same time, all his country, and leaving the houses uninhabited, as a signal chastisement for his impiety." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... these sacred banners, and were impatient to open the way with their sword to the holy city. Nobles, artisans, peasants, even priests, enrolled their names; and to decline this meritorious service was branded with the reproach of impiety, or, what perhaps was esteemed still more disgraceful, of cowardice and pusillanimity. The infirm and aged contributed to the expedition by presents and money; and many of them, not satisfied with the merit ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... "and the chastisement for my impiety is not delayed. Will you still force me to obey you? Shall I be dragged to the altar, in spite of myself, at the very ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... they stray still further from the truth in an endeavour to strengthen their position, and, as a natural consequence, visibly grow angry. To them Job's vehement and desperate speeches are damning evidence of the truth of their suspicion. Impiety is added to his first sin, and they begin to see in him a rebel against God. At first they had been contented to speak generally; and much which they had urged was partially true: now they step forward to a direct application, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... impiety, loathsome and dread, With a chaos of darkness our Spain overspread, Thou wast the first light which dispell'd with its flames The hell-born obscurity, glorious ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... that they should do one another good; more or less, according to the several persons and occasions; but in no wise hurt one another; it is manifest that he that doth transgress against this her will, is guilty of impiety towards the most ancient and venerable of all the Deities." How gladly would I believe this! That injustice is impiety, and indeed the supreme impiety, I will hold with my last breath; but it were ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... and ferocious. Written law follows it closely, and is in more or less harmonious agreement with it. Hence we see that great-hearted men, or men of brilliant genius, have almost all been accused of impiety, and, like Socrates, the son of Phenaretes, and Benoit Malon, have been smitten by the tribunals of their country. And it may be stated that a man who has not, at the very least, been sentenced to imprisonment does little credit to ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... counted God out. Either He had nothing to do with them or He brought them upon you. In any case His intervention on your behalf was not supposed to be in this world, and to look for rewards from Him here and now was considered a form of impiety. You were to be willing to serve God for naught; after which unexpected favours might be accorded you, but you were to hope for nothing as a right. I do not say that this is what I was taught; it was what I understood; but to the best of my memory it was the general understanding round ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... themselves, to consult concerning public affairs, as if they were impatient of the counsels and experience of their fathers. No country can prosper, where the ordinary mode of transacting the business connected with the root of the government, commences with this impiety." ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... of death, Satan, and hell, from tearing forth with ravenous bounds to flesh the fangs of his desires in bleeding virtue and innocence? Does the greatest satisfaction man is capable of here, the highest blessedness he can attain to, consist in drunkenness, gluttony, dishonesty, violence, and impiety? If he had the appetite of a tiger or a vulture, then, thus to wallow in the offal of vice, dive into the carrion of sensuality, abandon himself to revelling in carnivorous crime, might be his instinct and his happiness. But by virtue of his humanity man loves his fellows, enjoys the scenery of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... free from this superstition. Popes and priests had taught their followers to pray against the evil influences of comets and other celestial portents; Luther and Melanchthon had condemned in no measured terms the rashness and impiety of those who had striven to show that the heavenly bodies and the earth move in concordance with law—those 'fools who wish to reverse the entire science of astronomy.' A long interval had elapsed between the time when the Copernican theory was struggling for existence—when, but that more ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... which lasted six days, and Cambyses accompanied the corpse to the tomb. Cyrus now claimed to be the legitimate successor of the ancient Babylonian kings and the avenger of Bel-Merodach, who was wrathful at the impiety of Nabonidus in removing the images of the local gods from their ancestral shrines to his capital Babylon. Nabonidus, in fact, had excited a strong feeling against himself by attempting to centralize the religion of Babylonia in the temple of Merodach (Marduk) ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... father stood petrified. Voltaire, Antichrist, Archfiend of impiety—and in the hands ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... holy places for the good of his soul, and was almost tempted to wish that his father and mother were dead, so that he might free them from purgatory by his pious observances. Yet he was shocked by the impiety of the Italian churchmen and the scandalous stories about popes Alexander VI and Julius II, the latter of whom was just then engaged in his warlike expeditions into northern Italy. The evidences of immorality on the part ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... to take a coachman who knows how to drive than one who knows nothing of the matter? whether it be more eligible to take an experienced pilot than one that is ignorant? In a word, he counted it a kind of impiety to consult the oracles concerning what might be numbered or weighed, because we ought to learn the things which the gods have been pleased to capacitate us to know; but that we ought to have recourse to the oracles to be instructed in those that surpass our knowledge, because the gods ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... a new edict of Montesquieu's, and the necessity of arming themselves in case of violence on the marshal's part: thus it was nothing less than the beginning of a civil war, for which the pretexts were the impiety of the regent's court and Dubois's sacrileges; pretexts which would arouse the anathemas of an essentially religious province, against a reign so little worthy to succeed that ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... crying bitterly in bed the other night because he had in a fit of mischief thrown a stone at the Northern lights, which is regarded as an act of impiety by the Eskimo people. It was some time before I could pacify the child, or get him to believe that no dire results would follow his dreadful deed. But at length when "comforting time" was come for ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... against all such usurpations), framed a hellish and almost unbounded toleration in Scotland, of heretical and sectarian errors, for gratification of the abettors thereof, which was followed with a deluge of irreligion and impiety, drowning the nation in a ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... to his hut with trembling steps, and, arguing like his elder brother, resolved to say nothing of what he had seen, lest he should awake in Martin that daring curiosity which he almost deemed to be allied with impiety. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... this varnished rottenness than in truth and verity he is, I must define him to be a demure creature, full of oral sanctity and mental impiety; a fair object to the eye, but stark naught for the understanding, or else a violent thing much given to contradiction. He will be sure to be in opposition with the Papist, though it be sometimes accompanied with an absurdity, like the islanders near adjoining unto ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... precisely define, threw doubts into some minds. It was asserted, however, that this English-woman was rich, and that she had passed her life in traveling through every country in the world, because her family had thrown her off. Why had her family thrown her off? Because of her natural impiety? ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... far as the sense is concerned, this sentence forms the apodosis to the preceding wish: 'would that I could see him in like circumstances, and would that at length the gods opened their eyes; then he would surely have to pay a heavy penalty for his impiety, for the death of my brother and for my sufferings.' The present subjunctive in the apodosis corresponds with the same tense in the protasis, and differs very little from the future indicative. See Zumpt, S 524, note. [107] 'Although life has been ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... foretold to certain tender ladies things they were only too desirous to imagine predestined by an extraordinary indication of the course of planets through the zodiac, thus causing them to sin by the example of celestial conjunctions—a piece of wanton impiety. The beau took high ground in his objections to the adventure. Nevertheless, Duchess Susan did go. She drove to the heath at an early hour of the morning, attended by Chloe, Colonel Poltermore, and Caseldy. They subsequently breakfasted at an inn where gipsy repasts were occasionally served ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... generals had been beaten by them in an engagement, though they could not effect a public co-operation in their designs, procured volunteers from all quarters allured by the hope of plunder. The state of the Fidenatians alone determined on renewing hostilities; and as if it would be an impiety to commence war unless with guilt, after staining their arms with the blood of the new settlers there, as they had on a former occasion with that of the ambassadors, they join the Veientians. After this the leading men of the two states consulted whether they should select ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... necessary, in this great and astounding disorder, which arises from the rage of Satan, and from the fury and impiety of his instruments, that every body exert himself to guard the common safety, seeing that this madness would not only embroil and destroy religion, but also all principality, nobility, laws, ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... philosopher of Clazomenae, in Ionia, removed to Athens and took philosophy along with him, i. e. transplanted it there, but being banished thence for impiety to the gods, settled in Lampsacus, was the first to assign to the nous, conceived of "as a purely immaterial principle, a formative power in the origin and organisation of things"; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... thou have?—Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh,—Impiety and blasphemy to ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... with astonishment. Pyrrha first broke silence: "We cannot obey; we dare not profane the remains of our parents." They sought the thickest shades of the wood, and revolved the oracle in their minds. At length Deucalion spoke: "Either my sagacity deceives me, or the command is one we may obey without impiety. The earth is the great parent of all; the stones are her bones; these we may cast behind us; and I think this is what the oracle means. At least, it will do no harm to try." They veiled their faces, unbound their garments, and picked up stones, and cast them behind them. The stones (wonderful ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... him for baptism. "Take her and keep her, if you like," was the reply, "for she is no better than a dead dog." "We accepted the offer," says Biard, "in order to show them the difference between Christianity and their impiety; and after giving her what care we could, together with some instruction, we baptized her. We named her after Madame the Marquise de Guercheville, in gratitude for the benefits we have received from that lady, who can now rejoice that her name is already in heaven; for, a few ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... exclusive solutions which tend to suppress rather than to transform the elements of society; and to say to them, "You are communists, you desire to abolish property." It is immoral to accuse of irreligion and impiety men who have devoted their whole lives to the endeavor to reconcile the religious idea, betrayed and disinherited by the very men who pretend to be its official defenders, with the National movement. It is immoral to insinuate accusations of personal interest and of pillage, against ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... their works with their name appears to be as old as art itself. The odium excited against Phidias for his alleged impiety in inscribing his name upon the shield of his celebrated statue of Minerva, is a familiar example, which will occur to every reader; and there can be no doubt that the usage was also known to the painters of the classic ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... sin had grown from a secret, stealthy disease into a wicked, open, raging plague, which hand in hand with the physical contagion sought to slay the soul as the other strove to destroy the body, so incredible were their deeds, so enormous their depravity! The air was filled with blasphemy and impiety, with the groans of the gluttons and the howling of drunkards. The wildest night hid not greater debauchery than was here committed ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... Ochomenian stood up and spoke as follows: "You see, men, the perjury and the impiety of the king. You see the faithlessness of Tissaphernes, professing that he was next-door neighbour to Hellas, and would give a good deal to save us, in confirmation of which he took an oath to us himself, he gave us the pledge of his right hand, and then, with a lie upon his lips, ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... gingerbread. The ICONOCLAST may not get to heaven by the Baptist route or the Methodist route, or by any one of the thousand routes which "Christians" have been pleased to blaze out for sinners in the centuries since Christ died, but it is a long way above that kind of impiety— sacrilege is ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... this was fearful to Satan, for, at the coming of Christ Jesus, impiety was in the highest degree among those that pretended most knowledge of God's will; and Satan was at such rest in his kingdom that the priests, scribes and Pharisees had taken away the key of knowledge; that is, they ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... concerned with their lore. On the contrary, the possession of magical knowledge was an especial attribute of Odin himself; and to intrude themselves upon a deity, and compel him to instruct them in what they desired to know, was accounted not an act of impiety, but of gallantry and high courage, among those sons of the sword and the spear. Their matrons possessed a high reputation for magic, for prophetic powers, for creating illusions; and, if not capable of transformations of the human body, they were at least able to impose such fascination ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... disregard of every moral and religious bond; the systematic perjury so naturalised in a great seminary of religious education; the apathy with which the injustice was tolerated by the state and the impiety tolerated by the church. Copleston made a wretched reply, but more than twenty years passed before the spirit of reform overthrew the entrenchments of academic abuse. In that overthrow, when the time came, Mr. Gladstone was called to play ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... his opinion on the subject of drink that the wine referred to in the Bible was not alcoholic liquor, produced several quotations, told a story, and, as he was leaving, made a dark allusion to the danger of bad company, to certain excursions in the country, to the spirit of impiety, to the impurity of dancing, and the filthy lusts of the flesh. He seemed to be addressing his remarks to the age in general and not to Anna. He stopped for a moment, coughed, got up, bade Anna give his respectful compliments to M. Braun, made a joke in Latin, bowed, and took his ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... minds in the most dangerous errors. If, amongst an infinite number of false predictions, or vain interpretations of dreams, some of them are fulfilled, either this is occasioned by chance or it is the work of the devil, who is often permitted by God to deceive those whose foolishness and impiety lead them to address themselves to him and place their confidence in him, all which the wise lawgiver, animated by the Divine Spirit, justly repressed by ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... intensity of her fervor pressed upon them for response that they could not shape in words; they wept, they shouted, they prophesied, and over them swept ever the witchery of her wonderful voice, preaching impiety—the worship of Seraiah! ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... difficulties have gradually yielded to the progressive developments and revelations of time. It was the opinion of Socrates, for example, that the problem of the natural world was unavoidably concealed from mortals, and that it was a sort of presumptuous impiety, displeasing to the gods, for men to pry into it. If Newton himself had lived in that age, it is probable that he would have entertained the same opinion. It is certain that the problem in question ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... he refuses gifts of conciliation. But by the critical hypothesis this is not the fault of the Iliad, for Book IX. is declared to be "late," and of the same date as late parts of the Odyssey. Achilles is not less open to moral reproach in his abominable cruelty and impiety, as shown in his sacrifice of prisoners of war and his treatment of dead Hector, in Iliad, XXIII., XXIV. But these Books also are said to be as ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... body commits with its five senses—but the whole tree with all its fruits, the whole man as he is descended from Adam. In it are included body and soul, will, reason and understanding. Both inwardly and outwardly, it is still under the sway of unbelief, impiety and disobedience. Man is called old, not because of his years; for it is possible for a man to be young and strong and vigorous and yet to be without faith or a religious spirit, to despise God, to be greedy and vainglorious, or to live in pride or the conceit of ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... offender[452],—yet, since it is clear that his principal followers, who were also his contemporaries, put forth a composition which they were pleased to style the 'Gospel of Truth[453],' it is idle to dispute as to the limit of the rashness and impiety of the individual author of the heresy. Let it be further stated, as no slight confirmation of the view already hazarded as to the probable contents of the (so-called) Gospels of Basilides and of Valentinus, that one particular Gospel is related to have been preferred before ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... of the Holy Ghost into a man, and not an acquisition of Gods grace, by doctrine, and study; I think they are in a very dangerous Dilemma. For if they worship not the men whom they beleeve to be so inspired, they fall into Impiety; as not adoring Gods supernaturall Presence. And again, if they worship them, they commit Idolatry; for the Apostles would never permit themselves to be so worshipped. Therefore the safest way is to beleeve, that by the Descending of the Dove upon the ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... dawn (compare Phaedrus and Lysias; Phaedr.) and expresses his intention of yielding to the illusion to-day, and to-morrow he will go to a priest and be purified, we easily see that his words are not to be taken seriously. In this part of the dialogue his dread of committing impiety, the pretended derivation of his wisdom from another, the extravagance of some of his etymologies, and, in general, the manner in which the fun, fast and furious, vires acquirit eundo, remind us strongly of the Phaedrus. The jest is a long one, extending ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... self-love which opposes God's true character. Under the influence of this principle, men depart from truth, it being itself the greatest practical lie in nature, as it sets up that which is comparatively nothing above universal existence. Self-love is the source of all profaneness and impiety in the world, and of all pride and ambition among men, which is nothing but selfishness, acted out in this particular way. This is the foundation of all covetousness and sensuality, as it blinds people's eyes, contracts ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... Euripides might have brought her character out more explicitly and more at length, but even he could not have made her more living or more tragic, or represented more subtly in her relation to Oedipus both the mother's protecting love and the mother's authority. As for her "impiety," of which the old commentaries used to speak with much disapproval, the essential fact in her life is that both her innocence and her happiness have, as she believes, been poisoned by the craft of priests. She and Laius both "believed a bad oracle": her terror and her love for her husband made her ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... all. The Author of our nature has written it strongly in that nature, and has promulgated the same law in His written word, that man shall eat his bread by his labor; and I am persuaded that no man, and no combination of men, for their own ideas of their particular profit, can, without great impiety, undertake to say that he shall not do so,—that they have no sort of right either to prevent the labor or to withhold the bread. Ireland having received no compensation, directly or indirectly, for any restraints on their trade, ought ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... as appearances in nature and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and the fountain of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, of that inspiration of man which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us organs of its activity and receivers of its truth. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.) |
