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Layman   /lˈeɪmən/   Listen
Layman

noun
(pl. laymen)
1.
Someone who is not a clergyman or a professional person.  Synonyms: layperson, secular.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Layman" Quotes from Famous Books



... decline and that of Parliament began to increase, the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay transferred all their sympathies and assiduities to the Parliament. In 1641, they sent over three agents to evoke interest with the Parliamentary leaders—one layman, Mr. Hibbins, and two ministers, Thomas Weld and Hugh Peters, the latter of whom was as shrewd and active in trade and speculations as he was ardent and violent in the pulpit. He made quite a figure in the civil war in England, and was Cromwell's favourite war chaplain. Neither he ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... does not respect efficiency, but it soon will have no opportunity to respect it; for efficiency is being destroyed and before long will have disappeared altogether. There will soon be no difference between the judge and the suitor, between the layman and the priest, the sick man and the physician. The contempt which is felt for efficiency destroys it little by little, and efficiency, accepting the situation, outruns the contempt that is felt ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... you like that I had nothing whatever to do with your sister's elopement, and that I know..." I was going to add "nothing more about it than you do yourself," but remembering my talk with Banks, I decided that that was not perfectly true, and with the layman's respect for the sanctity of an oath I concluded, "and that I know very little more about it ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... You are a married man, and if you should seek consolation, where several of your fellow priests have lately sought it, in the Church of Rome, you will have to seek it as a layman. I do not pretend to know your private affairs, and I should consider it impertinent if I tried to pry into them at such a moment. But I do know your worth as a priest, and I have no hesitation in begging you once ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... Tibble's account in a big book, and sent a message to the cofferer to bring the amount. 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?" ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to the second question is that the layman too often treats the trouble in the skin as if it were the disease itself, whereas it is, generally, merely a symptom thereof. Examples: To plaster medicated oils or ointments all over the skin of a dog suffering from constitutional eczema is about as sensible as would be the ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... his father and mother were dining out, so we determined to go to a restaurant. And it was there that Vincent told me about "Father" Payne, as he was called by his friends, though he was a layman and an Anglican. He had heard all about him from an Oxford man, Leonard Barthrop, some years older than ourselves, who was one of the circle of men whom Father Payne had collected about him. Vincent was very full of the subject. He said that ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... 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 ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... picture from a layman are some new and striking features. First is the love—one can call it nothing else—which the child bestows upon the planet. Why is the moon her beloved and her desire from childhood up, why can she stand by ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger

... 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 ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... those accusations are justified. As a combatant of another nation, I have my standards of comparison by which to judge and I frankly state that I was amazed with the progress that had been made. It is a progress based on a huge scale and therefore less impressive to the layman than if the scale had been less ambitious. What I saw were the foundations of an organisation which can be expanded to handle a fighting-machine which staggers the imagination. What the layman expects to see are Hun trophies and Americans coming ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... one evening at the Cottage that he never had any mystical call to the ministry, but only had entered the Divinity Hall instead of going to Oxford because his mother had this for her heart's desire, and he loved her. As a layman it perhaps did not become me to judge mysteries, but I dared to say that any man might well be guided by his mother in religion, and that the closer he kept to her memory the better he would do his work. After which both of us smoked furiously, ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... writers to exaggerate not a little the place which it occupied in the general intellectual development of the time. In the universities, it is true, it long exercised an extraordinary influence, and Mr. Gladstone, who was by far the most remarkable layman whom it profoundly influenced, was accustomed to say that for at least a generation almost the whole of the best intellect of Oxford was controlled by it. It possessed in Newman a writer of most striking and undoubted genius. In an age remarkable for brilliancy of style he was one of ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... — N. laity, flock, fold, congregation, assembly, brethren, people; society [U.S.]. temporality, secularization. layman, civilian; parishioner, catechumen; secularist. V. secularize. Adj. secular, lay, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... what effect has this splendor on those who pass beneath it? You may walk from sunrise to sunset, to and fro, before the gateway of St. Mark's, and you will not see an eye lifted to it, nor a countenance brightened by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian, rich and poor, pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very recesses of the porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city push their counters; nay, the foundations of its pillars are themselves the seats—not "of them that sell doves" ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... stolen a pound in his youth and had used 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 ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... then the rest of him; window open all night no matter how hard it blew or rained; ate three meals a day and no more; chewed every mouthful of food thirty times—coffee, soup, even his drinking-water (Gladstone had taught him that, he boasted)—a walking laboratory of a man, who knew it all, took no layman's advice, and was as set in his ways as a chunk ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... and educate eight poor children nominated by the mayor and sworn magistrates. For this he received, under Louis XIV., in 1706, forty setiers of wheat and fifty livres in money. It is interesting, also, to learn that the principal of the public college, when he happened to be a layman, received a salary, under Louis XIV., of 400 livres in addition to his dwelling-house. When he was a priest he received only 300 livres, but he might also receive 172 livres more as chaplain of the Hotel-Dieu. The well-to-do citizens ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... a heretic? Do you not know that all this heresy springs from the reading of the Bible? You see, the Bible is a very strange book. It seems that there are many things in it which, when read by an ordinary layman, appear to mean this or that. When read by a consecrated priest, however, they mean something quite different. In the same way, there are many doctrines which the layman cannot find in the Bible that to the consecrated ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... self-possession they convey. Then let the photographer, the producer, and the author, be they one man or six men, stick to this type of picturization through one entire production, till any artist in the audience will say, "This photoplay was painted by a pupil of Gilbert Stuart"; and the layman will say, "It looks like those stately days." And let us not have battle, but a ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... establishing the right and duty of ecclesiastical tribunals to punish all who practised or dealt with the arts of demonology. In 1484, Sprenger came out with his famous book, "Malleus Maleficarum;" or, the "Hammer of Witches." Paul Layman, in 1629, issued an elaborate work on "Judicial Processes against Sorcerers and Witches." The following is the title of a bulky volume of some seven hundred pages: "Demonology, or Natural Magic or demoniacal, lawful and unlawful, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... not approve of the assemblies he, nevertheless, sympathized deeply with the distressed laity. A layman was then bound to his parish, and Grundtvig clearly understood the difficulty of laymen who had to accept the ministry, have their children baptized, instructed and confirmed by pastors denying fundamental doctrines of their faith. With his usual frankness ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg

... prelate. The bishop heard the doubts which De Vaux stated, with that acuteness of intelligence which distinguishes the Roman Catholic clergy. The religious scruples of De Vaux he treated with as much lightness as propriety permitted him to exhibit on such a subject to a layman. ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... advantages emanating from systematic study along the most advanced lines of modern thought and science. The facts are correlated and simply expressed with the earnest desire to bring within the scope of the layman the good that may accrue. It is, however, not for the laymen alone that this work is undertaken, but for unprofessional and professional alike, be he medical student or practitioner or other interested person; for to each and all I present herein the best that a lifetime ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... 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

... 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 part of Catholic ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... legally confer the Empire, he was good enough for Otto's purpose. Only when John repented of his bargain and turned traitor was he evicted in favour of a more reputable successor (963). And John's successor was a layman until the time of his election. Otto's chief concern was to secure a trustworthy partisan; this remained the Saxon policy till the days ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... inscribed the name of Isaac Casaubon. We know him by repute only as a celebrated French scholar, who was tempted from his native land by King James I. with the offer of a fat canonry at Canterbury, but who only lived to enjoy the sinecure post—he was a layman—four years. Surely there must be fishermen amongst us: to them the initials I. W. scratched upon Casaubon's memorial may recall the great angler, Isaac [Transcriber's note: "Izaak" in Index] Walton, {44} even though we have no means of proving that these were actually ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith

... her forehead on the holy knees of the Old Maid, one hand upon the floor, and the other pressed convulsively against her heart. It clutched a lock of hair, once sable, now discolored with a greenish mould. As the priest and layman advanced into the chamber, the Old Maid's features assumed such a resemblance of shifting expression, that they trusted to hear the whole mystery explained, by a single word. But it was only the shadow of a tattered curtain, waving betwixt the ...
— The White Old Maid (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the amusements which a layman may follow and a clergyman may not, hunting is thought to be by much the worst. There is a savour of wickedness about it in the eyes of the old ladies which almost takes it out of their list of innocent amusements even for laymen. By the term old ladies it will ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope

... returned his father, "and know not yet the wiles of the deceiver; God forgive me, if I am uncharitable, but the testimony of many worthy persons goes to prove, that this same La Tour hath openly employed a monkish priest, dressed in the habit of a layman, as his agent ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... 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 ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... has been so often referred to. That report did not express merely my view, or that of the committee, but the view of the entire Synod. Nor from that day to this has there been heard anywhere within our bounds even a whisper of objection from minister, elder, or layman in regard to the positions then taken. It is our settled, irreversible policy. Deep down in the heart of the Church lies the conviction that our missionaries, who carry to the heathen the doctrine of Christ as we have received it, ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg

... same time. It worked favorably for the external brilliancy of tone of this instrument, while gradually closing the ears of the dilettante and the musician to the charms of a simple but characteristic management of the voice in accordance with the rules of counterpoint. Thus the layman nowadays has seldom an ear for the subtleties of the string quartet, whereas, on the other hand, our great-grandfathers would indubitably have run away from the sound of our brass bands and military music. The earlier symphonies, since they were essentially intended to bring out ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... twilight fell, the candles began to burn in the little schoolhouses, where the farmers assembled and prayed to God. In the small towns and tiny villages the little churches were packed with worshippers, not simply on Sundays but during the evenings of the week. During this interval the layman became as influential as the ordained preachers. At this time, the Young Men's Christian Association took its rise, all of the old men saw visions, and all of the young men dreamed dreams, and many ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... produced at the Space Navy base on 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 build ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... them yet more by the horrible noise of great rocks grinding and rending beneath them. They beat their breasts and shrieked with fear. His blood was upon them! The home-bred and the foreign, priest and layman, beggar, Sadducee, Pharisee, were overtaken in the race, and tumbled about indiscriminately. If they called on the Lord, the outraged earth answered for him in fury, and dealt them all alike. It did not even know wherein the high-priest was better than his guilty brethren; overtaking him, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... that the king took from them they in turn took from their own sub-tenants. Flambard, however, did not content himself with a moderately harsh exaction of these feudal dues. The grievance against him was that he made the king 'to be every man's heir, whether he were in orders or a layman,' that is to say, that Flambard so stripped and exhausted the land belonging to the king's wards as to make it almost worthless, and then demanded reliefs so enormous that when the estate had at last been restored, all its value had passed into the hands of the king. When a bishop ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... bracelets he hung in the branches of his hunting forest by the Seine, which stayed three years without being stolen, is an indication of the rigour of the laws he made. In about 930 he died, and was the first layman to be buried in the cathedral he ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... as humble[16] as any layman who before or since his time has held the seals, Thomas Parker raised himself to the woolsack by great talents and honorable industry. As an advocate he won the respect of society and his profession; as a judge he ranks with the first expositors of English law. Although ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... lecture, and in spite of the compression due to its form, up to that time probably the ablest defence, based on external evidence, of the Johannine authorship, and certainly the completest treatment of the relation of Justin Martyr to this gospel. Abbot, though a layman, received the degree of S. T. D. from Harvard in 1872, and that of D.D. from Edinburgh in 1884. . He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... and explicit are the Roman Sacraments. A very abject life it is to murmur Absolve te over the heads of parishioners, and to place wafers on their tongues, when we have ceased to believe that we have power to forgive sins and to turn biscuits into God. A layman may have doubts, and continue to live his life as before, without troubling to take the world into his confidence, but a priest may not. The priest is a paid agent and the money an unbelieving priest receives, if he be not inconceivably ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... Kansas Wild Flowers, University of Kansas Press, Lawrence, 1948. This is more than a state book, and the integration of knowledge, wisdom, and appreciation of flower life with botanical science makes it appeal to layman as well as to botanist. 463 pages, 774 illustrations. Applicable ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... sulky and menacing, holding parliaments, disregarding the king's proclamations and planting food in the bush, the first step of military preparation. The religious sentiment of the people is indeed for peace at any price; no pastor can bear arms; and even the layman who does so is denied the sacraments. In the last war the college of Malua, where the picked youth are prepared for the ministry, lost but a single student; the rest, in the bosom of a bleeding country, and deaf to the voices of vanity and honour, peacefully pursued their studies. But if the church ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was delivered by minister, layman or divinity student, Duncan Polite always found something spiritually uplifting in the service; and, indeed, so did many another, for if the preacher sometimes lacked in oratory, he made up for it in piety, and if he failed to shine in ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith

... thy lord may be) Thus low I take off mine to thee, The homage of a layman's castor, To the spruce delta of his pastor. Oh mayst thou be, as thou proceedest, Still smarter cockt, still brusht the brighter, Till, bowing all the way, thou leadest Thy sleek possessor to ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... Clarice, wondering much to hear a layman use language which it seemed to her was only fit for priests, "how may one ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt

... pride, a pride which is certainly wide-spread and which leads to the disparagement of the practical doctor and medical layman, and then further to the disparagement of the craft of nature healers. The practical doctor and the nature healer on the one hand tend towards an understandable disparagement of medical science and analysis and, on the other hand, tend towards superficiality. ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various

... the non-proficient in anything, the "layman," he who was not technically trained in ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius

... or engineer. I've just handled cost and production and let you boys worry about how. But as a layman, watchbird is ...
— Watchbird • Robert Sheckley

... not have written it. The poem itself is not without a glance towards politicks, notwithstanding the subject. The cry that the church was in danger, had not yet subsided. The Last Day, written by a layman, was much approved by the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... 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 ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant

... is especially interested in introducing and popularizing new horticultural developments. It publishes a new type of tree as a publisher does a book. We serve as a connecting link between the horticulturist and the layman, aiming to coordinate the work of horticulturists and to interpret the meaning of this work to prospective planters of trees. We act as a sort of educational sieve, our aim being to extend the number of tree planters. This is a sales ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... (marquises). These officials had so much power and lived so far from the royal court that it was necessary for Charlemagne to appoint special agents, called missi dominici ("the lord's messengers"), to maintain control over them. The missi were usually sent out in pairs, a layman and a bishop or abbot, in order that the one might serve as a check upon the other. They traveled from county to county, bearing the orders of their royal master and making sure that these orders were promptly obeyed. In this way Charlemagne ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... cover to cover the book is readable, and every word is intelligible to the layman. Dr. Dolmage displays literary powers of a very high order. Those who read it without any previous knowledge of astronomy will find that a new interest has been added to their lives, and that in a matter of 350 pages they have gained a true conception ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... returns from a half acre grove. Every grower of nut trees knows that problems and troubles continue to arise which tax his knowledge and experience. How much more baffling such difficulties are to the layman who is just embarking on the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... long while yet." Today neutral opinion is no longer anxiously or even eagerly sought. The temporary need for this sort of moral support seems to have passed, and there are many indications that the well-informed layman expects 1915 to see the wind-up of the war, while I have talked with not a few professional men who have expressed the opinion that the war will be over by Summer—except ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... the place where Fothad Airgtech king of Ireland had been slain by Cailte, one of Finn's companions. Mongan said it was on the banks of the Lame in Ulster, near his own palace; Forgoll said it was at Dubtar in Leinster. Forgoll, enraged at being contradicted by a mere layman, threatened to pronounce awful incantations against Mongan, which might put rat-hood on him, or anything. The end of it was that Mongan was given three days to prove his statement; if he should not have done so by that time, he and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... of work to be done in this thankless protection of the metropolis. During one of the sessions there had appeared in the lobby an excellent man, Dr. Levi Silliman Ives, formerly Protestant Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina, who, having been converted to Roman Catholicism, had become a layman and head of a protectory for Catholic children. With him came a number of others of his way of thinking, and a most determined effort was made to pass a bill sanctioning a gift of one half of the great property known as Ward's Island, adjacent to the city of New ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... essentially a layman. There was nothing priestly in his mood; nothing scholastic in his reasoning; nothing sacerdotal in his conclusions. We breathe with him the clear sharp air of mathematics; and his imagination, shaking itself free from all controversial pettifogging, sweeps off into the stark and naked ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... College—had a certain piquancy: whether they had also sweet reasonableness and an entire accordance with the fitness of things is a question no doubt capable of being debated. Me the situation strikes, I must confess, as a little grotesque. The layman in the wide sense, the amateur, always occupies a rather equivocal position when he addresses experts and the profession; but his position is never so equivocal as when he doubles the part of non-expert ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... is equally astonished—and resentful—at every new discovery, but in a short time accepts it as a commonplace. The layman resents all new ideas, but the adjustment of the human mind to the inevitable is common even among savages." Her slight affectation of pedantry was very well done and Clavering could not detect the flicker of a lash as her eyes rested ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... head of the State, kings, counts, barons, and peasants, in different orders below him; the Church ruling the souls, the State the bodies of men, and the two chieftains working hand in hand, each bearing a mission from above; the Emperor, as a layman, owning himself inferior to the Pope, yet the Pope acknowledging the temporal power of the ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... academic agricultural scientists conceal the basic simplicity of their knowledge by unnecessarily expressing their data with exotic verbiage and higher mathematics. In Jenny's time it was not considered demeaning if an intelligent layman could read and understand the writings of a scientist or scholar. Any serious gardener who wants to understand the wide differences in soil should become familiar with Factors in Soil Formation. About organic matter in virgin soils, Jenny ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon

... has been firmly established its evolution always follows similar lines. Ritual becomes increasingly elaborate: metaphysical dogma grows too subtle for a layman's comprehension. Commercialism spreads from the market to the sanctuary, whose guardians exploit the all-pervading fear of the unknown to serve their lust of ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... 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 had held from the first, and the confession of faith was drawn up which ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... the test you applied then? Please abolish your present self, the self which is now instructed, or half-instructed, and better able to distinguish between good and bad than we outsiders, and answer in your then character of a layman, with no advantage over ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... done?" as applied to the art of singing brings up so many different points that it is difficult to know where to begin or how to give the layman in any kind of limited space a concise idea of the principles controlling the production of the voice and ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... the mesa as much as plants and four-footed things, and one is not like to meet them out of their time. For example, at the time of rodeos, which is perhaps April, one meets free riding vaqueros who need no trails and can find cattle where to the layman no cattle exist. As early as February bands of sheep work up from the south to the high Sierra pastures. It appears that shepherds have not changed more than sheep in the process of time. The shy hairy men who herd the tractile flocks might be, except for some added clothing, ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin

... 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. He has united every real, good force, and he showed ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... century the movement toward close industrial organization has proceeded with little interruption. Legislation has been passed designed to break up industrial combinations and from time to time various industries have been disintegrated. But the layman has not been able to discover that such disintegrations by court order have had any marked influence on the progress of the fundamental tendencies toward industrial consolidation. The farmers have been the last to get into the organization field on any extensive scale. The ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt

... and at His death to the judgement of Pontius Pilate. We may find it hard to appreciate these and other arguments of the same kind, but Dante's passion never fail s to carry us with him. In his letters he appears as one of the earliest publicists, and is perhaps the first layman to publish political tracts in this form. He began early. Soon after the death of Beatrice he addressed a pamphlet on the State of Florence 'to the Great ones of the Earth,' and the public utterances of his later years, dating from the time of his banishment, are all directed to emperors, princes, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... care not if he be," said Montreuil, in a low but haughty tone. "Priest though I am, I have not assumed the garb, without assuming also the weapon, of the layman. Even now I have my hand upon the same sword which shone under the banners of Mar; and which once, but for my foolish mercy, would have rid me forever of this ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... mainly of a humorous nature, and in the daily press. This adverse comment has not been endorsed by critics of art and architecture. Mr. Potter was chosen for this work by Augustus St. Gaudens, and again, after Mr. St. Gaudens' death, by Mr. D. C. French, also an eminent sculptor. Any layman can satisfy himself, by a brief observation of the building as a whole, that the architectural balance of the structure demands figures of heroic size to flank the main approach. With that requirement in view, the designer of such figures has but a limited choice of subject, ...
— Handbook of The New York Public Library • New York Public Library

... His intimacy with the Abbe Gerard was one of long standing: they mutually amused each other; the keen intellect of the priest found much that was interesting in the shallow but attractive and brilliant nature of the layman; while the Duke entertained feelings of the warmest admiration for a man who, having risen from nothing, enlivened the most exclusive coteries with his graceful learning ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... I forgot. It's your business to thank God. For my part, being a layman, I don't know anything in particular I've got to ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... book, while nearly, if not quite, worthless as an authority as to what the law actually was, is very valuable as showing what an intelligent layman at the time thought it was. The fear that baptism set a slave free was undoubtedly present among both the French and the English planters in America, including the West Indies; and this fear had much ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... incurred the same penalty as the hurlers themselves. These humble results of observations taken on the spot, may possibly be useful, as tending to offer some startling facts from ancient history to the next pious layman in the legislature who gets up to propose the next series of Sabbath prohibitions for the benefit of the profane laymen in ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... other, and in my judgment more 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 little part of the heavy debt of gratitude ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... four turonenses for a layman; ab incestu pro laico in foro conscientiae turonenses quatuor. For the man and the woman who have committed incest, eighteen turonenses four ducats and nine carlins. That is not just; if one person pays only four turonenses, the two ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... To the devout father Fray Andres de Urdaneta, of the Order of St. Augustine: I have been informed that, while you were a layman, you accompanied the fleet of Loaysa, and passed through the Strait of Magallanes and the spice region, where you spent eight years in our service. And inasmuch as we have just charged Don Luis de Velasco, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various

... divorce his wife or take an action at law. As long as Gregory remained in their midst, the Brethren held true to him as their leader. He had not, says Gindely, a single trace of personal ambition in his nature; and, though he might have become a Bishop, he remained a layman to the end. Full of years he died, and his bones repose in a cleft where tufts of forget-me-not grow, at Brandeis-on-the-Adler, hard by the Moravian frontier ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... extremely misleading to give any but the vaguest and most elementary suggestions on the law which governs letters. To be clear and specific means inevitably to be misleading. I was talking with a lawyer friend not long since about general text-books on law which might be useful to the layman. He was rather a commercially minded person and ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther

... 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 tried out in real life. But it was ridiculous to compare him with the stalwart ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... women as here given are in no sense of the word a "brief," but merely present the facts in the language of a layman and in the simplest and most concise form. Those relating to property are in the nature of a curiosity. An attorney in San Francisco who was asked for information as to the laws in general for women in California, answered that to give in full those of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... Zurich friend, the piano teacher, Wilhelm Baumgartner, made me a present of Feuerbach's book on Tod und Unsterblichkeit ('Death and Immortality'). The well-known and stirring lyrical style of the author greatly fascinated me as a layman. The intricate questions which he propounds in this book as if they were being discussed for the first time by him, and which he treats in a charmingly exhaustive manner, had often occupied my mind since the very first days of my acquaintance with Lehrs in Paris, just ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... proportion of lives preserved after the terrible wounds inflicted by deadly fragments of shell and the still more deadly rifle bullet. Military surgery has attained a degree of proficiency during the experiences of the past three years which a layman cannot adequately describe; ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... the upas'rayas (separate buildings for monks like the Buddhist viharas). The principle of extreme carefulness not to destroy any living being has been in monastic life carried out to its very last consequences, and has shaped the conduct of the laity in a great measure. No layman will intentionally kill any living being, not even an insect, however troublesome. He will remove it carefully without hurting it. The principle of not hurting any living being thus bars them from many professions such as agriculture, etc., and ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... Mrs. B- at home?" "Yes, sir; pray what name shall I say?" I looked at the man's face astonished. What name? what name? aye, that is the question. What is my name? I had no more idea who I was than if I had never existed. I did not know whether I was a dissenter or a layman. I felt as dull as Sternhold and Hopkins. At last, to my great relief, it flashed across me that I ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... assistance. A mission can be established and made fruitful only on the basis of the sacraments, and chiefly on those of the Holy Eucharist and Penance. It is not enough to send a zealous and well intentioned layman to "a promising mission field" in order that he may read Morning and Evening Prayer and some sermon already published. What is needed is a priest to say Mass and hear confessions, and nothing else will serve as a substitute. ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... part due to the fact that their knowledge of the difficulties of feminine life causes them to be more thoughtfully tender, and more charitable as concerns the effects upon women of certain inevitable conditions as to which the layman is ignorant or indifferent. But the very fulness of the husband's appreciation of a woman's drawbacks and little moral ailments, the outcome of her womanhood, becomes dangerous when he ventures to be her medical ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... resort, even for a layman, was the Record Office, for there one could run through the whole history of France in the most entertaining manner with the help of the manuscripts placed on view, from the most ancient papyrus rolls to the days of parchment and paper. You saw the documents of the Feudal Lords' and Priests' ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... the three fields of drama, criticism, and satire, Dryden appears next as a religious poet in his "Religio Laici," an exposition of the doctrines of the Church of England from a layman's point of view. In the same year that the Catholic James II. ascended the throne, Dryden joined the Roman Church, and two years later defended his new religion in "The Hind and the Panther," an allegorical debate between two animals standing ...
— All for Love • John Dryden

... Sibbs wrote a tract called "The Bruised Reed." A copy of this was given by a humble layman to a little boy at whose father's house he had been entertained over night. That boy was Richard Baxter, and the book was the means of his conversion. Baxter wrote his "Call to the Unconverted," and among the multitude led to Christ by it was Philip Doddridge. ...
— The Art of Soul-Winning • J.W. Mahood

... to pray for strength to persevere in the Good, and to obtain forgiveness for his errors. It was his duty to confess his faults to a Magus, or to a layman renowned for his virtues, or to the Sun. Fasting and maceration were prohibited; and, on the contrary, it was his duty suitably to nourish the body and to maintain its vigor, that his soul might be strong to resist the Genius of Darkness; that ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... been adopted in the manufacture of the timepiece as we know it now. Indeed, many such inventions never passed the experimental stage, and yet it would be very interesting to the professional horologist, the apprentice and even the layman to become more intimately acquainted with the vast variety of inventions made upon this domain since the inception of horological science. Undoubtedly, a complete collection of all the escapements invented would constitute ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous

... a line of investigation that I felt ought to be of the deepest interest to every thinking, high-minded physician, to every intelligent layman; and very early the evidences of the utility of withholding food from the sick during the entire time of absence of desire for it, its absolute safety, ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... what jealous care the right of trial by jury in criminal cases has been guarded by every English-speaking people from the days of King John, indeed from the days of King Alfred, is known to every lawyer and to every intelligent layman, and it does not seem to me that such a limitation of that right as is presented by the proceedings in this case, can be reconciled either with constitutional provisions, with the practice of courts, with public sentiment on the subject, or with safety in the administration of justice. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... and it would have to be clear that the public would be benefited thereby. There was to be in the future no hiding under cover, for everything was to be done in the open, and in a way entirely understandable to the ordinary layman. ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... 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 of learning. Even admitting every indistinct commendation ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... to some natures as moral surgery. I have often wondered that Hogarth did not add one more picture to his 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 to have ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... everything; My son likewise, to maintain idolatry, Saith: tush, what hurt can carved idols bring? Despise this law of God, the heavenly King, And set them in the church for men thereon to look: An idol doth much good: it is a layman's book. Nembroth,[27] that tyrant, fearing God's hand, By me was persuaded to build up high Babel, Whereby he presumed God's wrath to withstand: So hath my boy devised very well Many pretty toys to keep men's soul from hell, Live they never ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... leguas from these—a very large island, where your Majesty has two forts. This island extends so far that it makes a strait with the island of Nueva Guinea on the eastern end, according to the relation of Fray Diego de Prado, of the Order of St. Basil, who, while he was a layman, coasted along this island on the southern side, of which nothing was then known. This is the largest island in the world, and was discovered from the northern side. It extends from the equinoctial line. No one has thus far examined what is in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair

... warfare. One priest, indeed, had gone so far as to tell him that he was on dangerous ground ... and the one and single man who up to the present had seemed on his side, was the very man, Mr. Ballard, then a layman, whom he had met by chance in London, and who had been the occasion of first suggesting any such idea. It was, in fact, for the sake of meeting Ballard again that he was going to London; and, he had almost thought from his friend's last letter, it ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... or copy-book hand is the goal. The pupil gives constant attention to the handwriting as well as to the thought. A number of students of about the same grade, under the same teacher, will write much alike. Fifteen or twenty of these students could each write a line on a page and it might baffle a layman, and perhaps puzzle an expert, to tell whether or not more than one person wrote the page. This constant striving after one ideal, and putting thought on the handwriting, had drawn them all toward that ideal ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay

... this mysterious increment, that must be added to aspiration before it becomes poetically creative? So far as a mere layman can understand it, it is a sudden arrest, rather than a satisfaction, of the poet's longing, for genuine satisfaction would kill the aspiration, and leave the poet heavy and phlegmatic. Inspiration, on the contrary, seems to give ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... 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 Thrales (post, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... "that, from the sweeping consequences looked for, the career is not devoid of interest. You have, besides, some of the entertainment of the game of hide-and-seek. But it would still seem to me—I speak as a layman—that nothing could be simpler or safer than to deposit an infernal machine and retire to an adjacent county to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... (except in the rare case when he is at liberty to choose what he shall produce) his sole merit lies in skill. In the fine arts the student uses skill to produce something beautiful. He is free to choose what that something shall be, and the layman claims that he may and must judge the artist chiefly by the value in beauty of the thing done. Artistic skill contributes to beauty, or it would not be skill; but beauty is the result of many elements, and the nobler the art the lower is the rank ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... and laughed heartily to himself. It was the first time that he had laughed for some months. Then he translated it to his companions, not without complaisancy, for it had a truly legal sound, and your layman loves to affect ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... beauty of Greek Architecture. We recognize the justice of a description of the Parthenon as 'le suprême effort du génie à la poursuite du beau'; but the layman must sometimes ask himself what does it mean? Where did it come from, where did it go to, why is it thought so beautiful, how was it that this people relatively insignificant in power, in territory, and in ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... patrons, the young man of genius who wished to thrive might fairly commit himself to the service of the Church, for which he had been bred by his father; but Addison's tact and refinement promised to be serviceable to the State, and so it was that, as Steele tells us, Montagu made Addison a layman. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... vocabulary, while Edwy was standing listlessly at the window. The "library," if it deserved the name, was very unlike a modern library; books were few, and yet very expensive, so that perhaps there was no fuller collection in any layman's house in the kingdom. There were Alfred's translations into Anglo-Saxon, the "Chronicle of Orosius," or the history of the World; the "History of the Venerable Bede," both in his original Latin and in English; Boethius on the "Consolations of Philosophy;" ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... be made of the story, narrated in Archaeologia, of the discovery of the sepulchre of St. Amphibalus at a spot near Redbourn called the "Hills of the Banners". St. Alban himself appeared to a layman in a vision and told him where the saint's bones were to be found,—indeed, he is said to have himself gone thither to point out the spot. This was during the abbacy of Symon (1167-83). We learn from Roger of Wendover ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins

... This noble ensample to his sheep he gave, That first he wrought, and afterwards he taught Out of the Gospel he those wordes caught, And this figure he added eke thereto, That "if gold ruste, what shall iron do?" For if a priest be foul, on whom we trust, No wonder is it if a layman rust; And shame it is, if that a priest take keep, A foul shepherd to see and a clean sheep; Well ought a priest ensample for to give By his cleanness, how that his sheep should live. He put not out his benefice on hire, And left his sheep encumbered in the mire, And ran to London unto Sainte ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... Was lost in darkness; the chambers of her brain Lay desolate and silent. I can gather So much, and little more:—This Julian Is one of some distinction; probably rich, And titled Count. He had a love-affair, In good-boy, layman fashion, seemingly.— Give me the woman; love is troublesome!— She loved him too, but falsehood came between, And used this woman for her minister; Who never would have peached, but for a witness Hidden behind some curtain ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald



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



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