"Irreverent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seized and involved in the serpents' coils. He struggles to tear them away, but they overpower all his efforts and strangle him and the children in their poisonous folds. This event was regarded as a clear indication of the displeasure of the gods at Laocoon's irreverent treatment of the wooden horse, which they no longer hesitated to regard as a sacred object, and prepared to introduce with due solemnity into the city. This was done with songs and triumphal acclamations, and the day closed with festivity. In the night the armed ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... borne by the two sexes to our system of Government should be proposed as an "experiment," and that it should be gravely recommended that a newly organized Territory under act of Congress should be set aside for this "experiment," which is in direct, grossly irreverent disregard of all that we have known as a rule, our great fundamental rule, in organizing a government of laws, whether colonial, State, or Federal, in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Protestant Pietists, both English and foreign, is all in St Augustine better said than it ever has been since. Some of the Pietist hymns, as we know, are very beautiful; but there are things in them which one wishes left out; which seem, or ought to seem, irreverent when used toward God; which hurt, or ought to hurt, our plain, cool, honest English common-sense. A true Englishman does not like to say more than he feels; and the more he feels, the more he likes to keep it to himself, instead of parading it and talking of it before men. Still waters run ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... forgetfulness of God, who were fed on earthly luxuries, drunk with false wisdom, and loathing all that pertained to religion. Among the latter, the sight of whom grieved me especially, because Jesus so loved children, I saw many irreverent, ill-behaved acolytes, who did not honour our Lord in the holy ceremonies in which they took a part. I beheld with terror that many priests, some of whom even fancied themselves full of faith and piety, also outraged Jesus ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... the clerks declare thee to have been irreverent to thy father and mother, thus disobeying God's command; to have given occasion for scandal, to have blasphemed, to have erred from the faith and to have made ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... stimulus, rebelled against the mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took her from school, no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even thought that she had latterly been somewhat irreverent ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... receive those intimations—so obscure, yet so distinct—as truth? In all her miserable experience, there was nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense. It perplexed, as well as shocked her, by the irreverent inopportuneness of the occasions that brought it into vivid action. Sometimes the red infamy upon her breast would give a sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister or magistrate, the model of piety and ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... words, gentle Kate, And not a thought irreverent of our Widow. Why, 'twere unmannerly at any time, But most uncourteous on our wedding-day, When we should show most hospitable.—Some wine! ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... upon the superintendent by the youth of Waddy, and called after him by irreverent small boys from convenient cover or under the shelter of darkness. He found the Widow Haddon at home. She it was ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... sense of self-importance at medical school, where they proudly endured the high pressure weeding out of any free spirit unwilling to grind away into the night for seven or more years. Anyone incapable of absorbing and regurgitating huge amounts of rote information; anyone with a disrespectful or irreverent attitude toward the senior doctor-gods who arrogantly serve as med school professors, anyone like this was eliminated with especial rapidity. When the thoroughly submissive, homogenized survivors are finally licensed, they assume the ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... argument than a hopeless bitter glance at his empty loom. At this moment he sat silent—a rock against which the noisy waves of a combative Bible-reader were breaking in rude foam. His silence and apparent impassiveness angered the irreverent little worthy. To Falconer's humour he looked a vulgar bull-terrier barking at a noble, sad-faced staghound. His foolish arguments against infidelity, drawn from Paley's Natural Theology, and tracts about the inspiration of the Bible, touched the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... divinity, he durst not venture to conclude. A silly old priest from Montargis, who was among the company, treated the young rascal to a bottle of wine in honour of the jest and grimaces with which it was accompanied, and swore on his own white beard that he had been just such another irreverent dog when ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... energies of nature as well as shape the mould in which the character of his people should be formed. That any one should stand before this statue in a scoffing mood is to me perfectly inexplicable. My own emotions were more nearly akin to absolute bodily fear. At an irreverent word, I should have expected the brow to contract into a darker frown, and the marble lips to unclose ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... without which aid it appeared that the holy father could not manage the desired prayer. But the crafty Mercurius had, by his devilish art, inserted a song in the place of the ave, so that Father Peter, instead of chanting an hymn, sang the following irreverent ditty— ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Ensample. SECTION 3. He who dated the Christian era is the Ensample in Christian Science. Careless comparison or irreverent reference to Christ Jesus is abnormal in a Christian Scientist, and is prohibited. When it is necessary to show the great gulf between Christian Science and theosophy, hypnotism, or spiritualism, do it, but without hard words. The wise man saith, "A soft answer ...
— Manual of the Mother Church - The First Church of Christ Scientist in Boston, Massachusetts • Mary Baker Eddy
... fidelity of one who reveres Nature. Turgenef has thus at least one element of the highest religiousness,—reverence towards the powers of Nature superior to man; a reverence the possession of which he himself would perhaps have been the first to deny, since consciously he was an irreverent agnostic. But his soul was wiser than his logic; and however dead his head might declare the universe to be, his hand painted it as if alive. This, for instance, is how ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... kept together. You see, therefore, why I speed to Texas. Should I not, with my philosophy, my horse and my rifle—not to speak of stout heart and hand—reasonably aspire to the principality of Sans Souci? Laugh, if you please, but be not irreverent. You shall have carte blanche then if you will have a becoming faith now, on the word of a prince. I say it, It is written—Sans Souci." [Footnote: All these speculations were written in 1840-'41. I need not remark upon those ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... presence is a tonic, and his tongue distills only purity. His example is the lodestar of our aspirations, and we fain would be his disciples. We feel him to be something worshipful in that his life constantly beckons to our better selves. To be reverent is to be liberally educated, while to be irreverent is to dwell in darkness and ignorance. To be reverent is to live on the heights, where the air is pure and tonic and where the sunlight is free from taint. To be reverent is to acknowledge our indebtedness to all those who, in art, in science, ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... can see better with two eyes than I can with one, as far as that goes. I don't believe they wear 'em for seein' at all. Take that man there," pointing to a long, lank Canadian in a yellow ulster, whom the irreverent smoking-room had already christened "The Duke of Labrador." "Look at him! He didn't wear a sign of one until this mornin'. If he needed it to see with he'd have worn it before, wouldn't he? Don't tell me! He wears it ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... queen; built himself a palace, with a city attached to it; and in short, made himself, generally, at home. We are also fortunate in having some genealogical particulars as to his wife's antecedents; and it is to be regretted that modern historians, of the skeptical, the irreverent, and the startling schools, could not imitate the gravity, the good faith, and the respect for things established, by which the elder chroniclers were inspired. The apothecaries of the Middle Ages never dealt so unkindly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... so many of them that now the place is become a town—and a town in the desert—that is to say, in a place useless for any other purpose; a secure place indeed, for we may be sure that the ground occupied by these poor tombs runs no risk of being coveted—not even in the irreverent times of the future. No, it is on the other side of Cairo—on the other bank of the Nile, amongst the verdure of the palm-trees, that we must look for the suburb in course of transformation, with its villas of the invading foreigner, and the ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... this!-Well may irreverent, unthinking youth despise, instead of revere, the hoary head which the wearer is so much ashamed of. The lady boasts a relationship to you, and Mr. B. and, I think, I am very bold. But my reverence for years, and the disgust I have to see ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... the use of all this," broke in the irreverent "Kid." "Do we have to stand there and have war ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... July. On the same day he began Cain, a Mystery. Cain was an attempt to dramatize the Old Testament; Lucifer's apology for himself and his arraignment of the Creator startled and shocked the orthodox. Theologically the offence lay in its detachment. Cain was not irreverent or blasphemous, but it treated accepted dogmas as open questions. Cain was published in the same volume with the Two Foscari and Sardanapalus, December 19, 1821. The "Blues," a skit upon literary coteries and their patronesses, was written in August. It was first published in The Liberal, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... her words; but Aunt Mary laughed at the idea of the slonk-hill, as a latter-day Golgotha, with poor Uncle James staggering beneath the weight of the Southdown Road, young men and all, upon him. It was very irreverent. He burst into tears, Hester moved to leave the room, but was ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... was a most irreverent interpolation, I well knew. I opened my door. O'Keefe stood outside laughing. The Suwarna, her engines silent, was making fine headway under all sail, the Brunhilda skipping in her wake cheerfully with ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... Their example was followed by most of the West End Christians, including her ladyship of Canore and her husband and daughters, whose curiosity had been more than amply satisfied. The cheers changed from enthusiasm to irony as the irregular procession moved towards the doors, and an irreverent Secularist at the back of the hall jumped on his seat and shouted, with an ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... solemn, or all is irreverent. At Bayreuth we came on a pilgrimage; it cost us time, and trouble, and money; we were in earnest—so were the actors; the spirit of the great master who had planned every detail seemed still to preside over all; the actors ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... Cardington. "The thing was worked, as I remember, from the room above, and was used by the robber host to persuade his guests to part peaceably with their valuables. But I fear that you are going to show an irreverent attitude of ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... inhabitants. Gib is the wrong place to bring out a young lady, though Major Dalrymple's daughters, immortalized in Lever's novel, could not well have found a better hunting-ground. But then Major Dalrymple's daughters were regular garrison hacks—so the irreverent subs of the Rovers used to call them—and never stood a chance beside the daughters of the county families. There are racing and chasing at the station, and theatricals and balls. I arrived at the wrong season. ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... lent itself to irony: parties of Americans and English parsons, the former agape for any rubbishy old things, the latter learned in the lore of obsolete Church-furniture, had thronged Torcello; and now they were all gone, and the sun had set behind the Alps, while an irreverent stranger drank his wine in Attila's chair, and nature's ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... monitor; while Dermott, among whose many sterling qualities delicate fancy was not included, put it down to the smell of some special dish indigenous to Sunday breakfast. My brother-in-law's contribution to the debate was an unseemly and irreverent parallel between Saturday night potations and Sunday ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... irreverent laugh. "You fellows make a voodoo mystery of flight because it pays you. There's nothing very difficult about it, after all. One has ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... enclosed that I am in full force, and going to finish my readings, please God, after Christmas. I am in the hope of receiving your promised notes in due course, and continue in the irreverent condition in which I last reported myself on the subject of speech-making. Now that men not only make the nights of the session hideous by what the Americans call "orating" in Parliament, but trouble the peace of the vacation by saying over again what they said ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... the "chevalier without fear and without reproach," but he was glorified by a whole galaxy of excellences which soldiers too often lack. He was pure of speech and of habit, never intemperate, never obscene, never profane, never irreverent. In domestic life he was an absolute model. Lofty command did not make ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... intercession may teach us how familiar the intercourse with the Heavenly Friend may be. The boldest words from a loving heart, jealous of God's honour, are not irreverent in His eyes. This prayer is abrupt, almost rough. It sounds like remonstrance quite as much as prayer. Abraham appeals to God to take care of His name and honour, as if he had said, If Thou doest this, what will the world say of Thee, but that Thou art unmerciful? But the grand ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... chere, what a serious derangement of his organism!" Michael broke in with irreverent laughter. "When all's said, the heart is a practical machine—even the heart of a lover, and a little of it must have been left below ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... no reason why it should not be true and orthodox. You will soon hear a good many more things, which are true enough—though whether they are orthodox or not, the court cooks must settle. Of course, I am a disappointed, irreverent old grumbler. Of course, and of course, too, young men must needs buy their own experience, instead of taking old folks' at a gift. There—use your own eyes, and judge for yourself. There you may see what sort of saints are bred by this plan of managing the Catholic Church. There comes one ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... from being intimidated from proceeding, this demonstration only made Sir Roger the more determined. To have so desperate and irreverent a population coming about his house and woods now presented itself in a much more formidable aspect than ever. So, next day, not only were the placards once more hoisted, but rewards offered for the discovery of the offenders, attended with all ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... disputes would seem to us childish to-day if even such a writer as Parkman did not put us on our guard against a premature judgment.[1] "The disputes in question," writes Parkman, "though of a nature to provoke a smile on irreverent lips, were by no means so puerile as they appear. It is difficult in a modern democratic society to conceive the substantial importance of the signs and symbols of dignity and authority, at a time and among a ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... to the command of the British force in Flanders would doubtless meet with his warm approval. After a little more fencing, Pitt gave the name of the Marquis Cornwallis, who had just returned from his Viceroyalty in India. Mack by no means welcomed the proposal, and made the irreverent remark that the best General, after fighting elephants in India, would be puzzled by the French. Pitt thereupon observed that the Duke of York had not the confidence of the army, to which Mack and Merveldt replied by praising ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... your trust, and eschew the irreverent empty phrases and contradictions of a mis-called 'Science,' professing which some have missed their true aim in ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... likewise I have heard attributed the irreverent piece of wit alluded to by the Witness; but with equal injustice, as his son, the late Bishop of Quebec ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... a traveller upon the subject be deemed hasty or irreverent, I beg to quote Bishop Tomline's opinion. He says—"Great objections have been made to the clauses which denounce eternal damnation against those who do not believe the faith as here stated; and it certainly is to be lamented that assertions of so peremptory ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... showed them up for the brittle, dry hills they were, and left them behind. It was pitiful! It was as though a revered tragedian should overnight find that his vogue had departed; that he was no longer getting over; that an irreverent upstart, breaking in on his most sonorous periods, was getting laughs with slang. We had lots of water; the dust we left behind; it wasn't even hot in the ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... when there, to make some irreverent remarks about that tomb. I had walked out to see it on a hot afternoon, and I found it inconveniently far. One is accustomed to have these places "grouped," and I was displeased with Juliet for not being buried nearer home—it was an ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... English character,' is nothing more nor less than le manque de bonheur—'a want of anything like happiness.' An English thinker, on the other hand, finds in the very language of France the evidence of superficial emotion and unaspiring, irreverent intelligence. 'How exactly,' writes Julius Ham, 'do esprit and spirituel express what the French deem the highest glory of the human mind! A large part of their literature is mousseux; and whatever is so, soon grows flat. Our national quality is sense, which may, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... days later. It remained for William F. Church, of the party, to relate that incident, for it was the kind of thing that Mark Twain was not likely to record, or even to remember. Doctor Church was a deacon with orthodox views and did not approve of Mark Twain; he thought him sinful, irreverent, profane. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... to-day paradoxical, even irreverent. But to the Greek of the sixth, fifth, and even fourth century B.C., it would have been a simple truism. We shall see this best by following an Athenian to his theatre, on the day of the great Spring Festival ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... Christ being its chief representation. This Mystery is the most ancient dramatic work of modern Europe, and gives the whole Gospel narrative from the birth of our Saviour until His death. Being too long for a play of one act, it was continued from day to day. What would seem irreverent on a modern stage was regarded as perfectly simple and natural in the Middle Ages, and it was a potent factor in teaching the masses the truths ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... glow seemed like the benediction of the Infinite on the closing act of the day. He saw the hurried and unfeeling dumping of bodies into the holes awaiting them. Then his heart grew big with something unspeakable as he noted how in all that irreverent and unsympathetic action the American and English soldiery alone were serving as brother for brother. In the long trenches prepared for them their dead were laid with reverent dignity and gentleness. Each one's place was carefully marked with a numbered slab that ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... suggest, at least, that husbandry was once a sacred art; but it is pursued with irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being to have large farms and large crops merely. We have no festival, nor procession, nor ceremony, not excepting our cattle-shows and so-called Thanksgivings, by which the farmer expresses a sense of the sacredness of his calling, or is reminded of ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... mother's jewels (which came to her just at the time), they would apparently have had some difficulty in furnishing their house in Doughty Street. But Horner, their friend (the "parish bull" of Scott's irreverent comparison), had gone to London before them, and impressed himself, apparently by sheer gravity, on the political world as a good young man. Introduced by him, Sydney Smith soon became one of the circle at Holland House. It is indeed not ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... book interesting and suggestive. It is disgraced by none of the flippant and irreverent sentimentalism which characterizes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... passengers, till an irreverent youth ended it by saying: "Mamma's got the rocks; that's the ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... a garden where "Nat"—we must protest against this irreverent abbreviation of the name of that honored Governor whose life in little we are about to behold—and his father ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... irreverent laugh, and the youth blushed deeply, and tried to look as if he had meant to insinuate what knowing people called ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... with weapons an atheist might use if he possessed the skill. The author maintains that in his ridicule of the Church of Rome and of Protestant dissenters, he is only displaying the abuses which deform the Christian Church; but no defence can be urged for his wild and irreverent method of turning subjects into ridicule which by a vast number of people are regarded as sacred. In judging of Swift's satire from a moral standing-point, one test, as Mr. Leslie Stephen observes, may be supposed to ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... aware of a grave dug in the midst of the thoroughfare, and a provision of quicklime piled in the ditch. The cart was backed to the margin, the body slung off the platform and dumped into the grave with an irreverent roughness. A sharpened stake had hitherto served it for a pillow. It was now withdrawn, held in its place by several volunteers, and a fellow with a heavy mallet (the sound of which still haunts me at night) drove it home through the bosom of the corpse. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a long and arduous apprenticeship (if it is not irreverent so to style it) which Val had to pass in order to fit himself for priestly work; he was curate for I know not how many years in a large and extremely poor mission in one of our big towns. He worked well ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... so cunningly has Nature ordered it, that whatsoever man ought to obey, he cannot but obey. Before no faintest revelation of the Godlike did he ever stand irreverent; least of all, when the Godlike showed itself revealed in his fellow-man. Thus is there a true religious Loyalty forever rooted in his heart; nay in all ages, even in ours, it manifests itself as a more or less orthodox Hero-worship. In which fact, that Hero-worship exists, has existed, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... Sammett's garden, which was once Angermann's, famous for its company, kings, composers, poets, wits, and critics, all mingling there in discordant harmony. Now it is overrun by Cook's tourists in bicycle costumes, irreverent, chattering, idle, and foolish. Even Wagner has grown gray and the Ring sounded antique to me, so strong were the disturbing influences ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... to admit that London had affected my feeling for Sylvia. Whatever one's view, her big violet eyes were abrim with gentle sympathy. I watched her as I sat by her side in church, and thought of our irreverent talk at the office. Here was sincere piety, at all events, I thought. Mediaevalism never produced a sweeter devotee, a worshipper more rapt. I could not follow her into the place of ecstasy she reached. But, I told myself, I could admire from ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... Jencks," I began, as seriously as I could, "she is not really cynical—she is no more irreverent than a child would be. Surely some of your ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... came to college I waited upon him, and then staid away four. On the sixth, Mr. Jorden asked me why I had not attended. I answered I had been sliding in Christ-Church meadow. And this I said with as much nonchalance as I am now talking to you. I had no notion that I was wrong or irreverent to my tutor. BOSWELL: 'That, Sir, was great fortitude of mind.' ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... The East Heath was crowded with a noisy, turbulent, good-tempered mob, enjoying, as a London crowd always does, the mere presence of a multitude. There was a little rough horse-play and the exchange of favourite witticisms, and there was some preaching and a great singing of irreverent parodies; there was little drunkenness and little bad behaviour except for half a dozen troops or companies of girls. They were quite young, none of them apparently over fifteen or sixteen. They were running about together, ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... you think he did but laugh in the most irreverent manner, and ask me if I couldn't point out a Universalist institution that he could finish up at. I declare, Judge, it ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... around his full neck, and immaculate drill trousers, strapped over varnished boots. A murmur ran round the court. "Old 'Personally Responsible' had got his war-paint on," "The Old War-Horse is smelling powder," were whispered comments. Yet for all that the most irreverent among them recognized vaguely, in this bizarre figure, something of an honored past in their country's history, and possibly felt the spell of old deeds and old names that had once thrilled their boyish pulses. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... Ormuzd, Amon-Ra, Bel-Marduk, Jehovah, Zeus, Jupiter, and many lesser deities parade before us in defile. Prejudice, intolerance, tolerance even are lacking from this book, as they were from "Imperial Purple." "The Lords of the Ghostland" is neither reverent nor irreverent, it is unreverent. Mr. Saltus finds joy in writing about the gods, the joy of a poet, and if his chiefest pleasure is to extol the gods of Greece that is only what might be expected of this truly pagan ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... Irreverent opponents of the PRIME MINISTER have sometimes compared him to Micawber, on the ground that he was always waiting for something to turn up. I found another link to-day between these celebrated characters. As Mr. ASQUITH unfolded the details of the two new Votes of Credit, one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... strange banner that Abdurrahman advanced to meet the army of the emir,—a turban attached to a lance-head. This standard afterwards became sacred, the turban, as it grew ragged, being covered by a new one. At length the hallowed old rags were removed by an irreverent hand, "and from that time the empire of the Beni Ummeyah began ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... called his little bit of theayter—which his irreverent daughter was wont to describe with characteristic brutality as sheer ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... to teach another. He that doeth so joyfully, upon him shall much be bestowed by God."[14] These last words, like the last phrases of my former quotation from him, may stand perhaps in the way of some, as nowadays they may easily sound glib or irreverent. But are we less convinced that only tasks done joyfully, as labours of love, deserve the reward of fuller and finer powers, and obtain it? When Duerer thought of God, he did not only think of a mythological personage resembling ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... I prayed, and I did not mean that it should sound irreverent. "O dear Lord, don't bother about my ambitions! Just let me remain strong and well enough to do the work that is my portion from day to day. Keep me faithful to my standards of right and wrong. Let this new and wonderful love which has come into my life be a staff ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... shown emphatically by those cases which we do not clearly understand; I take for example the strangest, as is fitting. Some irreverent zealots have hailed the Phaloenopsis as Queen of Flowers, dethroning our venerable rose. I have not to consider the question of allegiance, but decidedly this is, upon the whole, the most interesting of all orchids in the cultivator's point ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... to in the Medley as "a very ingenious Pamphlet." As any reader of the Reflections will observe for himself, the pamphlet opens on a violent political note and sustains it throughout. Although Oldmixon is more concerned to level charges against Swift—a lewd, irreverent cleric, a turncoat, a party scribbler, etc.—than to deny the validity of Swift's views concerning the language, he does directly challenge certain points. And he arrives at a conclusion which may well have been ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... styes, and other suitable places. As on all occasions when the matter to be proclaimed was from the magistrates, Thomas, on this, was attended by the town-officers in their Sunday garbs, and with their halberts in their hands; but the abominable and irreverent creature was so drunk, that he wamblet to and fro over the drum, as if there had not been a bane in his body. He was seemingly as soople and as senseless as a bolster.—Still, as this was no new thing with him, it might have passed; for James Hound, the senior officer, ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... sinners bowing down in a mass, on the cold stones, and all thoughts of cushioned pews and drawing-room conveniences unknown. We Protestants have improved on our Catholic forefathers in this respect; and the innovation of which you now speak, in my eyes is an irreverent, almost a sinful, invasion of ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... sensuous, as for youth and beauty and all kinds of comeliness; or purely intellectual, as for intelligence, artificiality, servility, meanness. And as his essence was satirical, as he was naturally irreverent and contemptuous, it follows that he is best and strongest in the act of punishment not of reward. His passion for youth was beautiful, but it did not make him strong. His scorn for things contemptible, his ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... Irreverent House went off into roars of laughter, amid which Mr. Dick, more than ever bewildered, sat down, and presently went out to ask Miss Betsy Trottwood ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... so irreverent a doctrine here! Mr. Ray went gladly, and was far more devout and reverential in church than some ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... irreverent way of expressing her mind, so contrary to the deferential habits studiously inculcated in family discipline, had grown to be so much a matter of course to all the family that nobody ever thought of rebuking it. There was a sort of savage freedom about her which they excused in right ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... favours, as the Jews of old received their law, with a mute wonder; to think, that the loudness of acclamation was only the praise of men to men, and that the secret homage of the soul was a greater mark of reverence, than an outward ceremonious joy, which might be counterfeit, and must be irreverent in its tumult. Neither, my lord, have I a particular right to pay you my acknowledgements: You have been a good so universal, that almost every man in the three nations may think me injurious to his propriety, that I invade your praises, in undertaking to celebrate them alone; and that I ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... man; the authorities must not be spoken of in so irreverent a manner. Are you aware that your language ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... them there was a delicate submission in her air which was suggestive of obedience to the dignity of their years and state. Strongly conservative and rather feudal old persons were much pleased by this. In the present irreverent iconoclasm of modern times, it was most agreeable to talk to a handsome creature who was as beautifully attentive as if she had been a ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... will make some irreverent speech of this sort: 'O inhabitants of Athens, and Sparta, and Cnosus,' they will reply, 'in that you speak truly; for some of us deny the very existence of the Gods, while others, as you say, are of opinion that they do not care about ...
— Laws • Plato
... this remark he was, no doubt, reproved by the King, who, as we are told by Beaulieu, with the most unpleasant details, washed the feet of the poor every Saturday. But the reply, though somewhat irreverent, is, nevertheless, highly creditable to the courtier's frankness. Another time he shocked his royal friend still more by telling him, in the presence of several priests, that he would rather have committed thirty mortal sins than be a leper. The King said nothing at the time, but he sent ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... habits, I cannot say; but there is no impertinence—even to the nibbling of her beard when she is asleep—of which he is not guilty towards the poor old thing, who passes the greater part of her mornings in gravely butting at her irreverent tormentor. ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... from this point of view, the Last Judgment was an unparalleled success. As such the contemporaries of Buonarroti hailed it. Still, the breath of life has exaled from all those bodies, and the tyranny of the schematic ideal of form is felt in each of them. Without meaning to be irreverent, we might fancy that two elastic lay-figures, one male, the other female, both singularly similar in shape, supplied the materials for the total composition. Of the dramatic intentions and suggestions underlying these plastic and elastic shapes I am not now speaking. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... 'is an inflated jargon, composed of terms picked up in all countries, and wholly irreducible to any ordinary rules of grammar and sense. The sentiments are mischievous in tendency, profligate in principle, licentious and irreverent in the highest degree.' The first part of this accusation was only too well founded, but the licentiousness of which Lady Morgan's works were invariably accused in the Quarterly Review, can only have existed in the mind of the reviewer. One cannot but smile to think how many persons with ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... thicket. Presently, Cartier's two interpreters issued from the wood and declared that the god Coudouagny had sent his three chief priests to warn the French against ascending the river, predicting dire calamities if they should persist. Cartier's reply to the Indian deity was brief and irreverent, and he ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... to him, might possibly strike Moggy as irreverent, and the worthy father paused, and, with upturned eyes, murmured a Latin ejaculation, crossing himself; and having thus reasserted his clerical character, he proceeded to demonstrate ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Gaylord Lumber Company, not at all flattering to that corporation. Mr. Bascom hinted, at an animus: there was no more need for a railroad in the Pingsquit Valley than there was for a merry-go-round in the cellar of the state-house. (Loud laughter from everybody, some irreverent person crying out that a merry-go-round was better than poker tables.) When Mr. Bascom came to discuss the gentleman from Leith, and recited the names of the committees for which Mr. Crewe—in his desire to be of service ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... With all her faults, she was a pious and noble woman. She meant to train him for the Lord, and therefore when she saw young Ishmael mocking at the festival of his weaning, she besought her husband to send away the irreverent son, whose influence might ruin the consecrated Isaac. Hagar, with a generous provision for her wants, was a fugitive; and the Most High approved the solicitude of a mother for an only child, around whose destiny was gathered ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... closet to look over Lady Di's scenes from the 'Mysterious Mother'—the players and dramatists, finally, who crowded round Hogarth's sketch of his 'Beggars' Opera,' with portraits, and gazed on Davison's likeness of Mrs. Clive:—how could poor Horace have tolerated the sound of their irreverent remarks, the dust of their shoes, the degradation of their fancying that they might doubt his spurious-looking antiquities, or condemn his improper-looking ladies on their canvas? How, indeed, could he? For those parlours, that library, were peopled in his days with all those who could enhance ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... unchristian. Like most thoughtful minds of the day, he yearns for some nobler and larger creed than that of the theologians; for a creed which, understanding Nature, shall reconcile it with Nature's God. Nor may he fairly be called irreverent for talking, Frenchman like, of things spiritual with the same freedom as he would of things temporal. Perhaps in his heart of hearts he has nearly as much religious earnestness as they who call Dr. Colenso an infidel, and shake their heads at the doubtful theology of ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the divine will. I am sure that either the one or the other class is mistaken in that belief, and perhaps, in some respects, both. I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me.... What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do, especially ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... a good Saturday reviewer, he fell foul of many popular idols. One regular chopping-block for irreverent reviewers was Dr. Cumming, who was then proving from the Apocalypse that the world would come to an end in 1865. His ignorance of Greek and of geography, his audacious plagiarisms from E. B. Elliott (a more learned though not a much wiser interpreter), ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the justification of the ungodly one sin is not remitted without another, for "it is irreverent to expect half a pardon from God" [*Cap., Sunt. plures: Dist. iii, De Poenit.]. Hence, in the justification of the ungodly, if man's free-will must move against sin, he ought to think of all his sins. But this is unseemly, both ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... seventy—is counted in statistics among the proud population of this Seat of Empire, and she is as much subject to the cosmic laws and as much a member of the human family as the tallest and most swaggering Lifeguards-man who ever had "Cook's Son!" shouted at him by irreverent urchin. ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... freshman's year. Kennedy, in his frolicsome and happy moods, had, in ways, childish, perhaps, but completely harmless, offended the sensitive dignity of the college official, and these trivial eccentricities the Dean regarded as heinous faults—the symptoms of a reckless and irreverent character. There was one particular transaction which gave him more than usual offence, in which Kennedy, hearing a very absurd story at a don's party, while the Dean was present, parodied it with such exquisite humour and such complete command of countenance, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... Hurricane did not hear this irreverent speech, for he continued to gaze with pity and dismay upon the ragamuffin before him. He was a handsome boy, too, notwithstanding the deplorable state of his wardrobe. Thick, clustering curls of jet-black hair fell in tangled disorder around a forehead broad, white and smooth as that of ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... that after all, "Paradise Lost" was one of the books which no one wished longer: we fear, in this irreverent generation, some wish it shorter. Hardly any reader would be sorry if some portions of the latter books had been spared him. Coleridge, indeed, discovered profound mysteries in the last; but in what could not Coleridge find a mystery if he wished? Dryden more wisely remarked ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... saying the wrong thing," said the girl, in a repentant voice; "but, truly, I didn't mean to be irreverent—I only wanted you to know how pat the doctor reels off the scientific phrases; and"—assuming an important air—"I guess I know that Christian Science is the 'new tongue' spoken of in the Bible. I've been to the service all summer; auntie went with me, too, and thought it was ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... a most fortunate one. America and England have agreed to praise Washington's character so highly that at the hands of the young and irreverent he is in some danger of the fate of Aristides. For the benefit of those who tend to weary of the Cherry Tree and the Little Hatchet, it may be well to say that Washington was a very typical Southern gentleman in his foibles as well ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... the body and legs and wrapped them about him, tying the hind legs as a girdle round his waist. The effect on the whole was bad. It was even irreverent—like one of those mediaeval pictures of a monk changed into a beast by the ministrations of Satan. At the very best the ensemble resembled a humpbacked cow sitting on her haunches ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... greatest sang-froid known to be exhibited during the flood, but the most irreverent was that of an old man who was saved by E.B. Entworth, of the Johnson works. On Saturday morning Mr. Entworth rowed to a house near the flowing debris at the bridge, and found a woman, with a broken arm, ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... or from the top of a folding bed, jump down, and be at the hall door ready to greet the incomer, before she was halfway up the stairs. The cat never got down for the wrong person, and she never neglected to meet any and every member of our family who might be entering. The irreverent scoffer may call it "instinct," or talk about the "sense of ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... Fourthly, blasphemy, and irreverent mention of religion. I will not here debate what compliment a man pays to his own understanding by the profession of infidelity; it is sufficient to my purpose that he runs the risque of giving the cruelest offence to persons of a different temper; for, if a loyalist would be greatly ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... a mode of expression he often employed when speaking of his honored brethren,—the Reverend Mather was right this time, and the irreverent doctors who laughed at him were wrong. One only of their number disputes his claim to giving the first impulse to the practice, in Boston. This is what that person says: "The Small-Pox spread in Boston, New England, A.1721, and the Reverend Dr. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Indeed, one irreverent, but "pretty smart feller," who lived on the top of a hill known as Drift Hill, where certain adventurous farmers dwelt for the sake of its smooth sheep-pastures, was heard to say, after a mighty sermon by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... warmed up, and began to raise the roof, Polly said, 'O, dry up.' The minister had his eyes shut, but he opened one of them a little and looked at Pa> Pa was tickled at the parrot, but when the minister looked at Pa as though it was him that was making irreverent remarks, Pa was mad. ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... it and are in enjoyment of it. If additions continue to be made to the wealth of literature, there will come a day of sifting, and each one fears lest he be caught in the meshes of the sieve. In attacking the masters, irreverent youth is only defending itself; the iconoclast or image-breaker is a Stylite who erects himself as an image, an icon. "Comparisons are odious," says the familiar adage, and the reason is that we wish to be unique. Do not tell Fernandez ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... not getting a little irreverent?" said Helen gently. "There are so many common things to jest about. Is it not better to use them as the butt of our wit, instead ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... de Henares," says Martyr in one of his early letters, "quae dicitur esse Complutum. Sit, vel ne, nil mihi curae." (Opus Epist., epist. 254.) These irreverent doubts were uttered before it had gained its literary celebrity. L. Marineo derives the name Complutum from the abundant fruitfulness of the soil,—"cumplumiento que tiene de cada cosa." Cosas Memorables, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... Orleans relates that the irreverent old calumniator, Marshal Villeroi, who in his youth had known St. Francis de Sales, said, on hearing him called saint: "I am delighted to hear that Monsieur de Sales is a saint. He was fond of saying indelicate things, and used ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... both irreverent and destructive when it seeks to do anything with the Word of God. For that Book is to be handled as no other book is. Behind the historical, and the literary, and the textual, and the philosophical criticism must be a spiritual discernment, born of faith alone, which both ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... them may have dwelt in the old time on this very spot of ground now covered by the Museum. Like other people who grow too rich and comfortable, the citizens of Tarentum loved mirth and mockery; their Greek theatre was remarkable for irreverent farce, for parodies of the great drama of Athens. And here is testimony to the fact: all manner of comic masks, of grotesque visages; mouths distorted into impossible grins, eyes leering and goggling, noses extravagant. I sketched a caricature of Medusa, the anguished ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... the reader is still inclined to think that sex-knowledge is, at best, an unholy secret, he will hardly doubt that it can be divulged with less injury by an adult who is earnestly anxious for the child's welfare than by coarse and irreverent lips. ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... is no doubt about it that the theater, as at present conducted, is pulling the stones from the foundations of public morality, and weakening, and in many quarters endangering, the whole structure of society. The atmosphere of the modern theater is lustful and irreverent. It is a good place for Christians to keep away from. It is a good opportunity for the strong man to deny himself for the sake of his younger or ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... was, perhaps, a little irreverent. He anticipated Wordsworth's "Peter Bell" by a premature parody, "Peter ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... wildest revelry, braving the fate awaiting them. As Leonard passed Saint Michael's church, in Basinghall-street, he perceived, to his great surprise, that it was lighted up, and at first supposed some service was going on within it, but on approaching he heard strains of lively and most irreverent music issuing from within. Pushing open the door, he entered the sacred edifice, and found it occupied by a party of twenty young men, accompanied by a like number of females, some of whom were playing at dice and cards, some drinking, others singing Bacchanalian melodies, others ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... squeal. "An author! But where did you get him, Goddy?" (Such was her rather irreverent abbreviation of "godfather," employed to signify ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... ground, heedless of the oak from which they fell; alienated men snatch God's gifts for the gratification of their appetites, and forget the giving God. This seeing eye, and this hearing ear, and these cunning hands, the irreverent son counts his own, and determines to employ them in ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... I see how she is failing and sinking, and I own that this surprises me! I really thought that Cora was fascinated by that fellow in London." (This was the irreverent manner in which Mr. Clarence spoke of his grace the Duke of Cumbervale.) "And I thought that she only married Rothsay from a sense of duty, keeping her word, and all that sort of thing! I can't understand her grieving herself to death ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... work for him, the shocking old doubt will raise its snaky head once more—whether this forger, who rests in so much darkness, might not, after all, be of English blood. Tom, it may be feared, is known to modern English literature chiefly by an irreverent mention of his name in a line of Peter Pindar's (Dr Wolcot) fifty years back, where ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... placarded in big letters on a long black board on the front of the building, and was as follows, "Rights of Women Institute; Established for the Relief of the Disabilities of Females." By friendly tongues to friendly ears "The College" or "the Institute" was the pleasant name used; but the irreverent public was apt to speak of the building generally as the "Female Disabilities." And the title was made even shorter. Omnibuses were desired to stop at the "Disabilities;" and it had become notorious that it was just a mile from ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... the incensed master. "The irreverent dog is deserting us, on this neck of barren sand, where we are cut off from all communication with the interior, and are as completely without intelligence of the state of the market, and other necessaries, as men in ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... man thrust out his jaw at her, with the grimace of an irreverent schoolboy. Upon that aged face it seemed a blasphemy. Then he took out of his bosom a long leather purse, and emptying its contents on the settle, began to count and recount the pieces, ringing and examining ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she then offer. If she was cool, she was not irreverent before the thought of the awful thing that lay ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... in peril! See! they trample upon our wise and well- established laws in the person of our chief magistrate; for Governor Endicott is passing, now an aged man, and dignified with long habits of authority,—and not one of the irreverent vagabonds has moved his bat. Did you note the ominous frown of the white-bearded Puritan governor, as he turned himself about, and, in his anger, half uplifted the staff that has become a needful support to his old age? Here comes old Mr. Norris, our venerable minister. ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and fall of the intensity. A few days later Mr. MacDowell played a recital in Chicago, and among the other selections was this same "March Wind," which he played fortissimo throughout. When I saw him the next day I began, in that irreverent manner which critics and composers have with one another (for Mr. MacDowell was not yet a professor): "You're a fine fellow! To mark your own 'March Wind' pianissimo and then play it fortissimo. What's the good of my working two hours with a pupil to get it down fine when ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... herself one of twelve children who had been brought up on an income of fourscore pounds a year, never thought there could be poverty in more than double the sum; and looked on Gray, though now termed by irreverent youth the Old Doctor, as a very advantageous match. For several years they had no children, and it seemed as if Doctor Gray, who had so often assisted the efforts of the goddess Lucina, was never to invoke ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... concern which she had so plainly evinced for his good opinion throughout all that she had been saying, silenced any rebuke he might else have given her, for this unwarrantable charge against his friend. Mrs. Horton was shocked at the irreverent manner in which Mr. Sandford was treated—and Miss Woodley turned to him with a benevolent smile upon her face, hoping to set him an example of the manner in which he should receive the reproach. Her good wishes did not succeed—yet ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... of De Carti with intention, and had perhaps exaggerated a little Mrs. Dixon's respectful manner. He knew such incidents cheered his father, who could never look at these subjects from a proper point of view, and, as people said, sometimes made the strangest remarks for a clergyman. This irreverent way of treating serious things was one of the great bonds between father and son, but it tended to increase their isolation. People said they would often have liked to asked Mr. Taylor to garden-parties, and tea-parties, and other cheap entertainments, if only he ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... composer of such innate spirituality that to analyze and classify him in a formal manner seems well-nigh irreverent. His music once heard is never forgotten, and when thoroughly known is loved for all time. Nor is an elaborate biographical account necessary; for Franck, more than any other modern composer, has been fortunate in that his life and works have been sympathetically presented to the ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... mental pain. Therefore it is in so far all the plainer, as well as easier, a duty not to conceal such dissent. What we have been saying comes to this. If a believer finds that his son, for instance, has ceased to believe, he no longer has this disbelief thrust upon him in gross and irreverent forms. Nor does he any longer suppose that the unbelieving son must necessarily be a profligate. And moreover, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, he no longer supposes that infidels, of his own family or acquaintance at any rate, will consume ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... the best witnesses, turn for a moment from our sorrow to bear the fullest and the most willing testimony that the high and noble spirit of MARK LEMON ever prompted generous championship, ever made unworthy onslaught or irreverent jest impossible to the pens of those who were honoured in ...
— Punch, Volume 101, Jubilee Issue, July 18, 1891 • Various
... dry eyes around him. Father Maguire, who was ignorant of the progressive change that had taken place in him since his last visit to the cave, now wept like a child, and Reilly himself experienced something that amounted to remorse, when he reflected on the irreverent tone of voice in which he ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... we can devise some way to counteract the prevailing narrow, vulgar, disrespectful, and irreverent attitude towards all aspects of sex and reproduction; unless we can make people see sexual processes in all their normal aspects as noble, beautiful, and splendid steps in the great plan of nature; unless we can substitute a philosophical ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... of your animals." From what I formerly saw of breeders, I have no doubt that the man thus rebuked would have smiled and said not a word. If he had afterwards told the story to other breeders, I greatly fear that they would have used emphatic but irreverent language about naturalists. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin |
