"Impiety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the tenants of which came and visited him in his studio, carrying on endless discussions over the payment and amount of the rents in front of the poetic Virgins. The Church was poor because of the impiety of the times, it could not pay as generously as in other centuries, but commissions were numerous, and a Virgin in all her purity was a matter of only three days—but young Renovales made a troubled, wry face, as if a painful ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... knowledge: he was destined to be the standard-bearer of destruction; his genius, although not the most elevated, yet the most comprehensive in France, has hitherto been only judged by fanatics or his enemies. Impiety deified his very vices; superstition anathematised his very virtues; in a word, despotism, when it again seized on the reins of government in France, felt that to reinstate tyranny it would be necessary first to unseat Voltaire from ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... investigation of first causes and of the universe—and reduced all philosophy to the science of self-control with a view to happiness, and control of others with a view to their happiness. Like Anaxagoras, he was banished from the city under the charge of impiety, and his books ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... with the will of his friends. The confessor listens patiently to the long argument, but sets the whole of it at naught. In a word he declares that Loyola, in declining the proffered generalship, is fighting against God. Further resistance would have been a flagrant impiety. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... lived for many years in great impiety, and, forgetful of his God, in mortal sins—especially a base passion so fixed and rooted in his heart that when one of our fathers talked with him, striving to convert him, he seemed mad and beside himself. In truth, he was beside himself, for he still remained with that evil companion ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... stripped naked, were submitted to indignities for which the annals of warfare, except among the most ferocious savages, can scarcely supply a parallel. That the Almighty might not seem to be insulted in the persons only of living creatures formed in His own image, the fresh impiety was perpetrated of derisively stuffing leaves torn from French Bibles into the gaping wounds of the dead lying on this field of carnage. Nor did the Roman Catholics of Orange fare much better than their reformed neighbors. ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... with joy in your report. May you prosper, Mary, fortunate beyond compare, and perchance comparable to that ancient Virgin Mary (a comparison more than Caesarean) since "blessed art thou among women:" perhaps also it will be no impiety to compare Wordsworth himself your husband to the Angel of Salutation, since (like the angel) from heaven descend both Muses and the servants of the Muses: whose devoutest votary I always know Wordsworth to be. Congratulations to thee, Dorothea, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... good, and of all comfort.[95] In England we are so convinced of this, that there is no rust of superstition, with which the accumulated absurdity of the human mind might have crusted it over in the course of ages, that ninety-nine in a hundred of the people of England would not prefer to impiety. We shall never be such fools as to call in an enemy to the substance of any system to remove its corruptions, to supply its defects, or to perfect its construction. If our religious tenets should ever ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... own small pasture, almost its own sky! But covet not the Abode: forbear to sigh, As many do, repining while they look; Intruders—who would tear from Nature's book This precious leaf with harsh impiety. Think what the home must be if it were thine, Even thine, though few thy wants! Roof, window, door, The very flowers are sacred to the Poor, The roses to the porch which they entwine: Yea, all that now enchants ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... problem; his father was simply not in a position to understand. Doubt anything in the Bible—doubt so-called orthodox Christianity—be expelled from the church and from college for such a reason—where could his father find patience or mercy for wilful folly and impiety ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... things is an universal truth,[41] and it never happens to a man, as is the case in all other things, that at some times and to some persons only it is better to die than to live; yet that these men for whom it is better to die—this probably will appear wonderful to you—may not, without impiety, do this good to themselves, but must ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... cried she; "and the chastisement for my impiety is not delayed. Will you still force me to obey you? Shall I be dragged to the altar, in spite of myself, at the very hour ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... and a colossal one of Zeus, his masterpiece, also of ivory and gold, for Olympia; accused of having appropriated some of the gold intended for the statue of Athena he was acquitted, but was afterwards charged with impiety for carving his own likeness and that of Pericles on the shield of the goddess, and was thrown into prison, where he died, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the Hindus were even now almost Christians, because their Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesa were no other than the Christian Trinity;" a sentence in which, he adds, we can only doubt whether folly, ignorance, or impiety predominates. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... explains the passage thus—We resemble the Gods in righteousness as much as the Cyclops and Giants resembled each other in impiety. But in this sense of it there is something intricate and contrary to Homer's manner. We have seen that they derived themselves from Neptune, which sufficiently justifies the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... of absurdity,' Mr. Newthorpe remarked, 'in living when you can think of nothing but how you're to save your life. Better have done with it, I think. It strikes me as an impiety, too, to go playing at hide-and-seek with ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... viii.); in their strange conjunctions of free-thinking and intolerance. Plato in the Laws enacts that he who speaks against the gods shall be first fined, then imprisoned, and at last, if he persists in his impiety, put to death; yet he had as little belief in ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... thriftlessness and ingratitude. These indeed are tokens of a spirit of discontent which we cannot view with composure, especially in the light of late events in the unhappy country of France—the prey of impiety ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... which, equally with those we have quoted, speak forth Jehovah's interest in the helpless. "Leave thy fatherless children to me," he said, by his prophet Jeremiah, at a time when misery, desolation, and destruction were falling on Judea and her sons for their awful impiety. "Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me." "A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... little short of profanity to seek any pre-existing sources for it. 'The fathering of the Greek on the pre-existing profane cultures has been scouted by perfervid Hellenists in terms which implied that they hold it little else than impiety. Allowing no causation more earthly than vague local influences of air and light, mountain and sea, they would have Hellenism born into the world by a miracle of generation, like its own Athena from the head of Zeus.'[*] But a great civilization ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... sleep from careful lovers flies, To bathe himself in Saccharissa's eyes. As fair Astraae once from earth to heaven, By strife and loud impiety was driven; So with our plaints offended, and our tears, Wise Somnus to that paradise repairs; Waits on her will, and wretches does forsake, To court the nymph for whom those wretches wake. More proud than ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... man become Tu-Kila-Kila by killing me? And if I am Tu-Kila-Kila, how dare you, not being yourself Korong, and not having broken off the sacred bough, as I did, venture to attack me? You wish to set aside all the customs of Boupari. Are you not ashamed of such gross impiety?" ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... the navy, but would try for employment outside the country; whereon an officer standing by said to him that that appeared a pretty shabby thing, to take pay and dodge duty. The remark sank deep; he changed his mind, and served with great gallantry. It seems to me now almost an impiety to record, but, knowing my father's warm love for the South, I hazarded to the marine captain a doubt as to his position. He replied that there could be no doubt whatever. "All your father's antecedents are military; there is no military spirit in the North; ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... "Honest! Open you name it! There is but one definition for it. Immodesty! In a young girl that is deadlier than impiety. It is the wild blood of her father," he ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... Addison. Besides the many Reasons I have already given in Relation to the French, I might add, that their Language is less fit for Tragedy, and the Servitude of their Rhime enervates the Force of the Diction. And as for Our Comedies, they are so full of Lewdness, Impiety and Immorality, and of such complicated perplexed Plots, so stuffed with Comparisons and Similies, so replenished with Endeavours at Wit and Smartness, that I cannot forbear saying, that whoever sees or reads them for ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... changeful fortune of war, defeat and imprisonment; and now we see the same poor human heart, its visions soiled and clouded, its courage beaten down, surrounded only by enemies and scoffers, beginning even to suspect itself of imposture and impiety. She who had felt as a saint, hears herself exorcised as a sorcerer; and, by and by, a crowd of men, churchmen and civilians, stand round in triumph to see her burnt and consumed as a thing unholy and impure, whose life had been, not, as she had deemed, a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... wishes not to be deluded, who will not, when he has read a book, judge for himself? After all these jubilees and pilgrimages; after BOYDELL'S subscription of 500l. for one single copy; after it had been deemed almost impiety to doubt of the genius of SHAKSPEARE surpassing that of all the rest of mankind; after he had been called the 'Immortal Bard,' as a matter of course, as we speak of MOSES and AARON, there having been but one of each in the world; after all this, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... name of the Holy Father to his children, pathetically described the indignities to which the pope had been exposed, driven from his palace, bombarded in the fortress to which he had retreated, compelled to capitulate and leave his kingdom in the hands of the enemy; he expatiated upon the impiety of the French troops, the sacrilegious horrors of which they had been guilty, and in tones of eloquence hardly surpassed by Peter the Hermit, strove to rouse them to a crusade for the rescue of the pope ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... sceptical in the extreme. While having a deeper sense of the reality of life than others, he realized that he did not know much. He criticized freely the prevailing beliefs, customs, and religious practice. For this he was accused of impiety, and forced to drink the hemlock. With an irony in manner and thought, Socrates introduced the problem of self-knowledge; he hastened the study of man and reason; he instituted the doctrine of true manhood as an essential part in the philosophy of life. Conscience was enthroned, and the ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... and weather-stained garments, on which mother Nature has embroidered, midst sun and rain, midst fire and steam, her own heraldic honors? Ashamed of these tokens and titles, and envious of the flaunting robes of imbecile idleness and vanity? It is treason to Nature; it is impiety to Heaven; it is breaking Heaven's great ordinance. Toil, I repeat toil—either of the brain, of the heart, or of the hand, is the only true manhood, the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... some attempts to convince him of the impiety of his scepticism; while he remained cool, but unshaken; and I left him with mingled emotions of pity, for his adherence to doctrines so damnable; and of admiration, at the amenity and philanthropy with ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... of the voyage, for which they were prepared, but, as Salmasius put it, 'for a king to be arraigned in a court of judicature, to be put to plead for his life, to have sentence of death pronounced against him, and that sentence executed,'—oh! horrible impiety. To this Milton replies: 'Tell me, thou superlative fool, whether it be not more just, more agreeable to the rules of humanity and the laws of all human societies, to bring a criminal, be his offence what it will, before a court of justice, to give him leave to ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... usurper, because Elala offered his protection to the priesthood; but the orthodox annalist closes his notice of his reign by the moral reflection that "even he who was an heretic, and doomed by his creed to perdition, obtained an exalted extent of supernatural power from having eschewed impiety and injustice."[1] ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... not dare, if thus they dare Be impudent to Heaven, and play with prayer, Play with that fear, with that religious awe, Which keeps men free, and yet is man's great law! What can they but the worst of Atheists be Who, while they word it 'gainst impiety, Affront the throne of God with their false deeds? Alas! this wonder in the Atheist breeds. Are these the men that would the age reform, That Down with Superstition cry, and swarm This painted glass, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... they are never angered, though they groan; the acrimony of the aggressor is not in them, but rather the softness and tenuity of light, which penetrates and warms and illumines. To their eyes Doubt is neither an impiety, nor a blasphemy, nor a crime, but a transition through which men return upon their steps in the Darkness, or advance into the Light. This being so, dear pastor, ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... executing heretics; not indeed one by which any deduction should be made from their sufferings (which certainly was not the royal wish, nor likely to be grateful to God or salutary to religion), but by which all hopes of glory—that powerful incentive to their impiety—might be precluded. With regard to any suggested alterations in the council of state, or in the other two councils, the King was to be represented as unwilling to form any decision until he should hear, at length, from the Duchess Regent ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... I conceive any meaning attached to the words "separate attention," that is not fully answered by one part of an exhibition exciting seriousness or pity, and the other raising mirth and loud laughter. That they felt no impiety in the affair is most true. For it is the very essence of that system of Christian polytheism, which in all its essentials is now fully as gross in Spain, in Sicily and the south of Italy, as it ever was in England in the days of Henry VI.—(nay, more so; for a Wicliffe ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... turmoil, and uneasiness, he would have been content. Could he have been again unborn—uncreated! He had once repined to Father John, that existence had been for him a necessary evil; and though checked by the priest for the impiety of the thought, was it odd if he often thought, that he was one of those for whom it would have been better had ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... parted from Socrates with the significant words: 'That in any city, and particularly in the city of Athens, it is easier to do men harm than to do them good;' and Socrates was anticipating another opportunity of talking with him. In the Euthyphro, Socrates is awaiting his trial for impiety. But before the trial begins, Plato would like to put the world on their trial, and convince them of ignorance in that very matter touching which Socrates is accused. An incident which may perhaps really have occurred in the family of Euthyphro, a learned Athenian ...
— Euthyphro • Plato
... using violence; abusing parents; fraudulently injuring another; giving false evidence; speaking disrespectfully to the aged; marrying an elder brother's wife; putting your foot on, or walking over, a man's body; speaking profanely of religion—are acts of impiety.[198] ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... born as a human creature, to be insulted, flagellated, and even executed as a malefactor; when they pretended to create God himself, to swallow, digest, revive, and multiply him ad infinitum, by the help of a little flour and water, the Indians were shocked at the impiety of their presumption. — They were examined by the assembly of the sachems who desired them to prove the divinity of their mission by some miracle. — They answered, that it was not in their power. — 'If you were ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... practice—that it might be, though refining, or tonic even, in the case of those strong and in health, yet, as Pascal says of the kindly and temperate wisdom of Montaigne, "pernicious for those who have any natural tendency to impiety or vice," the line of reflection traced out above, was fairly chargeable.—Not, however, with "hedonism" and its supposed consequences. The blood, the heart, of Marius were still pure. He knew that his carefully considered theory of practice braced him, with the effect ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... said "good-night" in a tone as suppressedly hostile as his own. Now I may go. We may all go. I am the last, or I think I am, to pass through the swing-door. I hurry along the passage to join the rest in the school-room. I upbraid the boys for the rash impiety of their demeanor. I feel a foot on my garments behind, and hear a long cracking sound that I too, too ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... to dread the sea. Augustus, whose success had blessed not only his own country, but the whole world, had—not the least of his blessings—given to the seamen a calmed sea—pacatum mare. Lamenting at Virgil's departure for Athens, he rebukes the impiety of the first mariner who ventured, in the audacity of his heart, to go afloat and cross the briny barrier interposed between nations. He esteems a merchant favoured specially by the gods, should he twice or thrice a year return in safety from an Atlantic cruise. He tells us he himself ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... in passing the open doors of the church that my ears were assailed with cries of female distresses:—nor could I doubt that even that sanctuary (held sacred by our troops of Spain!) had been invaded by the impiety of the German or Burgundian legions!—As usual, the chief ladies of the town had placed themselves under the protection of the high altar. But there, even there, had they been seized by sacrilegious hands!—The fame of the rare beauty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... possible, by vituperation, culumny, and every engine of moral torture. But a far more terrible weapon, and one which made Vesalius rage, and it may be for once in his life tremble, was the charge of impiety and heresy. The Inquisition was a very ugly place. It was very easy to get into it, especially for a Netherlander: but not so easy to get out. Indeed Vesalius must have trembled, when he saw his master, Charles V., himself take fright, and actually call on ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... promise of Jesus Christ, that the gates of hell shall never prevail against the Church, our soul cannot but feel excruciating pain, upon considering how daring outrages against divine and sacred things daily flow from the unbridled licentiousness, the perverse effrontery and impiety of the press. Now in this pestilence of corrupt books which invades us on all sides, the work entitled Institutes of Ecclesiastical Law, by John Nepomue Nuytz, Professor in the Royal University of Turin, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... immortal, and an immortal being would be God. The contrary beliefs of the Egyptians and the Aryans were to them abominations, and the spiritualistic doctrine inaugurated by Juda Maccabaeus and accepted by the Pharisees, an impiety. The Pentateuch had not a word on the subject. Moses had expressly declared that secret things belong to the Lord, and only visible things to man. The prophets had indeed foretold a terrestrial immortality, but that immortality was the immortality of a nation; and the realization ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... time by mothers and nurses under the supervision of the state; finally, to comprehend music and gymnastics. Under music is included reading, writing, playing on the lyre, arithmetic, geometry, and a knowledge of astronomy sufficient to preserve the minds of the citizens from impiety in after-life. Gymnastics are to be practised chiefly with a view to their use in war. The discussion of education, which was lightly touched upon in Book ii, is ...
— Laws • Plato
... war comes we hear exactly the same tale as now of the Germans' love of peace and the despicable deceitfulness of their enemies. 'And the peace shall be a German peace; now tremble before the sword of God and of Germany ye who are strong in impiety and fruitful in bloodguiltiness.'" ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... of 1759 was a fitting reward of Wolfe's valour, punished the infamies of the Bigot regime and withdrew Canada from the focus of the terrible chastisement which awaited France soon after—in the Reign of Terror—for her impiety and immorality. The victory of April, 1760, was a comforting incident—a species of compensation to a handful of brave and faithful colonists, for the crushing disaster which had befallen their cause, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... a thing! the impiety of it startles me—to wrong so good, so fair a creature, and one that loves you tenderly—'tis a barbarity of barbarities, and nothing could be ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... another, till the latter took up the ground, that though the saints were not omnipresent, yet God, who was so, imparted to them the prayers offered up, and then they used their interference with Him to grant them. 'That is, father, (said C. in reply)—excuse my seeming levity, for I mean no impiety—that is; I have a deaf and dumb wife, who yet understands me, and I her, by signs. You have a favour to ask of me, and want my wife's interference; so you communicate your request to me, who impart it ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... where, under the grand silence of midnight, she decided alone her son's future, the spirit of the Basque ancestors passed, sombre and jealous also, disdainful of the stranger, fearful of impiety, of changes, of evolutions of races;—the spirit of the Basque ancestors, the old immutable spirit which still maintains that people with eyes turned toward the anterior ages; the mysterious antique spirit by which the children are led to act as before them their fathers had acted, ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... never undertaken the publication of these letters. Between two impending law-suits how shall we muster courage to keep on the even tenor of our way? Even our staunch friend, the anonymous Public, torments us with frequent accusatory epistles, charging us with dulness, impiety, and irreverence for American institutions. All these we must lay on the back of our Englishman, whose compatriots we confess are apt to assume a latitude of style hardly tolerated among us. In the mean time, gentle Public, respected Cockney, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... and venerable representations of saints and angels—for as sacred and venerable they had been taught to consider them—with very different feelings. The antiquary may be permitted to regret the necessity of the action, but to Magdalen Graeme it seemed a deed of impiety, deserving the instant vengeance of heaven,—a sentiment in which her relative joined for the moment as cordially as herself. Neither, however, gave vent to their feelings in words, and uplifted hands and eyes formed their only mode of expressing them. The page was about to approach ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... Trent affair. Men of Manchester, Englishmen, what reception can you give this man? He is the friend of General Butler. He is the friend of that so-called gospel preacher, Cheever. His impudence in coming here is only equalled by his cruelty and impiety." ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold
... they come on logical results of their own making. In our conventional readiness to reverence the mother and disown the mistress as social institutions, we are apt to ignore, as though the mere suggestion were an impiety, the fact that in their instincts and affections they have often much in common. It is one of Nature's kindest and wisest economies; yet perhaps the woman treasures it secretly, because it is a quality of her sex scarcely ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... later and much worse age; and, whatsoever we may think of the taste of the authors of these lives, or of their faculty for judging of evidence, we must at least give them credit for being earnest men, incapable of what would have been in their eyes, and ought to be in ours, not merely falsehood, but impiety. Let the reader be sure of this—that these documents would not have exercised their enormous influence on the human mind, had there not been in them, under whatever accidents of credulity, and even absurdity, an element of sincerity, virtue, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... heav'n, love ocean-wide, thy lovely form will don; What time love will encounter love, license must rise wanton; Why hold that all impiety in Jung doth find its spring, The source of trouble, verily, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... by inadvertence I spat in the church of God." At this the friar began to smile, and said:—"My son, this is not a matter to trouble about; we, who are religious, spit there all day long." "And great impiety it is when you so do," replied Ser Ciappelletto, "for there is nothing that is so worthy to be kept from all impurity as the holy temple in which sacrifice is offered to God." More he said in the same strain, which I pass over; and then at last he began to sigh, and by and by to weep ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... impiety, thou impious purity, For thee I'll lock up all the gates of love. Much Ado ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... you Jews, and pierce my side, Buffet and scoff, scourge and crucify me, For I have sinned, and sinned, and only he Who could do no iniquity hath died, But by my death cannot be satisfied My sins, which pass the Jews' impiety: They killed once an inglorious man, but I Crucify him daily, being now glorified. O let me then his strange love still admire. Kings pardon, but he bore our punishment; And Jacob came, clothed in vile harsh attire, But to supplant, and with gainful intent: God clothed himself ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... announced one day in public, that in consequence of the impiety of the Omaguas, he should retire to a neighboring tribe, of more religious turn of mind; and taking with him the precious instrument, leave their palms to blight, and themselves to ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... extraordinary-looking being, who stood like a statue—with the exception of its arms, which it continued slowly to wave up and down in a series of mysterious signs, as if it would bar our progress in that direction; indeed, if I may not be accused of impiety by saying so, it reminded me of the angel with the flaming sword, stationed at the entrance of Eden to prohibit the return of our first parents,—though I am very certain that the idea must have been original so far as the Australian necromancer—for ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... more wouldst thou have?—Shall we keep chasing this murdeous fish till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh,—Impiety and blasphemy to hunt ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... secrets, also to quarrel, to strike, to take revenge, to do evil, to steal, to tell lies, to deceive, to blaspheme; carelessness about the children, intemperance, luxury, excessive prodigality, drunkenness, uncleanness, immodesty, application to magic and witchcraft, impiety, with several other causes. By legitimate causes we do not here mean judicial causes, but such as are legitimate in regard to the other married partner; separation from the house also is seldom ordained ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... extent of affecting his reason. The "madness of Cambyses," reported to and believed in by Herodotus, was a fiction of the Egyptian priests, who wished it to be thought that their gods had in this way punished his impiety. The Persians had no such tradition, but merely regarded him as unduly severe and selfish. A dispassionate consideration of all the evidence on the subject leads to the conclusion that Cambyses lived and died in the possession of his reason, having neither destroyed it through ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... however they may baulk us of grand opportunities of plashing in watery sentiment. Speaking of the poet's biographers, Mr. Findlater remarks that they have tried to outdo one another in heaping obloquy on his name; they have made his convivial habits, habitual drunkenness; his wit and humour, impiety; his social talents, neglect of duty; and have accused him of every vice. Then he gives his testimony: 'My connection with Robert Burns commenced immediately after his admission into the Excise, and continued to the hour of his death. In all that time the superintendence of his behaviour ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... their impious outrage on Hermes in mutilating his statues; and the chief agent in their destruction was one who was descended on his father's side from the injured deity—Hermocrates, son of Hermon." I wonder, my dearest Terentian, how he omitted to say of the tyrant Dionysius that for his impiety towards Zeus and Herakles he was deprived of his power by Dion ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... he means by that name, says he means steam, heat, electricity, galvanism, magnetism, mesmeric force, odyle, animal life, the soul of man, or the sum of all the intelligences in the universe, he is a deceiver, and vain talker, abusing language to conceal his impiety. Pantheism is simply Jesuitical Atheism. Willing to dethrone Jehovah, but unable and unwilling to place any other being in his stead, as Creator and Ruler of the universe, yet conscious that mankind will never embrace open Atheism, Pantheists ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... slain, How should not we, who see, shun such a crime— We who perceive the guilt and feel the shame— O thou Delight of Men, Janardana? By overthrow of houses perisheth Their sweet continuous household piety, And-rites neglected, piety extinct— Enters impiety upon that home; Its women grow unwomaned, whence there spring Mad passions, and the mingling-up of castes, Sending a Hell-ward road that family, And whoso wrought its doom by wicked wrath. Nay, and the souls of honoured ancestors Fall from their place of peace, ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... night, dragged him from his bed, and crucified him against his door, while his wife clung to the old man's knees and besought the mercy they never gave and never got. Even the wild folk of the countryside were stricken with the horror and impiety of the deed; and it says much for the fear in which the Preez family were held that none molested them or called them ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... self-refuting assertion than this." I question, however, whether the clergyman does well to be angry with the geologists here. That fossils are mere models and archetypes, is his hypothesis, not theirs; and so it is he himself who is answerable, not they, for what he deems the impiety of the archetypal dung. His next statement is of a kind suited somewhat to astonish the practical geologist. "It is the constant language of geologists," he says, in giving the result of their discoveries, "that no young have been found!!! while the larger fossils have been detected isolated, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... help it, papa." He took her in his arms, and, for the first time since the discovery of her atrocious familiarity with Donal, kissed her. She clung to him, trembling now with pleasure as well as apprehension. But, alas! there was no impiety in the faithlessness that pronounced such a joy too good to endure, and the end came yet sooner than she feared. For, when the father rose erect from her embrace, and was again the laird, there, to his amazement, still stood the odd-looking, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... of a person who had been already once baptized was not only in the eyes of the established church an impiety, it was in the eyes of the established law a capital crime, and the history of Anabaptism in Germany is the history of a long martyrdom. In Catholic and Protestant countries alike these radicals were persecuted. From Strasburg and Nuremberg they were expelled, in Zurich their leaders ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... fancying there could be any harm in taking such a liberty, we entered the pagoda unceremoniously, and one of our artists set to work sketching the bronze image which the natives worship as a deity, a figure not quite three inches in height; but the Hindoos were shocked at our impiety, and soon ousted the Admiral and his party. Close by was a little tank or pool of water, beautifully spangled over with the leaves and flowers of the water-lily. Here several groups of Indian girls had assembled ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... until the year 399 B.C., when some of his enemies accused him of impiety, declaring that he did not worship the old gods, but introduced new ones and corrupted the minds of the young. "The penalty due," they said, ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... from undoubted authority that there never was such a man as Jesus, or show that he was a wicked impostor and deservedly lost his life. Show moreover, that there never were such men as the apostles of Jesus, or that they were likewise impostors, and all suffered death for their wicked impiety! Give the particulars of Saul's madly forsaking the honourable connexion in which he stood, for the sake of practising a fraud which produced him ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... wrong; and that the gods wished men to know them, not by beliefs and observances, but by doing good." This teaching, which was misunderstood by many, together with the dislike—not to say hatred—which such a "cross-examining missionary" would inevitably excite, caused his trial for impiety or rejection of the popular deities. He was then over seventy. When asked whether he had prepared his defence, he replied "that his whole life had been a preparation, since he had spent it in studying what was right ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... from here, where an aged city had tried to conquer the country and had failed, for the spirit of woods and open spaces, of water and trees and wind, survived among the very roofs. The conventions of the centuries, the convention of puritanism, of worldliness, of impiety, of materialism and of charity had all assailed and all fallen back before the strength of the apparently peaceful country in which the city stood. The air was soft with a peculiar, undermining softness; it carried with it a smell of flowers ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... pass!"—No; but there you sit, trembling for fear certain things should come to pass, and moaning and groaning and lamenting over what does come to pass. And then you upbraid the Gods. Such meanness of spirit can have but one result—impiety. ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... himself, did he will it, could save us," answered the lover in a tone which seemed to be that of impiety. "Were he here himself, with all the Manitous of the earth, and the air, and the flood, and the fire, gathered together from mountain, and valley, and wood, and prairie, he could not save us. Together, Mekaia, we shall sleep in the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... we began the religious exercises which those of our Society are wont to conduct in the plazas for the benefit of those, who through hindrances, carelessness, or impiety, fail to attend the sermons. The discourses were delivered in the Castilian language, in the principal plaza of Manila, beneath some of the principal buildings, which were then occupied (while the royal edifices ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... expressiveness touches us so nearly, the propriety of its sentiment is so striking, that, when the great test question of this living age is applied to it, and we are asked, What is its use? what is it good for? the heart is shocked at the impiety of the question, and the feelings revolt, as against an insult. Upon the arches of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... people of Great Britain:—"Nor can we suppress our astonishment, that a British Parliament should ever consent to establish in that country, a religion that has deluged your Island in blood, and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder, and rebellion through every part of the world." And "That we think the Legislature of Great Britain is not authorized by the Constitution to establish a religion fraught with ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... appertain to our most holy faith, Thank God, we've the original in keeping, We have his hand and seal to it—we - And I shall lead him easily to think How very dangerous for the state it is Not to believe. All civic bonds divide, Like flax fire-touched, where subjects don't believe. Away with foul impiety! ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... themselves under these sacred banners, and were impatient to open the way with their sword to the holy city. Nobles, artisans, peasants, even priests, enrolled their names; and to decline this meritorious service was branded with the reproach of impiety, or, what perhaps was esteemed still more disgraceful, of cowardice and pusillanimity. The infirm and aged contributed to the expedition by presents and money; and many of them, not satisfied with the merit of this atonement, attended it in person, and were determined, if ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... experiment, and is not contrasted with the certainty of ideal or mathematical knowledge. But the ancient philosopher never experimented: in the Timaeus Plato seems to have thought that there would be impiety in making the attempt; he, for example, who tried experiments in colours would 'forget the difference of the human and divine natures.' Their indefiniteness is probably the reason why he singles them out, as especially incapable of being tested by experiment. (Compare the saying of ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... her vindictive pride and rage, nothing through all eternity could change their nature. Yet, gone those more than forty years, and come this Nemesis now looking her in the face, she still abided by her old impiety—still reversed the order of Creation, and breathed her own breath into a clay image of her Creator. Verily, verily, travellers have seen many monstrous idols in many countries; but no human eyes have ever seen more daring, gross, and shocking images of the Divine nature than we creatures of ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... on we went across the vast ocean beyond, with never a sacrifice to implore the Gods that they should help our direction. One might feel censure towards these rugged mariners for their impiety, but one could not help an admiration for their lusty ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... the reformer, the ancient city, evangelized by St. Cromadaire, and enlightened by St. Gibbosine, fell into disorder and dissolution; every sort of extravagance and impiety was committed there, by day and by night. In vain did the great St. Nicolas warn his flock by exhortations, threats, and fulminations. The evil increased unchecked, and it was sad to see the contagion ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... of the few philosophers who have escaped the imputation of impiety, has defined with rare sagacity the limits of physical explanations, in his celebrated essay 'On the Theory and Structure of the Heavens', published at Konigsberg ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... of impiety," said the voice, severely; "look at Gabriel! he has followed my counsels, and is now the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... not by the king, but by his officers (ci. 3, 13, 14). But after making every deduction, these chapters remain as a historical source of the first rank. The section begins by revealing the reckless impiety of Jehoiakim in burning the prophecies of Jeremiah in 605 B.C., but the other chapters gather round the siege of Jerusalem, eighteen years later, and the events that followed it. They describe the cruel and successive imprisonments of the prophet for his ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... to the question is without doubt this:—Ham is punished in his son, just as he himself had sinned against his father. He is punished in this son, because he followed most decidedly the example of his father's impiety and wickedness. To this view we are led by the whole doctrine of Holy Scripture concerning the visitation of the guilt of the fathers upon the children. (Compare the author's "Dissertations on the Genuineness of the Pentateuch," vol. ii. p. 373.) [Pg 35] To this view we are also ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... Methodius (A.D. 267-305), Tyrannion (A.D. 310), and Paulinus (A.D. 328). Early in the fourth century (B.C. 335) Tyre was the seat of a synod or council, called to consider charges made against the great Athanasius,[14484] who was taxed with cruelty, impiety, and the use of magical arts. As the bishops who assembled belonged chiefly to the party of Arius, the judgment of the council condemned Athanasius, and deprived him of his see. On appeal the decision was reversed; ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... diabolical villain has gone to his final account. Summon some scavenger to collect the vile remains, and bury them in a dung-hill. To give them Christian, decent burial would be treason to man, sacrilege to the Church, and impiety to God!' ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... nay, a thousand times. Ever since I have been engaged in public matters I have hardly heard of anything else. It is precisely your own case, when, as a bishop, people reproach you for impiety; or, as a musketeer, for your cowardice; the very thing of which they are always accusing ministers of finance is ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... reverence for their fathers; at length it was deemed sacrilege to doubt these pandects in any one particular; even the errors, that had crept into them with time, were beheld with reverential awe; he that ventured to reason upon them, was looked upon as an enemy to the commonwealth; as one whose impiety drew down upon them the vengeance of these adored beings, to which alone imagination had given birth; not contented with adopting the rituals, with following the ceremonies invented by themselves, one community waged war against another, to oblige it to receive ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... Arjuna! have passed through many transmigrations. I know all these. Thou dost not know them.... For whenever there is a relaxation of duty, O son of Bharata! and an increase of impiety, I then reproduce myself for the protection of the good and the destruction of evil-doers. I am produced in every age for the purpose of establishing duty.... Some sacrifice the sense of hearing and the other senses in the fire of restraint. Others, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... had vanquished them, it is not in words to describe how I despised and detested the majority of my schoolfellows—for their vulgar pleasures, their offensive habits—their hard, rough, brutal manners—their vicious principles, and their vile, blasphemous impiety. I was a warm lover and a still more ardent hater, and my hatred to most of them exceeded all bounds of reason; but it was just such as a straightforward, warm-tempered fellow, is certain to entertain without mitigation in such ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... that which above all things he requires; so that when he manifests himself by his word, men should follow according to their vocation and commandment. Now so it is, that God, by that great Pastor our Lord Jesus, now manifestly in his word calls us from all impiety, as well of body as of mind, to holiness of life, and to his spiritual service; and for this purpose he has erected the throne of his mercy among us, the true preaching of his word, together with the right administration of his sacraments: but ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox
... a great deal to crush me, because I know, in the first place, that my own intentions were correct, that I feel in my heart a deep reverence for religion, that impiety is very abhorrent to me; and in the second, I place firm reliance on the judgment of some who have encouraged me. You and Mr. Lewes are quite as good authorities, in my estimation, as Mr. Dilke or the ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Perozes completely destroy his army, I. iv. 1 ff.; force the Persians to pay tribute, I. iv. 35; receive Cabades after his escape from the Prison of Oblivion, I. vi. 10; Cabades owes their king money, I. vii. 1, 2; punished for impiety towards Jacobus, the hermit, I. vii. 8; eight hundred Eph. killed by the Persians, I. ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... and his clothes were hanging round him in rags. Yet, in a certain sense, his narrow escape had done him good, for it had brought very vividly before him the impiety of his prayer. He had given way too long to maddening thoughts, and they had unnerved him. With the consciousness of his escape, all the manliness of his nature reasserted itself. He had faced this thing so long that he would face it now to the end. ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... define, threw doubts into some minds. It was asserted, however, that this English-woman was rich, and that she had passed her life in traveling through every country in the world, because her family had thrown her off. Why had her family thrown her off? Because of her natural impiety? ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... it comes to a question of judging the actions of others, or rather of answering objections, amongst which there are some even concerned with the actions of God, whereof I will speak presently. And as an insuperable necessity would open the door to impiety, whether through the impunity one could thence infer or the hopelessness of any attempt to resist a torrent that sweeps everything along with it, it is important to note the different degrees of necessity, and to show that there are ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... yet it was the hour which preceded the dawn. It was the culminating point of the infidelity of kings, priests, and people; the visible expression and embodiment of the mind of France, long tutored by falsehood and impiety; the letting loose of Satan on earth, that all might see and wonder at the Beast! That Revolution inscribed lessons in letters of blood for the Church and for the nations of the world to learn. Christians accordingly ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... The four Ages follow, and in the last of these the Giants aspire to the sovereignty of the heavens; being slain by Jupiter, a new race of men springs up from their blood. These becoming noted for their impiety, Jupiter not only transforms Lycaon into a wolf, but destroys the whole race of men and animals by a Deluge, with the exception of Deucalion and Pyrrha, who, when the waters have abated, renew the human ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Bharata! piety languishes and impiety is in the ascendant, I create myself. I am born, age after age, for the protection of the good, for the destruction of evil-doers, and the establishment ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... the return of all moneys and objects of value which any persons had received from Nero. However, if anybody had been exiled by the latter on the charge of impiety towards the emperor, he restored him to citizenship; and he also transferred to the tomb of Augustus the bones of members of the imperial family who had been murdered, and he ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... the doorways of private houses and temples, had in one night most of them their fares mutilated. No one knew who had done it, but large public rewards were offered to find the authors; and it was further voted that any one who knew of any other act of impiety having been committed should come and give information without fear of consequences, whether he were citizen, alien, or slave. The matter was taken up the more seriously, as it was thought to be ominous for the expedition, and part of a conspiracy to bring ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... apparent aspiration after social and humanitarian reform, there was a corruption of the public conscience and a hardening of the public heart. London was the living picture of this startling contrast. Impiety, iniquity, impurity, and injustice were at their height here, and either England must forfeit her position among the nations, or the Almighty would interpose. The Almighty was about to interpose, and the consummation of London's wickedness ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... nations have convulsed the world, and our country is threatened with similar calamities. We perceive with pain and fearful apprehension a general dereliction of religious principles and practice among our fellow-citizens, a visible and prevailing impiety and contempt for the laws and institutions of religion, and an abounding infidelity, which in many instances tends to atheism itself. The profligacy and corruption of the public morals have advanced with a progress proportionate to our declension ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... be, that the whole is greater than a part, that two and three make five, is pretending to stop the ocean with a bulrush. Will you set up profane reason against sacred mystery? No punishment is great enough for your impiety. And the same fires which were kindled for heretics will serve also for the ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... there was no irreligion concerned with their lore. On the contrary, the possession of magical knowledge was an especial attribute of Odin himself; and to intrude themselves upon a deity, and compel him to instruct them in what they desired to know, was accounted not an act of impiety, but of gallantry and high courage, among those sons of the sword and the spear. Their matrons possessed a high reputation for magic, for prophetic powers, for creating illusions; and, if not capable of transformations of the human body, they were at least able ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... the Domina silent and immoveable: But no sooner did She recover herself, than She exclaimed against sacrilege and impiety, and called the People to rescue a Daughter of the Church. They were eagerly preparing to obey her; when Don Ramirez, protected by the Archers from their rage, commanded them to forbear, and threatened them with the severest ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... classes were coarse, drunken, and ill-mannered. Bribery and corruption on the grossest scale were the principal means for getting into Parliament. Mr. Dowdeswell, M.P. for Worcestershire, said to the Commons, "You have turned out a member for impiety and obscenity. What halfdozen members of this House ever meet over a convivial bottle, that their discourse is entirely free from obscenity, impiety, or abuse ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... the Princess, "thou dost not imagine that I have part or lot in these odious imputations? Even could I deem them true, should I not think charitably of thee, but yesterday a heathen, and educated in impiety by a foul sorcerer? My poor lamb! But tongues must be stopped, and I have now to advise thee how this may ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... learned of the convening of a new assemblage of the clergy, I believed that it was done for the express purpose of my condemnation. Stunned by this fear like one smitten with a thunderbolt, I daily expected to be dragged before their councils or assemblies as a heretic or one guilty of impiety. Though I seem to compare a flea with a lion, or an ant with an elephant, in very truth my rivals persecuted me no less bitterly than the heretics of old hounded St. Athanasius. Often, God knows, I sank so ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard |
