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Layman   Listen
noun
Layman  n.  (pl. laymen)  
1.
One of the people, in distinction from the clergy; one of the laity; sometimes, a man not belonging to some particular profession, in distinction from those who do. "Being a layman, I ought not to have concerned myself with speculations which belong to the profession."
2.
A lay figure. See under Lay, n. (above).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Layman" Quotes from Famous Books



... enough so that the finger can be introduced to break down adhesions, so that proper drainage can be established, after which wash out with a 5 per cent solution of permanganate of potash. As this is a dangerous location for a layman to interfere with, owing to the branching of the carotid artery, pneumogastric nerve and jugular vein, it should be ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... shaking his head again, 'I might think one of your profession better employed in devoting himself to the discovery and punishment of guilt than in leaving that duty to be undertaken by a layman.' ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... contest in that case, at least," corrected Dr. Crafts with an indulgent smile for a layman. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... having members of his own cabinet ever on the watch for the vulnerable spot in his back, which he had never allowed them to find. Yet, there was the case of Louis Napoleon. He had the ability to achieve a position; he had been the lath painted to look like steel. He had all the externals which the layman associates with victory until he went to the supreme test, which ripped him into slivers of rotten wood. The little Napoleon had been one of the premier's favorite bugaboo examples of stage realism ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... 29-34, along the west wall, are hundreds of famous etchings. This branch of art, old and respected through the examples offered by early masters like Albrecht Durer and Rembrandt, has still to be fully appreciated. It has come to the public slowly, the layman who likes and buys pictures more often holding aloof from the thing called an etching. That there is now a closer acquaintance than before is due in large measure to Joseph Pennell. Working through the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... prebendaries first appointed, and what the nature of their duties generally? What is the rank of a prebendary of a cathedral or other church, whether as a layman or a clerk in orders? Would a vicar, being a prebendary, take precedence as such of a rector not being one? Where is the best account of prebends ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various

... ascetic—whose rules of indifference toward all and every thing, make him a being concentrated entirely upon himself and his goal—is united again to humanity and its interests. The duty of educating the layman and watching over his life, must of necessity change the wandering penitents into settled monks—who dedicate themselves to the care of souls, missionary activity, and the acquisition of knowledge, and who only now and ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler

... civil servants. A canon would often leave his prebend in the spiritual charge of a vicar engaged by the year, or under the administration of a proctor, or would even farm it out—sometimes to a layman. Sometimes a canon was suspected of being a layman himself, or a married man. The proctors or lessees dismissed or appointed vicars at their pleasure. The prebendal houses fell into disrepair, and in some cases a plot had been assigned, but ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett

... is interesting in so far as it, if correct, affords an instance of atheism arising in a layman from actual experience, not in a philosopher from speculation. If we ask, however, what is known historically about Diagoras, we are told a different tale. There existed in Athens, engraved on a bronze tablet and set up on the Acropolis, a decree of the people offering a ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... very reforms, which would consist in giving this country a Government of laymen, would make it cease to exist. It is called 'States of the Church' (Etats de l' Eglise), and that is what it must remain. It is true I have lately appointed a layman to a post formerly held by an ecclesiastic, and I may do so again occasionally; but, however small we may be, we cannot yield to outer pressure, and this country must be administered by men of the ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... usual very quickly and straight, his soutane brushed against the blouse of Jacques. He gave one quick glance from beneath his eyebrows at the profane interruption, but he would not distract himself from his sacred errand at such a moment. It is a sacred errand when any one, be he priest or layman, carries the best he can give to the bedside of the dying. I said this to Jacques when M. le Cure had passed and the bell went tinkling on along the street. 'Jacques,' said I, 'I do not call it impious, like this good woman, but I call it inhuman. What! a man goes to carry help ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant

... at all events, it argues very much indeed in a writer's favour, that the "layman" has managed to write the simplest sentence about a specialty, without some more or less ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor

... consummated. What more than the simple knowledge of the man's guilt does any mortal desire; guilty, or not guilty, is the plain question which the law asks, and no more; take my advice, sir, as a poor Protestant layman, and leave the acts of the confessional and inquisition ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... brother, the abbot of the Carthusian convent, must contend for an honour which will certainly add two most eminent recruits to the large army of martyrs, since the Highlanders little regard the distinction betwixt clerk and layman in the ambassadors whom ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... everything quite according to tactics, which would only confuse the layman. The wonder was that any of it had come back alive. On that narrow front it had ridden out toward the Germany Army with nothing between the cavalry and the artillery and machine guns which had men on horses for ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... Then Tibble again put his question on behalf of the two young foresters, and the comptroller shook his head. He did not know the name. "Was the gentleman" (he chose that word as he looked at the boys) "layman or clerk?" "Layman, certainly," said Ambrose, somewhat dismayed to find how little, on ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... sure, esteemed by all, especially the women, to be so great a man as the Reverend Jabez Jaynes, A.M., who, by virtue of his sacred office and academical honors, took formal precedence of every mere layman in the parish. But with this notable exception, Doctor Bugbee was the peer of every other dignitary, whether civil, military, or ecclesiastical, within the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... where men in knots shout one another down, not where some lonely longhaired prophet declaims conversion. After he became a Catholic he sought to set himself frontiers, the apologetic territory suitable for a layman like himself. But he found himself more and more preoccupied with a territory further inland, penetrating all the time to the deeper meaning of the creed he had embraced. He could look back and see how most of his early books had seized upon some essential ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... influence of the Renaissance. The problem for the present and the future is how, through education, to render culture accessible to all—to break down that barrier which in the Middle Ages was set between clerk and layman, and which in the intermediate period has arisen between the intelligent and ignorant classes. Whether the Utopia of a modern world in which all men shall enjoy the same social, political, and intellectual advantages ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... lines of demarcation were fluid and easily passed, and as through the Church, the schools and the cloister there was an open road for the son of a peasant to achieve the Papacy, so through the guilds, chivalry, war and the court, the layman, if he possessed ability, might from an humble beginning travel far. An epoch of real liberty, of body, soul and mind, and the more real in that limits, differences and degrees were recognized, accepted ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... considering. He knew that only his scientific brethren could gauge the advance in knowledge, and consequent power over disease, due to his patient toil; it was a question of minute discoveries, of investigations unintelligible to the layman. Some of his colleagues held that he foolishly restricted himself in declining to experimentalise in corpore vili, whenever such experiments were attended with pain; he was spoken of in some quarters ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... that pound to amass a huge fortune how much was he obliged to give back, the pound he had stolen only or the pound together with the compound interest accruing upon it or all his huge fortune? If a layman in giving baptism pour the water before saying the words is the child baptized? Is baptism with a mineral water valid? How comes it that while the first beatitude promises the kingdom of heaven to the poor of heart the second beatitude promises also to the meek that they shall possess the land? ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... Wiclif had felt the social need for a popular version of the Bible, so William Tindale felt it now. He saw the need as great among the clergy of the time as among the laity. In one of his writings he says: "If you will not let the layman have the word of God in his mother tongue, yet let the priests have it, which for the great part of them do understand no Latin at all, but sing and patter all day with the lips only that which ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee

... from the serenade theme. With these two smuggled themes everything contrapuntal (a fugue included) and instrumental is done that technical bravado could suggest or true art license. The result is a carnival of technic that compels the layman to wonder ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... spontaneity adhere to it. These must be taken into account in any estimate of the net educative influence of machinery. But though these mental qualities must not be overlooked, exaggerated importance should not be attached to them. The layman is often apt to esteem too highly the nature of skilled specialist work. A locomotive superintendent of a railway was recently questioned as to the quality of engine-driving. "After twenty years' experience he declared ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... interesting to paleographers and historians, having no more bearing on human welfare than the controversy as to whether uncial or cursive is the older form of writing); yet now, within fifty years of Colenso's heresy, there is not a Churchman of any authority living, or an educated layman, who could without ridicule declare that Moses wrote the Pentateuch as Pascal wrote his Thoughts or D'Aubigny his History of the Reformation, or that St. Jerome wrote the passage about the three ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... them, as to keep them to their duties; but when a constituency assumes to enact the part of executive and judiciary, they not only get beyond their depth, but into the mire. What can, what does the best-informed layman, for instance, know of the qualifications of this or that candidate to fill a seat on the bench! He has to take another's judgment for his guide; and a popular appointment of this nature, is merely transferring ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... I am, and can be, only a layman?" he asked. "What claims can I have, except the common claim of all faithful members of the Church on the good offices of the priesthood?" He paused for a moment, and continued with the abruptness of a man struck by a new idea. "Yes! I have perhaps one small aim of my own—the ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... tight little smile. "And he's not a qualified observer. Neither, for that matter, is Rainsford. Regardless of his position as a xeno-naturalist, he is complete layman in the psychosciences. He's just taken this other man's statements uncritically. As for what he claims to have observed for himself, how do we know he isn't including a lot of erroneous inferences with his ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... valuable, employment, to produce this short sketch of the story of a great people, now our Ally. My motive has been mainly that I do not think that any such sketch, concentrated enough to be readable by the average layman who has other things to do (especially in these days) than to study more elaborate and authoritative histories, at present exists, and I have thought that in writing it I might perhaps be discharging some ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... exceeded the speed of light. Who could say what continuum that might have put us in? I remember an analogy I read once, in a layman's book on different theories of space-time. '—The future and the past, two branches of a hyperbola, each with the speed of ...
— An Empty Bottle • Mari Wolf

... four stages of Cruelty. Those wretched fools, reverend divines and others, who were strangling men and women for imaginary crimes a little more than a century ago among us, were set right by a layman, and very angry it made them ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... and most conscientiously laborious of our clergymen has lately ventured to question whether all his professional brethren invariably give utterance to their sincerest beliefs, and has been sharply criticised for so doing. The layman, who sits silent in his pew, has his rights when out of it, and among them is the right of questioning that which has been addressed to him from the privileged eminence of the pulpit, or in any way sanctioned by his religious teacher. It is ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... themselves were in a genial mood, easily moved to wide grins; and with a single exception they looked much like any other road gang at work anywhere in the land. An expert might have recognized purely criminal types among them: to a layman they suggested merely the lower grades of unskilled labor. Some of the faces were distinctly brutal; there was the sullen visage of a powerful negro who, with different environment, might have been a Congo prince; but the face of ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... materially to our store of exact science. Through their influence, orphanages have been founded, schools established, and hospitals opened. Creeds take a secondary place to deeds in this land, and when you discuss a man, be he cleric or layman, the last thing you ask is, "To what church does he belong?" Incidentally, it does seem rather odd that with Scottish blood running through the veins of nine-tenths of the people of this North as yet no Presbyterian ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... ourselves, because in many matters of behaviour and the management of the passions the right amount for one person would be excessive for another, according to varieties of age, sex, station, and disposition. Thus anger that might become a layman might be unbefitting in a churchman; and a man might be thought loquacious if he talked as much as a discreet matron. [Footnote 5] The golden mean, then, must be defined by reason according to the particular circumstances of each case. But as Reason herself is to seek ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... are used only against the military and naval forces of the enemy. The original proposal was carried by a unanimous vote, save ours. I am not satisfied with our attitude on this question; but what can a layman do when he has against him the foremost contemporary military and naval experts? My hope is that the United States will yet stand with the majority on ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... Diocletian's time: some had been blinded, or had their ears cut off; some had marks worn on their arms by chains, or were bowed by hard labor in the mines. The Emperor, in purple and gold, took a seat in the council as the prince, but only as a layman and not yet baptized; and the person who used the most powerful arguments was a young deacon of Alexandria named Athanasius. Almost every Bishop declared that the doctrine of Arius was contrary to what the Church ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... artist, on the other hand, and to my mind very justly, looks primarily for what he calls good painting, and a simple statement of these two points of view explains a great deal of very deplorable friction between the artist and the willing and enthusiastic layman, who is constantly discouraged by finding that his artist friend greets his pet canvas ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... 6: At the beginning of the poem Helmbrecht's elaborately embroidered hood is described at length. 7: This is not to be understood as a mockery of religion. A dying person might be shrived by a layman if no priest was at hand, a bit of earth or grass being substituted ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... lady, of whom all we know is that her name was Lucretia. Four children had blessed the union, and the composer's domestic happiness became a bar to his temporal preferment. With two others he was dismissed from the chapel because he was a layman, and a trifling pension allowed him. Two months afterward, though, he was appointed chapel-master of St. John Lateran. His works now succeeded each other rapidly, and different collections of his masses were dedicated to the crowned ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris

... lining membrane of the peritoneal cavity. It is well to remember that there is nothing in the peritoneal cavity except a little serum. The layman will say that the bowels are in this cavity, but they are not; they project into the cavity, and their outside covering is the lining membrane of the peritoneal cavity, but they are truly on the outside of the cavity, and to enable ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... Peter Moller, a wealthy layman, had met with a great sorrow in the death of his son. He was planning to expend a large sum for a monument in memory of this son, when Dr. Passavant, an eminent worker in behalf of invalids and orphans, called upon him, perhaps with the hope of obtaining a contribution ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner

... when any of the animals in their care are sick as soon as the first symptom of disease manifests itself, by changes in the general appearance and behavior. But in order to ascertain the exact condition a general and systematic examination is necessary. The examiner, whether he be a layman or a veterinarian, must observe the animal carefully, noting the behavior, appearance, surroundings, ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... stood back with the bored contempt of the professional for the layman who intrudes on his mysteries. Other civilians had come that way before—had seen, and grinned, and complimented and gone their way, leaving the gunners high up on the bleak hillside to grill or mildew or freeze for weeks and months. Then she spoke. Her voice was higher pitched, it seemed, ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling

... In one of the stories told by Murphy, Johnson is made to say, 'Damn the rascal.' Murphy would as soon have made the Archbishop of Canterbury swear as Johnson; much sooner the Archbishop of York. It was Murphy 'who paid him the highest compliment that ever was paid to a layman, by asking his pardon for repeating some oaths in the course of telling a story' (post, April 12, 1776). Even supposing that at this time he was ignorant of his character, though the supposition is a wild one, he would at once have been set right by Boswell and the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... smiling graciously. "I really don't see a great deal of point going into theory, gentlemen." She looked at Ross and Dr. Braun, then back at Crowley. "Don, I think that what the doctor was leading up to was an attempt to describe in layman's language the theory of the process onto which we've stumbled. He was using the jellyfish as an example of a life form all but invisible. But I'm sure you aren't interested in technical terminology, are you? A good deal of gobbledygook, really, ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)

... save life. A wariness of mind he would answer as fitted all and, laying hand to jaw, he said dissembling, as his wont was, that as it was informed him, who had ever loved the art of physic as might a layman, and agreeing also with his experience of so seldomseen an accident it was good for that mother Church belike at one blow had birth and death pence and in such sort deliverly he scaped their questions. That is truth, pardy, said Dixon, and, or I err, a pregnant ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... library—now the central portion of the Bodleian—had been completed about 1480. It was well stocked with manuscripts of value, the most important of which, in number about 600[446], had been given by Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, between 1439 and 1446. His collection was that of a cultivated layman, and was comparatively poor in theological literature. Yet in this home of all that was noble in literature and splendid in art (for the Duke's copies are said to have been the finest that could be bought) did this crew of ignorant fanatics cry havoc, with ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... some hundred yards behind the low crest held midway of our line by the Second Corps, whence the ground fell away in a gentle slope. The space back of our line was in what to a layman's eye would have seemed the wildest confusion of wagons, ambulances, ammunition mules, cattle, and wandering men. It was slowly assuming some order as the Provost Guard, dusty, despotic and cross, ranged the wagons, drove back stragglers, and left wide lanes for the artillery to ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... address themselves primarily to the educated layman rather than to the expert. It was hoped that the publication of the essays would serve the double purpose of illustrating the far-reaching influence of Darwin's work on the progress of knowledge and the present attitude of original investigators and thinkers towards ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... was caught under a tree he was felling, and badly hurt. During the hour or so that followed, getting the tree cut away, and moving the injured man to the cabin on a wood sledge, Dick had the feeling of helplessness of any layman in an accident. He was solicitous but clumsy. But when they had got the patient into his bed, quite automatically he found himself making an investigation and ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... quickly under again, the captain at the periscope taking each time a fresh bearing of the enemy, who is supposed to be at some distance and steaming at good speed. After two or three such quick sights, changing course after each sight, it will be time to discharge a torpedo or two at her. And—the layman may note it—with expert men at the periscope and diving-rudder, a porpoising sub can sight, discharge her torpedo, and ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly

... engaged in all kinds of pursuits and came from ALL walks of life. They ranged from social outcasts to society leaders; from poverty stricken unfortunates to persons of great wealth; from illiterate men and women to editors and college professors; from laborers and layman to physicians and ministers. The youngest suicide was a mere infant of five years, the oldest, a centenarian of 106! Among the suicides of last year were two evangelists and twelve clergymen. It would appear that those who had devoted their thoughts ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis

... and the layman, the scholar and the illiterate, the prince and the peasant, the mother and the maid, acknowledge ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... country a military organization is too often judged by the acts of a few of its members. When one or two soldiers in uniform conduct themselves in an ungentlemanly or unmilitary manner to the disgrace of the uniform, the layman shakes his head and condemns all men wearing that uniform. Hence, show by the way in which you wear your uniform that you are proud of it; this can be best accomplished by ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey

... himself that to which he was not entitled,—the office of a bishop in the Church. Under these strange and irregular circumstances was the infant Church, brought from the British isles and planted in the wilderness of Australia, allowed to continue for about twelve years. The witness of a layman concerning this state of things may be here repeated: "I myself then saw a church without a bishop, and I trust in God I may never see it again."[175] In 1824, the Rev. T. H. Scott was appointed Archdeacon of New South ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... psychologic principles on which the talks rest are at least measurably correct, though when doctors disagree on vital points, how shall the layman know the ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the church without further examination, whether they be right or wrong, as Papists teach that the magistrate is to execute the decrees of their Popish councels with blind obedience, and submit his faith to them, because he is a layman and may not dare to examine whether the church doth erre or not, is clear. 1. Because, if in hearing the Word all should follow the example of the men of Berea, not relying on the testimony of Paul or any preacher, [and] try whether that ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... if a layman may speak," put in Marrineal. "Mr. Banneker, shall I have the contract ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... before the final figure can be set. So, the prospective buyer must have patience and understanding. Also, he should have his architect prepare plans for the work with just as much thoroughness as if it were a new building. To the layman it may all seem very complicated but to an architect who knows his old houses, it is no more difficult than new work. He begins by making a careful set of measured drawings of the old house as it stands. He examines the fabric to determine what sills, ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... extravagant attachment to any sect. Some gentlemen in Ireland affect that sort of glory. It is to their taste. Their piety, I take it for granted, justifies the fervor of their zeal, and may palliate the excess of it. Being myself no more than a common layman, commonly informed in controversies, leading only a very common life, and having only a common citizen's interest in the Church or in the State, yet to you I will say, in justice to my own sentiments, that not one of those zealots for a Protestant interest ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the Duchess of Longueville concealed Arnauld in an obscure lodging, who assumed the dress of a layman, wearing a sword and full-bottomed wig. Arnauld was attacked by a fever, and in the course of conversation with his physician, he inquired after news. "They talk of a new book of the Port-Royal," replied the doctor, "ascribed to Arnauld or to Sacy; but I do not believe it comes from Sacy; ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... and, apparently fascinated by their own reflection, broke out passionately against the expression they felt in the figure of despair, of atheism, of denial. Like the others, the priest saw only what he brought. Like all great artists, St. Gaudens held up the mirror and no more. The American layman had lost sight of ideals; the American priest had lost sight of faith. Both were more American than the old, half-witted soldiers who denounced the wasting, on a mere grave, of money which should have been ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... gave him the admirable expression of an old Christian soldier. 'Bonus miles Christi'—a good soldier of Christ—had been inscribed upon the tomb of the chief under whom he had been wounded at Patay. One would have taken him for a guardian layman of the tombs of the martyrs, capable of confessing his faith like them, even to the death. And when Julien determined to approach and to touch him lightly on the shoulder, he saw that, in the nobleman's clear, blue eyes, ordinarily so gay, and sometimes so choleric, sparkled unshed tears. ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... "Letters," to find him treating questions, as serious for the friends he was defending as for their adversaries, ironically, with a but half-veiled disdain for them, or an affected humility at being unskilled in them and no theologian. He does not allow us to forget that he is, after all, a layman; while he introduces us, almost avowedly, into a world of unmeaning terms, and unreal distinctions and suppositions that can never be verified. The world in general, indeed, se paye des paroles. That saying ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... friend in a neighboring hut had been suffering for more than a week with chills and fever, but that she was "embarrassed" and must not take anything that might bring that condition prematurely to a head. I prescribed not without some layman misgiving. Great astonishment spread throughout the hamlet when I refused payment for my services, and the old woman not only vociferously declined the coin I proffered for the food, but bade me farewell with a vehement "Dios se lo pagara"—whether in Honduranean change ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... hours. He gives seven hours to manual labor, and he neither eats nor drinks more than is absolutely essential. Through his intelligent, voluntary labor, conscientiously performed and with a view to the future, he produces more than the layman does. Through his temperate, judicious, economical system he consumes less than the layman does. Hence it is that where the layman had failed he sustains himself and even prospers.[1105] He welcomes the unfortunate, feeds them, sets ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... if that blessing had not been granted to us. As for the salutation of Mr. Rangely which so shocked your reverence, that was part of the campaign. He had just promised to write an article for the 'Churchman' advocating Father Frontford from the point of view of a layman; and of course until that is in print it is necessary to be gracious to him. The trouble with you is that you've seen so little of life that you exaggerate the most innocent things. You really are rather insulting to me, if you think of it; but I pardon ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... It is the fulfilment of our duty. You are a layman. With you sentiments play an important part. We, the police, on the other hand are compelled to sacrifice our feelings to ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma

... whole university; however he finally abandoned his professor's chair and his telescope and returned to his monastery, to his quiet cell, and there he died as a good Christian should. I am also acquainted with Sniadecki,147 who is a very wise man, though a layman. Now the astronomers regard planets and comets just as plain citizens do a coach; they know whether it is drawing up before the king's palace, or whether it is starting abroad from the city gates; but who was riding in it, and why, of what he talked with the king, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... before the New Testament was printed in Erse. The whole Bible was not printed in Erse till this Church had existed more than one hundred and twenty years. Nor did the publication at last take place under the patronage of the lazy and wealthy hierarchy. The expense was defrayed by a layman, the illustrious Robert Boyle. So things went on century after century. Swift, more than a hundred years ago, described the prelates of his country as men gorged with wealth and sunk in indolence, whose chief business was to bow and job at the Castle. The only ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to Dr. Channing, with a preface of his own. He showed me Professor Stuart's letter in reply, and seemed rather amused that the professor directed it to the Rev. James Thom, supposing, of course, that so much theological zeal could not inhere in a layman. He also showed us many autograph letters of their former pastor, Mr. Cheyne, whose interesting memoirs have excited a good deal of attention in some circles ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... the council bore abundant fruit during several succeeding pontificates. The central government was completely reorganized. A definite catechism was prepared at Rome and every layman instructed in the tenets and obligations of his religion. Revisions were made in the service books of the Church, and a new standard edition of the Latin Bible, the Vulgate, was issued. A list, called the Index, was prepared ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... Works resulted in the production by them of the three presses from which Uber Land und Meer and Die Illustrirte Welt are to-day issued. As a whole and in detail, as well as in its productions, the press is the marvel of mechanic and layman. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various

... exporting of drugs would prove profitable for the colony in Virginia and for the Company may explain why two apothecaries accompanied the second group of immigrants who arrived in 1608. Someone had to search out and identify possible drugs, and a layman could not be expected to perform a task requiring such specialized knowledge. The apothecaries could further serve the new settlement by helping ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes

... lived as a layman and had never learned any poetry. Indeed, so ignorant of singing was he that sometimes, at a feast, where it was the custom that for the pleasure of all each guest should sing in turn, he would rise ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... unmeaning forms and performance of unnecessary ceremonies; in the gaudy decoration of temples with pictures and statues, which some consider an incitement to devotion; in an entire abandonment of the soul of the layman to the care of the priest, as if the laic himself had no part in working out his salvation. As a good Protestant, I am bound to condemn and anathematize these errors; but, more distinctly, I hold that our Puritan brethren (to come back to the point of departure) ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... compass, matches, police whistle and notebook. The field glasses should not be more than six power; and if possible you should get the sort with detachable prisms. The prisms are apt to cloud in a tropical climate, and the non-detachable sort are almost impossible for a layman to clean. Hang these glasses around your neck by a strap only just long enough to permit you to raise them to your eyes. The best notebook is the "loose-leaf" sort. By means of this you can keep always a fresh leaf on top; and at night can transfer ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... dishonorable and even criminal. In Tibet it is well known that, except in the larger towns, nearly all people, excluding brigands and Lamas, are poor, while the monks and their agents thrive on the fat of the land. The masses are maintained in complete ignorance. Seldom is a layman found who can read ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor

... however, rose, and Mr. Allen pulled George down. Mr. Scotton wished to say just one word. They could not, he was sure, overestimate the gravity of the situation. They were called together upon a most solemn occasion. Their worthy pastor had spoken as a minister of the gospel. He, Mr. Scotton, as a layman, wished just to remind them that they were exercising judicial functions—(Brother Bushel fidgeted and got very red)—and that it was necessary they should proceed in proper order. With regard to two of the charges, the evidence was fully before them; that is to say, absence from public ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... a fine thing to look back over—this Southern Board's work! Here was a fine, zealous merchant twenty years ago, then fifty-seven years old, who saw this big job as a modest layman. If he had known more about "Education" or more about "the South, bygawd, sir!" he'd never have had the courage to tackle the job. But with the bravery of ignorance, he turned out to be the wisest man on that task in our generation. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... assumption. There are physicians who will lie, and there are physicians who will not lie; and in each case the individual physician acts in this matter on his own responsibility: he has no code of professional ethics justifying a lie on his part as a physician, when it would not be justifiable in a layman. ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull

... of March, and on the 6th Marshall handed down his most famous opinion. He condensed Pinkney's three-day argument into a pamphlet which may be easily read by the instructed layman in half an hour, for, as is invariably the case with Marshall, his condensation made for greater clarity. In this opinion he also gives evidence, in their highest form, of his other notable qualities as a judicial stylist: his "tiger ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... newly-formed languages were hardly made use of in writing, Latin being still preserved in all legal instruments and public correspondence, the very use of letters, as well as of books, was forgotten. For many centuries, to sum up the account of ignorance in a word, it was rare for a layman, of whatever rank, to know how to sign his name. Their charters, till the use of seals became general, were subscribed with the mark of the cross. Still more extraordinary it was to find one who had any tincture ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... may not contaminate the race with descendants. However, my office is to save life and I cannot do otherwise. But I am a surgeon, and every day I do things in the effort to save and prolong life that to a layman are repulsive and awful, more revolting to him than the sight of bloodless death itself. From the taking of human life I draw back. But no repugnance, no horror, unsteadies my hand elsewhere. The end of the crimes of your devilish confederacy ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... certain order to remove the soil in which preventable diseases grow. These steps, worked out by the sanitarians of Europe and America after a century of experiment, are seen to be very simple and are applicable by the average layman and average physician to the simplest village or rural community. How many of these steps are taken by your city? by your county? by ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... the vernacular, the English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German languages rapidly took shape. Their development was expressive of the new spirit in western Europe, as also was the fact that Dante (1264-1321), "the first literary layman since Boethius" (d. 524), wrote his great poem, The Divine Comedy, in his native Italian instead of in the Latin which he knew so well—an evidence of independence of large future import. New native literatures were springing forth all over Europe. Beginning with the troubadours ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... Rochester, whence they could take ship to the North. Jack, in his life-long character of an attached and incorruptible protector, was to go with them. He would be quite as ready, in the interests of his friends, to bite a priest as a layman, and would show his teeth at the Sheriff with as little compunction as at a street-sweeper. Moreover, like all of his race, Jack was a forgiving person. Many a time had Gertrude teased and tormented him for her own amusement, but nobody expected Jack to remember ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt

... and Pyecroft through professional appreciation; I with a layman's delight in the expert; and ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... avalanche of materialism that is hanging over the European world just now. No syllabus, no act of Parliament can do this. There is no royal road which all can travel. It has been done, to some extent, in the past, and it will have to be done, to a much greater extent, in the future by the layman and the laywoman, by the teachers of all denominations, by some even whom inspectors may consider inefficient and whom children may tolerate as queer. It will be done best by the best teachers, but all teachers can share in the work on the one condition that ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... will be regarded as the more valuable, because they are the voluntary contribution of a Christian layman, as well as of a man of eminent scientific attainments, to the great argument on which depends the religious faith of mankind. Possessing a mind of extraordinary powers, trained under the promptings of an intense thirst for knowledge to patient and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... loved Coniston home, he passed from life Jan. 20, 1900, no one more reverently than he has looked deeper into the mystery of life, thought more concernedly of its problems, shed more passionately and eloquently about him love for the beautiful, or practically and helpfully done more—layman only though he was—for religion and humanity. At his death the nation paid honor to his memory by offering his remains a resting-place in the great fane of England's illustrious dead, Westminster Abbey; but Ruskin had himself otherwise ordered the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... he urged his protege, Stevens, to consent to share in the ceremonies of the service as a layman; but there was still some saving virtue in the young man, which made him resolute in refusing to do so. Perhaps, his refusal was dictated by a policy like that which had governed him so far already; which made him reluctant to commit himself to a degree which ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... to Caesar, in which she begged him to come at once to her house in the Via delta Longara. Caesar questioned the messenger, but he only replied that he could tell him nothing, that he would learn all he cared to know from his mother's own lips. So, as soon as he was at liberty, Caesar, in layman's dress and wrapped in a large cloak, quitted the Vatican and made his way towards the church of Regina Coeli, in the neighbourhood of which, it will be remembered, was the house where ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... in reply, saying that no one ever believed the word of an inquisitor, and that if it should ever be my good fortune to capture Callao I would burn their buildings to the ground, and hang every official, priest, and layman belonging to it. There the matter dropped. Of course I did not get the chance of carrying my threat into execution, but if I had done so I should have certainly carried it out; and even if I had ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... deacons read and kept the matter hid from their pastors. Physicians and lawyers read and spoke not a word to their wives and children. In the church, from highest ecclesiastic and layman, wherever in the professions a religious, scientific, scholarly mind, there was felt the central intellectual commotion of those years—the Battle of the ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... of the insane. The connection of dreams, irrational beliefs and foolish actions with unconscious wishes has been brought to light, though with some exaggeration, by Freud and Jung and their followers. As regards the nature of these unconscious wishes, it seems to me—though as a layman I speak with diffidence—that many psycho-analysts are unduly narrow; no doubt the wishes they emphasize exist, but others, e.g. for honour and power, are equally operative and equally liable to concealment. This, however, does not affect the value of their general theories ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... esteemed, he seems to have lived in the retirement of private life until the maturity of middle age. He early became a member of the Baptist church, in which he led a consistent and zealous life, taking a prominent part as a layman in the promotion of the interests of religion and of the denomination with whom he fraternized. His character and worth made him prominent among the brotherhood. He often represented his church as its messenger, and was usually called to preside ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith

... all his wide experience the latest had been the third day. That, however, was rare; more frequently it was a matter of hours, sometimes barely an hour, while now and then—incredulous as it may seem to the layman—only minutes. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... unseemly. If anyone charges a clerk, let him go to his bishop, for the bishop himself to hear the case, or depute judges. If it come to arbitration, let the so-deputed judges cause the parties to select a judge. If a clerk or a layman have anything against a bishop, you should act between them either by hearing the cause yourself, or by inducing the parties to choose judges. For if his own jurisdiction is not preserved to each bishop, what else results ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... a layman to understand the character of the ice through which the Roosevelt fought her way. Most persons imagine that the ice of the arctic regions has been formed by direct freezing of the sea water; but in the summer time very little of the floating ice is of that character. It is composed ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... hides out of the tanning tubs and cutting them in pieces." In some cases starving, unarmed and practically naked men were abandoned far from any white settlement. What is and what is not allowable in war seems so largely a matter of "military necessity" that the layman is reluctant to comment, for, in the last resort, it is only the needlessly barbarous that ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... sweet and holy amid the breathings of the ocean. Te Deum Laudamus, "We praise thee, O God! we acknowledge thee to be the Lord!" "All the earth doth worship thee, the Father everlasting;" closed the offices, when Mr. Effingham dismissed his congregation with the usual layman's request for the benediction. ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... The layman has no difficulty in recognizing the practical value of researches directed toward the improvement of the incandescent lamp or the increased efficiency of the telephone. He can see the results in the greatly ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale

... hope, start on a plane many thousands of years in advance of me. There should be no more comparison between us than between a person with all his senses and one that is deaf and blind. Though you are a layman, you should, with your faith and frame of mind, soon be but ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... presume, does not often happen to a layman, of administering moral and religious reproof to a Doctor of Divinity; but finding the occasion thrust upon me, and the hereditary Puritan waxing strong in my breast, I deemed it a matter of conscience not ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... spent there officiating for the layman in charge of the mission and in interesting talk with the sergeant of police about the annual winter journey from Dawson to Fort McPherson on the McKenzie, from which he had just returned with a detail of men. The next winter he ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... time before Settle and our other authors were hired by the Whigs to answer it. Full details have not survived; one suspects Shaftesbury's Green Ribbon Club. That such replies were considered necessary testifies both to the popularity of Absalom and Achitophel with the layman in politics and to the Whigs' fear of its harming their cause. Settle's was of course a mercenary pen, and it is amusing to note that after ridiculing Halifax here he was quite prepared to publish, fourteen years later, Sacellum Apollinare: a Funeral Poem ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... 'all the articles' of the Apostles' Creed, and who are bidden by the Church to repeat the same Creed every week, are in the same position as the clergy. But the Bishop again attempts to draw a distinction. 'The responsibility of joining in the Creed is left to the conscience of the layman,' but not to the conscience of the clergyman, nor, we suppose, of the choir.[41] This plea seems to us a very lame one. The Church of England has never thought of imposing severer doctrinal tests on the clergy than on the laity, and assent to the Creeds ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... infima species. Man, for instance, was a lowest species. Any further divisions into which the class might be capable of being broken down, as man into white, black, and red man, or into priest and layman, they did ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... Mars, by a small force of experts whose skills were almost as closed to the general scientific and technical world as the secrets of a medieval guild. The old A-bomb was an historical curiosity, and there was nobody on Uller who had more than a layman's knowledge of the intricate technology of modern nuclear weapons. There were plenty of good nuclear-power engineers on Gongonk Island, but how long would it take them to design and ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... the negligent," L'Isle replied, "the liturgy is but a form; but to the earnest churchman it is a thing of life. Using it, the Christian congregation, priest and layman, pastor and flock, join in an united confession of their sins, in the profession of their common faith, in prayer for mercies needed, in thanksgiving for blessings bestowed. God's praise is sung, his pardon to repentant sinners authoritatively ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... islands.... But those who treated the said fathers most generously were Ours, for we gave them our best and brightest jewel, namely, San Nicolas, allowing them to found their convent in his name. This meant wholly to enrich them and to leave us poor." Further, a layman named Don Bernardino, captain and castellan of the port of Manila, builds a convent for the new order "sufficient for forty religious." At death he and his wife also leave money to continue the work, and the new ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various

... assented Collins. "Of course, I understand," he continued, in a louder voice, as they started toward the door, "that the question of stocks is always a very complicated one, and very difficult for a layman to understand, but a ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson

... clergyman," he would say to himself. And then, if old Brattle chose to turn his daughter out of the house, on such provocation as the daughter had given him, what was that to him, Fenwick, whether priest or layman? The old man knew what he was about, and had ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... arrival at Langley, two men sat in close conference in the Jerusalem Chamber of the Palace of Westminster. One of them was a priest, the other a layman. The first priest, and the first layman, in the realm; for the elder was Thomas de Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the younger was Henry of Bolingbroke, King ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... Grimes some divinity question, holds forth on original sin, or justification, or assurance, monopolizing the conversation. Then tea-things go, and a portion of Scripture comes instead; and old Grimes expounds; very good it is, doubtless, though he is a layman. He's a good old soul; but no one in the room can stand it; even Mrs. Grimes nods over her knitting, and some of the dear brothers breathe very audibly. Mr. Grimes, however, hears nothing but himself. At length he stops; his hearers wake up, and the hassocks begin. Then we go; and Mr. Grimes and ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... possible and precious. And while all that sufficed for him, he honestly entertained the idea of celibacy as a condition necessary for the perfect purification of his own soul, and desirable as giving him a place apart which would help to maintain and strengthen his influence with his people. A layman may remain a bachelor without attracting attention, but a priest who abjures matrimony insists that he makes a sacrifice, and deserves credit for the same. He says that the laws of nature are the laws of God, yet arranges his own life in direct opposition to the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... an equilibrium," remarked Challenger, and the two learned men wandered off into one of their usual scientific arguments, which were as comprehensible as Chinese to the layman. ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... were blacks and whites, to the prisoner there were the imprisoned and the free, and to the sick man there were the sick and the well.... So, without thinking of it once in his lifetime, he had been a civilian, a layman, a non-Catholic, a Gentile, white, free, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... host, refugees of all classes were streaming into Brussels—young and old, rich and poor, priest and layman. Nearly all bore some burden of household treasure, many some pathetically absurd family heirloom. Every kind of vehicle appeared to have been called into use, from smart carriages drawn by heavy Flemish horses to little carts harnessed to dogs. Over ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan



Words linked to "Layman" :   clergyman, commoner, layperson, lay reader, laity, temporalty, secular, common person, common man



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