"Irreverent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... never seen me in India-rubber clothing, and I can always disguise my voice. It was easy to distinguish those who did make the discovery; they were always conscious and simpering when their turn came; while the others were stout and irreverent till I revealed myself, and then rather cowed and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... "Irreverent cur! do you rail on the afflicted of Heaven? The Founder of your creed would abhor you, for He, they say, was pitiful. I spit upon ye, and I curse ye. Be accursed!" And flinging up his hands, like St. Paul at Lystra, he rose to double his height and towered ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... writing amid the charms of California mountain scenery. Science the blindest guide on a gold-hunting expedition. Irreverent contempt of the beautiful mineral to the dictates of science. Nothing better to be expected from the root of all evil. Foreigners more successful than Americans in its pursuit. Americans always longing for ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... by those cases which we do not clearly understand; I take for example the strangest, as is fitting. Some irreverent zealots have hailed the Phaloenopsis as Queen of Flowers, dethroning our venerable rose. I have not to consider the question of allegiance, but decidedly this is, upon the whole, the most interesting of all orchids in the cultivator's point of view. For there are some genera and many species ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... through the darkening streets. One cheerful and irreverent, brimful of remark or criticism; the other silent, his usual dreaminess was modified, but had not departed, and once, gazing up through the clear, dark blue, where the stars were shining, he had a momentary sense as if he ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... for a tutor, to prepare the two boys for school. The tutor had a cork leg, which was a source of serious trouble to me, for it stuck out straight behind when we knelt down to family prayers—conduct which struck me as irreverent and unbecoming, but which I always felt a desire to imitate. After about a year, my mother found a house which she thought would suit her scheme, namely, to obtain permission from Dr. Vaughan, the then Head Master of Harrow, to take some boys into her house, ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... were no longer silent and glum. The Captain whistled and sang and was in high spirits most of the time. At home he was his old self, chaffing Isaiah about the housekeeping, taking a mischievous delight in shocking his friend and partner by irreverent remarks concerning Jonah or some other Old Testament personage, and occasionally, although not often, throwing out a sly hint to Mary about the frequency of letters from the West. Mary had told her uncles of Crawford's leaving Boston and returning to Nevada because of his father's ill ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... convict her of any infringement of rules. Little did these pompous invaders suspect how this slender capable girl with the hazel eyes was spicing the hours behind their backs, and drawing with nimble and irreverent pencil portraits of her captors, daring caricatures which she exhibited in secret to the terrified delight of her patients. Luckily for her this harmless vengeance had not been discovered, for doubtless she would have paid dearly for ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... persons in his time, "wrested" those parts of Paul's writings which were "dark and hard to be understood:" and this was not the worst of their conduct, for they treated "the other scriptures also" in the same reckless and irreverent manner, which were neither dark nor hard to be understood. (2 Pet. iii. 16.) These epistles are no more mystical or prophetical than those of the apostle Paul. They are simply and properly descriptive, although like all other ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... in the mud, and there was no conspiracy to conceal the existence of the mud. Mark Twain's coarseness, however, is more than that of Cervantes or Shakespeare. Neither Cervantes nor Shakespeare is ever irreverent. ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... saying the wrong thing," said the girl, in a repentant voice; "but, truly, I didn't mean to be irreverent—I only wanted you to know how pat the doctor reels off the scientific phrases; and"—assuming an important air—"I guess I know that Christian Science is the 'new tongue' spoken of in the Bible. I've been to the service all summer; auntie went with ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... ashes, and thought that even the sacred funeral flames were a dishonor to that temple of God which had been so highly favored of heaven. So the cherished bodies of the dead were brought here out of the sight of man, where no irreverent hand might disturb the solemn stillness of their last repose, to lie until the last trump should give that summons for which the primitive Church waited so eagerly, in daily expectation. In the city above the Christian religion had been increasing for successive ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... nervous young man with the celluloid collar sat a stout individual with a bald head. This was Abijah Thompson, known by the irreverent as "Barking" Thompson, a nickname bestowed because of his peculiar habit of gradually puffing up, like a frog, under religious excitement, and then bursting forth in an inarticulate shout, disconcerting to the uninitiated. During Baxter's ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... critics of all others, they who so zealously acknowledge the remains of the theoretical writings of the ancients on literature, Aristotle, Horace, Quinctilian, &c., as infallible standards of taste, should yet distinguish themselves by the contemptuous and irreverent manner in which they speak of their poetical compositions, and especially of their dramatic literature. Look, for instance, into a book very much read,—La Harpe's Cours de Litterature. It contains many acute remarks on the French Theatre; but whoever should ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... seen, a simple question of history. We can trace with tolerable certainty the steps by which this collection of sacred writings was made; we know pretty well who did it, and when and how it was done. And there is nothing profane or irreverent in this inquiry, for the work of collecting these writings and fixing this canon has been done mainly, if not wholly, by men who were not inspired and did not claim to be. There is nothing mysterious or miraculous about their doings ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... of the Public is still outside, listening open-mouthed to a comic dialogue between the Showman and a juvenile and irreverent Nigger. Those who have come in find that, with the exception of some particularly tame-looking murderers' heads in glazed pigeon-holes, a few limp effigies stuck up on rickety ledges, and an elderly Cart-horse in low spirits, there is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... faintly, and now and then I heard a noise in the water-butt under the spout, the snapping of an old rafter, or something falling behind the wall. The toads crawled from under the plantain leaves, and hopped across the broad stone before the kitchen door, and the irreverent cat, with whom I sympathized, raced like mad in the grass. Growing duller, I went to the cellar door, which was in the front entry, opened it, and stared down in the black gulf, till I saw a gray rock rise at the foot of the stairs which ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... true and proper altar, whereon Christ was again really sacrificed; but that it was and might be called an altar, in that sense in which the primitive church called it an altar, and in no other. And because experience had shewn how irreverent the behaviour of many people was in many places, (some leaning, others casting their hats, and some sitting upon, some standing, and others sitting under the communion table, in time of divine service,) for the avoiding of which and like abuses it was thought meet and convenient that ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... necessary to enlarge upon the preliminaries. We need hardly say that Larry washed off the mud, and that he passed flattering remarks upon his own abilities and prowess, and, in very irreverent tones and terms, addressed Ah-wow, who smoked his pipe and looked at him. All that, and a great deal more, we leave to our reader's well-known and vivid imagination. Suffice it that the venison was duly washed, and a huge fire, with much difficulty, ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... is right, therefore, for one man to teach another. He that doeth so joyfully, upon him shall much be bestowed by God."[14] These last words, like the last phrases of my former quotation from him, may stand perhaps in the way of some, as nowadays they may easily sound glib or irreverent. But are we less convinced that only tasks done joyfully, as labours of love, deserve the reward of fuller and finer powers, and obtain it? When Duerer thought of God, he did not only think of a mythological personage resembling an old king; he thought ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... became in some sort the guardians of the spot in which they were set up, like images of saints in Roman Catholic countries, and not unfrequently were employed when it was wished to secure any place from irreverent treatment. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... American as the years go by. The home papers and periodicals are taken, the American church attended, if there happens to be one; the English chapel, if there is not. Never a French church! In their hearts they think it almost irreverent to read the service in French. The acquaintance of a few fellow-exiles is made and that of a half-dozen English families, mothers and daughters and a younger son or two, whom the ferocious primogeniture custom has cast out of the homes of ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... they accepted their common fate with a certain Indian stoicism and Western sense of humor that for the time lifted them above the vulgar complacency of their former fortunes. There was a deep-seated, if coarse and irreverent resignation in their philosophy. At the beginning of the calamity it had been roughly formulated by Billings in the statement that "it wasn't anybody's fault; there was nobody to kill, and what couldn't ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... brother," quoth Giles, "'tis an irreverent knave, that maketh the monk in me arise, my very toes do twitch for to kick his lewd and sacrilegious carcase—and, lord, he ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... the tall four-post bed he was selling and he now put his hand upon this object—a hardy service with a cunningly simulated air of deference. It was to be profaned by no irreverent handling! ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... man once in the Foreign Office—a man who had grown middle-aged in the Department, and was commonly said, by irreverent juniors, to be able to repeat Aitchison's Treaties and Sunnuds backward in his sleep. What he did with his stored knowledge only the Secretary knew; and he, naturally, would not publish the news abroad. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... historians are much ruffled by the irreverent manner in which Guicciardini notices the origin of the cognomen of the Great Captain; which even his subsequent panegyric cannot atone for. "Era capitano Gonsalvo Ernandes, di casa d'Aghilar, di patria Cordovese, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... was the astounding irreverent comment. It proceeded from the same incipient agnostic who could not believe in ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... Rodd and Hartnoll . . . and a deuced lucky thing for you we tumbled upon you as we did. But Captain Suckling's orders were—and I heard him give 'em, with my own ears—to fetch you off to-morrow morning. From the Blue Posts, eh? Well, just you run back, or Blue Billy,"—by this irreverent name, as I learned later, the executive officers of his Majesty's Navy had agreed to know Mr. Benjamin Sheppard, proprietor of the Blue Posts: a solid man, who died worth sixty thousand pounds—"or Blue Billy will ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... withdrew it from all relative and comparative ideas of externals of worship. "What a training it is here for the appreciation of the wondrous beauty of our Church services, calming all feeling of excitement and irreverent passionate zeal, and enabling one to give full scope to the joy and glory of one's heart, without, I hope, forgetting to rejoice with reverence and moderation. Here, at Tamaki, you have nothing but the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... July. On the same day he began Cain, a Mystery. Cain was an attempt to dramatize the Old Testament; Lucifer's apology for himself and his arraignment of the Creator startled and shocked the orthodox. Theologically the offence lay in its detachment. Cain was not irreverent or blasphemous, but it treated accepted dogmas as open questions. Cain was published in the same volume with the Two Foscari and Sardanapalus, December 19, 1821. The "Blues," a skit upon literary ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... ever carried his irreverent familiarity so far as to bid the Supreme Being stop and think on the importance of the interests which are under His care. The grotesque indecency of such an address throws into shade the subordinate absurdities of the passage, the unfurling of whirlwinds, the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... action than the volunteers, whose only school was actual practice in the field. And look at our Senate and House of Representatives, sir; are the most distinguished statesmen there graduates of colleges? Quite the reverse. I do not wish to be so irreverent as to disparage schools and colleges, sir, I only wish to be so just as to exalt talent, industry, and perseverance to their proper ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... other half, "No; no King! Down with the veto!" and on that day at vespers the choristers preconcerted to use loud and threatening emphasis when chanting the words, "Deposuit potentes de sede," in the "Magnificat." Incensed at such an irreverent proceeding, the royalists in their turn thrice exclaimed, "Et reginam," after the "Domine salvum fac regem." The tumult during the whole time of ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... she had experienced at his wish, the shock given to her girlish sensibilities by his irreverent views of marriage, together with the sure and near approach of the day fixed for committing her future to his keeping, made her so restless that she could scarcely sleep at all that night. She rose when the sparrows began to walk out of the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... you are really irreverent. You began laughing in meeting, and you are keeping it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... perhaps hardly necessary to add, is Charlotte's irreverent appellation for the curates—Mr. Smith and ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... specialists of the back country how to ride a buckjumper; which makes a party of resourceful bushmen stand helpless in the presence of flood or fire, till marshalled by some hero of the croquet lawn; above all, which makes the isocratic and irreverent Australian fawn on the 'gentleman,' for no imaginable reason except that the latter says 'deuced' instead of 'sanguinary,' and 'by Jove' instead of 'by sheol.' Go to; I'll no more on't; it hath ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... thee, Sir Robin, who said there was cheese in my wallet? Nay, is there like to be cheese in a wallet already containing five-and-twenty holy Ladies on their way back from Vespers? Out upon thee for a most irreverent little glutton! I fear me thou hast not only a high look, thou hast also a proud stomach; just the reverse of the great French Cardinal who came, with much pomp, to visit us at Easter time. He had a proud ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... calling it immoral. There is no doubt about it that the theater, as at present conducted, is pulling the stones from the foundations of public morality, and weakening, and in many quarters endangering, the whole structure of society. The atmosphere of the modern theater is lustful and irreverent. It is a good place for Christians to keep away from. It is a good opportunity for the strong man to deny himself for the sake of his younger or ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... even more profusely than the rest as if for some anniversary observance. Clearly, these people, concurring in this with the special sympathies of Marius himself, had adopted the practice of burial from some peculiar feeling of hope they entertained concerning the body; a feeling which, in no irreverent curiosity, he would fain have penetrated. The complete and irreparable disappearance of the dead in the funeral fire, so crushing to the spirits, as he for one had found it, had long since induced in him a preference for that other mode of settlement to the last sleep, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... and deliberate scene shifting of mountains and mesas, showed them up for the brittle, dry hills they were, and left them behind. It was pitiful! It was as though a revered tragedian should overnight find that his vogue had departed; that he was no longer getting over; that an irreverent upstart, breaking in on his most sonorous periods, was getting laughs with slang. We had lots of water; the dust we left behind; it wasn't even hot in the ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... the service, when Butler had been admitted minister of the kirk of Knocktarlitie, with all its spiritual immunities and privileges, David, who had frowned, groaned, and murmured at Knockdunder's irreverent demeanour, communicated his plain thoughts of the matter to Isaac Meiklehose, one of the elders, with whom a reverential aspect and huge grizzle wig had especially disposed him to seek fraternisation. "It didna become a wild Indian," David said, "much less a Christian, and a gentleman, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... were mad, irreverent moments when Carl Granberry delivered his poker sermons with the eloquent mannerisms of the pulpit, save, as Payson held, they were infinitely more logical and eloquent, but to-night, husking his logic of these externals, he fell flatly to preaching an ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... a story of a tourist who, lingering long in the Holy Land, was pained at the irreverent hurry of an American, who arrived there one afternoon, scurried over the sacred places, and prepared to depart betimes on the morrow. He timidly inquired of the swift-foot why he, who had come so far, ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... of Walt Whitman has been a good deal bandied about in books and magazines. It has become familiar both in good and ill repute. His works have been largely bespattered with praise by his admirers, and cruelly mauled and mangled by irreverent enemies. Now, whether his poetry is good or bad as poetry, is a matter that may admit of a difference of opinion without alienating those who differ. We could not keep the peace with a man who should put forward claims to taste and yet depreciate ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with the matter. A passage from the Epistle lampooning Aylmer, Bishop of London, and a sample each of Pap with a Hatchet and the Almond, will show the general style. But the most characteristic pieces of all are generally too coarse and too irreverent to ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... such as were inseparable from the conjunction of such ambitions with such powers. He may whet and wield his blade; but he puts no poison on its edge. He may disparage reverence; but he is not himself irreverent. He may impugn the convictions that most men love; but, while withholding no syllable of dissent and reprehension, he utters not a syllable that can insult or sting. And all the while his pages teem with observations full of point, and half full ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... irreverent remark. He looked around the place and saw that they were alone. Then he said, very earnestly, "Mr. Finnegan, may I have a few ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... authorized government monopoly so long as the agreed-upon duty was paid. Then there was the Starch Monopoly, a very profitable one because starch was a new delight which soon enabled Elizabethan fops to wear ruffed collars big enough to make their heads—as one irreverent satirist exclaimed—'look like John ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... water, taking The hue and image of o'erleaning flowers, Sweet human faces, white clouds of the noon, Slant starlight glimpses through the dewy leaves, And tenderest moonrise. 'T was, in truth, a study, To mark his spirit, alternating between A decent and professional gravity And an irreverent mirthfulness, which often Laughed in the face of his divinity, Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite unshrined The oracle, and for the pattern priest Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious merchant, To whom the soiled ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... performance had been received in Boston. They poured out their opinions most freely and frankly about the frosty attitude of the people who were present at that performance, and about the Boston newspapers for the position they had taken in regard to the matter. That position was that I had been irreverent beyond belief, beyond imagination. Very well, I had accepted that as a fact for a year or two, and had been thoroughly miserable about it whenever I thought of it—which was not frequently, if I could ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... him and jerked her arm away. "The Presence of God in that place?" she demanded. "No! Never! How perfectly dreadful! I think that is irreverent!" ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... work—and the small thimble, Stanton could have sworn, still warm from the snuggle of somebody's finger. Last of all, a fat and formidable edition of Robert Browning's poems; a tiny black domino-mask, such as masqueraders wear, and a shimmering gilt picture frame inclosing a pert yet not irreverent handmade adaptation of a certain portion of St. Paul's epistle to ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Morality, was a creation of the fifteenth century. Whether it had its origin in a laicising of the irreverent celebration of the Feast of Fools, or in that parade of fools which sometimes preceded a Mystery, it was essentially a farce, but a farce in which the performers, arrayed in motley, and wearing the long-eared cap, distributed between them the several roles of human ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... ill," said Berry. "Put your head between your knees, dear, and think of a bullock trying to pass through a turnstile. And why 'as husbands go'? As a distinguished consort, I must protest against that irreverent expression." ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... beings from whom the anthropologist who puts no bridle on his hobby-horse is pleased to claim descent. Near the base is one of those symmetrically scooped-out hollows which are such a striking peculiarity of the formation here, and which suggest to the irreverent that a cheese-taster of prehistoric dimensions must have been brought to bear upon the rocks when their consistency was about the same as that of fresh gruyre. According to one theory, they were washed out by the sea, that retired from the interior ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... starve or freeze, or sell me to some human brute, to be slowly tortured and starved to death; but do Thou, My Master, take my life in the kindest way, and your God will reward you Here and Hereafter. You will not consider me irreverent if I ask this in the name of Him who was born ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... of reconciliation become daily more and more distasteful to me. I have used them in times past; but now the deliberate construction of such schemes seems to me almost like trifling with the words of Scripture and the teachings of Nature. They seem to me almost irreverent, and quite foreign to the true, humble, liberal spirit of Christianity; they are so evidently artificial, so evidently mere ingenious human devices. It seems to me that if we will only regard the two books in the philosophical spirit which I have endeavored to describe, ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... Beauclerk closet to look over Lady Di's scenes from the 'Mysterious Mother'—the players and dramatists, finally, who crowded round Hogarth's sketch of his 'Beggars' Opera,' with portraits, and gazed on Davison's likeness of Mrs. Clive:—how could poor Horace have tolerated the sound of their irreverent remarks, the dust of their shoes, the degradation of their fancying that they might doubt his spurious-looking antiquities, or condemn his improper-looking ladies on their canvas? How, indeed, could he? For those parlours, that library, were peopled in his days with all those who could enhance ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... sharpened in that magic sort of way. My "God-days," are what I call those strange days when I can sympathize with every one as if I'd known their whole history and all their troubles and thoughts and struggles, ever since they were born. I call them that, not to be irreverent, but because I suppose God always feels so; and the little spark of Him that's in every human being—even in a naughty, pert thing like me—comes out in us more on some days than on others, though only for a few minutes ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... with—and feed him on Substitutes. . . . Do you know that parlour-game, Yarrell dear? Are you a performer at Musical Chairs? Were you by any chance brought up on a book called What Shall We do Now? The fact is—" Sammy, who could be irreverent, but so as never to offend, stole a look at Otway—"we're a trifle hipped in the old log cabin. I started a guessing-competition just now, and our Commanding Officer won't play. Turn up the reference, Polky—Ecclesiastes something-or-other. It runs: ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... braving the fate awaiting them. As Leonard passed Saint Michael's church, in Basinghall-street, he perceived, to his great surprise, that it was lighted up, and at first supposed some service was going on within it, but on approaching he heard strains of lively and most irreverent music issuing from within. Pushing open the door, he entered the sacred edifice, and found it occupied by a party of twenty young men, accompanied by a like number of females, some of whom were playing at ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... see none of the traditional beauty of battle; they apply themselves to a devoted—almost obscene—study of corpses and carnage generally; and they lack the American's instinct for the rowdy commonplace, the natural, the irreverent, which so materially aids his realism. In "The Red Badge of Courage" invariably the tone is kept down where one expects a height: the most heroic deeds are accomplished ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... to my inexperienced ears, irreverent conversation, proceeded from half a dozen powerful young men, in low-crowned sailors' hats and flannel trousers, some in striped jerseys, some in shooting-jackets, some smoking cigars, some beating up eggs in sherry; while my cousin, dressed ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... buried in the ground, not in a vault, the chancel earth, moreover, formerly absorbing a large degree of moisture, the great probability is that dust alone remains. This consideration may tend to discourage an irreverent opinion expressed by some, that it is due to the interests of science to unfold to the world the material abode which formerly held so great an intellect." Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps has more faith in the alleged precaution than I have. Surely a needy clerk, with ...
— Shakespeare's Bones • C. M. Ingleby
... seem to thee a little irreverent, but he doesn't mean to be. It's his way," said his wife, with a smile. "If thee'll come with me I'll show thee to a room where thee can rest and prepare ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... the hostess afforded him, Dummie, by the expiring ray of the candle that burned in the death-chamber, hastily opened a huge box (which was generally concealed under the bed, and contained the wardrobe of the deceased), and turned with irreverent hand over the linens and the silks, until quite at the bottom of the trunk he discovered some packets of letters; these he seized, and buried in the conveniences of his dress. He then, rising and replacing the box, cast a longing eye towards the watch on the toilet-table, which was of gold; ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... man; the authorities must not be spoken of in so irreverent a manner. Are you aware that your language ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... AUSTIN]. Note that mode Of faltering out that, when a lady passed, He, having eyes, did see her! You had said— "On such a day I scanned her, head to foot; Observed a red, where red should not have been, Outside her elbow; but was pleased enough Upon the whole." Let such irreverent talk Be lessoned for ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... duty, an idea circulated among the people that our constitution is not so perfect as it ought to be, before you are sure of mending it, is a certain method of lessening it in the public opinion. Of this irreverent opinion of Parliament, the author himself complains in one part of his book; and he endeavors to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... He had all a soldier's virtues, the "chevalier without fear and without reproach," but he was glorified by a whole galaxy of excellences which soldiers too often lack. He was pure of speech and of habit, never intemperate, never obscene, never profane, never irreverent. In domestic life he was an absolute model. Lofty command ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... of this secular, I might almost say irreverent spirit, I quote Bock's accusation against Queen Mary of Hungary, who in her embroideries, preserved at Aix-la-Chapelle, is said to have represented herself as the Queen of Heaven, surrounded by her ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... a breathing-space of quiet; Messer Folco looked hard at his daughter; and she, for her part, looking, as before, away from him, because, as I guess, she judged that there would be something irreverent in outfacing her father while she denied his wishes and defied so strangely his parental authority. Messer Simone stood at his ease a little apart with the mocking smile of conquest on his face, and the guests, kinsfolk, and friends, that were ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... lightly go: Though thy heart presage thee woe, Vales and many a wasted sun, Oread let thy laughter run, Till the irreverent mountain air Ripple all ...
— Chamber Music • James Joyce
... hue of the rocks that overshadow and darken the valley and the river, and also the situation of the village at the entrance of the dark valley, justify these names. And even if they did not, still we are not so irreverent as to interfere with the arrangements of those who have gone before us," ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... folding bed, jump down, and be at the hall door ready to greet the incomer, before she was halfway up the stairs. The cat never got down for the wrong person, and she never neglected to meet any and every member of our family who might be entering. The irreverent scoffer may call it "instinct," or talk about the "sense of ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... their aptest designation as long as he lived, and assumed a paternal relation which finished only with the older man's death. The Lady-in-chief made such a pet of him that he was referred to in the irreverent Tory press as ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... seasoned youngster a glass of rum. He would then point to the chart and say, "We're there. What is that place, my man? I can't see very well." On receiving his answer, he would remark, gravely, "I thought it was that." This innocent device gave the greatest entertainment to his irreverent pupils. Sometimes this kind of ignorance led to complications. One old gentleman bored away through a fog for several days under the pleasing impression that he was going north about from Liverpool. After a long time a ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... adventure, in nautical romances, of the starving crew casting lots in the long boat, and spoils the dignity of antiquity by modern trivialities, saying of a discontented sailor on Columbus's ship, "He wanted fresh shad." The fun of Innocents Abroad consists in this irreverent application of modern, common sense, utilitarian, democratic standards to the memorable places and historic associations of {571} Europe. Tried by this test the Old Masters in the picture galleries become laughable. Abelard was a precious scoundrel, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... severe homily, the Prelate took his departure, leaving the Abbess highly incensed, though she prudently forbore returning any irreverent answer ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... and fled from his neglect and treachery—a fugitive to her mother's house. And yet as she sat before the fire with this little infant cooing in the warmth—like a puppy or a little pig, or any other little animal you can suggest—this was the thought of the irreverent man—there was a look of almost more than common happiness, of blessedness, in her face. Who can fathom these things? They were at least beyond the knowledge, though not the sympathy, of this very rising ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... It was during the opening prayer that they arrived, and they had to stand by the door and be peeped at by irreverent children; then they had to invite themselves to a vacant seat near the door. The superintendent came that way ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... even to steal glances up to the side galleries, where the boys of lower degree were at their mischief, and where fits of giggling and horse-play rose and spread from time to time until the tithing-man, old Conrad to wit, burst in and laid his hickory gad over their irreverent heads. ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... experiments in physics and chemistry, reading the Scientific American late into the night, until his broad shoulders were threatened with a permanent stoop, and his eager eyes blinked wearily at breakfast, anxious to disprove certain accepted theories, and as eager to introduce others, unaffected, irreverent, and irresistibly buoyant. William could not hear an opera praised without dragging Susan off to gallery seats, which the lady frankly characterized as "smelly," to see if his opinion agreed with that of the ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... "Isn't that almost irreverent?" she asked. "Surely the righteous must have their reward. And your father is good. See how much he gives to all the established charities, how many things he has founded. He's always thinking of others, and planning for them. And surely, for us, he does everything. How ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke
... book interesting and suggestive. It is disgraced by none of the flippant and irreverent sentimentalism which characterizes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... amount of classical education to see seriously the meaning, that ancient artists desired in all gravity to express, in works which now excite a smile by their inherent comicality. Hence the antiquary may be occasionally ruffled by the remarks of some irreverent spectator, on a work which the former gravely contemplates, because he feels the design of its maker, and is familiar with the antique mode of expression. Thus the early Greek figures of Minerva, whether statues or upon coins, have occasionally ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... the religious organizations of Chicago, he said, respectfully but pointedly: "I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and by religious men who are certain they represent the Divine Will.... I hope it will not be irreverent in me to say that if it be probable that God would reveal His will to others, on a point so closely connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me.... If I can learn ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... written," said Lestocq, after a moment's reflection, "that any one who dares so misuse his tongue as to revile the sublime majesty of his emperor or empress with irreverent language, such criminal shall have the instrument of his crime, his tongue, torn ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... of hearing Mother Martha's story would be a poor one indeed, if I allowed her to begin a fresh string of questions. Accordingly, I dismissed the inquiries about the clergy of the Established Church with the most irreverent briefness, and recalled her attention forthwith to the subject of the ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... that question, as to the past, ruled the present. What had parted them, and how did they to-day envisage one another? She could not make out. Had never, indeed, attempted seriously to make out, shying from such investigation as disloyal and, in a way, irreverent. Now investigation was forced on her. Her mind worked independent of her will, so that she could neither prevent or arrest it. Sir Charles showed himself scrupulously attentive and courteous to General Frayling. He offered no spoken objection to her association with Henrietta. Yet an unexplained ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... who gives testimony. Com—mit'ted, done, performed. 2. Coun'sel, a lawyer. 4. Re-ject'ed, refused. 6. As-sured', made bold. Con-fid'ing-ly, with trust. 8. Pro-fane', irreverent, taking the name of God in vain. 33. Per'ju-ry, the act of willfully making a false oath. Chaff, the light dry husk of grains or grasses. 34. Ma-tured', perfected, fully developed. Pot'ter, one whose occupation is to make earthen vessels. Rev—e-la'tion, the act of disclosing ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... to do with, myself," she added apologetically; "the most I've got in my sullar, I guess, is a gallon jar o' watermelon pickles. I could give that. You don't think it sounds irreverent—connectin' God with a big ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... the latter). That person who is endued with intelligence, who waits upon his superiors, and who has his passions under control succeeds in knowing all the rules of morality and never disputes with what is accepted by all. An ungovernable, irreverent, and sinful person of wicked soul perpetrates sin in seeking ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... wish you wouldn't mingle church and cavalry slang. It's downright irreverent, and at the bottom of your heart you're anything but ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... a composer of such innate spirituality that to analyze and classify him in a formal manner seems well-nigh irreverent. His music once heard is never forgotten, and when thoroughly known is loved for all time. Nor is an elaborate biographical account necessary; for Franck, more than any other modern composer, has been fortunate in that his life and works have been sympathetically presented to ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... scholasticism formulated by Albertus Magnus and Aquinas. The weapons of this interminable and many-sided controversy were as rude as the age which forged them: on the one side, coarse invective and irreverent paradox; on the other, scandalous imputations, spiritual censures, the sword, the prison, and the stake. For the medieval attitude towards heterodoxy was unflinching and uncompromising. To remain sceptical when the Church had defined was as the sin of witchcraft ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... may safely say, now dead everywhere,—buried, indeed,—for the mad painter Blake saw the funeral of the last of the little people, and an irreverent English bishop has sung their requiem. It never had much hold upon the Yankee mind, our superstitions being mostly of a sterner and less poetical kind. The Irish Presbyterians who settled in New Hampshire ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... intimidated from proceeding, this demonstration only made Sir Roger the more determined. To have so desperate and irreverent a population coming about his house and woods now presented itself in a much more formidable aspect than ever. So, next day, not only were the placards once more hoisted, but rewards offered for the discovery of the offenders, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... he burst out a-laughing, and says that no such Thieves' Flash must be sent to the Foot of the Throne. But Mr. Shapcott told him that he would not have one word altered; that he would not even strike out the paragraph where I had been irreverent enough to quote a Text (and spell it badly); and that what I had written, and naught else, should go to the King. He took it to London himself, and his Majesty being much elated by some successes in Germany, and the Discovery of a Jacobite Plot, and moved moreover by the intercession of a Foreign ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... burst which I had raised by my irreverent attacks on De Beranger, these gentlemen separated from their political friends, and complimented me. One of them even addressed me a letter, in which I read these words, which assuredly I would not have written: "That stupid De Beranger." There was a sort of alliance between us. Monsieur ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... rough, unroofed porch in the front and stared off at the dark vastness, afraid of the wild strangeness, afraid of the looming mountains, afraid of the multitude of stars. She said it was ridiculous to have so many stars. It wasn't natural. It was irreverent. It was like looking too close into heaven ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... involuntary terror when the fat evangelist had said: "Your Saviour knows everything. Come and confess your guilt." There was no sense of guilt in her now, but only a desperate desire to defend her secret from irreverent eyes, and begin life again among people to whom the harsh code of the village was unknown. The impulse did not shape itself in thought: she only knew she must save her baby, and hide herself with it somewhere where no one would ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... the irreverent Jake. "I own I wasn't at a temp'rance meetin' las' night, but I was in bed long ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... surprised that one had to pay money for such masquerades of eloquence as were exhibited that night on the platform. Yes, it occurred to me that if one had not a dollar one could not become an atheist. Billah! I was scandalized. For no matter how irreverent one likes to pose, one ought to reverence at least his Maker. I am a Christian by the grace of Allah, and my ancestors are counted among the martyrs of the Church. And thanks to my parents, I have been duly baptized and confirmed. For ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... written had I not as a child and girl been driven once a year to the Shaker meeting at the little village of Alfred, sixteen miles distant. The services were then open to the public, but eventually permission to attend them was withdrawn, because of the careless and sometimes irreverent behavior of young people who regarded the Shaker costumes, the solemn dances or marches, the rhythmic movements of the hands, the almost hypnotic crescendo of the singing, as a sort of humorous spectacle. I learned to know the brethren and sisters, and the Elder, as years ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... dwelt in the old time on this very spot of ground now covered by the Museum. Like other people who grow too rich and comfortable, the citizens of Tarentum loved mirth and mockery; their Greek theatre was remarkable for irreverent farce, for parodies of the great drama of Athens. And here is testimony to the fact: all manner of comic masks, of grotesque visages; mouths distorted into impossible grins, eyes leering and goggling, noses extravagant. I sketched a caricature of Medusa, the anguished features and snaky locks ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... Further, in the justification of the ungodly one sin is not remitted without another, for "it is irreverent to expect half a pardon from God" [*Cap., Sunt. plures: Dist. iii, De Poenit.]. Hence, in the justification of the ungodly, if man's free-will must move against sin, he ought to think of all his sins. But this is unseemly, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... said of an irreverent floriculturist, and with equal truth—perhaps indeed with greater. For the astronomer, in some cases, may be hard and cold, from indulging in habits of thought too exclusively mathematical. But the true lover of flowers has always something gentle and genial in his nature. He never looks ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... about America. But this much I have said, because the Americans, as a nation, set their trust in liberty and in equality, of which I detest the one, and deny the possibility of the other; and because, also, as a nation, they are wholly undesirous of Rest, and incapable of it; irreverent of themselves, both in the present and in the future; discontented with what they are, yet having no ideal of anything which they ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... hopeless bitter glance at his empty loom. At this moment he sat silent—a rock against which the noisy waves of a combative Bible-reader were breaking in rude foam. His silence and apparent impassiveness angered the irreverent little worthy. To Falconer's humour he looked a vulgar bull-terrier barking at a noble, sad-faced staghound. His foolish arguments against infidelity, drawn from Paley's Natural Theology, and tracts about ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... spirits of those who have fled, man! And gentles and ladies Located in Hades, Through his miraculous mediation, Declare how they feel, And such things reveal As suits their genius for impartation. 'Tis not with any irreverent spirit I give the tale, or flout it, or jeer it; For many good folk Not subject to joke Declare for the fact that they both see and hear it. It comes from New York, though, And it might be hard work, though, To bring belief to any ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... being cold to one of his companions, this irreverent member of "The Long Nine" told his future President that it was no wonder he was cold—"there was so much of him on the ground." None of the party appreciated this homely joke at the expense of his feet (they were doubtless able to bear it) more ...
— A Cousin's Conspiracy - A Boy's Struggle for an Inheritance • Horatio Alger
... "Kettner's Book of the Table," London, 1877, the excellent author dismisses Roman cookery with a few lines of "warning." Kettner, admirer of Sala, evidently was still under the baneful influence. Twenty years later, Danneil, colleague of Kettner's, joined the chorus of "irreverent critics." They all based their judgment on mere idle conversation, resulting from disappointments in ill-fated attempts to cook in the Apician style. Even the best experts, it appears, fall victims to the mysterious spell surrounding, protecting things of sacred antiquity, ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... respectfully, for an old law reads: "No person shall ride in the dead cart except the corpse that is carried, and, therefore, nobody shall get up and ride behind. It is against Christian piety to bury people with irreverent actions, or drag them in hides, or throw them into the grave without consideration, or in a position contrary to the practice ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... abruptly, if he never shrank from the publicity he was thus giving Laura. "Madame Recamier was not quite pleased," I said, "that Canova had modelled her bust, even from imagination. Do you never shrink from permitting irreverent eyes to look on Laura's beauty? Think of men as you know them. Would you give each of them her miniature, perhaps to go with them into scenes of riot ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... situation. The man-of-war, in which everything was His Majesty's, sustained this feeling, and it was too sudden a change to expect such a man to abandon all his most cherished notions at a moment's warning. The irreverent exclamation of Captain Truck shocked him, and he did not fail to show as much by the disgust pictured in ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... at Paris Municipal Constitution, Differential Calculus, Newspaper Chronique de Paris, Biography, Philosophy; and now sits here as two-years Senator: a notable Condorcet, with stoical Roman face, and fiery heart; 'volcano hid under snow;' styled likewise, in irreverent language, 'mouton enrage,' peaceablest of creatures bitten rabid! Or note, lastly, Jean-Pierre Brissot; whom Destiny, long working noisily with him, has hurled hither, say, to have done with him. A biennial Senator he ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... even to guess what thoughts may have passed through the mind of Christ when He sighed over the very defect which He was healing. But it is surely not irreverent in us to say that our Lord had cause enough to sigh, if He foresaw the follies of mankind during an age which was too soon to come.—How men, instead of taking the spirit of His miracles and acting ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... in Sammett's garden, which was once Angermann's, famous for its company, kings, composers, poets, wits, and critics, all mingling there in discordant harmony. Now it is overrun by Cook's tourists in bicycle costumes, irreverent, chattering, idle, and foolish. Even Wagner has grown gray and the Ring sounded antique to me, so strong were the disturbing influences ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... saying it in the shortest, the simplest, the calmest, the most finished words. Saying it!—rather taught to say it. For if that "divine inspiration of poets," of which the poetasters make such rash and irreverent boastings, have indeed, as all ages have held, any reality corresponding to it, it will rather be bestowed on such works as these, appeals from unrighteous man to a righteous God, than on men whose only claim to celestial help seems to be that mere passionate sensibility, which our ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... of clowns in the Elder Dramatists; which, even were it NOT overdone as it is, cannot be admitted in this place, and is plainly impertinent in the Tragedy that is being acted here. Something of Farce will often enough, in this irreverent world, intrude itself on the most solemn Tragedy; but, in pity even to the Farce, there ought at least to be ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... pure abstraction, having no organic connection with the Synthetic Philosophy, or indeed with any philosophy of value. Mr. Spencer's warning to his readers seems to quite justify Mr. Bradley's rather caustic comment, "I do not wish to be irreverent, but Mr. Spencer's attitude towards his Unknowable strikes me as a pleasantry, the point of which lies in its unconsciousness. It seems a proposal to take something for God simply and solely because we do not know what the devil it can ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... superstitious, too often they are laughed at and ridiculed; on the other hand, fun should never be made of such children and they should be given every opportunity to develop courage and self-reliance. If a child is irreverent, he should have his eyes opened to the wonders of creation and to the majesty and power displayed by the Maker of the universe. So, in all cases, the parents should beware of the almost universal, negative mode of training which represses, scolds, finds fault, and ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... Later the labyrinths lost their religious meaning, and became a pastime for idlers and children. The one in the church at Saint-Omer has been destroyed, because the celebration of the office was often disturbed by irreverent visitors trying the sport.[22] ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... Clarence sent of the illuminated commandments in the new Church of St. Katharine in the Regent's Park! How Emily and I gloated over the imitation of them when we replaced the hideous old tables, and how exquisite we thought the initial I, which irreverent youngsters have likened, with some justice, to an enormous overfed caterpillar, enwreathed with red ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rather ill of the Law. He calls it the elements of the world, the weak and beggarly elements of the world. Was it not irreverent for him to speak that way about the holy Law of God? The Law ought to prepare the way of Christ into the hearts of men. That is the true purpose and function of the Law. But if the Law presumes to usurp the place and function of the Gospel, it is ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... over. In crossing the dry bed of an arroyo a wheel gave way and the coach overturned, fortunately for me on the side of the padre! Had it been otherwise the weight of the good priest might have caused me much inconvenience; but as it was I fell upon him. It was in no irreverent spirit that I afterwards cogitated that, at least on one occasion of my life, the Romish Church had interposed between me and injury! And as the priest was not hurt, I could afford to impart this ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... thereby no excuse. Yet somtimes Nations will decline so low From vertue, which is reason, that no wrong, But Justice, and some fatal curse annext Deprives them of thir outward libertie, 100 Thir inward lost: Witness th' irreverent Son Of him who built the Ark, who for the shame Don to his Father, heard this heavie curse, Servant Of Servants, on his vitious Race. Thus will this latter, as the former World, Still tend from bad to worse, till God at last Wearied with their iniquities, withdraw His presence ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... words, gentle Kate, And not a thought irreverent of our Widow. Why, 'twere unmannerly at any time, But most uncourteous on our wedding day, When we should shew most hospitable.—Some wine. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... a black one,—I cross an ancient brush fence and am fairly within the old hemlocks, and in one of the most primitive, undisturbed nooks. In the deep moss I tread as with muffled feet, and the pupils of my eyes dilate in the dim, almost religious light. The irreverent red squirrels, however, run and snicker at my approach, or mock the solitude with their ridiculous ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... and Belial? Or will you, youths of England, make your country again a royal throne of kings; a sceptred isle, for all the world a source of light, a centre of peace; mistress of Learning and of the Arts;—faithful guardian of great memories in the midst of irreverent and ephemeral visions;—faithful servant of time-tried principles, under temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires; and amidst the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped in her strange valour of goodwill ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... of the great Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of India, being called "a little monkey"! Grandmammas will take such liberties. Three or four years later, according to that spicy and irreverent chronicler, Charles Greville, the little Princess was not pretty. But she was just entering on that ungracious period in which few little girls are comely to look upon, or comfortable to themselves. Greville saw her at a children's ball, given by the King in ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... in search of his little maid, and of fighting Spaniards once more before he died. I will not quote the texts out of Isaiah and the Psalms with which his mouth was filled from morning to night, for fear of seeming irreverent in the eyes of a generation which does not believe, as Yeo believed, that fighting the Spaniards was as really fighting in God's battle against evil as were the wars of Joshua or David. But the old man had his practical hint too, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... said Jack Winch, "have a match. Don't be singin' your mustaches over the fire for nothing;" with an irreverent pun ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... use of all this," broke in the irreverent "Kid." "Do we have to stand there and have war ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... admirable part of Lord Exmouth's character, was derived from religion. Young as he was when he first entered the service, and though such principles and feelings could not be supposed then to be very strongly fixed, yet he was guarded in his conduct, and always prompt to check any irreverent allusion to serious subjects. His youth was passed in camps and ships, at a time when a coarse and profane conduct too much prevailed, now happily almost unknown; but he was never deterred by a false shame from setting a proper example. On board his ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... zeal, so many of our churches would not be untidy, neglected, ruinous. There would not be moth-eaten altar-cloths, and worm-eaten altars. There would not be green mouldering walls, and broken pavements. There would not be a service slovenly, unmusical, irreverent, or if not irreverent, at least unworthy ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... unconscious of his own. She often saw the wounded soldier leaning on Endicott's arm, and their words seemed grave and earnest, while Endicott's face seemed for a time to lose its cynical sneers. And then Dorris had relented, only to harden again at some irreverent words of this incorrigible Keith. A sharp retort was on her lip now, but she restrained it as L'Estrange once more joined the group, and the talk drifted into quieter channels, the young soldiers a little graver than usual. At last L'Estrange spoke with tender regret of the peaceful ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... Perhaps it was irreverent, but that was what Montague had always thought of, ever since he had first laughed over the tale his father told. It had happened one January afternoon in the Wilderness, during the terrible battle of Chancellorsville, ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... I must ask you to observe, that this arbitrary, irreverent method of approaching Holy Scripture, is absolutely fatal; and can result in nothing but general unbelief. It confessedly leaves the individual reader to decide what parts of the Bible he thinks could, what parts could ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... granted, he undid the parcel, and disclosed a mass of long, fair, silky hair threaded into a gold ring that was set with an emerald. On the gift was an inscription in English: From an unknown friend. A great discussion ensued. One irreverent speaker opined that the thing was a hoax, and that the hair had come from a wig-maker's; but his blasphemy was shouted down. Another proposed that Balzac should cut off his own long, flat locks (it was in 1834 that he began to let them grow) and should send them addressed ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... day, in St. Patrick's Church, though it was then, as the Anglo-Irish Annalist remarks, the penitential season of Lent. A work of peace and reconciliation, calculated to spare the effusion of Christian blood, may have been thought some justification for this irreverent use ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee |
