"Impious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came among you to sell you what he called indulgences; were they indulgences to commit sin, or indulgences to obtain pardon? What impious imposition! Oh! dear friends—dear friends! God's gifts of grace are free—are priceless. The blood of His only Son purchased them for us once for all. Gifts, gifts—free, free gifts—are what God offers; no selling now, no purchasing now—that has all been ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... after the commission of the impious and profane offence of asking for more, Oliver remained a close prisoner in the dark and solitary room to which he had been consigned by the wisdom and mercy of the board. It appears, at first sight not unreasonable to suppose, that, if he had entertained ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... evil chance, upon your head, Your precious head, some impious shell alighted, I should regard my dearest hopes as dead, My ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... simple, foolish person, shameless, very fertile and easy to be persuaded either to vice or virtue. He who looks studiously and acutely, with his eyes and eyelids downwards, denotes thereby to be of a malicious nature, very treacherous, false, unfaithful, envious, miserable, impious towards God, and dishonest towards men. He whose eyes are small and conveniently round, is bashful and weak, very credulous, liberal to others, and even in his conversation. He whose eyes look asquint, is thereby denoted to be a deceitful person, unjust, envious, furious, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... heav'n-built wall, Wandering from clime to clime, observant stray'd, The manners noted, and their states survey'd. On stormy seas unnumber'd toils he bore, Safe with his friends to gain his natal shore: Vain toils! their impious folly dar'd to prey On herds devoted to the god of day; The god vindictive doom'd them never more (Ah! men unbless'd) to touch that natal shore. O snatch some portion of these acts from fate, Celestial muse! and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... had meant to frame. When the organist and the sextoness came down presently, and with indignant virtue advised the removal of the child to the workhouse, he regarded their suggestion as little less than impious, and expressed his determination of taking the little ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... in all times. Agree with me that we can add nothing to the simplicity of God. We say that God is one; that is the image of simplicity. You say that He is one and three at the same time, and such a definition strikes us as contradictory, absurd, and impious." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Red KAISER, swoll'n with impious pride And stuffed with texts to serve his instant need, Took Shame for partner and Disgrace for guide, Earned to the full the hateful traitor's meed, And bade his hordes advance Through Belgium's cities towards the fields of France; And when at last our patient island race, By the attempted ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... high-priest, muttered something about the anger of the Gods at the toleration shown to a sect of impious heretics who ate pigeons broiled, "whereas," said he, "our religion commands us to eat them roasted. Now therefore, O King," continued this respectable divine, "give command to thy men of war, and let them smite the disobedient people with ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... man bowed and left the room; but Melissa remained behind, feeling as if the floor had opened in front of her. He, whose ardent assurance she had just now believed, that he had been forced to shed the blood of an impious wretch, in obedience to an overpowering fate, was capable of allowing the noblest of men to be beheaded, unjudged, merely to please a mercenary favorite! His confession, then, had been nothing but a revolting piece of acting! ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... scorning the warning of the Redskin, had landed there, and even dared to build a fire on its shores; but before the sun again set he found an unknown grave in the great lake. Never in the memory of the Indians had such a terrific storm raged as after the perpetration of the impious act. ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... delightful Dream, To reassume my wonted Cares and Shame. —I will not speak with him. [Exit Boy. Oh Hippolyta! thou poor lost thing, Hippolyta! How art thou fallen from Honour, and from Virtue, And liv'st in Whoredom with an impious Villain, Who in revenge to me has thus betray'd thee. Keep thy self closer than thou'st done thy Sin; For if I find thee out, by all that's good, Thou hadst more Mercy on thy slaughter'd Honour, Than I will have for thee. And thou, Antonio, that hast betray'd ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... and Bonaparte must have agreed about some new measure to indirectly chastise impious writers, the Senators Garat, Jaucourt, Roederer, and Demeunier, four of the members of the senatorial commission of the liberty of the Press, were sent for, and remained closeted with Napoleon, his Minister ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... other familiar little bird in some by-gone summer, seemed to have built its nest in the yawning and exaggerated mouth. It looked like a kind of Manichean idol, which might have been elevated on a pedestal for a century or so, enjoying the worship of its votaries in the open air, until the impious sect perished from among men,—all save old Dr. Dolliver, who had set up the monster in his bedchamber for the convenience of private devotion. But we are unpardonable in suggesting such a fantasy to the prejudice of our venerable friend, knowing him to have been as pious and upright a ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 'entretien' like that between 'Frere Rigolet' and 'L'Empereur de la Chine.' Every French man of letters knows it by heart; but it would wound our English susceptibilities were I to cite it here. Then, too, the impious paraphrase of the Athanasian Creed, with its terrible climax, from the converting Jesuit: 'Or vous voyez bien . . . qu'un homme qui ne croit pas cette histoire doit etre brule dans ce monde ci, et dans l'autre.' To which 'L'Empereur' replies: 'Ca ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... with narrowing eyes, and his lips moved in an effort to find words with which to break in upon this impious declaration. When Armitage ceased speaking the old man sank ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... the war which Truth or Freedom wages With impious fraud and the wrong of ages, Hate and malice and self-love mar The notes of triumph with painful jar, And the helping angels turn aside Their sorrowing faces the shame to bide. Never on custom's oiled grooves The world to a higher level moves, But grates and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the pious monk! who boasted of promoting general welfare, and now commences his career by plunging us in ruin. But shall we patiently submit to be involved in his most impious rashness? or shall we instantly dismiss the culprit? and, as we ought, give the free knights the quickest ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... Henry VIII., a revolter therefrom, and following and embracing the errors of heretics, she hath removed the royal council, consisting of the English nobility, and filled it with obscure men, being heretics; hath oppressed the embracers of the Roman faith, hath placed impious preachers, ministers of iniquity, and abolished the sacrifice of the mass, prayers, fastings, distinction of meats, a single life, and the rites and ceremonies; hath commanded books to be read in the whole realm, containing manifest ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... my feelings in my boyish days, though represented in grotesque pantomime; the awe with which I contemplated the monumental statue on horseback of the murdered commander, gleaming by pale moonlight in the convent cemetery; how my heart quaked as he bowed his marble head, and accepted the impious invitation of Don Juan: how each footfall of the statue smote upon my heart, as I heard it approach, step by step, through the echoing corridor, and beheld it enter, and advance, a moving figure of stone, to the supper table! But then the convivial scene in the charnel-house, where Don Juan ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... condemned alike by science and by religion; it is both useless and impious. It is obsolete, and only practised by malign sorcerers in obscure holes and corners. Undoubtedly magic is neither religion nor science, but in all probability it is the spiritual protoplasm from which religion and science ultimately ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... mouth, and probably never looking in at all. How vividly the whispered eagerness of the outcasts round David is reproduced! They think it would be 'tempting Providence' to let such a chance slip. They put a religious varnish on their advice. It would be almost impious not to kill Saul, for here was the hand of God evidently fulfilling a prophecy! There may have been some unrecorded prediction of the sort which they seem to quote; but more probably they are only referring to David's designation to the crown, which ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... father, waxing hotter and hotter, "or a 'lady' such as his wife is, the Jezebel daughter of an Ahab father!—brought up in the impious atrocities of France, and the debaucheries of Naples, where, though she keeps it close here, she abode with that vile woman whom they call ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... remained to her of resolution, energy, courage, vanished before the feeling, the despairing conviction, of her powerlessness to save herself from herself. She felt that she was being borne along on a resistless current, that it was useless, almost impious, to try to stop. That great power of the world that causes suffering, the malevolent power that bears the name of a god on the marble of the antique tragedies, and is called No Chance on the tattooed brow of the galley-slave—Fatality—was trampling upon her, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... sound and practical recommendations which, as the Government has realised, can be put in action at once. A few years ago any attempt to control venereal disease was considered by many to be almost impious. Such disease was held to be the just visitation of God upon sin and to interfere would be wicked. We know better now. A large proportion of those who are most severely struck by venereal disease are new-born children and trustful wives, while a simple kiss or the use of towels and cups ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... reference to this point the Jews fancy foolish things. They interpret the sons of God to signify demon-lechers by whom that impious generation was begotten, and that they were called the sons of God by reason of their spiritual nature. The more moderate ones, however, refute such folly and represent the sons of the mighty. This has ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... beginning of the eighteenth century, was the principal centre of irreligion. France gave the patent of European circulation to ideas which proceeded in part from this foreign source. An active propaganda for the diffusion of impious and immoral writings had been established in Great Britain. A strong reaction set in, and, dating from the year 1698, we see formed various societies having for their object the diffusion of good books and respectable journals.[68] ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... far the matter looks well, and the prospect is not hopeless. These glosses, however, were revised by another master of the Apostolic Palace, Sixtus Fabri, and were edited, under the sanction of Pope Gregory XIII., in the year 1580; and from this authentic impression the impious panegyric has not been withdrawn. The marginal abridgment has, in compliance with Manriq's direction, been exterminated; and this additional note has been appended as ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various
... beautiful is to see Cain ploughing the earth with a pair of oxen, which, with their labouring to pull at the yoke of the plough, appear real and natural; and the same is shown in Abel, who is watching his flocks, and Cain puts him to death, when he is seen, in a most impious and cruel attitude, slaughtering his brother with a club, in such a manner that the very bronze shows the limpness of the dead limbs in the most beautiful person of Abel; and in the distance, likewise, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?" Strange, that after all these thousands of years, we should still persist in this degrading confession, as a thing which it is impious to deny, and impious to attempt to render otherwise, when scripture itself, in language so emphatic, declares that it is a lie. Job is innocent, perfect, righteous. God Himself bears witness to it. It is Job ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... Clocks here; those contrivances, with Bells, being held an Impious Aping of Providence. And the only way you have of telling the Time is by the Fellows up in the Minarets calling 'em to Prayers. Some of the rich Agas have Watches, bought or stolen out of Europe; but they are usually spoilt by the Women of the Harem playing with 'em. The Dey's principal Wife, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... world. The noble toleration so earnestly advocated by Bayle and Locke a century later, was almost a new revelation to the human mind; but in the sixteenth century it would have been regarded as impious, and rebellion against God to have affirmed that error was not to be pursued and punished. The reformers did not advocate the view that a man had a right to believe what he pleased, and to disseminate that belief. They only ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... it was with fire and sword that his fraternal, loving heart waged war on schism. Living like his monks, in poverty, chastity, and obedience—the great virtues of those times of pride and licentiousness—he went from city to city, exhorting the impious, striving to bring them back to the Church and arraigning them before the ecclesiastical courts when his preachings did not suffice. He also laid siege to science, sought to make it his own, dreamt of defending God with the weapons of reason and human knowledge like a true forerunner of the angelic ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... man is a beast of prey, a wolf, whose natural state is war, and that government is only a contrivance of men for their own gain, a strong chain thrown over the citizen,—organized, despotic, unprincipled power. To this faithless and impious work, which at least did good by shocking the world and rallying many of the best minds to develop and defend the true principles of society and the state, he put a fit frontispiece, a picture of the vast form of Leviathan, the Sovereign State, the Mortal God,—a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... up before the world as patterns of detailed imitation; and now, when such ideals are wanted more than ever, Protestantism stands with a drawn sword on the threshold of the enquiry, and tells us that it is impious. The law, we are told, has been fulfilled for us in condescension to our inherent worthlessness, and our business is to appropriate another's righteousness, and not, like Titans, to be scaling heaven by profane efforts of our own. Protestants, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... flamed with gin-palaces; a multitude were sauntering in the mild though tainted air; bargaining, blaspheming, drinking, wrangling: and varying their business and their potations, their fierce strife and their impious irreverence, with flashes of rich humour, gleams of native wit, and racy ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... from all her boundaries is moved Against ye: Time has found ye light as foam. The Earth rebels; and Good and Evil stake Their empire o'er the unborn world of men On this one cast;—but ere the die be thrown, 445 The renovated genius of our race, Proud umpire of the impious game, descends, A seraph-winged Victory, bestriding The tempest of the Omnipotence of God, Which sweeps all things to their appointed doom, 450 And you to oblivion!'—More he would ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... apparitions, and nearly everybody present had contributed his mite to the stock of information upon a hazy and somewhat thread-bare subject. Opinions ranged from rank incredulity to childlike faith, one believer going so far as to denounce unbelief as impious, with a reference to the Witch of Endor, which was somewhat marred by being complicated in an inexplicable fashion with ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... the Roman troops to their standards was inspired by the united influence of religion and of honor. The golden eagle, which glittered in the front of the legion, was the object of their fondest devotion; nor was it esteemed less impious than it was ignominious, to abandon that sacred ensign in the hour of danger. [34] These motives, which derived their strength from the imagination, were enforced by fears and hopes of a more substantial kind. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... sinking 'neath the weight Of wassail inclination dissolute; The youth, who, following his baleful steps, Reeled for the first time from intemperance; And she who had forgot her covenant, In brazen infamy and unwept shame;— The good, the bad, the impious and unjust, The energetic and the indolent, The adolescent and the venerable, Passed by, pursuant of ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... possibility of alchemy seems to have been general sometime before Chaucer wrote; but that belief was accompanied by the conviction that alchemy was an impious pursuit, because the transmutation of baser metals into gold was regarded as trenching on the prerogative of the Creator, to whom alone this power rightfully belonged. In his Inferno (which was probably written about the year ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... he held that their friendship and converse was injury and ruin to the soul. So also he detested the heresy of the Arians, and exhorted all not to approach them, nor hold their misbelief. {66b} In fact, when certain of the Ariomanites came to him, having discerned them and found them impious, he chased them out of the mountain, saying that their words were worse than serpent's poison; and when the Arians once pretended that he was of the same opinion as they, he was indignant and fierce against them. Then being sent for by ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... lavish been To right the woes of many an injured land; And shall she now be slow, Her gratitude, her piety to show? In Christian zeal to buckle on the brand, For Mary's glorious Son to deal the blow? What ills the impious foeman must betide Who trust in mortal hand, If Christ himself lead on the ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... are also overloaded with Indian superstitions and a crude cosmology, which pass under the name of Buddhism. Accordingly, Buddhist scholars have confused not seldom the doctrine of the Buddha with these absurdities, and thought it impious to abandon them. Kaiseki,[FN121] for instance, was at a loss to distinguish Buddhism from the Indian astronomy, which is utterly untenable in the face of the fact. He taxed his reason to the utmost to demonstrate the Indian theory and at the same time to refute the Copernican ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... offended, and resolved to avenge himself on Dion; so he took the son of Dion prisoner, not, indeed, for the purpose of killing him, but of giving him up into the hands of a godless teacher. After the young man had been long enough under this teacher to learn from him everything that was bad and impious, Dionysius sent him back to his father. Now what object had the tyrant in acting thus? He foresaw that this corrupted son, by his impious conduct during his whole lifetime, would cause his father constant grief ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... always seemed to me something impious in the neglect of health. I could not do half the good I do if it were not for the strength and activity ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... and abhorrence. For a time the highest and holiest of human affections was to his darkened mind no more than a carnal appetite; and he strove to conquer the emotions which he feared would rouse within him a riot of impious passions. With fasting and cruel discipline he would fain have killed the devil that agitated him, whenever he passed a pretty girl in the street. As a lay Carthusian he wore a hair-shirt next his skin, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... as a gift from the gods, Robina," I explained. "I remember how I myself used to feel about these things, at ten. To have enquired further would have seemed to her impious. How was it they were ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... than the rest, now approached the church and with his spear broke some of the windows. The Abbe D'Abbon, an eye-witness and minute historian of the siege of Paris, states that the impious Dane was at once struck dead. The same fate befell one of his comrades, who mounted to the platform at the top of the church and in descending fell off and was killed. A third who entered the church and looked round ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... this hall assembled!" Krishna in his anger cried, "Oft hath Chedi's impious monarch Krishna's noble ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... thee to bless Our king,—our Caesar girt for foreign wars! Help him to heal these fratricidal scars That speak degenerate shame and wickedness; And forge anew our impious spears and swords, Wherewith we may against ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... time the Sodomites grew proud, on account of their riches and great wealth; they became unjust towards men, and impious towards God, insomuch that they did not call to mind the advantages they received from him: they hated strangers, and abused themselves with Sodomitical practices. God was therefore much displeased at them, and ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... of the Altar, we hold that the bread and wine in the Eucharist, are the true body and blood of Christ, which are administered and received, not only by pious, but also by impious Christians."—Symb. Books, ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... the place formerly beautified by the Grotto of Thetis (or Tethys) gave sanctuary to the impious scheming of that Madame de Lamotte, whose intrigue and evil ambition brought upon the Queen in 1785 the scandal of the Diamond Necklace, with the subsequent dramatic arrest of Cardinal de Rohan in the fateful Hall of Mirrors, and the ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... and the inequality of the towers produce rather an unfavourable effect. During the revolution, this august edifice was converted into a sulphur and gunpowder manufactory, by which impious prostitution, the pillars are defaced, and broken, and the whole is blackened, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... we look for in vain in our own ornamental works.[76] But the French appear to have no teaching such as might carry them beyond this; their entire ignorance of color renders the assumption of the brush instantly fatal, and the false, forced, and impious sentiment of the nation renders anything like grand ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... "Mind your own business, my lad, and let the leaks take care of themselves! Go about your work; and if you whisper a syllable of what you have told me to any other person, I WILL THROW YOU OVERBOARD, you officious, intermeddling little vagabond!" And he indorsed his fearful threat by an oath too impious to be transcribed. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... lotus-like navel, Brahma himself, and lord of all mobile and immobile things, and whose is this entire universe! When the dreadful Danavas Madhu and Kaitava were bent on slaying Brahma, beholding their impious endeavour thou wert angry, and from thy forehead, O Hari, sprang Sambhu, the holder of the trident. Thus these two foremost of the deities have sprung from thy body in order to do thy work! Even Narada it was who hath told me this! ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... until comparatively recent times prevented any unbiassed critical examination of such data as we actually possess. Previous to the eighteenth century any attempt to deal with the life of Jesus upon purely historical methods would have been not only contemned as irrational, but stigmatized as impious. And even in the eighteenth century, those writers who had become wholly emancipated from ecclesiastic tradition were so destitute of all historic sympathy and so unskilled in scientific methods of ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... out from the confusion of these unsorted fragments all the heroes of Emily Bronte's saga. There is Gleneden, who kills a tyrant and is put in prison for it. There is Julius Angora, who "lifts his impious eye" in the cathedral where the monarchs of Gondal are gathered; who leads the patriots of Gondal to the battle of Almedore, and was defeated there, and fell with his mortal enemy. He is beloved of Rosina, a crude prototype of Catherine Earnshaw. ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... (or in its stead Safar), Zu 'l-ka'adah and Zu-'l-Hijjah (Nos. 1 or 2; 7,11 and 12) the yearly peace, during which a man might not kill his father's murderer. The idea must have taken deep root, as Arab history records only six "impious (or sacrilegious) wars," waged despite the law. Europeans compare it with the Treuga Dei (truce of God) a seven-years peace established about A.D. 1032, by a Bishop of Aquitaine; and followed in A.D. 1245 by the Pax Regis (Royal Peace) under Louis VIII. of France. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... O Hero! what a Hero hadst thou beene If halfe thy outward graces had beene placed About thy thoughts and counsailes of thy heart? But fare thee well, most foule, most faire, farewell Thou pure impiety, and impious puritie, For thee Ile locke vp all the gates of Loue, And on my eie-lids shall Coniecture hang, To turne all beauty into thoughts of harme, And neuer shall ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... consecrated ground to-day. With stronger truth be it said that a devout heart may consecrate a den of thieves, as an evil one may convert a temple to the same. My heart, perhaps, has no such holy, nor, I would fain trust, such impious, potency. It must suffice that, though my form be absent, my inner man goes constantly to church, while many whose bodily presence fills the accustomed seats have left their souls at home. But I am there even ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reach, come and crave assurance of forgiveness. How shall we reply to such men? Shall we say, "Who is this that speaketh blasphemies? who can forgive sins, but God only?" Shall we say it is all blasphemy; an impious intrusion upon the prerogatives of the One Absolver? Well, we may; it is popular to say we ought; but you will observe, if we speak so, we do no more than the Pharisees in this text: we establish a negation; but a negation is ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... manner, there ought to be no restraint at all on thinking freely upon any proposition, however impious or absurd. There is not the least hurt in the wickedest thoughts, provided they be free; nor in telling those thoughts to everybody, and endeavouring to convince the world of them; for all this is included in the doctrine of freethinking, as ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... charge against anything. Whereas if he place his good in outward things, depending not on the will, he must perforce be subject to hindrance and restraint, the slave of those that have power over the things he desires and fears; he must perforce be impious, as deeming himself injured at the hands of God; he must be unjust, as ever prone to claim more than his due; he must perforce be of a mean and ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... philosophy, had degenerated into barren and meaningless scholasticism—a frigid reproduction of lifeless forms copied technically and without inspiration from debased patterns. Pictures became symbolically connected with the religious feelings of the people, formulas from which to deviate would be impious in the artist and confusing to the worshipper. Superstitious reverence bound the painter to copy the almond eyes and stiff joints of the saints whom he had adored from infancy; and, even had it been otherwise, he lacked the skill ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... ashy pile, God will put out the fire unspeakable Which he once kindled, and the bones and ashes Of men will God himself again transform, And raise up mortals as they were before. And then will be the judgment, God himself Will sit as judge, and judge the world again. As many as committed impious sins Shall Stygian Gehenna's depths conceal 'Neath ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... my country also was estranged from me. Had I died begging for my country, even unsuccessfully, that would have been worship, acceptable to the gods. But theft is never worship—how then can I offer this gold? Ah me! I am doomed to death myself, must I desecrate my country with my impious touch? The way to put the money back is closed to me. I have not the strength to return to the room, take again that key, open once more that safe—I should swoon on the threshold of my husband's door. The only road left now is the road in front. Neither have I the strength deliberately ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... in Arabic verses, by a Moorish dog of the Marquisate of El Cenet, during the rebellion of Aben-Humeya. In view of its sacrilegious nature, and by the advice of the Senor Penitentiary, I have just burned this impious ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... presented with great ceremony to the ancestors in the Nanga before the bulk of the crop was dug for the people's use, and no man might taste of the new yams until the presentation had been made. The yams so offered were piled up in the sacred enclosure and left to rot there. If any one were impious enough to appropriate them to his own use, it was believed that he would be smitten with madness. Great feasts were held at the presentation of the first-fruits; and the sacred enclosure itself was often spoken of as the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... the Ahone-Okeus creed is clear. God (Ahone) is omnipotent and good, yet calamities beset mankind. How are these to be explained? Clearly as penalties for men's sins, inflicted, not by Ahone, but by his lieutenant, Okeus. But that magistrate can be, and is, appeased by sacrifices, which it would be impious, or, at all events, useless, to offer to the Supreme Being, Ahone. It is a logical creed, but how was the Supreme Being evolved out of the ghost of a 'people-devouring king' like Powhattan? The facts, very fairly attested, do not fit the anthropological theory. It is to be remarked that ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... are a victim! But Lord de Winter makes cruel accusations against you. You are a Christian; you are my sister in religion. I feel myself drawn toward you—I, who have never loved anyone but my benefactor—I who have met with nothing but traitors and impious men. But you, madame, so beautiful in reality, you, so pure in appearance, must have committed great iniquities for Lord de Winter to pursue ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... prepare thee for thy passage as I ought?" said Jerome. "Thou canst not be saved without pardoning thy foes—and canst thou forgive that impious man there?" ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... shaft Shot from the bow of exile. Thou shalt prove How salt the savour is of other's bread, How hard the passage to descend and climb By other's stairs, But that shall gall thee most Will be the worthless and vile company, With whom thou must be thrown into these straits. For all ungrateful, impious all and mad, Shall turn 'gainst thee: but in a little while Theirs and not thine shall be the crimson'd brow Their course shall so evince their brutishness T' have ta'en thy stand apart shall ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... supper was finished, Peter helped her to clear away the things and insisted on being allowed to help wash the dishes. But to this Beth demurred for they were of Aunt Tillie's blue colonial china set and not to be trusted to impious hands. But she let Peter sit in the kitchen and watch her (which was quite satisfactory) and even spared him a kiss ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... rich. Durand was filled with indignation; he saw everything he had respected become an object of sarcasm to these young men, and his most cherished convictions turned into ridicule. He was like those devout persons who, when they hear an unseemly oath or an impious word, tremble and pray heaven not to cast its avenging lightning; he asked himself if social order was not overthrown, if the army was not marching to its ruin. He began to talk of his apprehensions, ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... But soon by impious arms from Latium chas'd, Their ancient bounds the banish'd Muses pass'd; 710 Thence Arts o'er all the northern world advance, But Critic-learning flourish'd most in France: The rules a nation, born to serve, obeys; And Boileau still in right of Horace sways. But we, brave Britons, foreign laws despis'd, ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... wage, stood Sganarelle, And here Don Luis pointed, bent and dim, To show the dead who lined the holes of Hell, This was that impious son who ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... had been created as a mere sentient plummet to sound every gulf of human woe; then humbly recanted the impious repining, and thanked God that, at least, she had been spared that deepest of all abysses, the Hades of remorse. That which comes to most women as the supreme earthly joy—the consciousness of possessing ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... usual, at the bottom of their letters. "Horrid apostacy, says Barclay, for it is notorious that the use of these compliments implies not any design of service." This expression in particular they reprobated for another reason. It was one of those, which had followed the last degree of impious services and expressions, which had poured in after the statues of the emperors had been worshipped, after the titles of eternity and divinity had been ushered in, and after thou had been exchanged for you, and it had taken a certain station, and flourished among these. Good ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... the child of ignorance, ignorance is also the child of fear; the two react on, and produce each other. The more men dread Nature, the less they wish to know about her. Why pry into her awful secrets? It is dangerous; perhaps impious. She says to them, as in the Egyptian temple of old—"I am Isis, and my veil no mortal yet hath lifted." And why should they try or wish to lift it? If she will leave them in peace, they will leave her in peace. It is enough that she does ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... his ideal Republic, denies toleration to the impious, i.e., to those who did not accept the State religion. Even if they remained quiet and peaceful, and carried on no propaganda, they seemed to him dangerous by the bad example they gave. He condemned them ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... have written into the fire (yet rescuing some of it on second thought), and curse myself as an ingle-nook man, for I see that one can only paint what he himself has felt, and in my passion I wish to have all the vices, even to being an impious man, that I may describe them better. For this may I be pardoned. It comes to nothing in the end, save ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... prodigy, A great, a noble Roman, and an honest, Live an old man!—— Enter LEPIDUS. O Marcus Lepidus, When is our turn to bleed? Thyself and I, Without our boast, are almost all the few Left to be honest in these impious times. ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... boldly. He told them flatly, that, if they looked through the present time or the past ages, they would not meet a man of such a high and noble order as this, and that to lay at our door the blood of a man the like of whom might not be born for centuries was too impious and execrable a thing to be thought of. I'll warrant me, he made a rustling among them when he said that, and the Pope's commissary—old Romalino—then whispered and frowned; but Agnolo is a stiff old fellow when he once begins a thing,—he never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... liberty and equality which constitute its greatness. Thus we have shown to the world, to use the words of our Commander in Chief, who is both a great soldier and a noble citizen, that "the republic may well be proud of the army that she has prepared." And thus, this impious war has brought out all the virtues of our race, both those with which we were credited—of initiative, elan, bravery, and fearlessness—and those which we were not supposed ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... was young and trained in scientific methods, was at first inclined to argue with Constable Malone about the effect of the moon on the human mind. He refrained, reflecting that it is an impious thing to destroy an innocent superstition. One of the great beauties of Celtic Ireland is that it still clings to faiths forsaken by the ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... saw a thrill of horror shake the forms of Harut and of all those with him as the full meaning of these, to them, most impious requests sank into their minds. But he only asked ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... wantonly sport with the rights of mankind:—if neither the voice of justice, the dictates of the law, the principles of the constitution, nor the suggestions of humanity, can restrain your hands from shedding human blood in such an impious cause, we must then tell you that we will never submit to be hewers of wood or drawers of water for any ministry or ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Independents; "the agreement" and its advocates became the objects of their fiercest attacks. Its provisions were said to be unwarranted by the powers of the commissioners, and its purpose was pronounced an act of apostasy from the covenant, an impious attempt to erect the throne of the king in preference to the throne of Christ. Their vehemence intimidated the Scottish parliament, and admonished the duke of Hamilton to proceed with caution. That nobleman, whose imprisonment ended with the surrender of Pendennis, had waited on the ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... their presence, except a slight movement, and then a shiver amongst the frost-bitten boughs above the rocks. He had not power to bethink him of his Paternosters and Ave Marias, which, doubtless, would have dissolved the impious charm. Ralph had so neglected these ordinances that his tongue refused to repeat the usual nostrums for protection against evil spirits. His creed was nigh forgotten, and his "salve" was not heard. Whilst he was pondering on this occurrence, there started through a crevice a single ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... "that through the impious circles turnest me, according to thy pleasure, speak to me and satisfy my desires. The folk that are lying in the sepulchres, can they be seen? All the lids are now lifted, and no one keepeth guard." And he to me, "All shall ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... God of Jacob speedily send it unto him, and unto them all! Specially hath this proud man extended his glove over the children of Judah, as holy David over Edom, holding the murder of a Jew to be an offering of as sweet savour as the death of a Saracen. Impious and false things has he said even of the virtues of our medicines, as if they were the devices of ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... have no other master but our caprice—that is to say, our evil self will have no God, and the foundation of our nature is seditious, impious, insolent, refractory, opposed to, and contemptuous of all that tries to rule it, and therefore contrary to order, ungovernable and negative. It is this foundation which Christianity calls the natural man. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... all his host Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring To set himself in glory above his peers, He trusted to have equalled the Most High, If he opposed, and with ambitious aim Against the throne and monarchy of God, Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud, With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power Hurled headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion, down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms. ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... of the Persian scriptures," he said, "it is impious and wicked. Even were it true that there were a flame from the Supreme dwelling within us, unmanifested and undeniable, it is evidently not with this that we have to do in our earthly life. It ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... the most simple and the most naked recital of facts; but I may, perhaps, be permitted to apply here those two verses of the 37th Psalm, which appear so expressly made for the purpose: "I have seen the impious exalted like the cedars of Lebanon: Yea, he passed away, and, lo, he was not; yea, I sought him, but he could ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the wild chase, upon the king of beasts, as is his unhappy offspring before our laws cleave to him. God creates no slaves. The laws of man do oftentimes pervert the best gifts of nature, and wage an impious warfare against her decrees. But you can discover what is of the earth and what is from above. You may take man at his birth, and by an adequate system make him a slave, a brute, a demon. This is man's work. ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... on whose slope Cassino is, was of old frequented on its summit by the deluded and ill-disposed people, and I am he who first carried up thither the name of Him who brought to earth the truth which so high exalts us; and such grace shone upon me that I drew away the surrounding villages from the impious worship which seduced the world. Those other fires were all contemplative men, kindled by that heat which brings to birth holy flowers and fruits. Here is Macarius, here is Romuald, here are my brothers, who within the cloisters fixed their feet, and held a steadfast heart. And I to him, 'The affection ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... of "The Maid's Tragedy," of Beaumont and Fletcher, had been forbidden by an order from the Lord Chamberlain. It was conjectured that "the killing of the king in that play, while the tragical death of King Charles I. was then so fresh in people's memory, was an object too horribly impious for a public entertainment;" and, accordingly, the courtly poet Waller occupied himself in altering the catastrophe of the story, so as to save the life of the king. Another opinion prevailed, to the effect ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... how I want to ask all about the spirit-land. Wake up and reclothe thy bones and become again animated dust, and tell me thou, my great progenitor, the mysteries of the grave, of heaven and hell. How quiet is the grave? No response, and it is impious to ask what I have. O! what is life which animates and harmonizes the elements of this mysterious creation, man! Life how imperious, and yet how kind; it unites and controls these antagonistic elements, and they do not quarrel on his watch. Mingling and communing they go on through ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... of philological fable, thus derive the word Galla. When Ullabu, the chief, was summoned by Mohammed to Islamise, the messenger returned to report that "he said no,"—Kal la pronounced Gal la,—which impious refusal, said the Prophet, should from that time become the name ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... When pride and folly in the heart abide, The tongue fails not their presence to betray. Capaneus threatens what his hand would do, Scorning the gods, and with unchastened lips, Madly exulting, vents against high heaven And heaven's high king his swelling blasphemies. Surely I trust that on his impious head The lightning shall be launched more fiery far Than are the rays of any noonday sun. To meet him with his braggart menaces Stout Polyphontus goes, a gallant soul, Who well can hold the post, so Artemis ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... that the people of America should enjoy peace, liberty, and safety, but that the government of the individual States, that particular municipal establishments, might enjoy a certain extent of power, and be arrayed with certain dignities and attributes of sovereignty? We have heard of the impious doctrine in the Old World, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the New, in another shape that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political ...
— The Federalist Papers
... that alchymy had become a mere covert for secret and deadly sins. That the practisers of it were apt to scruple at no means to satisfy their inordinate greediness of gold. Some had been known to use spells and impious ceremonies; to conjure the aid of evil spirits; nay, even to sell their souls to the enemy of mankind, so that they might riot in boundless ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... and a very learned theologian, I assure you; but he always held that it was impious to apply plain common sense to matters so far above us, and that is why he and my poor husband were never on speaking terms; not from any fault of the Judge's, who had been trained to think about ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... respect; when I attacked no one, nor even named one? And you, my lord, how do you dare to reproach with temerity a man of whom you speak with such scanty justice and so little decency, with so small respect and so much levity? You call me impious, and of what impiety can you accuse me—me who never spoke of the Supreme Being except to pay him the honour and glory that are his due, nor of man except to persuade all men to love one another? The impious are those who unworthily profane the cause ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Darwin, it may be observed that he is addressing the general public, and opposing the ordinary and common objections of popular religionists, who have inveighed against "Evolution" and "Natural Selection" as atheistic, impious, and directly conflicting with the dogma ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... a name which, while it was generally understood, could not, it was supposed, be offensive to the stern inhabitant of the regions of despair. This was so general a custom that the Church published an ordinance against it as an impious and blasphemous usage. ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... nature, Hamlet, To give these mourning duties to your father: But, you must know, your father lost a father; That father lost, lost his;[37] and the survivor bound, In filial obligation, for some term To do obsequious sorrow:[38] But to persever[39] In obstinate condolement,[40] is a course Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief: It shows a will most incorrect to Heaven.[41] We pray you, throw to earth This unprevailing[42] woe; and think of us As of a father: for let the world take note, You are the most immediate to our throne; Our chiefest courtier, cousin, ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... bondage. The politics of anti-slavery the Antiguans are exceedingly well versed in, but of its religion, they seem to feel but little. They seem never to have examined slavery in its moral relations; never to have perceived its monstrous violations of right and its impious tramplings upon God and man. The Antigua planters, it would appear, have yet to repent of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... boasted, it was not in the power of the gods themselves to dethrone him; so great was the idea he had formed to himself of the firm establishment of his own power. It was with a view to these arrogant notions, that Ezekiel put the vain and impious words following into his mouth: "My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself."(477) But the true God proved to him afterwards that he had a master, and that he was a mere man; and he had threatened him long before, by his prophets, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... of pious demureness and querulous selfishness. She tells the Pope that all her life she has intensely desired to be a nun: that she is, unhappily, in the irreligious position of a matron, and, moreover, is the suffering wife of an impious husband. This sinful man requires of her—of her, a soul devoted to religion— that she shall behave as if she belonged to the wicked world which holds himself within its thrall, and shall sacrifice God to him. ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... refrained from doing this because he had read in a book that a course of falling off horses often resulted in the birth of a genius. Both Moslem and Christian would have thought such speculations not only impious but utterly unpractical. I quite agree with them; but that is ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... family and, possibly, the key of his cellar, an Englishman's stable is sacrosanct? Dispose of anything he owns rather than his horses. To attempt touching them is, indeed, to stretch out your hand against the Ark of the Covenant and risk prompt withering of that impious limb. Yet poor ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... liberty, and to render them impatient until they shall have carried the blessings of civilization to Mexico, rewarding themselves for their active benevolence by the appropriation of lands so admirably adapted to the labors of the descendants of Ham, whom it would be impious in them to leave unprovided with the best fields to work out their mission,—which is, to produce the greatest possible crops with the least possible expenditure of capital and care, for the good of that superior race ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... and threw the scroll aside. Possibly, he was just imagining that he was the target of a plot. Possibly there was a real sea god named Kondaro—an omnipotent sea deity, who could tell when persons within his domain were too curious, or harbored impious thoughts, and who was capable of influencing the actions of ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... not refusal to perform military service, but an open defection from the Roman people. They desired, therefore, that they would return to their colonies speedily, and that, considering the subject as untouched, as they had only spoken of, but not attempted, so impious a business, they would consult with their countrymen. That they would warn them that they were not Campanians or Tarentines, but Romans; that from thence they derived their origin, and thence were sent out into colonies and ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... puritan, pietist^, precisian^, religionist, devotee; ranter, fanatic, juramentado^. the wicked, the evil, the unjust, the reprobate; sons of men, sons of Belial, the wicked one; children of darkness. V. be impious &c adj., profane, desecrate, blaspheme, revile, scoff; swear &c (malediction) 908; commit sacrilege. snuffle; turn up the whites of the eyes; idolize. Adj. impious; irreligious &c 989; desecrating &c v.; profane, irreverent, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... reflective historian, but at the same time pious and feeling. His sentiments chimed in very well with mine; and what particularly delighted me in his work was, that I received a more favorable notion of many heretics, who had been hitherto represented to me as mad or impious. The spirit of contradiction and the love of paradoxes are inherent in us all. I diligently studied the different opinions: and as I had often enough heard it said that every man has his own religion at last, so nothing seemed more natural to me than that I should ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... of his quarrel with Philip, Boniface built great hopes on Edward's support, and strongly urged him to fight for holy Church against the impious French king. But Edward had suffered too much from Boniface to fall into so obvious a trap. His hold over his own clergy was so firm that Winchelsea himself had no chance of taking up the papal call to battle. Thus it was that Unam ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... and flatter, and bribe, and spill blood, and lust, and covet? Are there yet in the country whence you come the breadless bellies, the sores and rags and lamentations of the poor? Ay, Yahoo, and do vicious men rule, and attain riches; and impious women pomp and flattery?—hypocrites, pandars, envious, treacherous, proud?" He stared with desolate sorrow and ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... through, I waited to see what would happen. It was a fine day, and I gazed up at the slip of white sky above the houses opposite, and expected something to appear in it. God would certainly exhibit his anger in some terrible form, and would chastise my impious and willful action. I was very much alarmed, but still more excited; I breathed the high, sharp air of defiance. But nothing happened; there was not a cloud in the sky, not an unusual sound in the street. Presently, I was quite sure that ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... than just We offer each a copy of Our bust, With option of a fine; but, be it known, Whoso again shall deem his life his own, Or find in Ours the faintest flaw or fleck, God helping, We will hang him by the neck. Yea, he shall surely curse his impious star That dares to question Who or where We are! Worship your Caesar, and (C.V.) your God; Who spares the child may haply spoil the rod. Many Our uniforms, but We are one, And one Our empire over which the sun, Careering ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... have a magical virtue; he who observes them all is a saint; he who neglects any of them is impious and destined to pass into the body of ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... even perdrix aux choux — a villanous dish formerly — but we have no more cabbages than partridges to thank God for. I have long been obliged to leave off saying "grace after meat;" it really became an impious mockery, and was also impolitic and uneconomical, as my stomach used to turn against it. I consulted John this morning about killing a sheep, as none of them seemed inclined to die naturally. John caught at ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... impious to the Lord of hosts The valour of her off-spring boasts, Mindless that now on land and main His ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... them is a disease; but death Should I repeat them. I dare not deny, (For Innocence cannot justifie what's false) But all the Advocate hath alledged concerning His falshood, and my shame, in my consent, To be most true: But now I turn to thee, To thee Don Henrique, and if impious Acts Have left thee blood enough to make a blush, I'le paint it on thy cheeks. Was not the wrong Sufficient to defeat me of mine honour, To leave me full of sorrow, as of want, The witness of thy lust left in my womb, To testifie thy falshood, and my shame? But now so many years I ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... grandmother told her that if she handled "blind flowers" she would be stricken blind. She found by test that the pretty flowers were harmless. She tested everything that could be tested, till she hit at last on an impious plan to put God ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... clergymen. But if no Egyptian hierophant accompanied the immigrators, doubly ridiculous is it to suppose that the latter would have raised any of their own body, to whom such a change of caste would be impious, and still less any of the despised savages, to a rank the most honoured and the most reverent which Egyptian notions of dignity could confer. Even the very lowest Egyptians would not touch any thing a Grecian knife had polluted—the very rigidity with ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... their river and why they should lose it, or in what manner a stream could be turned from its natural course — all these things were to them incomprehensible. In the beginning of the world it had been set running there. Who would be impious enough ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... he lived after his return to Cartagena that the characteristics which he transmitted to his posterity were, in general, quite the reverse of those which he himself had manifested so abundantly in early life. Whereas, he had formerly been atrociously cruel, boastingly impious, and a scoffer at matters religious, his later descendants were generally tender of heart, soft of manner, and of great piety. Whereas, in early manhood he had been fiery and impulsive, quick of decision and immovable of opinion, his progeny were increasingly inclined to be deliberate ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... stretching his arm towards the receding waters. "The sea deserts the impious heretics. Strike from them now their last hope, and cut off their retreat to the departing ships." The Spaniards were not slow to perceive their advantage, while the courage of the patriots at last began to ebb with the tide. The day was lost. In the hour of transitory ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... not only a city, a nation, an empire, but a religion; Rome, which replied to a suggestion that the people of Latium should be admitted to citizenship, "Thou hast heard, O Jupiter, the impious words that have come from this man's mouth. Canst thou tolerate, O Jupiter, that a foreigner should come to sit in the sacred temple as a senator, as a consul?" Rome welcomed later the barbarians from the woods of Germany ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... half uplifted the staff that has become a needful support to his old age? Here comes old Mr. Norris, our venerable minister. Will they doff their hats, and pay reverence to him? No: their hats stick fast to their ungracious heads, as if they grew there; and—impious varlets that they are, and worse than the heathen Indians!—they eye our reverend pastor with a peculiar scorn, distrust, unbelief, and utter denial of his sanctified pretensions, of which he himself immediately becomes conscious; the more bitterly ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... before the Gallo-Roman proconsul, and, since she refused to sacrifice to the pagan gods, was savagely maltreated, and sentenced to be beaten as she walked naked through the streets; but she raised her eyes to heaven and a cloud descended and hid her from the gaze of the impious mortals who would otherwise have witnessed her martyrdom. Subsequently she was spirited away to the top of a mountain, where, however, her presence was betrayed by a shepherd. Her pagan father, learning of her hiding-place, quickly ascended ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... received, and do not reason deductively; they have only sought to gratify their curiosity, or to gain credit for their discoveries; and do not some of them lose themselves in their speculations, and become impious, even so as to recognize no other God ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... in th' enchanted Tow'r; Go impious, false and cruel, go To her who has inflam'd your Heart, but know, That now Melissa (justly enrag'd) Will soon raise all th' Infernal Monsters up, All ugly Harpies shall approach, Cerberus and Furies, Fire and Flames appear. And e'er you close my ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym
... OVERTURNED.—For, as we have shown the doctrine of Matter or corporeal substance to have been the main pillar and support of Scepticism, so likewise upon the same foundation have been raised all the impious schemes of Atheism and Irreligion. Nay, so great a difficulty has it been thought to conceive Matter produced out of nothing, that the most celebrated among the ancient philosophers, even of those ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... English privative is un; but as we often borrow trom the Latin, or its descendants, words already signifying privation, as inefficacious, impious, indiscreet, the inseparable particles un and in have fallen into confusion, from which it is not easy to ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... maintains that men have been created into a great number of castes or classes from none of which can they, by any possibility, pass into another. In whatever social stratum a man is born there must he live and die. It is impious for him to attempt to evade or to violate this heavenly classification. His interests and all his rights are confined to that one caste of his birth. It is sin for him to marry out of it or, in any way, to transgress his natal compact with it. ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... new piety of God and the pope, that for money they allow a man who is impious and their enemy to buy out of purgatory the pious soul of a friend of God, and do not rather, because of that pious and beloved soul's own need, free it for ...
— Martin Luther's 95 Theses • Martin Luther
... thought Philip, and impious, to pray for luck; he felt that perhaps he ought not to ask a blessing upon the sort of labor that was only a venture; but yet in that daily petition, which this very faulty and not very consistent young Christian gentleman put up, he prayed earnestly enough for Ruth and for the Boltons ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... an impious king in the land of Ui Neill at that time, Ainmire son of Colgan his name. He impressed the tribelands and the septs under a grievous tax. So Beoit went, a-fleeing from that king, into the land of the Connachta, to Cremthann son of ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... of July, was celebrated with certain curious rites, which were apparently connected with the artificial fertilisation of the fig. Again, Greek legend told how Pentheus, king of Thebes, and Lycurgus, king of the Thracian Edonians, opposed the vine-god Dionysus, and how the impious monarchs were rent in pieces, the one by the frenzied Bacchanals, the other by horses. The Greek traditions may well be distorted reminiscences of a custom of sacrificing human beings, and especially divine kings, in the character of Dionysus, a god who resembled Osiris in many points and ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the foundation of his reasoning, and as the great argument for immediate treaty, that every effort to overturn the system of the French revolution must be unavailing; and that it would be not only imprudent, but almost impious, to struggle longer against that order of things, which, on I know not what principle of predestination, he appears to consider as immortal. Little as I am inclined to accede to this opinion, I am not sorry that the honourable ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... occasion, we have now a commander in the British navy, who, to his honour, has shewn the force of an excellent example supporting the best precepts: for, on board of his ship, not an oath or curse was to be heard; while volleys of both (issued from impious mouths in the same squadron, out of his knowledge) seemed to fill the sails of other ships with guilty breath, calling aloud for that perdition to overtake them, which perhaps his worthy injunctions and example, in his own, might ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... I durst not pray to him! I am not so impious as that either. I have not presumed to pray for a ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of the Anglo-Saxons open the graves; the idea of death haunts them as much as it did their pagan ancestors; they look intently at the "black creatures, grasping and greedy," and follow the process of decay to the end. They address the impious dead: "It would have been better for thee very much, ... that thou hadst been created a bird, or a fish in the sea, or like an ox upon the earth hadst found thy nurture going in the field, a brute without understanding; or in the desert of wild beasts the worst, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... "Not impious, but true. God did not lay these heavy burdens on me. My own hands placed them there. If I drag a pillar down upon myself, will God make my bones iron so that they shall not be broken? No, Mrs. De Lisle; there ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... the stately crown } Of each tall turret, look with horror down, } And general grief overwhelms th' unhappy town: } The old deplore their late remains of light; And mothers lead their infants from the sight. The ghosts of Cadmus' race, an impious crew, This prodigy of kindred guilt to view, Sent from the mansion of eternal hills, (A dark assembly) crowd Baeotia's hills; O'er day's fair face a gloomy twilight cast, And smile with joy to ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... mystics that they came, in communion with God, to the point where they have no need of Christ, seemed to him impious. There is no way of knowing that we are in fellowship with God, except by comparing what we feel that this fellowship has given us, with that which we historically learn that the fellowship with God gave to Christ. This is the ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... persisted in saying mass, in preaching, baptizing, and squabbling with the conjurers, or priests of the country, till they had thrown the whole community into confusion. — Then the assembly proceeded to try them as impious impostors, who represented the Almighty as a trifling, weak, capricious being, and pretended to make, unmake, and reproduce him at pleasure; they were, therefore, convicted of blasphemy and sedition, and ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... custom instituted at a later period by the democracy. According to the story of the popular party, Aristogeiton accused the friends of the tyrants with the deliberate intention that the latter might commit an impious act, and at the same time weaken themselves, by putting to death innocent men who were their own friends; others say that he told no falsehood, but was betraying the actual accomplices. At last, when for all ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... a name; in art, a hypocrisy or affectation. Over German religious pictures the inscription, "See how Pious I am," can be read at a glance by any clear-sighted person. Over French and English religious pictures the inscription, "See how Impious I am," is equally legible. All sincere and modest art ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... voice at his elbow. "This awful destruction is sickening me. I knew war was horrible, but this is more like the work of fiends than of men. There is something monstrous, something superhumanly impious, in blasting your fellow-creatures with irresistible lightnings like this, as though you were a god instead of a man. Will you not be glad when it ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... foes that drown Our psalms of worship with their impious drum. The sweetest chimes in all the land lie dumb ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... that we are watched over in the night season," he said, laying his hand on Low's shoulder, with an illustration of celestial guardianship that would have been impious but for its palpable grotesqueness. "No, sir, we know not what ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... wrong,—not only begging but stealing questions, and taking everything for granted that will serve your turn. For you are not ashamed to rob O. Cromwell himself, and make use of his canting assurances from Heaven and answering condescensions: the most impious Mahometan doctrine that ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... industrial chiefs, and the spiritual power to rest upon a doctrine scientifically established. De Maistre, on the other hand, believed that the old authority of kings and Christian pontiffs was divine, and any attempt to supersede it in either case would have seemed to him as desperate as it seemed impious. In his strange speculation on Le Principe Generateur des Constitutions Politiques, he contends that all laws in the true sense of the word (which by the way happens to be decidedly an arbitrary ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... the Egyptian and wed with thee according to the law." Whereat Joseph rent his garment, and he said, "O woman, fear the Lord, and do not execute this evil deed, that thou mayest not bring destruction down upon thyself, for I will proclaim thy impious purposes ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... the coquette. The emperor at first proposed that his son, the Archduke Ferdinand, should nominally have the command, while Wallenstein should be his executive and advisory general. "I would not serve," said the impious captain, "as second in ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... without mercy and the whites retaliated. Commissioners were sent from France, who asked simply civil rights for freedmen, and not emancipation. Indeed that was all that Toussaint himself had as yet demanded. The planters intrigued with the British and this, together with the beheading of the king (an impious act in the eyes of Negroes), induced Toussaint to join the Spaniards. In 1793 British troops were landed and the French commissioners in desperation declared the slaves emancipated. This at once won back Toussaint from ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... monks, like timid children, drew far away from these impious invaders of their peacefulness; some made as though to flee; and all broke out into cries of ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... time to the conception of a God—and not warped by custom from the sensations which a just notion of that God inspires—dwelt with delight and wonder on the information given him—lessons which, instilled into the head of a senseless infant, too often produce, throughout his remaining life, an impious ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... blustering, burly knight, cry aloud 'A fig for St. Alban and his monks! Since they excommunicated me—look you! I have only increased in girth, behold me fat and jolly, in faith almost too big for my saddle. A fig for them all!' Did he say so, the impious wretch? Be it known that from that very day Sir Knight began to shrink and waste and pine, and if he had not repented and been absolved in time, he had gone down to the bottomless pit with never a hope ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various |
