"Profane" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of my system I shall not amuse the Reader with doubtful and solitary extracts; but collect all that can be obtained upon the subject, and shew the universal scope of writers. I shall endeavour particularly to compare sacred history with profane, and prove the general assent of mankind to the wonderful events recorded. My purpose is not to lay science in ruins; but instead of desolating to build up, and to rectify what time has impaired: to divest mythology of every foreign ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... But his mild memory of distaste was as nothing to the disgust that possessed Sissy. In her ecstasy she had unwittingly lifted a corner of the lid that she kept tight over her emotions. Logically, she hated the unimpressed and profane ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... their labours or cowardly in their training, but to live as those who died daily, and (as I said before) to be earnest in keeping their souls from foul thoughts, and to emulate the saints, and not to draw near the Meletian schismatics, for "ye know their evil and profane determinations, nor to have any communion with the Arians, for their impiety also is manifest to all. Neither if ye shall see the magistrates patronising them, be troubled, for their phantasy shall have an end, and is mortal and only for a little while. Keep yourselves therefore rather ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... with happy mean, Public and private, sacred and profane, The wandering joys of lawless love supprest, With equal rites the wedded couple blest, Plann'd future towns, and instituted laws, ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... rebuking one another, as Divine Providence ministreth occasion. In many Families almost no knowledge nor worship of GOD to be found: yea, there are among the Ministers who have strenghtened the hearts and hands of the profane more then of the godly, and have not taken heed to the ministrie which they have received of ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... prayers or praises expressed in the hymns which may be given out to be sung. This objection is pointed out by Barclay in his Apology, where, after stating that "the formal customary way of singing hath no foundation in Scripture, nor any ground in true Christianity," he adds, "all manner of wicked, profane persons take upon them to personate the experiences and conditions of blessed David; which are not only false as to them, but also to some of more sobriety, who utter them forth." "Such singing doth more please ...
— On Singing and Music • Society of Friends
... the change of plans and foreman was a bit profane, and their manner toward him a bit familiar, Rowdy didn't mind. He knew that they did not grudge him his good luck, even while they hated the long drive. He also knew that they watched him furtively; for nothing—not ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... up From drudging o'er my acres, Treading the glade, and sweating at the plough, To dangle at the tables of the great; At bowls and cards to spend my frozen years; To sell my friends, my country, and my conscience; Profane the sacred sabbaths of my God; Scorn'd by the very men who want my aid To spread distress ...
— The Group - A Farce • Mercy Warren
... injustice committed in the flesh, or compelled thereto by the incantations of sorcery, or to communicate tidings from another world, has been testified to in all ages, and many are the accounts which have been left us both in sacred and profane authors. Did not Brutus, when in Asia, as is related ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... Their words, which she quotes, were now promises of support, vague warnings of trouble to come. "Fear not, for God will stand by you." She thought they meant that she would be delivered in safety as she had been hitherto, her wounds healing, her sacred person preserved from any profane touch. But yet such promises have always something enigmatical in them, and it might be, as proved to be the case, that they meant rather consolation and strength to endure than deliverance. For ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... resumed, "is a member of our church. I am sorry for it—grievously, bitterly sorry for it. The scandal must be removed. Personally, I would be as passive and forbearing as a child, but the church suffers whilst one such member is permitted to profane her ordinances. He must be cut off from her. It must be done. The church must disavow the man who has betrayed her minister and disgraced himself. I have been your friend, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... and left abruptly—the fair secretary, of whom I shall evermore stand in supreme awe, scowling at me when I did so. As I passed into Gower Street—sweet, serene Gower Street, sacred from the wheels of profane cabmen, I was almost surprised to see the "materialized" forms around me; and it really was not until I got well within sound—and smell—of the Underground Railway that I quite realized my abased position, or got out of the spheres whither the lofty periods of Mrs. Tappan's paper, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... foreign lands, one sees so much that is indecent, obscene, and shockingly profane, according to his our way of thinking, that he scarcely knows what to include and what to suppress in his accounts of foreign manners, customs and institutions. Some writers incline to the policy of rendering a true account of what they touch, but will restrain their pens from giving any notice ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... England as by law established. There are few bishops, deans, or other dignitaries, but imagine they are so jure divino; it is consequently a great mortification to them to be obliged to confess that they owe their dignity to a pitiful law enacted by a set of profane laymen. A learned monk (Father Courayer) wrote a book lately to prove the validity and succession of English ordinations. This book was forbid in France, but do you believe that the English Ministry were pleased with it? Far from it. Those ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... king more glorious opportunities to have made himself, his people, and all Europe happy, had not his too easy nature resigned him to be managed by crafty men, and some abandoned and profane wretches who ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... now shall I tell you of a special Providence) it did fortune, whiles yet ye Divell discoursed in this profane wise, there was vouchsafed unto ye frere a certain power to resist ye evill that environed him; for of a sodaine he did cast his doubtings and his misgivings to ye winds, and did fall upon ye Divell and did buffet him full sore, crying, "Thou ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... was on Eric's mind. How could he speak? was not his own language sometimes profane? How—how could he profess to reprove another boy on the ground of morality, when he himself said and did things less dangerous perhaps, ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... interest of character and conversation is present in a degree not lower. It must be accepted as a great blessing, even by those who regard Puritanism as an almost unmitigated curse, that its principles forbade Bunyan to think of choosing the profane and abominable stage-play as the form of his creation. We had had our fill of good plays, and were beginning to drink of that which was worse: while we had no good novels and wanted them. Of course the large ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... richest gems of thought, until he was able to crown himself with knowledge. Blessed with a felicitous power of analysis and a prodigious memory, he ransacked history, ancient and modern, sacred and profane; science, pure, empirical, and metaphysical; the arts, mechanical and liberal; the professions, law, divinity, and medicine; poetry and the miscellanies of literature; and in all these great departments of human lore he moved as easily as most men do in their particular province. His habit was not ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... by land was blocked; they could go only by sea. When the time came to depart, laden carriages, trucks, and wheelbarrows crowded to the quays through the narrow streets and a sad procession of exiles went out from their homes. A profane critic said that they moved "as if the very devil was after them." No doubt many of them would have been arrogant and merciless to "rebels" had theirs been the triumph. But the day was above all a day of sorrow. Edward Winslow, a strong leader among them, tells of his tears "at leaving our ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... where the carriage stopped there stood an ancient temple, esteemed to be the largest in the whole kingdom; which, having been polluted some years before by an unnatural murder, was, according to the zeal of those people, looked upon as profane, and therefore had been applied to common use, and all the ornaments and furniture carried away. In this edifice it was determined I should lodge. The great gate fronting to the north was about four feet high, and almost two feet wide, through which I could easily ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... red-faced men were eating; and they passed other camp-fires, burned out and smoldering. Some tents had dim lights, throwing shadows on the canvas, and others were dark. There were men on the road, all headed for town, gay, noisy and profane. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... you wouldn't talk like that; I am sure mamma wouldn't like it—she can not bear anything that borders on the profane." ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... the matter, and she gave him a shy, grateful look. But the old man was still more incensed when he saw that there were tears in her eyes, and he shuffled away, muttering something that sounded a little profane. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... session but three days, and honored itself greatly by its energetic action, and by the character of the laws which it inaugurated. One bill was introduced for preserving game; another for improving the breed of their horses; and it is worthy of especial record that a law was passed prohibiting profane swearing ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... time in ten years," she answered. "I feel that I have no business to intrude here. This is your shrine, and strangers should not profane it." ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... so very irreligious, so exceedingly undutiful, so horribly profane,' rejoined his father, turning his face lazily towards him, and cracking another nut, 'that I positively must interrupt you here. It is quite impossible we can continue to go on, upon such terms as these. If you will do me the favour ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... music-critic. Then let there be elected a supervisory board of trusty guardians, men absolutely above the reproach of having played the concertina or plunked staccato tunes on a banjo. Entrust to their care all beautiful music and poetry and prohibit the profane, vulgar, the curious, gaping herd from even so much as a glance at these treasures. For the few, the previous elect, the quintessential in art, let no music be sounded throughout the land. Let us read it and think ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Ambrosian music which is now so strange to modern ears was doubtless, when St. Ambrose introduced it, much akin to the secular music of the day, if it was not directly borrowed from it: and the history of hymn-music is a history of the adaptations of profane successes in the art to the uses of the Church. Nor do I see that it can ever be otherwise, for the highest music demands a supernatural material; so that it would seem an equal folly for musicians to neglect the unique opportunity which religion offers them, ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... "Now, none of your profane cryings out! You needn't talk about Heaven in that way: I'm sure you're the last person who ought. What I say is this. Your conduct at the Custom House was shameful—cruel! And in a foreign land, too! But you brought me here that I might be ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... which was a chequered one, he related an incident that had recently occurred on a plantation he had been visiting, and, as it presents a novel feature in the asserted rights of slave-holders—how profane, I will not stop to inquire—I think it worth recording. After a recital of a drunken debauch, in which he had taken a part, described by him as a frolic, and which had been kept up for several days, his host, he said, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... the holy place which you profane," he said. "Is it to the Lord's house that you came to pour forth the foulness of your heart, and the inspiration of the Devil? Get you down, and remember that the sentence of death is on you, yea, and shall be executed, were it but for this ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... attached to this dramatic censorship, and each censor, in every town throughout the island, has his own way of passing judgment; thus, what would suit the politics and morality of Havana, might be considered treasonable and profane at Santiago, and vice versa. A capital comedy is often so mutilated by the Cuban censor as to be rendered ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... face, cracking his jokes and ridiculing "the boorish settlers," in which he was sure to find a ready response in the boisterous laugh of Peters and other young supporters of the court and loyal party. Here, too, sat the fiery and profane Gale, the clerk of the court, with his thin, angular features, and forbidding brow, occasionally exploding with his short, bitter, barking laugh, as, with many an oath, he dealt out anticipated vengeance ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... and vague forms. Over their hierarchy there presided a deity who was called Shushinak (the Susian), Dimesh or Samesh, Dagbag, As-siga, Adaene, and possibly Khumba and AEmman, whom the Chaldaens identified with their god Ninip; his statue was concealed in a sanctuary inaccessible to the profane, but it was dragged from thence by Assurbanipal of Nineveh in the VIIth century B.C.* This deity was associated with six others of the first rank, who were divided into two triads—Shumudu, Lagamaru, Partikira; Ammankasibar, Uduran, and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... better prove how profoundly religious were the Latins than a word compounded of the above; namely 'profane.' A 'fanatic' was one who devoted himself to the fanum or temple—'profane' is an object devoted to anything else 'pro'—instead ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in us; but they are driven back by what we read of the personal character of these men. "Both prophet and priest," says Jeremiah, "are profane; yea, in My house have I found their wickedness, saith the Lord." "I have seen," he says in God's name, "in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery and walk in lies." Jeremiah's view of them might be thought to be coloured ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... of hay. What a train! What regulation! What a concourse of pre-established harmonies! What a concatenation of cause and effect! What a proof of God's existence! I was strangely struck by it, and mightily glad I am to be able to add this profane demonstration to the reasons furnished by theology, ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... laws of Nature and of our own being, can only become a scourge to ourselves and others, and it is for this reason that these secrets are so jealously guarded by those who know them, and that over the entrance to the temple are written the words "Eskato Bebeloi"—"Hence ye Profane." ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... was, stopped before reaching the brow of the hill, and, panting heavily, muttered an oath which Frederick heard. Though it was no more profane than those which had just escaped his own lips in the forest, it produced an effect upon him which was only second in intensity to the terror of the discovery that the money he had so safely ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... of his claim that he was a religious man, he indulged in a volley of profane language which made the commander's blood run cold in his veins. His right hand, from which he had dropped one of his revolvers, was pressed upon his nose, as though this organ was the seat of his injury. He stood behind the ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... our Sister! we have learnt 40 A different lore: we may not thus profane Nature's sweet voices, always full of love And joyance! 'Tis the merry Nightingale That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates With fast thick warble his delicious notes, 45 As he were fearful that an April night Would be too ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a few words," sighed Hawkins. "Werry few words, an' not a civil word in the lot—mostly adjectives of a profane kind. When I told 'em what had happened, they got mad at Fortune for a-jiltin' of 'em, an'—well, I came here. I was 'sas'inated ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou was created, till iniquity was found in thee. By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... thy profane foolery," said Don Rodrigo; "it is not seemly when the life of thy master is at stake. Prepare to give me a full and circumstantial account of this iniquitous business, or by my sword thou shalt severely rue the day thy master ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... mud, weeds, and stones. Among those weeds, I discerned one of familiar aspect, plucked and tasted it. Watercress, of remarkable size and flavor! We thought no more of Apollo and his shrine, but delving wrist-deep into Castalian mud, gathered huge handfuls of the profane herb, which we washed in the sacred front, and sent to ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... stand for? Loyalty to country. What does the cross stand for? Loyalty to Christ. Which is the more important? You are not asked to answer—only to think. Being loyal to Christ makes people truly loyal to country; but, alas, there are many who profane His name while they pretend to be loyal to their country. It cannot ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... any one so unsympathetic as you are," said Minnie, with an angry flush of colour. Chatty had not stayed to defend herself. She had hurried away out of reach of the warfare. No desire to crush her sister with a name was in Chatty's mind. It had seemed to her profane to speak of such a possibility at all. She realised so fully that everything was over, that all idea of change in her life was at an end for ever, that she heard with a little shiver, but with no warm personal feeling, the end of this discussion. She shrank, indeed, ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... swear not.' If, as is generally assumed, this refers to the custom of using profane oaths in common conversation, how remote from modern ideas is the place assigned to this vice, which perhaps affects human happiness as little as any other that can be mentioned, in the scale of criminality, and how ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... baptized me, the bath-tub being her Jordan, in the name of duty, love, and patience. In truth, Aunt Judy took as much prophylactic pains with my soul as if it had been tainted with a congenital sulphuric diathesis; and if I had sunk under a complication of profane disorders, no postmortem statement of my spiritual pathology would have been complete and exact which failed to take note of her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... honorable person whom you notice on the rock is an all-powerful favorite of the gods. He is by vocation a Sorcerer, and by rank a Priest. You now see him casting charms and blessings into the canoes of our fishermen, who kneel to him for fine weather and great plenty of fish. If any profane person, native or stranger, presumes to set foot on that island, my otherwise peaceful subjects will (in the performance of a religious duty) put that person to death. Mention this to your men. They will be fed by my male people, and fondled by my female people, so long as ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... Triumphant Chariot of Antimony.—Since I, Basil Valentine, by Religious Vows am bound to live according to the order of St. Benedict and that requires another manner of Spirit of Holiness than the common state of Mortals exercised in the profane business of this World; I thought it my duty before all things, in the beginning of this little book, to declare what is necessary to be known by the pious Spagyrist [old-time name for medical chemist], inflamed with an ardent desire ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... America. Speaking of the origin of the term "Lake School," he pronounced the epithet Lakers "the mere blunder of superficial wit and raillery." But that did not prevent him from creating the absurd title of "Bay writers," which he applied to all the writers about Boston, baptizing them in the profane waters of Massachusetts Bay. "The Church Review" was in the habit of devoting a good deal of its attention to criticism of the Puritan movement which founded New England. Accordingly, "It is time," announced this logician, in opening his batteries on Hawthorne, "that the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... that the men of his regiment are very profane and reprobate. He takes this opportunity to inform them of his great displeasure at such practices, and assures them that, if they do not leave them off, they shall be severely punished. The officers are desired, if they hear any men swear or make ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... sanctity that segregated them from wholesome human relations; and consequently our good Doctor had always resolved, in a grave and thoughtful spirit, at a suitable time in his worldly affairs, to choose unto himself a helpmeet. Love, as treated of in romances, he held to be a foolish and profane matter, unworthy the attention of a serious and reasonable creature. All the language of poetry on this subject was to him an unknown tongue. He contemplated the entrance on married life somewhat in this wise:—That at a time and place suiting, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... instant have given my horse for a glance at either box or book. But in another moment the necessity was gone; and the revelation, though made by polluted lips, was not the less welcome to my ears. What cared I whether the oracle was profane, so long as its response echoed my most ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Jonah's being swallowed by a fish! any more than it is with the story of Remus and Romulus' being nursed by a she wolf! And if not, these things are matters of total indifference; yea, as much so as the extraordinary, and, were it not for comparing things supposed to be sacred with profane, I would say, ridiculous stories in the heathen mythology. If it should be contended that the facts recorded in sacred history are necessary to prove the power and providence of God towards his children, it may be answered that those in profane history, if true, are equally conclusive. ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... pushing, elbowing, until they take their seats. I was, however, particularly struck with the attention shown to the ladies, the great sobriety of all classes, and the total absence of impure or profane expressions in conversation. How unlike the scenes one witnesses on board our steamboats in Britain, where the meaner sort of passengers seem to travel on purpose to indulge ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... ship, but remaining therein he solemnized the day with his wonted devotion. And now was the mid-hour of the day passed, when he heard no little noise; whereby he understood that the heathens were violating the Sabbath with their profane labors (the which was right contrary to his custom and command); and that they were then employed in a certain work which is called rayth; that is, a wall. And thereat being somewhat moved, he ordered ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... the exercise of common sense who would say that tobacco did him any good." What did Thomas Jefferson say? Certainly he is good authority. He says in regard to the culture of tobacco, "It is a culture productive of infinite wretchdness." What did Horace Greeley say of it? "It is a profane stench." What did Daniel Webster say of it? "If those men must smoke, let them take the horse-shed!" One reason why the habit goes on from destruction to destruction is that so many ministers of the gospel take it. They smoke themselves into bronchitis, and then the dear people have to send ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... you! It was so human of you to translate it out loud! It isn't profane. Look at him now. Don't you think it is a good name for him?" ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Thoughts of that Being, who is all along describ'd as aspiring to the Majesty of his Maker. Such Engines were the only Instruments he could have made use of to imitate those Thunders, that in all Poetry, both sacred and profane, are represented as the Arms of the Almighty. The tearing up the Hills, was not altogether so daring a Thought as the former. We are, in some measure, prepared for such an Incident by the Description of the Giants War, which ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... human rights and obligations; understand farming, cooking, house-work, and manual labor, in which they have been trained, better, I insist, than any similarly conditioned race or people. They are less profane—very much less—than white people; less bitter, vindictive, and bloodthirsty; less intemperate, and far, far less revengeful; and less selfish than what they contemptuously snub as "poor white trash." But he is a sinner! I believe the old stale rhyme tells some truth in a modified ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... subject of this mosque, than on any of the others, where what Christian pleases may enter without scruple. I fancy they imagine, that, having been once consecrated, people, on pretence of curiosity, might profane it with prayers, particularly to those saints, who are still very visible in Mosaic work, and no other way defaced but by the decays of time; for it is absolutely false, though so universally asserted, that the Turks defaced all the images that ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... O ye swains,—'tis a tale most profane, How all the tyrannical powers, Kings, Commons, and Lords, are uniting amain, To cut down this guardian of ours. From the East to the West, blow the trumpet to arms, Through the land let the sound of it flee, Let the far and the near all ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... Whence, or when procure them? from whom borrow them? Let set times be appointed, and certain hours be ordered for the health of our soul. Great hope has dawned; the Catholic Faith teaches not what we thought, and vainly accused it of; her instructed members hold it profane to believe God to be bounded by the figure of a human body: and do we doubt to 'knock,' that the rest 'may be opened'? The forenoons our scholars take up; what do we during the rest? Why not this? But when then pay we court to our great friends, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... true. Merely hearing Mrs. Wilkins's evil communications at meals—she did not listen, she avoided listening, yet it was evident she had heard—those communications which, in that they so often were at once vulgar, indelicate and profane, and always, she was sorry to say, laughed at by Lady Caroline, must be classed as evil, was spoiling her own mental manners. Soon she might not only think but say. How terrible that would be. If that were the form her breaking-out was going ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... religions do not arise, as the theory has hitherto been, from study and observation of the generative agencies in nature, but from the identity of object between love in sense and love in intellect, profane and sacred passion. The essence of each is continuance, preservation; the origin of each is subjective, personal; but the former has its root in sensation, the latter ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... chestnut-wood (Fig. 39) is in the possession of the Count de Courval. It is of simpler and "severer" design than common, inasmuch as it was usual to enrich these useful domestic implements with an abundance of elaborate designs, and fill their centres with scenes from sacred and profane history. ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... "Don't be profane," counselled Billy. "It would be more to the point to find Airth, and explain to him, in carefully chosen language, that letting Lady Ingleby die of a broken heart will not atone for blowing up her husband. I always knew our news would make no difference, from the moment ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... Douglas sitting patiently through it all, with his telling eyes fixed upon me until I ventured to give the "Old Hundredth," when he screamed his Indian name, Pillillooeet, turned tail, and darted with ludicrous haste up the tree out of sight, his voice and actions in the case leaving a somewhat profane impression, as if he had said, "I'll be hanged if you get me to hear anything so solemn and unpiny." This acted as a signal for the general dispersal of the whole hairy tribe, though the birds seemed willing to wait further developments, music being ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... touch profane, yes, holy things and pure; A wrong to one is wrong to all; we must ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of fulfilment. She was wasting cruelly away! Why should he leave her where she was? Leave her to profane herself and all womanhood in the arms ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... protection, I will just refer to the statistics of the late election of its President. The successful candidate, General Houston, a man notorious for his open contempt for all the decencies of civilized society,—brutal, brawling, profane, and licentious,—received somewhat rising five thousand votes: his competitor, Judge Burnet, between two and three thousand,—a vote smaller by thousands than that of our little county of Essex, in Massachusetts. Late accounts from Texas inform us that gangs of organized desperadoes, under ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... thanklessly, and with vacant, unsatisfied eyes that I watched the slow coming and the gliding away of the waters. I tell myself now, as a profane fact, that I did stand by that river (Methley gathered some seeds from the bushes that grew there), but since that I am away from his banks, “divine Scamander” has recovered the proper mystery ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... he, "with my consent. Any pew-rent is bad enough. Trafficking in the Gospel is abominable at best. It shuts out the poor. Worse than that, it shuts out the godless, the irreligious, the profane—the very men we want to catch. The pew-rents are too high now. We must ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... seriously injured himself by trying to dash his brains out, he was adjudged insane, and a watch set on him all night. In the morning, when taken before the magistrate, he was violent and abusive, using the most frightfully obscene and profane language. There he was held for examination and sent to Bellevue in a "straight-jacket," which was found to be necessary in order to control him. From the padded cell there he ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... crowd went up to kiss his feet. The figure which is carried about this evening is called "Our Saviour of the Column," and represents the Saviour tied to a pillar, bleeding, and crowned with thorns. All this must sound very profane, but the people are so quiet, seem so devout, and so much in earnest, that it appears much less so than you ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... leave her, having been twice commanded to do so by Mercury, the messenger of Jove. She, like the rest, seems to have had no occupation, while the consciences of few appear to have been sufficiently clear to enable them to enjoy unbroken rest." "The idleness in the spirit-land of all profane writers," added Bearwarden, "has often surprised me too. Though I have always recommended a certain amount of recreation for my staff—in fact, more than I have generally had myself—an excess of it becomes a bore. I think that all real progress comes through thorough work. ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... a piece of my profits," he remarked to Bryant, after a first profane explosion. "I'll send out for some dynamite and shoot it. If it wasn't for damned troubles like this, I'd been a retired man and fat and rich long ago. Don't grin, you heartless blackguard! You'll have miseries of your ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... that he was the Bishop as well as the Sovereign of Rome. The Romans, although inhabiting the Holy City, like all other people, stood in need of the instructions and warnings of religion. The Pope was aware, besides, that bad habits prevailed, such as profane swearing, luxurious living, the neglect of parents in the training of their children. The knowledge of such things grieved him exceedingly. He now resolved to have recourse to a measure which was as striking as it was unexpected. In the trying days of the Crusaders, and moved by their ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... of Mr. Amhurst, the greatest part of which were written at the university, consist chiefly of poems sacred and profane, original, paraphrased, imitated, and translated; tales, epigrams, epistles, love-verses, elegies, and satires. The Miscellany begins with a beautiful paraphrase on the Mosaic Account of the Creation; and ends with a ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... and we attended the performance, and were delighted with their sweet wild music, and with their wisdom and their wit. They were all reformers of the radical school, and though their songs and conversation were not immoral or profane, they were advanced beyond the bounds of religion, into the neutral ground ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... his friends as a result of his speech are at variance with the facts. Cautious Northerners naturally hesitated to support him and face both the popular convictions on fugitive slaves and the rasping vituperation that exhausted sacred and profane history in the epithets current in that "era of warm journalistic manners"; Abolitionists and Free Soilers congratulated one another that they had "killed Webster". In Congress no Northern man save Ashmun of Massachusetts supported him in any speech for months. On the other hand, Webster ...
— Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement • Herbert Darling Foster
... as a unifying element is of interest in connection with the theory of Hildebrand,[16] that the landscape should have a narrow foreground and wide background, since that is most in conformity with our experience. He adduces Titian's Sacred and Profane Love as an example. But of the general principle it may be said that not the reproduction of nature, but the production of a unified complex of motor impulses, is the aim of composition, and that this aim is best reached by focusing the eye by a narrow background—i.e., ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... upon comparatively easy words) were greeted with some laughter, and the ridiculed spellers sought their seats with hanging heads. By and by, however, the failures were not all at the bottom of the class; here and there such lists as "inane, profane, humane, insane, mundane, urbane," or, "staid, unlaid, mermaid, prayed, weighed, portrayed" began to pick out uncertain ones the entire ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... seized on as a receptacle for their ill-gotten prizes. May the spectre of Thomas Frognall Dibdin haunt the souls of these impious rascals, and torture them with never-ceasing visions of unobtainable and rare portraits, non-existent autographs, and elusive engravings in general! They even dare to profane your sacred work, the Biblia of book-lovers, by the 'insertion' of crudities invented by their fiendish imagination. They have committed the 'unpardonable sin' of bibliophilism. Not only do they carry on this wicked work, but actually flaunt their base crimes in the ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... stayed the perjury of my pen. She looked a real bona fide woman, and a specimen of the race I shall be well enough satisfied with, until I am assured beyond a doubt that angels are feminine, of which there is no proof in either sacred or profane history (all the illustrations I have ever seen proving the contrary)—and I can get as close to them as I ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... offer a hasty and perilous worship in the place where their sanctuary had stood. All the public services had ceased, and no voice of adoration was heard within the holy gates, except that of the profane heathen ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... idleness he'll never outgrow; for every morning I'd send him below—I won't state the exact destination, but I have reasons for thinking he never got farther than the servants' hall—with strict—and for the most part profane—orders not to show his face again unless I rang. Even at that, I always found him waiting up for me when I came home. Oh, there was no changing the ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... in a striking oratorical way, with loud voice and florid style. And when they observe that the worshippers in Church are serious and subdued in their manner, and will not look, and speak, and move as much at their ease as out of doors, or in their own houses, then (if they are very profane) they ridicule them, as weak and superstitious. Now is it not plain that those who are thus tired, and wearied, and made impatient by our sacred services below, would most certainly get tired and wearied with heaven above? because there the Cherubim ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... not ended. They were resolved that no image of the Caesars should be brought into their land, and carried this so far that when the governor of Syria wished to march through a part of their territory to attack the Arabs, they objected that the standards of the legions were crowded with profane images, which their sacred laws did not permit to be seen in their country. The governor yielded to their remonstrance, and marched around the ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Elsewhere, the doorways are of stone, and the walls are built in irregular courses of crude bricks. The great enclosure wall was not, as frequently stated, intended to isolate the temple and screen the priestly ceremonies from eyes profane. It marked the limits of the divine dwelling, and served, when needful, to resist the attacks of enemies whose cupidity might be excited by the accumulated riches of the sanctuary. As at Karnak, avenues of sphinxes and series of pylons led up to the various gates, and formed triumphal approaches. ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... after a pause (which some have been daring enough to set down to sentimental recollections), "Is she releegious?" he asked, and was shortly after, at his own request, presented. The acquaintance, which it seems profane to call a courtship, was pursued with Mr. Weir's accustomed industry, and was long a legend, or rather a source of legends, in the Parliament House. He was described coming, rosy with much port, into the drawing-room, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... another part of the service; then the nuns warbled once more overhead; and it was curious to hear, in the intervals of the most lugubrious chants, how the organ went off with some extremely cheerful military or profane air. At one time was a march, at another a quick tune; which ceasing, the old nuns began again, and so sung until ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shines with the polish of many Saturday rubbings, and the altar, on which a magnificent Virgin, dressed in blue and silver, receives domestic worship, is covered with innumerable pretty trifles, half sacred, half profane. There are on it, besides, little pictures in beads, holy-water fonts, a watch-case with an Agnes Dei, a Palm Sunday palm-branch, and not a few odorless artificial flowers. A number of oaken bookshelves ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... Mother's buried dust;—the midnight train, Of silent stars,—the rolling spheres, Each God, that list'ning bows, With thee it prospers, false-One! to profane. The Nymphs attend;—gay Venus hears, And all deride thy vows; And Cupid whets afresh his burning darts On the stone, moist with blood, that dropt from ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... unto the courses of my age Worship afar, lest haply I profane The temple that is now my holy fane, For which my song is given ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... soften its tone. Upon his refusal, it is said, they stole to the printing-office and did it themselves. But the proofs came back for Jackson's perusal. The lad who brought them was the late Mr. J. S. Ham, of Providence, R. I. He used to say that he had never known what profane swearing was till he listened to General Jackson's comments ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... glory of this enlightened age? Have we not produced it ready-made and ready-armed, mature in its birth, a perfect goddess of wisdom and of war, hammered by our blacksmith midwives out of the brain of Jupiter himself? Have we not sworn our devout, profane, believing, infidel people to an allegiance to this goddess, even before she had burst the dura mater, and as yet existed only in embryo? Have we not solemnly declared this Constitution unalterable by any future legislature? Have we not bound it on posterity forever, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... paid: for swinish gluttony Ne'er looks to Heaven amidst his gorgeous feast, But with besotted base ingratitude Crams, and blasphemes his Feeder. Shall I go on? Or have I said enow? To him that dares 780 Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words Against the sun-clad power of chastity Fain would I something say;—yet to what end? Thou hast nor ear, nor soul, to apprehend The sublime notion and high mystery That must be uttered to unfold the sage And serious doctrine of Virginity; And thou ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... exercises ought to be performed in great sinceritie without delay, laying aside all Exercises of worldly businesse or hinderances, Notwithstanding the mockings of Atheists, and profane men; In respect of the great mercies of God to this Land, and of his severe Corections wherewith lately he hath exercised us. And to this effect, persons of eminency (and all Elders of the Kirk) not onely ought to stir up themselves and their Families to diligence herein; But also ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland |
