"Desecrate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not desecrate the few good antiques you happen to own by the use of a too modern colour scheme. Have the necessary modern pieces you have bought to supplement your treasures stained or painted in a dull, dark colour in ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... for a moment outside the doorway gazing at her; hesitating to desecrate that revery, which seemed to him to have a touch of sadness in it. And then she turned her head, slowly, and saw him, and her lips parted, and a startled look came into her eyes, but she did not move. He came quickly into the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... slope is a brand new cemetery, with new metal wreaths and even a few flowers; it is a disciplined array of uniform wooden crosses, each with its list of soldiers' names. Unless I am wholly mistaken in France no Germans will ever get a chance for ever more to desecrate that second cemetery as they ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... live yet a natural life, round which the vine clings, and which the elm willingly shadows. Man would desecrate it by his touch, and so the beauty of the world remains veiled to him. He needs not only to be spiritualized, but naturalized, on the soil of earth. Who shall conceive what kind of roof the heavens might extend over him, what seasons ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... Puseyites. His aversion is carried to things outward as well as inward. His gall rises at a new church with a high pitched roof; a full-breasted black silk waistcoat is with him a symbol of Satan; and a profane jest-book would not, in his view, more foully desecrate the church seat of a Christian, than a book of prayer printed with red letters, and ornamented with a cross on the back. Most active clergymen have their hobby, and Sunday observances are his. Sunday, however, is a word which never pollutes his ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... murmured she, hoarsely. "Not here, in the house of the man whose name I bear. Let us not desecrate love; enough that ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... my soul? Teaching him that his lips, Uttering their native earthquake and eclipse, Could never so avail To rend from hem to hem the ultimate veil Of this most desolate Spirit, and leave it stripped and desecrate, - Nay, never so have wrung From eyes and speech weakness unmanned, unmeet; As when his terrible dotage to repeat Its little lesson learneth at your feet; As when he sits among His sepulchres, to play ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... your actions are, No thought of guile as yet within your breast; Alas! the wily foe, not lurking far, May soon corrupt and desecrate your rest. ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... lugubrious white, and its pillars have false bases in a palpable imitation of veined red marble. Its pure and early form, the Latin cross, is gone, its fine old stalls are hidden in a gallery, and at the altar Corinthian columns desecrate its ancient Romanesque. Yet in spite of the incongruities the atmosphere of the church is truly that of its dim past. There are the low broad arches, the great, supporting pillars that are massive ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... that I'd rather starve than desecrate the home of my ancestors—that I'd sooner end my days in a London garret than level a single wall for my own benefit—what then? Would you put me down as ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... allusion to his father would have. A slight tinge of shame was in his face; but I saw that he had not sufficient moral courage to resent the shameful desecration of a parent's name. How should he, when he was himself the first to desecrate that name? ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... was one blaze of gold and silver; and as the king marched through the main aisle with his splendid retinue, every eye was bent upon him and every whisper hushed. Proceeding straight up to the high altar, he bent his knee before the God whose name he was now so soon to desecrate. Then the archbishop raised from the altar a crown of gold glittering with precious jewels, and placed it reverently upon the monarch's brow. The sacred rite of consecration over, the monarch rose and turning was met by a herald of ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... fire across them, are the Lesser Sundas—Bali, noted for its superb scenery and its alluring women; Lombok, the northernmost island whose flora and fauna are Australian; Sumbawa, where the sandalwood comes from; Flores, whose inhabitants consider the earth so holy that they will not desecrate it by digging wells or cultivation; Timor, the northeastern half of which, together with Goa in India and Macao in China, forms the last remnant of Portugal's once enormous Eastern empire; Rotti, Kei, and Aroo, ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... Thy life is one of very little ease; Albeit men mock thee with their similes And prate of being "happy as a clam!" What though thy shell protects thy fragile head From the sharp bailiffs of the briny sea? Thy valves are, sure, no safety-valves to thee, While rakes are free to desecrate thy bed, And bear thee off—as foemen take their spoil— Far from thy friends and family to roam; Forced, like a Hessian, from thy native home, To meet destruction in a foreign broil! Though thou art tender yet thy humble bard Declares, O clam! ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... in mourning, but tomorrow, covered with laurels, she will have extinguished the last of the tyrants who now desecrate her soil. Then she will invite you to a single association, so that our motto may be 'Unity in South America.' All Americans ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... pervert, desecrate, violate, profane; maltreat, mistreat; revile, reproach, vilify, vituperate, malign, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Allcraft, and to worry her with his complaints. He hurried to her house, and forced himself into her presence. We will not follow him, for grief is sacred; and who that had the heart of man, would desecrate the hearth hallowed by affliction, deep and terrible as that of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... in the Italian sunlight, had often had his eye rested upon them! I began to love the soil for his sake, and felt that the presence of this one holy man had done more to hallow it than all that the long race of emperors and popes had done to desecrate it. ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... leave of hope. We conversed some time longer, returning toward the cottage; but there was nothing further to communicate, that it is necessary to record. Neither of us thought of self, and I would as soon have attempted to desecrate a church, as attempt to obtain any influence over Lucy, in my own behalf, at such a moment. All my feelings reverted to my poor sister again, and I was dying with impatience to return to the sloop, whither, indeed, it was time to repair, the sun having some time before ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... in 1814, he did not desecrate or despoil the place: it was left for the Germans to do that, just a century later in the progress of civilization! My blood grew hot as I heard from our two men the story of what the new Vandals had done. Just for a moment I almost forgot the secret ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... round, when it's the short way across, run away at the right time, or fight when it's wise—all in one afternoon." Rolf set out for the north carrying a bombastic (meant to be reassuring) message from Hampton that he would annihilate any enemy who dared to desecrate ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... surrounding the Haram, and from the Ka'aba itself, and began winging erratic courses all about the Forbidden City. Men, birds, and animals alike, all shared the terror of this unheard-of outrage when—according to ancient prophesy—the Great Devils of Feringistan should desecrate the ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... introduced to the interior of the cabin and the contents of wash-hand basins. The solemn hero of tragedy plays Scrub in the farce. This is "very tolerable and not to be endured." The Noble Lord is almost the only writer who has prostituted his talents in this way. He hallows in order to desecrate; takes a pleasure in defacing the images of beauty his hands have wrought; and raises our hopes and our belief in goodness to Heaven only to dash them to the earth again, and break them in pieces the more effectually from the very height they have fallen. Our enthusiasm for ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... no great merit. Her life was not so easy that she should fear this pure embrace. It would be better, far better, than to marry Owen Davies, than to desecrate their love and teach Geoffrey to despise her. And how else could she ward this trouble from him except by her death, or by a marriage that in her eyes was more dreadful ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... quite decided whether they were right or wrong till I went to the Pacific. Then I discovered why those men abused the missionaries. Where the missionary has laboured faithfully, the natives will not desecrate the sabbath, and will not pander to the gross desires of their civilised visitors. That is the secret of their dislike ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... countenances of niggers, or the cheerful sway-away-my-boys expression of the Jack Tar, but with sour, cameronean-lookin' faces, that seem as if they were dreadfully disappointed they were not persecuted any longer—had no churches and altars to desecrate, and no bishops to anoint with the oil of hill-side maledictions as of old), while others are emerging from the fiery furnaces beneath for fresh air, and wipe a hot dirty face with a still dirtier shirt sleeve, and in return ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... If it ever comes into my possession, it will be so guarded that no stray foot shall desecrate its paths." ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... describes the baptism:—"Dec. 29.—Yesterday was a day of great joy. I had the happiness to desecrate the Gunga, by baptising the first Hindoo, viz. Krishna, and my son Felix: some circumstances turned up to delay the baptism of Gokool and the two women. Krishna's coming forward alone, however, gave us very great pleasure, and ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... 'Elizabeth,' I should as soon turn round as my sisters would ... no sooner. Only, my own right name has been complained of for want of euphony ... Ba ... now and then it has—and Mr. Boyd makes a compromise and calls me Elibet, because nothing could induce him to desecrate his organs accustomed to Attic harmonies, with a Ba. So I am glad, and ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... of the Christian doctrine concerning it, v. 312. endeavors of the French Constituent Assembly to desecrate it, v. 312. ends for which it was instituted, vii. 131. restraints upon it in the reign of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... like a stone. If he does not wake to-day we shall understand what kind of a sleep it is, and his body will then be borne to a place in one of the remote recesses of the cave where none will ever find it to desecrate it. As for the rest of us—well, it is agreed that if any one of us ever escapes alive from this place, he will write the fact here, and loyally hide this Manuscript with The Boss, our dear good chief, whose property it is, be he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mockingly exclaimed the pope. "Shall a Corilla desecrate the spot hallowed by the feet of Tasso and Petrarch? No, I say, no; when art becomes the plaything of a courtesan, then may the sacred Muses veil their heads and mourn in silence, but they must not degrade themselves ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... is Christmas-day 1815 with us; what it may be with you I don't know, the 12th of June next year perhaps; and if it should be the consecrated season with you, I don't see how you can keep it. You have no turkeys; you would not desecrate the festival by offering up a withered Chinese bantam, instead of the savoury grand Norfolcian holocaust, that smokes all around my nostrils at this moment from a thousand firesides. Then what puddings have you? Where will you get holly to stick in your churches, or churches to stick ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... the rabble dissolute That desecrate thy poet's grave?'" read Otto, and the musical poem was at an end. All were enchanted with it. Otto alone made some small objections: "The Muses ought not to come with 'trumpets and drums,' and so many expressions similar to 'give ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... humanity—its own truth that sets it free—not binds, and lops, and mutilates it! who see God to be the father of every human soul—the ideal Father, not an inventor of schemes, or the upholder of a court etiquette for whose use he has chosen to desecrate the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... after day and month by month the King pushed on with his armies, hoping to come at last on Time. Sometimes they encamped at night near palaces of beautiful design or beside gardens of flowers, hoping to find their enemy when he came to desecrate in the dark. Sometimes they came on cobwebs, sometimes on rusted chains and houses with broken roofs or crumbling walls. Then the armies would push on apace thinking that they were closer ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... and sign the pledge, and quit cigars, and go to work, and pay your debts, and gravitate back into Sunday-School, where you can make love to the preacher's daughter under the guise of religion, and desecrate the sanctity of the innermost pale of the church by confessions at Class of your 'thorough ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... a picture of village life in those days. The village church stood in the centre of the hamlet, with a carefully made fence around it, in order that no swine or foul beast might desecrate the graves. Surrounded by the churchyard, with its yew tree and lich-gate, the church was very similar to the old building wherein the villagers still worship. All the houses had thatched roofs, and chief among the other dwellings stood the lord's ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... price, with the clasp set before, He is Saul, ye remember in glory,—ere error had bent The broad brow from the daily communion; and still, tho' much spent Be the life and bearing that front you, the same, God did choose, To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never quite lose. So sank he along by the tent-prop, till, stayed by the pile Of his armour and war-cloak and garments, he leaned there awhile, And sat out my singing,—one arm round the tent-prop, to raise His bent head, and ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... issued to voters, warning them against the chicane of unpatriotic demagogues. As a counter-blast, "All Good Democrats" were summoned to hold mass-meetings in the several counties on the Fourth of July. "We select the Fourth of July," read this pronunciamento, "not to desecrate it with unhallowed shouts ... but in cool and calm devotion to our country, to renew upon the altars of its liberties, a sacred oath ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... Misuse. — N. misuse, misusage, misemployment[obs3], misapplication, misappropriation. abuse, profanation, prostitution, desecration; waste &c. 638. V. misuse, misemploy, misapply, misappropriate. desecrate, abuse, profane, prostitute: waste &c. 638; overtask, overtax, overwork: squander &c. 818. cut blocks with a razor, employ a steam engine to crack a nut; catch at a straw. Adj. misused &c. v. Phr. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... like it naturally, just as they now like their follies and sins. Or those who are much engaged in worldly business, who confess they do not give that attention to religion which they ought to give; who neglect the ordinances of the Church; who desecrate the Lord's day; who give little or no time to the study of God's word; who allow themselves in various small transgressions of their conscience, and resolutely harden themselves against the remorse which such transgressions are calculated to cause them; and all this ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... a Friday. Joshua knew it would pain the people deeply to be compelled to desecrate the holy Sabbath day. Besides, he noticed that the heathen were using sorcery to make the heavenly hosts intercede for them in the fight against the Israelites. He, therefore, pronounced the Name of the Lord, and ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... Sunday afternoon. The quiet of the holiday was noticeable even on the mountains where, hand in hand, the little comrades walked. They were nicely washed and arrayed in Sunday clothing, because Bacha Filina would not suffer anybody to desecrate Sunday. Everyone who could, had to go to the next town to church, though it was almost two hours' walk. He himself seldom went; he was not able to take long walks. Once a timber fell on his foot in the woods and from that time ...
— The Three Comrades • Kristina Roy
... persons. Collection one hundred and thirty-three dollars. The next day, Thursday the 11th, we left for Springfield. The meeting was held in the evening, at the Town Hall, as some of the Parish committee objected to its being held in the church, fearing it would desecrate the place. The Hall was crowded, and many could not gain admittance. Dr. Osgood opened the meeting with prayer, took several of the Mendians to his own house, and manifested a deep interest on their behalf, as did many of the other inhabitants. The Mendians were all hospitably entertained in ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... unfeeling ignorance of restorers have been employed, as so often in Italy, to spoil and desecrate the memorials of the past; and the munificence of Pius, Munificentia Pii IX., is placarded on the inner walls. One is too frequently reminded at Rome of the old and new lamps in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... others with their sordid cares And troubles enter here? Love hung about the rooms like smoke, And peace descended as a cloak, Should I allow the vulgar folk To desecrate that year? ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West
... of a verity these be souls Such as in life were vile, Risen again from the nethermost coals To harry the earth a while; Versed in wickedness, old in sin, Never was hell could hold them in, And back they hasten in droves and shoals To desecrate and defile. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... in order to take out this precious relic, but he was not able. It appeared as if some powerful spell held it firmly together; and it has remained unopened down to the present time. May it remain so until the last awful day, and may the impious hand of avarice or curiosity never desecrate these holy ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... felt our way beyond the mouth of the river we were forced to paddle north-west by north, in blind reliance on our compass. Sounds there were none. Involuntarily we lowered our voices. The inadvertent click of the paddle against the gunwale seemed to desecrate ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... Marie de Medicis strenuously opposed the renewal of civil warfare, and the Duc de Lesdiguieres represented to the King the ardent desire of the Protestants to conclude a peace, all their efforts were impotent to counteract the pernicious counsels of the Prince, which were destined to darken and desecrate all the after-reign of Louis XIII. Marie then endeavoured to dissuade the King from heading his troops in person; or, should he persist in this design, at least to forego that of leaving her in the capital, and of exposing Monsieur to the dangers of the campaign. ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... they smile forever. Even In their dances!—desecrate Thus this high and noble art Which a sacred ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... those sin against this commandment who grossly misuse and desecrate the holy day, as those who on account of their greed or frivolity neglect to hear God's Word or lie in taverns and are dead drunk like swine; but also that other crowd, who listen to God's Word as to any other trifle, and only from custom come to preaching, ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... in soft recurrent ways, The perfect song, or in remoter days Theocritus have hymned you in glad Greek; But I am not as they,—and dare not speak Of you unworthily, and dare not praise Perfection with imperfect roundelays, And desecrate the prize I ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... intellectual barrenness and the vicious pandering to lower appetites, consequent upon the trading spirit of literature, we note with regret the growing tendency to desecrate beautiful subjects by using them as materials for burlesque. We have had a Comic History of England—one of the dreariest and least excusable of jokes, and capable of for ever vulgarizing in the young mind the great deeds ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... insisted on its choice as a voluntary. Those who had heard the tune before and half remembered it decided that it must come from the "Mikado"; and one stern dowager went so far as to protest to the rector for permitting such a tune to desecrate ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... separate Glastonbury Abbey from Glastonbury. I can understand a man venerating it as a ruin; and I can understand a man despising it as a rubbish-heap. But it is senseless to insult a thing in order to idolatrise it; it is meaningless to desecrate the shrine in order to worship the stones. That sort of thing is the bad side of American appetite and ambition; and we are perfectly right to see it not only as a deliberate blasphemy but as an unconscious buffoonery. But there is another side to the American tradition, which is really too much ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... the Chinese; no slave being allowed to practise either. The reverence of the Indians for the graves of their fathers approaches the worship of ancestors among the Chinese. No outrage is greater to the Indians than to desecrate the burial-places of their dead. They often make sacrifices to them, and celebrate anniversaries of the dead with dancing and feasting. The Chinese feast their dead at regular intervals, and carry them thousands of miles across the ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... Mrs. Carlyle's death, the orphan had been a comparatively happy woman, for jealousy could not invade or desecrate the grave and its harmless sleeper; and Salome fervently thanked God, that, since she was denied the blessing of Dr. Grey's love, at least she had been spared the torture of seeing him the fond ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... upon to deepen our infamy before the world, to rivet the fetter more firmly on the limbs of the enslaved, and to become utterly insensible to the voice of human woe that is wafted to us on every southern gale. We have been called upon, in its name, to desecrate our whole land by the footprints of slave-hunters, and even to engage ourselves in the horrible business ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... young poet to Frank, as they turned to wait for Whitaker and his companions, "how horrible it is to desecrate a scene and hour like this by violence—perhaps, Elliot, by murder!" Frank did not reply; his thoughts were at that time with his aged mother and his now unprotected sister; and he bitterly reflected that to whoever of them, in the approaching contest, wounds or death ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... rooms again. This already has become a melancholy task; but we must choose it, or its sadder alternative,—the old buck-saw. True there are students among us who will have exercise if cramming professors are ever so vexed. They will not study on Sunday; they escape to the woods, admire nature—desecrate the Sabbath. They find relaxation at the billiard table, make effigies in the night to be burned in the morning, remove side-walks, dislocate gates, or arm-in-arm parade the side-walk singing: "Happy is the maid ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... sad old companion, who had taken his stand on the very site which they proposed to cover with a marble floor, shook his head and frowned, and the young man and the Lily deemed it almost enough to blight the spot and desecrate it for their airy temple that his dismal figure had thrown its shadow there. He pointed to some scattered stones, the remnants of a former structure, and to flowers such as young girls delight to nurse in ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... when that great captain of the Gauls, Brennus, led his forces through Italy and Greece, there were in his troop two French nobles, one named Felsinus, the other named Bono, who seeing the wicked designs of Brennus to invade and desecrate the temple of Delphos, after his great conquests, withdrew their forces and passed into Asia with their ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... glorious presence silence is the only language that is befitting. In such a presence sound is discord, for such enchantment as it begets cannot be made articulate. Its influence steals into the senses and lifts the spirit up. To defile or despoil such beauty would be to desecrate a shrine. But the sordid man sees in this symphony of color nothing else than a promise of fruit. His response is wholly physical, not spiritual at all. His spiritual sense seems atrophied and he can do nothing but estimate ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... obliged to prepare his food on the Sabbath, and you imagine yourselves better than he is. No, that will not do. The intention must decide. If any one bakes bread on the Sabbath, I should say to him: 'Is it for your own good or for gain?' In the first case you are acting rightly, in the last you desecrate the Sabbath." ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... were impossible for the very basest fiend to do. But I was wrong to desecrate the word, and say I love her. No, no; I tell you I hate her, I loathe her; but in spite of hatred, in spite of loathing, she exercises over my imagination an irresistible fascination—a fascination you can never feel in that intensity which haunts ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... don't want to desecrate God's Day," Uncle William answered, accepting the rebuke, "but that is a lamentable letter to get. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... by no means as happy as he might have been. Regarding him in this view, it was melancholy to see him so utterly engrossed in his pursuits and plans. He did not take time to look about him and enjoy. The Sabbath to him was a dull, wearisome, restless day. He had too much respect for it to desecrate it by even a private attention to his affairs, and he had very little idea of any spiritual wants. He was active in erecting a church and securing a good preacher, on whose ministrations he attended regularly with his family. Yet it was a great relief ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... world, and engage in the delightful exercises of the holy Sabbath." And I will here mention, for the benefit of those among you (if there are any such) who, in your eager pursuit of wealth, or honor, or are battling, as he was, with the untoward events of life, are tempted to desecrate the Sabbath to secular purposes, that I have often heard your grandfather say (about that time) that on Monday his mind was clearer, and his hopes stronger of success, than at any other time. And towards the close of the week, after his ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... the dead. Three volleys were fired over the graves after the slain men had been laid in them. Bugler Swanson blew "taps," after which the graves were carefully filled and the tops sodded so that roving Moros would not afterwards find and desecrate these graves, sacred to the American people. All in good time the American military authorities would send and exhume these remains, transferring them to marked resting ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... was henceforth to have no sympathy with the future; the two worlds were distinct and separate—that which had been, from that which was to be. To what a bold and adventurous enterprise he had pledged his life!—to unveil the mysteries in which he had participated—to desecrate the altars he had served—to denounce the goddess whose ministering robe he wore! Slowly he became sensible of the hatred and the horror he should provoke amongst the pious, even if successful; if frustrated in his daring attempt, what penalties might he not incur ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... together, reading to each other, discussing questions, and, in other ways, seeking self-improvement. Sundays they devoted chiefly to intellectual pastime, strolling along the banks of the Schuylkill, except Matson, who was too much of a Christian to desecrate the Sabbath. He always went to the house of God on Sundays; nor was he esteemed any less highly by his skeptical associates ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... anxiously; "on the wedding-day no pious bride must desecrate her lips by kissing or partaking of food before going to the altar. Only devout thoughts should fill her heart; and she ought to pray and implore the saints to vouchsafe happiness to her. Let me go, therefore, and fulfil ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... go!" thought the chief justice, with somewhat of an old Puritan feeling in his breast. "No good can come of men who desecrate the house ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... last, breaking the silence with vehement abruptness. "I cannot! I cannot! It would be wicked. I should desecrate the holy sacrament. I could not utter that vow before the holy altar. Never! Yet I can't stay here where he is. He will be wishing to see me. He will be coming soon—he may be coming now. I will not see him. I will not speak with him again. ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... methodically," the orator continued. "To-day is Friday, and in an hour it will be ended. If we begin on Saturday, we may be tempted to desecrate the Sabbath; therefore, as good citizens, I pray that you will first consider your duty to your God, and not forget to keep holy His day. The soldiers will be here on Monday. Let us begin our work then, and finish it ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... rid of this authoritatively through our missionary representatives. We will close the churches, demolish the steeples, melt down the bells, send all sacred vessels to the Mint, smash the images of the saints, desecrate relics, prohibit religious burials, impose the civil burial, prescribe rest during the decadi[2133] and labor on Sundays. No exception whatever. Since all positive religions deal in error, we will outlaw them all: we will exact from Protestant clergymen a public abjuration; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... That shot forth fire, and a heavy brow, Portentous as the lowering front of heaven, When the reverberant, sullen thunder rolls Among the echoing clouds. Thus she denounced Her ancient, fickle worshippers, who left Her altars desecrate, her fires unfed, Her name forgotten. "But I reign, I reign!" She would shrill forth, triumphant; "yea, I reign. Men name me not, but worship me unnamed, Beauty and Love within their heart of hearts; Not with bent knees and empty breath of words, But with devoted sacrifice of lives." Then melting ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... may be found of better faculties, and better qualified to exercise political privileges, and to attain the distinctions of society, than many men; yet who complains of the order of society by which they are excluded from them? For I do not speak of the few who would desecrate them; do violence to the nature which their Creator has impressed upon them; drag them from the position which they necessarily occupy for the existence of civilized society, and in which they constitute its blessing and ornament—the only position which they ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... was above the world to them, and, therefore, while in the world, they could only act upon the principle that governed the world; and prepare for Heaven by pious acts on the Sabbath. There was no other way to do, they believed—to attempt to bring religion down into life would only, in their view, desecrate it, and expose ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... people who inhabited the outlying parts of the Roman domains. This was a mere formality and it did not have any deep significance. But to the Jews such a thing seemed highly sacrilegious and they would not desecrate their Holiest of Holies by the carven image ...
— Ancient Man - The Beginning of Civilizations • Hendrik Willem Van Loon
... have found us—'gainst the horde Of robber Northmen, who, with torch and sword, Approach to desecrate The sacred hearthstone and the Temple-gate— Who would defile our fathers' graves, and cast Their ashes to the blast— Yea! who declare, "we will annihilate The very bound-lines of your sovereign State"— Against this ravening flood Of foul invaders, drunk ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... some restitution of his property is made to the dead, and odd articles, such as brass bowls or a gun or a shield or sword, are placed in a sacred cave, which none dare desecrate by entering to remove anything. These caves are high up on the mountain-sides, and are said to be full of sacred offerings, which have ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... seen enough," said Dalton, rising slowly, and drawing a small riding-whip, "to know now that this person is no duke, but either a charlatan or a devil. In either case, since he has intruded here, to desecrate and degrade, I find it proper to apply a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... snows of the former, nor to the burning sun of the latter." ... "That we improve to the last, that we revered his name to the last, that during his long sleep we permitted no hostile foot to pass or desecrate his resting-place, shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our Washington." Washington's mind, when he rises from his grave at the Last Day, will be immediately relieved by the information that no Britisher has ever trodden ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... the world. Here his perplexed spirit finds inspirations of strength, and space for rest. There is no happiness in life, there is no misery, like that growing out of the dispositions which consecrate or desecrate ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... the devil fleeing from holy water, were not perhaps quite so benighted as our superior modern culture has led us to suppose. For that "hatred of goodness exaggerated to the point of paroxysm," that impulse to desecrate and defile which forms the basis of black magic and has manifested itself in successive phases of the world-revolution, springs from fear. So by their very hatred the powers of darkness proclaim the existence of the powers ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... the reader, that in Ireland many of the church-yards are exclusively appropriated to the interment of Roman Catholics, and, consequently, the corpse of no one who had been a Protestant would be permitted to pollute or desecrate them. This was one of them: but it appears that by some means or other, the body of a Protestant had been interred in it—and hear the consequence! The next morning heaven marked its disapprobation of this awful visitation by a miracle; for, ere ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... enemy. His Majesty resolves, that Regenspurg 150 Be purified from the enemy, ere Easter, That Lutheranism may be no longer preached In that cathedral, nor heretical Defilement desecrate the celebration Of that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... with her daughters in a day or two! And good gracious, he would be left alone in the house! to do as he pleased! to keep bachelor's hall! to bring that girl there as his housekeeper, perhaps, and so desecrate his sacred, patrimonial home! No, that must never be! She must invite and urge her son to accompany herself and his sisters to Washington. But if he should decline the invitation and persist in his declination, what then? Why, as a last resort, she would give up the ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... rapine of nutting taught him to feel that there is a spirit in the woods—a presence which too rude a touch of ours will desecrate and destroy. ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... fee—not to mention the best man's scarf-pin. And I should hate," Ned added sentimentally, "to see 'the touch of a woman's hand' desecrate the sublime ugliness of the ancestral home. Think of such ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... of most imminent danger, were performed in secret, be recorded for future generations. They, however, have no influence on the course of worldly events. They are known only to silent eye-witnesses, and soon fall into oblivion. But hypocrisy, illusion, and bigotry stalk abroad undaunted; they desecrate what is noble, they pervert what is divine, to the unholy purposes of selfishness; which hurries along every good feeling in the false excitement of the age. Thus it was in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... prate of schools that should excel a Raphael? Yes, art was magic; and as he owned the truth of the aphorism, he could comprehend that in magic there may be religion, for religion is an essential to art. His old ambition, freeing itself from the frigid prudence with which Mervale sought to desecrate all images less substantial than the golden calf of the world, revived, and stirred, and kindled. The subtle detection of what he conceived to be an error in the school he had hitherto adopted, made more manifest to him by the grinning commentary of Nicot, seemed to open to him a ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... read that the fishermen on the shores of the Baltic are remarkably superstitious, and careful not to desecrate any of their saints' days. They never use their nets between All Saints' and St. Martin's, as they would be certain not to take any fish throughout the year. On Ash Wednesday the women neither sew nor knit, for fear ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... demon tempts me. But to what? What nameless deed shall desecrate this hand? It must not be: the royal blood of twice two thousand years, it must not die, die like a dream. Oh! my heart is full of care, and my ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... minutes thereafter the 'gentlemen' had all taken position at the end of the 'company street,' and, with their opera-glasses, were taking observations upon those who, as they thought, had come to desecrate the 'hop' room. I was on guard that day, but not being on post at that time, I was sitting in rear of the guard tents with my friends—that place being provided with camp-stools for the accommodation of visitors— when a cadet corporal, Tyler, of Kentucky, came and ordered me to go and fasten down ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... of certain things one must not do: such as saluting with the left hand, which is the dishonourable one of the pair, and refraining carefully, when in a temple or mosque, from touching anything at all, because for an unbeliever to touch is to desecrate. I was told also that a Mohammedan grave always gives one the points of the compass, because the body is buried north and south with the head at the north, turned towards Mecca. The Hindus have ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... come to believe in nothing, like you—and I am far from that yet, thank God!—I should even then remain honest and true—faithful to one love, simply from pride. I should prefer," she added, in a voice deep and sustained, but somewhat strained, "I should prefer to desecrate an ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... just what we do when we take the powers of heart and mind and will, which are meant to be filled with affections, thoughts, and purposes, that are 'an odour of a sweet smell, well-pleasing to God,' and desecrate them by pouring from them libations before creatures. Is not love profaned when it is lavished on men or women without one reference to God? Is not the intellect desecrated when its force is spent on finite objects of thought, and never a glance towards God? ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... equestrian statue of Washington. The right hand of the rider, lifted against the sky, points a prophetic finger toward the southwest. Dark, and motionless, and grand, it is the one symbol belonging solely to the Union, which they have not dared to desecrate; which they have strangely chosen to consider neither as an ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Conemaugh is hard indeed. Each hour reveals some new and horrible story of suffering and outrage, and every succeeding hour brings news of swift and merited punishment meted out to the fiends who have dared to desecrate the stiff and mangled corpses in the city of the dead, and torture the already half crazed victims of the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Sophia to hang the holly and mistletoe. But Sandal knew that his soul shrank from the nephew he had called into his life; knew that the sound of his voice irritated him, that his laugh filled him with resentment, that his very presence in the house seemed to desecrate it, and to slay for him ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Terrorists and Anarchists of France, M. L'Abbe.... The Committee of Public Safety who pillage and murder, outrage women, and desecrate ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... mother of his foe, He will not speak to her in hate; My boy will never stoop so low As motherhood to desecrate. But she shall know what once I knew— Eyes that are glorious to see, The light of manhood shining through— Because ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... themselves, with black wands, in solemn Undertakers' order of procession on either side of the funeral vehicles. Those clumsy pomps of feathers and velvet, of strutting horses and marching mutes, which are still permitted among us to desecrate with grotesquely-shocking fiction the solemn fact of death, fluttered out in their blackest state grandeur and showed their most woeful state paces, as the procession started magnificently with its meager offering of one dead body more to the ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... Ridicule is one of the most deadly of weapons, but it never harms those who have the hardihood of getting down to basic facts and classifying things and ideas according to their true value. Why should we be guided by the wit and sarcasm of indolent voluptuaries who daily desecrate their bodies through ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... Ibn-Sadif. None in the camp knew of the Annunciation, of that fair, sacred day when the birds will not even build their nests lest their labour desecrate its holiness." ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... was very clear, seemed to have absolutely forgotten herself; she disregarded Miss Good's admonitions, and declared stoutly that at such a moment she did not care what rules she broke. She was quite determined that the culprit who had dared to desecrate her composition, and put plum-cake and "Turkish delight" into her desk, should be publicly exposed ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... this part of the premises was by a short, narrow lane, very dirty and very little used, because, whatever might have been in old times, it led now from nowhere to nowhere. Meadows received by this entrance one or two persons whom he never allowed to desecrate his knocker. At the head of these furtive visitors was Peter Crawley, attorney-at-law, a gentleman who every New Year's Eve used to say to himself with a look of gratified amazement—"Another year gone, and I ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... cell to be picked by my industrious fingers had all been removed the previous evening, lest I should desecrate the sacred day by pursuing my ordinary avocation. My apartment was therefore clean and tidy, and by the aid of a bit of dubbin I managed to give an air of newness to my well-worn shoes. The attendants ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... natural. One of the first efforts of nursery culture is to smear that white page with our self-made foulness. We labor conscientiously and with patience, to teach our babies shame. We degrade the human body, we befoul the habits of nature, we desecrate life, teaching evil and foolish falsehood to our defenceless little children. The "sex-taboos" of darkest savagery, the decencies and indecencies of primitive convention, we have preserved throughout the ages in our guarded temple of ancient idols, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... again. Father, you shall take me to my mother's grave. One prayer there—one word with Estelle—and then I will go to Paris; it is the resort of every criminal, and thence it sends forth its crime-blackened ruffians to desecrate this fair earth with horror. Come, father, come—my mother's grave—lead ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... was most vulnerable, he hurt her. Oh, where she was delivered over to him, in her very soft femaleness, he seemed to lacerate her and desecrate her. She pressed her hands over her womb in anguish, whilst the tears ran down her face. And why, and why? Why was ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... and nothing is ever taken seriously or as it was meant, but always perverted and misunderstood. While this spirit lasts, there can be no hope of the achievement of high things, for men will not open the secrets of their hearts to us, if we intend to desecrate the holy, or to broil themselves upon a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... could think them, believe them! No, Karen, it was not well. Not only are you dear to me for yourself; there is another bond. You were dear to him. You were beside me in the hour of my supreme agony. You desecrate our sacred memories when you allow small suspicions and fears to enter your thoughts of me. So much has failed me in my life. May I not trust that my ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... silly baby! You wicked, horrible, sacrilegious girl!" Brinnaria stormed. "You irreligious, atheistical, blasphemous wretch! To save your hide you'd desecrate the temple, pollute the Altar, anger Vesta, make all our prayers in vain, bring down curses without count on Rome and all of us. Be silent! Don't you dare to speak another word! Off ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... Reread the true story of the young woman on page five, accept my assurance that there are thousands and thousands of such cases, and ask yourself, who is to blame? We may certainly assure ourselves that no man living would wilfully desecrate his bride. He did not know,—did not even suspect that the disease he had years ago was still in his system. Society is to blame—you and I—the laxity of the law is the culprit. Had he been compelled to pass a physical examination ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... not, friend Mulrady, that when these lands were given to my ancestors by Charles V., the Bishop of Monterey laid a curse upon any who should desecrate them. Good! Let us see! Of the three Americanos who founded yonder town, one was shot, another died of a fever—poisoned, you understand, by the soil—and the last got himself crazy of aguardiente. Even the scientifico,[1] ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... temples desecrate Where Cypris smiled, the golden maid, the queen, And ruined is the palace of our state; But happy loves flit round the mast, and keen The shrill wind sings the silken cords between. Heroes are we, with wearied hearts and sore, Whose flower is faded and whose locks are hoar. Haste, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... sad old companion, who had taken his stand on the very site which they proposed to cover with a marble floor, shook his head and frowned; and the young man and the Lily deemed it almost enough to blight the spot, and desecrate it for their airy Temple, that his dismal figure had thrown its shadow there. He pointed to some scattered stones, the remnants of a former structure, and to flowers such as young girls delight to nurse in their gardens, ...
— The Lily's Quest (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "a place not appointed her," and reinstated her in her own sanctuary "which she had delighted in." 1635 added to 645 make 2280, a date not to be disputed. Now if a successful Elamite invasion in 2280 found in Chaldea famous sanctuaries to desecrate, the religion to which these sanctuaries belonged, that of the Cushite, or Semitic colonists, must have been established in the country already for several, if not many, centuries. Indeed, quite recent discoveries show that it had been so considerably ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... And Mr. Height will be with us too, for I promised to have luncheon with him again," she exclaimed, as Miss Lindsey began to insert her into an evening wrap made of a priceless old Paisley shawl which "Fashions" had also tempted Miss Elvira to desecrate with ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... particle unsexed," said Leslie, rubbing a match on his boot-sole and preparing to desecrate the sweet air of evening ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... sentiment, every passion, every prayer, is inter-related with every other thought, deed, word, sentiment, passion and prayer of every other living thing in all eternity. We have an ideal to maintain, and if we are untrue or fail, we interrupt, we desecrate the everlasting scheme of the universe. We will therefore be held responsible for our manner of living,—for the sum total of our existence. We have a purpose to fulfill, a responsibility to sustain. If we are false to that purpose, and fail in our ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... example of desecrating churches, by using them as stables and hospitals, and for other secular purposes. It was a natural outcome of such practices that the succeeding generation should go a step further and do infinitely worse. If God-fearing men did not scruple to desecrate consecrated churches, was it likely that their godless successors would have ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... a fool's reasoning. Because he was a stranger and an infidel, so has he been told of dark things done to those who desecrate our faith." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... jaundiced sight, The weather, and the time explain it all: Yet have I drawn a lesson from the spot, And shrined it in these verses for my heart. Thenceforth those tranquil precincts I have sought Not less, and in all shades of various moods; But always shun to desecrate the spot By vain repinings, sickly sentiments, Or inconclusive sorrows. Nature, though Pure as she was in Eden when her breath Kissed the white brow of Eve, doth not refuse, In her own way and with a just reserve, To sympathize with human suffering;[18] ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... capable of discovering the truth without the light of the Gospel, and so faith has died. My Brethren!" he exclaims, "Let us not, if we share this blindness and contempt for the heavenly light, be false and shameless enough to desecrate the Holy Place by appearing there as preachers of a Christianity in which we ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... air won't desecrate it," Harney laughingly rejoined; and they walked to the other end of the library while he set forth his idea ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... noticed it as a thing out of the common course of events. And this, too, in a city where the Sabbath proprieties are sternly insisted upon; where some twenty pulpits deal out anathemas upon all who "desecrate the Lord's day;" where simple notices of meetings for moral purposes even can scarcely be read; where many count it wrong to speak on that day for the slave, who knows no Sabbath of rest, or for the drunkard, who, imbruted by his ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... buildings, and so they knocked them down. But they were not such fools as to encumber their march with the fragments of the edifice they had themselves spoilt. They were at least superior to the modern American mode of reasoning. They did not desecrate the stones because ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... themselves with fright, men, women, and children fled to St. Sophia, leaving their homes and goods to be plundered. A hundred thousand persons rushed in and locked and barred all the church doors behind them. They trusted that the conqueror would not dare to desecrate so holy a place. Abashed before the holiness of God, he would bow down in the dust and leave them in peace. And according to a prophecy the angel of God would descend from heaven in the hour of need and rescue ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin |
