"Profanation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Convention, received with "the fraternal embrace" by the president and secretaries, and was then installed by the whole legislature in the cathedral, which was called the "Regenerated Temple of Reason." In this monstrous profanation, the apostate archbishop officiated as the high priest of Reason, with a red cap on his head, and a pike in his hand; with this weapon he struck down some of the old religious emblems of the church, and finished his performance by placing a bust of Marat on the altar. A colossal statue was then ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... newly-adopted child to his election as Tribune, I have gone beyond the time of my narration, so that the reader may understand the cause and nature and effect of the anger which Clodius entertained for Cicero. This originated in the bitter words spoken as to the profanation of the Bona Dea, and led to the means for achieving Cicero's exile and other untoward passages of his life. In the year 60 B.C., when Metellus Celer and Afranius were Consuls, Clodius was tried for insulting ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... which the joiners might destroy!—President Bailly enters with Secretaries; and returns bearing papers: alas, within doors, instead of patriotic eloquence, there is now no noise but hammering, sawing, and operative screeching and rumbling! A profanation without parallel. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... unconscious of the limits of sixteen in Bice's case as we all are in the case of Juliet. She was of no age. She was the ideal woman capable of comprehensions and intentions as far above anything possible to the genus boy as heaven was above earth. It would have been a profanation, a sacrilege too dreadful to be thought of, to compare that ethereal creature with the other things of her age with which he was so familiar. Of her age! Her age was the age of romance, of love, of poetry, of ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... expressions of horror at the sacrilege of taking the church into the domain of politics, southern presbyteries one after another renounced the jurisdiction of the General Assembly that could be guilty of so shocking a profanation, and, uniting in a General Assembly of their own, proceeded with great promptitude to make equally emphatic deliverances on the opposite side of the same political question.[354:1] But nice logical consistency and accurate working within the lines of a church theory were more than could ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... lips as if she would have made a formal reply to this appeal. But, had she attempted it, perhaps the old recollections, the long-repressed feelings of childhood, youth and womanhood, might have gushed from her heart in words that it would have been profanation to ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... like profanation to see her exquisite work tortured and murdered. She snatched the cambric from Alison, and set to work to make another perfect stitch herself. At that moment there came the sudden and terrible pain—the shooting agony up the arm, followed by the partial ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... them as far as possible, and he surrounded himself with Bishops and clergy. His mother Helena made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to visit the spots where our blessed Lord lived and died, and to clear them from profanation. The churches she built over the Holy Sepulchre and the Cave of the nativity at Bethlehem have been kept ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... bit funny at the time. I just felt awful. What would the dear old woman say to this profanation? Why the dickens did people have whitewashed walls on which sacrilegious stains were luridly visible? I looked up and down the hall like Moses when he slew that Egyptian, trembling lest the old woman should come in. How ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... consecrated hosts from Catholic Churches, and this not as a consequence of importing the vessels of the sanctuary, which are often of trifling value and often left behind. The intention of the robbery is therefore to possess the hosts, and their future profanation is the only possible object. Now, before it can be worth while to profane the Eucharist, one must believe in the Real Presence, and this is acknowledged by only two classes, the many who love Christ and some few who hate Him. But He is not profaned, at least not intentionally, ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... offended with nature for making him a man, and not a woman;" and the affirmation of the Pedasians, from your friend Herodotus, that, whenever any calamity befell them, a prodigious beard grew on the chin of the priestess of Minerva. You ever thought a man in woman's disguise a profanation—a woman in man's a horror. The fair sex were never, in your eyes, the weaker and the worse; how oft have you delighted in their outward grace and moral purity, contrasting them with gross man, gloriously ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... extravagants of the emotional telegram. They were probably among the earliest to apply electricity for heart-breaking messages. Some lovers feel it a profanation thus to reveal their souls beneath the eye of a telegraph-operator; but the objection of delicacy ceases if you can regard the operator in his actual capacity as a part of the machine. French perhaps is an ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... them,' said Leonard. 'There was always refreshment; it was only before and after that all would seem mockery, profanation, or worse still, delusion and superstition—as if my very condition proved that there was ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... joined by the rector and professors of the university, but on arriving at the door he turned back and spent the hour of service in the retirement of his rooms. To his free soul it was a performance, professional and sectarian, and in consequence, something of a profanation. His disciple Hegel must have been moved by similar feelings when he replied to the questioning of his old housekeeper why he did not attend Divine service, "Thinking is also a ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... accomplishments of "honesty, sobriety, humility," and on the precipice of reprobating such qualities,—which, however beneficial to the soul, gave no hope of preservation to the body,—they were prevented from this profanation by the fortunate remembrance of one qualification, which Henry, the possessor, in all his distress, had never till then called to his recollection; but which, as soon as remembered and made known, changed the whole prospect of wretchedness placed ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... the fine organ playing of Mr. Novello, and admired the soaring singing of his daughter,— "the tuneful daughter of a tuneful sire;" but he resented the misapplication of the theatres to sacred music. He thought this a profanation of the good old original ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... of war. Nor did they draw the awful sword until the Thirteen Colonies, in Congress assembled, (1774,) solemnly pledged each other to stand as one people in defence of the old local government. This was in the majesty of revolution. It is profanation to compare with this patience and glory the insurrection begun by South Carolina. She—the first time such an organization ever did it—assumed to be a nation; and then madly led off in a suicidal war on the National Government, although ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... associations as are supplied by a tap and skittle-ground;—a person of loftier and purer sentiments would have shown more reverence for the genius loci, and would have remembered that the walls were once vocal with Christian prayers, and that what in other instances would be only negligence, is profanation here. But probably the innkeeper pays his rent regularly, and we hope will be made the interlocutor in an imaginary conversation with the last ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... to see you, Fanny." There was tragedy, not profanation in his voice. His hand gripped hers. He turned, and now, for the first time, Fanny saw that at his elbow stood a buxom, peasant woman, evidently a nurse, and in her arms a child. A child with Molly ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... the tropics come days of languor and nights of inactivity so delicious it seems profanation to move. More than one thousand men, who boarded the Massachusetts with the vigor of the North in their veins, have succumbed, one by one, to the lethargy of the soft breeze of ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... of crowded and dirty tenements and of foul ship-steerages, seemed doubly unholy here in the clean sanity of the hills. It was a profanation, a hideous curse. "If it should seize upon Ross—" Words failed to express her horror, her hate of it. "Oh God, save him!" she prayed ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... himself must have been labouring under an illusion as to the distance. He almost gave way to an impulse to thrust his bayonet through the corpse; but a dead body, seen under the shadows of night, inspires a certain air of imposing solemnity, which repels profanation; and this, acting upon the spirit of the sentinel, hindered him ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... marriage-bed. My eyes were opened. I saw it all, now, as I had never done before. It was not alone my existence and my mentality that I must sacrifice, but my body. That too was to be given up! To what horrible profanation and outrage was I to be subjected! My head grew dizzy and my eyes blind. I shared in the torments of Julia—I was Julia herself. I was on the brink of a precipice, with hell beneath me and devils goading me on to ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... walked toward his store under the shadow of the dawn, was conscious of all this. The land was wrapped in the intensest quiet; the very crunch of his snowshoes seemed a profanation, though he trod lightly. When he had ascended the Point, he paused and gazed back. Already the thaw had commenced; down the still white face of the country, which lay at his feet like a shrouded corpse, the tears had begun to trinkle, ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... God with great fervency, and humbled themselves in sackcloth, and put ashes on their heads, and cried unto the God of Israel that he would not give their wives and their children and cities for a prey, and the Temple for a profanation: and the High-priest, and all the Priests put on sackcloth and ashes, and offered daily burnt offerings with vows and free gifts of the people, Judith iv. and then began Josiah to seek after the God of his father David: and after Judith had slain Holofernes, and the ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... feat of art even in these last chapters neither to lose the light comical touch, nor to lapse into undisguised profanation. It was only feasible by veritable dancing on the tight-rope of sophistry. In the Moria Erasmus is all the time hovering on the brink of profound truths. But what a boon it was—still granted to those times—to be able to treat of all this in a vein of pleasantry. For this should ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... practice. The child had flown from her in the instant of his grasping it, like a pale butterfly, but there remained where it had floated, a silken and nubile essence, fairy and humanity in one, clad in pure thoughts and sweet respect, the profanation of which would be as rare a game as Satan's struggle with the ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... havigi. Procuration konfidatisto. Prodigal malsxpara. Prodigality malsxparemo. Prodigious mireginda. Prodigy miregindajxo. Produce produkti. Produce produktajxo. Product produktajxo. Production produkto. Productive fruktoporta. Proem antauxdramo, antauxdiro. Profanation malpiegajxo. Profane malpia. Profanity malpieco. Profess anonci, profesi. Profession (occupation) profesio. Professor profesoro. Proffer proponi, prezenti. Proficient kompetenta. Profile profilo. Profit profito, gajno. Profitable profita. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... of the sweater she wore presented an inharmonious note on the field of velvety green;—it was strangely out of place, he thought,—almost an offence to the eye. He was conscious of an instant protest against this profanation. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... coarse jests of polite society, its sanctity forever missed. The temple has been invaded, its white floors trodden by feet from muddy alleys, the gods thrown down. Is not the temple as much ruined when this profanation has been accomplished, as if the walls had fallen? I will not be misunderstood as doubting, for one moment, the purity of soul of American girls as a whole; but I assert, that the result of which I have spoken is terribly common in our large cities, and that it is much more likely ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... had looked about for a while at the beautiful church, drew them forth one by one and read the greater part of them. Occupying one's self with light literature in a great religious edifice is perhaps as bad a piece of profanation as any of those rude dealings which Mr. Ruskin justly deplores; but a traveller has to make the most of odd moments, and I was waiting for a friend in whose company I was to go and look at Giotto's beautiful frescoes ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... treacherous gains as if it were a thing done, they made a practice of going every year to take captives in the islands of our administration, often outraging the temples sacrilegiously and not a single one that was near the beach escaped profanation and they utterly abused everything intended for religious worship, with great scorn to the name of Christian. They cut the sacred vestments, into robes and other garments [capisayos], and they destined the ciboriums and sacred chalices to the dirty use of their ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... and growing happy susceptibilities. It was, perhaps, just as well to have her mind reverted to realistic fact. The presence of Haze Ruff, the astounding truth of the contact with his huge sheep-defiled hands, had been profanation and degradation under which she sickened with fear and shame. Yet hovering back of her shame and rising anger seemed to be a pale, monstrous, and indefinable thought, insistent and accusing, with which she must sooner or later reckon. It might have ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... the artist's profanation of his first attempt to approach Miss Francie by indulging at the end of another week in a second. He went about six o'clock, when he supposed she would have returned from her day's wanderings, and his prudence was rewarded by the sight of the young lady sitting in the ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... of the first laws that fall into our hands justice, and their practice and dispensation very often foolish and very unjust; and as those who scoff at and accuse it, do not, nevertheless, blame that noble virtue itself, but only condemn the abuse and profanation of that sacred title; so in physic I very much honour that glorious name, its propositions, its promises, so useful for the service of mankind; but the ordinances it foists upon us, betwixt ourselves, I neither ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... disappeared, the whole church had vanished, I no longer saw anything, ... or more truly I saw, O my God, one thing alone. "Heavens, how can I speak of it? Oh no! human words cannot attain to expressing the inexpressible. Any description, however sublime it might be, could be but a profanation ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... Nova, p. 45), brought out Douglas at the Dublin Theatre. The first two nights it had great success. The third night was as usual to be the author's. It had meanwhile got abroad that he was a clergyman. This play was considered a profanation, a faction was raised, and the third night did not pay its expenses. It was Whyte who suggested that, by way of consolation, Sheridan should give Home a gold medal. The inscription said that he presented it to him 'for having enriched the stage ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... this were the end of this service, yet it were needless: since we have done it over and over again, in our former protestations and covenants; and so this repetition may seem to be a profanation of so holy an ordinance, by making of it so ordinary, and nothing else, but a taking of God's name in vain. To ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... barbarian who can enter it without a feeling of reverence for the presiding divinity of the place. Loud talking, laughing, pushing before others who are examining a picture or statue, moving seats noisily, or any rude or discourteous conduct, seems like profanation in such a place. Avoid them by all means, we entreat you; and though you wear your hat everywhere ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... toiled away their lives. For the classes who came next to him were all the sensuous delights of a most luxurious civilization, and high intellectual pleasures which the mysteries of the temple hid from vulgar profanation. But for the millions who constituted the base of the social pyramid there was but the lash to stimulate their toil, and the worship of beasts to satisfy the yearnings of the soul. From time immemorial to the present day the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... 'desecration of the Sabbath' by the municipal authorities themselves, but they are assuredly responsible for its profanation. Appointed to guard the public morals, they are assuredly censurable if licentiousness is suffered to run its wild career unnoticed and unchecked. We do not ask to be believed. We would prefer to ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... separate carriages for separate castes, but compliance with the proposal was of course out of the question; and now high Brahmans and low Chumars—who are never seen in the same temple even though they worship the same gods, as the presence of a Chumar there would be deemed a profanation—may be seen packed in the same carriage in as close contact as two human beings can be. When they separate the Brahmans have recourse to lustrations, and satisfy themselves the impurity has ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... over Eden Valley hill stood still and wondered at the profanation of the holy day, not knowing. Even sober pillars of the Kirk Erastian going homeward smiled and shook their ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... them, without encountering an unfriendly glance. At the door stood two Cossack soldiers, specially placed there to prevent the worshippers from being insulted by curious Christians. (Those who have witnessed the wanton profanation of mosques in India by the English officers will please notice this fact.) If we had not put off our shoes before entering the hall of worship, the Cossacks would have performed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... horror, clutching his staff as though to shield it from profanation. The others howled like a hound-pack at a full moon, except one of the short-tunic boys, who was slapping himself on the head with both hands and yodeling. The horn-crew hastily swung their piece around at the ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... guessed; her marriage would be something of an event. Heaven grant that he might read no journalistic description of the ceremony! Few things more disgusted him than the thought of a fashionable wedding; he could see nothing in it but profanation and indecency. That mattered little, to be sure, in the case of ordinary people, who were born, and lived, and died, in fashionable routine, anxious only to exhibit themselves at any given moment in the way held to be good form; but it was hard ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... yet something to say, takes refuge at the altar; and there even a maddened mob dare not molest him. But the prize goes to a rising star, young Sophocles; and presently the Gods' Messenger is formally accused and tried for "Profanation ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... truth and authority to the souls of men—to trace, I say, the outward and the visible signs of sacraments, of polity, of discipline, up to the inward spiritual realities upon which they depend, which they impart and represent to faith, or shelter from profanation; to study the workings of the hidden life of the Church by those developments which, in all ages and countries, have been its necessary modes of access to human feeling and apprehension; to systematise the end gained; to learn what is universal, what partial, what temporary, what eternal, ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... to a sumptuous banquet. After the wine and rum had produced their wonted effects, females were introduced, and compelled to partake of the feast. These poor creatures, having no suspicion of the King's intentions, shrunk with terror from a profanation punishable with death. But their resistance was unavailing: they were not only constrained to sit down to the repast in company with the men, but even to eat pork; and thus, to the great astonishment ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... mysterious sanctity round the beloved object, making the lover most modest when in her presence. So reserved is affection, that, receiving or returning personal endearments, it wishes, not only to shun the human eye, as a kind of profanation; but to diffuse an encircling cloudy obscurity to shut out even the saucy sparkling sunbeams. Yet, that affection does not deserve the epithet of chaste which does not receive a sublime gloom of tender melancholy, that allows the ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... of the University, animated by the fiery speeches of one of their Professors, George Mistriotes, the bulwark of the unreconcilable Purists, who would model the modern language of Greece after the ancient, regarded this translation as a treacherous profanation both of the sacred text and of the national speech. The demotikists, branded under the name of [Greek: Malliaroi] "the hairy ones," were thought even by serious people to be national traitors, the creators of a mysterious propaganda ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... a woman was as good as a man; and hence her hatred of marriage, and her Amazonian exploits. But still the Piache[195-12] would not show her that trumpet, or tell her where it was: and as for going to seek it, even she feared the superstitious wrath of the tribe at such a profanation. But the day after the English went, the Piache chose to express his joy at their departure; whereon, as was to be expected, a fresh explosion between master and pupil, which ended, she confessed, in her burning the old rogue's hut over his head, from which he escaped with loss of all his conjuring-tackle, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the baptizing of the children occasioned. By these means, however, I came to the knowledge of their condition, their lives and conversation, of which the latter were the most deplorable—habitual profanation of the Sabbath-day, drunkenness, rioting, immodest dancing, revellings, fightings, an improper state of females on their marriage, and an absence and ignorance of the ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... a miracle, such as was once heard of before in the Church in the person of the holy Denis, was again wrought by Divine Providence to preserve the bodies of these saints from profanation. The trunk of Kieran rose from the ground, and selecting first his own head, and carrying it to a stream, and there carefully washing it, and afterwards performing the same sacred office for each of his ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... and put on others to be inspected by witnesses. Fra Bonvicini made no objection, though the suspicion was humiliating; he changed shirt, dress, and cowl. Then, when the Franciscans observed that Savanarola was placing the tabernacle in his hands, they protested that it was profanation to expose the sacred host to the risk of burning, that this was not in the bond, and if Bonvicini would not give up this supernatural aid, they far their part would give up the trial altogether. Savonarola replied that it was not astonishing that the champion of religion who put his faith ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... were buried in places prepared for that purpose in their own houses; but in after ages they adopted the judicious practice of establishing the burial grounds in desert islands, and outside the walls of towns, by that means securing them from profanation, and themselves from the liability of catching infection from those who ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... victory must, according to divine necessity, [Pg 449] be followed by the outward one. The covenant-people which, inwardly, had submitted to the world, which, by its own guilt, had profaned itself, was, outwardly also, given up to the world, and was profaned in punishment. And this profanation, inflicted upon it as a punishment, again manifested itself just at that place, where the profanation by the guilt had chiefly manifested itself, viz., in the holy city, and in the holy temple. It is with a view to the former manifestation of the victory of the world over the Kingdom of God, that ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... taste perhaps, but that one feels this place needs no such accessories, and, instead of deriving advantage from them, is degraded into a mere show by their presence; and, in saying this much, I feel as though the application of the term was a profanation. ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... clean, artistic, and comfortable. She places upon it the stamp of her character, industry, and good taste. She supplies it with things that delight the senses and point the way to culture. To such a home the crude and the bizarre are a profanation. She administers her home as a sacred trust in the interests of her family and never for exhibition purposes. Her home is an expression of herself, and her children will carry into life the standards that she inculcates through the agency of the home. Life is better for the family and for the community ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... produce of the ancient, rustic, manly, home-bred sense of this country. I did not dare to rub off a particle of the venerable rust that rather adorns and preserves than destroys the metal. It would be a profanation to touch with a tool the stones which construct the sacred altar of peace. I would not violate with modern polish the ingenuous and noble roughness of these truly constitutional materials. Above all things, I was resolved not to be guilty of tampering,—the odious vice of restless and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... babble. Worse than that, they 'devise musical instruments like David.' But how unlike him in the use they make of art! What a descent from the praises of God to the 'idle songs' fit for the hot dining-halls and the guests there! Amos was indignant at the profanation of art, and thought it best used in the service of God. What would he have said if he had been 'fastened into a front-row box' and treated ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... this profanation of the Lord's day, and sat down and contemplated the old Aztec god, who had been deified for his wisdom, and could not but regret the change that had been imposed upon these imbecile Indians. The next Sabbath after this was the national anniversary of the miraculous ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... that it was, he abjured his religion to avoid the agonies of fire, and was thereupon baptised under the name of Juan de Atahualpa. The name John was given to him because this baptism in extremis took place on St. John the Baptist's day. Rarely, if ever, has there been a more ghastly profanation of ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... need to deal with the failings of those who are just emerging from heathenism in our own days. The First Epistle to the Corinthians administers rebukes for schism, fornication, idolatrous tendencies, misuse of spiritual gifts, profanation of the worship of God, and misbelief. And even the Saints at Ephesus, who are addressed as if they had made great advance in the understanding of the mysteries of the faith, are warned to abstain ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... cushion, and efface the appearance of any one having occupied that sacred seat; although King Charles himself, considering the youth and beauty as well as the affliction of the momentary usurper of his hallowed chair, would probably have thought very little of the profanation. She then hastened officiously to press her support on Edith, as she paced the hall apparently in ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... God are the most glaring defect of his system. He contended that we cannot attribute to the Deity intelligence or personality without making him a finite being like ourselves; that it is a species of profanation to conceive of him as a separate essence, since such a conception implies the existence of a sensible being limited by space and time; that we cannot impute to him even existence without compounding him with sensible natures; that no satisfactory explanation ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners.' Turn away, refresh your soul with solitude and fill yourself with the thought of God. For only by the thought of Him can man save his soul from profanation." ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... old mother remained inexorable. I am sure in her own mind she resented as a profanation her daughter's work about the church. She herself had never entered that familiar holy place since her daughter's disgrace. Sunday and holiday all these years she had trudged to Breagh, a long way round by the coast, for mass. All expostulations have been ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... the silence like a profanation. Unseen by either of us, Ventnor had slipped to one side where he could cover the core of ruby flame that must have seemed to him the heart of the Disk's rose of fire. He knelt a few yards away, white lipped, eyes cold gray ice, sighting carefully ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... the boldest of all things. It is true, the fault is not his, so much as theirs who have consented to this profanation, but that is the way of the world. But, I say, there's no small bit of people coming. Any one would say that nothing had changed since last year. The same distinguished persons, the same elegant costumes, the crowding at the door, the same excitement in the portico, the same throng in the church. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... (sense) contained therein is this, that by polygamical marriage in the Christian world, the marriage of the Lord and the Church is profaned; in like manner the marriage of good and truth; and still more the Word, and with the Word the church; and the profanation of those things is spiritual adultery. That the profanation of the good and truth of the church derived from the Word corresponds to adultery, and hence is spiritual adultery; and that the falsification of good and truth has alike ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... wealth.[12] The family of the chief do not build tombs; and that now raised over the place where the late prince was buried is dedicated as a temple to Siva, and was made merely with a view to secure the place from all danger of profanation.[13] ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... What right has Goethe, what right has Arnold, what right has any dictionary, to define the word Irreverence for me? What their ideals are is nothing to me. So long as I reverence my own ideals my whole duty is done, and I commit no profanation if I laugh at theirs. I may scoff at other people's ideals as much as I want to. It is my right and my privilege. No man has any right to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the question as an abstract one. I ask you only to suppose the case. Should you thrust conscience into the cellar, stifle its outcries, and give your consent to a profanation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... mental conditions which could make him capable of such a profanation. Step by step he traced their development, in his own harsh experiences of life, as he followed his father's body to the grave. He traced them back indeed to that father himself, since it was from him that he had inherited the bitter and perilous self-confidence which had sunk ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... remark was told to the pope at his levee, and caused him to remark, Laetamini, gentes, quoniam surrexit Dominus. A quotation which the old cardinals abominated as a profanation of sacred texts. Seeing which, the pope reprimanded them severely, and took occasion to lecture them, telling them that if they were good Christians they were bad politicians. Indeed, he relied upon the fair Imperia to reclaim the emperor, and with this idea he syringed ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... said, and laughed. "But I did not then quite understand the Comtesse. I know now that she detests me. Then, too, she had not seen or thought of Ratoneau—Dieu! What profanation! Was it quite new, the terrible idea? I saw the brute—pah! We were handing ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... had been supreme. The air was full of intonations and cadences; not of the echo of smashing blows, of riven armor, of howling victims and roaring beasts. The spot is, in short, one of the sweetest legacies of the ancient world; and there seems no profanation in the fact that by day it is open to the good people of Arles, who use it to pass, by no means in great num- bers, from one part of the town to the other; treading the old marble floor, and brushing, if need be, the empty benches. This familiarity does ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Catholic system of measurable sins and merits, with rewards and punishments legally adjusted and controlled by priestly as well as by divine prerogative. Such a supernatural mechanism seems to an independent and uncowed nature a profanation and an imposture. Away, it says, with all intermediaries between the soul and God, with all meddlesome priestcraft and all mechanical salvation. Salvation shall be by faith alone, that is, by an attitude and sentiment private to the spirit, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... are a profanation to any good woman. Ned Bannister, of the Shoshones, was one of them. He looked at his cousin, and his ribald eyes coasted back to bold scrutiny of this young woman's charming, buoyant youth. There was Something in his face that sent a flush of shame coursing through ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... and tree. Each flower has wept and bow'd toward the east Above an hour since: yet you not dress'd; Nay! not so much as out of bed? When all the birds have matins said And sung their thankful hymns, 'tis sin, Nay, profanation to keep in, Whereas a thousand virgins on this day Spring, sooner than the ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... given his strut additional pomposity. The resemblance is great, it is striking—Hyperion to a satyr; Thersites to Hercules; mud to marble; dunghill to diamond; a singed cat to a Bengal tiger; a whining puppy to a roaring lion. Shade of the mighty Davis, forgive the almost profanation of ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... angel, as beautiful as the goddess that floated in upon the world in a mother-of-pearl dinghy! As clever as that other one with the fireman's tin hat, as game as Jimmy Wilde, and as kind as Heaven. Spoke to you—touched you—looked at you—blasphemy, profanation and sacrilege! And barged into your bedroom, when—. My God! woman," cried poor Dick, as if a flame came from the marble lips of him, "I could have watched him through an hour of rack and thumbscrew, when I thought of you up in that room ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... delivered by tradition, from the father to the son, and so from generation to generation, without writing; or, unless it were casually, without the least communicating them to any other nation or tribe; for to do that they account a profanation. And, yet, it is thought that they, or some spirit worse than they, first told us, that lice, swallowed alive, were a certain cure for the yellow-jaundice. This, and many other medicines, were discovered by them, or by revelation; for, doubtless, we ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... up and paced the walk a moment, then said, "Well, I don't know. A woman like Grace St. John shakes my faith in our old belief. It seems profanation to assert that ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... accomplished brides." The soul of a footman is expressed by the pen of an abigail,—and the one not a Humphrey Clinker, nor the other a Winifred Jenkins,—and we are expected to admire the result as a good imitation of a lively, intelligent, well-bred American young lady! We protest against the profanation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the worst characters in the colony, Luke Normington, John Colley, and William Osborne. It amounted nearly to a mockery and profanation of religion to administer an oath to such hardened and unprincipled wretches; yet their testimony could not be refused when called for by a prisoner who was standing under the weight of a capital charge; but of the credibility of such testimony it ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... lover of nature. His eye was open to beauty, and his ear to music. He found these, not in rare conditions, but wheresoever he went. He was sincerity itself, and no cant or affectation is to be found in his writings. He was religious in his own way; incapable of any profanation, by act or thought, although his original living and thinking detached him from the social religious forms. He thought that without religion no great deed had ever been accomplished. He was disgusted with crime, and no worldly success could cover ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... young and innocent girl married to this remorseless gambler, scarred with the gun and the knife, was a profanation of maidenhood—and yet, as he fell now and then into a dream, he took on a kind of savage beauty which might allure and destroy a woman. Whatever else he was, he was neither commonplace nor mean. The visitors to whom he was pointed out as "a type of our modern Western desperado" invariably acknowledged ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... tendency to jest on the most solemn subjects, are well known even in the present day, might not have treated Selwyn less harshly for what was done under the influence of wine? To this we are inclined to reply, that no punishment is too severe for profanation; and that drunkenness is not an excuse, but an aggravation. Selwyn threatened to appeal, and took advice on the matter. This, as usual, was vain. Many an expelled man, more unjustly treated than Selwyn, has talked of appeal in vain. Appeal ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... all these high festivals in their copes, that nothing might be lacking to do them honour. He offered no opposition to the deposition of King Richard II.: it was clearly inevitable. Braybrooke was a vigorous reformer of abuses, and denounced the profanation of the church by traffickers, shooting at birds inside, ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... Presbyterians. 4th. Have they liberty of electing their own[5] officers, pastors, elders, and deacons? So the Presbyterians. 5th. Have they power to keep the whole lump of the Church from being leavened, and purely to preserve the ordinances of Christ, from pollution and profanation, &c.? So the Presbyterians, &c. So that whereinsoever the independent government is truly excellent, the presbyterial government stands in a full equipage and equality ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... seventh day sabbath is not of the law of nature, and so not moral; because though we read that the law of nature, and that before Moses, was charged upon the world, yet I find not till then, that the profanation of a seventh day sabbath was charged upon the world: and indeed to me this very thing makes a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... successors of St. Francis never received, whose history throws a bright light on the simplicity of the early days. It will be remembered with what zeal Francis had repaired several churches; his solicitude went further; he saw a sort of profanation in the negligence with which most of them were kept; the want of cleanliness of the sacred objects, ill-concealed by tinsel, gave him a sort of pain, and it often happened that when he was going to preach somewhere ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... not fairer cities than our own, Extravagant enormous apertures For light, and portals larger, open courts Where all ascending all are unconfined, And wider streets in purer air than ours? Temples quite plain with equal architraves They build, nor bearing gods like ours embossed. Oh, profanation! Oh, our ancestors!" Though all the vulgar hate a foreign face, It more offends weak eyes and homely age, Dalica most, who thus her aim pursued. "My promise, O Charoba, I perform. Proclaim to gods and men ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... bound to respect, not for themselves, but by reason of the usage for which they are chosen and set aside, thereby becoming consecrated, religious. We should respect them in a spiritual way as we respect in a human way all that belongs to those whom we hold dear. Irreverence or disrespect is a profanation, a sacrilege. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... whispered to him: "Go now! Despite all her stern allegiance to duty you can make her come into your arms. This marriage is all a hideous mistake. The bigots have trapped her with a bait of false martyrdom. Go while she is still sickened with the first bitterness of this profanation of youth in the custody of age." Then into this hot-blooded counsel crept the old, cold voice of logic, like a calm speaker quieting the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... clergyman, "there is no choice left to me. It would be profanation to take persons in such a mood to make vows, and kneel to receive God's grace, which they evidently make light of. Whoever will not come and apologise ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... our age that God winks at the profanation of the mass, a horrible abomination that fills the whole earth, and at ungodly teachings and other offenses which have hitherto been in vogue in religion. But when men live so together that they disregard both State and home, when huge covetousness, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... she came short, not of the dream, but of the reality. To be placed beside Lucia Harden would have been a severe test for any woman; but for Flossie it was cruelty itself. He had never subjected her to that, not even in thought; for he felt that the comparison, cruel to one woman, was profanation to the other. It was only feminine Fate who could be so unkind as to put those two side by side, that he might look well, and measure his love for Flossie by his love for Lucia, seeing it too as it was. Maddox had not been far ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... genuine, though at the same time very passionate way; and as she had, to use a Scots proverb, a crop for all corn, his attentions were acceptable to her. Had she been true-hearted enough to know anything of that love whose name was for ever suffering profanation upon her lips, she would, being at least a year and a half older than he, have been too much of a woman to encourage his approaches—would have felt he was a boy and must not be allowed to fancy himself a ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... minds of a majority of the people of the free States a vague, grand idea that the Constitution was a sacred instrument of government,—a holy shrine of fundamental law, which no unhallowed hands could touch without profanation,—a digested system of rights and duties, resembling those institutes which were, in early times, devised by the immortal gods for the guidance of infirm mortal man; and the mysterious creatures, half divine and half human, who framed this remarkable document, were ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... place, hitherto children had partaken of the sacrament. This had come partly from the teaching of the need of the sacrament for salvation, partly from the early custom of administering communion directly after baptism. The fear of profanation now caused the gradual discontinuance of children's communions, and in the middle of the thirteenth century they were ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... a book. There was no lamp in the corridor save the moon, but the whole house was bright as I slipped down the great staircase and across the hall to the library. I switched on the lights and then switched them off. They seemed profanation, and ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... saw the name of the Apostle Paul replaced by a convicted felon's cap. Sometimes I was actually present at the confabulations of the Section, where I heard amazing errors propounded. At last I quitted this place of profanation and went to live on the pension of a hundred pistoles allowed me by the Assembly in a stable that stood empty, the horses having been requisitioned for the service of the armies. There I sing Mass for a few of the faithful, who come ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... vessel were immured from the world. Virginia was standing at the wheel, and with the pall throwing the derelict into more sombre relief, Dan caught more strongly than ever the utter contrast which her presence brought to this abandoned hulk. Whenever she had walked along the deck it had seemed a profanation to him that the uneven planking should know her tread; that she should be on the derelict at all was, he felt, a working of Fate against everything that was ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... quiet and easily satisfied people, whose existence you might forget except when they testify their happiness by their shouts; noisy without a thought of sedition; whose only care is to shun poverty without amassing wealth; lowly in fortune but rich in temper—it is a kind of profanation to rob such people ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... another; although, I am afraid, that sanctified reason is, by no means, the point where the difficulty pinches; and only offered by pretended churchmen, as if they could be content with our believing, that the impiety and profanation of making the Sacrament a test, were the only objection. I therefore propose, that before the present law be repealed, another may be enacted; that no man shall receive any employment, before he swears himself to be ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... real desolation before. He rushed to the wide chasm which now admitted the winds and rains of heaven to the shrine which his adoration and reverence had consecrated with a tenderness so absorbing. Oh! what ruin—what profanation—what an irreparable havoc of all his treasure! And the tree, too—gone, blasted. Tears of passionate despair rained from his eyes: he wrung his hands, he stamped, raved, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... other purpose in our minds we ought to rest on the Lord's Day. In order that this may be clearly understood, I move that a law be adopted which shall voice the sentiment of this community against the profanation of ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... to me a profanation—an insult heaped on injury—an unjustifiable prying into the saddest secrets of the great prison-house of human woe—for us visiters to be standing here; and, though I apologised for it with a sovereign, which grain of sand will, I am sure, be wisely applied to the mitigation of this ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... she says!" cried Julian, with sudden excitement, his muscles quivering, and his cheeks flaming all at once. "Don't use that word 'wife,' it is profanation; I can't bear it! If I see her to-night, I can't answer for what I may do. Curse ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... good-looking—I tell you no one would speak of good looks in connection with her—she is simply and perfectly beautiful; and she is going to service. Imagine yon creature brushing your boots and bringing them to you! The bare idea is profanation. She only wants education to make her a thing to be worshiped; but she is quite uncultured: I shouldn't wonder if she can't even read or write decently, but she has no want of natural ability: everything ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... coast; bright, wicked little fellows, darted about, uttering shrill cries at the intrusion of the stranger as he drifted slowly back into their fairylike abode. Paul felt as though he would like to have one of the little fellows and raised his carbine to shoot; but it seemed profanation to disturb the grand serenity and beauty of the scene. The weapon was lowered and the animals ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... poor; but there was, I dare say, something honorable in that poverty, something sacred I would say. But seeing it made the object of a public appeal for commiseration, I feel as if everything that was sacred in my position had undergone a profanation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... hundred and sixty days,"—that is, years; for, as formerly noticed, all these expressions mean the same period of time; the period during which the witnesses prophesy, on the one side, and the gentiles tread the outer court, on the other. The profanation of the holy city,—the church nominal, and the testimony of the witnesses against that conduct, is the same contest which in this chapter is represented under other symbols. The waters of the symbolic flood have spread over all the nations of Christendom, corrupting the very fountains of ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... argument than to the less favourable bias of his audience that Sumner owed his failure to change the course of legislation in this instance. An argument only one degree less absurd had done well enough as a reason for the enslavement and profanation of the South a year or two before. But there was no great party hoping to perpetuate its power by the aid of the Chinese, nor was there a defeated and unpopular section to be punished for its "treason" by being made ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... It was a desperate desecration, comparable only, in his vague analogies, to the Mecca pilgrimage and profanation of a Holy Tomb. But its ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... the convent, until it came to the ears of the Prior himself. This holy man, who hated Father Gebhardt on account of his intimacy with the most respectable houses, was shocked at the scandalousness of the affair, which he considered as a profanation of the holy sacrament; and, refusing to decide on such a weighty matter, he referred it to the Archbishop. The Archbishop, wisely concluding that whatever sinful man wishes or thinks by day he dreams of by night, denounced ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... continue to act on the early received and uniformly continued sense of mankind. That sense not only, like a wise architect, hath built up the august fabric of states, but, like a provident proprietor, to preserve the structure from profanation and ruin, as a sacred temple, purged from all the impurities of fraud and violence and injustice and tyranny, hath solemnly and forever consecrated the commonwealth, and all that officiate in it. This consecration is made, that all ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... brilliant line of kings, in a firm grasp, as if it required the exertion of all his strength to master this delicate embodiment of charming womanhood. True, the proud blood of the outwitted lioness urged her to resist this profanation, and Proculejus—an enviable honour—made her feel the superior strength of his arm. I am no prophet, but Dion, I repeat, this shameful struggle and the glances which flashed upon him will be remembered to his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sufficient sympathy between us for me to be sure of your discretion. But remember, if you ever feel tempted to disclose a single word of these hidden matters, there are Unseen Powers who will amply avenge the profanation. Know, then, that since my Beloved was snatched from me by what dull men call death, all my faculties have been concentrated on the effort to discover some link of communication with the Invisible World. I will not dwell on my toils and sufferings, the terrible ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... Were, then, all his strivings and agonies in vain? Did he love this woman with any earthly love? Was he jealous of the thought of a future husband? Was it a tempting demon that said to him, "Lorenzo Sforza might have shielded this treasure from the profanation of lawless violence, from the brute grasp of an inappreciative peasant, but Father Francesco cannot"? There was a moment when his whole being vibrated with a perception of what a marriage bond might ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... presents being even added thereto; hence it is a grievous scandal amongst all those nations when they see Europeans open graves to take out the beaver robes they have placed therein. The burial-grounds are places so respected that their profanation is accounted the most atrocious outrage that can be offered ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... frigates, swarming with a horde of foreign bandits, creeping about our bay? For what have the persons of General Vallejo and Judge Leese been seized and imprisoned? Why does a strip of cotton, painted with a gaping bear, flaunt itself above Sonoma? Oh, abomination! Oh, execrable profanation! Mother of God, open thine ocean and suck them down! Smite them with pestilence if they put foot in our capital! Shrivel their fingers to the bone if they dethrone our Aztec Eagle and flourish their stars and stripes above our ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... has exaggerated the personal, the positive, the ritual. It has wronged mankind by monopolizing all virtues for the Christian name. It is only by his holy thoughts that Jesus serves us. "To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul." The preachers do a wrong to Jesus by removing him from our human sympathies; they should not degrade his life and dialogues by ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... shortly, and Margaret pondered on his strange manner, little guessing what profanation her mention of Amabel's letter had seemed to him, or how it jarred on him to hear this exaggerated likeness of ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... did not even know she cared for music; for Hester, who did not regard her faculty as an accomplishment but as a gift, treated it as a treasure to be hidden for the day of the Lord rather than a flag to be flaunted in a civic procession—was jealously shy over it, as a thing it would be profanation to show to any but loving eyes. To utter herself in song to any but the right persons, except indeed it was for some further and higher end justifying the sacrifice, appeared to her a kind of immodesty, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the air, is regarded as a performance of peculiar virtue and "merit," and one of the most signal acts of devotion possible to a Buddhist. And yet, as the symbol of One great Central Spirit, whose name it is profanation to utter, the symbol is strangely at variance with the doctrines ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... was already irreparably disfigured when General Lyautey came to Morocco; but ferocious old Sale, Phenician counting-house and breeder of Barbary pirates, had been saved from profanation by its Moslem fanaticism. Few Christian feet had entered its walls except those of the prisoners who, like Robinson Crusoe, slaved for the wealthy merchants in its mysterious terraced houses. Not till two or three years ago was it completely pacified; and ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... hunted up evidence to transfer the burden of the imputed wrong to the memory of the dead Aurelius. But should he commit this profanation of the grave—as he regarded it? The voice of brotherly love—for he had tenderly loved his erring brother—said, "No." Would any amount of proof satisfy the nervous, doubting man before him? He feared not. Therefore Marcus Wilkeson ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... slavery in the colonies, was displayed in the 'Temple of Reason.' In June another festival was ordered—to the Supreme Being: the God of Philosophy. But the most superb exhibition was the 'general festival,' in honor of the republic. It was distinguished by a more audacious spirit of scoffing and profanation than the former. Robespierre acted the 'high-priest of Reason' on the day, and made himself conspicuous in blasphemy. He was then at the summit of power,—actual ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... truth, and the checks encountered in the search, and give him the results of my long inquiry. Everything has its appropriate and harmonious reason. I am too fully persuaded of this to believe that the Philanthus commits her profanation of corpses merely to satisfy her appetite. What does the empty stomach mean? May it not—Yes!—But, after all, who knows? Well, let us follow ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... me!—His motive love!—Yes, indeed! Love of himself! He knows no other; for love, that deserves the name, seeks the satisfaction of the beloved object more than its own. Weighed in this scale, what a profanation ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... which your husband's brother has proposed to you to do is a sacrilege and a profanation. I own to you freely that I look on what I have done toward thwarting your relative in this matter as an act of virtue. You cannot expect me to think it a serious obstacle to a union predestined in heaven, that ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... church, for did not the Psalms make it clear, "The singers go before, and the minstrels" (which they understood to mean ministers) "follow after"? And then—those anthems! They were terrible inflictions. Every bumpkin had his favourite solo, and oh! the murder, the profanation! "Some put their trust in charrots and some in 'orses," but they didn't "quite pat off the stephany," as one of the singers remarked, meaning symphony. It was all very strange ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... skilled in."[32] So says the author of "Representative Men." "Evil," according to old philosophers, "is good in the making; that pure malignity can exist is the extreme proposition of unbelief. It is not to be entertained by a rational agent. It is Atheism; it is the last profanation." "The divine effort is never relaxed; the carrion in the sun will convert itself into grass and flowers; and man, though in brothels, or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way to all that ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... what strange uses are you come. . . . This excess of grotesqueness in profanation is more insulting surely than to be sacked by barbarians! Behold a table set for some thirty guests, and the guests themselves—of both sexes—merry and lighthearted, belong to that special type of humanity which patronises Thomas Cook & ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... mortal men, of whom were recounted things miraculous. Looking upon that face, which time touched only to enhance its calm, only to make yet purer its sweet humanity, he felt himself an idle and wanton child, and his entrance hither a profanation. ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... him, and determined to test his sincerity. Sincerity! It seems like a profanation of the word to write it in connection with such a monster, so I asked him point-blank, "Why may ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... awe, regarding them at first as more than human. One of the soldiers approached M. Papirius, and began reverently to stroke his long white beard. Papirius was a minister of the gods, and looked on this touch of a barbarian hand as profanation. With an impulse of anger he struck the Gaul on the head with his ivory sceptre. Instantly the barbarian, breaking into rage, cut him down with his sword. This put an end to the feeling of awe. All the old ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... character of a partisan; he has always been the consistent supporter of liberal measures per se, and not because they were the means adopted by a party to gain political power. With his political steadfastness he has preserved his intellectual integrity from profanation. For although, had he early devoted his powers to the study of abstract or practical science, as a leading and not a subsidiary pursuit, the acuteness of his mind was such, that he must have risen to ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... confidence promise her little rewards! And to compare this passionate flooding of heart and mind, of corporeal and spiritual faculty with any incense which that rigid watcher of mysteries had to offer up, were an absurdity and a profanation impossible even to ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... intermediary vessel, which stands exactly on the line between the two compartments. This transference, being carried out to the accompaniment of all sorts of reverential gestures and utterances, secures such a profanation of the sacred substance as is without the evil consequences that would otherwise be entailed. Thus the ritual is essentially precautionary. A taboo is the hinge of the ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... brought to Genoa. Now, when the Genoese saw this strange capture convoyed into Genoa—so the tale goes—they were afraid, and crowded round the old Admiral, demanding wherefore he made war on the Church, and some shouted sacrilege and others profanation, while others again besought him with tears what it meant. And he answered, so that all might hear, that it meant that his galleys were stronger than ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... justice, and for the perversion of justice, and on account of the offence of those who interpret the Torah, not according to its true sense (33). Noxious beasts come into the world for vain swearing (34), and for the profanation of the Divine Name (35). Captivity comes into the world on account of idolatry, immortality, bloodshed, and the neglect of the year of rest for the soil (31). 12. At four periods pestilence grows ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text
... were represented all the details of domestic life. The tone of these pictures was glad and gay; and, what is remarkable, they had no trace of the funeral ritual or the god Osiris. These were not like tombs, but rather like homes. To secure the body from all profanation, it was concealed in a pit, carefully hidden in the solid masonry. These tombs belong ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Mars Gradivus, and you, father Quirinus, of your Ancilia? Is it right that these sacred things, coeval with the city, some of them more ancient than the origin of the city, should be abandoned to profanation? And, observe the difference existing between us and our ancestors. They handed down to us certain sacred rites to be performed by us on the Alban and on the Lavinian mounts. Was it in conformity with religion that these sacred rites were transferred to us to Rome ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... principal ecclesiastical buildings were in a few instances perverted. In the minds of modern Churchmen there would be the closest connection between culpable neglect of the sacred fabric, and the profanation of it by admission within its walls of the sights and sounds of common daily business or pleasure. There was something of this in the period under review. The extraordinary desecrations once general ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... history of the image. The Virgin del Lluch was the patroness of Majorca. A hermit had been compelled to flee from there, for a reason no one had been able to discover—perhaps to get away from some Saracen girl of those exciting, war-like days! And to rescue the Virgin from profanation he brought her to Alcira, and built this sanctuary for her. Later people from Majorca came to return her to their island. But the celestial lady had taken a liking to Alcira and its inhabitants. Over the water, and without even wetting her feet, she came ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... expressed against any one who should presume to fancy that the best work of any native author could equal the poorest that Scott put forth. The Continental opinion which at that time often reckoned the American novelist as equal, if not superior to his British contemporary, seemed to men here like a profanation. It was, indeed, so said ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... he was very likely to have done.— The corruption of a notorious courtier would have made no impression: the King had already been overwhelmed with such accusations, and they had lost their effect: but to have seduced the virtuous Mirabeau, the very Confucius of the revolution, was a kind of profanation of the holy fire, well calculated to revive the languid rage, and extinguish the small remains of humanity yet left ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... and Saturday within Burghs, causing intollerable profanation of the Lords Day, by carying of loads, bearing of Burthens; and other work of that kinde: It were expedient for the redresse thereof, that the care for restraining of this abuse be recommended by the Assembly unto the severall Burghs, and they to bee earnestly ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... scattering in the dust the golden wine of happy hope, in the effort to serve and comfort that loved sufferer, who, languishing on a hospital cot, had died among strangers; had been shrouded by hirelings. That any other hand than hers had touched her sacred dead, seemed a profanation; and at the thought of the last rites rendered, the loyal child shivered as though some polluting grasp had been laid upon herself. Out of the envelope rolled a broad hoop of reddish gold, her mother's wedding ring; and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... looked over my shoulder, half expecting to see the wrathful face of a slim, dark man. A cold air blew through the room. It almost seemed that viewless influences were interposing to save the stranger's treasures from profanation. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... your homes to fight battles in which you are not, and which you do not feel yourselves, interested; but it is to prevent the hostile foot of a foe from invading your territory —it is to guard the sacred altar of your liberties, cemented by the blood of your fathers, from the profanation of a tyrant's polluting touch—it is to guard your dwellings, your friends, your families, your all, from the desolating warfare of a fell savage foe—it is that the midnight and sleeping couch of our infants may not be awakened to death by the tremendous ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... we form our ideas almost wholly from their severest features. It is like gazing on some scenes in the land which we inherit from them; we see the mountains, rising sternly and with frozen summits tip to heaven, and the forests, waving in massy depths where sunshine seems a profanation, and we see the gray mist, like the duskiness of years, shedding a chill obscurity over the whole; but the green and pleasant spots in the hollow of the hills, the warm places in the heart of what looks desolate, ...
— Dr. Bullivant - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... smile, each tooth appeared like an inestimable pearl. Such was my passionate warmth that—we had rattled out of the village, gentle reader, and were lonely as Adam and Eve in paradise—I plead guilty to no less freedom than a kiss. The gentle eye of Mrs. Bullfrog scarcely rebuked me for the profanation. Emboldened by her indulgence, I threw back the calash from her polished brow, and suffered my fingers, white and delicate as her own, to stray among those dark and glossy curls which realized my daydreams of ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... falsehood (ruse), aspersion, cynicism, and immorality: he used even those arms that respect for God and man denies to the wise; he employed his virtue, his honour, his renown, to aid in this overthrow; and his apostleship of reason had too often the appearance of a profanation of piety; he ravaged the temple instead of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... barbaric and half-oriental power he is not (I assure you) shedding tears over the grave of Kosciusko. And when I say (as I do most heartily) that the German Emperor is a barbarian, I am not merely expressing any prejudices I may have against the profanation of churches or of children. My countrymen and I mean a certain and intelligible thing when we call the Prussians barbarians. It is quite different from the thing attributed to Russians; and it could not possibly be attributed to Russians. It is very important that ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... the life, food, and nourishment of our souls; consequently the forsaking of them, and the profanation of the Sabbath, are usually ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... tribute which the country was to pay, demolished the walls of the city, and nominated Hyrcanus to the priesthood, though without the royal diadem. The magnanimity of Pompey, in respecting the Treasures of the Temple, could not obliterate the deeper impression of Jewish hatred excited by his profanation ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... felt her equality to any social fortune that might befall her, and then she would have liked to see her married to a title, and taking the glory of this world with an unconsciousness that experience would never wholly penetrate. But then again she felt that this would be somehow a profanation, and she wanted to pack her up and get her back to Middlemount before anything of the kind should happen. She gave Milray these impressions of Clementina in the letter she wrote to thank him for her, and to scold him for sending the girl ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... ended there, of course. The victory was with the priest. One can imagine how the idea of such a profanation would strike Joan or any other child in the village. She ran and dropped upon her knees by ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain |
