"Blasphemy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself one minute in which to establish the fruitlessness of spurs, whip and blasphemy in this emergency, and then, descending to his own legs, he climbed over the fence into the road and ran as fast as boots and tops would let him towards the point whence the cry of the hounds was coming, ever more and more faintly. In a moment or two he returned, out of breath, to where ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Antediluvians; and when my foot at last touched land, I sat down there a long, long time in the rubbly snow, and silently wept. My eyes that night were like a fountain of tears. For the firm land is health and sanity, and dear to the life of man; but I say that the great ungenial ice is a nightmare, and a blasphemy, and a madness, and the realm ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... These were coldly declined; and it was a good sign that Robinson, being permitted by the regulations to write one letter, did not write to any of his old pals in London or elsewhere, but to Mr. Eden. He told him that he regretted his quiet cell where his ears were never invaded with blasphemy and indecency, things he never took pleasure in even at his worst—and missed his reverence's talk sadly. He concluded by asking for some good books by way ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... bewitch a sailor's wife—I was lang eneugh there—and out I wad be, and out John Blower gat me, but wi' nae sma' fight and fend.—My Lady Penelope Penfitter, and the great folk, may just take it as they like; but in my mind, Dr. Cacklehen, it's a mere blasphemy for folk to gar themselves look otherwise than their Maker made them; and then the changing the name which was given them at baptism, is, I think, an awful falling away from our vows; and though Thisby, which I take to be Greek for Tibbie, may be a very ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... pipes, and the tavern-chorus which he and his friends are singing. Such a man as Charles should have had an Ostade or Mieris to paint him. Your Knellers and Le Bruns only deal in clumsy and impossible allegories: and it hath always seemed to me blasphemy to claim Olympus for such a wine-drabbled ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... brothers, sisters, and wives would not have been bereaved and plunged into mourning.... That matter, however, I have settled with God." "Settled with God!"—an amazing statement, a statement which would seem the height of blasphemy if it were not an expression of noblest manliness, if it did not reveal the soul of a warrior dauntlessly fighting for a great cause, risking for it the existence of a whole country as well as his own happiness, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... mask. "I can't deny it, Havisham. The facts stated are true. The inferences drawn as to my character are false. The bringing of Miss Allen into the story was a blasphemy. All things considered, as far as publicity goes, utter silence is my only recourse. As for my private retaliation on Brown, that's another and a ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... DO... Every man upon the earth, professing Christians or non-professing, must hear it and WILL KNOW IT SOONER OR LATER.... I could tell you much more about this; but were I to tell you the whole truth, blasphemy would be nothing to it, in the estimation of the superstitious and over righteous of mankind.... Jesus, our Elder Brother, was begotten in the flesh by the same character that was in the Garden of Eden, and who ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... my right!" What atrocity has that legend sanctified! and yet with demure faces they try men for blasphemy. Give ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... then, Coleridge succeeds with the supernatural, both by way of description in detail, and of suggestion. If you wish to see a failure, try the ghost, the moral but not affable ghost, in Wordsworth's "Laodamia." It is blasphemy to ask the question, but is the ghost in "Hamlet" quite a success? Do we not see and hear a little too much of him? Macbeth's airy and viewless dagger is really much more successful by way of suggestion. The ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... tone, and with an erect mien, stopping short upon him, which made him start back—'tis next to blasphemy to question this lady's honour. She is more pure than a vestal; for vestals have often been warmed by their own fires. No age, from the first to the present, ever produced, nor will the future, to the end of the world, I dare aver, ever produce, a ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... itself and inexcusable under all conceivable circumstances; for instance, blasphemy, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... strange fascinating picture of the dark, mysterious London house, with London like a magic cauldron bubbling beyond it. There was moreover the further strangeness of her aunt's religion. Her father in his anger had spoken about "their wicked blasphemy," "their insolence in the eyes of God," "their blindness and ignorant conceit." Maggie had discovered, on a later day, from her uncle that her aunts belonged to a sect known as the Kingscote Brethren and that the main feature of their creed was that they expected the second ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... sleep on duty, sir! And the fact is, I was worn out in the attack on the Silent Tower last night, and when you had your interview with the pirate—all good pirates forgive me for the blasphemy! Amen!—and I knew that everything was going smoothly, I went into the wheel-house and took forty winks." He said all this without moving so much as an eyelid, from which I gathered that he wished absolute silence to be observed on my part. Whilst ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... blasphemy to sing the praise o' God, not only better than some folks in the choir, but like an angel o' light, I wish you'd do a little o' that blaspheming ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... begun to grow around the person of Chunder Sen, like those around a thousand others well known in the history of India. He became to some of his followers not only a great religious teacher, but also something of an incarnation on his own account, so that it seemed to them blasphemy for any living being to aspire to speak from the pulpit ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... long rigors of cold, her delicate face reddened as if before a fire, her jaws felt almost locked as she went through the deadly cold of the lonely house back to bed; but that strange rage in her heart enabled her to defy it, and awakened within her something like blasphemy against life and all the conditions thereof, but never against Richard Alger. She never felt one throb of resentment against him. She even wondered, when she was back in bed, if he had bedclothing enough, if the quilts and bed-puffs ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the man, and did not apologize for the blasphemy. He looked at her fixedly, as though unguessed-at horizons of innocence widened inimitably before his horrified eyes. And then, following some line of association which escaped Sylvia, "I'm not fit to look at Judith!" he cried. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... priests to his assistance, Vincent set to work at once to visit the convicts in the Paris prisons; but the men were so brutalized that it was difficult to know how to win them. The first advances were met with cursing and blasphemy, but Vincent was not to be discouraged. With his own gentle charity he performed the lowest offices for these poor wretches to whom his heart went out with such an ardent pity; he cleansed them from ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... the president without elation. "Moira didn't tell him. She's an angel! But he's bound to learn. And then if he doesn't detonate with the rage in him, he'll see to it that all of us are murdered—slowly, for treason to the Erse and blasphemy directed at St. Patrick." Then the president said with a sort of yearning pride: "D'ye know what Moira offered to do? She said she'd taken biology at college, and she'd try to solve the problem of ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... every magistrate is of God, it is (unless he would exercise tyranny) his chief duty, all blasphemy being repressed, to defend and provide for religion, and to execute this to his utmost strength, as the prophet teacheth out of the word; in which respect the pure and free preaching of God's word, a right, diligent, and well-instituted discipline of youth, citizens ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... showed great kindliness to one another, and faithfulness in standing by their comrades in war. No people could have better observed either the third or the fifth commandment; for they had a particular horror of blasphemy, and their respectful tenderness towards their parents and, indeed, towards old people in ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... his children must not feel this year was different, Lin made a step toward them. There were hours and spots where he could readily have descended upon them at that, played the role of clinking affluence, waved thanks aside with competent blasphemy, and tossing off some infamous whiskey, cantered away in the full self-conscious strut of the frontier. But here was not the moment; the abashed cow-puncher could make no such parade in this place. The people brushed by him back and forth, busy upon their errands, and aware ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... them. They in turn hate and persecute us for vile heretics. What can we do about it? With Paul we glory in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. What do we gain? We are told that our glorying is idle vanity and unadulterated blasphemy. The moment we abase ourselves and give in to the rage of our opponents, Papists and Anabaptists grow arrogant. The Anabaptists hatch out some new monstrosity. The Papists revive their old abominations. What to do? Let everybody become sure of his calling and doctrine, that ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... man I had been sent to relieve. He quite concurred in my opinion of the beauties of the scenery, but said that he was very glad to get away. Then, being a cheerful man, though given to unnecessary blasphemy, like most South Sea Island traders, he took me out to the rich garden at the back of the station and showed me the grave of his predecessor, who had died of fever a year before. Further on, but outside the enclosing fence, were some more graves, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... of promotions; his scruples removed, or his refusal submitted to. When Cardinal Fesch demanded His Holiness's Bull for the curate Miollis, the Cardinal Secretary of State, Gonsalvi, showed no less than twenty acts of apostasy and blasphemy, which made him unworthy of such a dignity. To this was replied that, having obtained an indulgence in toto for what was past, he was a proper subject; above all, as he had the protection of the Emperor of the French. The Pope's Nuncio here then addressed ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... call him a poet because he has the trick of a sonorous cadence and of words that fall with the measure of music, so that youths and maidens recite them for the vain charm of their mere empty sound? It is a lie—it is a blasphemy. A poet! A poet suffers for the meanest thing that lives; the feeblest creature dead in the dust is pain to him; his joy and his sorrow alike outweigh tenfold the joys and the sorrows of men; he looks on the world as ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... midnight; where a crew of robbers and their whores are met together after a booty, and are beginning to grow drunk, from which time, until they are past their senses, is such a continued horrible noise of cursing, blasphemy, lewdness, scurrility, and brutish behaviour; such roaring and confusion, such a clatter of mugs and pots at each other's heads, that Bedlam, in comparison, is a sober and orderly place: At last they all tumble from their stools and benches, and sleep away the rest of the night; and generally ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... triumph. Succession, sequence, series. Supernatural, preternatural, superhuman, miraculous. Suppose, surmise, conjecture, presume, imagine, fancy, guess, think, believe. Surprise, astonish, amaze, astound. Swearing, cursing, profanity, blasphemy, execration, imprecation. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... you twenty funerals and twenty plots," Saxon protested, shocked by this blasphemy of conventional death. "It ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... over some dubious word out of all proportion to the pleasure I get from a whole page of good writing. One would have to live two centuries to attain a true idea of any matter whatever. What Buffon said is a big blasphemy: genius is not long-continued patience. Still, there is some truth in the statement, and more than people think, especially as regards our own day. Art! art! art! bitter deception! phantom that glows with light, only to ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... the following year it was published by Mr. Valpy, along with some shorter poems, of which Miss Barrett subsequently wrote that 'a few of the fugitive poems may be worth a little, perhaps; but they have not so much goodness as to overcome the badness of the blasphemy of Aeschylus.' The volume, which was published anonymously, received two sentences of contemptuous notice from the 'Athenaeum,' in which the reviewer advised 'those who adventure in the hazardous lists of poetic translation to touch anyone rather than Aeschylus, and they may take warning by ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... Daniel. He spoke with an effect of forced politeness. Although he had such a horror of extreme heat, he was always chary of boldly expressing his mind concerning it, for he had a feeling that he might be guilty of blasphemy, since he regarded the weather as being due to an Almighty mandate. Therefore, although he suffered, he was ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and witches would hardly have amused him. As Mrs. Farnsworth and I took up the recent movements on the western front I overheard Torrence putting all the machinery of the trust company at Mrs. Bashford's disposal. It seemed almost a blasphemy to be talking of income and like matters to ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... this sacred oak, Hear, Spirit, hear! thy presence I invoke! By a Monarch's heaven-struck fate, By a disunited State, By a generous Prince's wrongs. By a Senate's strife of tongues, By a Premier's sullen pride, Louring on the changing tide; By dread Thurlow's powers to awe Rhetoric, blasphemy and law; By the turbulent ocean— A Nation's commotion, By the harlot-caresses Of borough addresses, By days few and evil, (Thy portion, poor devil!) By Power, Wealth, and Show, (The Gods by men adored,) By nameless Poverty, (Their hell abhorred,) By all they hope, by ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... this is terrible," she heard him say; "I feel that this is blasphemy. That we should try to tamper with the greatest force, the greatest and the most sacred and secret-force, that—that moves in the world, is to me horrible. I cannot bear to listen; it seems to make everything so small!" She saw him sit down, and her mother rising ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... as the cold water swashed about its legs, and turned playfully to bite its groom. Gilmour, still stooping, dug his elbow up beneath its ribs. The animal wheeled in anger, but Gilmour ran to its head with most manful blasphemy, and led it to the stable door. The off hind leg ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... humour of the Germans often amuses me. I think it was Palmerston who described Germany as "that land of damned Professors." They are all so desperately in earnest, and their "Kultur" is so serious, that jokes and fun seem like blasphemy. My penury has again been relieved by Mr. S——'s kind loan of L1. Lady M—— came in to tell me that the American Vice-Consul had telegraphed to Mr. W—— the good news that we are all to go on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday next. I have heard this story so often ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... so—seeing the two figures slowly walking in the trail. And holding her there firmly against his breast, it seemed a blasphemy to ask the question that ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... crazily on the pavement to his own drawling jagged sounds, then crossed over to avoid contact with this piece of drunken foolery. A night in the lock-up! What asses people were! But the man had noticed his movement of avoidance, and streams of genial blasphemy followed him across the street. 'I hope they'll run him in,' thought Soames viciously. 'To have ruffians like that about, with women out alone!' A woman's figure in front had induced this thought. Her walk seemed oddly familiar, and when she turned the corner for which he was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... us that on sea Titus tauntingly observed, in a great storm, that the God of the Jews was only powerful on the water, and that, therefore, he had succeeded in drowning Pharaoh and Sisera. "Had he been strong, he would have waged war with me in Jerusalem." On uttering this blasphemy, a voice from heaven said, "Wicked man! I have a little creature in the world which shall wage war with thee!" When Titus landed, a gnat entered his nostrils, and for seven years together made holes in his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... high priest rent his clothes, and saith, "What further need have we of witnesses? Ye have heard the blasphemy: what ...
— His Last Week - The Story of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus • William E. Barton
... in wondering fear. She stepped outside the baleful circle and went striding up and down the room, fighting herself back to self-control, telling herself that the children were not to blame, yet finding them the more repulsive for their very innocence. The purer the lips, the viler the blasphemy. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... of Jesus is so firmly established that any insinuation of error on his part is deemed a blasphemy. Doubting Jesus is more impious than mocking God Almighty. Jehovah may be exposed to some extent with impunity; a God who destroyed 70,000 of his chosen people because their king took a census[1] is too ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... saint. Froude did not mean to imply that it was the actual words of Scripture which had this effect upon Ignatius. He was referring to the great scholar's own notes, which are polemical, and not intended to please monks. The founder of the Jesuits would have doubtless regarded them as most detestable blasphemy. The Enchiridion, on the other hand, is a purely devotional book, though written for a man of ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... good to her poor servants,—may the Blessed One bind her in the bundle of life! But not all Christians are like her. Lady, there is this day sore trouble, and great rebuke and blasphemy, against the sons of Israel that dwell in Norwich. They accuse us of having kidnapped and crucified a Christian child. They lay too much to us, Lady,—too much! We have never done such a thing, nor ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... make a white, friend," said Adam, good-naturedly. "Blasphemy, or hypocrisy either, is sufficient ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... Paine Liberty of Man, Woman and Child Orthodoxy Blasphemy Some Reasons Why Intellectual Development Human Rights Talmagian Theology (Second Lecture) Talmagian Theology (Third Lecture) Religious Intolerance Hereafter Review of His Reviewers How the Gods Grow The Religion of our Day Heretics ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... like a caged lioness, her face livid with the fury that possessed her. She no longer asked questions; she no longer addressed him; oath followed oath from her thin lips, and the hideousness of this woman's blasphemy made me shudder. At last there were heavy steps upon the stairs, and, moved by a sudden impulse "Madame," I cried, "let me prevail upon you to ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... her: tears of remorse, tears at the recollection of those pure times which could never return, tears of vexation that she should so uselessly have ruined her young life which might have been so happy. Laughter and singing in particular seemed to her like a blasphemy, in face of her sorrow. Without any need of self-restraint, no wish to coquet ever entered her head. She said and felt at that time that no man was more to her than Nastasya Ivanovna, the buffoon. Something stood sentinel within her and forbade her every joy. Besides, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... soap-suds, into the open again, a slip in the mud, and, forgetting, abrupt opening of the eyes—how wonderfully expressive and voluminous is our English tongue. Although I have heard a no more efficient flow of useful blasphemy ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... modesty will sure attone for every thing, when the world shall know it is so great, I am even to this day insensible of those two shining graces, in the play (which some part of the town is pleased to compliment me with) blasphemy and bawdy. For my part I cannot find them out; if there were any obscene expressions upon the stage, here they are in print; for I have dealt fairly, I have not sunk a syllable, that could be ranged under that head, and yet I believe with a steady faith, there is not ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... tolerated, but did not say Amen. Finally he prayed for the utter extermination of the Southern people. He besought God to wipe them out of existence—men, women and children—from the Ohio River to the Gulf of Mexico. This blasphemy and contemptible wickedness I could not endure, and I arose from my knees. Perhaps five hundred people saw me when I got up. The point in the prayer at which I got up aroused suspicion, and inquiry was in a moment rife. They learned who I was and where I was from, and ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... whether there was anything wrong about it, but hastily wrote the few lines which preceded it, and sent it to the printers. And what has my kindness done for me? It has done nothing but bring down upon me a storm of abuse and ornamental blasphemy. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... Saboba mothers among themselves; and they were embarrassed before her, and knew not what to say. Ramona perceived it, but had no life in her to speak to them. Benumbing terrors, which were worse than her grief, were crowding Ramona's heart now. She had offended the Virgin; she had committed a blasphemy: in one short hour the Virgin had punished her, had smitten her child dead before her eyes. And now Alessandro was going mad; hour by hour Ramona fancied she saw changes in him. What form would ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... for you to accept it. Is it, I ask you, from your own experience—is it a free gift? And if your own experience, in which you can't be mistaken, gives its pretensions the lie, why, in the name of common sense, will you persist in believing it? I say it is downright blasphemy to think it has emanated from the Good Spirit—assuming that there is one. It tells you that you must be tormented hereafter in a way only to be made intelligible by the image of eternal fires—pretty strong, we must all allow—unless you comply with certain conditions, which ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... sackcloth, but in royal robes; not with ashes, but with a diadem upon his head, did the murderer present himself vicariously upon the scene of his crimes. It may be supposed that, even in the sixteenth century, there were many minds which would revolt at such blasphemy. Furthermore, even had the people of Holland been weak enough to accept the pardon, it was impossible to believe that the promise would be fulfilled. It was sufficiently known how much faith was likely to be kept with heretics, notwithstanding that the act was fortified by a papal ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that may result hence three kinds are usually reckoned. First, is feared the infection that may spread; but then all human learning and controversy in religious points must remove out of the world, yea the Bible itself; for that ofttimes relates blasphemy not nicely, it describes the carnal sense of wicked men not unelegantly, it brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against Providence through all the arguments of Epicurus: in other great disputes it answers dubiously and darkly to the common ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... adamantine fate Between my sullen heart and its desire, I swore that I would burst the Iron Gate, Rise up, and curse Him on His throne of fire. Earth shuddered at my crown of blasphemy, But Love was as a flame about my feet; Proud up the Golden Stair I strode; and beat Thrice on the Gate, and ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... bagman of blasphemy three days afterwards, reading in the papers the letter of Bishop Guilbert, burst into print with this incredible but most instructive effusion, addressed to his friend ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... represented in her lodges, and within her walls, were gathered men of desparate and socialistic politics who had sworn to overturn as far as they could the authority of society, to despise the rights of property, and to trample on the laws of order. There was no city in the world guilty of more blasphemy than this beautiful Geneva; and even to this day, as the sins of fathers descend to their children, the teachings of Calvin, of Bayle, and of Servetus hang like a chronic curse over the city to warp every ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... God than the Lord," says the preamble of the code, "shall surely be put to death." This is followed by ten or twelve enactments of the same kind, copied verbatim from the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. Blasphemy, sorcery, adultery,[31] and rape were punished with death; an outrage offered by a son to his parents, was to be expiated by the same penalty. The legislation of a rude and half-civilized people was thus transferred to an enlightened and moral ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... their betrayal. In low, deep tones, he commenced the mockery of a trial. That her avowal of her faith would elude torture, by at once condemning her to the flames, was disregarded. She was formally accused of blasphemy and heresy, and threatened with the severest vengeance of the church which she had reviled; but that this case of personal guilt would be mercifully laid aside for the present, for still more important considerations. Was ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... Council of the Indies, "to abstain from proceedings against Indians, because of their stupidity and incapacity, as well as scant instruction in the Holy Catholic faith, for the crimes of heresy, apostasy, heretical blasphemy, ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... will assume, sincerely, according to their notions of what is right, and, I say, gentlemen, that the individual who persecutes that man, or those people, for piously worshipping their Creator, commits blasphemy against the Almighty—and stains, as it were, the ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... nature in a perfectly impartial manner. For if the existence of a Deity is presupposed, a mind with any particle of that most noble quality—reverence—will naturally hesitate to draw conclusions that partake of the nature of blasphemy; and therefore, unconsciously perhaps to themselves, they endeavour in various ways to evade the evidence which, if honestly and impartially considered, can scarcely fail to negative the argument from beneficence ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... waken from his daze, "Tiger" laughed, a terrible and cruel laugh; and then he flung a frightful blasphemy upon the still June air; and then he dashed the wondrous diamond to earth, and stamped and dug it with a perfect frenzy of rage into the ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... flickered, illuminating now a corner of the den, now the pale face of one of the players, and as the light blinked, the shadows of the men grew long or short on the sandy walls. From time to time was heard a curse or a blasphemy. ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... Infinity, Space and Time. They will think it too terrible, they will feel it would turn them to water, to live through unearthly moments of vision without creeds or beliefs. So they'll get beliefs first. Ah, poor creatures! The cart before the horse! Ah, the blasphemy (pitiful!) of their seeking high spiritual temples, with god-maps or bibles about them, made below in advance! Think of their entering into the presence of Truth, declaring so loudly and boldly they know her already, yet far from willing ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... Wilkes, Thou greatest of bilks, How changed are the notes you now sing! Your famed 'Forty-five' Is prerogative, And your blasphemy 'God save the King'! Johnny Wilkes, And your blasphemy, 'God save the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... what you would have expected from his appearance—dull and gross. He was chiefly distinguished among men of birth for general obscenity of speech and morphological inventiveness in blasphemy. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... subordinates, or profits off Human Life is Wrong tho' demanded by ten thousand priests, tho' framed in a thousand laws, tho' hoary with ten thousand years. Whatever hurts the Son of man—that—that is the Blasphemy. Whatever helps, releases, emancipates, makes free, glorifies, makes sacred, enlarges, enricheth Human Life, that is the Right and Good, tho' persecuted by private interests; that is the Truth, tho' withstood by dead men's creeds. Whatever emancipates ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... the church in Smyrna is supposed to have been Polycarp, who, rather than to apostatize, was burnt alive in that city about A. D. 166. That church had passed through the trial of poverty, and was found "rich toward God," Luke 12:21. It had suffered from the blasphemy of unbelieving Jews, who had a synagogue there and were particularly active at the martyrdom of Polycarp. But "He is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh: but he ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... the great stronghold of intellectual conservatism, traditional belief, has been assailed by facts which would have been indicted as blasphemy but a few generations ago. Those new tables of the law, placed in the hands of the geologist by the same living God who spoke from Sinai to the Israelites of old, have remodelled the beliefs of half the civilized world. The solemn ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... thus settled his case for this world, they proceeded to settle it for the next, insisting that "for a man to infect a family in the morning with smallpox and to pray to God in the evening against the disease is blasphemy"; that the smallpox is "a judgment of God on the sins of the people," and that "to avert it is but to provoke him more"; that inoculation is "an encroachment on the prerogatives of Jehovah, whose right it is to wound and smite." Among the mass ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Even a Spaniard dare not face that. Beside, sir, the mob like this Inquisition, and an Auto-da-fe is even better sport to them than a bull-fight. They would be the first to tear a man in pieces who dare touch an Inquisitor. Sir, may all the saints in heaven obtain me forgiveness for my blasphemy, but when I saw you just now fearing those churchmen no more than you feared me, I longed, sinner that I am, to be a ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... said. She almost said it aloud, so real had her fear been. Her eyes, fixed upon the minister's face, were terrified, but her soul was strong. Fearful of blasphemy, yet brave, she faced the bogie of a God her thought had evoked, saying, "I make my own choice. Take my lover from me if you will—I shall never give myself ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... told him of the riot in the park, and narrated the blasphemy of the German Lutheran, who had held up a putrid dog in parody of ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... valiant doctor sipped, and sipped again, and said with great blasphemy that it was the real stuff, and only needed henbane to make it perfect. Then, taking from his pocket a good-sized leathern-covered flask, with a silver lip fastened on the muzzle, he offered it to Septimius, who declined, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... plots, could not but subject them to ridicule, abuse, and actual persecution. They habitually violated numerous laws on the statute-book, ranging from those requiring good order to those forbidding what was construed as blasphemy. They were, therefore, beaten and stoned by the mob; abused, fined, and imprisoned by the magistrates; ridiculed and prosecuted by the clergy; subjected to starvation, exposure, and other hardships by sheriffs and jailers. [Footnote: Besse, Sufferings of the Quakers, I., chaps, iii., ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... false report of the temptation, we may learn from this, that the same weak man would resist and master the same powerful temptation, upon considerations of infinitely less value than those which religion offers, nay such vile considerations, that the grace of God cannot without blasphemy be supposed to add any manner of force and efficacy to them. Thus for instance, it would be a hard matter to dress up a sin in such soft and tempting circumstances, that a truly covetous man would not resist for a considerable sum of money; when neither the hopes of heaven nor the fears of hell ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... an evil life are opposites. When such in the other life enter into the state of their interiors, and are heard speaking and seen acting, they appear foolish; for from their evil lusts they burst forth into all sorts of abominations, into contempt of others, ridicule and blasphemy, hatred and revenge; they plot intrigues, some with a cunning and malice that can scarcely be believed to be possible in any man. For they are then in a state of freedom to act in harmony with the thoughts of their will, since they are separated ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... public mind. Still, men and women, whose holiness and purity are beyond slander's reach, come and crave assurance of forgiveness. How shall we reply to such men? Shall we say, "Who is this that speaketh blasphemies? who can forgive sins, but God only?" Shall we say it is all blasphemy; an impious intrusion upon the prerogatives of the One Absolver? Well, we may; it is popular to say we ought; but you will observe, if we speak so, we do no more than the Pharisees in this text: we establish a negation; but a negation is only one ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... experience? Yet, to say that a devout soul can meditate on these transcendently mysterious events, and not derive from them practical instruction to enable her to fulfil her little trivial earthly duties with Christian perfection, is nothing short of blasphemy. The Son of God incarnate, all glorious, all awful, all unfathomable as He was even in the days of His sojourning on earth, was yet our example, our model, our embodied series of precepts. The eye ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... God only. Again, if the devil could assume to himself a human body and enliven the faculties of it, and cause it to generate, as some affirm he can, yet this body must bear the image of the devil. And it borders on blasphemy to think that God should so far give leave to the devil as out of God's image to raise his own diabolical offspring. In the school of Nature we are taught the contrary, viz., that like begets like; therefore, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... hospital service with red crosses on their caps were no better than cowards. Then they discovered a spy (as they supposed) in their midst, and time was consumed in hustling him out. Lastly an orator concluded his speech with awful blasphemy, wishing that he were a Titan, and could drive a ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... the worst passions of the human heart had been exhibited here, and that betimes amid the laughter of the merry throng in midnight revelry and above the strains of the "harp and viol" one could have heard the voices of blasphemy and the sharp, loud reports of pistols in the hands of careless characters, whose deadly bullets had sent many a poor unfortunate wayfarer or unwary miner from the gold fields to his ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... adding a horrid blasphemy. "'Twas passion in me once, and I am none so sure there was not a time when you could have cooled it into love. But now 'tis hatred and revenge." He snapped his fingers in her face. "The thing they'll find ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... helpful) 'Sermons'. Then again there is an appendix to Llewellyn Davies' 'Manifestation of the Son of God', which treats of forgiveness in a future state as related to Christ and Bible. As to that special passage about the Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost (to which you refer), I will write you my notions on it ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... doctrine, including both the divinity and Messiahship of The Saviour, would, perhaps, be the preferable form of the latter proposition. I showed the taleb these propositions, and he was greatly exasperated, adding it was blasphemy to connect Christian and Jewish ideas with "the Word of God" (‮كلام الله‬). He added, oddly enough, "Such impious things had never been before done in this ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... that were rank blasphemy; but I thought his way of casting up again th' events God had pleased to send, were worse blasphemy. Howe'er, I said nought more angry, for th' little babby's sake, as were th' child o' his dead son, as well as o' ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... smote the hostile stranger on the side of the neck so stiffly that he faltered and almost dropped. Then seeing that I was so much lighter than himself and perhaps valuing himself against me purely on a basis of avoirdupois, pound for pound, he gathered and came at me, roaring out blasphemy and obscenity which I had rather Lafitte and L'Olonnois had ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... course to take, he went to Turkey, and in order to succeed there, had himself circumcised, put on the turban, and entered into the militia. His blasphemy advanced him, his talents and his colour distinguished him; he became Bacha, and the confidential man in the Morea, where the Turks were making war against the Venetians. He determined to make use of this position in order to advance his own interests, and entering into communication ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... the action of that devouring element. This is made good by experience, which can from the ashes of a plant revive the plant, and from its cinders recall it into its stalk and leaves again. What the art of man can do in these inferior pieces, what blasphemy is it to affirm the finger of God cannot do in those more perfect and sensible structures? This is that mystical philosophy, from whence no true scholar becomes an atheist, but from the visible effects of nature grows up a real divine, and beholds not in a dream, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... in this Climate, where the Elasticity of the Air is quite different and where the pressure of the Atmosphere has for want of Vapour no Force, all his Notion dissolv'd in its Native Vapour call'd Wind, and flew upward in blew Strakes of a livid Flame call'd Blasphemy, which burnt up all the Wit and Fancy of the Author, and left a strange stench behind it, that has this unhappy quality in it, that every Body that Reads the Book, smells the Author, tho' he be never so far off; nay, tho' he took Shipping to Dublin, to secure his Friends from ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... of course, the one who makes the wheels go round is the one who really drives the coach. Believe me, there is more of expediency than nobility in the attitude of our men towards our women, and more of laziness than either, perhaps! But Fielding Hall would call this blasphemy, I ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... uproar. The leading men, sitting round and watching him, burst out with a protest, charging him with blasphemy, saying that God only could ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... who has again lost, speaks with ironic blasphemy. He blames the First Gambler for addressing his prayer to God rather than to ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... of the bells of a church, which were sent by ship that was lost in sight of the town, owing to the blasphemy of the captain, says that the bells are supposed to be in the bay, and they announce by strange sounds the approach ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... working is more like that of instinct than it is like that of reason. The irreligious man, testing a proposition by reason alone, may decide that it is to the interests of all concerned that he should not utter blasphemy. The orthodox Christian never considers the pros and cons of the question; he has the Ten Commandments and the teachings of his youth in his mind, and he refrains from blasphemy in almost the instinctive way that he refrains from putting his hand ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... is, I should say, the most difficult post in House; far more so than SPEAKER'S. SPEAKER is robed about with authority that does not pertain to Chairman. Observations which, addressed to SPEAKER, would be flat blasphemy, are, when flung at Chairman of Ways and Means, merely choleric words. Apart from that, position is, through long stretches of sitting, more arduous. When full-dress debate going on, SPEAKER of judgment and experience can go easy; may even, upon occasion, strategically ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various
... Penn (though we did not always follow him to all, that Saturday afternoon), to many other places in London: to the Tower, where he was imprisoned on the droll charge of "blasphemy," within stone's throw of All Hallow's Barking, where he was christened; to Grace Church Street, where he was arrested for preaching; to Lincoln's Inn, where he had chambers in his worldlier days; to Tower Street, where he went to school; ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... a very few years ago they were not allowed to express themselves openly. Laws have been passed to suppress them, and dire penalties have been devised for their benefit. Laws against sacrilege, heresy and blasphemy still ornament our statute-books; but these invented crimes that were once punishable by death are now obsolete, or exist in rudimentary forms only, and manifest themselves in a refusal to invite the guilty party to our Four-o'Clock. This hot intent to support and uphold the volunteers ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... testimony to the Son of God. But when they said that he should from his table sing forth wickedness, evidently doth it appear that he who never stood on the truth, but who from the beginning was a liar and the father of lies, did in his blasphemy utter these things ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... themselves, but had been born with their spectacles on. It is dolorous for young people to spend the three or four hours of a winter's evening with parents who sit talking over their own ailments and misfortunes, and the nothingness of this world. How dare you talk such blasphemy? God was busy six days in making the world, and has allowed it to hang six thousand years on his holy heart; and that world hath fed you, and clothed you, and shone on you for fifty years: and yet you talk about the nothingness of this world! Do you ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... Stott heard no more. An idiot! He had fathered an idiot! That was the end of his dreams and ambitions! He had had an hour's sleep on the sitting-room sofa. He went out to his work at the County Ground with a heart full of blasphemy. ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... that Christ, though nothing more than an ordinary man, may really have 'thought himself Divine,' without being liable to the charge of a visionary self-idolatry or of blasphemy,—as supposed by every body, Trinitarian or Unitarian, except Mr. Foxton. He accounts for it by the 'wild sublimity of human emotion, when the rapt spirit first feels the throbbings of the divine afflatus,' &c. ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... with the guide, and in a sort of frenzy peered far into the awful chasm. Words of blasphemy were on his lips as he began to realize to what end his persecution had driven the fair young creature he had sworn to win. As for Brand, he rejoiced in his fate. Could it have been ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... and Field we may find such abundant errata, reducing the text to nonsense or to blasphemy, making the Scriptures contemptible to the multitude, who came to pray, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Friend whom some day they will need more and understand and know better. That is as much as most children need. The phrases of religion put too early into their mouths may become a cant, something worse than blasphemy. ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... chosen a heathen Roman poet, Virgil, as his guide through Hell, and a beautiful maiden as his companion on the way to heaven. That was foolishness and blasphemy. ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... Faustus, lay that damned book aside, And gaze not on it, lest it tempt thy soul, And heap God's heavy wrath upon thy head! Read, read the Scriptures:—that is blasphemy. ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... tendency of the common crowd in regard to its Great Men, whensoever, or almost whensoever, the Heavens do, at long intervals, vouchsafe us, as their all-including blessing, anything of such! Practical "BLASPHEMY," is it not, if you reflect? Strangely possible that sin, even now. And ought to be religiously abhorred by every soul that has the least piety or nobleness. Act not the mutinous flunky, my friend; though there be great wages ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... uses] the blasphemy and profanity which he confesses to be so common in Catholic countries, as an argument for, and not against the 'Catholic Faith.'"—p. 34. That is, because I admit that profaneness exists in the Church, therefore I consider it a token of the Church. Yes, certainly, just as our national form ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... the scribe added. The prince opened his eyes. "Aye, Kenkenes carried his beauty-love into blasphemy. He executed a statue of Athor in defiance of the sculptor's ritual. For this also, Har-hat holds a heavy ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... strongly on everything that the war has brought into question for the Anglo-Saxon peoples that humorous detachment or any other thinness or tepidity of mind on the subject affects me as vulgar impiety, not to say as rank blasphemy; our whole race tension became for me a sublimely conscious thing from the moment Germany flung at us all her explanation of her pounce upon Belgium for massacre and ravage in the form of the most insolent, 'Because I choose to, damn ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... responsible for a vast amount of most pitiable and entirely groundless terror among those newly arrived in Kamaloka who in many cases spend long periods of acute mental suffering before they can free themselves from the fatal influence of that hideous blasphemy, and realize that the world is governed not according to the caprice of some demon who gloats over human anguish, but according to a benevolent and wonderfully patient law of evolution. Many members of the ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... said, "though Blasphemy's loud scream With that sweet music of deliverance strove! Though all the fierce and drunken passions wove 45 A dance more wild than e'er was maniac's dream! Ye storms, that round the dawning east assembled, The Sun was rising, though ye hid his light!" And when, to soothe my ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to have become so excited by religious stimulants that he is subject to what are known to the records of insanity as hallucinations: that he hears voices whispering blasphemy in his ears, and sees devils coming to meet him, and thinks he is going to be torn in pieces, or trodden into the mire. Suppose that his mental conflicts, after plunging him into the depths of despondency, at last reduce him to a state of despair, so that he now contemplates ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... police force to protect the heretic funerals and to arrest any priest who disturbed them. There is freedom of speech and printing. The humorous journals are full of blasphemous caricatures that would be impossible out of a Catholic country, for superstition and blasphemy always run in couples. It was the Duke de Guise, commanding the pope's army at Civitella, who cried in his rage at a rain which favored Alva, "God has turned Spaniard;" like Quashee, who burns his fetish when the weather is foul. The liberal Spanish papers overflowed with wit at the proclamation ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... various composers. The pianoforte sonatas of Mozart, Haydn, Dussek, and Clementi might be reduced to very moderate compass. To suggest that any one of Beethoven's thirty-two should be removed out of its place would now sound flat blasphemy; but art progresses, and some even now are falling into oblivion. The catalogue of music performed at the Popular Concerts during the history of the past thirty-five years shows pretty clearly which sonatas of Beethoven are likely to live long, and which not. But to return to Clementi. ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... glimmering rows... (No sign of the abject life— Not even a blasphemy...) But the spindle legs keep time To a limping rhythm, And the shadows twitch upon the snow Convulsively— As though death played ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... have hit upon a more unfortunate ship. The crew was composed of the dregs of the New Orleans and Charleston docks—men with every species of vice and degradation stamped upon their countenances, and amongst whom every second word was some infamous oath or blasphemy. Blows with handspikes were of common occurrence, and brutality and violence generally were the order of the day. There was no court of appeal, and the immunity which any one individual might enjoy depended entirely upon how ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... of an African tempest came crashing down upon them; the wild revel was stilled; the trembling topers dropped their cups, fevered checks turned pale, the dancers parted and threw up their hands in agonized supplication, words of lust and blasphemy died on their lips and turned to prayers and muttered charms. The terrified nymphs that surrounded Venus sprang from the car, and the foam-born goddess in the shell tried to free herself from the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... flock or field. Take heed; and as these words By me are utter'd, teach them even so To those who live that life, which is a race To death: and when thou writ'st them, keep in mind Not to conceal how thou hast seen the plant, That twice hath now been spoil'd. This whoso robs, This whoso plucks, with blasphemy of deed Sins against God, who for his use alone Creating hallow'd it. For taste of this, In pain and in desire, five thousand years And upward, the first soul did yearn for him, Who punish'd in himself the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... suspected. My hag heard of this instantly, and therefore determined to attend the sacrament on the following Sunday; for this end she despatched Wolde to the priest, bidding her tell him she had a great desire to attend the holy rite, and would go to confession that day after noon. At this horrid blasphemy a cold shudder fell upon the priest (and I trust every Christian man will feel the like as he reads this), for he now saw through her motive clearly, how she wanted to blind the eyes of the people as to the death of the ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... religious thoughts and pieces. She died when he was young, and his stepmother was not pious. He began to drag his religious anchor, and at length, having read Shaftesbury, left his theological moorings altogether, and drifted into a wide sea of ungodliness, blasphemy, and recklessness of living. Such at least is the picture drawn by the sinner saved of his own earlier years. While still but a stripling he fell desperately in love with a girl of thirteen; his affection ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... down to read Le Solitaire, and as I read my amazement grew, and I did in "gaping wonderment abound," to think that fashion, like the insane root of old, had power to drive a whole city mad with nonsense; for such a tissue of abominable absurdities, bombast and blasphemy, bad taste and bad language, was never surely indited by any madman, in or out of Bedlam: not Maturin himself, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... saith he, which doth willingly sin or consent, After he hath received the knowledge of the verity, Remaineth no more sacrifice, but a fearful looking for judgment, And a terrible[159] fire, which shall consume the adversary; And Christ saith that this blasphemy Shall never be pardoned nor forgiven In this world, nor ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... it they say out there?" he shouted in fury. "They call words of blasphemy, that the bull is Germany, and 'Judas' will ride it to the death! They are ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... thereof, To make of labor an eternal lust, And with pale thrift destroy the red of love, The curse of Pan has sworn your destiny. Unloving, unbeloved, you go your way Toiling forever, and unwittingly You bear love's precious burden every day From flower to flower (for your blasphemy), Poor eunuch, making flower ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... punch-bowl clinking, the tongue of the songster glib and tuneful, and the general mirth alive and furious. A few honest folk, with the gift of a second sight in such matters, discover their uncanny presence—leprous impurity, insane blasphemy, and the stony grin ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the steps, bang went the door, and ere long we were safely consigned to the "string" of carriages bound for the same destination as ourselves. After much "cutting-in," and shaving of wheels, and lashing of coach-horses, with not a little blasphemy, "Miss Horsingham" and "Miss Coventry" were announced in a stentorian voice, and we were struggling in a mass of silks and satins, blonde and broadcloth, up the swarming staircase. Everything happened exactly as I had ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... society outrages the only sort of crime in which the spectator of Paris plays has permitted himself to indulge; he has recreated himself with a deal of blasphemy besides, and has passed many pleasant evenings in beholding ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his servant, 'Go,' and he goeth, and to this man, 'Do this,' and he doeth it. Obedience to any besides is treason against the dignity of our own nature; disobedience to Him is both treason against our nature and blasphemy against God. 'Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ, Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.' There is the deepest ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... have been partly frustrated by one additional virtue—that of artistic dexterity. If he had chalked up his great message on a wall, like Walt Whitman, in large and straggling letters, it would have startled men like a blasphemy. But he wrote his light-headed paradoxes in so flowing a copy-book hand that everyone supposed they must be copy-book sentiments. He suffered from his versatility, not, as is loosely said, by not doing every department well enough, but by doing every department ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... oldsters, and especially of the tyrant Murphy. I was let into all the secrets of the mess in which the youngsters were placed by the captain to be instructed and kept in order. Alas! what instruction did we get but blasphemy? What order were we kept in, except that of paying our mess, and being forbidden to partake of those articles which our money had purchased? My blood boiled when they related all they had suffered, and I vowed I would sooner die than ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... had power, by God's permission, to take the very person of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the day or time of his humiliation, and carry him from place to place, and tempted him with temptations of horrid blasphemy, and yet left him innocent. Why may we not suppose the like may be done to a good man? And why not much more appear in his shape (or make folk think it is his shape, when indeed it is not), and yet the person be innocent, being far enough off, and not knowing of it, nor would consent if he had known ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... beckoning with his hand for a silence, he read out with loud voice the pardon. But when he came to these words, 'The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, pardoning iniquity, transgression, and sin'(Exo 34:6); and to these, 'all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven,' &c. (Mark 3:28); they could not forbear but leap for joy. For this you must know, that there was conjoined herewith every man's name in Mansoul; also the seals of the pardon ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... be among the absolutely blessed fruits of time, and to quarrel with any of their details may be blasphemy. The only real blasphemy, in short, may be that pessimistic temper of the soul which lets it give way to such things as regrets, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... Morgan cause. And now the General, with exultation in his face, got up and made an impassioned effort; he pounded the table, he banged the law-books, he shouted, and roared, and howled, he quoted from everything and everybody, poetry, sarcasm, statistics, history, pathos, bathos, blasphemy, and wound up with a grand war-whoop for free speech, freedom of the press, free schools, the Glorious Bird of America and the principles of eternal ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... toward the brink, mouthing at her with foul oaths. She fell to her knees, and hung, screaming, a dead weight. The baying of the hound sounded closer. Hodges threw a glance over his shoulder, and saw the dog charging from the grove. He would have fired, but the girl was in the way. With a final blasphemy, he dropped his rifle, and struck at her—full in the face. She sank down limply, unconscious. Her body slid away slowly, yet with a quickening movement, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... heart, who cared everything. Was Valentine indeed dead? He would not believe it, for such a belief would bring the world in ruins about his feet. Such a belief would people his soul with phantoms of despair and of wickedness. Could he not cry out against God in blasphemy, if God took his friend from him? The tears rushed into his eyes, as he sat waiting there in the night. As before a drowning man, scenes of the last five years flashed before him, painted in vital colours,—scenes of his life with Valentine,—then ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... blasphemy, and although Aphrodite be a kind and indulgent goddess, beware of drawing down her anger ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... at this blasphemy. Poor Marner went out with that despair in his soul—that shaken trust in God and man which is little short of madness to a loving nature. In the bitterness of his wounded spirit, he said to himself, "She will cast me off, too!" and for a whole ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... threatening cloud of fanaticism, lighter in some parts, denser in others, but too heavy in all. I had no idea, however, that in Pennsylvania, the cradle of toleration and freedom of religion, it could have arisen to the height you describe. This must be owing to the growth of Presbyterianism. The blasphemy and absurdity of the five points of Calvin, and the impossibility of defending them, render their advocates impatient of reasoning, irritable, and prone to denunciation. In Boston, however, and its neighborhood, Unitarianism has advanced ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... take cognizance only of the fitnesses which the individual man knows or believes; but it does take cognizance of all the fitnesses which he knows or believes. Virtue may coexist with a very low standard of emotional piety; but it cannot coexist, in one who believes the truths of religion, with blasphemy, irreverence, or the conscious violation or neglect of religious obligations. He who is willingly false to his relations with the Supreme Being, needs only adequate temptation to make him false to his human relations, and to the fitnesses of his daily life. Moreover, while, as we have said, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... the first mate, poured out a flood of blasphemy. What the this, that and the other ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: 6. For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience. 7. In the which ye also walked sometime, when ye lived in them. 8. But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. 9. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; 10. And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him: 11. Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Mother get up. Her Bible is taken from her. Her pencil and paper are taken from her. She is made to stand on the hearthrug, with her hands behind her, while Mother and Father lecture her on Blasphemy. The bell is then rung, and Nurse is sent for. She is handed over to Nurse, with pitiless instructions. Nurse then takes her to her room, where she is undressed, put to ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... the mouth that is the herald of my victories! 'Twere rank blasphemy. Prophesy triumph, Esther, and Alroy will never doubt ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... censure, penance, excommunication, or forcing the culprit to demand pardon in church on his knees. But when {171} the Consistory thought necessary, it could invoke the aid of the civil courts and the judgment was seldom doubtful. Among the capital crimes were adultery, blasphemy, witchcraft, and heresy. Punishments for all offences were astonishingly and increasingly heavy. During the years 1542-6 there were, in this little town of 16,000 people, no less than fifty-eight executions ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... voice of blasphemy the fane alarms, The cloister startles at the gleam of arms. [14] 60 The [15] thundering tube the aged angler hears, [G] Bent o'er the groaning flood that sweeps away his tears. [16] Cloud-piercing pine-trees nod their troubled heads, [17] Spires, rocks, and lawns ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... a yelp and a volley of furious blasphemy from the companion hatchway, and the deformed man with the black face came up hurriedly. He was immediately followed by a heavy red-haired man in a white cap. At the sight of the former the staghounds, who had all tired of barking at me by this ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... Ulf—where the God-Egg struck Flora. It is buried in the pit, but the Silent Death has protected it from blasphemy—and besides Man Alexander never learned about it. We feared that he would destroy it as he ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... the sun know your secret, O great king!" she cried, hiding her face in a square of cloth. "See me beat my breast! Impossible! Impossible! No one of your subjects would dare to tell him so great a taboo. It would be rank blasphemy. If they did, your anger ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... fire, as enemies of the human race—yet the reason of this severe treatment seems to be different from that acted upon in the Mosaical institutions. The weight of the crime among the Jews was placed on the blasphemy of the diviners, and their treason against the theocracy instituted by Jehovah. The Roman legislators were, on the other hand, moved chiefly by the danger arising to the person of the prince and the quiet of the state, so apt to be ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... certainty he realized that what the prince was saying would, if he could understand, lift a certain veil. Here, put in words at last, was manifestly the secret, that catch of understanding without which men are groping in the dark, perhaps that mere pointing of relations which would make clear, without blasphemy, time and the future, rebirth and old existence, it might be; and certainly the accident of personality. Here, crystallized, were the things that men almost know, the dream that has just escaped every one, the whisper in sleep that would have explained ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... right way of God, and keep not the law of Moses which is the right way; and convert the law of Moses into the worship of a being which ye say shall come many hundred years hence. And now behold, I, Sherem, declare unto you that this is blasphemy; for no man knoweth of such things; for he cannot tell of things to come. And after this manner ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... dreadful vengeance in the indiscriminate massacre of the populace. It was a night of sleeplessness and terror—the carnival of all the monsters of crime who thronged that depraved metropolis. The streets were filled with intoxication and blasphemy. No dwelling was secure from pillage. The streets were barricaded; pavements torn up, and the roofs of houses ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... on lake and fell, The Monk resumed his muttered spell: Dismal and low its accents came, The while he scathed the Cross with flame; And the few words that reached the air, Although the holiest name was there, Had more of blasphemy than prayer. But when he shook above the crowd Its kindled points, he spoke aloud:— 'Woe to the wretch who fails to rear At this dread sign the ready spear! For, as the flames this symbol sear, His home, the refuge of his fear, A kindred ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... dangerous rush] Hold on! Hold on! [To MORE] Swear to utter no more blasphemy against ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fight so long [5450]"till their headpiece, bucklers be all broken, and swords hacked like so many saws," for they must not see her abused in any sort, 'tis blasphemy to speak against her, a dishonour without all good respect to name her. 'Tis common with these creatures, to drink [5451]healths upon their bare knees, though it were a mile to the bottom, no matter of what mixture, off it comes. If she bid them they will go barefoot to Jerusalem, to the ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... to be sayin' it to folks that can't understand," she muttered to herself as she left the room, "ef blasphemy means what Mis' Kinney sez ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson |
