"Blasphemy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... liberty; whereat the parties then and there assembled laughed very heartily, with the single exception of Mr. Grummer, who seemed to consider that any slight cast upon the divine right of magistrates was a species of blasphemy not to be tolerated. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Bedfordshire, in 1628. The son of a tinker, his childhood and early manhood were idle and vicious. A sudden and sharp rebuke from a woman not much better than himself, for his blasphemy, set him to thinking, and he soon became a changed man. In 1653 he joined the Baptists, and soon, without preparation, began to preach. For this he was thrown into jail, where he remained for more than twelve years. It was during this period that, with ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... drink is scored up—upon him and his pots and his pipes, and the tavern-chorus which he and his friends are singing. Such a man as Charles should have had an Ostade or Mieris to paint him. Your Knellers and Le Bruns only deal in clumsy and impossible allegories: and it hath always seemed to me blasphemy to claim Olympus for such a wine-drabbled ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... earnest appeal to Magni, Brask despatched to the Vadstena Chapter a tract in refutation of the Lutheran doctrines, and along with it a sermon preached by Petri, "in which," so wrote the bishop, "you will observe his blasphemy of the Holy Virgin." Brask, despite his spiritual duties, was no ascetic, and, though suffering at the time from illness, added a postscript begging the Chapter to let him have a box of nuts. Apparently these delicacies came; for the bishop's next letter, written to the pope, was in a happier ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... the kind, vile rabble," said Don Quixote, burning with rage, "nothing of the kind, I say, only ambergris and civet in cotton; nor is she one-eyed or humpbacked, but straighter than a Guadarrama spindle: but ye must pay for the blasphemy ye have uttered against beauty like that of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... not return the Amishman's salute. "I return your gifts, Lightless One," he announced. "They are tainted with your blasphemy." He nodded, and his servants dismounted to stack at the side of the road Aaron's guest-gifts of months before. The bale of tobacco was set down, the bolt of scarlet silk, the chains of candy, the silver-filigreed saddle. ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... weakness, its limits broke upon him; tacitly blaspheming he looked with a lustreless eye at the palpable, polished, "toned" objects designed for suspension on hooks. That is, he blasphemed if it were blasphemy to feel that as bearing on the energies of man they were a poor and secondary show. The human force producing them was so far from one of the greatest; their place was a small place and their connexion with the heroic life casual and slight. They ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... herself. We have him sitting on our pariah. A free-thinker startles him as a kind of demon; but a female free-thinker is one of Satan's concubines. He took it upon himself to reproach me—flung his glove at my feet, because I sent a cheque to a poor man punished for blasphemy. The man had the right to his opinions, and he had the courage of his opinions. I doubt whether the Rev. Hampton-Evey would go with a willing heart to prison for his. All the better for him if he comes head-up out of a trial. But now ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had been drinking heavily for some time and was more than half stupefied. He thought he heard a noise as of someone at the door and looked up. Then he called half savagely to come in; but there was no response. With a muttered blasphemy he renewed his potations. Presently he forgot all around him, sank into a daze, but suddenly awoke to see standing before him someone or something like a battered, ghostly edition of his sister. For a few moments there came ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... The blasphemy shocked him into his senses, which had wandered. Now he knew that from some hidden place the Dark Master was watching him and listening for his ravings, and upon that Brian sternly caught his lips together and ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die."—1 Sam. 12:14. (Let the reader notice that God, foreseeing that people would ridicule the idea of God saving David, calls it blasphemy and calls those who do it "the enemies of the Lord.") David fasted and prayed for the child. On the seventh day the child died, "But when David saw that his servants whispered, David perceived that the ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... heart is won, other defects are easily corrected. This is why God particularly asks for the heart. By this means alone would be prevented the drunkenness, blasphemy, lewdness, enmity, and robbery which are prevalent in the world. Jesus Christ would reign universally, and the Church everywhere would ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... darkness, war between good and evil, truth and error, light and darkness. We went together into the lowest slums of the district; walked arm in arm over the ground where misery tells its sad and awful tale, where poverty shelters its shivering frame, and where blasphemy howls its curse. We found out haunts of vice and sin, terrible in their character, and distressing in their consequences. I found he had not hitherto been accustomed to this kind of mission. Once on my entering a ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... the disrespect shown to his Son. We have come to a time when men seek to limit his knowledge, and occasionally they are saying that he did not know concerning the things of which he spake. Such blasphemy makes us shudder. There is a disposition to misinterpret his teaching. They did it in Paul's day and he spoke by inspiration when he said, "If any man present another gospel than that which I have presented let him be accursed." There is a disposition to rob him of his deity. "Is Jesus ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... your noansense! What do I want with a Christian faim'ly? I want Christian broth! Get me a lass that can plain-boil a potato, if she was a whure off the streets." And with these words, which echoed in her tender ears like blasphemy, he had passed on to his study and shut the door ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said it was fearful!—beyond blasphemy! and that she looked like a Bible witch, sitting up drinking and swearing and glaring in her nightclothes and nightcap. She was on a journey into Hungary, and claimed the hospitality of the castle on her way there. Both were widows. Well, it was a quarter ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... you, Elkanah Daniels, I'll have no blasphemy here. That little sanctuary up the road is founded on a rock and neither you nor any of your Phariseein' priest-worshipin' crew can shake it. The Almighty'll protect His own. As for the Reg'lar church, that's ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... ] There was no tribunal of justice, and the governor pronounced summarily on all complaints. The church adjoined the fort; and before it was planted a stake bearing a placard with a prohibition against blasphemy, drunkenness, or neglect of mass and other religious rites. To the stake was also attached a chain and iron collar; and hard by was a wooden horse, whereon a culprit was now and then mounted by way of example and warning. [ Le Jeune, Relation, 1636, 153, 154 (Cramoisy). ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... of peace-offering for his blasphemy in calling the Nevada desert a leper, Lombard had embezzled a couple of chairs from the smoking-room and carried them to the rear platform of the car, which happened to be the last of the train, and invited Miss Dwyer to come thither and see the scenery. Whether she had wanted to pardon him or not, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... has ever flowed from the confessions of Rousseau, or the autobiographical sketch of Hume? From the first we rise with a confused and miserable sense of weakness and of power—of lofty aspirations and degrading appetencies—of pride swelling into blasphemy, and humiliation pitiably grovelling in the dust—of purity of spirit soaring on the wings of imagination, and grossness of instinct brutally wallowing in "Epicurus' stye,"—of lofty contempt for the opinion of mankind, yet the most slavish subjection to their most fatal prejudices— of a sublime ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... this attack upon him, was swearing abundance of oaths, and making tell thousands of exclamations, in proof of his innocence. Nothing, however, could stop the volubility of his wife, or calm her rage. By this time she had worked her passion up to such a pitch, that oath succeeded oath; and blasphemy blasphemy, in one raging, unceasing torrent. From her husband she fell on Zeenab, and from Zeenab she returned again to her husband, until she foamed at the mouth. She was not satisfied with words alone, but seizing the wretched girl by one ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... ecclesiastically governed community there was little distinction between sacred and secular matters. The church was the centre of affairs. A stake was planted before the sacred edifice bearing a placard of warning against blasphemy, drunkenness, and neglect of the Mass. A pillory, with chain and iron collar, and a wooden horse, stood close ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... Ursulines of Loudun in the seventeenth century.[404] She was clever, beautiful, ambitious, fond of pleasure, still more of power. With this, as sometimes happens, she was highly hysterical, and in the early years of her religious life was possessed by various demons of unchastity and blasphemy with whom for many years she was in constant struggle. She fell in love with a priest of Loudun, Grandier, a man whom she had never even seen, only knowing of him as a powerful and fascinating personality at whose feet all women fell, and she imagined that she and the other nuns of her ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... almost blasphemy," said Ume, in a frightened whisper. "Look, now, beloved, the light of the sun sinks down. Soon the great moon will ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... expressed their doubts about the mode of life provided for in the rules. "But," replied Giovanni di San Paolo, "if we hold that to observe gospel perfection and make profession of it is an irrational and impossible innovation, are we not convicted of blasphemy against Christ, ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... Eddy turned the pastors out of all the Christian Science churches and abolished the office for all time as far as human occupancy is concerned—she appointed the Holy Ghost to fill their place. If this language be blasphemous, I did not invent the blasphemy, I am merely stating a fact. I will quote from page 227 of Science and Health (edition 1899), as a first step towards an explanation of this startling matter—a passage which sets forth and classifies the Christian ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shocked, reader, when we say she never prayed. The truth is that, with the exception of the constant blasphemy of the people with whom she lived, and of this she heard too much, she rarely heard of God. Once she went into a church, and heard a man talk about Him in a way she could not understand. When she heard the organ it sounded so sweet that ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... advice, and I have read, or rather re-read, Blackstone. I studied him twenty years ago. Each time he has made upon me the same impression. Now, as then, I have ventured to consider him (if one may say so without blasphemy) an inferior writer, without liberality of mind or depth of judgment; in short, a commentator and a lawyer, not what we understand by the words jurisconsulte and publiciste. He has, too, in a degree which is sometimes amusing, a mania for admiring ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... of words respecting the decrees of Providence to the caprices of James and his beslobbered minion the Duke of Buckingham, is somewhat nearer to blasphemy than even the euphuism of the ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." In John 10, verse 30, He declares, "I and my Father are one"; in verse 36, same chapter, He denies that it was blasphemy to call Himself the Son of God. In the presence of death He refused to deny ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... thought on these things, fairly answer thyself these few questions. Is not this arrogancy? Is not this blasphemy? Is not this to condemn God, that thou mightst be righteous? And dost thou think, this is indeed ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... punished my blasphemy with kindness," began Torquatus, "in sending my Lord Paullus ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... course, only causes the unbeliever to blaspheme. It is to him every whit as monstrous as the old stories of the witches riding on broomsticks. But the question is not to be settled by blasphemy on one side or credulity on the other. There is something behind these phantasmal apparitions; there is a real substratum of truth, if we could but get at it. There seems to be some faculty latent in the human mind, by which ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... presumptuous blasphemy, tradition must be voiceless. The demon looked upwards; but, as if blasted by some withering sight, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... livelihood from misfortune. He transmutes tears into treasure, and from nakedness and hunger garbs himself in clean linen and develops the round of his belly. He is a bloodsucker and a vampire. He lays unholy hands on heaven and hell at cent. per cent., and his very existence is a sacrilege and a blasphemy. And yet here am I, wilting before him, an arrant coward, with no respect for him and less for myself. Why should this shame be? Let me rouse in my strength and smite him, and, by so doing, ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... be really the body of Christ that was given for the salvation of the world, what horrible blasphemy to state such things of it, what vileness to believe them, what a barefaced imputation on the reason of man to spread these shocking details before him and ask him to accept them as true ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... complaint. Witnesses had seen the transaction. He first shouted, in an unseemly way, to frighten my palfry. I wheeled round, rode up to the window, and asked him what he meant. He grinned, and said some foolery, which produced him an immediate slap in the face, to his utter discomfiture. Much blasphemy ensued, and some menace, which I stopped by dismounting and opening the carriage door, and intimating an intention of mending the road with his immediate remains, if he did not hold his ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... oaths and blasphemy was at full tide, and violent assault and quick death seemed most imminent, the first officer had stolen a glance at the girl by his side. He had expected to find a shocked and frightened maiden countenance, and was not at all prepared for the flushed and deeply ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... had blushed to call her sons! Thee to defend the Moloch Priest prefers 185 The prayer of hate, and bellows to the herd, That Deity, Accomplice Deity In the fierce jealousy of wakened wrath Will go forth with our armies and our fleets To scatter the red ruin on their foes! 190 O blasphemy! to mingle fiendish ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Paine Liberty of Man, Woman and Child Orthodoxy Blasphemy Some Reasons Why Intellectual Development Human Rights Talmagian Theology (Second Lecture) Talmagian Theology (Third Lecture) Religious Intolerance Hereafter Review of His Reviewers How the Gods Grow The Religion of our Day Heretics And Heresies The Bible Voltaire ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Christmas morning, 1916, and the thoughts of all were dwelling on past years in the cheery surroundings of English and Colonial homes—in vivid contrast to the dismal grey of the North Sea. To break the spell of memory both officers felt would be blasphemy, and yet a feeble attempt at conversation was made every now and then for ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... man—a Jew of kingly blood, But of the people—poor and lowly born, Accused of blasphemy of God, He stood Before the Roman Pilate, while in scorn The multitude demanded it was fit That one should suffer for the people, while Another be released, absolved, acquit, To live his life out ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... deny. A vast majority of mankind associate with the idea of disbelief in their Gods every thing stupid, monstrous, absurd, and atrocious. Absolute Atheism is thought by them the inseparable ally of most shocking wickedness, involving as it manifestly does that 'blasphemy against the Holy Ghost' which we are assured shall not be forgiven unto men 'neither in this world nor in that which is to come.' Educated to consider it 'an inhuman, bloody, ferocious system, equally hostile to every restraint and to every virtuous affection,' the majority of ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... this threatening, at least in part, already put into execution? Whence is there so much ignorance and contempt of God? Why do mankind so eagerly, so universally pursue the vain pleasures and follies of the world, while they seldom think of God their Maker? From whence proceed the infidelity, blasphemy, lying, theft, sabbath-breaking, slandering and the many horrid evils, which every where abound? Whence is it that so many in this colony, labour under such sore and complicated disorders, pains, and miseries? Why are so many, both young and old, taken away by death? And why is ...
— An Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, Established in New South Wales and Norfolk Island. • Richard Johnson
... believe the archangel Gabriel himself could look at you more comforting than Father Honore does; if he can't help her, the Lord himself can't, and I don't mean that for blasphemy either. Poor soul—poor soul"—she wiped the tears that were rolling down her cheeks,—"here I am the mother of eight children and never had to lose a night's sleep on account of their not doing right, and here's Aurora with ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... 1775, a book was published, the title of which was—"Thoughts on Nature and Religion," which contained much gross blasphemy. Its author, a Scottish physician of the name of Blair, residing in Cork, undertook to be the champion of free-thinking in religion; and, under the plausible pretext of vindicating the conduct of Servetus in his controversy with Calvin, this writer ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... hesitation, And gone within the cavern's vault profound, When I heard wails of hopeless lamentation, Despairing shrieks that shook the walls around, Curses, and blasphemy, and desperation, Dark crimes avowed that would even hell astound, Which heaven, I think, in order not to hear, Had hid within ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... conceal. It was because of thoughts like these that they did not trust themselves to go out and see other people, for they feared that by their looks if by nothing else, or by their silence or perhaps their tears, they might imply a blasphemy against the All Highest. And hunger made one so hasty. What might one not say? And ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... in this breaking up of the Mission a powerful argument to keep his disciples out of the way to heaven. Whenever Daniel went from his own village to Goobbe, he was derided by the heathen, as Pilgrim was at Vanity Fair. The blasphemy and ridicule with which he was assailed were almost unbearable. One day especially he was most severely tried. As he was going along one of the principal streets some of the 'lewd fellows of the baser sort' were most insulting and abusive; and a few shopkeepers joined them in ridiculing ...
— Old Daniel • Thomas Hodson
... Tower of David! O Star of the Sea! have you no comfort for my sore heart? Am I for ever to hope? Grant me at least despair!'—and so on she went, heedless of my presence. Her prayers grew wilder and wilder, till they seemed to me to touch on the borders of madness and blasphemy. Almost involuntarily, I spoke as if to ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... ballerine, and wore the old-fashioned ballet-skirt with its volumed gauze,—a coyness which the Englishry had greatly modified, through an exigency of the burlesque,—perhaps because indecorum seems, like blasphemy and untruth, somehow more graceful and becoming in southern than in ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... showed great kindliness to one another, and faithfulness in standing by their comrades in war. No people could have better observed either the third or the fifth commandment; for they had a particular horror of blasphemy, and their respectful tenderness towards their parents and, indeed, towards old people in general, ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him. Did I say, a few days since, that I had nothing to do with him but to receive my salary at his hands? Did I forbid myself to think of him in any other light than as a paymaster? Blasphemy against nature! Every good, true, vigorous feeling I have gathers impulsively round him. I know I must conceal my sentiments: I must smother hope; I must remember that he cannot care much for me. For when I say that I am of his kind, I do not mean that I have ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... him by insidious questions; they called him a glutton and a winebibber for eating and drinking like other men, a friend of publicans and sinners for his condescending love and mercy, a sabbath breaker for doing good on the sabbath day; they charged him with madness and blasphemy for asserting his unity with the Father, and derived his miracles from Beelzebub, the prince of devils. The common people, though astonished at his wisdom and mighty works, pointed sneeringly at his origin; his own ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... popular religion followed the popular politics, hung across the lettering. Graham had already become familiar with the phonotype writing and these inscriptions arrested him, being to his sense for the most part almost incredible blasphemy. Among the less offensive were "Salvation on the First Floor and turn to the Right." "Put your Money on your Maker." "The Sharpest Conversion in London, Expert Operators! Look Slippy!" "What Christ would ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... called such foolishness; she could not laugh now. Such ways of thinking and speaking were a profanation of all she held holiest; words which she whispered in trembling to her heart were vulgarised and defiled by use upon these tinkling tongues; it was blasphemy against ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... railways give him the trucks he needed. There was a collection of hungry German transport officers always putting in their oars, and being infernally insolent to everybody. I took the high and mighty line with them; and, as I had the Bulgarian commandant on my side, after about two hours' blasphemy got ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... began to be haunted by a strange curiosity about the unpardonable sin, and by a morbid longing to commit it. But the most frightful of all the forms which his disease took was a propensity to utter blasphemy, and especially to renounce his share in the benefits of the redemption. Night and day, in bed, at table, at work, evil spirits, as he imagined, were repeating close to his ear the words, "Sell him! sell him!" He struck at the hobgoblins; he pushed them ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... has combined with such depths—with the indignation of Alceste, the self-deception of Tartufe, the blasphemy of Don Juan—such wildness of irresponsible mirth, such humour, such wit! Even now, when more than two hundred years have sped by, when so much water has flowed under the bridges and has borne away so many trifles of contemporary mirth (cetera fluminis ritu feruntur), even now we never laugh so ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... early days had been so bent on a foreign education for his eldest son, had drilled him in languages and pressed him to go to Italy,[153] at the end of his long life left instructions to his children: "Suffer not thy sonnes to pass the Alps, for they shall learn nothing there but pride, blasphemy, and atheism. And if by travel they get a few broken languages, that shall profit them nothing more than to have one meat ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... "What blasphemy to call such cruel enactments by the sacred name of law!" replied the young man. "As well might the compacts of robbers to secure their plunder be called law. The walls have no ears or tongues, Signor," added ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... youth, and told tales of the sea to guests who paid their score. He had a cadet brother who was a seaman still, and who drifted out of longshore knowledge for great gaps of time, and came back again liker to mahogany than he had been before, a thought more abundant in blasphemy, and a great deal richer in gold pieces with the heads of every king in ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... himself one minute in which to establish the fruitlessness of spurs, whip and blasphemy in this emergency, and then, descending to his own legs, he climbed over the fence into the road and ran as fast as boots and tops would let him towards the point whence the cry of the hounds was coming, ever more and more faintly. In a moment or two he returned, out of breath, to where ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... cruelty, his blasphemy, his perfidy were strongly exposed and unanimously condemned, and that he was denounced as a violator of law and propriety, false to the dignity of the Church, and faithless to the State, he implored the princes ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... public mind. Still, men and women, whose holiness and purity are beyond slander's reach, come and crave assurance of forgiveness. How shall we reply to such men? Shall we say, "Who is this that speaketh blasphemies? who can forgive sins, but God only?" Shall we say it is all blasphemy; an impious intrusion upon the prerogatives of the One Absolver? Well, we may; it is popular to say we ought; but you will observe, if we speak so, we do no more than the Pharisees in this text: we establish a negation; but a negation is ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... other life enter into the state of their interiors, and are heard speaking and seen acting, they appear foolish; for from their evil lusts they burst forth into all sorts of abominations, into contempt of others, ridicule and blasphemy, hatred and revenge; they plot intrigues, some with a cunning and malice that can scarcely be believed to be possible in any man. For they are then in a state of freedom to act in harmony with the ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... dealt with the heavy life-preserver a blow at the assailant's head, which fortunately only reached his shoulder. The latter released Tom's throat to get possession of the pistol. In the struggle it went off. There was a hideous blasphemy, a groan, and a heavy fall between the ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... to robbery. But if he were a thief, why did he confess so freely, and even glory in his sin? Then, too, if it were the wish of the Virgin that he should receive this gift, by what right did any civic or military body interfere, for would it not be blasphemy to doubt or deny the designs of Providence? Was not the accused soldier under the acknowledged protection of the Virgin? Would she not visit with indignation, if she did not vigorously punish, the attempt to ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... historian's case is often too strong to be stated. There is always a reactionary party, or one at least which lingers sentimentally over the dream of past golden ages, such as that of which Cowley says, with a sort of naive blasphemy, at which one knows not whether to smile ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... of Council arose the King of Arizim. He said: "I fear that thou hast spoken blasphemy against the Sea, and I have a dread that ill will come of it. Indeed I had not thought she was so fair. It is such a short while ago that she was quite a small child with her hair still unkempt and not ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... punished with death, for cursing or striking their father or mother. Marriages were to be solemnized by magistrates; and all who denied the coercive authority of the magistrate in religious matters, or the validity of infant baptism, were to be banished. Blasphemy, perjury, adultery, and witchcraft, were all made capital offences. In short, we may challenge the annals of any nation to produce a code of laws more intolerant than that of the first settlers in New-England. Unlimited obedience was enjoined to the authority of the magistrate, by ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... twenty thousand francs a year. The governor was ordered to give him as many soldiers as he might want, permit as many persons to settle at Detroit as might choose to do so, and provide missionaries.[38] The minister exhorted him to quarrel no more with the Jesuits, or anybody else, to banish blasphemy and bad morals from the post, and not ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... said the girl, with an expression of fear.—"God pardon us both! I meant no harm. I speak of our blessed Saint Catherine of Sienna!—may God forgive me that I spoke so lightly, and made you do a great sin and a great blasphemy. This was her nunnery, in which there were twelve nuns and an abbess. My aunt was the abbess, till the ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... henceforth find our happiness in taking Him for our teacher, guide, and model who never shrank from duty, even when to perform it wrung from him tears of agony and a bloody sweat, and who held on his course through evil report and good report, spite of blasphemy, persecution, and a bitter and shameful death, till he had finished the work which his Father had given him to do, and had won for us the victory over sin and death, and an imperishable crown ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... of them he had seen himself before the Great White Throne, worthless, sin-stricken. What was he that dared to enter such a holy calling as the ministry? He who was as the dust of the earth, a priest of the Most High God! He beat his brow at the blasphemy of the thought. It was Nadab or Abihu he was or a son of Eli, and the Ark would depart forever from God's people, did he dare to raise his profaning hands in its ministry. And so, partly to escape his sister's reproaches, he had sailed away to Canada. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... indignantly demanded, "that I will give one dollar for your support while you are adhering to this blasphemy? That I will ever again even so much as break bread with you, until, in humble contrition, you return to your allegiance to ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... dislodge prejudice; and blasphemy may rudely but effectually bring to their senses those who have mistaken the hardness of their hearts for loyalty, and their easy default for success. But practical wisdom belongs only to those who proceed unwaveringly out ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... them I saw Peter, zealous still, but with a holy zeal. I heard him ask, 'How long shall those precious souls, redeemed by thy blood, be led astray? May I not fly on the wings of love, and destroy that city of blasphemy on the seven hills, that the glory may be thine?' But Jesus looked on him with an eye of love, and said, 'Simon, son of Jonas, the time is not yet come.' Then Peter only replied, 'Lord, thou knowest. Thy ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... merciful God forgive me for my blasphemy—I cried, 'not His, but yours, Raby. I can not live without your love;' and then I was almost choked with ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... spoke strange words about His coming upon the clouds of heaven to judgment. He held that by their relation to Himself and to His ideals the lives of all men should be tested, and the verdict passed upon their deeds. For making these and similar claims He was convicted of blasphemy and put ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... Elders. The flower of chastity seems withered in Mantua. No longer in Lydia nor in Cyprus, but in Mantua, is fixed the realm of pleasure." The Mantuans were a different people in the old republican times, when a fine was imposed for blasphemy, and the blasphemer put into a basket and drowned in the lake, if he did not pay within fifteen days; which must have made profanity a luxury even to the rich. But in that day a man had to pay twenty soldi ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... assignments for the next morning. From an adjoining kennel issued occasional deep groans and a strong whiff of savage shag tobacco, blown outward by the droning gust of an electric fan. These proved that the cartoonist (a man whose sprightly drawings were born to an obbligato of vehement blasphemy) was at ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... bleared fellow, stepping forward and looking round. His appearance indicated the class of parodies on the American citizen, known vulgarly as "Yankees from Longueuil," and as he continued, "I say to them,"—he added a string of blasphemy in exaggerated Vermontese. ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... was coming with forty thousand troops to take dreadful vengeance in the indiscriminate massacre of the populace. It was a night of sleeplessness and terror—the carnival of all the monsters of crime who thronged that depraved metropolis. The streets were filled with intoxication and blasphemy. No dwelling was secure from pillage. The streets were barricaded; pavements torn up, and the roofs of ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... what the dormitory of French privates is, and how difficult a man well educated well brought up, finds it, first, to endure the coarsest ribaldry and the loudest blasphemy, and then, having endured and been compelled to share them, ever enforce obedience and discipline as a superior among those with whom just before he was an equal, his ardour would not have been merely cooled—it would have been changed into despair for the armies of France, if hereafter they are ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... voice was bitter and mocking, and her words seemed to Helen almost blasphemy; it had never occurred to her that such grief as hers would not be sacred to anyone. Yet there was no thought of anger in her mind just then, for she had been chastened in a fiery furnace, and was too full of penitence ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... to the most palpable and absurd falsehoods: they assured the duke that he was mistaken in the Waldenses for they were a wicked set of people, and highly addicted to intemperance, uncleanness, blasphemy, adultery, incest, and many other abominable crimes; and that they were even monsters in nature, for their children were born with black throats, with four rows of teeth, an bodies all ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... when we were alone,—'I like to astonish Englishmen; they come abroad full of Shakspeare, and contempt for the dramatic literature of other nations. They think it blasphemy to find a fault in his writings, which are full of them. People talk of my writings, and yet read the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... not resenting this insinuation. "That's between me and my Maker," he said with bold blasphemy. "Anyway, I'm not afraid of putting your party at liberty. I know a corner or two. I can look after myself. I've got my earths ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... "Truly she could not, she had something else to do." Adams rebuked her for disputing his commands, and quoted many texts of Scripture to prove "That the husband is the head of the wife, and she is to submit and obey." The wife answered, "It was blasphemy to talk Scripture out of church; that such things were very proper to be said in the pulpit, but that it was profane to talk them in common discourse." Joseph told Mr Adams "He was not come with any design to give him or Mrs Adams any trouble; ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... 'e'en in His very motion there is rest.' And this divine coincidence of activity and of repose belongs to the divine Son in His divine-human nature. With that arrogance which is the very audacity of blasphemy, if it be not the simplicity of a divine consciousness, He puts His own work side by side with the Father's work, as the same in principle, the same in method, the same in purpose, the same in its majestic coincidence ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... the method of violent punishment. And our citizens, all school taught, are walking in the same darkness. As I write these lines the Home Secretary is explaining that a man who has been imprisoned for blasphemy must not be released because his remarks were painful to the feelings of his pious fellow townsmen. Now it happens that this very Home Secretary has driven many thousands of his fellow citizens almost beside themselves by the crudity of his notions of ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... the baleful circle and went striding up and down the room, fighting herself back to self-control, telling herself that the children were not to blame, yet finding them the more repulsive for their very innocence. The purer the lips, the viler the blasphemy. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the blackguard sailors and hirelings of the English squadron set loose to hunt down the refugees. The shouting became a roar. Then in burst Eli Kirke's front door. The house was suddenly filled with swearings enough to cram his blasphemy box to the brim. There was a trampling of feet on the stairs, followed by the crashing of overturned furniture, and the rabble had rushed up with neither let nor hindrance and were ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... "ought not to deal, to judge, or to meddle, with her majesty's prerogative royal[c]." And her successor, king James the first, who had imbibed high notions of the divinity of regal sway, more than once laid it down in his speeches, that "as it is atheism and blasphemy in a creature to dispute what the deity may do, so it is presumption and sedition in a subject to dispute what a king may do in the height of his power: good christians, he adds, will be content with God's will, revealed in his word; and good subjects ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... G-d, you are there!" he cried, with a volley of blasphemy. And he signed to those about Count Hannibal to stand away from him. "You are there, are you? And you are not afraid to show your face? I tell you, it's you and such as you bring us into contempt! so that it is ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... of Sathanas." said he, "which can convert Scripture into blasphemy, mingling poison with our necessary food!—Is there no leech here who can tell us the ingredients of this ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... must be in the back-room of one of our ale-houses at midnight; where a crew of robbers and their whores are met together after a booty, and are beginning to grow drunk, from which time, until they are past their senses, is such a continued horrible noise of cursing, blasphemy, lewdness, scurrility, and brutish behaviour; such roaring and confusion, such a clatter of mugs and pots at each other's heads, that Bedlam, in comparison, is a sober and orderly place: At last they all tumble from their stools and benches, and sleep away the rest of the night; ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... the presence of that sacrilegious materialism, of that practical blasphemy, which defies creative Deity at the very shrines where its infinite power is most wonderfully displayed, is a plague spot, a malignant sign of spiritual leprosy, which warns all to beware of its vile contagion; yet, the suggestions ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... had achieved his end at last. As a high priest was expected to do when he heard blasphemy, he rent his clothes, and, turning to his colleagues, he said, "What need have we of witnesses? behold, now ye have heard His blasphemy." And they all assented that Jesus was guilty, and that the sentence ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... which Prince and one of his female followers were involved, led to the secession of some of his most faithful friends, who were unable any longer to endure what they regarded as the amazing mixture of blasphemy and immorality offered for their acceptance. The most prominent of those who remained received such titles as the "Anointed Ones,'' the "Angel of the Last Trumpet,'' the "Seven Witnesses'' and so forth. In 1862 "Brother Prince'' sent "to the kings and people of the earth'' letters "making ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... so on Divine? To think that God made the human race, at the same time knowing well that the vast majority of the race would come to such an end—an end which they could not forsee nor prevent! Is that the way Infinite Wisdom would act? The idea seems almost blasphemy. Yet that is what you must believe if you accept the idea either of annihilation or of ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... damaged Paine's reputation in America, where the name of "Tom Paine" became a stench in the nostrils of the godly and a synonym for atheism and blasphemy. His book was denounced from a hundred pulpits, and copies of it were carefully locked away from the sight of "the young," whose religious beliefs it might undermine. It was, in effect, a crude and popular statement of the Deistic argument ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... gone—all good angles mobbing thee with warnings:—what more wouldst thou have?—Shall we keep chasing this murdeous fish till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh,—Impiety and blasphemy ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... uncared-for body; it wasn't his fault that the little hands were taught to fight and steal rather than lift themselves up toward a gracious father to invoke His love and blessing, or that the words of blasphemy were frequent on the lips that were made for prayer and praise. He could think of a time when his childish knees had bent before the good God, of whom a kind friend had told him, and his own mother—who should have been prostrate beside him in penitence ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... recalled these utterances, their blasphemy made him cringe. He wrapped the little broken body tighter in his arms. Was she, then, what she was by a loving God's decree? He kissed her hair and groaned in righteous anger. Did that Outcast Emperor dare call himself the representative of God ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris |
