"Irreverent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... date, their circumstances; some of them may have dwelt in the old time on this very spot of ground now covered by the Museum. Like other people who grow too rich and comfortable, the citizens of Tarentum loved mirth and mockery; their Greek theatre was remarkable for irreverent farce, for parodies of the great drama of Athens. And here is testimony to the fact: all manner of comic masks, of grotesque visages; mouths distorted into impossible grins, eyes leering and goggling, noses extravagant. I sketched a caricature of Medusa, the anguished features ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the Divine will.... I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal his will to others on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me.... What good would a proclamation of emancipation ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... the plowman moved automatically upward as if to brush away a fly, and at this unconscious action the child, seized by a convulsion of laughter and fearing lest it explode, stuffed his fists into his mouth. In the opinion of this irreverent young skeptic his Uncle Dave was in a "tantrum" instead of a "trance," and he thought such a disease ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... coat, brass buttons and a buff-colored vest. His coat and buttons were well known all over the country. One day when William Lloyd Garrison was inveighing against some conduct of the Southern whites, and said: "They say the South is quiet now. Order reigns in Warsaw. But where is Poland?" An irreverent newspaper man said: "He is up in Vermont polishing ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... sang hymns to Jesus Christ, while the passers-by crossed themselves and bowed their heads reverently. Now, the cathedral which crowns the hill, roofless and ruinous, is only imposing from a distance, and a part of it is used for the storage of marine or lighthouse stores under our prosaic and irreverent rule. Xavier preached frequently in it and loved it well, yet the walls are overgrown with parasites, and the floor, under which many prelates and priests lie, is hideous with matted weeds, which are the haunt of snakes and lizards. Thus, in the city which was so dear to Xavier that ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... laws of our constitution not to be affected by a testimony so vast, uniform, and sacred as that which is rendered by the common belief of Christian history and the Christian countries to the truth of the Trinity. There is something extremely painful, not to say irreverent, towards the Providence which has watched and led the true Christian Israel, in presuming that a tenet so emphatically and gladly received in all the ages and regions of Christendom, as almost literally to meet the terms of the test of Vincentius,—believed always, everywhere, and ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... soldier, "I would willingly be civil, but it consists not with my duty to hear these godly men, in whose service I am, spoken of after this irreverent and unbecoming fashion. And albeit I know that you malignants think you have a right to make free with that damnation, which you seem to use as your own portion, yet it is superfluous to invoke it against others, who have ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... Peter informs us that some persons in his time, "wrested" those parts of Paul's writings which were "dark and hard to be understood:" and this was not the worst of their conduct, for they treated "the other scriptures also" in the same reckless and irreverent manner, which were neither dark nor hard to be understood. (2 Pet. iii. 16.) These epistles are no more mystical or prophetical than those of the apostle Paul. They are simply and properly descriptive, although like all other epistles, they are applicable to the church ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... immortality, inhabited by the gods, but fatally inaccessible to man. When he thinks of this place, it is with a sigh, a sigh that man's aspirations towards it are vain and his attempts to reach it irreverent. This latter thought he enforces by an earnest allusion to the myth of Bellerophon, who, daring to soar to the cerulean seat of the gods on the winged steed Pegasus, was punished for his arrogance by being hurled down headlong. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... his revered master,—as nearly so as the position of a layman was likely to resemble that of an ecclesiastic. His denial of the Visible Church, as represented by the Pope and Cardinals, sprang not from an irreverent, but from a reverent spirit. To accept them as exponents of Christ and Christianity was to blaspheme and traduce both, and therefore he only could be counted in the highest degree Christian who stood most completely opposed to them in spirit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... Y Chi Tung worrying about any components he might have "requisitioned" seemed almost irreverent to Mike. Budget Control would gladly have given that eminent physicist a good half of the entire space station, if he had expressed his needs through the proper channels—as a matter of fact, anything on board that wasn't actually ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... the juicy soup (as soon as it comes into contact with the latter). That person who is endued with intelligence, who waits upon his superiors, and who has his passions under control succeeds in knowing all the rules of morality and never disputes with what is accepted by all. An ungovernable, irreverent, and sinful person of wicked soul perpetrates sin in seeking his well-being ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... nautical romances, of the starving crew casting lots in the long boat, and spoils the dignity of antiquity by modern trivialities, saying of a discontented sailor on Columbus's ship, "He wanted fresh shad." The fun of Innocents Abroad consists in this irreverent application of modern, common sense, utilitarian, democratic standards to the memorable places and historic associations of {571} Europe. Tried by this test the Old Masters in the picture galleries become ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Erskine! Who ever heard of such an irreverent nickname applied to that good and great man? "The laddies couldna be his sons," thought the woman. She made no further inquiry, and the boys escaped scot free. The culprit afterwards entered the service of the East India Company. "The boy ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... almost too late, wasn't I?" was his irreverent greeting to the cashier. "Time to cash this before closing up?" he demanded breathlessly, but with unabated cheerfulness. He flopped the check over. "Mendenhall's indorsement. Hi! Mr. President! Just a minute! ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... and though she trembled she would not and could not disobey the voice of conscience which set before her one clear, plain duty. She was in great doubt whether to stand or to kneel; she was afraid of being seen if she knelt; she would not be so irreverent as to pray sitting; she rose to her feet, and clasping a cedar tree with her arms, she leaned her head beside the trunk, and whispered her prayer, to him who saves his people from their sins, that he would make her one ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... was a perpetual memory of his mother, who had died in his boyhood, completed his festal transformation. Yet his erect carriage, high aquiline nose, and long gray drooping moustache lent a distinguishing grace to this survival of a bygone fashion, and over-rode any irreverent comment. Even his slight limp seemed to give a peculiar character to his massive gold-headed stick, and made it a part of ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... hoping to find quiet and peace there, and so to reconcile myself with duty. Vain dream! The place of rest itself had become inhospitable. Workmen were stripping and carrying away the turf, the trees were dry, the wind cold, the sky gray—something arid, irreverent, and prosaic dishonored the resting-place of the dead. I was struck with something wanting in our national feeling—respect for the dead, the poetry of the tomb, the piety of memory. Our churches are ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... singular that the French critics of all others, they who so zealously acknowledge the remains of the theoretical writings of the ancients on literature, Aristotle, Horace, Quinctilian, &c., as infallible standards of taste, should yet distinguish themselves by the contemptuous and irreverent manner in which they speak of their poetical compositions, and especially of their dramatic literature. Look, for instance, into a book very much read,—La Harpe's Cours de Litterature. It contains many acute remarks on the French Theatre; ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... most serious things that has in it no offense. Humor has its share even in religion—but oh, how few seem to understand its laws! I confess to a kind of foreboding shudder when even a clergyman begins to jest upon the borders of sacred things. It is not humor that is irreverent, but the mind that gives it the wrong turn. As we may be angry and not sin, so may we jest and not sin. But there is a poor ambition to be married, which is, I fear, the thought most present with too many young women. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... say that he was not profound. This is because he was not stupid. In the presence of absurdity he laughed, and was called irreverent. He thought God would not damn even a priest forever. This was regarded as blasphemy. He endeavored to prevent Christians from murdering each other, and did what he could to civilize the disciples of Christ. Had he founded a sect, obtained control of some country, and burned a few ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the clergy chafed against Collins's manipulation of this tongue-in-cheek persona. They resented his irreverent wit which projected, for example, the image of an Anglican God who "talks to all mankind from corners" and who shows his back parts to Moses. They were irritated by his jesting parables, as in "The Case of Free-Seeing," and by the impertinence ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... from being intimidated from proceeding, this demonstration only made Sir Roger the more determined. To have so desperate and irreverent a population coming about his house and woods now presented itself in a much more formidable aspect than ever. So, next day, not only were the placards once more hoisted, but rewards offered for the discovery of the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... departure, casting a frowning glance on the two boys. Having reached the door he turned round, as if to watch what the head master would do. Dr Freeman on this called up A'Dale and Ernst, and spoke in a loud voice with great severity to them, threatening them with condign punishment for their irreverent behaviour. As, however, he did not proceed further than words, they had reason to hope that he did not consider them guilty of any very atrocious crime. As soon as the priest had taken his departure, they were allowed to return to their seats, with an admonition, that ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... a rose-breasted grosbeak, with lovely rosy shield, with much posturing and many sharp "clicks," essayed to find out what manner of irreverent intruder this might be. Later his modest gray-clad spouse joined him. They circled around to view the wonder on all sides. They exchanged dubious-sounding opinions. They were as little "used to seeing a lady" as the oxen. They slipped ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... became aware of a grave dug in the midst of the thoroughfare, and a provision of quicklime piled in the ditch. The cart was backed to the margin, the body slung off the platform and dumped into the grave with an irreverent roughness. A sharpened stake had hitherto served it for a pillow. It was now withdrawn, held in its place by several volunteers, and a fellow with a heavy mallet (the sound of which still haunts me at night) drove it home through the bosom of the corpse. The hole ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... such as be slothfull in the ministration of the Sacraments and irreverent, as prophaners receiving the cleane and uncleane, ignorants and senselesse prophane, and making no conscience of their profession in their calling and families, omitting due tryall or using none, or light tryall, having respect ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... revenues, while dooming themselves to spare living.[448] He appeals to the authority of the Christian religion, which indeed might be a fair argumentum ad hominem against 'Parson Malthus.' He declares that Nature takes more care of her work than such irreverent authors suppose, and 'does not ask our aid to keep down the excess of population.'[449] In fact, he doubts whether population increases at all. Malthus's whole theory, he says, rests upon the case of America; and with the help of Mr. Booth and some very unsatisfactory statistics, he tries ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... exclaimed Mr. Schultze, and it was anything but an irreverent ejaculation. He arose. "Der miracle has come to pass! Ve might haf ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... regarded as inclined to resent any intrusion or the taking of any liberties with them or their belongings. If one little stick of wood from a tc[)i]'ndi hogan is used about a camp fire, as is sometimes done by irreverent whites, not an Indian will approach the fire; and not even under the greatest necessity would they partake of the food prepared by ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... with a long black beard and hair falling below his shoulders, clothed in silk of gold and purple, waving a censer, monotoning the prayers in a high Russian tenor, with one eye on the choir of sanitars, one eye on the candles blown by the wind, the breeze meanwhile playing irreverent jests on his splendid skirts of gold. Then there was the congregation in three groups. The first group—two generals, two colonels, four or five other officers, the Sisters (Sister K—— bowing and crossing ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... Todd drifted away to the more congenial atmosphere of a dowager duchess's dower-house in the Highlands, where it is to be hoped that his conversational qualities were more brilliantly displayed than in the irreverent gaiety of Rackham. Millie Splay meant to keep Harry Luttrell too. She hoped against hope. This was the man for her Joan, and whether he was wasting his leave miserably in that melancholy house troubled her not ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... distinction. It would clearly be irreverent to mention a nowadays-devil, close at hand, in the same breath as the remoter Gadarenes. She said nothing about Galilee being there still, with perhaps the identical breed of swine, and even madmen. The Granny's inner vision of Scripture history was unsullied ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... element, Like a bow slackened and unbent, In some dark corner shall be leant. The robin sings, as of old, from the limb! The catbird croons in the lilac bush! 25 Through the dim arbor, himself more dim, Silently hops the hermit-thrush, The withered leaves keep dumb for him; The irreverent buccaneering bee Hath stormed and rifled the nunnery 30 Of the lily, and scattered the sacred floor With haste-dropt gold from shrine to door; There, as of yore, The rich, milk-tingeing buttercup Its tiny polished urn holds up, 35 Filled with ripe summer to the edge, The ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... girl's ill," said Berry. "Put your head between your knees, dear, and think of a bullock trying to pass through a turnstile. And why 'as husbands go'? As a distinguished consort, I must protest against that irreverent expression." ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... some one on very partikler business," growled the irreverent member, and the secretary made his way to ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... spell-bound on the form which, though human, transcended humanity as eternity transcends time, as the light of the sun transcended the blazing beacon on Pharos; and she said to herself that it was impossible that an irreverent hand should be laid on this supremely lovely statue, crowned with the might ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... directions—now by the beauty, order, and deep symbolism of the Catholic ritual, now by the spirituality and earnestness of the men among whom he lived. At one moment the worldly pomp, the mechanical and irreverent worship, and the gross and vicious habits of many of the clergy repelled him; at another the reverence and conservatism of his nature held ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... divines, but you may look into it freely enough through a couple of gilded lattices. It is very sombre and splendid, and conveys the impression of a very holy place. And yet somehow it suggested irreverent thoughts; it had to my fancy—perhaps on account of the lattice—an Oriental, a Mahometan note. I expected every moment to see a sultana appear in a silver veil and silken trousers and sit down on the ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Church had withdrawn the light of its countenance from Moscow, the nest of irreverent vipers who had bombarded the Kremlin. Dark and silent and cold were the churches; the priests had disappeared. There were no popes to officiate at the Red Burial, there had been no sacrament for the dead, nor were any prayers to be said ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... was so fascinating a father as mine for a boy anything under eight or ten years old. He could guess on Saturday whether I should name William Pitt on the Sunday; for, on those occasions, 'Slender Billy,' as I hope I am not irreverent in calling him, made up for the dulness of his high career with a raspberry-jam tart, for which, my father told me solemnly, the illustrious Minister had in his day a passion. If I named him, my father would say, 'W. P., otherwise S. B., was born in the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of that irreverent young man, Harbinger, there stirred a sort of misgiving. Had he expressed himself too freely? Had he said anything too thick? He had forgotten the old boy! Stirring Bertie up with his foot, he murmured "Forgot you didn't know, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... scullerymaids to further contributions in favour of patriot Parliamentarians, but to protest with all the fervour of the conveners' souls, with all the eloquence of their powerful intellects, with all the solemnity of a sacred deed, against the irreverent naming of the animals in the Central Park Zoological Gardens after Irish ladies, Irish gentlemen, Irish saints. Misther Daniel O'Shea, of County Kerry, stated that the great hippotamus had actually been named Miss Murphy! A hijeous baste from a dissolute counthry inhabited wid black ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... an irreverent boy. Haddingly was greatly pleased at the thought of Maitland sitting ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... Her irreverent haste caused those about her to turn their heads at the slight confusion she made, Amelie among the rest, who recognized at once the countenance of Angelique, somewhat flushed and irritated, as she strove vainly, with the help of La Force, to get out of the throng of kneeling ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... it diminishes at the Renaissance, and Rabelais, drawing up a list of some remarkable books in St. Victor's library, inscribes on it, between the "Maschefaim des Advocats" and the "Ratepenade des Cardinaux," the works of the subtle doctor under the irreverent ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... of this secular, I might almost say irreverent spirit, I quote Bock's accusation against Queen Mary of Hungary, who in her embroideries, preserved at Aix-la-Chapelle, is said to have represented herself as the Queen of Heaven, surrounded by ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... a fact resting on his own statement in a passage indisputably written by him (in the "Prologue" to the "Legend of Good Women"); nor is the value of this statement reduced by the negative circumstance, that in the extraordinary tag (if it may be called by so irreverent a name) to the extant "Canterbury Tales," the "Romaunt of the Rose" is passed over in silence, or at least not nominally mentioned, among the objectionable works which the poet is there made to retract. And there seems at least ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... him that the madman, as men called him, lay wrestling in prayer with the Father of lights. The old highlander was not irreverent, but the thing would have been unintelligible to him. He could readily have believed that the supposed lunatic might be favoured beyond ordinary mortals; that at that very moment, lost in his fit, he might be rapt in a vision of the future—a wave of time, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... stirs All his heart into tumult?... Lucile de Nevers With the Duke's coupled gayly, in some laughing, light, Free allusion? Not so as might give him the right To turn fiercely round on the speaker, but yet To a trite and irreverent compliment set! ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... Ensample. SECTION 3. He who dated the Christian era is the Ensample in Christian Science. Careless comparison or irreverent reference to Christ Jesus is abnormal in a Christian Scientist, and is prohibited. When it is necessary to show the great gulf between Christian Science and theosophy, hypnotism, or spiritualism, do it, but without hard words. The wise ...
— Manual of the Mother Church - The First Church of Christ Scientist in Boston, Massachusetts • Mary Baker Eddy
... very definite prospect of any income whatever; and had not Mrs. Smith sold her mother's jewels (which came to her just at the time), they would apparently have had some difficulty in furnishing their house in Doughty Street. But Horner, their friend (the "parish bull" of Scott's irreverent comparison), had gone to London before them, and impressed himself, apparently by sheer gravity, on the political world as a good young man. Introduced by him, Sydney Smith soon became one of the circle at Holland House. It is indeed not easy to live on invitations and ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... or the dead. No tongue thy peerless name hath spoken, No space can hold that awful name; The aspiring spirit's wing is broken;— Thou wilt be, wert, and art the same! Language is dumb. Imagination, Knowledge, and science, helpless fall; They are irreverent profanation, And thou, O God! art all in all. How vain on such a thought to dwell! Who knows Thee—Thee the All-unknown? Can angels be thy oracle, Who art—who art Thyself alone? None, none can trace Thy ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... Anglais, 'the basis of the English character,' is nothing more nor less than le manque de bonheur—'a want of anything like happiness.' An English thinker, on the other hand, finds in the very language of France the evidence of superficial emotion and unaspiring, irreverent intelligence. 'How exactly,' writes Julius Ham, 'do esprit and spirituel express what the French deem the highest glory of the human mind! A large part of their literature is mousseux; and whatever is so, soon grows flat. Our national quality ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that again and again, would he continue to have sufficient strength of will not to follow her? She knew how to talk and make excuses. How sweetly she could talk. Had she no anxiety about her own salvation? On thinking it over, he could not remember ever having heard her say anything irreverent or impure. When she sat opposite him at table, quieter now than she had ever been before, and mutely raised her big eyes to the ceiling, she looked exactly like the pictures of the Virgin Mary whose heart is pierced with seven swords owing to ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... among the passengers, till an irreverent youth ended it by saying: "Mamma's got the rocks; that's ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... bitter glance at his empty loom. At this moment he sat silent—a rock against which the noisy waves of a combative Bible-reader were breaking in rude foam. His silence and apparent impassiveness angered the irreverent little worthy. To Falconer's humour he looked a vulgar bull-terrier barking at a noble, sad-faced staghound. His foolish arguments against infidelity, drawn from Paley's Natural Theology, and tracts ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... was that sort of irreverent criticism of women in which male parties so often indulge. Bitter cynic though he was, women were sacred to Andrews. To speak disrespectfully of a woman in his presence was like uttering blasphemy in the ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... of the scornful is one of the special dangers of this age. Pride, presumption, and scorn are closely linked together, and are far indeed from the mind which was in CHRIST JESUS. This spirit often shows itself in the present day in the form of irreverent criticism. Those who are spiritually least qualified for it are to be found sitting in the seat of judgment, rather than taking the place of the inquirer and the learner. The Bereans of old did not scornfully reject the, ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... bold, my brother, very bold. Did I not know you for an earnest man, When sacred themes move you to utterance, I'd chide you for those most irreverent words Which make essential to the Christian scheme That which the scheme was made to kill, ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... finished on the 9th of July. On the same day he began Cain, a Mystery. Cain was an attempt to dramatize the Old Testament; Lucifer's apology for himself and his arraignment of the Creator startled and shocked the orthodox. Theologically the offence lay in its detachment. Cain was not irreverent or blasphemous, but it treated accepted dogmas as open questions. Cain was published in the same volume with the Two Foscari and Sardanapalus, December 19, 1821. The "Blues," a skit upon literary coteries and their patronesses, was written in August. It was first ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... interpretation of prophecy. His labours were rewarded by the title of Pseudopropheta Canus, bestowed on him when he was old and white-haired, by the terrae filius of 1703. He had himself in his younger days shown some tendency to irreverent joking, by inventing an Eastern Patriarch, a native of London, a man of venerable appearance and dressed to suit the character, who deceived some eminent members of the University, and gave them his blessing; an incident of which Lloyd used to make his "bragge" ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... knowledge of things that have transpired before, without knowledge of the persons concerned, without a suspicion of the needs of the situation and its possibilities, they judge the peoples of the earth and divide the world. Stupid talk, with which irreverent officiousness seeks to while away and shorten the period of anxious waiting for customers; but to prepare quietly and wisely and mightily in advance for terms of peace, that is the duty ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... . and a deuced lucky thing for you we tumbled upon you as we did. But Captain Suckling's orders were—and I heard him give 'em, with my own ears—to fetch you off to-morrow morning. From the Blue Posts, eh? Well, just you run back, or Blue Billy,"—by this irreverent name, as I learned later, the executive officers of his Majesty's Navy had agreed to know Mr. Benjamin Sheppard, proprietor of the Blue Posts: a solid man, who died worth sixty thousand pounds—"or Blue Billy will be sending ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... represented their moral vicissitudes. But a lady, who had lived in a great house with many servants, who had founded an Amateur Quartet Society, the hem of whose garment had never been touched with irreverent finger—could she stand ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... resembling in this the Aryan root Nak, expressive of perishing or destruction. Nax is darkness; Narl, death; Naria, sin or evil. Nas—an uttermost condition of sin and evil—corruption. In writing, they deem it irreverent to express the Supreme Being by any special name. He is symbolized by what may be termed the heiroglyphic of a pyramid, /. In prayer they address Him by a name which they deem too sacred to confide to a stranger, and I know it not. In conversation they generally use a periphrastic ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... books, I think, less so. Tolstoy and Zola see none of the traditional beauty of battle; they apply themselves to a devoted—almost obscene—study of corpses and carnage generally; and they lack the American's instinct for the rowdy commonplace, the natural, the irreverent, which so materially aids his realism. In "The Red Badge of Courage" invariably the tone is kept down where one expects a height: the most heroic deeds ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... at the feet of every member of the Senate in 1850 and challenged him to say that he knew, or thought, or dreamed, that by enacting the compromise of 1850 he was directly or indirectly abrogating, or in any degree impairing the Missouri Compromise. "If it were not irreverent," he continued, "I would dare call up the author of both the compromises in question, from his honoured, though yet scarcely grass-covered grave, and challenge any advocate of this measure to confront that imperious shade, and say that, in making ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... lines that raised the ire of Byron, who regarded them as an irreverent assault upon his favorite poet, Pope. In the controversy occasioned by the Rev. W. L. Bowles's strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope, Byron perversely asks, "Where is the poetry of which one-half ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... listen when he spoke. As his hand had fitted naturally a weapon, so his mind turned naturally to larger things than those offered in these long-tilled fields of life. He came back from the war disillusionized, irreverent, impatient, and full of that surging fretfulness which fell upon all the land. Thousands of young men, accustomed for years to energy, activity, and a certain freedom from all small responsibility, were thrust back at ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... Beyond Vico comes a jutting headland; the road curves round it, clinging close on the hillside, turns inland, and all at once looks down upon the Piano di Sorrento. Instinctively, the companions rose to their feet, as though any other attitude on the first revelation of such a prospect were irreverent. It is not really a plain, but a gently rising wide and deep lap, surrounded by lofty mountains and ending at a line of sheer cliffs along the sea-front. A vast garden planted for Nature's joy; a pleasance of ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... of a book "Kitab Nujaba al-Abna" Treatise on Distinguished Children, by Ibn Zakar al- Sakalli (the Sicilian), ob. A. D. 1169-70. And the boy-Kazi is a favourite role in the plays of peasant-lads who enjoy the irreverent "chaff" almost as much as when "making a Pasha." This reminds us of the boys electing Cyrus as their King in sport (Herodotus, i. 114). For the cycle of "Precocious Children" and their adventures, see Mr. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... wood and declared that the god Coudouagny had sent his three chief priests to warn the French against ascending the river, predicting dire calamities if they should persist. Cartier's reply to the Indian deity was brief and irreverent, and he forthwith made ready ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... educational circles in which collegiate influences prevail, I did not deem it prudent to introduce some of the noblest thoughts that belong to the great theme. The book was sent forth limited and incomplete, hoping that, heretical as it was, and quite irreverent toward the ignorance descended from antiquity, it might still receive sufficient approbation and appreciation to justify later introduction of matter that would have hindered ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... intemperate, insistent gaze must surely be inconsequent. Once and for all, the legend of the crystal might be disposed of at the cost of two or three hours' climbing. I would bring it back to prove to Wylo that no irreverent "debil-debil" would ever again blink at the sun from that particular spot. As for the skeletons, they were, without doubt, as mythical as the evil spirit, and in any case a few old bones were not to scare me from ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... little Mara composed herself on a low stool by her grandmother's side, he, however, did not conduct himself as a babe of grace. He resisted all Miss Ruey's efforts to make him sit down beside her, and stood staring with his great, black, irreverent eyes during the Bible-reading, and laughed out in the most inappropriate manner when the psalm-singing began, and seemed disposed to mingle incoherent remarks of his own even in ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is this!-Well may irreverent, unthinking youth despise, instead of revere, the hoary head which the wearer is so much ashamed of. The lady boasts a relationship to you, and Mr. B. and, I think, I am very bold. But my reverence for years, and the disgust ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... here reprinted from the Christian Observer, XI (376-386), of June, 1812, is of special interest as an early protest from conservative, religious circles against the immoral and irreverent tone of Byron's poetry. As literary criticism, it is almost worthless, in spite of the elaborate allusions and quotations with which the critic—evidently a survivor of the old school—has interlarded his remarks. Little can be said in defense of an article which insists that the chief end ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... could not manage the desired prayer. But the crafty Mercurius had, by his devilish art, inserted a song in the place of the ave, so that Father Peter, instead of chanting an hymn, sang the following irreverent ditty— ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... made an observation in an undertone, no doubt touching the intimacy between the ducal carriage and Tom-Jim-Jack—a remark which, as it might have been irreverent and dangerous, Ursus took care not ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... when there, to make some irreverent remarks about that tomb. I had walked out to see it on a hot afternoon, and I found it inconveniently far. One is accustomed to have these places "grouped," and I was displeased with Juliet for not being buried nearer home—it was an oversight—but perhaps ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... or dust of human attributes, descend and ascend on their missions to the earth. Who can have the heart to handle harshly these beautiful faiths? To say, this hope may go up, but this must go down to the darkness of annihilation! Was it irreverent in the pious singing-master of a New England village, when he said, that often, while returning home late on bright winter nights, he had dropped the reins upon his horse's neck, and sung Old Hundred from the stars, set as notes to that holy tune, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... their common fate with a certain Indian stoicism and Western sense of humor that for the time lifted them above the vulgar complacency of their former fortunes. There was a deep-seated, if coarse and irreverent resignation in their philosophy. At the beginning of the calamity it had been roughly formulated by Billings in the statement that "it wasn't anybody's fault; there was nobody to kill, and what couldn't be reached by ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... "Memorials of James Hogg," says that "there is no doubt that Hogg wrote the first draft; indeed, part of the original is still in the possession of the family.... Some of the more irreverent passages were not his, or were at all events largely added to by others before publication." [Footnote: Mrs. Garden's "Memorials of James Hogg," p. 107.] In a recent number of Blackwood it ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... of the Public is still outside, listening open-mouthed to a comic dialogue between the Showman and a juvenile and irreverent Nigger. Those who have come in find that, with the exception of some particularly tame-looking murderers' heads in glazed pigeon-holes, a few limp effigies stuck up on rickety ledges, and an elderly Cart-horse in low spirits, there is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... Jehovah's man or Dagon's man," said one of the younger soldiers, with a half-irreverent tone, "I wish we had him here ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... advantage of an authorized government monopoly so long as the agreed-upon duty was paid. Then there was the Starch Monopoly, a very profitable one because starch was a new delight which soon enabled Elizabethan fops to wear ruffed collars big enough to make their heads—as one irreverent satirist exclaimed—'look like John Baptist's on ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... the awful secrets of the future had overwhelmed in them all present sympathies. As we have stood before these lofty apparitions of the painter's mind, it has seemed to us impossible that the most vulgar spectator could have remained there irreverent. ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... remarked that after all, "Paradise Lost" was one of the books which no one wished longer: we fear, in this irreverent generation, some wish it shorter. Hardly any reader would be sorry if some portions of the latter books had been spared him. Coleridge, indeed, discovered profound mysteries in the last; but in what could ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... it will be all right. You'll not be irreverent, and maybe it will reawaken your own true ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... out his jaw at her, with the grimace of an irreverent schoolboy. Upon that aged face it seemed a blasphemy. Then he took out of his bosom a long leather purse, and emptying its contents on the settle, began to count and recount the pieces, ringing and examining each, and suddenly he leapt ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spice of the forbidden and therefore the free! The joy of asking reasons where you have hitherto answered school queries; of extemporizing replies, magnificent, irresponsible, instead of laboriously remembering mere solutions; of describing, analyzing, and generally laying bold mental eyes, irreverent intellectual hands, on personalities whose real presence would merely make you stumble over a chair or drop a tea-cup! For talking is the great equalizer of positions, turning the humble, the painfully immature, into judges ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... her nap in a big chair, or from the top of a folding bed, jump down, and be at the hall door ready to greet the incomer, before she was halfway up the stairs. The cat never got down for the wrong person, and she never neglected to meet any and every member of our family who might be entering. The irreverent scoffer may call it "instinct," or talk about the "sense of smell." I ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... are you about?" shouted Hardy, getting up and hastening to the corner. "Why, you irreverent beggar, those pins are the famous statesmen and warriors of ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... slides she had begun to mount at the moment her regular translating work was interrupted by their sudden entry. She had been taking quiet glances at Harry all the while, in her unobtrusive fashion; for Uta had learned always to be personally unobtrusive—'the prophet's donkey,' those irreverent French exiles used to call her—and she had come to the conclusion that he was a decidedly ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... year were kneeling to pray in a vast cathedral full of mellow stained light, isn't it?" said Anne dreamily. "It doesn't seem right to hurry through it, does it? It seems irreverent, like ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... some anniversary observance. Clearly, these people, concurring in this with the special sympathies of Marius himself, had adopted the practice of burial from some peculiar feeling of hope they entertained concerning the body; a feeling which, in no irreverent curiosity, he would fain have penetrated. The complete and irreparable disappearance of the dead in the funeral fire, so crushing to the spirits, as he for one had found it, had long since induced in him a preference for that other mode of settlement to the last sleep, as ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... Irreverent opponents of the PRIME MINISTER have sometimes compared him to Micawber, on the ground that he was always waiting for something to turn up. I found another link to-day between these celebrated characters. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... you're irreverent," said his sister, "and it's a shame that the canons permit such persons to sit on the vestry ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... maudlin lovers here in corners mourn, But all be brisk and talk, but not too much, On sacred things, let none presume to touch. Nor profane Scripture, nor sawcily wrong Affairs of state with an irreverent tongue: Let mirth be innocent, and each man see That all his jests without reflection be; To keep the house more quiet and from blame, We banish hence cards, dice, and every game; Nor can allow of wagers, that ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... burst which I had raised by my irreverent attacks on De Beranger, these gentlemen separated from their political friends, and complimented me. One of them even addressed me a letter, in which I read these words, which assuredly I would not have written: "That stupid De Beranger." There was a sort ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... open on the journey, and discovered that certain Jesuits had been sent into Scotland to encourage the presbyterians to rebel. Arrived in Valladolid, he heard one Armstrong, in a sermon delivered to students, charge his majesty with most foul and black-mouthed scandals, and use such irreverent, base expressions as no good subjects could repeat without horror. He then returned to England, and was soon after sent to St. Omer with fresh letters, in which was mentioned a design to stab or poison his majesty—Pere la Chaise, the French king's confessor, having placed ten thousand ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy |
