"Desecration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deeper, and more firmly based than your own. Its central dogma is the emancipation of humanity. It has its source in the cries of despair which rise unceasingly to heaven from the hearts of tortured millions, in the famine of the operatives, the grinding poverty of the peasants, the desecration of their wives and daughters, the degradation of the race through unjust laws and debasing and brutal prejudices—from all this agony spring my new formulas, the creed which I am determined to establish: 'Man has a birthright of happiness.' These thoughts are my god, a god which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... The desecration of the Sabbath was a greater evil to society than any tyrant could inflict. How would any infringement of civil rights be resisted! Here was an infringement with consequences infinitely more injurious; and yet the press were dumb dogs, and the pulpit ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... ecclesiastical vestments had been already sold, the tapestries removed to the Houses of Parliament, the college plate melted down, and Henry VII.'s Chapel despoiled of its brass and iron, when, in 1643, the Abbey was subjected to actual desecration. The Royalist stories of soldiers smoking and singing round the communion table, and playing boisterous games about the church and chapels, have not been proved. But Sir Robert Harley, who had taken down the Eleanor ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... emigrants were interred. An enormous granite boulder, of a rough conical shape, weighing 30 tons, was dug up in the vicinity, and was placed on a base of cut stone masonry, twelve feet square by six feet high. The stone bears the following inscription: "To preserve from desecration the remains of 6000 emigrants who died from ship fever in 1847 and 1848 this monument is erected by workmen in the employment of Messrs. Peto, Brassey, & Betts, engaged in the construction of the Victoria Bridge, ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... the captain gravely, "your quotation, besides bein' a kind o' desecration, is not applicable; 'cause the Ogilvys did not run away. They fowt on that occasion like born imps, an' they would ha' certainly won the day, if they hadn't been, every man jack of 'em, cut to pieces ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... St. John, meantime, affected to be much scandalized at what they deemed a desecration of holy ground, and claimed the custody of the place. In 1340, in consideration of a hundred golden guineas contributed toward the armament against France, the king made over the Temple to the Hospitallers. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... wrinkled countenances of the remaining caciques was stamped a look of dismay and hatred which boded no good. It was plain to Kirby that in battering up the man detailed to kill him, he had committed a desecration of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... his probing had not been so deep, nor the effect so quick and great; but Mahomet, the camel-driver! Centuries of feud, hate, crimination, and wars—rapine, battles, sieges, massacres, humiliations, lopping of territory, treaties broken, desecration of churches, spoliation of altars, were evoked by ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... of course, Greg, and it must have been stupid for you!" Stupid! It seemed even in this moment treason, it seemed desecration, to use this word of their quiet, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... almost charm. There is something slummy and unwashed-looking about the black blight. These insects are as foul as a stagnant pond. Though they have wings, they seem incapable of flight. They are microbes of a larger growth—a disease and a desecration. On the other hand, there is one good point about them: they are very stupid. Instead of spreading themselves out along the entire extent of the bean and so lessening their peril, they mass themselves in hordes ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... for any consideration shall it be mutilated. It would be desecration to do it. If we never get home, it could do no good; and if we do, the day may come when we can return in safety, and remove it whole, or at least we might give the information that would lead to its ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... midst of peace and refinement—is it not, my friends? And, with all this, may we not expect that fierce instinct of selfishness which overwhelms every other impulse, and breaks out in crime? Ah! and do we not discover a counterpart to that saddest feature of all in such circumstances—a desecration even of the parental instinct? Fathers, beating their sons into the career of guilt; and mothers—worse than those who made horrid food of their own children—offering their daughters to the Moloch of lust in the shape of some "gentlemanly" devil ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... month, later, Mrs. Graham refers to the gay and fashionable circles to which they were introduced in Quebec, and mentions her visiting the beautiful falls of Montmorency; but mourns over the low state of religion, and the prevailing desecration of ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... civilization, the most intellectual and energetic members of the race gradually obtained more and more insight into the working of Nature's laws, and more and more control over some of her hidden forces. Now the desecration of this knowledge and its use for selfish ends is what constitutes sorcery. The awful effects, too, of such desecration are well enough exemplified in the terrible catastrophes that overtook the race. For when once the black practice was inaugurated it was destined to spread in ever widening circles. ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... most of them very good and carefully packed away, so that I am sure there is not a moth-hole in any one of them. I have several times thought, Asaph, that I might give you some of his clothes; but it did seem to me a desecration to have the clothes of such a man, who was so particular and nice, filled and saturated with horrible tobacco-smoke, which he detested. But now you are getting to be so awful shabby, I do not see how I can stand ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... had ever dreamed of, they could now do battle with the enemy that held their race in subjugation and with Russia, whose avowed object through generations had been the capture of Constantinople, the possession and perhaps desecration of the holy places of their religion and the dismembering of the last self-governing ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... we visited another hospital; that known as the Hospital de Jess—hallowed ground; for here the mortal remains of Cortes were deposited. And, though rescued from desecration by a distinguished individual, during a popular tumult, so that they no longer repose in the sanctuary of the chapel, there still exists, enshrined here, that over which time and revolutions have ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... setting sun upon the broad nave and graceful pillars of the aisles—this superb window, an admirable specimen of the architecture of the age in which it was designed, had well-nigh shared the fate of the others, and was only preserved from desecration by the circumstance of the death of the glass-painter. The mullions of this window being found much decayed, were carefully and consistently restored during the last year by Mr. Blore, and the ancient ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... nightmare of desecration was over. It was pulled down, and they built red-brick houses on its grave and left its ancient memories ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... "that would never do; and I wouldn't dare to try to find her box, and put them in it. It would seem like a desecration for any hand but her own ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... several others, drew up a remonstrance against "the desecration by officious restoration, and the tearing down of time-mellowed structures to make room for the unsightly ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... compensation for land and buying off opposition to railway schemes. He says:—"One noble lord had an estate near a proposed line of railway, and on this estate was a beautiful mansion. Naturally averse to the desecration of his home and its neighbourhood, he gave his most uncompromising opposition to the Bill, and found, in the Committee of both Houses, sympathizing listeners. Little did it aid the projectors that they urged that the line did not pass within ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... Gregory's, and the roof and other parts restored at a cost of L6,700, but the architecture was never the same afterwards. Of course the disappointed Romanists attributed the disaster to the Divine anger, and Bishop Pilkington, of Durham, preaching next Sunday at the Cross, to the still continued desecration. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... But he did not mean to let his idiotic sentimentality carry him away again. So long as the enchantress was speaking, the spell was wholly impotent. Therefore he should not suffer her to relapse into silence. Yet—how he hated that high, piercing voice! It was like the desecration of something sacred. It made him shrink ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... impossible to read the comment aloud in company. All this ribaldry and prudery (the two are the same) does not mean that people do not feel decently on the subject: on the contrary, it is just the depth and seriousness of our feeling that makes its desecration by vile language and coarse humor intolerable; so that at last we cannot bear to have it spoken of at all because only one in a thousand can speak of it without wounding our self-respect, especially the self-respect of women. ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... always at her new conception of him. The tears which she had shed during his music filled her face with a sort of tender charm. It did not occur to her that any words of hers could be other than a desecration of ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... indeed, some expression of indignation on the part of the people at the beginning of the reign of Edward VI., when the desecration of the churches began. "Various commotions," says Dr. Madden, "took place in consequence of the reviling of the sacrament, the casting it out of the churches in some places, the tearing down of altars and images; in one of which tumults, one of the authorities was ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... the silence between them knew only her own sorrow and the bitterness of the desecration that had been wrought in her own love. Then, dimly, through her tears, she heard Franklin's voice, and heard that ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... according to their means, for this purpose. A few old soldiers were left to drill the new levies, to see that the walls were placed in a thorough condition of defence, and above all to aid the leaders in suppressing any attempt at the ill-treatment of Catholics, or the desecration of their churches, by the Huguenot ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... suffered conspicuous change. For, on Richard moving down-stairs to his old quarters in the southwestern wing of the house, Lady Calmady had judged it an act of love, rather than of desecration, to restore this long-disused apartment to its former employment. Adjoining the dining-room,—connecting this last with the billiard-room, summer-parlour, and garden-hall,—this room was convenient to assemble ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... prickly-pears that girt round the thatched huts of the Kaffir workpeople; the stone-penned sheep-kraals, and the corrugated iron roof of the bald stable for the waggon oxen—all was as crude and ugly as a new country can make things. It seemed to me a desecration that Hilda should live in such an unfinished land—Hilda, whom I imagined as moving by nature through broad English parks, with Elizabethan cottages and immemorial oaks—Hilda, whose proper atmosphere seemed to be one of coffee-coloured ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... New York, bursting with a noble wrath at the failure of their coup in Philadelphia. An outrage had been worked upon them, upon the public, upon the majesty of the law. To hear their ravings one might have supposed them the evangelists of Justice righteously denouncing a desecration of the sacred altar; or, that we had deprived them of an inalienable right they had possessed to our property. It would have been humorous if the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... carelessness and lack of sanitation. It is the same with the sufferings of women. We used to think it was a dispensation of Providence if a woman were compelled to undergo an operation. Now we know it usually is due to someone's lack of care, to a desecration of Nature's teachings. ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... Part, to declare that 'the Veteran' (Miss G.) had wished to play the Part as it was acted: and furthermore comes Mr. Halliday, who somehow manages and adapts at D. L., to assert that the Veteran not only wished to enact the Desecration, but did enact it for many nights when Miss Wallis was indisposed. Then comes Isabel forward again—but I really forget what she said. I never saw her but once—in the Duchess of Malfi—very well: better, I dare say, than anybody now; but one could not remember a Word, a Look, or an Action. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... succeeded another, and I became almost oblivious to all thought of dressing until the gong rang for breakfast. I felt rebellious, and, on that morning at least, the meal seemed a desecration, the sacrifice of an opportunity. Once before, I had a similar early morning experience; that was at Laggan, on the Canadian Pacific Railway, when, on awakening, I beheld directly opposite my window lovely Lake Louise and the beautiful glacier mirrored within the opalescent blue. This day ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... Psalter. Many of the psalms, especially those in the latter half of the book, bear the unmistakable marks of the Maccabean struggle. In Psalms 74 and 89, for example, there are clear references to the desecration of the temple and the bitter persecutions of Antiochus. They voice the wails of despair which then rose from the lips of many Jews. Many other psalms, as, for example, the one hundred and eighteenth, express that intense love and devotion ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... that I utterly deny! I have never made him such! There was nothing in our nominal marriage to give him that claim. It was a mere legal form, for a mercenary purpose. It was a wicked and shameful subterfuge; a sacrilegious desecration of God's holy altar! but in its wickedness heaven knows I had little will! I was deluded and disturbed; facts were misrepresented to me, threats were made that could never have been executed; my fears were ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... wound, adding that he was leaving on the next day for Tippecanoe. Philip Alston barely glanced at the white face lying against the pillow. He was disturbed and even shocked to see it there. He felt this stranger's presence in her chamber to be a desecration. And then the sight of suffering always made him uncomfortable. He wondered how she could endure it. The repulsion which the average man feels for any affliction of mind, body, or estate was so intensified in ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... things: ravines and dump heaps. And the dumpers are forever edging up, and squeedging up, and trying to grab the ravines and spoil 'em, when nobody's looking. You've made your choice, and allied yourself with the dump heaps. What right have you to cry out against the desecration ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... semblance of the deceased, whose ashes were placed in a hollow made on the back of the head for the purpose. Feeling sorry for having thus disturbed the remains of Chaacmol, so carefully concealed by his friends and relatives many centuries ago; in order to save them from further desecration, I burned the greater part reserving only a small quantity for future analysis. This finding of the heart and brains of that chieftain, afforded an explanation, if any was needed, of one of the scenes more ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... These tell our brief story, and may I not ask, gentlemen, that they shall so plead with you that you will report to the Senate unanimously in favor of the sixteenth amendment, which we ask in order that the women of these United States who shall come after us may be saved the desecration of their homes which we have suffered, and our country may be relieved from the disgrace of refusing representation to that half of its people that men call the better half, because it includes their wives and daughters ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... only a feeling of disgust that such a desecration of Nature's gifts to humanity should be allowed. Then he remembered another place further along the glen which was almost as pretty as this had been before the defiling brush of the advertiser had ruined it. So he spurred his horse and rode ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... voice which the nature of the 'argumentum ad hominem' absolutely requires,—"Would you, Sir, if a 'Jew' of a godfather had proposed the name for your child, and offered you his purse along with it, would you have consented to such a desecration of him? O my God!" he would say, looking up, "if I know your temper rightly, Sir, you are incapable of it;—you would have trampled upon the offer;—you would have thrown the temptation at the tempter's head with abhorrence. Your greatness of mind in this action, which I admire, with ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... saw this awful desecration of the land the phrase of the cross seemed to sing in unison with the beating of ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... the first to operate, and would have found the greatest scope in any alteration. We may hope that nothing but a true growth in such religion as needs and seeks new expression for new depth and breadth of feeling, will ever be permitted to lay the hand of change upon it — a hand, otherwise, of desecration and ruin. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... among virtuosos.——The English, undeterred by the indignation which has been poured out upon Lord Elgin by BYRON and others for rifling Athens of its antiquities for display at home, are practicing the same desecration in regard to the treasures discovered in Nineveh by Mr. Layard. It is announced that the Great Bull and upwards of 100 tons of sculpture excavated by him, may be expected in England in September for the British Museum. The French Government are also making extensive collections of Assyrian works ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... threshold, but from the corridor he could see the interior of the room and all that went on there during the next few moments. A candle burned on the bureau, exposing the feminine neatness and delicacy of the furnishings. The presence of the three men was a desecration; what they were about to do, an unforgivable ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... herself she would, before considering such desecration of every sacred memory, have preferred to stuff with paper the crannies of that wind-rattled window and to turn on the gas. In comparison this would have ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... just quoted. About forty years ago, it was proposed to build a summer hotel on this island, which is four or five miles from the mouth of the Merrimac. I have found among Mr. Whittier's papers an unfinished poem, protesting against what he considered a desecration of this spot which always had a great charm for him. It is likely that the reason why this poem was never finished or published was because the project of building a hotel was abandoned. I have taken the liberty to give as a title for it "The Plaint of ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... operations of the turquoise-miners. It seems almost incredible that ignorance and vandalism should still be so rampant in the twentieth century that the most important historical monuments are not safe from desecration in order to obtain a few turquoises, but it is so. Prof. Petrie's expedition did not start a day too soon, and at the suggestion of Sir William Garstin, the adviser to the Ministry of the Interior, the majority of the inscriptions ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... to hold all meetings for the transaction of public business in the sanctuary. None, not even the most piously fastidious parson or deacon, ever thought of being shocked at what in these degenerate times would seem like a gross desecration of the house of God. There were fewer Pharisees in Belfield a hundred years ago than now. To the Puritans, and to all their descendants, until of late, their places of worship were not churches, but meeting-houses merely; and by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... these lines by the fact that these bones require protecting from the vandalism of certain persons unknown, also I have been approached by pioneers several times to write about this desecration of the last ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... not the pleasantest occupation in the world to ransack the clothing of a skeleton, and he who was doing it could not help reflecting as he did so that it looked very much like a desecration and a robbing of the dead. To his great disappointment, however, he failed to discover anything which would give the slightest clue. It looked as if the man had purposely destroyed all such articles before destroying himself, and, after a thorough ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... divided between the inclination to fall at the Saint's feet and kiss her robe, and the temptation to knock Naumann down while he was adjusting her arm. All this was impudence and desecration, and he repented ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... earnestness of it makes it almost desecration to touch it. It is to keep a private note-book with columns for the days of the week, and a list of virtues, with spaces against each for marks. this, with many stern rules for preface, is stored away in a secret place, and from time to time, ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... she waken no one until it is too late, I thought fervently. I heard her step from the bed. Once I would have hidden my eyes as devoutly as the pagan blinded himself lest he should see Artemis, on whom it was desecration to look, but now I hesitated no more to gaze on her than on any other beautiful hateful thing which I should crush. Her loveliness stirred neither my senses nor my compassion; both were forever dead, I knew, to woman. Full ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... up their lives, all stirred Dermot strangely. And when the thought of the incalculable wealth that lay in the vast quantity of ivory stored in this great charnel-house flashed through his mind, he felt that it would be a shameful desecration, inviting the wrath of the gods, to remove even one tusk ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... upon all born of woman, and cultivating in man a lordly and arrogant spirit, a love of dominion, a disposition to lightly regard her comfort and happiness, all which have been indulged to a fearful extent, to the curse of his own soul and the desecration of her nature. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... it deserves the name! Our English storms are nothing but babies compared with the appalling blasts which sweep down upon us from the north. In summer the furious seas dash against the cliffs as if to protect them from the desecration of human encroachment. The fine snow filters in between the roof and ceiling of this building, and in a "mild," such as we are now experiencing, it melts, and endless little rivulets trickle down in nearly every ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... cathedral. They have already damaged it beyond the possibility of complete repair, even should their hearts at this late day be miraculously touched by shame for what they have done and their guns should cease from further desecration. The glorious glass has already been broken into a million fragments; many of the finely executed mouldings and figures—irreplaceable specimens of a forgotten art—have been crushed; great wall spaces pounded and marred. It is as if a huge, fat German hand had ground itself across a delicately ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... Persian Empire Judaea a province of the Persian Empire Jews at Alexandria Judaea the battle-ground of Egyptians and Syrians The Syrian kings Antiochus Epiphanes His persecution of the Jews Helplessness of the Jews Sack of Jerusalem Desecration of the Temple Mattathias His piety and bravery Revolt of Mattathias Slaughter of the Jews Death of Mattathias His gallant sons Judas Maccabaeus His military genius The Syrian generals Wrath of Antiochus Desolation of Jerusalem Judas ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... a common inheritance of frailty and weakness modifies the severity of judgment. Years after, in The Lost Occasion I gave utterance to an almost universal regret that the great statesman did not live to see the flag which he loved trampled under the feet of Slavery, and, in view of this desecration, make his last days glorious in defence of "Liberty and Union, one ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... two other boys on an errand from another department, came back where I sat, in a hidden nook, reading Thompson's Seasons. One of them spit over my shoulder, between the leaves. I leaped to my feet, infuriated, and a fight began. The desecration of my beloved poetry gave me such angry strength that I struck out lustily and dropped ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... stands a crucifix. This large and dignified Calvaire, though bearing the nicks of bullets and faded by weather, still sheds a sorrowful beauty that is perhaps the more impressive because of these marks of desecration. It forms the center of the tiny village, whose houses cluster close to the mourning image and then straggle thinly along the three roads. Not even the war which swept over in all its ferocity has robbed Vauchelles ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... fortitude of woman to behold without protest this desecration of decoration. Peninnah Penelope Anne sprang forward, snatched the glossy locks from the puncheons, and with a tender hand righted the structure, while the powder flew about in light puffs at her touch, readjusting a curl here and a cleverly wrought wave there. The valet's pious aspiration from ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... is annually celebrated by all Jews everywhere, to commemorate the purifying of the Temple and the restoration of its worship after its desecration by Antiochus Epiphanes, of which an account may be found in 1 Maccabees iv. 52-59. It is very probable that some of our Christmas festivities are only adaptations of the observances of this Jewish feast in symbolism of Christian ideas. During the eight ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... or proclaim an untruth concerning him without being legally compelled to render compensation, should be withdrawn from his grave. I cannot tell you how I have blushed for the living, and kindled with resentment on behalf of the dead, when contemplating the merciless desecration of what may truly be called the sacredness of home, ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... I relegate it to the general collection of notes on Fetish. M'pongwe jurisprudence is founded on the same ideas as those on which West African jurisprudence at large is founded, but it is so elaborated that it would be desecration to sketch it. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... tomb we shall see in Alkmaar church. The Stadtholders made the Binnenhof their headquarters; but the present Royal Palace is half a mile north-west of it. Other buildings have been added from time to time, and the trams are now allowed to rush through with their bells jangling the while. The desecration is not so glaring as at Utrecht, but it seems thoroughly wrong—as though we were to permit a line to traverse Dean's Yard at Westminster. A more appropriate sanction is that extended to one or two dealers in old books and prints who have their ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... his first chill of horror at the act itself, Henry Montagu realized that the desecration was his own thought, his own impulse carried into fierce determination, he sank weak and dizzy into the chair that the boy had left. But again he mastered his frightened mind and thrust away from it the sinister oppression of omen ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... it has achieved its purpose to the full; I am content to leave you to judge so great a matter. It is your turn; trample under foot the ashes of the murderer! Disdain the dust of him who slew his brother, and defiled his brother's queen with infamous desecration, who outraged his sovereign and treasonably assailed his majesty, who brought the sharpest tyranny upon you, stole your freedom, and crowned fratricide with incest. I have been the agent of this just vengeance; I have ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... cleaned, swept and garnished by the wife of the porter of the Mansions, received Emmy, her babe, Madame Bolivard and multitudinous luggage. All the pretty fripperies and frivolities had been freshened and refurbished since their desecration at alien hands, and the place looked cheery and homelike; but Emmy found it surprisingly small, and was amazed to discover the prodigious space taken up by the baby. When she drew Septimus's attention to this phenomenon ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... misuse, misusage, misemployment^, misapplication, misappropriation. abuse, profanation, prostitution, desecration; waste &c 638. V. misuse, misemploy, misapply, misappropriate. desecrate, abuse, profane, prostitute: waste &c 638; overtask, overtax, overwork: squander &c 818. cut blocks with a razor, employ a steam engine to crack a nut; catch at a straw. Adj. misused ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... This, however, was made up for when the drumming, smashing, and brass-blurting of the overture to "Zampa" was noised forth: this was encored with ecstacies, and so were some of the quadrilles. Happy musical taste! Beethoven's septour, arranged as a set of quadrilles, is a desecration unworthy of Musard. For this piece of bad taste he ought to be condemned to arrange the sailor's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... devastated by the Assyrian mercenaries that he followed the advice which Isaiah gave him in the first place. Had he followed it before, he would have saved not alone his country and his people from the ravages of war, but he would have been spared the payment of so large a tribute and the desecration of the Temple. ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... impulse. When we had finished the first waltz, I left her in the company of one of her Milwaukee friends and started out in quest of some acceptable male partner whose touch of her I should not feel to be a positive desecration. I had reached about the middle of the hall when an affectionate slap on my shoulder ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... yes—of men who care for appearance more than sympathy. But you are not such a man! It is not as if we had been friends; it is not as if we had ever spoken. It is wicked to call such a foolish fancy by the name of love; it is desecration." ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... Mordecai. "It is a matter of more importance than life and death, and the Talmud authorizes the desecration of the Sabbath in time of ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... incompetent mothers—the greatest cause of infant mortality—will be educated and instructed in the rudiments of eugenics and will consequently, to a large extent, cease to be ignorant and incompetent; that the desecration of young wives will stop, and stop forever, because vice and disease will be branded and exposed; that the feeble-minded, the deaf-mute, the imbecile, and the insane, will no longer be allowed to propagate their kind, to the permanent detriment of ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... afternoon, for one; the policeman on the beat that he'd stopped for a chat in front of the house, for another; a maid in the hall behind us, the policeman's sweetheart she is, for another! Oh!" he cried, "the desecration! That one caress, one that I'd thought a sacred secret between us forever—and in plain sight of those three hideous vulgarians, all belonging to my enemy, Gorgett! Ah, the ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... presided at the baptismal-font of the land. To call that severe Dantescan head, which it would seem impossible that accident should have formed, so defined and expressive is its outline, like the Sphynx, a mystery in the desert—to call it the Old Man of the Mountain, is irreverence, desecration! I and this exquisite little lake, lapped amid the foldings and windings of the mountains, whose 'million unseen spirits' may do the bidding of that heroic old Prospero who presides over it—to call this gem of the forest a 'Punch-bowl,' is a sorry travesty. I paid my homage to him while ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in hand, and supplies the reference to the Sabbath law, which the former had not. There was much hard work done in the temple on the Sabbath—sacrifices to be slain, fires and lamps to be kindled, and so on. That was not Sabbath desecration. Why? Because it was done in the temple, and as a part of divine service. The sanctity of the place, and the consequent sanctity of the service, exempted it from the operation of the law. The question, no doubt, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... a conscious attempt to avoid association with the dead. Barrett reports that cremation was practiced, and the bones placed in a stream to prevent their desecration. However, this appears to have been only one of the disposal customs and is not well remembered by Washo living today. The burning or burying of the personal possessions of the dead was common. Certain prized possessions ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... "the holiest man in it"; the people worship him. The day I saw him they had wreathed him with fresh-cut flowers; white flowers crowned that hideous head, hung round his neck and down his breast; a servant in front carried flowers. Was there ever such desecration? That vileness ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... Rifle the grave—that was the way to solve it. That would still leave it possible to collect the insurance, too. The blackmail letter about the five thousand dollars was only a blind, to lay on the mythical Black Hand the blame for the desecration. Brought into light, humidity, and warmth, the body would recover consciousness and the life-functions resume their normal state after the anabiotic coma into which ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... glass, Harry: 'tis not the fragrance of the wine, but the sentiment connected with it, which prevents me from offering you a pipe. The odor of the best Virginia would seem to me a desecration. There are only a dozen bottles left in that cupboard. I never uncork one except for a near friend. 'Tis out of fashion now: hock and champagne have taken its place; but, do you know, I like it the better on that account. It reminds me of the past, and, though ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... argument of most subtle reasoning, to prove that every effort to abolish the office in Spain had been entirely useless: it would exist, and if not publicly acknowledged, would always be liable to abuse and desecration; that the only means of exterminating its secret, and too arrogant power, was to permit its public establishment, and so control it, that its measures should be open to the present, and to every successive ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... unsurpassed and unsurpassable piece of choral writing which Dr. Crotch, one of the "English school," living in an age less sensitive even than this to Purcellian beauty, felt to be so great that it would be a desecration to set the words again. Later composers set the words again, feeling it no desecration, but possibly rather a compliment to Purcell; and Purcell's setting abides, and looks down upon every other, like Mozart's G minor and Beethoven's ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... a very low idea, and such a desecration of a sacred spot, that if I had owned any money to be sure of, I would have offered hundreds to prevent it. But I found myself now in a delicate state of mind concerning money, having little of my own, and doubting how much other people might ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... "Desecration—desecration?" quoth she, staring on me great-eyed and biting at her scarlet nether lip. "Ha, dare ye say it, dog?" And crying thus, she hurled the pistol at me with aim so true that I staggered and came nigh falling. Stung by the blow I turned on her ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... unpardonable desecration to enter the chamber of Father Beret's soul and look upon his sacred and secret trouble; nor must we even speculate as to its particulars. The good old man writhed and wrestled before the cross for a long time, until at last he seemed to receive the calmness and strength he prayed for ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... process of soaking and retting the stalks of the plant pollutes the water, and if carried on in a tank or in the pools of a stream might destroy the village supply of drinking-water. In former times it may have been thought that the desecration of their sacred element was an insult to the deities of rivers and streams, which would bring down retribution on the offender. It is also the case that the proper separation of the fibres requires a considerable degree of dexterity which can only ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... to see the object.... To use an expression of your own, it's desecration to disturb ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... wisdom. Let an incident connected with the tomb of Fenelon furnish us an emblem of the spirit in which we shall look upon his name. His remains were deposited in the vault beneath the main altar at which he had so often ministered. It would seem as if some guardian-angel shielded them from desecration. Eighty years passed and the Reign of Terror came upon France in retribution for her falsity to her best advisers. The allied armies were marshalling their hosts against the new republic. Every means must ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... with peculiar distinctness to all who were acquainted with the Gospels, it was at the same time a figure that could be used without exciting suspicion among the heathen, and one which was not exposed to desecration or insult from them; and under emblems of this kind, whose inner meaning was hidden to all but themselves, the first Christians were often forced to conceal the expression of their faith. This figure recalled to them many of the sacred words and most solemn teachings of their Lord: "I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... entered with all the comprehension of a man who had known spiritual conflict, and lived through years of devoted service to his fellow-men, into that state of Maggie's heart and conscience which made the consent to the marriage a desecration to her; her conscience must not be tampered with; the principle on which she had acted was a safer guide than any balancing of consequences. His experience told him that intervention was too dubious a responsibility to be lightly incurred; the possible issue either of an endeavor ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... and Mayhall's big fingers trembled as he pulled them away, as though to avoid further desecration of that sacred name. ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... not blind to this change; he did not see who had cast the first veil of darkness over the pure light that had shone so freely for him; and while he silently regretted what he deemed the desecration of the spotless image he had loved, nothing whispered that it was his own Shadow brooding above the true heart that had toiled so faithfully and long ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... about him, but she thought the more. And—though had he known it, the pelf-despising Mr. Vanbrugh would never have forgiven such a desecration of Art—it was not her lightest spur in the attainment of excellence, to feel that as soon as her pictures were good enough to sell, she might earn money enough to discharge the claim of this harsh creditor, whose very name sent a pang ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... to pillars of churches is illustrated by what an Augustine Canon of Scone says, in a work on the rule of his foundation (Paris, 1508), for he protests against the desecration of churches, with the exception of curing lunatics in the way I have just described, as being ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... very suddenly. She doesn't trust us. I shall always be being pushed away from him by her. He's just twenty, and I shall be eighteen in a week; couldn't we marry now at once? Then, whatever happened, I couldn't be cut off from him. If I could tell Dad, and ask him to help me! But I can't—it seems desecration to talk about it, even to Dad. All the way up in the train to-day, coming back home, I was struggling not to show anything; though it's hateful to keep things from Dad. Love alters everything; it melts up the whole world and makes it afresh. Love is the sun of our spirits, and it's the wind. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... doubt that the mass of the population regarded us with acute distrust, if not with dislike and fear. But the prompt measures taken by General Miles to disabuse their minds of any preconceived ideas of ensuing rape, robbery, or desecration, did much to soothe the more ignorant and childish of the natives, while the intelligent and educated class needed no further assurance than that contained in the proclamation issued by the commanding general from Ponce on the 28th of ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... heart and wounded soul can find balm in sleep. Locked at night into a dark cell has made existence for nearly eighteen months a mere hideous vigil, broken by fitful nightmare. To see only pure faces, to listen to sweet feminine voices that never knew the desecration of blasphemy, to exchange the grim, fetid precincts of a penitentiary for a holy haven such as this, is indeed a glimpse of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... compelled to come into the fold than from the misinterpretation of any other text in the sacred scriptures. If any civilized power in the world to-day should send an expeditionary force into a heathen country, which should signalize its arrival therein by the desecration of its temples and the destruction of its idols, the commander would be recalled at once. We have learned other methods, methods of persuasion, of reason, of love. The age of Cortes knew nothing of these methods, and he was only following ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... groups in the costume of the period instead of in the vestments of the early Romans, as had been the custom. This innovation was made by him in his picture of the death of General Wolfe, and created no little disturbance. His friends, including Reynolds, protested against such a desecration of tradition; even the King questioned him, and West replied that the painter should be bound by truth as well as the historian, and to represent a group of English soldiers in the year 1758 as dressed in classic costume was absurd. After the picture ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... stand on its four proper legs, rocking and tetering like a gold-digger's washing-pan, unless the lame leg is propped up with an old shoe, or a stray newspaper fifty times folded, or a magazine of due thickness (I am using 'Harper's Magazine' at this moment, which is somewhat a desecration, as it is too good to be trampled under foot, even the foot of a table), or a coal cinder, or a towel. Well, it is but for a moment and so ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... going to trust our customers, and keep our accounts without pen or ink. We have invented a most ingenious system, which gives us far more work than writing, but we have determined to spare ourselves no trouble to keep the Sabbath from unnecessary desecration.' ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... the Huguenots needed most of all. They therefore sent two envoys to M. de Laveze to ask him to give them at, least a share of his weapons; but he, as a good Catholic, replied that it was quite true that he had indeed a store of arms, but that they were destined to the triumph and not to the desecration of religion, and that he would only give them up with his life. With these words, he dismissed the envoys, barring his doors ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the property of Mr. Hambrough (of Steephill Castle), which extends to St. Lawrence, the estate of Earl Yarborough; succeeded by Old Park; and near Niton, the seats of Mrs. Arnold, Sir W. Gordon, and Mrs. Vine: altogether a delightful distance of above four miles; which we hope will long escape any desecration of its beauties by the operations of ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... to stand in that chaos of destruction, that ribald havoc, that desecration of all we think of as sacred, and see, stretched from one broken tombstone to another, the telephone wires that connect the trenches at the foot of the street with headquarters and with ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... already have been made on the floor of Congress to so amend the Constitution as to exclude women from a voice in the government. As this would be to turn the wheels of legislation backward, let the women of the nation now unitedly protest against such a desecration of the Constitution, and petition for that right which is at the foundation of all government, the right of representation. Send your petition when signed to your representative in Congress, at your ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Their very presence, the fact of their existence, is an outrage to the fresh, bright sun and the green and growing things. The clean, upstanding trees cry shame upon them and their withered crookedness, and their rottenness is a slimy desecration of the sweetness and ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... suppressed by Josiah in obedience to Deuteronomy,(366) had been revived under Jehoiakim; (2) VII. 30-34, the high-places in Topheth, upon which children were sacrificed, also condemned by Deuteronomy and recorded as destroyed by Josiah;(367) (3) VIII. 1-3, the desecration of the graves of Jerusalem. It is not necessary to reproduce these prose passages, whether they be Jeremiah's or not; our versions of them, Authorised and Revised, are ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... this desecration my companion and I grew vocal. We agreed that our national lawgivers who were even then framing an immigration law with a view to keeping certain people out of this country, might better be engaged in framing one with a ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... howl and half a screech, of "Oh, you!" addressed at quarter-minute intervals to every object, animate or inanimate, that came within the howler's vision or thought. This particular bit of gutter-slang induced a peculiar irritation. It seemed to me utter desecration that this quickening beauty of hill and sky and river and green woods, which should have stirred young hearts to madrigals and chorals, should resound to the blatant, shrieking vulgarity of Lobster Square. I do not mind confessing that at times my feelings towards the innocent ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... of voice, which the nature of the argumentum ad hominem absolutely requires,—Would you, Sir, if a Jew of a godfather had proposed the name for your child, and offered you his purse along with it, would you have consented to such a desecration of him?—O my God! he would say, looking up, if I know your temper right, Sir,—you are incapable of it;—you would have trampled upon the offer;—you would have thrown the temptation at the ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... day, and the blaze of the meridian heat still inflamed the air; the kine for shelter, rather than for sustenance, had wandered through some broken arches, and were lying in the shadow of the nave. This desecration of a spot, once sacred, still beautiful and solemn, jarred on the feelings of Egremont. He sighed and turning away, followed a path that after a few paces led him into the cloister garden. This was a considerable ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... co-operating motive is that two persons drawn to each other by a mutual affection may live helpfully and happily together. A selfish marriage, for its merely animal gratifications—a marriage in which strength, health, usefulness, often life itself, are sacrificed to sensuality and lust—is a desecration of a holy institution, and somewhat worse in its consequences than promiscuous profligacy, for the consequences of that may not fall upon one's children ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... the back, seeing that the desecration of the article had been completed, plucked up heart of courage and put in her little request; "I think I might have a needle-case out of it," said she, "just as a suvneer of the poor general"—and a long ...
— The Relics of General Chasse • Anthony Trollope
... You are simply crazy," I said, earnestly. "I swear to you by my mother that I have not seen Dora since I moved out of your house, and that all your suspicions are nonsense" (to keep the memory of my mother from desecration I declared mutely that my oath referred to the truthful part of my declaration only— that is, exclusively to the fact that ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan |
