"Impiety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 Improvement (I make some Exceptions in this Censure) will find a ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... Ham broke into my locker last night, and is roaring drunk again; can't find the jug; will log him every time now—No religious exercises to-day; women are complaining of my impiety, but a man can't feel resigned when he has just lost a four-gallon jug of the best ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... of the congregation, the conversion of the sawyer was dwelt upon by the preacher, from a text preached upon the chapter that relates to the conversion of Saul, and the cases were cited as parallel. Let the opponents of the Established Church rail at it as they will, scenes of such wickedness and impiety could never have ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... 2—Anon., Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the Stage (1704) and anon., Some Thoughts Concerning ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... to be staying with the court, or in Calais during his captaincy there; and not a single hint occurs of any one irregularity.[303] The research will bring to light no single expression savouring of impiety, dissoluteness, carelessness, (p. 322) ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... 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 ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... ensue. And afflicted with these, people betake themselves to penances. And some celebrate sacrifices, desiring to enjoy the good things of life, or attain heaven. On the coming of the Dwapara Yuga, men become degenerate, in consequence of impiety. O son of Kunti, in the Kali Yuga a quarter only of virtue abideth. And in the beginning of this iron age, Narayana weareth a black hue. And the Vedas and the institutes, and virtue, and sacrifices, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... As rapidly as this takes place, the reverence for the old-time gentleman, the quiet lady of the inner courtyards, will wane, and reverence will be supplanted by discourtesy, faith by doubt, and love of the Gods by unbelief and impiety. ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... much against the thrawn, discomfortable dog: dead he is, and we may be glad of it; but he was a better man than most of us, no less patently than he was a worse. To fill the world with whining is against all my views: I do not like impiety. But - but - there are two sides to all things, and the old scalded baby had his noble side. - ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... noble opportunity they lost of earning for themselves immortal honors from God and man! If, instead of raising the standard of revolt, they had waged war upon their own passions, and fought with the Catholic reformers against impiety, they would be hailed as true soldiers of the cross. They would be welcomed by the Pope, the Bishops and clergy, and by all good men. They might be honored today on our altars, and might have a niche in our temples, side by side with those ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... warrior friars for no other price than the annual tribute of a goshawk such as are native to the island. Old and worn he retired to Majorca, living off the products of the estates belonging to his commandery situated in Catalonia. The impiety and the vices of the hero horrified the family and scandalized the island. Three young Moorish girls and a Jewess of great beauty were his companions in the guise of servants where they occupied a whole wing of the Febrer mansion, which was much larger at that time than today. Moreover, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... conuertite building on hope, Loue makes folks hardy, alas the flesh is fraile, Dispences now a little with the Pope: And fr[o] restrictions giues her heart more scope. O Liberty, Author of heresie. Why with such violent wing dost thou assaile, To hurry vertue to impiety. ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... wonderfully popular and beloved, when they are founded upon a real good nature; but, without it, are like hypocrisy in religion, or a bare form of holiness, which, when it is discovered, makes a man more detestable than professed impiety. ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... solely as the tool of servitude or the food of appetite, and all majesty of character is lost; all aim or wish to rise above the brute, to aspire after a station or character, to the occupation of which a tyrannic impiety has opposed an insurmountable barrier, is gone; and those great principles which confer a superiority upon the human kind, and point to a noble pre-eminence, cease to operate, and expire for want of action. This state of things is unnatural, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... glance often takes the prize from scholarship. All hasty, decisive judgment betrays, when it becomes habitual, superficiality of observation and impiety against the essential character of particular facts. Children know as completely determined and certain a great deal which is doubtful to the mature ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... truth and virtue, we may impress it for that service; and good it were to rescue so worthy a faculty from so vile abuse. It is the right of reason and piety to command that and all other endowments; folly and impiety do only usurp them. Just and fit therefore it is to wrest them out of so bad hands, to revoke them to their right use ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... missionary by 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 ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... his aunt, conversationally; to admit that she was a proud, rude woman, and to declare that they needn't mind her. But before he had time to commit himself to this perilous mixture of gallantry and impiety, the young lady, resuming her walk, gave an exclamation in quite another tone. "Well, here's Mother! I guess she hasn't got Randolph to go to bed." The figure of a lady appeared at a distance, very indistinct in the darkness, and advancing with a slow and wavering ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... said, "God will help us. It is folly and impiety to doubt him in the hour of danger. Are we atheists, that we let ourselves be discouraged in this way? Let us go and see Patience. . . . He will bring forth some wise saw to ease our minds; he is the old oracle who solves all problems ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... fashionable men and women of the time, he would have found society congenial to his tastes, and sufficient employment for his talents. He would have exhibited in his own life and character their vices and their superficial virtues, their extravagance, libertinism, and impiety, their politeness, courage, and wit. He might have borne a distinguished part in the petty statesmanship, the intriguing diplomacy, and the wild speculations of that period. But here, among the stern rebels of the Revolution ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... the Orchomenian arose and spoke thus: "You see, soldiers, the perjury and impiety of the king; and you see also the faithlessness of Tissaphernes, who, after telling us that he was a neighbour of the Greeks, and would esteem it the highest privilege to save us, and after having given us his right hand as a pledge, ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... some new way devised for 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
... 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, that sculpture, to deface, But worship pride and avarice in their place? ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... hall, hesitating, it would seem, to enter upon the evening's drama. Tall, graceful as always, with a magnetic force behind his languor, he impressed Kate as a man whom few women would be able to resist; whom, indeed, it was a sort of folly, perhaps even an impiety, to ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... things.' [106] Nae ille—reddat; as far as the sense is concerned, this sentence forms the apodosis to the preceding wish: 'would that I could see him in like circumstances, and would that at length the gods opened their eyes; then he would surely have to pay a heavy penalty for his impiety, for the death of my brother and for my sufferings.' The present subjunctive in the apodosis corresponds with the same tense in the protasis, and differs very little from the future indicative. See Zumpt, S 524, note. [107] 'Although life has been taken from thee before the ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... proved to me to-night that it was not you who murdered Peter; but to attain that proof you have done a deed that is even fouler and more shameful, a deed that reveals to the full the blackness of your heart. Have you not proved yourself a monster of vengeance and impiety?" She rose and faced him again in her sudden passion. "Are you not—you that were born a Cornish Christian gentleman—become a heathen and a robber, a renegade and a pirate? Have you not sacrificed your very God to ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... these, that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to 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 destruction of philosophers."—(IV. ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... whensoever I 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 deep in despair that I was ready to leave the world of ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... periwig." St. Evremond was a kind of Epicurean philosopher, and drew his own character in the following terms, in a letter to Count de Grammont. "He was a philosopher equally removed from superstition and impiety; a voluptuary who had no less aversion from debauchery than inclination for pleasure: a man who had never felt the pressure of indigence, and who had never been in possession of affluence: he lived in a condition despised by those who have everything, envied by those ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... exclusive solutions which tend to suppress rather than to transform the elements of society; and to say to them, "You are communists, you desire to abolish property." It is immoral to accuse of irreligion and impiety men who have devoted their whole lives to the endeavor to reconcile the religious idea, betrayed and disinherited by the very men who pretend to be its official defenders, with the National movement. It is immoral to insinuate ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... against sectarian thought must always be an aspiration towards truth. Who shall dare to claim a monopoly of the Almighty? It would be an insolence on the part of a solar system, and yet it is done every day by a hundred little cliques of mystery mongers. There lies the real impiety. ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... Nay, not (as one would say) healthy: but so sound, as things that are hollow; thy bones are hollow; Impiety has ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... principles of religion, and formed betimes to the practice of good life, Christianity, in a little time, would be seen to revive in Goa; but in case the children grew up without instruction or discipline, there was no remaining hope, that they who sucked in impiety and vice, almost with their milk, should ever ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... Catholic writers defended these inquisitorial abominations, but, with what every Protestant must needs consider daring and blasphemous impiety, laboured to prove that the first Inquisitor was God himself. Luis de Paramo, for instance, in his book 'De Origine et Progressu Officii Sanctoe Inquisitionis, ejusque dignitate et utilitate,' proves God to be the first Inquisitor, and that in the Garden ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... Law—For the Hone that set the razor that shaved the rats—Rev. Dr. Samuel Parr, who most seriously disapproves of all parodies upon the hallowed language of Scripture and the contents of the Prayer-book, but acquits Mr. Hone of intentional impiety, admires his talents and fortitude, and applauds the good sense and integrity of his juries—Religion without hypocrisy, and Law without impartiality—O Law! ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... in body, so is the soul spiritually inviolate through faith, by which it becomes Christ's bride. But if it falls from faith into false doctrine, it must be brought to shame. Hence Scripture uniformly calls impiety and unbelief, adultery and whoredom,—that is, when the soul relies on human doctrines, and thus lets go its hold on faith and Christ. This St. Peter here forbids, when he calls on us to gird up the loins of our mind; as though he would say, ye have now heard the Gospel and have come to believe, ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... 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 ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... like Moscow, considered a sacred city, and the soldiers were affected rather by the impiety of the act than by the actual destruction that was being wrought. As General Wilson and Frank rode back to the spot where General Barclay was stationed, a mass of Russian infantry moved down the hill towards the bridges, and at once ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... him such an invisible pressure as to present him the choice of orthodoxy or beggary. Thus they disapproved of Euripides permitting his characters to indulge in any sceptical reflections, and discountenanced the impiety so obvious in the 'Prometheus Bound' of Aeschylus. It was by appealing to this sentiment that Aristophanes added no little to the excitement against Socrates. They who are doubting themselves are often loudest in public denunciations of ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Young we have the type of that deficient human sympathy, that impiety toward the present and the visible, which flies for its motives, its sanctities, and its religion, to the remote, the vague and unknown: in Cowper we have the type of that genuine love which cherishes things in proportion to their ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... 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
... they were being slain or deprived of their liberty they naturally became exasperated and turned against their dastardly oppressors. But from their point of view it was absolutely necessary to find out if the Spaniards were mortal. If they were not, it would be an act of impiety to resist them. ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... 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 and endeavoring to do it." Condemned by the judges to drink poison, ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... Piache 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 ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... suffer, heaven! will no flame, No heat of sin, make thy just wrath to boil In thy distemper'd bosom, and o'erflow The pitchy blazes of impiety, Kindled beneath thy throne! Still canst thou sleep, Patient, while vice doth make an antick face At thy dread power, and blow dust and smoke Into thy nostrils! Jove! will nothing wake thee? Must vile ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... infinite number of false predictions, or vain interpretations of dreams, some of them are fulfilled, either this is occasioned by chance or it is the work of the devil, who is often permitted by God to deceive those whose foolishness and impiety lead them to address themselves to him and place their confidence in him, all which the wise lawgiver, animated by the Divine Spirit, justly repressed ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... son Ridolfo, the last of the house, attained, by the murder of the legate and the public officers in the year 1534, a brief but sanguinary authority. We shall meet again with the names of the rulers of Rimini. Unscrupulousness, impiety, military skill, and high culture have been seldom combined in one individual as in Sigismondo Malatesta (d. 1467). But the accumulated crimes of such a family must at last outweigh all talent, however great, and drag the tyrant into the abyss. Pandolfo, Sigismondo's ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... that his principal followers, who were also his contemporaries, put forth a composition which they were pleased to style the 'Gospel of Truth[453],' it is idle to dispute as to the limit of the rashness and impiety of the individual author of the heresy. Let it be further stated, as no slight confirmation of the view already hazarded as to the probable contents of the (so-called) Gospels of Basilides and of Valentinus, that one particular Gospel is related to ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... September, 1892, when he addressed his last meeting in support of Mr. Howard Whitbread, then Liberal candidate for South Bedfordshire. A speech which he delivered at the General Election of 1886, denouncing the "impiety" of holding that the Irish were incapable of self-government, won the enthusiastic applause of Mr. Gladstone. When slow-going Liberals complained of too-rapid reforms, he used to say: "When I was a boy, our cry was 'Universal Suffrage, Triennial ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... indisposed. The nature of her indisposition she revealed to Julia alone. "That young lady keeps me on thorns. I never feel secure she will not say or do something extravagant or unusual: she seems to suspect sobriety and good taste of being in league with impiety. Here I succeed in bridling her a little; but encounter a female enthusiast in her own house? merci! After all, there must be something good in her, since she is your friend, and you are hers. But I have something more serious to say before you go there: it is about her brother. He is a flirt: ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... them, the two stared fearfully out of the window. Their guns, loaded with slugs, leaned against the wall, but they would never be guilty of such perilous impiety as to ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... in truth, a man eminently fitted to close an old age and to inaugurate a new, to demonstrate the paradoxical situation of the Popes by the inexorable logic of his practical impiety, and to fuse two conflicting world-forces in the cynicism of supreme corruption. The Emperors of the Julian house had exhibited the extreme of sensual insolence in their autocracy. What they desired of strange and sweet and terrible in the forbidden fruits of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... render the volume acceptable to those who have a taste for reading of this sort, while its general merits place it in the class of works one would wish to see extensively circulated among those who think that Unitarianism has nothing to stand upon, or that it is a doctrine full of impiety."—Christian Examiner. ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... impressive mystery close to her ear: "Could you but comprehend what marvellous manner of being is the man—of whom I say but this: May he never forsake you through the very same magic by which he came to you!" Elsa starts away from Ortrud, in horror at such impiety,—disbelief in the highest. But in a moment her displeasure gives way to sadness and pity for the darkness in which this other woman lives. "Poor sister!" she speaks, most gently, "you can hardly conceive how unsuspecting is my heart! You have never known, belike, the happiness that belongs ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... its own dear brook, Its own small pasture, almost its own sky! But covet not th' Abode—oh! do not sigh, As many do, repining while they look, Sighing a wish to tear from Nature's Book This blissful leaf, with worst impiety. Think what the home would 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 ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... was outraged at the impiety of the woman's touch, and the cold metal shrank back, leaving a hollow place, and spoiling the even surface of the bell. From that time forth the bell gradually lost its polish, and became dull and ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... it was not uncommon for saints of both sexes, if they had suffered from some unjust neglect, to come and complain to some pious person of the wrong being done them on earth. They appeared possibly to a monk, to a peasant or a citizen, denounced the impiety of the faithful in terms urgent and sometimes violent, and commanded him to reinstate their worship and restore their sanctuary. And this is what Madame Saint Catherine did. In the year 1375 she entrusted a ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... enthusiastic belief in a divine interposition in favor of the party that had hitherto been unsuccessful and oppressed. The humiliations which had befallen the French royal family and nobility were looked on as the just judgments of God upon them for their vice and impiety. The misfortunes that had come upon France as a nation were believed to have been drawn down by national sins. The English, who had been the instruments of heaven's wrath against France, seemed now, by their pride and cruelty, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... denunciations and rebukes administered to his nation, not even sparing the prince. (5) He is called the weeping prophet. He was distressed both by the disobedience and apostasy of Israel and by the evil which he foresaw. Being very devoutly religious, he was pained by the impiety ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... impiety of their conduct called forth an immediate rebuke, even from the dead, a frown seemed to pass over Sir Piers's features, as their angry glances fell in that direction. This startling effect was occasioned by the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... glory should outlive his dust; Nor was it much a fault; for whether he Obey'd or not, 'twas equal destiny. So fatal beauty is, and full of waste. That neither wanton can be safe, nor chaste. What then should man pray for? what is't that he Can beg of Heaven, without impiety? Take my advice: first to the gods commit All cares; for they things competent and fit For us foresee; besides, man is more dear To them than to himself; we blindly here, Led by the world and lust, in vain assay To get us ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... the cemetery, where a black wooden cross, without inscription, was all that indicated its place hereafter to the mother. Athanase lived and died in shadow. No voice was raised to blame the rector; the bishop kept silence. The piety of the mother redeemed the impiety ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... scorn. In a city so free, or, to say better, so licentious as Athens was, at that time, nobody was spared, not even the chief magistrate, nor the very judges, by whose voice comedies were allowed or prohibited. The insolence of those performances reached to open impiety, and sport was made equally with men and gods[16]. These are the features by which the greatest part of the compositions of Aristophanes will be known. In which, it may be particularly observed, that not the least appearance of praise will be found, and, therefore, certainly ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... 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 Phoebus of his throne of gold 9 Is the soft god those softer limbs ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... be a colonel, and though a person of no parts either in body or mind, yet made by Cromwell one of his pageant lords. He was a fellow fit for any mischief, and capable of nothing else; a sordid lump of ignorance and impiety, and therefore the more fit to share in Cromwell's designs, and to act in that horrid murther of his Majesty. Upon the turn of the times, he ran away for fear of Squire Dun [the common hangman], and (by report) is since dead, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... surely it concerns Francois Paradis. Hast Thou already guessed it, O Mary, full of grace? How might she frame this her desire without impiety? That he should be spared hardship in the woods ... That he should be true to his word and give up drinking and swearing ... That ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... writer as Mosheim gives of them is worth noticing, on account of its sweeping character. "All the nations of the world," he says, "except the Jews, were plunged in the grossest superstition. Some nations, indeed, went beyond others in impiety and absurdity, but all stood charged with irrationality and gross stupidity in matters of religion." "The greater part of the gods of all nations were ancient heroes, famous for their achievements and their worthy ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Cassette replied with a sudden turn of her masked face and a murmur of surprise and protest against this impiety. A low, merry laugh came out of the Monk's cowl, and the Huguenotte let her form sink a little in her chair ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... uniformity is allowable; yet, if the singular be put first, a plural pronoun may sometimes follow without obvious impropriety: as, "So Judah was carried away out of their land."—2 Kings, xxv, 21. "Israel is reproved and threatened for their impiety and idolatry."—Friends' Bible, Hosea, x. "There is the enemy who wait to give us battle."—Murray's Introductory Reader, p. 36. When the idea of plurality predominates in the author's mind, a plural verb is sometimes used before a collective noun that has the singular article an ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... repeopled, and that the debt due to the god[n] was being exacted not from the Phocians, but from the Thebans who had planned the seizure of the temple. For he said that he gave Philip to understand that those who planned the act were no less guilty of impiety than those whose hands executed the plan; and that on this account the Thebans had set a price upon his head. {22} Moreover, he said that he heard some of the Euboeans, who had been thrown into a state of panic ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... sky; Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurled, Being on being wrecked, and world on world; Heaven's whole foundations to their centre nod, And nature tremble to the throne of God. All this dread order break—for whom? for thee? Vile worm!—Oh, madness! pride! impiety! ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... of Athens; the philosopher of the Christians, by Arnobius; and the god of philosophers, by Cicero—Athenaeus accuses of envy; Theopompus of lying; Suidas of avarice; Aulus Gellius, of robbery; Porphyry, of incontinence; and Aristophanes, of impiety. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the author, in an article which has become almost historic for its virulence. Poor Lady Morgan was accused of bad taste, bombast and nonsense, blunders, ignorance of the French language and manners, general ignorance, Jacobinism, falsehood, licentiousness, and impiety! The first four or five charges might have been proved with little difficulty, if it were worth while to break a butterfly on a wheel, but it was necessary to distort the meaning and even the text of the original in order to give any colour to the ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... ungrateful, the hero's reckless defiance is shocking to Greek feeling. As the play goes on, this is subtly and delicately indicated by the attitude of the chorus. They enter overflowing with pity. They are slowly chilled and alienated by the hero's violence and impiety; but they nobly decline, at the last crisis, the mean advice of Hermes to desert Prometheus and save themselves; and in the final crash they share his ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... called to the altar, are collateral helps not to be despised by the ministers of the Gospel.... All the arts and sciences ought to be employed in one confederacy against the prevailing torrent of vice and impiety; and it will be no small step in the progress of religion, if it is as evident as it ought to be, that he wants the best sense a man can have, who is cold to the "Beauty of Holiness."'[925] Tillotson, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... and his success had a little turned his head. In one passage of his writings he had taken rank as Reeve's equal and representative, and had put himself on a level with "the Commissionated." It was an awful act of impiety. "For," says Muggleton, "as John Reeve was like unto Elijah, so am I as Elisha, and his place was but as Gehazi, and could stand no longer than my will and pleasure was." Claxton had been formally blessed, therefore he could never be ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... people of your father; there are your guns, here is your land. But let you and me enjoy that land together." He must have known already she was a free-eater, and there is no doubt he trembled at the thought of that impiety and of its punishment; yet he consented to what seems her bold proposal. The same day he met his own mother, who signed to him privately that he should eat free. But Liholiho (the poor drunkard who died in London) was incapable of so much daring: he hung long ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time; so that (incredible barbarity!) thirty-one cocks are sure to be most inhumanly murdered for the sport and pleasure, the noise and nonsense, nay, I may say the profane cursing and swearing, of those who have the effrontery to call themselves, with all these bloody doings, and with all this impiety about them—Christians!' Moreover, this ungenerous diversion was the bane and destruction of thousands, who thus dissipated their patrimonial fortunes. That its attractions were irresistible is evident from the difficulty experienced ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the Empire of Women is not of such importance that for the surpressing of the same any man is bound to hazard his life: I answer, that to suppress it, is in the hand of GOD alone; but to utter the impiety and abomination of the same, I say, it is the duty of every true messenger of GOD to whom the truth ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox
... angles mobbing thee with warnings:—what 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
... Query, requesting some of your readers to supply the ellipsis in the form with which petitions to Parliament are required to be closed, viz.: "And your petitioners will ever pray, &c." To me, I confess, there appears to be something like impiety in its use in its present unmeaning state. Would a petition be rendered informal by any addition which would ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 190, June 18, 1853 • Various
... of Atreus. What seems good is not good, to gash the parents' skin with a fierce hand, and brandish the sword black-stained with blood in the sunbeams. But, on the other hand, to act wickedly[21] is mad impiety, and the folly of ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... persisted that I must go to Leipzig. I was now resolved, contrary to his views and wishes, to choose a line of studies and of life for myself, by way of self-defense. The obstinacy of my father, who, without knowing it, opposed himself to my plans, strengthened me in my impiety; so that I made no scruple to listen to him by the hour, while he described and repeated to me the course of study and of life which I should pursue at the ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... people; whilst beneath the shade of the tree of liberty was instituted universal slavery; and that the most Christian, as well as the most civilized of all nations, had fallen down to the lowest limits of impiety and barbarism. ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... these images, when every thing else was given up for lost, was always the object of the last desperate effort of the husband and father. AEneas in this case asked his father to take these images, as it would have been an impiety for him, having come fresh from scenes of battle and bloodshed, to have put his hand upon them, without previously performing some ceremony of purification. Ascanius took hold of his father's hand. Creusa followed behind. Thus arranged they sallied forth from the ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... when the Rev. Dick Shepherd remarrying a divorced woman—i.e., encouraging her to take again the solemn vow she had already broken—said that he heard the voice of Christ: "Go in peace," it was not for impiety that Chesterton condemned him. He wrote with restraint "There is scarcely a shade of difference left between meaning well and ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the distinction between accent and quantity, and between the accents of common talk and the musical accents that occur in poetry. It is the best monograph on the subject, of which we know. Another article, "On Prometheus," clears AEschylus from the charge of impiety, because he appears to make Zeus act tyrannically towards Prometheus in the "Prometheus Vinctus." He also gave the results of some of his classical studies, in lectures in Edinburgh and Glasgow on Roman history and Greek literature. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of PURIFICATION you are to understand that you are to be cleansed from impiety and prejudice before you can acquire more of the sublime knowledge in passing the other degrees, to be able to support the brilliant light of reason, enlightened by truth, of which the blazing ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... for the excesses of philanthropy and the pampering of criminals (cf. Rep. B. 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
... "the time has come to declare its untruthfulness, and to unmask those who are guilty of its imposture." Then follows a resolution for the especial consideration of slave-owners:—"Resolved—That it is the climax of audacity and impiety for this nation to receive the Bible as the inspired Word of God, and then to make it a penal offence to give it to any of the millions who are held as chattel slaves on its soil, thus conspiring to make them miserable here and hereafter." Then follows a charitable ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... of those memorable days: "The very face of heaven did manifestlie speak what comfort was brought to this country with hir—to wit, sorrow, dolour, darkness and all impiety—for in the memorie of man never was seen a more dolorous face of the heavens than was at her arryvall ... the myst was so thick that skairse micht onie man espy another; and the sun was not seyn to shyne two days befoir nor two ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... God and the destroying of trust in our own act of confession. For a man will hardly go to mass without guilt, if he thinks his forgiveness sure because he has confessed, rather than because God is merciful; nay, this is altogether an impiety. The summa summarum[22] is, "Blessed are all they that put their trust in the Lord." [Ps. 2:12] When you hear this word, "in the Lord," know that he is unblessed who puts his trust in anything whatsoever that is not the Lord Himself. And such a man those ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... groaned as the intensity of her fervor pressed upon them for response that they could not shape in words; they wept, they shouted, they prophesied, and over them swept ever the witchery of her wonderful voice, preaching impiety—the worship ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... no impiety in his irreligion, no real pride, in his pride, there existed that weakness, if I may use the word, peculiar to a brain which can not grasp at reality, but adheres to a chimera as a ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Savonarola with his own weapons—that is, by the force of eloquence. He chose as the Dominican's opponent a preacher of recognised talent, called Fra Francesco di Paglia; and he sent him to Florence, where he began to preach in Santa Croce, accusing Savonarola of heresy and impiety. At the same time the pope, in a new brief, announced to the Signaria that unless they forbade the arch-heretic to preach, all the goods of Florentine merchants who lived on the papal territory would be confiscated, and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 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 ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... "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
... calmly and solemnly through the astonished attendants. For him there existed no antechamber, no delay; disdaining the ordinary forms of etiquette, he paced slowly through the various apartments, until, with no usher to announce him, he reached that of Ali. The latter, whose impiety by no means saved him from superstitious terrors, rose hastily from the divan and advanced to meet the holy sheik, who was followed by a crowd of silent courtiers. Ali addressed him with the utmost respect, and endeavoured even to kiss his right ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... new edict of Montesquieu's, and the necessity of arming themselves in case of violence on the marshal's part: thus it was nothing less than the beginning of a civil war, for which the pretexts were the impiety of the regent's court and Dubois's sacrileges; pretexts which would arouse the anathemas of an essentially religious province, against a reign so little worthy to succeed that ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... ill-fortune seems to have mastered them remember that our Master is before all things just. He lays no burden that ought not to be borne on any one of His children, and those who give way to despair are guilty of sheer impiety. The same Power that sends the affliction gives also the capability of endurance, and, if we refuse to exert that capability, we are sinful. When once the first inclination toward weakness and doubt is overcome, every effort becomes easier, and the sense ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... religious,) the more recent counterfeits of the notorious Greek Simonides—such literary humbugs as these are equal in presumption and in ingenuity too, to any of a merely business kind, though usually destitute of that sort of impiety which makes the great religious humbugs horrible as well ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... which he took home, and showed to a friend, intending to keep it as a relic in his house. A heavenly fairy makes her appearance, and claims the suit of feathers; but the fisherman holds to his treasure trove. She urges the impiety of his act—a mortal has no right to take that which belongs to the fairies. He declares that he will hand down the feather suit to posterity as one of the treasures of the country. The fairy bewails her lot; without her wings how can she return to heaven? She recalls ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... one would say, healthy; but so sound as things that are hollow: thy bones are hollow: impiety has made a ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... 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
... kiss on father's forehead—and 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
... vinedresser, in the Canton of Vaud, in Switzerland, was, unhappily, as well known in the village in which he lived, for his bad conduct, as for his impiety. The father, whose name we will not mention, was a proud and hard-hearted man, both intemperate and dissolute; and his wife, who thought as little of the fear of God as her husband did, was what might be called ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... to conduct than birds and dogs. I am sure that people would laugh at you and me if they knew how we occupy ourselves.' And on the eighth—wait, yes, on the eighth—while we were singing vespers together in my chambers, you threw your book angrily into the fire, which was an impiety; and afterward you told me that you had let it drop—a sin, a mortal sin. See, I have written below, lie, underlined. People never deceive me, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... authority which sits enthroned above the Constitution and the laws"; and he gives an extract from a nameless English correspondent, in which the writer remarks, "Religion is an excellent thing except in politics," a maxim exceedingly palatable to very many of our politicians. Aware that the impiety of this sentiment was not exactly suited to the meridian of Massachusetts, he says his friend undoubtedly meant "a fantastical notion of religion." Of course, he regards the religious prejudice against hunting and enslaving men as springing from a fantastic notion of religion. Yet, ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... I don't know as to the Gods)—Ver. 1037. "Deos nescio." The Critic Lambinis, in his letter to Charles the Ninth of France, accuses Terence of impiety in this passage. Madame Dacier has, however, well observed, that the meaning is not "I care not for the Gods," but "I know not ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... place around us in the world continually? Not, indeed, that a long train of good influences has been frequently set agoing in the Sabbath school—for Sabbath schools are but of recent origin. But people have always been led along to virtue or vice, to piety or impiety, to bless the world or to prove a curse to it, by one another. A word or a look from a relative, or friend, or acquaintance, in the school or somewhere else, has often given a turn to the whole character. A word, it is said, may move a continent. ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... after all this injustice, and impiety on your parts, you have prosecuted that with the extreamest madness, which you esteemed criminal in your enemies, viz. To arrogate the supream power in a single person;{3} condemn men without Law; execute, and proscribe them with as little: Imprest for your Service, violate your ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... steal, also what dire woes they were going to work upon Polyphemus. In spite of their protests Silenus is believed: Ulysses promises, if set free, to erect shrines in Greece for the Cyclops, besides dwelling upon the impiety of attacking innocent strangers: Polyphemus replies that he does not care for shrines, and as for impiety he is independent of Zeus; which gives occasion for a glorification of the life of nature. They are driven into the cave to ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... 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, the preceding ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... inoculated in Turkey, and four years later her daughter was to be the first subject inoculated in England. She made rapid progress notwithstanding the opposition of the medical profession, and the ignorance and credulity of the public. The clergy vituperated her for the impiety of seeking to control the designs of Providence. Preaching in 1722, the Rev. Edward Massey, for example, affirmed that Job's distemper was confluent small-pox, and that he had been inoculated by the Devil. Lady Montagu, however, gained many supporters among the higher ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... and was no image of Heaven's Law; whom it never struck that Heaven had a Law, or that the Earth—could not have what kind of Law you pleased! Human Statute-books, accordingly, are growing horrible to think of. An impiety and poisonous futility every Law of them that is so made; all Nature is against it; it will and can do nothing but mischief wheresoever it shows itself in Nature: and such Laws lie now like an incubus over this Earth, so innumerable ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... Revolution marked the darkest hour of this time; 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 clung nearer to their Saviour amidst the ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... regulation from a taboo. When the Gauls captured Rome the Flamen of Jupiter went up into the Capitol with the garrison. He might not leave Rome, it would have been impious. But the other flamens nd the Vestals left Rome, the Vestals were months at Caere. It is not impiety for a Vestal to be outside the city walls over night, it is merely forbidden by the rules. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... fact of this seeming isolation of Greek culture, and to deem it 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 can never be accounted for in ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... which was probably more or less common to the very various Churches which surrounded him. He had avowed this sweeping denial with a freedom which pained some friends, perhaps rather by its rashness than by its impiety, and he was apt to regard the procedure of theologians as a blasphemous twisting of the words of Christ. He rejected that belief in miracles and in the literally inspired accuracy of the Bible narrative which was no doubt held as fundamental by all these Churches. He rejected no ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... "Friend," replies the old man in a soft tone of voice, "swear not; we are Christians, and endeavour to be good Christians, but we are not of opinion that the sprinkling water on a child's head makes him a Christian." "Heavens!" say I, shocked at his impiety, "you have then forgot that Christ was baptised by St. John." "Friend," replies the mild Quaker once again, "swear not; Christ indeed was baptised by John, but He himself never baptised anyone. We are the disciples of Christ, not of John." I pitied very ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... movement, what shouting, what laughter, what merriment! There is nothing so interesting as a regiment. It is our country in its youthful and vigorous aspect. All the ineptitude, the turbulence, the superstition at times, and at times the impiety of the country as represented in the individual, disappears under the iron rule of discipline, which of so many insignificant figures makes an imposing whole. The soldier, or so to say, the corpuscle, separating at the command "Break ranks!" from the mass in which he ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... forgotten ideas of Hutton, von Hoff and Prevost, published that bold challenge to the Catastrophists—the "Principles of Geology"—he was met with the strongest opposition, not only from the outside world, which was amused by his "absurdities" and shocked by his "impiety"—but not less from his fellow-workers and friends in the Geological Society. For Lyell's numerous original observations, and his diligent collection of facts his contemporaries had nothing but admiration, and they cheerfully admitted him to the highest offices in the society, but they ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... these monks to discuss in their assemblies, they repaid this kindness by rousing common hostility against me; and now by suggestions, from their pulpits, in public meetings, before mixed multitudes, with great clamourings they declaim against me; they rage with passion, and there is no impiety, no heresy, no disgrace which they do not charge me with, with wonderful gesticulations—namely, with clapping of fingers, with hands outstretched and then suddenly drawn back, with gnashing of teeth, by raging, by spitting, by scratching their heads, by gnawing their nails, by stamping ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... and that these peasants, like the rest of the King's subjects, were to be forced, at the sword's point if necessary, to worship God in his way, and not in theirs. Viewed in this light, the whole proceeding would appear to be a ludicrous absurdity, but for its revolting impiety and the abominable cruelties with which it was accompanied. Yet the Royalists even blamed themselves for the mercy which they had hitherto shown to the Protestant peasantry; and the more virulent amongst them urged that the whole of the remaining population that would ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... sympathies of the mother abashed, on this occasion, the miserable and calculating impiety of the husband; her reproaches were open and unshrinking, and her moral sense of ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the Holy Ghost into a man, and not an acquisition of Gods grace, by doctrine, and study; I think they are in a very dangerous Dilemma. For if they worship not the men whom they beleeve to be so inspired, they fall into Impiety; as not adoring Gods supernaturall Presence. And again, if they worship them, they commit Idolatry; for the Apostles would never permit themselves to be so worshipped. Therefore the safest way is to beleeve, that ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... 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
... generous and wakeful spirit of Christian Benevolence, seeking and finding every where occasions for its exercise, is exploded, and a system of decent selfishness is avowedly established in its stead; a system scarcely more to be abjured for its impiety, than to be abhorred for its cold insensibility to the opportunities of diffusing happiness. "Have we no families, or are they provided for? Are we wealthy, and bred to no profession? Are we young and lively, and in the gaiety and vigour of youth? Surely we may be allowed to take ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... the paths of the St. Bernard, night and day, to do credit to his training, and when the toil is ended, all he asks is just as much meat as will keep the breath within his ribs. Had heaven given Uberto a conscience and greater wit, the first might have shown him the impiety of working for travellers on holy days and festas, while the latter would be apt to say he was a fool for troubling himself about the safety of others ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... covenants (which, when preserved, serve as a strong barrier against all such usurpations), framed a hellish and almost unbounded toleration in Scotland, of heretical and sectarian errors, for gratification of the abettors thereof, which was followed with a deluge of irreligion and impiety, drowning the nation in ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... conquer, in other words, as well might we ask whether despotism is inviolable—whether liberty is a revolt—whether there is no justice here below but for kings—whether there is, for the people, no other right than to serve and obey? The mere doubt is an act of impiety toward the people." ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... doubly sure. The stories of supernatural consequences to follow if a woman sees the turndun lend a sanction. This is not a random theory, without basis. In Brazil, the natives have no bull-roarer, but they have mysteries, and the presence of the women at the mysteries of the men is a terrible impiety. To warn away the women, the Brazilians make loud 'devil-music' on what are called 'jurupari pipes.' Now, just as in Australia, the women may not see the jurupari pipes on pain of death. When the sound of the jurupari pipes is ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... would be no sacrilegious act for them to alter their religious laws and customs. But the little horn was to set himself up against the Most High and think to change His times and laws—an act of unparalleled audacity, impiety, and blasphemy. This description the papacy has consistently and constantly fulfilled. The pope has assumed the power to make time holy or unholy as he sees fit; to command men to abstain from meat and to cease work, ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... of the Pagans was soon succeeded by resentment; and the most pious of men were exposed to the unjust but dangerous imputation of impiety. Malice and prejudice concurred in representing the Christians as a society of atheists, who, by the most daring attack on the religious constitution of the empire, had merited the severest animadversion of the civil magistrate. They had separated themselves (they gloried in the confession) ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... moral character, in the pursuance of his base intrigues, committed an act of sacrilege by entering the house of Csar, disguised as a woman, during the celebration of the mysteries of the Bona Dea, to which men were never admitted. He was tried for the impiety, and, through the efforts of Cicero, was almost convicted, though he managed to escape by bribery. He was ever afterward a determined enemy of the great orator, and, by the aid of Pompey, Csar, and Crassus, finally succeeded in having him condemned for ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... give him for baptism. "Take her and keep her, if you like," was the reply, "for she is no better than a dead dog." "We accepted the offer," says Biard, "in order to show them the difference between Christianity and their impiety; and after giving her what care we could, together with some instruction, we baptized her. We named her after Madame the Marquise de Guercheville, in gratitude for the benefits we have received from that lady, who can now rejoice that her name is already in heaven; for, a few days after ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... him that it was by way of returning thanks to Heaven for the benefits they received; and was indeed an ancient and religious custom, which they could not, with a safe conscience, or without impiety, omit. ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various |
