"Irreverence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... confusion. The San Fernando church was in crumbled ruins, and such of the church properties as were left there were in the keeping of a Mexican not over-careful, and not in the least devout. It would not trouble him to part with a saint or two, Alessandro thought, and no irreverence to the saint either; on the contrary, the greatest of reverence, since the statue was to be taken from a place where no one cared for it, and brought into one where it would be tenderly cherished, and worshipped every day. If only San Fernando were not so far away, and the wooden saints ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the accredited representatives of the various religious organizations. Emphasis is placed upon denominationalism, and more heart-burnings have been caused amongst the men in consequence of the divisions amongst the Churches than amongst the home folks at the fancied increasing irreverence and indifference of the men regarding the things that are esteemed sacred. The men give evidence of being disposed to stand outside of all human creeds. Their query is not 'Are you a member of a certain religious ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... Without any semblance of irreverence we may paraphrase this story slightly and have our own General Pershing stand in the place of David asking for water. Then we can see three of his soldiers going across No Man's Land in quest of the water which he craves. When they return, bearing ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... Mazzini sees much already,—at Milan, where he is, he has probably this day received the intelligence of the accomplishment of his foresight, implied in his letter to the Pope, which angered Italy by what was thought its tone of irreverence and doubt, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... famous prophecy of the Seventy Weeks had been alleged to a Roman philosopher, would he not have replied in the words of Cicero, "Quae tandem ista auguratio est, annorum potius quam aut raensium aut dierum?" De Divinatione, ii. 30. Observe with what irreverence Lucian, (in Alexandro, c. 13.) and his friend Celsus ap. Origen, (l. vii. p. 327,) express themselves concerning the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... he equals him to, or rather what Gods he puts him above. And Glaucus took no exception to being praised at the expense of his art's patron deities; nor yet did they send any judgement on athlete or poet for irreverence; both continued to be honoured in Greece, one for his might, and the other for this even more than for his other odes. Do not be surprised, then, that when I wished to conform to the canons of my art and find an illustration, I took ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... died in his eighty-ninth year, it seems irreverent to call him by his nickname. And yet the irreverence is rather in seeming than in reality, for a nickname, a pet-name, an abbreviation, is often the truest token of popular esteem. It was so with the subject of this section, whose perennial youthfulness of heart and mind would have ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... Remington intended no irreverence; indeed, he could not tell what he did intend, or what it was ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... method of instruction used by some of the earliest laborers in this field left something to be desired in point of adaptedness to the savage mind. Without irreverence to the great name of Jonathan Edwards, there is room for doubt whether he was just the man for the Stockbridge Indians. In the case of the Rev. Abraham Pierson, of Branford, in New Haven Colony, afterward founder of Newark, we have an illustration ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... amorphous agglomerate of human shreds and patches kneeling by the bedside of the dying murderer, to pray some comfort into his passing soul. But his "gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it," while through Helen ran a cold shudder of disgust at the familiarity and irreverence ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... than it is now), and that she had a sense of fair play that was proof against her zeal as an Irish Church-woman. It is true that she mentioned what she regarded as the disaster of Larry's religion in her prayers, but she did so without heat, leaving the matter, without irreverence, to the common sense of Larry's Creator, who, she felt must surely recognise the disadvantages of ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... slightly and almost painlessly; and, bowing submissively, as if to meet his companion's jesting mood, began to recite the CONFITEOR. The episode ended well, for both Heron and Wallis laughed indulgently at the irreverence. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... of mortal existence, which these persons temporarily and phenomenally obeyed. Since, then, the sensuous manifestation has now become merely symbolic, and is no longer an indispensable investiture of the idea, it may be altered at will in Christian art without irreverence. The utmost capacity of the artist is now exerted, not in enforcing or refining a generalised type, but in discovering some new facial expression which shall reveal psychological quality in a particular being. Doing so, he inevitably insists upon the face; and having formed a face expressive ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... that this reading and expounding of the Scriptures by the ignorant and unlearned led almost invariably to those other sins of blasphemy and irreverence which curdled the very blood in his veins. Again and again had his heart burned within him to go forth amongst the people himself; to take upon himself and put in practice the office of evangelist, which he knew to be a God-appointed ministry, and yet which was so seldom worthily fulfilled, and ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Settle we have already spoken fully; but we may here add, that, in addition to former offences of a public and private nature, Elkanah, in the Prologue to the "Emperor of Morocco," acted in March 1681-2, had treated Dryden with great irreverence.[16] Shadwell had been for some time in good habits with Dryden; yet an early difference of taste and practice in comedy, not only existed between them, but was the subject of reciprocal debate, and something approaching ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... Moreover, he liked a Beckett too well to harm him in the mind of a common friend; and he was unquestionably aware that the loftiness of a Beckett's aims and character rendered him unassailable against a charge of irreverence or lack of respect. Certain it is, at least, that when a Beckett died at Boulogne Jerrold felt the blow so deeply that he gave up that town thenceforward as a place of residence, nor would he ever ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Darby went off again in a storm of fierce imprecation; this time, however, in good Anglo-Saxon. And the Abbot was seemingly so stunned by Aymer's recital that he did not note the irreverence of his lordship, who was let free to curse away to his heart's content until brought up by ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... furrowed earth and her blundering children. A rough earth-hint, a Rabelaisian ditty, a gross amazing jest, a chuckle of deep Satyric humour;—and the monstrous "thickness" of Life, its friendly aplomb and nonchalance, its grotesque irreverence, its shy shrewd common-sense, its tough fibres, and portentous indifference to "distinction"; tumbles us over in the mud—for all our "aloofness"—and roars over us, like a ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... "Such irreverence shall not be!" exclaimed Ranulph, seizing Luke with one hand, and snatching at the cereclothes with the other. "Remove it, or ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Fenelon, and Lacordaire, and thousands like them, who prefer ritualism and auricular confession, and penance, monasticism, and an ecclesiastical monarch, and all the machinery of a complicated hierarchy, with all the evils growing out of papal domination, to rationalism, sectarian dissensions, irreverence, license, want of unity, want of government, and even dispensation from the marriage vow. Which is worse, the physical arm of the beast, or the maniac soul of a lying prophet? Which is worse, the superstition and narrowness which excludes the Bible from schools, or that unbounded ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... accused of showing irreverence towards these barbarous kings and priests. Irreverence! It is like charging a historian with disrespect ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... greeting. But Ruth quickly understood. There was no irreverence in it, only a man's stumbling, wholehearted confession. It was a plea that she had no will to deny. The quick, warm tears of joy came welling to her eyes as she silently took his hand and led him out of the little garden and to where his ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... him on this Sabbath morning struck dismay to Jock's orthodox soul, clinging tenaciously to its ancient traditions. Lawyer Ed, too, seemed to have donned the spirit of irreverence with the bonnet, and was conducting himself as no elder of the kirk should have behaved even at a St. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... Indelicacy or irreverence is unpleasant in itself, and yet when complication is added to it few of us can avoid laughing, and I am afraid that some considerably enjoy objectionable allusions. To tell a man to go to h—-, or ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... dependence on their Author for insight into their mysteries. The attitude of worship naturally suggests sober-mindedness and deep seriousness, and banishes frivolity. To treat that Book with lightness or irreverence would be doubly profane when one is in the posture ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... believe you understood it, dear old sceptic!" returned Balder, with affectionate irreverence, throwing his arm across his father's broad shoulders. "I say that every soul of right capacity, living for culture, and not afraid of itself, will at last reach that highest point. It is the sublime goal of man, and no human life is complete unless in gaining it. Many fail, but not all. I will ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... gift of God, so precious, so inspiring, is treated with such utter irreverence and contempt in the calculations of us mortals as this same air of heaven. A sermon on oxygen, if one had a preacher who understood the subject, might do more to repress sin than the most orthodox discourse to show when and how and why ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... of a personality so freshly minted as to have taken no more than two impressions. Rory was her guide, philosopher, and crony. He was her overwhelming ideal of power, wisdom, and goodness; he was her help in ages past, her hope for years to come (no irreverence intended here; quite the reverse, for if true family life existed, we should better apprehend the meaning of "Our Father, who art in heaven"); he was her Ancient of Days; her shield, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Discourse on the Negro Question', which would be interesting as a literary curiosity were it not in spirit and tendency so unspeakably wicked as to excite in every rightminded reader a feeling of amazement and disgust. With a hard, brutal audacity, a blasphemous irreverence, and a sneering mockery which would do honor to the devil of Faust, it takes issue with the moral sense of mankind and the precepts of Christianity. Having ascertained that the exports of sugar and spices from the West Indies have ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... himself was a devout Christian and Catholic and a deeply religious man such plays as the Auto da Alma, the Barcas, the Sumario, the Auto da Cananea are sufficient proof. He had much of the Erasmian spirit but nothing in common with the Reformation. His irreverence is wholly external, it was abuses not doctrine that he attacked, the ministers of the Church and not the Church itself. He may have been in the secret of King Jo[a]o's somewhat stormy negotiations with the Holy See and he took the national and regalist view: in the Auto da Feira ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... Here was irreverence almost atheistic. Keturah's face showed her shocked disapproval. Matilda Tripp voiced ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... breath sharply and winced at this irreverence, but quickly remembered that she must always be sending out messages of love, north, east, south, and west. So she sent a rather spiky one in the direction of her husband who was sitting due east, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... would be greatly affronted by hearing any indecencies offered to the person of a temporal prince, how much more bitterly must a man who sincerely believes in such a being as the Almighty, feel any irreverence or insult shewn to His name, His honour, or His institution? And, notwithstanding the impious character of the present age, and especially of many among those whose more immediate business it is to lead men, as well by example as precept, into the ways of piety, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... glory of those conversions. The thought that all the time she was singing, with the one passion of her soul to touch the conscience of that tent full of sin, Jasper Chase had been unmoved by it except to love her for herself, gave her a shock as of irreverence on her part as well as on his. She could not tell why she felt as she did, only she knew that if he had not told her tonight she would still have felt the same toward him as she always had. What was ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... "burst out" of it. He never meant to go in. But the rain had forced him to take shelter in its porch, as evening service was about to begin: and the defiant looks of the elect as they pushed past him one by one, had impelled him to assert his rights as a Christian, and push in too. The stupid ranting irreverence of the pastor, and the snuffling satisfaction of the flock, were soon, however, too much for him, and in a very short time he was again—where we find him—out in the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... one accuse the critic of irreverence, who doubts the wisdom of universities, and of pedantic scholars who burrow like moles in the mouldering remnants of antiquity, but see nothing of the glorious sky overhead. While I have no reverence for barren or ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... be sure that it was Olivia Langdon's voice that gave the deciding vote for the newly adopted chief title, which would take any suggestion of irreverence out of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a painful following of the Saviour's steps in these dark days, the circumstances lending themselves in a wonderful way to the comparison which French writers love to make, but which many of us must always feel, however spotless the sufferer, to have a certain irreverence in them. But if ever martyr were worthy of being called a partaker of the sufferings of Christ it was surely this girl, free, if ever human creature was, from self-seeking, or thought of reward, or ambitious hope, in whose heart there had never ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... with such irreverence, such entire ignorance rather of all the questions at issue, from the pulpit, would be clearly impracticable. Men require to be taught "which be the first principles." They require to be educated in Divinity. And thus we come back to the fontal source ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... brought me (it is highly improper to smoke while the Koran is being read or recited). He thanked me for the respect, and I told him I knew he would not smoke in a church, or while I prayed; why should I? It rather annoys me to find that they always expect from us irreverence to their religion which they would on no account be guilty of to ours. The little boy was a fellah, the child of my friend Omar, who has lost all his cattle, but who came as pleasant and smiling as ever to kiss my hand and wait upon me. After that the Maohn read the second chapter, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... on him as he stumbled over the resounding steps. But, twenty feet from the door, the spirit of irreverence overtook him. Then, at the thought of the waiting Butsey, he began to pipe forth voluminously the martial strains of Sherman's March to the Sea, kicking enormous pebbles victoriously ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... Goethe, what right has Arnold, what right has any dictionary, to define the word Irreverence for me? What their ideals are is nothing to me. So long as I reverence my own ideals my whole duty is done, and I commit no profanation if I laugh at theirs. I may scoff at other people's ideals as much as I want to. It is my right and my privilege. No man has ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... believed to belong to them; and had contracted a weight and veneration from the rites and solemn devotions in which they were used: they were a sort of attributes with which it was a matter of religion to salute them on all occasions, and which it was an irreverence to omit. As for the epithets of great men, Mons. Boileau is of opinion, that they were in the nature of surnames, and repeated as such; for the Greeks having no names derived from their fathers, were obliged to add some other distinction of each person; either naming his parents expressly, or his ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... and were soon fast asleep. They rose at the usual hour the following morning, and while they were having breakfast angry and excited voices were heard alongside; and as they eagerly listened to the picturesque flow of profane language intermixed with a few eloquent remarks to God to forgive such irreverence, their minds were permeated with fear lest suspicion would fall on them during the paroxysm of alternate rage and godliness. Plunker was a powerful man, and when his anger was roused they knew by experience it was not safe to interject a word either ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... myself indeed see no reason why vulgar superstitions and absurd conceptions that deform the pure faith of a Christian 220 should possess a greater immunity from ridicule than stories of witches, or the fables of Greece and Rome. But there are those who deem it profaneness and irreverence to call an ape an ape, if it but wear a monk's cowl on its head; and I would rather reason with this weakness than offend ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... that I might be impressed by the sound as well as by the knowledge o' th' fact—"for," saith I, a-hammering away on a shoe for Joe Pebbles's brown nag King Edward (though I had often reasoned with Joe on account o' th' name, first because o' its irreverence, second on account o' th' horse not being that kind o' a horse, as 'twas a mare)—"for," saith I, as I made th' shoe, saith I, "'tis sure a great wickedness to steal a lass's sweetheart away from her!" saith I. And so 'twas; but, for all I could do, I ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... of course Berenger could not love, but the rigid bareness, and, as he thought, irreverence of the Calvinist, and the want of all forms, jarred upon one used to a ritual which retained much of the ancient form. In the early years of Elizabeth, every possible diversity prevailed in parish churches, according ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had been, from the first, altered and Italianized by Mr. and Mrs. Blyth, and by all intimate friends, into "Madonna." One or two extremely strict and extremely foolish people objected to any such familiar application of this name, as being open, in certain directions, to an imputation of irreverence. Mr. Blyth was not generally very quick at an answer; but, on this occasion, he had three answers ready before the objections were quite out of ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... known how Luther was scandalized by the irreverence with which the priests in Rome said Mass. And at the same time the feasts of the Church were celebrated with a taste and magnificence of which Northern countries had no conception. It looks as if this most imaginative of nations was easily tempted to neglect everyday ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... twinkling: No sooner our friend had got an inkling Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible, (Whene'er 'twas the thought first struck him, How death, at unawares, might duck him Deeper than the grave, and quench The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench) Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence, As to hug the book of books to pieces: And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance, Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases, Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see equipt yours,— So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures. And you picked ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... called 'the Lamb's book.' That is of a piece with the whole relation of the New to the Old, and of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word and Manifestor of God, to the Jehovah revealed in former ages. For, unconditionally, and without thought of irreverence or idolatry, the New Testament lifts over and confers upon Jesus Christ the attributes which the Old jealously preserved as belonging only to Jehovah. And thus Christ the Manifestor of God, and the Mediator to us of all divine powers and blessings, takes the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... punt back, whereat the Boers concealed in the kopjes opened a brisk fire at long range on the naked figures, but did not hit anyone nor prevent them all from bringing the punt safely to our side: a dashing exploit, of which their regiment—the 'Cockyolibirds,' as the army, with its customary irreverence, calls us on account of the cock's feather cockades we wear in our hats ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... carefully enveloping his own violin in the paper, took the old wife of the soutar, and proceeded to perform upon her a trick which in a merry moment his master had taught him, and which, not without some feeling of irreverence, he had occasionally practised upon his own ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... "Irreverence for pervading custom," went on Bob, "is shown by certain men when they smoke, with no word of apology, in a lady's reception-room, or track mud in on their boots, as if it was a country club. Some people enjoy ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... Salvation herself)—Ver. 535. This was a proverbial expression among the Romans. "Salus," "Safety" or "Salvation," was worshipped as a Goddess at Rome. It is well observed, in Thornton's translation, that the word "Salus" may, without irreverence, be translated "Salvation," on no less authority than that of Archbishop Tillotson. "If," says he, "men will continue in their sins, the redemption brought by Christ will be of no advantage to them; such as obstinately persist in an impenitent ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... nothing akin to desolation; the heart of the land I love seems to beat in the silent night gathering around me; amid things eternal, I touch the familiar and the kindly earth. Moving, I step softly, as though my footfall were an irreverence. A turn in the road, and there is wafted to me a faint perfume, that of meadow-sweet. Then I see a light glimmering in the farmhouse window—a little ray against the blackness of the great hillside, below which the water sleeps. ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... and went to Mary's head like wine. This seemed a miracle, performed for her. Unconscious of irreverence, she thought that surely the saints had worked this wonder. She forgot that, because she won, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... was only preserved from complete collapse by remembering that it was not irreverence, but simply spiritual ignorance on the part of Anne that was responsible for this extraordinary petition. She tucked the child up in bed, mentally vowing that she should be taught a prayer the very next day, and was leaving the room with the light when ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... our own engagement, and disregard of an obligation directly imposed of God. St. Peter recognizes this distinction when he said to Annanias, Thou hast not lied unto men but unto God. All lying is sinful, but lying to God is a higher crime than lying to men. There is greater irreverence and contempt of the divine presence and authority, and a violation of an obligation of a higher order. Every man feels that the marriage vows have a sacred character which could not belong to them, if marriage was merely a civil contract. In like manner the divine institution ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the tricks and devices of civilization are known to him; all artifices and contrivances he sees in shop-windows; the street, the theatre, the newspaper are the rivals of the home, and they quickly teach him irreverence and disobedience. He loses innocence, experience of evil gives him flippant views. He becomes wise in his own conceit; having eyes only for the surfaces of things, he easily persuades himself that he knows all. Of such a youth how shall any college make an ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... say you don't know that?" responded the Philosopher, scandalised at the irreverence of the insects, but inwardly rejoicing at the prospect of a controversy in which ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... played "medicine dance." This, to us, was almost what "playing church" is among white children, but our people seemed to think it an act of irreverence to imitate these dances, therefore performances of this kind were always enjoyed in secret. We used to observe all the important ceremonies and it required something of an actor to reproduce the dramatic ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... whom he cannot change or influence, an outcast of the streets, a boy whom the mere animal appetites have turned into a small fiend. Never having had his mind awakened, evil is this creature's good; avarice, irreverence, and vindictiveness, are his nature; sorrow has no place in his memory; and from his brutish propensities the philosopher can take nothing away. The juxtaposition of two people whom such opposite means have put in the same moral ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... book, and returned to Philadelphia. Full of the day, I told my policeman at the ferry that I had seen Walt. "That old gas-bag comes here every afternoon. He gets free rides across the Delaware," and I rejoiced to think that a soulless corporation had some appreciation of a great poet, though the irreverence of this "powerful uneducated person" shocked me. When I reached home I also told my mother of my visit. She was plainly disturbed. She said that the writings of the man were immoral, but she was pleased at my report ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Cal!" remarked the hostess as she softly dropped her eyelids and smiled reprovingly; "this irreverence comes of visiting Miss Agnes Wilt too often. I must take you ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... irreverence of his tender years, however, Matt Peasley scorned this well-meant advice, notwithstanding the fact that he knew it to be sound, for by shipping as second mate and remaining in the same ship, sooner or later his chance ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... was an engraving which had adorned the nursery in my youth, and had been a never-failing source of curiosity to me. It was Gustave Dore's "Christian Martyrs," and I had once been deprived of pudding at the nursery dinner, because I had remarked (with irreverence wholly unintentional) that one of the lions seemed ill, and anxious to "climb up the wall and get away from the nasty martyrs." Thus it is that children are misunderstood by their elders! and now, as I gazed at the same picture on the monastery wall, I felt again all the old, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... portraits, which they regarded with insular irreverence (what were French knights and dames to them?), then without awe spread the contents of their wallets on the board, and feasted ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... to be one of a shining literary clique of extraordinary cheapness which had just then begun to be formed. The taint of a flippant wit was common to all its members, and their assurance was unbounded. They undertook to extinguish anybody with a few fine phrases; and, in their conceited irreverence, they even attacked eternal principles, the sources of the best inspiration of all ages, and pronounced sentence upon them. Repute of a kind they gained, but it was by glib falsifications of all that is noble in sentiment, thought, and action, all that is good and true. It was the contraction ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... many fruits excellently fitted for the support of life might not subserve that purpose? And as those creatures might conceive (as we know) that some fruits, even many, fail to come to the full perfection of fruit life, may not we without irreverence conceive (as higher beings than ourselves may know) that a planet or a sun may fail in the making? We cannot say that in such a case there would be a waste or loss of material, though we may be unable to conceive how the lost sun or planet could ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... Jesus Christ, who has said to her: "He that heareth you heareth Me; he that despiseth you despiseth Me." She is the Mistress of truth. It is the property of the human mind to embrace truth wherever it finds it. It would, therefore, be not only an act of irreverence, but of sheer folly, to disobey the voice of this ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... had agreed that as Harold was under the regular age for Confirmation, and seemed so little disposed to prepare for it in earnest, they would not press it on him. He was far from fit for it, and he was in such a mood of impatient irreverence, that Mr. Cope was afraid of making his sin worse by forcing serious things on him, and his mother was in constant fear of losing her last hold ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had fallen like dew upon us—and passed forth between the tall stone gate-posts, as uncertain as the wandering Arabs where our tent might next be pitched. Providence took me by the hand, and—an oddity of dispensation which, I trust, there is no irreverence in smiling at—has led me, as the newspapers announce while I am writing, from the old Manse into a Custom House! As a story-teller, I have often contrived strange vicissitudes for my imaginary personages, but none like this. The treasure of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... respect for her, as was manifest from their habit of referring to her in private as "Mother Schwellenposch!" Edna, who was scarcely more beloved, was known as "Princess Four-eyes," in allusion to her pince-nez. Daphne found it hard at times to refrain from joining them in this irreverence, but, while she saw the Queen's and Edna's weak points as clearly as her companions—and indeed more clearly than any of them—her sense of loyalty kept her silent. She might laugh when she was alone, and ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... which the individual man knows or believes; but it does take cognizance of all the fitnesses which he knows or believes. Virtue may coexist with a very low standard of emotional piety; but it cannot coexist, in one who believes the truths of religion, with blasphemy, irreverence, or the conscious violation or neglect of religious obligations. He who is willingly false to his relations with the Supreme Being, needs only adequate temptation to make him false to his human relations, and to the fitnesses of his daily life. Moreover, while, as ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... anger on our soul? A. Anger begets in our souls impatience, hatred, irreverence, and too ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 3 (of 4) • Anonymous
... earth are you driving at?" I asked in a passion. I put my hat on my head (he never offered a seat to anybody), and as he seemed for the moment struck dumb by my irreverence, I turned my back on him and marched out. His vocal arrangements blared after me a few threats of coming down on the ship for the demurrage of the lighters, and all the other expenses consequent upon the delays arising ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... shines forth in Uprightness, says that reverence is part of that beauty; and thus as this reverence is the beauty of Uprightness, so its opposite is baseness and want of uprightness; which opposite quality it is possible to term irreverence, or rather as impudent boldness, in ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... from any frivolity or irreverence, but because the music, which sounds so grandly impressive here in the Sistine Chapel, strikes one as a mere confusion of discordant notes ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... they seem to have no stamina; they fall ill when all others are well, as if afflicted with a species of paralysis that affects body, mind, and moral sense at once. If the phrase may be used without irreverence, there is no health in them. The slightest difficulty is sufficient to send an apparently strong, hale man whining to the workhouse. He localises his complaint in his foot, or his arm, or his shoulder; but, in truth, he does not know himself what is the matter with him. The real illness ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... experience with them, these traits have been characteristic of those I have met. But it is not my lack of reverence that I intended to write about, it is the contradictory way in which those who are under their charge view this matter. The practical, effective and active irreverence of professing Christians astonishes as much as it puzzles me. They believe, or assume to believe, in the sacredness of the ministry and in the reverence due ministers as such; how do they show it? It seems to me that the architectural custom of elevating the pulpit above ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... miracle that I fell not into fits at the reading of it; and at the thought of what might have been the consequence, had it come into the hands of this Clarissa Harlowe. Let my justly-excited rage excuse my irreverence. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... combined in Genesis, each with its own characteristics. He, too, had to pay a price for letting more light upon the world. A determined attempt was made to punish him. Though deeply religious in his nature and aspirations, he was denounced in 1865 to the Prussian Government as guilty of irreverence; but, to the credit of his noble and true colleagues who trod in the more orthodox paths—men like Tholuck and Julius Muller—the theological faculty of the University of Halle protested against this persecuting effort, and it was brought ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... person is confined in a sort of box without a lid; the silent clubs, in which some write while others read the papers, and only interrupt themselves to make a sign of "good evening" with the hand—all that sort of thing constitutes an existence which the French have the irreverence to call selfish. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... of re-awakening courage in his followers; rather, indeed, of growing terror at the irreverence ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Trixie, shocked at this irreverence; 'it's David's—Michael Angelo's David!' He gave her Mabel's note. 'I can't write back because my hands are all charcoaly,' she explained; 'but you can say, "My love, and I will if I possibly can;" and, oh yes, tell her I had a ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... get attitude of distrust towards authority, which undermines the foundations of faith and prepares the mind to break away from control, to pass from instinctive opposition to antagonism, from antagonism to contempt, from contempt to rebellion and revolt. Arrogance of mind, irreverence, self-idolatry, blindness, follow in their course, and the whole nature loses its balance and becomes through ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... your matter out, here and there, "with solemn specious nonsense about something unconnected with the story." No "padding" for Miss Austen! in fact, madam, as you were born before Analysis came in, or Passion, or Realism, or Naturalism, or Irreverence, or Religious Open-mindedness, you really cannot hope to rival your literary sisters in the minds of a perplexed generation. Your heroines are not passionate, we do not see their red wet cheeks, and tresses dishevelled ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... heathenism enthroned in the Roman Empire and throughout the world form a bright chapter in the annals of historic deeds and supreme loyalty to lofty ideals. When we view the subject from this angle, it would almost seem to be an act of irreverence or of sacrilege to call in question the doctrines and practises of that period when the church was baptized by fire and waded through rivers of blood. Reverence for the martyrs and for their noble efforts to extend the cause of Christ ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... his surprise that the twelve judges had not long since decided this state of things to be unconstitutional, and overturned the American government by mandamus. His disgust increased, accordingly, as Captain Truck's irreverence manifested itself in stronger terms, and there was great danger that the harmony, which had hitherto prevailed between the parties, would be brought to ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... idea that had entered my head to publish an account of this curious and very sorrowful exodus, but said also that I could not describe it truthfully, and just as it occurred, without seeming to trifle with a grave subject and exhibit an irreverence for the dead that would shock and distress their surviving friends. But this bland and stately remnant of a former citizen leaned him far over my gate and whispered in my ear, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... scarcely possible to describe the scene without a certain mixture of the ludicrous, no feeling of irreverence crossed my mind at the time. On the contrary, my sympathies were greatly drawn out towards these our poor fellow-creatures; and there was something most instructive in the sight of them there assembled to enjoy those highest blessings—blessings of which no man could rob them. Religion seemed to ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... half sincere in its enthusiasm—and knew it. If the crowd had been composed of Americans, we should have anticipated an unhappy time for Smith; but good, loyal Canadians, by the limitations of temperament, could get no further than a spirit of manifest irreverence. ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... waggery about the future name of Ford House, and the bolder spirits offered shilling bets that it would be rechristened "Josephine Lodge" before the year was out. But save this not very scorching satire, which also was not too well received by the majority, as savoring of irreverence to consecrated powers, the country looked on in supreme good-humor, and the day came in its course, finding as much social serenity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... intend to go thither again with S——-, I did not accompany them, but went away the quicker that one of the gentlemen put on his hat, and I was ashamed of being seen in company with a man who could wear his hat in a cathedral. Not that he meant any irreverence; but simply felt that he was in a great public building,—as big, nearly, as all out of doors,—and so forgot that it was a consecrated place of worship. The sky is the dome of a greater cathedral than St. Paul's, and built by a greater architect than Sir Christopher Wren, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... from the similar scene in Job is its irreverence. Indeed one might almost call it flippancy, and few would deny that at times this flippancy is painful to them. The only excuse that I can find for it is that, rightly or wrongly, Goethe meant us to be pained. I believe that here Mephistopheles represents especially that element ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... longing for ignoble things; The strife for triumph more than truth; The hardening of the heart, that brings Irreverence for ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... excuse for the Father, that is, in giving his cats the names of some of the most respected and venerated saints among the Franciscans; going so far, indeed, as to bestow upon his finest cat the name of Saint Francis himself, the founder of the order. It is difficult to conceive of such irreverence in a priest, himself a member of that great order in the Catholic Church; and it is this, if anything, which would show a weakness of the mind. But even here, let us say, not as excuse, but in mitigation of his ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... believe you in error. It would be infinitely worse to have known you a hypocrite.' She dropped her voice at the last few words, as if entertaining the idea of hypocrisy for a moment in connection with her father savoured of irreverence. ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... certainly not of the Church's style, but I do not think, were there no absolute irreverence and scandal to be feared, that she would hesitate to use such a language, were it the only one understood by such a people. St. Francis Xavier's "catechisms" were often hardly less uncouth. Still, her whole tendency would be towards restraint, order, and exterior reverence. ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... sentence of Quintilian, perhaps the noblest praise ever accorded to an artist by a critic: "The beauty of the statue even made some addition to the received religion; the majesty of the work was equal to the god." We might indeed, without irreverence, impute to Phidias the words uttered in a very different sense by one who later gave a new and higher interpretation to a formula of "the received religion" in Greece: "Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... said to have made on very sacred subjects— remarks which most people would recognise as irreverent, if made by grown-up people, but which are assumed to be innocent when made by children who are unconscious of any irreverence, the strange conclusion being drawn that they are therefore innocent when ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... the Babe of Bethlehem reveal in their writers a certain childlikeness, an insouciance without irreverence, the spirit indeed of a child which turns to its God quite simply and naturally, which makes Him after its own child-image, and sees Him as a friend who can be pleased with trifles—almost, in fact, as a glorious playmate. ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... a Syrian take up new politics, join the Young Turk Party, forswear religion, or grow cynical about accepted doctrine, and the angle of his tarboosh shows it, just as surely as the angle of the London Cockney's "bowler" betrays irreverence and the New York gangster's "lid" expresses ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... population of New England is still, happily for itself, tinctured in all its language, habits, modes of feeling and thought, by a strict Scriptural training—"Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh." Look below the surface and you will see that there is no irreverence whatever beneath Hosea Biglow's daring use of Scripture; only that "perfect love which casteth out fear;" that the very purpose of the whole book is to set up Christ's Gospel as the standard by which alone all men are to be judged in all their acts. We may disagree from him in ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... behalf of the Sweet Primal Truth to awaken from the sleep of negligence and selfish love of yourselves, and to offer humble and continual prayers, with many vigils, and with knowledge of yourselves, because the world is perishing through the crowding multitude of iniquities, and the irreverence shown to the sweet Bride of Christ. Well, then, let us give honour to God, and our toils to our neighbour. Ah, me, do not be willing, you or the other servants of God, that our life should end otherwise than in mourning and in sighs, for ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... Author of nature, formally and in words renounce their allegiance to their Creator. Put an instance, then, with respect to any one of these three. Though we should suppose profane swearing, and in general that kind of impiety now mentioned, to mean nothing, yet it implies wanton disregard and irreverence towards an infinite Being our Creator; and is this as suitable to the nature of man as reverence and dutiful submission of heart towards that Almighty Being? Or suppose a man guilty of parricide, with all the circumstances of cruelty which such an action can admit ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... in virtues, study, and birth. With respect to children and conduct, this other resembles the intelligent Sarmin. Do thou bring the individual I have in view. He should be worshipped with respect (instead of being dragged hither with irreverence).' The messenger having come to the place, did the very reverse of what he had been bidden to do. Attacking that person, he brought him who had been forbidden by Yama to be brought. Possessed of great energy, Yama rose up at the sight of the Brahmana and worshipped him duly. The king of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... hoax made an instant sensation; it was denounced for its scandalous irreverence by the members of the Historical Society, especially by those who had Dutch ancestors, but was received with roars of laughter by the rest of the population. Those who read it now (from curiosity, for its merriment has long since departed, leaving it dull as any thrice-repeated ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... meant no irreverence but a vast derogation of Shad Wells. Somehow her point of view ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... to treat so noble a work as the Flying Dutchman with any irreverence; but if it is worth understanding Wagner's art, and the slow processes of its transition from the baldness and ultra-conventionality of Rienzi to the richness and simplicity and directness of Tristan, we must realize clearly that in its present stage the craftsmanship was little ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... metropolis of the district; it flamed with gin-palaces; a multitude were sauntering in the mild though tainted air; bargaining, blaspheming, drinking, wrangling: and varying their business and their potations, their fierce strife and their impious irreverence, with flashes of rich humour, gleams of native wit, and ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... practical uses, which it would be silly to ignore. Why, then, be angry? The truly wise man, as Dominic told himself with a somewhat mournful smile, learns to leave such time-wise fools as Sir Abel Barking to Almighty God for chastisement, because—if it can be said without irreverence—the Almighty alone has wit enough to deal with them. And, for his comfort on lower levels, he reminded himself that though the house of Barking might show him scant gratitude, and attribute its financial resurrection to its own inherent ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... out, and said she didn't think the wit meant any irreverence. It was only another way of saying, Paris is a heavenly place after New York ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... slight irreverence, Too small, I hope, to waste your blame on, We grew, in quite a Cambridge sense, A sort of PYTHIAS and DAMON. Together "kept," together broke Laws framed by elderly Draconians, And I was six, and JACK was stroke, That famous night we bumped ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... papa—you must not—you must not, indeed. Do you know this irreverence in speaking of the members of so sacred a profession is not at all what ought to be done. Don't Edgar. Dear papa, I may be foolish, but I do so ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... long duration, not dangerous, yet not at all, or very slightly, benefited by ordinary medicines. In such cases, of course, there is not room for the display of an imaginary agency:—"For," as Crabbe says,—and I hope your medical readers will pardon the irreverence— ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... veneration, reverence, deference, homage; probity, integrity, magnanimity, uprightness, chastity, decency, virtue, modesty; eminence, distinction, fame; glory, excellency, pride. Antonyms: dishonor, disesteem, irreverence, improbity, disrepute, reproach. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... in an atmosphere of truth—Adrian Reland, professor at the University of Utrecht. His work on Palestine is a monument of patient scholarship, having as its nucleus a love of truth as truth: there is no irreverence in him, but he quietly brushes away a great mass of myths and legends: as to the statue of Lot's wife, he treats it warily, but applies the comparative method to it with killing effect, by showing that the story of its miraculous renewal is but one ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... committee was dead. O, friends, this is not irreverence. It is joyful reverence. It is the message to all of us, Go on south to the greater things, and get so enthused and absorbed in our going that we'll ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... are no longer to be kept in darkness and ignorance respecting these matters:' and then they would produce their books and read paragraphs, making such comments that every person was scandalized; they cared nothing about the Pope, and even spoke with irreverence of the bones of Saint James. However, the matter was soon bruited about, and a commission was dispatched from our see to collect the books and burn them. This was effected, and the skippers were either punished or reprimanded, since which I have heard nothing more of ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... so sway his enraptured flock, mangles the Holy Scriptures with a fine irreverence, and pours forth his doctrine with an entirely self-satisfied indifference to reason and common sense. Nor has love accomplished its perfect work, for the interloper who stands at the entry is eyed with inquisitorial glances of pious exclusiveness—how has a Gallio such as he ventured to take ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... century a woman by the name of Lady Morgan, who was the author of several novels and books of travel. Although her record in intelligence and morals is good, John Croker, who regularly reviewed her books, accuses her works of licentiousness, profligacy, irreverence, blasphemy, libertinism, disloyalty and atheism. There are twenty-six pages of this in one review only, and any paragraph would be worth the quoting for its ferocity. After this attack it was Macaulay who said he hated Croker ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... Ruskin's illness his cousin, Mrs. Arthur Severn, has become more and more indispensable to him: she sits at the head of the table and calls him "the coz." An eminent visitor was once put greatly out of countenance by this apparent irreverence. After obvious embarrassment, light dawned upon him towards the close of the meal. "Oh!" said he, "it's 'the coz' you call Mr. Ruskin. I thought you ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... what is called love except as a word, and from sympathy with the persons in the tales she read. Any remotest suggestion of its existence in her relation to Godfrey she would have resented as the most offensive impertinence—an accusation of impossible irreverence. ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... commanders would have hesitated to do. He invaded the territory of a neutral state on the plea of self-defence. In his conversation he used expletives not considered in good taste, and which might be called swearing, without meaning any irreverence to the Deity, although in later life he seldom used any other oath than ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... deep reverie, lasting sometimes for hours. And although he contracted two marriages afterward, they were simply marriages of convenience, to which, after their termination, he frequently referred flippantly, sometimes with irreverence, ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... ethical lesson of 'The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg'. Anyone may pay the tribute of irresistible explosions of laughter to the horse-play of 'Roughing It', the colossal extravagance of 'The Innocents Abroad', the irreverence and iconoclasm of that Yankee intruder into the hallowed confines of Camelot. All may rejoice in the spontaneity and refreshment of truth; spiritually co-operate in forthright condemnation of fraud, ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... slowly absorbed the fact that, somehow or another, the Priest Captain had made a fool of him with a miracle that was not really a miracle at all, his choler rose in a manner most favorable to our purposes. Yet this very feeling of resentful anger—showing a growing irreverence of one to whom all the traditions of his people gave reverence second only to that due to the gods themselves—was startling evidence of the menace that our presence was to the theocratic ruler's temporal and spiritual power. Therefore it was with a keen curiosity that ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... His journey coincided with the year of the jubilee; but he passed through Italy without desiring, or deserving, the plenary indulgence which abolished the guilt or penance of the sins of the faithful. The Roman pope was offended by this neglect; accused him of irreverence to an image of Christ; and exhorted the princes of Italy to reject and abandon the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... seem to, at all," Fran responded mildly. "No, I'm not making fun of education when I find fault with your school, any more than I show irreverence to my mother's God when I question what some people call 'religion'. I want to find the connection—looks like it's lost—the connection between life and—everything else. It's the connection to life that makes facts of any value to me; and it's only in its connection to ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... free-thinker Boutraix proposes that they shall equip themselves from these with costumes not unsuitable to the knight, squire, and page of the legend, and they do so, Bascara refusing to take part in the game, and protesting strongly against their irreverence. At last midnight comes, and they cry, "Where is Ines de las Sierras?" lifting their glasses to her health. Suddenly there sounds from the dark end of the great hall the fateful "Here am I!" and there comes forward a figure in a white shroud, which ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... help being severe when one hears irreverence poured forth from reverend lips? I do not mean merely irreverence for the Catholic Creeds; that to my mind-God forgive me if I misjudge him- seemed to me only one fruit of a deep root of irreverence ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... of the Holy Ghost" had been pronounced, Malling settled himself to listen. He felt tensely interested. Both Mr. Harding and Chichester were now before him, the one as performer—he used the word mentally, with no thought of irreverence—the other as audience. He could study both as he wished to study them ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Carlyle's writings, if I am correct in my estimate of them, will afford a very sufficient answer to those who think that the scientific habit of mind tends to irreverence. ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... mistake is often made of thinking that habits can be formed only by "taking thought." It is true that some of the finest habits of life are built into character with painstaking effort, but untidiness and selfishness and irreverence and all their kin reach fullest unfolding in the thoughtless outflow of activity, when no ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... described as an intellectual and moral revolution. Every such revolution means some liberation of the intellect from bondage, and shows itself first of all in a temper of irreverence; the formulas of the old faith are no longer treated with respect and presently they are even ridiculed. It is useless to close our eyes to the fact that a spirit of this kind is at work amongst us, undermining the dignity and authority of objects and opinions and men that seemed half a century ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... whose mind was not unpoetical, has done his utmost, by interesting his reader in our native commodity by interspersing rural imagery, and incidental digressions, by clothing small images in great words, and by all the writer's arts of delusion, the meanness naturally adhering, and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and manufacture, sink him under insuperable oppression; and the disgust which blank verse, encumbering and encumbered, superadds to an unpleasing subject, soon repels the reader, however willing ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... what he had noticed, and said: "The first man had but two sons, and one slew the other; this man Noah has three sons, yet he desires to beget a fourth besides." Nor did Ham rest satisfied with these disrespectful words against his father. He added to this sin of irreverence the still greater outrage of attempting to perform an operation upon his father designed ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... just, and it is my duty to be so. This mark of irreverence towards the Queen is the only one for which Mademoiselle de la Valliere can be blamed; but she would never have done such a thing of her own accord; it was all the fault of the Marquise, blinded as she ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of a gorgeous spectacle, the joy of making a Sunday of a weekday, dominated every other feeling. As the procession passed along the boulevards, the spectators on the balconies almost applauded; here, in the populous quarters, irreverence manifested itself even more frankly. Coarse chaff, vulgar comments on the dead man and his doings, with which all Paris was familiar, laughter called forth by the broad-brimmed hats of the rabbis and the solemn "mugs" of the council ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... every subsequent utterance confirmed. It was an impression which did away with all remorse for my treacherous presence at his table. He was that terrible type, the Silly Cynic, his aim a caustic commentary on all things and all men, his achievement mere vulgar irreverence and unintelligent scorn. Ill-bred and ill-informed, he had (on his own showing) fluked into fortune on a rise in land; yet cunning he possessed, as well as malice, and he chuckled till he choked over the misfortunes of less astute speculators in the same ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... letter, written by the earl of Essex, just before his execution, to another nobleman, a passage somewhat resembling this, with which, I believe every reader will be pleased, though it is so serious and solemn that it can scarcely be inserted without irreverence. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... this thought seemed to cast upon the priesthood made him pause. He had not yet shaken off the dominion of old ideas and old habits. He apologized to an unseen censor for the apparent irreverence of his thought. It was not the priesthood, it was—He came again to a standstill. He was not prepared to own to himself that he disapproved of the Father Superior. He had vowed obedience, and here he sat raging against a decree because it sacrificed ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... close to its immediate and visible embodiments. From afar, you might trace the divine agency on its way. But to touch, to handle it, with these fleshly hands:—well! for Monseigneur, that was by no means to believe because the thing was "incredible, or absurd." He had smiled, not certainly from irreverence, nor (a prelate for half his life) in conscious incredulity, but only in mute surprise, at an administration of divine graces—this administration in which he was a high priest—in itself, to his quite ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... date you every line in Shakespeare on internal evidence and then obligingly pronounce Sir Arthur Conan Doyle our greatest living writer. He will need the intelligence, the first-hand views, the open mind, the genuine taste for books, the respect for art and irreverence for persons of Mr. Bennett himself; and, as I have hinted, he will need one or two qualities for which Mr. Bennett is not so well off. He must be a resolute critic of literature and not an authority on current reputations; he must have enough natural taste to ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... not involve that flippant irreverence for the past that so often is associated with it. It offers no encouragement to the chase after vagaries in which so many moderns indulge, as though all that is old were belated and all that is novel were true. The idea of progress has led more than one eager mind to think that ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... which has been dreamed by such wise and good men, may, for aught we know, or you know, have been a sort of vision—a vision foreshadowing forthcoming natural events in a clear intelligence: a vision—I say it without irreverence, for the event concerns the lives of millions living, and yet to come—resembling those seen by the Daniels and Josephs of old, foreshadowing the trials of the future, the fate of tribes and peoples, the rise and fall of dynasties. But the immediate history of the ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... hurt challenge in his eyes for irreverence and incredulity and even perhaps good-natured jeers, but Garry, sensing something big and unfamiliar, held out his hand. Kenny wrung it ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple |
