"Atheism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when proceedings against him were depending, with a bill against atheism and profaneness, he was at Chatsworth, and appeared extremely disturbed at the news of it, fearing the messengers would come for him, and the earl of Devonshire would deliver him up, the two houses of Parliament commit him to the bishops, and they decree him a heretic. This terror upon his ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... to receive certain truths. I hoped that people would learn by degrees, in the school of events, that it is not enough always to be reckoning with the figures "revolution," "secret societies," "Mazzinism," "Atheism," or to estimate things only by the standard supplied by the "Jew of Verona," but that other factors must be admitted into the calculation; for instance, the condition of the Italian clergy, and its position towards the laity, I wished, therefore, to ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... impose on them terms so destructive to their national consequence, as the durance they have imposed on themselves. Our present clanger is that of being led, from admiration, to imitate the excesses of a people whose government is anarchy, and whose religion is atheism." Burke expressed his concern at hearing this strange thing called a revolution in France, compared with the glorious event called the revolution in England. He instituted a parallel between the two, and showed how widely they differed from each other, and how Great Britain ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... displayed the interference of God, in thus making the former enemies of his worship pay homage to his ministers, after a long reign of atheism and persecution. ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... of the reasons for thinking that, with the material, there must be something spiritual in environment, that if the woof is material the warp is God. Here we need not delay long. Blank atheism seems to be at present unpopular and generally regarded as unscientific. The so-called philosophic materialism of the present day seems to be in general far nearer to pantheism than to the old form of materialism which recognized only atoms and mechanism. Atheism as a power to ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... suffering, that impotent pain,—the human debris of the social process,—which is a challenge to the power of God, and a cry to the heart of man that broods over it in vain, yet cannot choose but hear. In this region the near affinity of realism to pessimism, to atheism, is plain enough; its necessary dealing with the base, the brutal, the unredeemed, the hopeless darkness of the infamies of heredity, criminal education, and successful malignity, eating into the being as well as controlling ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... borne good as well as evil fruit. While your siren eloquence has led some doubting Thomases into the barren desert of Atheism, you have driven others to seek a better reason for their religious faith than barbarous tradition and the vote of ecumenical councils. Bigotry has quailed beneath the ringing blows of your iconoclastic hammer, dogmatism become more ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... artificial about any such compromise. If Pericles was intimate with Anaxagoras, who was prosecuted for atheism, he was also the friend of Phidias, who expressly said that his Zeus was the Zeus of Homer, no mere abstract ideal of divinity. If this was the case with Pericles, who held himself aloof from the common people, it must have been much more ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... We rose and left Mrs. Delamere explaining to Thornton how darling Florence and dearest Beatrix were all that a fond and intellectual mother could desire. She was anxious to be thought to be trembling on the verge of atheism, to which position her highly-gifted intelligence quite entitled her; while, at the same time, her strong judgment and moral virtues enabled her to assist in supporting the orthodox faith. The younger Miss Delamere (Beatrix) was doing one of those curious pieces of ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... preaching hath very much occasioned the great decay of religion among us. To this may be imputed no small part of that contempt some men bestow on the clergy, for whoever talketh without being regarded is sure to be despised. To this we owe in a great measure the spreading of atheism and infidelity among us, for religion, like all other things, is soonest put out of countenance by being ridiculed. The scorn of preaching might perhaps have been at first introduced by men of nice ears and refined taste, but it is now become a spreading evil through all degrees and ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... sailed from Rochelle to the West Indies, and Caraccioli lost no opportunity of preaching to young Misson the gospel of atheism and communism, and with such success that the willing convert soon held views as extreme as those of his teacher. These two apostles now began to talk to the crew, and their views, particularly on the rights of private property, ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... the "Protagoras," translated by Benjamin Jowett. Protagoras, from whom this dialog gets its name, was one of the Greek sophists, born about 481 B.C., and exiled from Athens on a charge of atheism, his work entitled "On the Gods" being publicly burned. In the dialog, which took place in the house of Calias, a wealthy Athenian gentleman, besides Protagoras there were present other sophists, including Hippias, Prodicus, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... is the universal foundation of religions. By this appeal to a higher power Robespierre hoped to strengthen the State at home and abroad. In the latter purpose he succeeded; and the solemn renunciation of atheism impressed the world. It was very distinctly a step in the Conservative direction, for it promised religious liberty. There was to be no favour to churches, but also no persecution. Practically, the advantage was for the Christian part of the population, and irreligion, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... they were alike based on secondary issues. Cicero's unique and imperishable glory is not, as he thought himself, that of having put down the revolutionary movement of Catiline, nor, as later ages thought, that of having rivalled Demosthenes in the Second Philippic, or confuted atheism in the De Natura Deorum. It is that he created a language which remained for sixteen centuries that of the civilised world, and used that language to create a style which nineteen centuries have not replaced, and in some ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... the books of the college. It was long, however, before he returned to an Oxford where only the buildings were the same. Twenty years from this date an atheistic treatise might have been written with perfect impunity by any Fellow of any college. Nobody would even have read it if atheism had been its only recommendation. The wise indifference of the wise had relieved true religion from the paralysis of official patronage. But in 1849 the action of the Rector and Fellows was heartily ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... Eccarius, Liebknecht, and others might demolish, once and for all, the reactionary proposals of Bakounin. To Marx, much of the program of the Alliance seemed a remnant of eighteenth-century philosophy, while the rest was pure utopianism, consisting of unsound and impractical reforms, mixed with atheism and schoolboy declamation. Altogether, the policies and projects of Bakounin seemed so vulnerable that the General Council evidently felt that little preparation was necessary in order to defeat them. They seemed to have forgotten, for the moment, that Bakounin was an old and experienced ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... commanded himself internally to Heaven; for, though a wise and strong-minded man, he was neither wiser nor more strong-minded than those of his age and education, with whom, to disbelieve witchcraft or spectres, was held an undeniable proof of atheism. ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... a system we have long ago given our opinion. In its higher forms, "Shint[o] is simply a cultured and intellectual atheism; in its lower forms it is blind obedience to governmental and priestly dictates." "Shint[o]," says Mr. Ernest Satow, "as expounded by Motooeri is nothing more than an engine for reducing the people to a condition of mental slavery." Japan being a country of very striking ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... something far better," I replied. "It's a check from the Western company, and for the full amount, too." And, although I was fairly on the road to atheism, I exclaimed, with a thrill of genuine pity, "Oh, God has been good ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... importance attaches to that mild variety of anarchism which is commonly called laissez-faire, and which Matthew Arnold calls British Atheism or Quietism. The reader will recall ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... furtherance of those praise-worthy objects as in the Eastern States of America. I admit all this, and admit it with pleasure; for I know it to be a fact: I only regret to add that in no other country are such strenuous exertions so incessantly required to stem the torrent of atheism and infidelity, which so universally exists in this. Indeed this very zeal, so ardent on the part of the ministers, and so aided by the well-disposed of the laity, proves that what I have just now asserted is, unfortunately, but ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... reduced to a dogmatic chaos. By the application of the principle of private judgment, certain leaders began to call in question, not merely individual doctrines, but even the very foundations of Christianity, and, in a short time, Atheism and Naturalism were recognised as the hall-mark ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... was a little over one-and-twenty he began to be regarded as a leader. He became an adept in public speaking too, and the announcement that he was to be present at a meeting was almost sure to draw a crowd. He ceased attending any place of worship, and indeed the incipient atheism of his earlier years seemed to settle into a kind of general unbelief ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... position of a girl, married to a man for whom she feels nothing more than esteem. You prate of duty, and make it your rule and measure; but surely to take necessity as the spring of action is the moral theory of atheism? To follow the impulse of love and feeling is the secret law of every woman's heart. You are acting a man's part, and your Louis will have ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... doubt that the Christians suffered for these crimes whether or no they were guilty of them: "Three things are alleged against us: Atheism, Thyestean feasts, OEdipodean intercourse," says Athenagoras ("Apology," ch. iii). Justin Martyr refers to the same charges ("2nd Apology," ch. xii). "Monsters of wickedness, we are accused of observing a holy rite, in which we kill a little child and ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... without peril the views of those who held a different belief, and beheld in me, as it were, the embodiment of this opportunity, so she gave me no peace until I had explained the meaning of the words pantheism, atheism, materialism, etc. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... into atheism if newspapers dare to print such interviews,' Father Oliver said; and he threw the paper aside angrily. 'And it was I,' he continued, dropping into his armchair, 'that drove her into this atheistical country. I am responsible, ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... love the romantic solemnity of youth; and even in this form, although not without laughter, I have to love it still. They are such ducks! But what are they made of? We were just as solemn as that about atheism and the stars and humanity; but we were all for belief anyway—we held atheism and sociology (of which none of us, nor indeed anybody, knew anything) for a gospel and an iron rule of life; and it was lucky enough, or there would have been more ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ridiculous and idle discourses that are uttered out of pulpits. For when the Gallants of the world do observe how the Ministers themselves do jingle, quibble, and play the fool with the Texts: no wonder, if they, who are so inclinable to Atheism, do not only deride and despise the Priests; but droll upon the Bible! and make a mock of all that ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... Encyclopaedia, in which they saw a rising stronghold for their philosophical enemies. To any one who turns over the pages of these redoubtable volumes now, it seems surprising that their doctrine should have stirred such portentous alarm. There is no atheism, no overt attack on any of the cardinal mysteries of the faith, no direct denunciation even of the notorious abuses of the Church. Yet we feel that the atmosphere of the book may well have been displeasing to authorities who had not ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... themselves in his own words, trusting thereby to give the reader an opportunity of knowing who and what Spinoza really was. One man shrinks with horror from him as an Atheist. Voltaire says, that he was an Atheist, and taught Atheism. Another calls him "a God-intoxicated man." We present him a mighty thinker, a master mind, a noble, fearless utterer of free and noble thoughts, a hard-working, honest, independent man; as one who, two centuries ago, gave forth to the ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... said, "if I have been misguided by modern opinions—if I have unconsciously absorbed the doctrines of modern fashionable atheism—lead me right. Teach me what you know. I am willing to learn. Let me find out the reason of my life. SET ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... very different conclusion from any that Berkeley ever contemplated. In the very title of the Treatise in which his notions on this subject are unfolded, he professes his purpose to be to remove "the grounds of scepticism, atheism and irreligion." Berkeley was a sincere Christian, and a man of the most ingenuous dispositions. Pope, in the Epilogue to his Satires, does not hesitate to ascribe to him "every virtue under heaven." He was for twenty years a prelate of the Protestant church. ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... who will not have quite understood. The simplest of preachers must some day encounter the old lady who accosted, so it is said, a former Bishop of Chester, who, at great pains to be lucid, had unfolded the argument against the errors of atheism, with the words, "Well, my lord, I must say as I think there is a God after ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... held the Bible in the highest veneration. He wrote an able defense of the use of it as a school-book, and for many years was vice-president of the Philadelphia Bible Society, which he helped to establish, and the constitution of which he drafted. He held skepticism and atheism in the deepest abhorrence, and in his own life affords a powerful refutation of the assertion one hears so often, that profound medical knowledge is ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... that spirit of negation and revolt of which those wretched men make a boast and which they obstinately oppose to all religious sentiment, all principle of tradition or revealed authority. I mean the atheism and ceaseless mockery with which they invariably meet any generous impulse aroused in an honest ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... Tartary, or the Terra Australia, are to us. And therefore as we draw giants and anthropophagi in those vacancies of our maps, where we have not travelled to discover better; so those wretches paint lewdness, atheism, folly, ill-reasoning, and all manner of extravagancies amongst us, for want of understanding what we are. Oftentimes it so falls out, that they have a particular pique to some one amongst us, and then they immediately ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... like a man, you plough and barrow away nature's curse, and other fables of the schoolmen beside," added he, in that daring fashion which afterwards obtained for him (and never did good Christian less deserve it) the imputation of atheism. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... work of her own in verse: Le Miroir de l'Ame pecheresse. The Parlement formally forbade the scholars of the Universite to translate any of the sacred books in Hebrew or Greek into French, as being a work of heresy. In 1546, Etienne Dolet, the printer, was hanged and then burned, for impiety and atheism, on the Place Maubert where his statue now stands. There was even invented, for the benefit of the heretics, a refinement of cruelty on the ordinary horrors of the stake,—a pulley over the victim's head to which he was ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... discourses of people not so far off, we should have too much reason to fear, that many, in more civilized countries, have no very strong and clear impressions of a Deity upon their minds, and that the complaints of atheism made from the pulpit are not without reason. And though only some profligate wretches own it too barefacedly now; yet perhaps we should hear more than we do of it from others, did not the fear of the magistrate's sword, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... upon the South Yorkshire Miners"! And on the same day it was determined to get up a Soiree. This gathering, held in Gower Street, was memorable because it was attended by Mrs. Annie Besant, then notorious as an advocate of Atheism and Malthusianism, the heroine of several famous law cases, and a friend and colleague of Charles Bradlaugh. Mrs. Besant was elected a member a few weeks later, and she completed the list of the seven who subsequently wrote "Fabian Essays," ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... help to show his bright and sparkling disposition: At dinner with a large party of famous men and women, a French scientist annoyed all the rest by loudly arguing for atheism, and proclaimed his belief that there is no God. "Very good soup this," struck in Sydney Smith. "Yes, monsieur, it is excellent," replied the atheist. "Pray, sir," continued Smith, "do you believe in a cook?" The ounce of wit was worth ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... people. The Statue of the Holy Virgin of Liberty it will be called, and the Jesuits and priests can go a-begging. Meanwhile, the Patriarch will issue his allocutions, and the Jesuits, their pamphlets, against rationalism, atheism, masonry, and other supposed enemies of their Blessed Virgin, and point them out as enemies of Abd'ul-Hamid. 'Tis curious how the Sultan of the Ottomans can serve the cause of ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... would hardly stew a child; Has even been proved to grant a lover's prayer. And paid a tradesman once, to make him stare;... Now deep in Taylor and the Book of Martyrs, Now drinking citron with his Grace and Chartres; Now conscience chills her and now passion burns; And atheism and religion take their turns; A very heathen in the carnal part, Yet still a sad, good Christian at ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... which was to them arrayed with the force of a universal obligation,—the truth, which was to them religion, would have been, of course, in an age in which a single, narrow-minded, prejudiced Englishwoman's opinions were accepted as the ultimate rule of faith and practice, 'flat atheism.' What was with them loyalty to the supremacy of reason and conscience, would have been in their time madness and rebellion, and the majority would have started at it in amazement; and all men would have joined hands, in the name of ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Of defaming a Southern lady, while at the same time you were endeavoring to win her most attractive property and person from those who should naturally acquire them. Sixth: Of Agrarianism, Abolitionism, Atheism, and Infidelity. Prisoner at the Bar, your sentence is, that you be tarred and cottoned and leave the State. If you are caught again, you will be hung by the neck, and Henry Ward Beecher have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... not confute. Lewis the Fourteenth was now their chief support. His conscience had, from boyhood, been in their keeping; and he had learned from them to abhor Jansenism quite as much as he abhorred Protestantism, and very much more than he abhorred Atheism. Innocent the Eleventh, on the other hand, leaned to the Jansenist opinions. The consequence was, that the Society found itself in a situation never contemplated by its founder. The Jesuits were estranged from the Supreme ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have lent importance to that which was absurd, interest to that which was forbidding, light to that which was the essence of darkness. For atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumination except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... small clique of abject admirers. He is said to have condemned the Essay on Man when it first appeared. He called it a collection of the worst passages of the worst authors, and declared that it taught rank atheism. The appearance of Crousaz's book suddenly induced him to make a complete change of front. He declared that Pope spoke "truth uniformly throughout," and complimented him on his strong and ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... northern Buddhism makes much of it, and even though it may not go back to Sakya Muni himself, it is a development of germs latent in his teaching; and to my own mind there is no more wonderful conception in the great religions than that of Dharmakâya. If any one attacks our Buddhist friends for atheism, they have only to refer (if they can admit a synthesis of northern and southern doctrines) to the conception of Dharmakâya, of Him who is 'for ever Divine and Eternal,' who is 'the One, devoid of all determinations.' 'This Body of Dharma,' we are ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... was perplexed with 'unbelief, blasphemy, hardness of heart, questions about the being of God, Christ, the truth of the Word, and certainty of the world to come; I say, then I was greatly assaulted and tormented with' atheism; but now the case was otherwise, now was God and Christ continually before my face, though not in a way of comfort, but in a way of exceeding dread and terror. The glory of the holiness of God did at this time break me to pieces; and the bowels and compassion of Christ did break me ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... punishment whether they believed it or not.33 It is by such a course that error and superstition reign, that truckling conformity, intellectual disloyalty, moral indifference, vice, and infidelity, abound. It is practical atheism, debauchery of conscience, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... known productions of Paine's subsequent career, "The Rights of Man" and "The Age of Reason," were written in Europe, but they were read throughout America. The reputation of the "rebellious Staymaker" has suffered from certain grimy habits and from the ridiculous charge of atheism. He was no more an atheist than Franklin or Jefferson. In no sense an original thinker, he could impart to outworn shreds of deistic controversy and to shallow generalizations about democracy a personal ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... night. The heavens, the work of God's fingers, canopied them gloriously. The moon and the stars, which God had ordained beamed down upon them with serene lustre. As they were flippantly giving utterance to the arguments of atheism. Napoleon paced to and fro upon the deck, taking no part in the conversation, and apparently absorbed in his own thoughts. Suddenly he stopped before them and said, in those tones of dignity which ever overawed, "Gentlemen, your arguments are very fine. But who made all those ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... ribaldry, and by removing their character as far as possible from cowardice and effeminacy, even if that should make people get very near to audacity and foolhardiness. And some even make superstition a plea for atheism, and stupidity a plea for knavery, perverting their nature, like a stick bent double, from inability to set it straight. But the basest disowning of flattery is to be disagreeable without any purpose in view, and it shows an altogether inelegant and clumsy unfitness ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... that he might be preserved from atheism, impiety and profaneness; that he might be loyal to his prince; that he might be gracious to those below him; that he might refrain from calumny and detraction; that he might be sincere in friendship, just in his dealings, grateful to his benefactors, patient in affliction; that he might ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... tendencies" of the proposed education, to the perfervid minister who informed a denominational synod that Agassiz, the last great opponent of Darwin, and a devout theist, was "preaching Darwinism and atheism" in ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... less naught To leave gods in profession and in thought, Than in her love and life; for therein lies Most of her duties and their dignities; And, rail the brain-bald world at what it will, That's the grand atheism that reigns in it still. Yet singularity she would use no more, For she was singular too much before; But she would please the world with fair pretext; Love would not leave her conscience perplext: Great men that will have less do for them, still Must bear ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... hate, I shall take care to punish, because I may punish when I think proper. Therefore, connivance being an engine of private malice or private favor, not of good government,—an engine which totally fails of suppressing atheism, but oppresses conscience,—I say that principle becomes, not serviceable, but dangerous to Christianity; that it is not toleration, but contrary to it, even contrary to peace; that the penal system to which it belongs is a dangerous principle in the economy either of religion ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... her marriage; and the London world to which she had belonged pitied poor Fanny Evelyn when she married the young clergyman, and went to settle in that smoky hole Turley; a very nest of Chartism and Atheism, in a part of the country which all the decent families had had to leave for years. However, somehow or other she didn't seem to care. If her husband's living had been amongst green fields and near pleasant neighbours she would have liked it better—that she ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... first edition of the "Weltraetsel," my translation into German of Romanes' "Thoughts on Religion" should have appeared. From this book it was evident that Haeckel and his associates could no longer count this man among their number since he—a life-long seeker after truth—had abandoned atheism for theism, and died a believing Christian. Troeltsch and the "Reichsbote" asked whether Haeckel had purposely concealed this fact, and Schmidt now explains that Haeckel first became acquainted with the "Thoughts on Religion" through him towards the end of January, 1900. Unfortunately ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... is taken up with what may be described as the private papers of Euphues, consisting of letters, essays, and dialogues, including A Cooling Carde for all Fond Lovers, a treatise on education, and a refutation of atheism, and so amid the thunders of the artillery of platitude the ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... provoked my avowal of atheism. She asked if I wasn't going to stay out of school during Passover, and I said no. Wasn't I a Jew? she wanted to know. No, I wasn't; I was a Freethinker. What was that? I didn't believe in God. Rachel was horrified. Why, Kitty Maloney believed in God, and Kitty was only a Catholic! ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... Young men of the richer sort had made a pastime of the same pursuit, 'which was not unamusing.' And hence bitter enmities had arisen; the professors of knowledge had revenged themselves by calling him a villainous corrupter of youth, and by repeating the commonplaces about atheism and materialism and sophistry, which are the stock-accusations against all philosophers when there is nothing else ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... guess their secret ejaculations: "I am studying the Origin of Trade Guilds!" "I, the Reign of Louis the Twelfth!" "I, the Latin Dialects!" "I, the Civil Status of Women under Tiberius!" "I am elaborating a new translation of Horace!" "I am fulminating a seventh article, for the Gazette of Atheism and Anarchy, on the Russian Serfs!" And each one seems to add, "But what is thy business here, stripling? What canst thou write at thy age? Why troublest thou the peace of these hallowed precincts?" My business, sirs? Alas! it is the thesis for my doctor's degree. My uncle and venerated ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... has coming upon her daily the care of all the churches. Yet spite of this universal attention to the government, its laws are half asleep; and spite of the old women and their Dorcas societies, atheism ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... believe this lie. Above the State is the Eternal Rule of Right and Wrong: above the State is the Supreme Moral Governor of the Universe; yes, above the State is God. Let us proclaim this august verity though in France Atheism has been triumphant; in England Agnosticism is fashionable; in Lutheran Germany—worst of all—evil has been enthroned in the place of good, and "devils to adore for ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... peculiarly mission fields. It is remarkable how the modern city reproduces world conditions morally. The city is a sort of miniature of the world. All the varying moral conditions of the heathen world, atheism, savagery almost, crude heathenish superstition, degradation of woman, neglect of children, and untempered lust, may be found in New York and Chicago, in London and Paris, in Vienna and Berlin, and in varying degree in all cities ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... Whenever I took off his fur coat he tittered and asked me: "Stepan, are you married?" and then unseemly vulgarities followed—by way of showing me special attention. Kukushkin flattered Orlov's weaknesses, humoured his corrupted and blase ways; to please him he affected malicious raillery and atheism, in his company criticised persons before whom in other places he would slavishly grovel. When at supper they talked of love and women, he pretended to be a subtle and perverse voluptuary. As a rule, one may say, Petersburg rakes are fond of talking of their abnormal tastes. Some young ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... is grand, sublime and splendid in the universe; the other to all that is little, groveling[14] and dark. The one is the parent of the most pure and ardent piety; the genuine progeny of the other are impiety and atheism. And, in fine, the one confers on its votary the most sincere, permanent, and exalted delight; the other ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... man, whom we shall meet with yet) could, in the name of the Clergy, insist on having the Anti-protestant laws, which condemn to death for preaching, 'put in execution.' (Boissy d'Anglas, Vie de Malesherbes, i. 15-22.) And, alas, now not so much as Baron Holbach's Atheism can be burnt,—except as pipe-matches by the private speculative individual. Our Church stands haltered, dumb, like a dumb ox; lowing only for provender (of tithes); content if it can have that; or, dumbly, dully expecting its further doom. And the Twenty Millions of 'haggard faces;' ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody, and tyrannical democracy. On the side of religion, the danger of their example is no longer from intolerance, but from atheism: a foul, unnatural vice, foe to all the dignity and consolation of mankind; which seems in France, for a long time, to have been embodied into a faction, accredited, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... London. The music in St. Joseph's was allowed by connoisseurs, who knew their Elgar as well as their Goss, their Perosi as well as their Bach, and their Wesley, to be remarkable. Critical persons, mostly men, who sat on the fence between Orthodoxy and Atheism, thought highly of Mr. Harding's sermons, and even sometimes came down on his side. And, of all signs surely the most promising for a West End clergyman's success, smart people flocked to him to be married, and Arum lilies were perpetually being carried in and out of his chancel, which was adorned ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... began to grow lukewarm. When it became evident that the New Era was to end in bloodshed, instead of universal peace and good-will towards men,—that the Rights of Man included murder, confiscation, and atheism,—that the Sovereignty of the People meant the rule of King Mob, who seemed determined to carry out to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Roman Catholics entertain entirely different political ideals, but they agree upon this, that the modern Liberal State is not really neutral in religions matters, but is 'Modern Protestant,' and 'Modern' Protestantism spells atheism in their eyes; and both regard a weak and fragile Christian as a better citizen than the best atheist or agnostic. For this reason they are combined in hostility to the existing System of elementary education, which they suspect ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... peace and happiness for all. The emphasis on environment is insistent. Facts are marshaled, the news of the day is interpreted to show that men are determined by economic conditions. This fixation has brought down upon the socialists a torrent of abuse in which "atheism" and "materialism" are prevailing epithets. But the propaganda continues and the philosophy spreads, penetrating reform groups, ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... of that day differed from ours in the means, though not in the end. They at least referred to their Bibles, and rather more than was required; but superstition is as mad as atheism! Many of the puritans confused their brains with the study of the Revelations; believing Prince Henry to be prefigured in the Apocalypse, some prophesied that he should overthrow "the beast." Ball, our tailor, was this ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... denial of all religion. The American State is Christian, and under the Christian law, and is based upon Christian principles. It is bound to protect and enforce Christian morals and its laws, whether assailed by Mormonism, Spiritism, Freelovism, Pantheism, or Atheism. But the State does the contrary. For, I ask, is not the State indirectly prohibiting the profession of Christianity by establishing a system of education which prohibits all religious instruction? The State forbids ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... it very much to heart; he told me—he's a client of mine, a stupid idiot, who never reasoned a thing out in his life—he told me that 'not to believe in eternal damnation was to take a short cut to atheism.' He also confided to me that 'a church which could permit such a falling from the faith was in a diseased condition.' I don't believe that opinion has reached Ward, however. It would take more grit than Dean possesses ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... the Church; others who deny the divinity of Christ, without, however, separating themselves from the Protestant Church; others, again, who believe in God, but do not believe in any Church; others—and amongst these are many of the cleverest men—who openly profess atheism. In consequence of this state of things, the Catholic party has a natural ally in the Calvinists, who as fervent believers and inflexible conservers of the religion of their fathers, are much less widely separated from the Catholics than from a large party of those ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... man ever heard me speak of Christ or of His doctrines, but with the profoundest reverence. Still, I welcome upon this platform those who differ as far as possible from me. And the Atheist no more "drags" in his Atheism, provided he only shows that Atheism itself demands woman's equality, and is no more out of order than I, when I undertake to show that Christianity preaches one law, one faith, and one line of duty ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Scot, Hobbes, and Osborne. It was, in truth, a danger to religion that he was trying to ward off. One of the fundamentals of religion was at stake. The denial of witchcraft was a phase of prevalent atheism. Those that give up the belief in witches, give up that in the Devil, then that in the immortality of the soul.[18] The question at issue was the reality of the ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... system of society as variously modified throughout Europe, and the levelling principle of democracy. That principle is actively and indefatigably at work in these kingdoms, allying itself as occasion may serve with Popery or with Dissent, with atheism or with fanaticism, with profligacy or with hypocrisy, ready confederates, each having its own sinister views, but all acting to one straightforward end. Your rulers meantime seem to be trying that experiment with the British Constitution which Mithridates ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... one of the noblest and loveliest, or, as in the hands of superficial, unbelieving, time-serving artists, one of the most degraded. All that human genius, inspired by faith, could achieve of best, all that fanaticism, sensualism, atheism, could perpetrate of worst, do we find in the cycle of those representations which have been dedicated to the glory of the Virgin. And indeed the ethics of the Madonna worship, as evolved in art, might be not unaptly likened to the ethics of human love: so long as the object of sense remained ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... of the deity, and the worship of a personal God is nowhere to be found in his teachings, which exposed him to the charge of atheism. He even supposed that gods were subject to death, and must return to other forms of life before they obtained final rest in Nirvana. Nirvana means that state which admits of neither birth nor death, where ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... engrave there the name of its immortal Author. Passions may arouse doubts; but when the Atheist questions himself, the evidence of a God confounds his incredulity, and the truth of the sentiment which fills his thoughts absolves him of the crime of Atheism. It is easy for you, my father, never to murmur against the Author of your being; you, who, in the gentle quiet of a life exempt from storms; have acquired the conviction that the sun of your old age will illumine the same scenes as did that of your youth. As for me—thrown on the earth like ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... strife, self-repression, energy, misrepresentation from his enemies. The Church was sinking further every day. What if this new spasm of fervour were no more than the dying flare of faith? How could he bear that? He would have to see the tide of atheism rise higher and more triumphant every day; Felsenburgh had given it an impetus of whose end there was no prophesying. Never before had a single man wielded the full power of democracy. Then once more he looked forward to the morrow. Oh! if it could but end in death!... Beati mortui qui ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... Man went into one of these thinking Engines, but he came wiser out than he was before; and I am persuaded, it would be a more effectual Cure to our Deism, Atheism, Scepticism, and all other Scisms, than ever the Italian's Engine, for Curing the Gout by cutting off ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... change over himself; just as in some sections of the rival camp, he would have heard to weariness of the bigotry and errors of Romanism. He was brought, as many people more God-fearing than he have been brought, to debate the question as to whether a common atheism were not the only panacea for the mutual hatreds that, as appeared to him from his present point of view, ruled the Island of Saints. He and Barty would sit up over the dying embers of the dining-room fire of No. 6, The Mall, talking; ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Newton to the ladies; d'Argens was an amiable and erudite writer of a dull free-thinking turn; Chasot was a retired military man with too many debts, and Darget was a good-natured secretary with too many love affairs; La Mettrie was a doctor who had been exiled from France for atheism and bad manners; and Poellnitz was a decaying baron who, under stress of circumstances, had unfortunately been obliged to ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... Scepticism, nay Sansculottic Jacobinism; an Orcus that has no bottom. Think of that. 'Groby Pool is thatched with pancakes,'—as Jeannie Deans's Innkeeper defied it to be! The Bottomless of Scepticism, Atheism, Jacobinism, behold, it is thatched over, hidden from your despair, by stage-properties judiciously arranged. This stuffed rump of mine saves not me only from rheumatism, but you also from what other isms! In this your ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... natural history of much atheism, not only an atheism of atheists, but a more terrible atheism of Christians, an unconscious atheism, whose roots have struck far into many souls whose last breath would be spent in denying it. So, ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... poem proceeds with the usual diatribe of Swift's desertion of the Whigs, his atheism, high-church sympathies, ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... heretical and terribly unscriptural; the multitude of human beings;—like "Oyster Nan" who couldn't live without "running her vulgar rig"—consider it downright infidelity, the companion of rationalism, and the "stepping Stone to atheism." Still there are many good people who are Unitarians; many magnificent scholars who recognise its principles; and if "respectability" is any proof of correctness—this age, in the obliquity of its vision, and in the depth of its respect ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... nihilism would slip into a destructive, or at least negative system. But Mahayanism was pulled equally strongly in the opposite direction by the popular and mythological elements which it contained and was on the whole inclined to theism and even polytheism quite as much as to atheism and acosmism. A modern Japanese writer[108] says that Dharma-kaya "may be considered to be equivalent to the Christian conception of the Godhead." This is excessive as a historical statement of the view current in India during the early centuries of ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... oppressively. In these three Governments, taken separately, one can see something excusable or at least human. When the Kaiser encouraged the Russian rulers to crush the Revolution, the Russian rulers undoubtedly believed they were wrestling with an inferno of atheism and anarchy. A Socialist of the ordinary English kind cried out upon me when I spoke of Stolypin, and said he was chiefly known by the halter called "Stolypin's Necktie." As a fact, there were many other ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... between 1694 and 1788. He made himself busy in France, while Bolingbroke and Tyndal and Woolston, and Hume and Morgan were at work in England. Then Didoret, of France, made his appearance upon the stage as a bold defender of Atheism. Next comes D'Holbach, the leading author of the "Systeme de la Nature," which came out in 1774. Its object was to strike down the idea of a God, of an intelligence separate from matter, of free-will, and of immortality. Didoret and others are accused ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... rather than renounce his impiety. The author does not name Vanini; and the truth is that this man repudiated his wrong opinions, until he was convicted of having published atheistical dogmas and acted as an apostle of atheism. When he was asked whether there was a God, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... recognition of Peter and his successors as the Head of the Church. Build upon this foundation and you will not erect a tower of Babel, nor build upon sand. If all Christian sects were united with the centre of unity, then the scattered hosts of Christendom would form an army which atheism and infidelity could not long withstand. Then, indeed, all could exclaim with Balaam: "How beautiful are thy tabernacles, O Jacob, ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... all the neighbouring peoples who hold the same beliefs, to modern Deists.[2] They are remote from Atheism and from cult! Suggestions about an ancient Egyptian influence are made, but popular Egyptian religion was not monotheistic, and priestly thought could scarcely influence the ancestors of the Dinkas. M. Lejean says these peoples are so practical and utilitarian that missionary religion takes ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... led on to examine more attentively what I doubt not was in my thoughts long before, viz. the concatenation of argument by which the mind ascends from its first to its final religious idea; and I came to the conclusion that there was no medium, in true philosophy, between Atheism and Catholicity, and that a perfectly consistent mind, under those circumstances in which it finds itself here below, must embrace either the one or the other. And I hold this still: I am a Catholic by virtue of my believing in a God; and if I am ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... pretence of being kind, and fanaticism and mischief are baptized as Duty. The divinely ordained institutions of society are sacrificed, and ruin and chaos inevitably result. Having shown that Philosophy, developed in its natural form, can produce nothing better than Pantheism, Atheism, Anthropomorphism, and Skepticism, there arises an inquiry for the causes which have produced these seemingly unhappy results. And now it appears "that the Consciousness must be developed in its natural ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... her remark was quite right; he himself felt that he might have directed his gifts in some other channel. Earlier in life, nevertheless, he had done something for the glory of God and the improvement of his fellow-men (referring to his "Confutation of Atheism"), but afterwards the genius of the pagans had attracted him, and, despairing of attaining their level in any other way, he had mounted upon their shoulders so that he might thus be able to look over ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... for help from God against this deceitful adversary, through daily experience of the atheism, hypocrisy, ignorance, misconceptions of God and of his ways, and deceitfulness of our hearts, might sufficiently put it out of ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... intellects. It neutralizes opposing forces and gives free play to Civilization, that Titan queen who has succeeded the ancient terrible figure of the King, that sham Providence, reared by man between himself and heaven. In the face of such achievements, atheism seems like a barren ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... necessary for making the web. The royal science is queen of educators, and begins by choosing the natures which she is to train, punishing with death and exterminating those who are violently carried away to atheism and injustice, and enslaving those who are wallowing in the mire of ignorance. The rest of the citizens she blends into one, combining the stronger element of courage, which we may call the warp, with the softer element of temperance, which we may imagine to be ...
— Statesman • Plato
... words on the relation which that religion is now supposed to hold to the general history of Indian piety. It was customary, till recently, to regard Buddha as a great reformer, and his religion as a great revolt against that which it found prevailing in India. He is credited with having preached atheism as a reaction against the burdensome worship of too many gods, with having instituted a great social movement consisting in the abolition of caste, with having openly denied the authority of the Vedas, till then unchallenged, and ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... analogous position with regard to republicanism. Just as atheism is a private affair which concerns the individual conscience, so a republican form of government is a private affair which interests only a part of the bourgeoisie. Certainly, by the time that socialism draws ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... imagination on America, sufficiently contemptuous to pay all the expenses of the trip—have, occasionally—and particularly if they have been invited to write for New York magazines, take professorships in native colleges, or lecture on the encouraging Continental progress of scientific atheism before Boston audiences;—such travellers, we say, convinced that they shall lose no money by it, but, on the contrary, rather sanguine of making a little thereby in the long run, have occasionally ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... Cuba? What good will it do there? If only the good it has wrought elsewhere, Heaven help the Cubans! Protestantism is nothing but a disorganizer and a pathway to infidelity and atheism. This is the only reason of its existence. As a positive moral force, it is a farce. It has never converted a single nation, but it has unconverted Protestants themselves with a holy vengeance. Berlin has 75,000 church goers out of 2,000,000 ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... of transmigration. He attributed to the soul no substantial existence. It is the Karma, or another being, the successor of one who dies, the result and effect of all that he was, who re-appears in case of transmigration. Buddhism involved atheism, and the denial of personal immortality, or, where this last tenet was not explicitly denied, uncertainty and indifference respecting it. On the foundation of Buddha's teaching, there grew up a vast system of monasticism, with ascetic ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... learned that a candidate for Congress was being accused of atheism by an opponent. Gloria's surprise vanished when she found that the charges were false. The candidate had merely denied the miracle of the loaves and fishes. He admitted, under pressure, that he gave full credence to the stroll upon ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald |
