"Profanation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... martial, much real piety of sentiment (p. 317) must, in innumerable instances, have been compounded with the widely-extended romantic spirit which was ardent to hazard life on sacred ground of Judea, rather than to suffer the continuance of its profanation by the avowed enemy of the ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... interposed, frightened at his vehemence, "such words are a profanation. A marriage ceremony could not increase our love, but it is indispensable ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... you speak patiently of such profanation and cruelty? Papist butchers and Scottish thieves, for the child of your hearth! Were it not better that I stole her safely away and wedded her in secret, so that at least she ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... man, and cast in his lot with the people of God, it had needed the utmost exercise of the strong restraint which he imposed on himself, as far as outward acts were concerned, to keep him from crying out against what seemed to him to be a profanation of God's ordinances. After old Mr Hollister's death, when others fell in with the new order of things, and one after another of his old friends found his place in the church, he kept back and remained a spectator, even when he would ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... profanation, And ere its ancient glories were out short all, A poor hard-working Cobbler took his station In a small house, just opposite the portal; His birth, his parentage, and education, I know but little of—a strange, odd mortal; His aspect, air, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... business to open his mouth, unless he is sure that he has received something to impart to men as a gift from the Divine Spirit. To preach our doubts, to preach our own opinions, to preach poor platitudes, to talk about politics and morals and taste and literature and the like in the pulpit, is profanation and blasphemy. Let no man open his lips unless he can say: 'The Lord hath showed me this; and this I bring to you as His word.' Nor has a Christian organisation any right to exist, unless it recognises the communication and reception and further spreading ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... what he considers the great defects of historical Christianity. It has exaggerated the personal, the positive, the ritual. It has wronged mankind by monopolizing all virtues for the Christian name. It is only by his holy thoughts that Jesus serves us. "To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul." The preachers do a wrong to Jesus by removing him from our human sympathies; they should not degrade his life and dialogues by insulation ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... done in the following October. For some days there was carried on a profanation even more sacrilegious than the demolition of the tombs. The coffins containing the remains of kings and queens, princes and princesses, were violated. On Wednesday, the 16th of October, 1798, at the very ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... wood and movable, is, as a matter of fact, never moved; it is placed altar-wise — that is, with its longer axis running north and south, and close against the east wall. Often there is a reredos behind it; it is also fenced in by rails to preserve it from profanation of various ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... officers, pastors, elders, and deacons? So the Presbyterians. 5th. Have they power to keep the whole lump of the Church from being leavened, and purely to preserve the ordinances of Christ, from pollution and profanation, &c.? So the Presbyterians, &c. So that whereinsoever the independent government is truly excellent, the presbyterial government stands in a full equipage ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... clergyman, "there is no choice left to me. It would be profanation to take persons in such a mood to make vows, and kneel to receive God's grace, which they evidently make light of. Whoever will not come and apologise ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... swearing, and every profaneness that might be expected from the dissolute manners of the people who composed them; and to this improper practice must undoubtedly be attributed most of the vices that existed in the colony, pilferings, garden-robberies, burglaries, profanation ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... love of drinking, and whose tendency to jest on the most solemn subjects, are well known even in the present day, might not have treated Selwyn less harshly for what was done under the influence of wine? To this we are inclined to reply, that no punishment is too severe for profanation; and that drunkenness is not an excuse, but an aggravation. Selwyn threatened to appeal, and took advice on the matter. This, as usual, was vain. Many an expelled man, more unjustly treated than Selwyn, has talked of appeal in vain. Appeal to whom? To what? Appeal against ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... them, was forced to overhear, so piercingly sweet was her voice. He trembled for fear some one else might hear her. It seemed like profanation that any one but God should listen to this outcry of a ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... embellished with horrors and licentiousness, ran through the convent, until it came to the ears of the Prior himself. This holy man, who hated Father Gebhardt on account of his intimacy with the most respectable houses, was shocked at the scandalousness of the affair, which he considered as a profanation of the holy sacrament; and, refusing to decide on such a weighty matter, he referred it to the Archbishop. The Archbishop, wisely concluding that whatever sinful man wishes or thinks by day he dreams of by night, denounced the ban of the Church ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... this myth and legend there was also evolved an account of a very different sort. The Jews who remained faithful to the traditions of their race regarded this Greek version as a profanation, and therefore there grew up the legend that on the completion of the work there was darkness over the whole earth during three days. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... solemnity. There is no relief from this kind of thing at midsummer. You cannot close your shutters and light your candles; that in the tone of mind which circumstances superinduce would be brutality. You cannot take Pickwick to the window and read it by the dying light; that is profanation. If you have a friend with you, you can't talk; the hour makes you silent. You are driven in on your self-consciousness. The long light wearies the eye, a sense of time disturbs and saddens the spirit; and that is the reason, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... sui generis, to be capable of a comparison with anything but themselves. We hardly inquire whether those for whom we are thus interested, and to whom we are thus knit, are better or worse than others—the question is a kind of profanation—all we know is, they are more to us than any one else can be. Our sentiments of this kind are rooted and grow in us, and we cannot eradicate them by voluntary means. Besides, our judgments are bespoke, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... consecrated hosts from Catholic Churches, and this not as a consequence of importing the vessels of the sanctuary, which are often of trifling value and often left behind. The intention of the robbery is therefore to possess the hosts, and their future profanation is the only possible object. Now, before it can be worth while to profane the Eucharist, one must believe in the Real Presence, and this is acknowledged by only two classes, the many who love Christ and some few who hate Him. But He is not profaned, at least not ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... my keepers set me free, when, by an impulse of frenzy, I rushed' to the pile, to make a last vain effort to rescue Veenah, or to share her fate; but was stopped by some of the bystanders, who called my act a profanation. ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... wearing fringes, and shaking the palm branch. (2) Violation of a negative commandment not so punished. (3) Violation of a negative commandment the penalty for which is death at the hands of the court, and being "cut off" by divine agency; for example, profanation of the divine name or false oath. In cases of the first class a penitent is as good as one who never sinned. In the second class he is even superior, because the latter has not the same prophylactic against pride. In the ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... possibility. To get married with a view to turning into domestic beings, would be a failure, a trouble, an interruption, a desecration, and a bore; to get married merely to go on as they were at present, would, in the eyes of Alfieri, have been a profanation of the poetry of their situation, a ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... night, vastly other, sunnier men, with abundance of quip and jest and playful sally with the acid personal tang. But from warm beds of repose! We avoid each other's eyes, and one's subdued "please pass that sirup pitcher!" is but tolerated like some boorish profanation of a ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... ardent lover of nature. His eye was open to beauty, and his ear to music. He found these, not in rare conditions, but wheresoever he went. He was sincerity itself, and no cant or affectation is to be found in his writings. He was religious in his own way; incapable of any profanation, by act or thought, although his original living and thinking detached him from the social religious forms. He thought that without religion no great deed had ever been accomplished. He was disgusted with crime, and no worldly success could cover it. He loved nature so well, and was so happy in her ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... my promise is yours. Through all trouble, through all profanation, through the hopeless separation that may be before us in this world, I live yours—and die yours. My Edwin, God ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... having been debauched by Publius Clodius. For so current was the report, that Clodius had found access to her disguised as a woman, during the celebration of a religious solemnity [19], that the senate instituted an enquiry respecting the profanation of the ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... while working at them. He himself did not smoke, and could not bear the smell of smoke, and he showed me several of his MSS. which had become quite useless to him, because they smelt of stale tobacco smoke. I did all I could to guard these sacred treasures against such profanation. ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... dress here pleases the eye, and their custom of going veiled to church, and always without a hat, which they consider as profanation of the temple as they call it, delights me much; it has an air of decency in the individuals, of general respect for the place, and of a resolution not to let external images intrude on devout thoughts. The hanging ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... unfavourable kind. For some months no other intercourse took place than what the visiting of the sick and the baptizing of the children occasioned. By these means, however, I came to the knowledge of their condition, their lives and conversation, of which the latter were the most deplorable—habitual profanation of the Sabbath-day, drunkenness, rioting, immodest dancing, revellings, fightings, an improper state of females on their marriage, and an absence and ignorance ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... character of the national forces should not suffer nor the cause they defend be imperiled by the profanation of the day or name of the Most High. "At this time of public distress," adopting the words of Washington in 1776, "men may find enough to do in the service of God and their country without abandoning themselves to vice and immorality." The first general order ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... remark was told to the pope at his levee, and caused him to remark, Laetamini, gentes, quoniam surrexit Dominus. A quotation which the old cardinals abominated as a profanation of sacred texts. Seeing which, the pope reprimanded them severely, and took occasion to lecture them, telling them that if they were good Christians they were bad politicians. Indeed, he relied upon the fair Imperia to reclaim the emperor, and with ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... governed by an oligarchy, Bulgaria by a German despot, Greece by a wilful king whose patriotism is overshadowed by his nepotism, Roumania is ruled more by the wish of the landlords (boyars) and court than by the wish of the people. I will say nothing about the very profanation of democracy in the ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... an earlier stage of this impression, when the thought of this profanation of the sacredness of life and the sanctity of love chills the life-blood of his heart, and then rushes burning through it like the shame of a personal insult, that he first stands before us in the palace of the King. In appearance nothing is changed. He sees the ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... gently shook his head. "I love you so deeply and truly that I can not be merry in this hour," he said thoughtfully; "and this wild tumult and this uproarious joy seem not to me like a glorification of our love, but rather its profanation. Ah! my dear love, would that I were alone with you in the open air, beneath the broad high arch of heaven, instead of here beneath this artificial one; would that we sat hand in hand in one of those quiet ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... discharged from the civil power, but the Apparitor of the Archbishop of Paris seized them, and conveyed them to the Ecclesiastical Prison; and, in three days more, they were tried and convicted of a scandalous profanation, by assuming to themselves the names, characters, and appearances, of an holy apostle and a blessed angel, with an intent to deceive a pious and well-meaning woman, and to the scandal of religion. On this they were ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... rose up in revolt, and the self he had once abdicated rushed back to him, howling out taunts which were not the less bitter because they were false. Not pausing to wonder whether the present were a profanation of the past, or the past an insipid forecast of the present, he was conscious only that a change—perhaps a terrible change—had taken place in his mind—a change so sudden and so violent that it had paralysed every power of analysis and reflection. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... of happy hope, in the effort to serve and comfort that loved sufferer, who, languishing on a hospital cot, had died among strangers; had been shrouded by hirelings. That any other hand than hers had touched her sacred dead, seemed a profanation; and at the thought of the last rites rendered, the loyal child shivered as though some polluting grasp had been laid upon herself. Out of the envelope rolled a broad hoop of reddish gold, her mother's wedding ring; and in zigzag lines across ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... one gained a pretty woman, whom he deserved, by fighting for; and the other has been fighting in the Peninsula many a long day, "by Shrewsbury clock," without gaining anything in 'that' country but the title of "the Great Lord," and "the Lord;" which savours of profanation, having been hitherto applied only to that Being to whom "'Te Deums'" for carnage are the rankest blasphemy.—It is to be presumed the general will one day return to his Sabine ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... paced the walk a moment, then said, "Well, I don't know. A woman like Grace St. John shakes my faith in our old belief. It seems profanation to assert ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... the temple at Delphi, the most venerated place in all Greece, whither flowed from century to century all kinds of offerings, and where, no doubt, enormous treasure was deposited. Such was, in the opinion of the day, the sanctity of the place, that, on the rumor of the projected profanation, several Greeks essayed to divert the Gallic Brenn himself, by appealing to his superstitious fears; but his answer was, "The gods have no need of wealth; it is they who ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... through the sharp discipline of pain was fitting her meek soul for heaven, had given him an experience such as few young men receive. This fraternal devotion proved a blessing in disguise; it preserved him from any profanation of his youth, and the companionship of the helpless creature whom he loved had proved an ever present stimulant to all that was best and sweetest in the man. A single duty faithfully performed had set the seal of integrity upon his character, and given him grace to see at thirty the rich compensation ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... Such was my passionate warmth that—we had rattled out of the village, gentle reader, and were lonely as Adam and Eve in paradise—I plead guilty to no less freedom than a kiss. The gentle eye of Mrs. Bullfrog scarcely rebuked me for the profanation. Emboldened by her indulgence, I threw back the calash from her polished brow, and suffered my fingers, white and delicate as her own, to stray among those dark and glossy curls which realized my daydreams of ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... only their manners but their natures are inverted, and nothing remaining of them of the dignity of poet but the abused name, which every scribe usurps; that now, especially in dramatick, or (as they term it) stage poetry, nothing but ribaldry, profanation, blasphemies, all licence of offence toward God and man is practised. I dare not deny a great part of this (and I am sorry I dare not), because in some men's abortive features (and would God they had never seen the light!) ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... Rome was a great national calamity, and it was something more: it was a profanation and a sacrilege. The literature which it evoked was a cry of anguish, a prophetic burden of despair. "Chants populaires," writes M. Emile Gebhart (De l'Italie, "Le Sac de Rome en 1527," 1876, pp. 267, sq.), "Nouvelles ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... failings of those who are just emerging from heathenism in our own days. The First Epistle to the Corinthians administers rebukes for schism, fornication, idolatrous tendencies, misuse of spiritual gifts, profanation of the worship of God, and misbelief. And even the Saints at Ephesus, who are addressed as if they had made great advance in the understanding of the mysteries of the faith, are warned to abstain from lying, violent anger, stealing, foul speaking, ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... now a miracle, such as was once heard of before in the Church in the person of the holy Denis, was again wrought by Divine Providence to preserve the bodies of these saints from profanation. The trunk of Kieran rose from the ground, and selecting first his own head, and carrying it to a stream, and there carefully washing it, and afterwards performing the same sacred office for each of his companions, giving each body its own ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... question to Rex directly, to be decided by his mysterious art. It would have been a relief to him if the decision had chanced to be contrary to his own vague forebodings, but on the other hand, it seemed like a profanation of his love to explain the situation to his friend. He never spoke of Hilda, and Rex did not know of ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... of you, which you would not thank me for repeating, nor him for uttering; proclaiming it aloud, as he did, without delicacy or discrimination, in an audience where it seemed profanation to utter your name: himself utterly incapable of understanding or appreciating your real excellences. Huntingdon, meanwhile, sat quietly drinking his wine,—or looking smilingly into his glass and offering no interruption ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... the Pope's galleys and had them brought to Genoa. Now, when the Genoese saw this strange capture convoyed into Genoa—so the tale goes—they were afraid, and crowded round the old Admiral, demanding wherefore he made war on the Church, and some shouted sacrilege and others profanation, while others again besought him with tears what it meant. And he answered, so that all might hear, that it meant that his galleys were stronger than those of ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... men of European education, in whose courage, integrity, and patriotism I had the fullest confidence. To them, the unlawful action of their own countrymen was more than a political catastrophe; it was a sacrilege, a profanation, a heinous crime. They came in tears, with broken voices, with murder in their hearts, torn by the doubt as to whether they should kill the members of the directoire and drive out the traitorous tribesmen who had made possible the destruction of the government, or adopt the truly Oriental idea ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... will he had not any doubt; Yet he as much believed the declaration Of God's own Word—which some men dare to flout— That man's heart is, in every rank and station, "Always deceitful," filled with profanation, "And desparately wicked." This none know But God, who has provided expiation, And sent his Holy Spirit down to show These facts to sinners dead, and ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... Hindus to have separate carriages for separate castes, but compliance with the proposal was of course out of the question; and now high Brahmans and low Chumars—who are never seen in the same temple even though they worship the same gods, as the presence of a Chumar there would be deemed a profanation—may be seen packed in the same carriage in as close contact as two human beings can be. When they separate the Brahmans have recourse to lustrations, and satisfy themselves the ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... room, breathing the spirit of its mistress. In fact it seemed a sort of profanation as we all followed in after her. For a moment Kennedy stood still, then he carefully looked about. At the side of the bed, near the head, he stooped and picked up something which he held in the palm of his hand. I bent over. Something gleamed in the morning sunshine—some little thin pieces of ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... Euridice, and the fiddle of Tartini, that Tartini with whom the devil had once come and made music. And the delight in anything so absolutely, barbarously, grotesquely, fantastically incongruous as such a performance in such a place was heightened by a sense of profanation: such were the successors of those wonderful musicians of that hated ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... out Douglas at the Dublin Theatre. The first two nights it had great success. The third night was as usual to be the author's. It had meanwhile got abroad that he was a clergyman. This play was considered a profanation, a faction was raised, and the third night did not pay its expenses. It was Whyte who suggested that, by way of consolation, Sheridan should give Home a gold medal. The inscription said that he presented it to him 'for having enriched the stage with a perfect tragedy.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... former defeat that they did not dare to make any new attempt; but unluckily on the 24th of April, 1566, the ammunition took fire and blew up the town and fort of Derry, so that the soldiers were obliged to embark for Dublin."[4] "This disaster was regarded at the time as a divine chastisement for the profanation of St. Columba's church and cell, the latter being used by the heretical soldiery as a repository of ammunition, while the former was defiled ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... resemblance is great, it is striking—Hyperion to a satyr; Thersites to Hercules; mud to marble; dunghill to diamond; a singed cat to a Bengal tiger; a whining puppy to a roaring lion. Shade of the mighty Davis, forgive the almost profanation of that ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... bit funny at the time. I just felt awful. What would the dear old woman say to this profanation? Why the dickens did people have whitewashed walls on which sacrilegious stains were luridly visible? I looked up and down the hall like Moses when he slew that Egyptian, trembling lest the old woman should come in. How could ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... print-seller in the street, who was crying, "Here is Voltaire, the famous Prussian; here you see him, with a great bear-skin cap, to keep him from the cold! Here is the famous Prussian, for six sous!"—"What a profanation!" said she. To return to my story: M. de Chenevieres had shewn her some letters from Voltaire, and M. Marmontel had read an 'Epistle ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... much concerned, or in a manner constrained, to punish any other sin as this. He is bound in honour and interest to vindicate His name from the abuse, His authority from the contempt, His holy ordinance from the profanation, which it doth infer. He is concerned to take care that His providence be not questioned, that the dread of His majesty be not voided, that all religion be not overthrown by the ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... are other judges, who think I ought not to have translated Chaucer into English, out of a quite contrary notion: they suppose there is a certain veneration due to his old language; and that it is little less than profanation and sacrilege to alter it. They are farther of opinion that somewhat of his good sense will suffer in this transfusion, and much of the beauty of his thoughts will infallibly be lost, which appear with ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... his intense love of beauty it seemed like sacrilege—the profanation of a beautiful temple—that such a girl as Charlotte Marsden should permit the associations of that evening. It was true that he could find no greater fault with her in respect to dress, manners, and attendants, than with many others,—not as much as with his own cousin. But for some reason ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... my gropings for the truth, and the checks encountered in the search, and give him the results of my long inquiry. Everything has its appropriate and harmonious reason. I am too fully persuaded of this to believe that the Philanthus commits her profanation of corpses merely to satisfy her appetite. What does the empty stomach mean? May it not—Yes!—But, after all, who knows? Well, let us follow up ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... shown in many beneficial decrees, as in those which abolished the maximum and arbitrary requisitions, put the relatives of the executed in the possession of their property, and prevented Vandalism in arts and sciences, and the profanation of churches. The provinces, also, felt the powerful influence of this new system. The Vendee again rose out of its ashes; bands of soldiers were again collected there to resist the republicans, as well as in Upper Poitou, and among the Chouans. Such were the results ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of this able essay are these; first that Church and State should be independent of each other:—he speaks of the duty of protesting "against the profanation of Christ's kingdom, by that double usurpation, the interference of the Church in temporals, of the State in spirituals," (p. 191); and, secondly, that the Church may justly and by right retain its property, though ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... luxury and more than the usual fastidiousness of his extravagant class. As the dusty and travel-worn party trod the soft carpets and brushed aside their silken hangings in their slow progress with their helpless burden to the lace-canopied and snowy couch of the young gambler, it seemed almost a profanation of some feminine seclusion. Gideon, to whom such luxury was unknown, was profoundly troubled. The voluptuous ease and sensuousness, the refinements of a life of irresponsible indulgence, affected him with a physical terror to which in his late moment of real peril he had been a ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... pressing, oppress. prtendre, to mean. prter, to lend. prtre, m., priest. prvenir, to warn, notify; forestall; anticipate, bias. prier, to pray. prire, f., prayer. priv de, deprived of, without. prix, m., price, prize, reward, penalty. prochain, adjoining. prodiguer, to lavish. profanation, f., profanation, desecration. profane, profane, unworthy; m., intruder. profiter, to take advantage. profond, deep, bottomless. proie, f., prey; en — , a prey to. projet, m., project, plan, scheme. promettre, to promise. prompt, quick, prompt, ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... that these six pagan authors, here mentioned to have described the famous profanation of the Jewish temple by Antiochus Epiphanes, should be all lost; I mean so far of their writings as contained that description; though it is plain Josephus perused them all ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... and innocent girl married to this remorseless gambler, scarred with the gun and the knife, was a profanation of maidenhood—and yet, as he fell now and then into a dream, he took on a kind of savage beauty which might allure and destroy a woman. Whatever else he was, he was neither commonplace nor mean. The visitors to whom he was ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... had raised from the ground to a cushion by her side. "My poor unhappy child, what is this dark mystery? Who can have dared to injure thee, and call it justice, zeal—religion, perchance! Mother of Mercy! pardon the profanation of the word! Try and collect thy thoughts, and tell me all. Who has ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... mercats on Monday and Saturday within Burghs, causing intollerable profanation of the Lords Day, by carying of loads, bearing of Burthens; and other work of that kinde: It were expedient for the redresse thereof, that the care for restraining of this abuse be recommended by the Assembly unto the severall Burghs, and they to bee earnestly ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... to remove my objection to the practice of calling upon any individual to offer supplication in a public assembly. After prayer had been offered, they proceeded to the ballot, and we left the meeting, deeply impressed with the profanation of employing the most solemn act of devotion to serve the exigencies ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... the sources would never find an end. The gravest charge against you is the profanation ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... aspersion, cynicism, and immorality: he used even those arms that respect for God and man denies to the wise; he employed his virtue, his honour, his renown, to aid in this overthrow; and his apostleship of reason had too often the appearance of a profanation of piety; he ravaged the temple instead of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... if there had been any. Some confessed kneeling. The elder absolved, reconciled, exhorted, imposed penance, blessed, and dismissed them. It was against this general "confession" that the opponents of "elders" protested, maintaining that it was a profanation of the sacrament of confession, almost a sacrilege, though this was quite a different thing. They even represented to the diocesan authorities that such confessions attained no good object, but actually to a large extent led ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... are a profanation to any good woman. Ned Bannister, of the Shoshones, was one of them. He looked at his cousin, and his ribald eyes coasted back to bold scrutiny of this young woman's charming, buoyant youth. There was Something in his face that sent a flush of shame coursing through her rich blood. No man had ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... the same general facts set forth under other symbols. Jerusalem, the holy city, the temple, and the two witnesses therefore correspond to the woman of chapter 12. The crowd of uncircumcised Gentiles and their profanation of the city of God for twelve hundred and sixty years correspond to ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... Jews, priests, ministers and rabbis, that is what they write. It is a belittling, a profanation, that, in spite of myself, I have separated and differentiated among them. For down there, in the bloody mud of the trenches, they are one body which ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... I said that Dick was as saucy as a lady's page or a king's jester. Talk of whipping Dash! Why, the young gentleman knew perfectly well that I had rather be whipt myself twenty times over. The very sound seemed a profanation. Whip my Dash! Of course I read master Dick a lecture for this irreverent mention of my pet, who, poor fellow, hearing his name called in question, came up in all innocence to fondle me; to which grave remonstrance the hopeful youth replied by another ...
— The Ground-Ash • Mary Russell Mitford
... corruption of a notorious courtier would have made no impression: the King had already been overwhelmed with such accusations, and they had lost their effect: but to have seduced the virtuous Mirabeau, the very Confucius of the revolution, was a kind of profanation of the holy fire, well calculated to revive the languid rage, and extinguish the small remains of humanity yet left ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... woman betrayed. She spurned with indignant pride the glittering offers of the miscreant who wrought her ruin. She recoiled with abhorrence from his loathsome caresses; cursed in bitter agony his unmanly deed, and brooded over her misfortune, until the loss of her reason followed the profanation of her person." ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... the old mother remained inexorable. I am sure in her own mind she resented as a profanation her daughter's work about the church. She herself had never entered that familiar holy place since her daughter's disgrace. Sunday and holiday all these years she had trudged to Breagh, a long way round by ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... justified; but the reader will have remarked that the name of Allah is often taken in vain. Moslems, however, so far from holding this a profanation deem it an acknowledgment of the Omnipotence and Omnipresence. The Jews from whom the Christians have borrowed had an interest in concealing the name of their tribal divinity; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... God, was a thorn in the eyes of the nations. These here [Pg 471] burn with eager desire to prove, actually and by deeds, that this presumptuous claim was unfounded, and, by the destruction of the city, to take from it its fancied holiness, and the glory of holiness. Destruction and profanation are, in their view, inseparably connected. The contrast to the verse under review is formed by vii. 10: "And mine enemy shall see it, and shame shall come upon her who said. Where is the Lord thy God? Mine eyes shall behold her, now shall ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... state hundreds of thousands toiled away their lives. For the classes who came next to him were all the sensuous delights of a most luxurious civilization, and high intellectual pleasures which the mysteries of the temple hid from vulgar profanation. But for the millions who constituted the base of the social pyramid there was but the lash to stimulate their toil, and the worship of beasts to satisfy the yearnings of the soul. From time immemorial to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... depended upon what was not, would of themselves have preserved the ancient franchises of this and other kindred mountain retirements from trespass; or (shall I dare to say?) would have secured scenes so consecrated from profanation. The lakes had now become celebrated; visitors flocked hither from all parts of England; the fancies of some were smitten so deeply, that they became settlers; and the Islands of Derwent-water and Winandermere, as they offered the strongest temptation, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious capitulation, acceptance of ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... keeping you waiting; but the fact is that I am so seldom honoured in this way in a morning, that I was hardly ready. Donnellan, there's the tea; don't mind waiting. These gentlemen will perhaps join us." And then he looked hard at Aby, as though he trusted in Providence that no such profanation would be done ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... rights as contrasted with the rights of man. What! usurp an exclusive control—then degrade the modes of exercising power, and after that say the degradation is reason why the usurpation should continue unchallenged. What profanation of the very powers of thought is that! On the contrary, I am prepared to say that I see no reason, I never have seen any reason, why there might not be changes introduced in your modes of taking the sense of the community, of ascertaining public opinion upon public measures, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... philosophies of history, of religion, of humanity, had the air of poetical inventions.... That reconciliation between the old and new, tolerated as a temporary political necessity, seemed at bottom a profanation of science, a moral weakness.... Faith in revelation had been wanting; faith in philosophy itself was now wanting. Mystery re-appeared. The philosopher knew as much as the peasant. Of this mystery, Giacomo Leopardi was the echo in the solitude of his thought and his pain. His skepticism announced ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... and tree. Each flower has wept and bow'd toward the east Above an hour since: yet you not dress'd; Nay! not so much as out of bed? When all the birds have matins said And sung their thankful hymns, 'tis sin, Nay, profanation to keep in, Whereas a thousand virgins on this day Spring, sooner than the lark, to ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... thanked the rough voyageurs for their incessant melodies, which made conversation difficult for the time, and thus left her to her own sweet silent thoughts, which seemed almost too sacred for the profanation of words. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... freemen; that the wicked Negroes might have been proceeded against in a most summary manner; that the Negro witnesses had been treated with too much consideration; that "the law requires no oath to be administered to them; and, indeed, it would be a profanation of it to administer it to a heathen in a legal form;" that "the monstrous ingratitude of this black tribe is what exceedingly aggravates their guilt;" that their condition as slaves was one of happiness and peace; ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... After a time, he was apprehended. The inquisitor demanded if he repented of what he had done. He protested, on the contrary, that he gloried in the deed, and that he would die a hundred deaths to rescue from such daily profanation the name of his Redeemer, Christ. He was then put thrice to the torture, that he might be forced to reveal his accomplices. It did not seem in human power for one man to accomplish such a deed of darkness without confederates. Bertrand had none, however, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... nobles, by the success at Inkowo, by the inactivity of Napoleon at Witepsk, and by the severe remarks of those who were not responsible; on the other hand, by a nation of peasants, merchants, and soldiers, who saw us on the point of treading their sacred soil, with all the horror that such profanation could excite. All, in short, demanded ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... walked toward his store under the shadow of the dawn, was conscious of all this. The land was wrapped in the intensest quiet; the very crunch of his snowshoes seemed a profanation, though he trod lightly. When he had ascended the Point, he paused and gazed back. Already the thaw had commenced; down the still white face of the country, which lay at his feet like a shrouded corpse, the tears had begun to trinkle, ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... about for a while at the beautiful church, drew them forth one by one and read the greater part of them. Occupying one's self with light literature in a great religious edifice is perhaps as bad a piece of profanation as any of those rude dealings which Mr. Ruskin justly deplores; but a traveller has to make the most of odd moments, and I was waiting for a friend in whose company I was to go and look at Giotto's beautiful ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... spiritual ruin and desolation, as well as of political anarchy and social disorganization. Each new success of its unholy work, necessarily inflicted a new pang on the heart of the sorrowing Spouse of Christ. Day after day, she had to weep afresh over some new profanation of her sanctuaries, some new desertion of her faithless children, some aggravated treason against her God. Nor was it only the ravages of heresy that she had to lament, but perhaps still more, the disloyalty of too many ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... that a great deal of her feeling was based on pride; but it was a pride entirely justified. She had no intention of submitting to the coarse hands and ropes of public affront. Throughout her life she had rebelled against any profanation of her person, she ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... flattery, love of excitement. They had not dresses like the other ladies, so they stole them; they could not pay for flattery by distinctions, and the dower of a worldly marriage, so they paid by the profanation of their persons. In excitement, more and more madly sought from day to day, they drowned the voice ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... readers of these pages it may seem like profanation to pass over poets like Sill, George Woodberry, Edith Thomas, Richard Hovey, William Vaughn Moody, Madison Cawein—to mention but half a dozen distinguished names out of a larger company—and to suggest that James Whitcomb Riley, more ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... This explanation will enable the reader to understand the feeling with which they beheld the young woman keep the royal hand a prisoner in hers. Some of them shuddered and turned their faces not to witness a familiarity so closely resembling profanation. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... other judges who think I ought not to have translated Chaucer into English, out of a quite contrary notion: they suppose there is a certain veneration due to his old language; and that it is a little less than profanation and sacrilege to alter it. They are farther of opinion, that somewhat of his good sense will suffer in this transfusion, and much of the beauty of his thoughts will infallibly be lost, which appear with more grace in their old habit. Of this ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Leibnitz, and Shakespeare, seem weak and paltry? Do not delicacy of sentiment, brilliancy of wit, fineness of rhythmical and aesthetic sense, the beautiful contributions of the talented special performer, sink into something like apologies—something even like profanation of that name to conjure by, the name of genius? And all the more if the profanation is made real by the moral irregularities or the social shortcomings which give some colour of ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... something of an event. Heaven grant that he might read no journalistic description of the ceremony! Few things more disgusted him than the thought of a fashionable wedding; he could see nothing in it but profanation and indecency. That mattered little, to be sure, in the case of ordinary people, who were born, and lived, and died, in fashionable routine, anxious only to exhibit themselves at any given moment in the way held to be good form; but it was hard to think that custom's tyranny should lay its foul ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... over the mental conditions which could make him capable of such a profanation. Step by step he traced their development, in his own harsh experiences of life, as he followed his father's body to the grave. He traced them back indeed to that father himself, since it was from him that he had inherited the bitter and perilous self-confidence which had sunk deep into ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... lines in which he has placed the heroine's name as it were on a string of pearls; they occur in his exquisite ballad 'Dames du temps jadis,' and, as it would be profanation to try and translate, I give them ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... before, but it is true, absolutely true. What right has Goethe, what right has Arnold, what right has any dictionary, to define the word Irreverence for me? What their ideals are is nothing to me. So long as I reverence my own ideals my whole duty is done, and I commit no profanation if I laugh at theirs. I may scoff at other people's ideals as much as I want to. It is my right and my privilege. No man has ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... belonging to the Dominion Parliament, this committee can "humbly advise the king" that the act in question is for that reason void.[Footnote: In July, 1903, for instance, an Act of the Province of Ontario, entitled the "Lord's Day Profanation Act," was thus ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... have thought, if any person had told him, that, before the expiration of the century in which he lived, the French themselves would, in perfect hatred of Christ, destroy the finest churches of France? At their profanation of his favorite church of St. Bertin, in the town of St. Omer's, that is said to have happened which Victor Vitensis relates to have happened in the persecution of the Vandals, (Hist. Pers. Van. 31:) "Introeuntes maximo cum furore, corpus Christi et sanguinem pavimento sparserunt, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... longer practice. The child had flown from her in the instant of his grasping it, like a pale butterfly, but there remained where it had floated, a silken and nubile essence, fairy and humanity in one, clad in pure thoughts and sweet respect, the profanation of which would be as rare a game as Satan's struggle ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... pledge of empire, is kept under the safeguard of her temple? What, O Mars Gradivus, and you, father Quirinus, of your Ancilia? Is it right that these sacred things, coeval with the city, some of them more ancient than the origin of the city, should be abandoned to profanation? And, observe the difference existing between us and our ancestors. They handed down to us certain sacred rites to be performed by us on the Alban and on the Lavinian mounts. Was it in conformity with religion that these sacred rites were transferred to us to Rome ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius |
