"Atheist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reign, there would neither have been worms in our ships nor caterpillars in our trees. He firmly believes that King William burned Whitehall that he might steal the furniture, and that Tillotson died an atheist. Of Queen Anne he speaks with more tenderness; owns that she meant well, and can tell by whom she was poisoned. Tom has always some new promise that we shall see in another month the rightful monarch on the throne. "Jack Sneaker," on ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... really did not know what his views were, beyond having a vague notion that he was an Atheist of a rather pronounced type, but that I would go and hear him when ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... his hands, in the once practised and now natural foreign gesture. "I'm not an atheist. Of course I believe in God, and I thank ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the county paper by a Frenchman, a retired teacher of his native language, who had somehow heard of the insult offered to his great countryman, and a copy of the contradiction had been sent to Mr. Broad. He was content with observing that its author was a Frenchman, and therefore probably an atheist, "with no consciousness of moral obligation." Voltaire's diabolic disappearance continued, therefore, to be one of Mr. Broad's most striking effects.)—This was a subject of great delicacy. They knew how closely related he was to Brother Allen through that dear saint now ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... disappeared from the universe, and in his place is only the inexorable law, which grinds on forever. It punishes and rewards, but has no love in it. It is only dead, cold, hard, cruel, unrelenting law. Yet Buddhists are not atheists, any more than a child who has never heard of God is an atheist. A child is neither deist nor atheist: ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... state religion, Deism. There is probably no one who does not believe in God. But if any atheist were discovered, he would be put through a course of experimental physics. If he remained obdurate in his rejection of a "palpable and salutary truth," the nation would go into mourning and banish him from ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... we have freedom of the Press; he may be seen there; impartial, even neutral. Tyrant Grimm rolls large eyes, over a questionable coming Time. Atheist Naigeon, beloved disciple of Diderot, crows, in his small difficult way, heralding glad dawn. (Naigeon: Addresse a l'Assemblee Nationale (Paris, 1790) sur la liberte des opinions.) But, on the other hand, how many Morellets, Marmontels, who had sat all their life hatching Philosophe eggs, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... right: Though, now and then, God sees some faithful disciples still Breasting the current to do His will. The little bird on the topmost bough Merrily pipes to the Poet below, Asking an answer as gay, I trow! But he hears the surging waves without,— The atheist's scoff and the infidel's doubt, The Pharisee's cant and the sweet saint's prayer, And the piercing cry for rest from care; And tears of pity and tears of pain Ebb and flow in every strain, As ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... now I am speaking of religion, let me ask you is not his name Bagshawe that you say rails on love and women? Because I heard one t'other day speaking of him, and commending his wit, but withal, said he was a perfect atheist. If so, I can allow him to hate us, and love, which, sure, has something of divine in it, since God requires it of us. I am coming into my preaching vein again. What think you, were it not a good way of preferment as the ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... be a Christian at that price, and so, instead of remaining a Christian humbug, I will be an honest atheist." ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... once in a lifetime and is the progenitor of countless happy hours—or hours of poignant pain. The Hour that can come only to those who are worthy of it, and which, whatever may follow, is an unspeakably precious blessing, confuting the cynic, shaming the pessimist, confounding the atheist, rewarding the pure in heart, revealing God ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... excusing one another. So hard were they upon her that she fancied she had nearly come to the conclusion that, if only she could do it pleasantly, without pain or fear, the best thing would be to swallow something and fall asleep; for like most people she was practically an atheist, and therefore always thought of death as the refuge from the ills of life. But although she was often very uncomfortable, Florimel knew nothing of such genuine downright misery as drives some people to what can be no more to their purpose than if a man should ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... right and wrong behaviour, they acquired a kind of sanctity, so that any thinker who in the light of a wider experience ventured to alter or amend the primitive theory was likely to be vituperated as an irreligious man or atheist. This sort of inference has not yet been wholly abandoned, even in civilized communities. Even to-day books are written about "the conflict between religion and science," and other books are written with intent to reconcile ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... light, In vain would Vice her works in night conceal, For Wisdom's eye pervades the sable veil. Artists may paint the sun's effulgent rays, But Amory's pen the brighter God displays: While his great works in Amory's pages shine, And while he proves his essence all divine, The Atheist sure no more can boast aloud Of chance, or nature, and exclude the God; As if the clay without the potter's aid Should rise in various forms, and shapes self-made, Or worlds above with orb o'er orb profound Self-mov'd ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... Sin, Reconciled With The Holiness Of God. Section I. The hypothesis of the soul's preexistence. Section II. The hypothesis of the Manicheans. Section III. The hypothesis of optimism. Section IV. The argument of the atheist—The reply of Leibnitz and other theists—The insufficiency of this reply. Section V. The sophism of the atheist exploded, and a perfect agreement shown to subsist between the existence of sin and the holiness of God. Section VI. ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... principle; he confessed to me that he did not believe in anything. At the point of death he would not hear talk of God. He said, speaking of himself, "Let this carcass alone, it is now good for nothing." He would steal, lie and swear; he was an atheist and..... ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... at Field Place, England, August 4, 1792. He was entered at University College, Oxford, but was shortly expelled as an atheist. His life was a sad one, his first marriage was unhappy, and he was drowned when only thirty years old, in July, 1822. His longest and best works are "The Cenci," "Prometheus Unbound," "The Revolt of Islam," and "Adonais," an elegy on the death ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... Fanny Wright! the atheist, the revolutionist! What a mad fancy! Who would ever have dreamed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... cosmopolitan Tyson and his reckless speech, and she had her own reasons for wishing him to make a good impression. But her hints had roused in him the instinct of antagonism, and he went on more recklessly than before. "No; you are perfectly wrong. I'm not an interesting atheist. I have the most beautiful ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... (Taoism), Buddhism, Muslim 2%-3%, Christian 1% (est.) note: officially atheist, but traditionally pragmatic ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... a good Catholic, and prided himself upon having demonstrated the existence of God and of the soul of man. As a reward for his exertions, his old friends the Jesuits put his works upon the "Index," and called him an Atheist; while the Protestant divines of Holland declared him to be both a Jesuit and an Atheist. His books narrowly escaped being burned by the hangman; the fate of Vanini was dangled before his eyes; and the misfortunes of Galileo so alarmed him, that he well-nigh renounced the pursuits by which the ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... subversive form. The Shelley whom Browning first loved was the Shelley of 'Queen Mab', the Shelley who would have remodelled the whole system of religious belief, as of human duty and rights; and the earliest result of the new development was that he became a professing atheist, and, for two years, a practising vegetarian. He returned to his natural diet when he found his eyesight becoming weak. The atheism cured itself; we do not exactly know when or how. What we do know is, that it was with him a passing state of moral or ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... et ambitiosus, as his master Aristotle terms him, scurra Atticus, as Zeno, an [205]enemy to all arts and sciences, as Athaeneus, to philosophers and travellers, an opiniative ass, a caviller, a kind of pedant; for his manners, as Theod. Cyrensis describes him, a [206] sodomite, an atheist, (so convict by Anytus) iracundus et ebrius, dicax, &c. a pot-companion, by [207]Plato's own confession, a sturdy drinker; and that of all others he was most sottish, a very madman in his actions and opinions. Pythagoras was part philosopher, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... the Cross' is a theological novel. It is, without any doubt, the most brilliant of Chesterton's novels; it is an argument between a Christian ass and a very decent atheist. Atheists, if they are sincere, are on the way to becoming good Christians; Christians, if they are insincere, are on the way ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... the thing I shou'd be, Nor am I even the thing I cou'd be, But twenty times, I rather wou'd be An atheist clean, Than under gospel colours hid ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Rousseau. He was not a mocker, or a leveller, or a satirist, or an atheist. He resembled Voltaire only in one respect—in egotism. He was not so learned as Voltaire, did not write so much, was not so highly honored or esteemed. But he had more genius, and exercised a greater influence on posterity. His influence was more subtle and more dangerous, for ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... than once been misrepresented with respect to his religious views. He has been called an agnostic, an atheist, even a pagan. Passages in nearly a score of his poems must be read and compared before an opinion can properly be given on the point. That he was a doubter, and to some extent a fatalist, appears certain; but there is nothing ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... attend to him, but when the case was transferred to me, I naturally became very anxious about his soul. The family with whom he lived were Christians, and from them I learned that he was an avowed atheist, and very antagonistic to anything religious. They had, without asking his consent, invited a Scripture reader to visit him, but in great passion he had ordered him from the room. The vicar of the district had also called, hoping to help him; but he had spit in his face, and refused ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... religious community, the village atheist keeps his doubts to himself. I have to do business with these Merlinolators. It's all I can do to keep Flora from antagonizing ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... this morning about two of y{e} Clock fro y{e} Young Divel Tavern, was killed w{th} a sword; He died Instantly: It proceeded fro a quarrell about Drincking a Health; Killed by M{r} Pitt of Graies Inne y{t} Dranck w{th} them. M{r} Hoyle was an Atheist, a Sodomite professed, a corrupter of youth, & a Blasphemer ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... is merely founded upon human policy must be always subject to human chance; but that which is founded on the divine wisdom can no more miscarry than the government of heaven. To govern by parties and factions is the advice of an atheist, and sets up a government by the spirit of Satan. In such a government the prince can never be secure under the greatest promises, since, as men's interest changes, so will their ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe
... Cruickshanks the atheist, "I'm ower independent to be religious. I dinna gang to the kirk to cry, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... it was an emperor, often deified in his lifetime, and separated from even the noblest of the senators by a distance of immeasurable superiority. He, was, in the startling language of Gibbon, at once "a priest, an atheist, and a god." [8] Surrounding his person and forming his court were usually those of the nobility who were the most absolutely degraded by their vices, their flatteries, or their abject subservience. But even these men were not commonly the repositories ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... worth while in the lessons of evolution, summarized in the foregoing statements. The atheist, who declines to personify the ultimate powers of the universe, may, nevertheless, find direction for his life in the principles brought to light by science. The agnostic, who doubts the validity of many conventional dicta that may not seem well grounded, can also find something to believe and ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... purpose, he caused them stop in worship, till he beat him severely: after which, when they began, he would run behind the door, and with the napkin his mouth, sit howling like a dog. About 1684, he and one D. Jamie were banished to America, where it was said, Jamie became an atheist, and Gibb came to be much admired by the poor blind Indians for his familiar converse with the devil and sacrificing to him (a thing then more common than now in these parts). In consequence of such a wretched life, he died a dismal death ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... question between one sect and another sect. It is, indeed, unjust to make a Quaker pay for teaching the doctrine of the Sacraments, or a Unitarian for teaching the Deity of Christ; but it is equally unjust to make an Atheist pay for teaching the existence of God, or a Churchman for teaching that curious kind of implied Socinianism which is ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... self, Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the street Sixty the minute; what's to note in that? You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack; Him you must watch—he's sure to fall, yet stands! Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender murderer, The superstitious atheist, demirep That loves and saves her soul in new French books— We watch while these in equilibrium keep The giddy line midway: one step aside, They're classed and done with. I, then, keep the line Before your sages,—just the men to shrink From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad You ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... to his guest. When the Holy Father gave his blessing from his window, and more especially at his audiences in the gallery of the Louvre, which were always crowded, precautions were taken against any outbreak of the indiscretion or levity to which the French are prone. We saw the atheist Lalande himself fall at the Pontiff's feet and kiss his slipper. In the public buildings which the Pope honored with his presence he was received as a sovereign. No one dared to betray more curiosity than ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... sometimes of the most extraordinary kind. There were several abbeys that possessed our Savior's crown of thorns. Eleven had the lance that had pierced his side. If any person was adventurous enough to suggest that these could not all be authentic, he would have been denounced as an atheist. During the holy wars the Templar-Knights had driven a profitable commerce by bringing from Jerusalem to the Crusading armies bottles of the milk of the Blessed Virgin, which they sold for enormous sums; these bottles were preserved with pious care in many of the great religious ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... filled with lager beer And the devil himself was the engineer; The passengers were a most motley crew,— Church member, atheist, ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... with the malady of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—he did not believe in God, only instead of hiding his disease under a cloak of mechanical religion, or temporizing with it, he frankly declared himself to be what he was, an atheist. ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... to the licentiousness of the stage; that the Athenians applauded all that made them laugh; and believed that Jupiter himself laughed with them at the smart sayings of a poet. Mr. Collier[1], an Englishman, in his remarks upon their stage, attempts to prove that Aristophanes was an open atheist. For my part, I am not satisfied with the account either of one or the other, and think it better to venture a new system, of which I have already dropped some hints in this work. The truth is, that the Athenians professed to be great laughers, always ready for merriment on whatever subject. But ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... spacious place for him who's gold, to spend, But for the poor it is the house of suffering without end: I wander idly through its streets, as lost us if I were A Koran in an atheist's house, which hath no welcome there.' 'A sigh, a sigh for Bagdad, a sigh for Irak's land! For all its lovely peacocks, and the splendors they expand: They walk beside the Tigris, and the looks they turn on me Shine o'er the jeweled necklace, like ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... the town agreed with Valmore, and McCarthy, knowing this, sunned himself in the town's displeasure. For the sake of the public furor it brought down upon his head he proclaimed himself a socialist, an anarchist, an atheist, a pagan. Among all the McCarthy boys he alone cared greatly about women, and he made public and open declarations of his passion for them. Before the men gathered about the stove in Wildman's grocery store he would stand whipping them into a frenzy by declaring for free love, and ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... becomes public reader in the University, and, as crowning evidence that he has finished sowing his wild oats, produces three volumes of lectures. Realizing how much of his own youth has been wasted, he writes a pamphlet on the education of the young, a dialogue with an atheist, and these, with a bundle of letters, make up the first part of the Anatomy of Wit. From one of the letters we learn that Lucilla was as frail as she was beautiful, and that she died in evil report. The story, ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... much to be wished, that they who value themselves upon that conceited Title were a little better instructed in what it ought to stand for; and that they would not perswade themselves a Man is really and truly a Free-thinker in any tolerable Sense, meerly by virtue of his being an Atheist, or an Infidel of any other Distinction. It may be doubted, with good Reason, whether there ever was in Nature a more abject, slavish, and bigotted Generation than the Tribe of Beaux Esprits, at present so prevailing in this Island. Their Pretension to be Free-thinkers, is no other than Rakes ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... William Frend, of the University of Cambridge, published a harmless pamphlet entitled "Peace and Union recommended to the associated bodies of Republicans and anti-Republicans." He was brought to trial, represented as a "heretic, deist, infidel, and atheist," and by sentence of the court banished from ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... Chancellor was with the King—that he believed the King would be hectored out of everything. For this the Duke of York, who all say hath been very strong for his father-in-law at this trial, hath turned him away: and every body, I think, is glad of it; for he was a pestilent rogue, an atheist, that would have sold his King and country for 6d. almost, so covetous and wicked a rogue he is, by all men's report. But one observed to me, that there never was the occasion of men's holding their tongues at Court and everywhere else ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Desplein The Atheist's Mass Cousin Pons Lost Illusions The Government Clerks Pierrette A Bachelor's Establishment The Seamy Side of History Modeste Mignon Scenes from ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... most directly in contact with those failures and has suffered most. I recall the shrewd comments of a certain sailor who had known the disinherited in every country; of a Russian who had served his term in Siberia; of an old Irishman who called himself an atheist but who in moments of excitement always blamed the good Lord for "setting supinely" when the world was so ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... this hypocrisy is the curse and danger of our age. The Atheist, no longer an execration, an astonishment, a curse, and a reproach, poses now as the friend of man and the champion of right. Those who incur the last and most terrible curse in this book, do so in the name of that truth for which they profess to be seeking. Art, profanely ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... not only a weak, but a false, argument; for, first of all, how do you know the opinions of all nations? I really believe there are many people so savage that they have no thoughts of a Deity. What think you of Diagoras, who was called the atheist; and of Theodorus after him? Did not they plainly deny the very essence of a Deity? Protagoras of Abdera, whom you just now mentioned, the greatest sophist of his age, was banished by order of the Athenians from their city and territories, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... convinced that Jesus made mistakes, he is not necessarily compelled to become an atheist. All other Gods that have been worshipped by men have been found imperfect. The oft exposed errors of Jehovah do not prevent Christians and Jews from professing belief in God. Those who require support from outside themselves cling to the symbol of deity though not thoroughly crediting ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... is like a set of manacles fastened upon the minds of those who believe in it. It is vain for us to look for aid from the Church and Christianity. It might be supposed that a hungry Christian would rebel against his hunger as readily as a hungry Atheist. But it is not ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... and, themselves being armed with an unction of self-confident impunity, have not scrupled to handle and touch that familiarly which would be death to others. Milton, in the person of Satan, has started speculations hardier than any which the feeble armory of the atheist ever furnished; and the precise, strait-laced Richardson has strengthened Vice, from the mouth of Lovelace, with entangling sophistries and abstruse pleas against her adversary Virtue, which Sedley, Villiers, and Rochester wanted depth ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... number of philosophical reasonings, displayed upon any subject, than those, which prove the existence of a Deity, and refute the fallacies of Atheists; and yet the most religious philosophers still dispute whether any man can be so blinded as to be a speculative atheist. How shall we reconcile these contradictions? The knights-errant, who wandered about to clear the world of dragons and giants, never entertained the least doubt with regard to the existence ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... You must say: "Once one is three, and three times one is one." The man who practiced every virtue, but failed to believe, was execrated. Nothing so outrages the feelings of the church as a moral unbeliever, nothing so horrible as a charitable atheist. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... were the most violent and prevailed, and made me apprehensive that they would proceed to greater length than speech. But Macer stood firm, nothing daunted by the uproar. One, who signalized himself by the loudness and fierceness of his cries, exclaimed, 'that he was nothing else than an atheist like all the rest of the Christians; they have no gods; they deny the gods of Rome, and they give us nothing in ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... Philistines. It is made up of a chorus ("How excellent Thy Name, O Lord"), which is a stirring tribute of praise; an aria ("An Infant raised by Thy Command"), describing the meeting of David and Goliah; a trio, in which the Giant is pictured as the "monster atheist," striding along to the vigorous and expressive music; and three closing choruses ("The Youth inspired by Thee," "How excellent Thy Name," and a jubilant "Hallelujah"), ending in plain but ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... and on occasion, a very trivial and ill-considered word or phrase will cling closer and longer than a serious or thoughtful judgment. When Theodore Roosevelt called Thomas Paine "a filthy little Atheist" (or was the adjective "dirty"? I really forget!) he was very young,—only twenty-eight,—and doubtless had accepted his viewpoint of the great reformer-patriot from that "hearsay upon hearsay" against which Paine himself ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... denied, when a love mighty as every other passion of his soul failed him, his grief, ungovernable and frenzied as his rage, overwhelmed him, and the "taint of madness which ran in his line," flooded his brain. But when the atheist became a Christian; when, in his own words, he felt "the Spirit of God was not the chimera of heated brains, nor a device of artful men to frighten and cajole the credulous, but an existence to be felt and understood as the whisperings ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... of danger I collapsed physically, and lay in bed for a week unmoving, and then rose to face a struggle which lasted for three years and two months, and nearly cost me my life, the struggle which transformed me from a Christian into an Atheist. The agony of the struggle was in the first nineteen months—a time to be looked back upon with shrinking, as it was a hell to live through at the time. For no one who has not felt it knows the fearful anguish inflicted by doubt on the earnestly religious soul. There is in life no other pain ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... Buddha by those who have never tried to understand him—that he denied some power greater than ourselves; that because he never tried to define the indefinite, to confine the infinite within the corners of a phrase, therefore his creed was materialistic. We do not say of Newton that he was an atheist because when he taught us of gravity he did not go further and define to us in equations Him who made gravity; and as we understand more of the Buddha, as we search into life and consider his teaching, as we try to think as he thought, ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... gets the upper hand of these headaches and nervous attacks; but these sublime creatures are rare. Faithful disciples of the blessed St. Thomas, who wished to put his finger into the wound, they are endowed with an incredulity worthy of an atheist. Imperturbable in the midst of all these fraudulent headaches and all these traps set by neurosis, they concentrate their attention on the comedy which is being played before them, they examine the actress, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... event. "Some three months before Sir Richard's death," writes Mr. P. P. Cautley, the Vice-Consul at Trieste, to me, "I was seated at Sir Richard's tea table with our clergy man, and the talk turning on religion, Sir Richard declared, 'I am an atheist, but I was brought up in the Church of England, and that is officially my church.' [529] Perhaps, however, this should be considered to prove, not that he was an atheist, but that he could not resist the pleasure ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... over the civilized world, and that sporadic cases of witch-burnings had occurred in different parts of America and Europe. Sir Thomas Browne, in his Religio Medici, 1635, affirmed his belief in witches, and pronounced those who doubted of them "a sort of atheist." But the superstition came to a head in the Salem trials and executions, and was the more shocking from the general high level of intelligence in the community in which these were held. It would be well if those who lament the decay of "faith" would remember ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Drake's day, perhaps the ablest of Elizabeth's captains; the versatility and culture, which place him securely in the second flight of the writers of the time; the breadth of intellectual outlook which caused his enemies to call him an atheist, coupled with an actual sincerity of belief; boundless energy, daring, ambition. His too were the fiery temper and the contemptuous arrogance which made him at one time the best-hated man in England outside a narrow circle of devoted admirers; while for all his pride ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... donation was in coming back, the more Mazarin thought that forty millions were worth a little risk, particularly of so hypothetic a thing as the soul. Mazarin, in his character of cardinal and prime minister, was almost an atheist, and quite a materialist. Every time that the door opened, he turned sharply round towards that door, expecting to see the return of his unfortunate donation; then, deceived in his hope, he fell back again with a sigh, and found his pains so much the greater for having ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of L'Homme Machine, a most rigorous materialist and atheist, enjoyed Frederick's favour on account of his writings. After his death the King himself delivered a funeral oration over him in the Academy. Voltaire was jealous of him, as he was of everyone who stood in his way, but La Mettrie was a physician, and Voltaire could be amiable ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... true that there is in blasphemy a certain discharge of power which solaces the burdened heart. When an atheist, drawing his watch, gave God a quarter of an hour in which to strike him dead, it is certain that it was a quarter of an hour of wrath and of atrocious joy. It was the paroxysm of despair, a nameless appeal to ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... is now the question. In answering it I shall assume no ground but that which all parties say is true. The Christian, the Deist and Atheist will admit that we have learned all we know, and that we have learned only through the aid of the five senses: seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling are the porters of the mind. One or another of these bring to the mind every thought that it receives. We ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... upright would steal, and thus punish the world. He looked into his make-up box. It contained bitter defiance, angry scorn, and a card-sharper's pack of cards. He took them out; and thus SONOGUN, the expelled atheist, made ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... was not a gentleman at all, never pretended to the title, and would probably have been rather affronted if any one had applied it to him: for he was a violent Atheist and Jacobin, glorying in his extraction from a shoemaker and an oysterseller, and in his education as a stable boy. He was, however, a man of considerable intellectual power and of some literary gift, which chiefly showed itself in his dramas (the best known, The Road to Ruin), but is ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected the less ready was the answer, until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... which broadly and obviously mark the wisdom and benevolence of God.' One extract more: 'W. Y. expressed his admiration of the masterly manner in which Dr. Chalmers, in his "Bridgewater Treatise," has fixed on the atheist a moral obligation to inquire into the truth of religion; but, said he, might not the disciples of Irving, by the same rule, oblige us to an inquiry into the supposed evidences of their favourite doctrine that Christ is about to appear and to reign personally on earth? Might not ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... began, "although I have never offended against the laws of the State, of morality or of his paternal authority, merely because I do not share his blind reverence for the Catholic Church and her Ministers. On that account he looks upon me, not merely as Latitudinarian, but as a perfect Atheist, and a faithful old manservant of ours, who is much attached to me, and who accidentally saw my father's will, told me in confidence that he had left all his property to the Jesuits. I think this is highly suspicious, and I fear that the priests ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... of impiety and avarice have stained the virtues or the reputation of Tribonian. In a bigoted and persecuting court the principal minister was accused of a secret aversion to the Christian faith, and was supposed to entertain the sentiments of an atheist and a pagan, which have been imputed, inconsistently enough, to the last philosophers of Greece. His avarice was more clearly proved and more sensibly felt. If he were swayed by gifts in the administration of justice, the example of Bacon will again occur: nor can the merit of Tribonian ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... knelt down beside her bed, her bare white feet peeping out from beneath the drapery of her white night-dress, in a posture that would have made the most human atheist believe in the beauty of devotion, those words were still in her ears: "The price of blood; the ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... out prominently in the emotions produced by the disaster is that in moments of urgent need men and women turn for help to something entirely outside themselves. I remember reading some years ago a story of an atheist who was the guest at dinner of a regimental mess in India. The colonel listened to his remarks on atheism in silence, and invited him for a drive the following morning. He took his guest up a rough mountain road in a light carriage drawn by two ponies, and when some distance from the ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... would be to me what God was before I became an atheist: an object that might help me to ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... his eyes at times,—one has a sympathy with humid lids. Providence hath beneficially provided for this want, and given to every man, in its divine forethought, misfortunes painful to recall. Hence, probably, those human calamities which the atheist rails against! Wherefore, when you are uttering some affecting sentiment to your intended dupe, think of the greatest misfortune you ever had in your life; habit will soon make the association of tears and that melancholy remembrance ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in its simple severity, could not even attempt to slake it. But on its simplicity a priesthood shook parures. Its severity was cloaked with mantles of gold. The founder, an atheist who had denied the gods, was transformed into one. About him a host of divinities was strung. The most violently nihilistic of doctrines was fanned into an idolatry puerile and meek. Nirvana became Elysium, and a religion ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... wishes, not to make up on this side as much additional faith as was lost on the other. There is no danger (thinks the spectator or reader) of my becoming such a monster of iniquity as Don Juan! I never shall be an atheist! I shall never disallow all distinction between right and wrong! I have not the least inclination to be so outrageous a drawcansir in my love affairs! But to possess such a power of captivating ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a struggle," she said, getting back to the Irish question as the subject of her sentence, "between a people to whom art is an ideal and a people who have accepted materialism and money for their gods, an atheist people." ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... a person should be called. Whether revolutionise, atheist, Bright (I said him), or Un-English. Miss Piff screeched her shrill opinion last, in the words: "A ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... This appears in chap. xviii. of the "Plus Ultra." With great simplicity Glanvill relates:—"At this period of the conference, the disputer lost all patience, and with sufficient spite and rage told me 'that I was an atheist!—that he had indeed desired my acquaintance, but would have no more on't,' and so turned his back and went away, giving me time only to answer that 'I had no great reason to lament the loss of an acquaintance that could be so easily forfeited.'" ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... in for a good share of satire, but darker things were said of the Italianate Englishman. He was an atheist—a creature hitherto unknown in England—who boldly laughed to scorn both Protestant and Papist. He mocked the Pope, railed on Luther, and liked none, but only himself.[104] "I care not," he said, "what you talk to me of God, so as I may have the prince ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... shilling a week of outdoor relief ye are sure of—for she sets up for being full of the milk of human kindness. She set her cap at John Home when he came home from London. She would never even allow that Davie Hume was an atheist, whilk was as clear as that I hae a nose to my face!—— Off with you to Fanny's at the Sciennes. And a long guid day to the pair of ye—ye are a disobedient regardless lassock, and ye are heapin' up wrath again the day of wrath, but for all that I'm no sayin' that I'll forget you in my will! ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... atheist, Or him who doubts if ever God can be, And questions the existence of a Christ, Mark well the fruits of Christianity, And say what other power has ever wrought The ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... Suppose an atheist, playing the part of a bigot, should be in power again in that country, do you believe that he would faithfully and religiously administer the trust of appointing pastors to a church which, wanting every other support, stands in tenfold need of ministers who will ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... wonders to the Devil, and impiety and heresy, if a man will not believe that the Devil can do what a thousand persons say he does. It is now reckoned godliness, if a man who fears God fear also the Devil. If he be not afraid of the Devil, he passes for an atheist, who does not believe in God, because he cannot think that there are two gods, the one good, the other bad. But these, I think, with much more reason, may be called ditheists. For my part, if, on account ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... impress the world with an idea that the Chinese, and particularly the Confucionists, are atheists; that they disbelieve in a future state of existence; and that they are the victims of a senseless superstition. Nothing can be more unjust than such an accusation. Could Caung-shee be an atheist, when he inscribed with his own hands the Jesuit church ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... overwhelming force. The man dominates the painter. A dozen comparisons force themselves upon you when the name of Goya is pronounced: comets, cataracts, whirlwinds, and wild animals. Anarch and courtier, atheist and decorator of churches, his "whole art seems like a bullfight," says Richard Muther. One might improve on this by calling him a subtle bull, a Hercules who had read Byron. "Nature, Velasquez, and Rembrandt!" cries MacColl in a too brief summary. "How inadequate the list! Lucifer, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... continue as its sign and memorial. Had the Sabbath been universally kept, man's thoughts and affections would have been led to the Creator as the object of reverence and worship, and there would never have been an idolater, an atheist, or an infidel. The keeping of the Sabbath is a sign of loyalty to the true God, "Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters." It follows that the message which commands men to worship God and keep His commandments, will especially ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... are the principles I want to maintain—that our platform may be kept as broad as the universe, that upon it may stand the representatives of all creeds and of no creeds—Jew and Christian, Protestant and Catholic, Gentile and Mormon, believer and atheist." ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... kings were made! It was decided by Jad-ben-Otho while the candidate was still a suckling babe! Wonderful! A miracle! and this divine creature in whose presence they stood knew all about it. Doubtless he even discussed such matters with their god daily. If there had been an atheist among them before, or an agnostic, there was none now, for had they not looked with their own eyes upon the ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Gradkoski. But Gronovitz, the Hebrew teacher, crypto-atheist and overt revolutionary, who read a Hebrew edition of the "Pickwick Papers" in synagogue on the Day of Atonement, was with Strelitski, and a bigot whose religion made his wife and children wretched was with the cautious Simon Gradkoski. Froom Karlkammer followed, but his drift was uncertain. He ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... this Jennka, the atheist, swearer, and brawler, suddenly got up from the bed, stood before the cadet, and slowly, almost solemnly, made the sign of ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... God, ere man can read the inscription on its heart." He once said that his highest desire was that there should be a monument to himself somewhere in the Alps which should be only a great stone with its face smoothed and this short inscription cut in it, "Percy Bysshe Shelley, Atheist." ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... a character of less seriousness: occasionally he manifested the inconsistency of indifference to his own opinions. Reverencing the memory of Pomponatius, he expressed the same disbelief of the spiritual and of immortality. He was possibly an atheist. Certainly his views were tinged with deep bitterness against religion; and after leading a restless life, he suffered a cruel martyrdom ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... Crousaz, maintained, and with a considerable degree of truth, that the principles of Pope's poem if pushed to their logical conclusion were destructive to religion and would rank their author rather among atheists than defenders of the faith. The very word "atheist" was at that day sufficient to put the man to whom it was applied beyond the pale of polite society, and Pope, who quite lacked the ability to refute in logical argument the attack of de Crousaz, ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... Maltravers one night softly stole to his room and opened the New Testament, and read its heavenly moralities with purged eyes; and when he had done, he fell upon his knees, and prayed the Almighty to pardon the ungrateful heart that, worse than the Atheist's, had confessed His existence, but denied His goodness. His sleep was sweet and his dreams were cheerful. Did he rise to find that the penitence which had shaken his reason would henceforth suffice to save his life from all error? Alas! remorse overstrained ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the moral order of the universe, the ethical responsibility of the present to all the future, the immeasurable consequence of every thought and deed, the ultimate disparition of evil, and the power of attainment to conditions of infinite memory and infinite vision,—cannot be termed either an atheist or a materialist, except by bigotry and ignorance. Profound as may be the difference between his religion and our own, in respect of symbols and modes of thought, the moral conclusions reached in either case are very much ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... "An atheist," said the dogmatic voice of the individual who had given that common-sense view of spiritualism the previous evening, "must be a fool of the most complete type. Because he doubts what men teach of God, is no reason for doubting the existence of God. I grant that ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... already that my brother is not like other cures. He has his own ideas, his own sentiments. Everybody knows him at this moment as the good Cure of Ville-en-bois; but when he came here first, thirty years ago, all the world called him infidel, heretic, atheist. It was because he would make many changes in the church and parish. The church had been famous for miracles; but Francis did not believe in them, and he would not encourage them. There used to be pilgrimages to it from all the country round; and crowds of pilgrims, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... me quite an atheist," said her teacher, with a deprecatory smile and gesture. "Life, nature, the universe, with their teeming and ever-unfolding wonders tell me that there is a Force—a controlling power and intelligence behind them. We call that force 'God.' We say that God is omnipotent, all wise ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... acknowledge that Satan may personate a pious Person, but not to do mischief, their Opinion has been confuted by more than a few unhappy Instances. Mr. Clark[17] speaks of a Man that had been an Atheist, or a Sadduce, not believing that there are any Devils or any (to us) invisible World; this Man was converted, but as a Punishment of his Infidelity, evil Angels did often appear to him in the Shape of his most intimate Friends, and would sometimes ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... had fallen in the room it could not have had a more startling effect than this outburst of Honor's. The nurse recoiled in horror thinking she was in the presence of a free-thinker who is first cousin to an atheist, and Mrs. Meek choked back her sobs to stare wide-eyed at her visitor who had dared to voice such heresy under ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... Rumbold: but his end did not, like theirs, edify pious minds. Though political sympathy had drawn him towards the Puritans, he had no religious sympathy with them, and was indeed regarded by them as little better than an atheist. He belonged to that section of the Whigs which sought for models rather among the patriots of Greece and Rome than among the prophets and judges of Israel. He was taken prisoner, and carried to Glasgow. There he attempted to destroy himself with a small penknife: but though he gave ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... than if they were still devout believers in the ancient practices of the Roman church. They are far more difficult to reach because they have imbibed the philosophies of spiritism, materialism and atheism. An atheist in South America is just as difficult to approach as he is anywhere. The devout Catholics are easier to reach with the gospel. The devout Catholic has at least one element which must always be reckoned with in dealing helpfully with an immortal soul. He has reverence, ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... jumble them; they are coordinates. For misanthropy, springing from the same root with disbelief of religion, is twin with that. It springs from the same root, I say; for, set aside materialism, and what is an atheist, but one who does not, or will not, see in the universe a ruling principle of love; and what a misanthrope, but one who does not, or will not, see in man a ruling principle of kindness? Don't you see? In either case the vice consists in ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... rejoice at, when properly conceived. It awakens a kind of religious enthusiasm even in Haeckel, who clearly perceives but a limited aspect of it; yet the perception is vivid enough to cause him, this so-called Atheist, to close his Confession of Faith with words ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... scirrhus in the pylorus—the physicians of Montpelier prophesied it would be hereditary in our family." He also gave directions to the priest Vignali as to the manner in which he wished his body to be laid out in a chambre ardente (a state-room lighted with torches). "I am neither an atheist," said Napoleon, "nor a rationalist; I believe in God, and am of the religion of my father. I was born a Catholic, and will fulfil all the duties of that church, and receive ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... exciting the peasants against the French, and especially against Bonaparte; that he was preaching sedition and rebellion in Christ's name, and was showing to the ignorant laborers a letter, which he had received from Christ, in which it was declared that General Bonaparte was an atheist and a heretic, whom one ought to destroy and drive away from Italy's ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... tell her that she and I had many very strange characteristics in common, which we shared with no one else, while we differed utterly in other respects. It was very like both of us, for Lola, when defending the existence of the soul against an atheist, to tumble over a great trunk of books of the most varied kind, till she came to an old vellum-bound copy of Apuleius, and proceed to establish her views according to his subtle neo-Platonism. But she romanced and embroidered so much in conversation ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Peter and St. Patrick. The whole thing might be happening in Wimbledon. He went to the Wesleyan Connexional School. He went to hear Moody and Sankey. "I was," he writes, "wholly unmoved by their eloquence; and felt bound to inform the public that I was, on the whole, an atheist. My letter was solemnly printed in Public Opinion, to the extreme horror of my numerous aunts and uncles." That is the philosophical atmosphere; those are the religious postulates. It could never cross the mind of a man of the Garrison that before becoming an atheist he might stroll into one of ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... more bitter, and some weapons used in it are worth examining. They are very easily examined, for they are to be found on all the battlefields of science; but on that field they were used with more effect than on almost any other. These weapons are the epithets "infidel" and "atheist." They have been used against almost every man who has ever done anything new for his fellow-men. The list of those who have been denounced as "infidel" and "atheist" includes almost all great men of science, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... degradation you may; in all the storms and winds and earthquakes of life, no matter what you do, you never can commit any crime that will shut my door, my arms or my heart to you. As long as I live you have one sincere friend." Call me an atheist; call me an infidel because I hate the God of the Jew—which I do. I intend so to live that when I die my children can come to my grave and truthfully say: "He who sleeps here never gave us ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... professor. Nothing could be more ungenerous and narrow than to abuse Byron for a dramatic poem in which some of his characters were fiends rather than men. We have no more right to say that he was an infidel because Cain or Lucifer blasphemed, than to say that Goethe was an atheist because Mephistopheles denied God. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... anti-Semitic papers, of which Drumont's "Libre Parole" was long the chief. You have the Single-tax papers. You have the Teetotal papers—and, really, it is a wonder that you have not yet also had the Iconoclasts and the Diabolists producing papers. The Rationalist and the Atheist propaganda ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... else that could be brought against him. They say he is an Atheist. Would that be any use? He gave a lecture on 'Culture as a Creed' about three months ago which made some folk mad. The other professors are Christians, and, of course, all the preachers took it up. He compared Buddha with ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... that a love of ruling from delight in ruling, and not from a delight in uses, is wholly devilish; and such a man may be called an atheist; for so far as he is in that love he does not in his heart believe in the existence of God, and to the same extent he derides in his heart all things of the church, and he even hates and pursues with hatred all who acknowledge ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg
... died in Britain, that, whether living or dying, have been visited by the minister or his people! The father of three orphan children lately taken under the Care of the Southampton Committee for the improvement of the Gipsies, had lived an atheist, but such he could not die. He had often declared there was no God; but before his death, he called one of his sons to him and said—I have always said there was no God, but now I know there is; I see him now. He attempted to pray, but knew not how! And many other Gipsies have ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... which was evident in almost everything he said. This it was which chiefly pleased the waiter and the muleteers, who were his usual listeners, since they were together on the road. They would laugh and curse him in religious terms for a blasphemer and a wicked atheist, reproofs which he received as high applause. It was his custom to salute his friends with insults, which they took kindly from him, being what he was. They told me in low tones of awe, yet with a chuckle, that he had even sold his father's grave in a facetious ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... the honor neither of God nor man in his conversation. Indeed if it were not speaking ill of the dead, one might say that he was a dirty, drunken, blasphemous blackguard. Worse again, he was, I fear, an atheist; for he never attended Mass, and gave His Holiness worse language even than he gave the Queen. I should have mentioned that he was a bitter rebel, and boasted that his grandfather had been out in '98, and his father with Smith O'Brien. At last he went by the name of Brimstone ...
— The Miraculous Revenge - Little Blue Book #215 • Bernard Shaw
... The atheist is not so much the man who denies the existence of any god as the man to whom God is not God, who looks upon the Deity as subordinate to powers void of holiness and nobility, the man who will not see in God the highest force in the world of nature and in the realm of the spirit. In ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... daily increasing scepticism from its worst dangers, and preserve morals which a future age of faith might once more inspire with religious ideals. Here was a writer at the summit of modern culture, saturated with materialistic science, a convinced and unchanging atheist, who, in spite of this, proclaimed in all her work that moral law is binding, and upheld a code of ethics, Christian in content, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... been going on,—those between the Doctor and the bishops, and the Doctor and Mrs. Stantiloup, and the Doctor and the newspapers,—she had for a while been unhappy. It had grieved her to have it insinuated that her husband was an atheist, and asserted that her husband was a cormorant; but his courage had sustained her, and his continual victories had taught her to believe at last that he ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope |
