"Sacrilege" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Ah, your half-believing heart Shrinks from that as sacrilege, Or, at least, upon its edge! Worse than sacrilege, I say, Is it to withhold the day From the brother whom thou knowest For the ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... Croisset after a moment's pause; "and it was all because of this woman and the man, but mostly because of the woman. And when the little Meleese came—she was the first white girl baby that any of us had ever seen—our love for these two became something that I fear was almost a sacrilege to our dear Lady of God. Perhaps you can not understand such a love, M'seur; I know that it can not be understood down in that world which you call civilization, for I have been there and have seen. We would have died for the little Meleese, and the other Meleese, her mother. And also, ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... country; sent to the galleys, nobles, rich old men, people much esteemed for their piety, learning, and virtue, people well off, weak, delicate, and solely on account of religion; in fact, to heap up the measure of horror, filled all the realm with perjury and sacrilege, in the midst of the echoed cries of these unfortunate victims of error, while so many others sacrificed their conscience to their wealth and their repose, and purchased both by simulated abjuration, from which without ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Surely at their best they could not have looked more wonderful than now. If they were preserved even so, and if a heaven-inspired artist were to model a statue of Belgium in front, Belgium with one hand pointing to the treaty by which Prussia guaranteed her safety and the other to the sacrilege behind her, it would make the most impressive group in the world. It was an evil day for Belgium when her frontier was violated, but it was a worse one for Germany. I venture to prophesy that it will be regarded by history as ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... know all this and yet be so vividly conscious that what he asked could never be. Her womanly pity said yes; her woman's heart said no. He was eager to take her in his arms, to place the kiss of life-long loyalty on her lips; but in her very soul she felt that it would be almost sacrilege for him to touch her; since the divine impulse to yield, without which there can be no ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... but the moral effect was altogether in his favor. The superstitious Russians saw in his marvellous success a miracle, and accepted it as proof positive that this was the true prince, to oppose whom was sacrilege. By dint of great energy Boris was able to maintain the war till the time of his own death, which happened during the spring of 1605. His son Feodor was crowned as his successor; but a few weeks later he was deposed and strangled, and the new ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... had to be alone to dream her dreams of a love that should be always single. Brigham's letter, far from disturbing these, had brought them a zest hitherto lacking. Neither the sacrilege of refusing him, its worldly unwisdom, nor its possible harm to the little bent man of sorrows, had as yet become apparent to her. Each day, when such duties as were hers in the house had been performed, she walked out to be alone,—always to Box Canon, that green-sided cleft in the mountain, ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... to Athens, Pisistratus had sent the "accursed" Alcmaeonidae into a second exile. During this period of banishment an opportunity arose for them to efface the stain of sacrilege which was still supposed to cling to them on account of the old crime of Megacles. The temple at Delphi having been destroyed by fire, they contracted with the Amphictyons to rebuild it. They not only completed the work in the most honorable manner throughout, but ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... Lu-don paled. "It is sacrilege," he cried; "for countless ages have the priests of the Great God offered each night a life to the spirit of Jad-ben-Otho as it returned below the western horizon to its master, and never has the Great God given sign that he ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... marched at the head of this holy troop. Saturninus walked by his side, surrounded by his illustrious family. The others followed in silence. Being brought before the magistrates, they confessed Jesus Christ so resolutely, that their very judges applauded their courage, which repaired the infamous sacrilege committed there a little before by Fundanus, the bishop of Abitina, who in that same place had given up to the magistrates the sacred books to be burnt: but a violent shower suddenly falling, put out the fire, and a prodigious ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... had not been near, they would not have had time to save anything. As it was, they saved all their duffle, and, going ashore, they soon had the canoe in shape again. Pierre felt that the Great Spirit had thus reminded him of his sacrilege in killing the big spirit fish. I tried to tell Pierre that he had seen a big balloon, and I called to mind that in that very year a big balloon had floated far into the wilderness. Pierre would have no ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... although her great personal affection for me made her glad to have me in the house, she must have felt that it was like sheltering a pariah. Her sister once heard some rumor or suggestion, connecting my name with that of a pious young lady, and looked upon it as a sort of sacrilege. Under these circumstances I came at last to the conclusion that, being under a ban, I would at least enjoy my liberty, either by living my own life as a bachelor, or else by marrying purely and simply ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... it—this was the irresistible problem the Brothers set themselves and slowly, coolly, perfectly solved. So long as the Adelphi remains to us, a microcosm of the eighteenth century is ours. If there is any meaning in the word sacrilege— ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... corner of the wide hall. It was the same old orchestra which had become so closely identified with the good times of the Eight Originals during their high school days. Jessica had declared laughingly that it would seem almost a sacrilege to think of being married to the strains of a wedding march that was not played by them. At the foot of the stairs the bride was met by her father, and the wedding party moved slowly into and down the long parlor ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... the sacrilege was spreading through Cho-Sen and half the northern provinces had risen on their officials, Keijo and the Court slept in ignorance. By Chong Mong-ju's orders the beacons flared their nightly message of peace. And night by night the peace-beacons flared, while ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... themselves. Upon that, the son of Prometheus soothes the daughter of Epimetheus with {these} gentle words, and says, "Either is my discernment fallacious, or the oracles are just, and advise no sacrilege. The earth is the great mother; I suspect that the stones in the body of the earth are the bones meant; these we are ordered to throw behind our backs." Although she, descended from Titan,[68] is moved by this interpretation of her husband, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... everything is in the greatest order; but to open her drawers and presses, and to look at all her dear jewels and trinkets in order to identify everything, and relieve her really excellent servants from all responsibility and anxiety, is like a sacrilege, and I feel as if my heart was being torn asunder! So many recollections of my childhood are brought back to me, and these dumb souvenirs which she wore and used, and which so painfully survive what ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... in a low tone; "but I should have thought, Pedro Alvarez, that I was the person of all others you would have been most desirous of avoiding—I, who am cognisant of your crimes, of the sacrilege you have committed, of your traitorous conduct—you, an outcast from the bosom of our Holy Mother Church—even now I find you in command of a ship belonging to the enemies of our country. If I ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... not the white man pursue me there." In defiance of this last solemn request, and the invariable tenor of his life, the missionaries seized the body and performed their service over it, amid the sullen indignation of his people, at what, under the circumstances, was sacrilege. ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... busybodies, poohpoohed the notion that the inventories which we showed him had anything to do with the rifled Forestburne chests, and scorned the notion that the family had ever been in possession of goods obtained by sacrilege. ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... "spirit of the Gospel" from the "letter of the Gospel" is an irreligious act. The State, which makes the Gospel speak in the letter of politics, in other letters than those of the Holy Spirit, commits a sacrilege if not in human eyes, at least in its own religious eyes. The State, which acknowledges Christianity as its supreme embodiment and the Bible as its charter, must be confronted with the words of Holy ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... rebellious tears, thou dost offer an injury to me who possess her."[2] He pardons some tears in a mother, occasioned by the involuntary sensibility of nature; but calls her excess in them a scandal to religion, abounding with sacrilege and infidelity: adding, that Blesilla herself mourned, as far as her happy state would allow, to see her offend Christ, and cried out to her; "Envy not my glory: commit not what may forever separate us. I am not alone. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... your husband's brother has proposed to you to do is a sacrilege and a profanation. I own to you freely that I look on what I have done toward thwarting your relative in this matter as an act of virtue. You cannot expect me to think it a serious obstacle to a union predestined in heaven, that your son is the squire's heir, and that my grandchild is ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... the other does not remarry for one year. There is no penalty enforced by the group for an earlier marriage, but the custom is firmly fixed. Should the surviving person marry within a year he would die, being killed by an anito whose business it is to punish such sacrilege. The widowed frequently remarry, as there are certain advantages in their married life. It is quite impossible for a man or woman alone to perform the entire round of Igorot labors. The hours of labor for the lone person must usually be ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... fortnight, tell unto another near friend of mine that he had of late heard much speaking thereof. What cannot these brethren say that can be so shameless to say thus? For of very truth, albeit that for a great robbery, or a heinous murder, or sacrilege in a church, with carrying away the pix with the Blessed Sacrament, or villainously casting it out, I caused sometimes such things to be done by some officers of the Marshalsea, or of some other prisons, with which ordering of them, and ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... silence, then a mightier roar of anger at once proclaimed and hailed the re-appearance of the Vidame. Bigoted beyond belief were the mob of Paris of that day, cruel, vengeful, and always athirst for blood; and this man had killed not only their leader but a priest. He had committed sacrilege! What would they do? I could just, by stooping forward, command a side view of the gallery, and the scene passing there was such that I forgot in it our ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... the murderers entered, but the singing of that service was never completed. The fear of sacrilege induced the knights to try to drag the defenceless Archbishop out of the Cathedral, but he struggled with such vigour, flinging one of the men down on the stone floor, that they gave up the attempt and killed him ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... Teniers (in his landscapes), Paul Potter, Canaletti, and the various Van-Somethings and Back-Somethings, more especially and malignantly those who had libelled the sea,' carried dismay into the hearts of collectors, and he was denounced as guilty of an art sacrilege scarcely more marvellous for its impiety than its daring. His opinions, however, have passed through a burning fiery furnace of criticism, and have survived the ordeal. Earnestness is half success; and the truth that was the ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... sat quite still for several seconds. Her eyes were fixed upon me; but I am quite certain that I had passed from within the orbit of her vision. The things which she saw were of another world—somehow it seemed sacrilege on my part to dream of peering even into the dimmest corner of it. So I looked away, and I could never tell altogether what effect my words had had upon her. For when I looked up, ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her eyes, and she met his gaze calmly and courageously. For some seconds neither moved, but stood looking at each other, he holding her tightly, she making no effort at resistance. Greif's first impression was that his wife had committed an act of sacrilege as well as a serious offence against the law. She had explained her meaning clearly enough when she tore up the letter, and he had understood all the consequences of the act at once. It would be useless to attempt a search for the fragments ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... arm hung a short circular shield, in his right hand was poised a long and slender lance. As this Moor, mounted on a charger in whose raven hue not a white hair could be detected, dashed forward against Pacheco, both Christian and Moor breathed hard, and remained passive. Either nation felt it as a sacrilege to thwart the encounter ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... loved, her family opposed. Her lover was beneath her in condition, yet she loved him still the dearer. In these countries, for a daughter to think of mating without consent of priests and parents, is sacrilege. She was guilty of it, her proud and haughty mother had destined Maraquita to be the bride of a wealthy grandee of old Spain—had disposed of those affections, no longer in Maraquita's power to give, for they had already been transferred with ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... my Sophia's young heart too easily gave way to the soft impression; she loved, she idolized this most base of mankind; she would have thought it a kind of sacrilege to have had any ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... raising its head high into the sky in spite of the unseen missiles that even then were beginning once more their attack. I would that these words might go to swell that cry which has gone up from all civilized peoples at the sacrilege to Rheims! Even now something of its majesty and its glory might be saved if the German guns were silenced—if within the German nation there were left any respect for the ancient decencies and traditions of man. But I know too well with what contempt the Germans view such ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... later epoch by the laic and canonic laws under Roman and Byzantine influence. For, if the Saxon code admitted the death penalty rather freely even in cases of incendiarism and armed robbery, the other barbarian codes pronounced it exclusively in cases of betrayal of one's kin, and sacrilege against the community's gods, as the only means ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... he called "melancholy associations," I should move. He had suggested this before, when my husband died. How can I leave the home to which I was brought as a bride? how can I endure the thought that strangers are in our room, or in that other room where Sophy lay? Mr. Maxwell would think it sacrilege to turn his church into an inn, and it is a worse sacrilege to me to permit the profanation of the sanctuary which has been consecrated by Love and Death. I do not know what might happen to me if I were to leave. I have been what I am through shadowy nothings which other ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... footbridge and took his way languidly along the road toward the deserted church. He was close to the hedge that grew thick and rank about the little inclosure when he suddenly heard the sound of lamentation from within. He drew back precipitately, with a sense of sacrilege, but the branches of the unpruned growth had caught in his sleeve, and he sought to disengage the cloth without such rustling stir as might disturb or alarm the mourner, who had evidently lingered here, after the dispersal of ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... covetous. Our neighbours' goods afflict us sore. From Frisco to the Bosphorus All sightly stuff, the less the more, We want it in our hoard and store. Nor sacrilege doth us appal— Egyptian vault—fane at Cawnpore— Collector folk ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... much heart you displayed in your reception of the king," said La Fontaine, quietly, without suspicion that he was uttering a sacrilege. ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... no husband! It were sacrilege to couple that sacred title with the name of the man who has wronged, deserted, repudiated me; and who intends if possible to add to the robbery of my peace and happiness, that of my fair, stainless name. Less than one month after the day when right here, where I now stand, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... range, and to such an indifferent marksman a matter of luck. But to Tressa to try was sacrilege after the struggle they had witnessed. The bullet fell far short, glancing from the water in a swift slit in ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... progress of the Reformation throughout Pomerania. An old chronicler, and a Protestant, thus testifies, 1542:—"And since this time (the Reformation) a great change has come over all things. In place of piety, we have profanity; in place of reverence, sacrilege and the plundering of God's churches; in place of alms-deeds, stinginess and selfishness; in place of feasts, greed and gluttony; in place of festivals, labour; in place of obedience and humility of children, obstinacy and self-opinion; in place of honour and veneration ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... apostasies are induced by the faltering steps of the man of genius! And yet it would be profanity to confound his errors in the same anathema, hurled against the base vices of meanness, the shameless effrontery of low crime! It would be sacrilege! If the acts of the poet have sometimes denied the spirit of his song, have not his songs still more powerfully denied his acts? May not the limited influence of his private actions have been far more than counterbalanced ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... ancient church. Once more, then, it is to be shut out of the sky; and now it is not Nature that asserts her predominance, protecting while she conceals, and throwing her mantle over the martyrs' graves to keep them from sacrilege,—but she is driven away by the builders of the papal court, and all precious old associations are incongruous with those of modern Roman architecture and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... Demosthenes had dreamed the night before that he and Archias were competing for a prize as tragic actors; the house applauded Demosthenes; but his chorus was shabbily equipped, and Archias gained the prize. Archias was not the man to stick at sacrilege. In Aegina, Hypereides and the others had been taken from the shrine of Aeacus. But he hesitated to violate an asylum so peculiarly sacred as the Calaurian temple. Standing before its open door, with his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... honour or the dramatic sense, so it seemed incontrovertible. At this discovery she was as full of shame as if she had done a sin. A sin indeed it seemed almost to be in her, that one so high should stoop to one so low, and she not die at once. Sacrilege—should not one die rather than suffer a sacrilege to be thrust upon one? So Clytie may have felt, and Oreithyia, when they discerned the God in the sun, or wild embraces of ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... play is that one is so dull between the acts. Wit is sacrilege, and sentiment is bathos. Not another rose fell from my lips during the performance, though that I minded little, as I was the more able to count the pearls that fell from the ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... drawn from probable facts eclipse the stupendous falsehood of Ananias and Sapphira! Then the same family strain inevitably crops out, in the loosely-woven web of defensive presumptive evidence—whose pedigree we trace to the same parentage. God forbid that I should commit the sacrilege of arrogating His divine attribute—infallibility—for any human authority, however exalted; or claim it for any amount of proof, presumptive or positive. 'It is because humanity even when most cautious and discriminating is so mournfully fallible and prone to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... however, made the good fortune of Timoleon accounted all the more remarkable, as these were the men that, with Philomelus of Phocis and Onomarchus, had forcibly broken into the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and were partakers with them in the sacrilege; so that, being hated and shunned by all, as persons under a curse, they were constrained to wander about in Peloponnesus; when, for want of others, Timoleon was glad to take them into service in his expedition for Sicily, where they ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... in my nature is to protect that name, and to fight for it to the last breath when danger threatens it, as it does now—through my mother!" He turned from her, striding up and down and tossing his arms about, in a tumult of gesture. "I can't believe it of you, that you'd think of such a sacrilege! That's what it would be—sacrilege! When he talks about your unselfishness toward me, he's right—you have been unselfish and you have been a perfect mother. But what about him? Is it unselfish ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... silence fell upon the scene. And when the sleeping infant smiled, and pressed My yielding bosom with her waxen cheek, I felt it would be sacrilege to speak, Such wordless ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... wandering daughter, that henceforwards will be a lamb travelling back into the Christian fold. Potentates so great as these, when they speak words of love, do not speak in vain. All was forgiven; the sacrilege, the bloodshed, the flight and the scorn of St. Peter's keys; the pardons were made out, were signed, were sealed, and the chanceries of earth ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... champion of hedonism, who maintains that pleasure is the supreme good in life, or rather the only good, that the prostitute is better than the nun, for the one makes men happy, the other is dedicated to a painful and shameful celibacy; that the law against adultery is a sort of sacrilege; that women should be common and should go naked; and that it is irrational to die for one's country or for any other ideal. . . . It is noteworthy that the representative of the Christian standpoint accepts tacitly the assumption that happiness is the supreme ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... custom to sit when the work of the day was done. In this chair no one else would ever sit, unless Sam would do so occasionally, in bravado, and as a protest against his father's authority. When he did so his mother would be wretched, and his sister lately had begged him to desist from the sacrilege. Close to this was a little round deal table, on which would be set the miller's single glass of gin and water, which would be made to last out the process of his evening smoking, and the candle, by the light of which, and with the aid of a huge pair ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... who had no right to the protection of the French flag. It should never be said that Louis of France shields from justice the thieves and murderers whom the Vicar of Christ would punish. You know, sire, that these men had committed sacrilege. They had plundered the altar of St. Peter's of its golden pyx and candlesticks, and had poniarded the sacristan ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... however, that Fesch always maintained that the marriage could only be annulled by an act of arbitrary authority. For Napoleon's refusal to receive the communion on the morning of the coronation, lest he, being what he was, should be guilty of sacrilege and hypocrisy, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... who was smiling at him as she had smiled since his entrance. He did not wonder at the prominence her beauty had brought her, for even at this close range her make-up could not disguise her loveliness. The lily had been painted, to be sure, but the sacrilege was not too noticeable; and he knew that the cheeks beneath their rouge were faintly colored, that the lashes under the heavy beading were long and dark and sweeping. As for her other features, no paint could conceal their ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... lying on one or other of the five battle fronts of the war. Others had found service in other spheres. Only one was still in his home town, poor old Phil Amory, Frances' brother, half-blind in his darkened room, but to bring anything of his own heart burden to that brave soul seemed sacrilege or worse. True enough, he was passing through the new and thrilling experience of making acquaintance with his father. But old Grant Maitland was a hard man to know, and they were too much alike in their reserve and in their poverty of self-expression to ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... what next will the love of gain suggest to these gold-worshippers? The whole earth should enter into a protest against such an act of sacrilege—such a shameless desecration of one of ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... column by the roadside near the scene of his theft, his head was then placed opposite to it, and the mutilated body hung upon a gibbet close by. Forgers had a fleur de lys branded on their foreheads. Sacrilege was punished by burning the criminal in chains over a slow fire. Some burglars, in the same year, had their hands cut off, their arms pulled out with red-hot pincers, and were finally beheaded and cut in pieces. The next year some wretched coiners were boiled alive. Infanticides were burnt. Other ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... prohibited the practice of surgery in 1248, and by subsequent councils, and all dissections were considered sacrilege. Surgery was considered dishonorable until the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. The use of medicine was also discouraged. Down through the centuries a few churchmen and many others, especially Jews and Arabs, took up the study. The ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... every thing connected with religion, that they were afraid to touch or injure any thing that had been consecrated to a religious use. To plunder a church, or a convent, or an abbey, or to do any thing to injure or destroy the property that they contained, was regarded as sacrilege; and sacrilege they deemed a dreadful crime, abhorred by God and man. Thus, while they would burn and destroy hundreds of dwellings without any remorse, and turn the wretched inmates out at midnight into the streets to die of exposure, terror, and despair, they would stop at once when they came to the church, afraid ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... one, and one demanding much prudence as well as learning. It may seem to us that to begin the correction, mutilation and reconstruction of the works and words of men so great in church history and liturgy as Prudentius, Sedulius, St. Ambrose, St. Paulinus, was a work of rashness, a sort of sacrilege, attempting to remodel the glowing piety of their poems to the pattern of Horace's verse. But the Jesuits had got their commands and they were bound to obey. They were chosen on account of their classical scholarship, ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... foot through the pass of that defile, of which we see but the picturesque summits, stops his nose, averts his eyes, guards his pockets, and hurries along through the squalor of the grim London lazzaroni. But seen above, what a noble break in the sky-line! It would be sacrilege to exchange that fine gorge for a dead flat of dull rooftops. Look here, how delightful! that desolate house with no roof at all,—gutted and skinned by the last London fire! You can see the poor green-and-white paper still clinging to the walls, and the chasm that once was ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... establish his new authority. He was doubtless more acceptable to the majority of the Jews than the apostate high priests whom he succeeded, but the stricter Hasideans naturally regarded it as a sacrilege that a man whose hands were stained with war and bloodshed should perform the holiest duties in ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... wanton love, they are true tyrants to the sex. Wife they have none—for it would be sheer sacrilege to apply this noble title to the "squaw" of a Comanche. Mistress is scarcely a fitter term—rather say slave. Hers is a hard lot indeed; hers it is to hew the wood and draw the water; to strike the tent and pitch it; to load the horse and ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... that," replied the old man with an indifferent shrug; but the word struck Caesar like a thunder-bolt. He listened breathlessly to hear what more the Indian might say; but Arjuna, who regarded it as sacrilege to waste the highest lore on one unworthy of it, went on reading to himself, and Adventus stretched ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... bed, deploring her condition, regarding her as lost to them—were such a thing to happen I should certainly kneel there in spirit with them. And feeling just as Balzac did about Massimilla Doni, that it was a sacrilege that Doris should be "expecting" or even married, I wrote, omitting, however, to tell her why I had suddenly resolved to break silence; I sent her a little note, only a few words, that I was sorry not to have heard of her for so long a ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods?" Hinduism in its present form is comparatively modern; but the people generally know nothing of its history, and they regard it as an inheritance from the most ancient times. It comes to them as the gifts of gods and sages, which it would be sacrilege to reject. There is much in the religion itself to bind the people to it. Its numerous ceremonies, sustained by the largest promises, give the assurance of a great reward. In discharging their religious duties they have often to endure toil, undergo ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... rather than sit comfortably upon velvet-cushioned thrones in a place unknown to her regal presence. Simms came back to his native city with her "unsociable houses which rose behind walls, shutting in beautiful gardens that it would have been a sacrilege to let ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... excitement Guy and Melton had escaped notice, but now they were suddenly espied, and the sight of the two hated Englishmen roused the passions to the highest pitch of ferocity. The foreigners' presence in the town was a sacrilege, an insult, and with threats and angry cries the mob surged round the group. At last, so great was the crush, the ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... that I shall not be accused of sacrilege in referring to the Chinese god as an inferior piece of art. Viewed simply from an artistic and economical standpoint, it seems to me that the Chinaman should have less pride in his bow-legged and inefficient god than in any ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the new President. The whole nation was breathlessly awaiting the declaration of Lincoln's policy. To call any kind of meeting which had an object other than that relating to the preservation of the Union seemed almost a sacrilege. Letters poured in upon Miss Anthony urging her to relinquish all idea of a convention, but she never had learned to give up. Even after the fall of Sumter and the President's call for troops, the letters were still insisting that she declare the meeting postponed; but it was ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... King to punish him. I had this cool anger in my heart when I went with Vohrenlorf to the Pavilion at six in the morning. But half the bitterness of it was due to my own inmost knowledge that my acts had led him on; that, if he had committed the sacrilege, my hand had flung open the doors of the shrine. He had defaced the image; it was I who had taught him no more to reverence it. Because he reminded me of this, I thought that I hated him, as we took our way to ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... them. He was, however, forced to confess that, now the other side was presented to him, the conduct of his countrymen was really indefensible; and he blushed as he thought of the various acts of sacrilege in churches, and other deeds of plunder, in which he had taken part. He assured his friend that, in the future, neither he nor his companion would ever share in such ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... fathers said, 'Who is this that thus falls asleep when He wills? To die is weakness, but thus to die is power.' 'The weakness of God is stronger than man.' The desperate king of Israel bade his slave kill him, and when the menial shrunk from such sacrilege he fell upon his own sword. Christ bade His servant Death, 'Do this,' and he did it; and dying, our Lord and Master declared Himself the Lord and Master of Death. This is a part of the history of the historic ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... hesitated only because they had been given to her by her mother, and she did not like to run the hazard of spoiling the set; but still she could manage it, and she would do it. Mademoiselle Felicie protested the attempt would be something very like sacrilege; to prevent which, she gave a hint to Helen of ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... any other than these three, each supreme in his peculiar art, should be discovered to have set his hand to reproduce the sacred image of the king, he should be punished as severely as though he had committed sacrilege. This order struck such fear into all men that Alexander alone of mankind was always like his portraits, and that every statue, painting, or bronze revealed the same fierce martial vigour, the same great ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... reason of the usage for which they are chosen and set aside, thereby becoming consecrated, religious. We should respect them in a spiritual way as we respect in a human way all that belongs to those whom we hold dear. Irreverence or disrespect is a profanation, a sacrilege. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... of the similia similibus curantur, Violet, and it is certain that where nothing else will cure a man of love for one woman, his love for another will. You can see how I love Sylvia, but you have never seemed so sweet to me as to-day." "It is a sacrilege, my friend, to speak so to me now. You are done with me forever. I am but a disembodied spirit, and escaped hades by the grace of the Omnipotent, rather than by virtue of any good I did on earth. So far as any elasticity is left in my opportunities, I am dead as yon ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... soul outside him, externalised it in this little corner of books and pictures. His soul shivered, as one who must go houseless awhile, at the thought that to-morrow its home would be no more. When and how would be its reincarnation? More magnificent, maybe, but never this again. It was sacrilege,—was it not ingratitude too? When once more the books and the pictures began to form into a new harmony, there would be no mother's love to ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... spare him; and then, on the spot, entered into a solemn compact that no one should be told. Encouraged by the forbearing tenderness, the unfortunate one ventured to return to the house of his friend, the owner of the wood, hoping that, in spite of the sacrilege committed, he might be able to face a world that would be ignorant of his crime. As the vulpicide, on the afternoon of the day of the deed, went along the corridor to his room, one maid-servant whispered to another, and the poor victim of an imperfect sight heard ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... said, and where it had been ever held in great veneration; and in the year 1312 an attempt was made to steal it by a man of Prato, a fellow of the basest sort, and as it were, another Ser Ciappelletto; but having been discovered, he was put to death for sacrilege by the hand of justice. Moved by this, the people of Prato determined to make a strong and suitable resting-place, in order to hold the said Girdle more securely; wherefore, having summoned Giovanni, who was now ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... Franklin)—a life and portrait of Mahomet. Both are said to have been unexceptionable according to European ideas, but the whole Mussulman population (145,000 in number) considered their faith insulted and outraged by the publication, holding it sacrilege and idolatry to imagine and print any likeness whatever of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... instituted, and those who were found culpable, to be punished according to law. It was a period of great rigor in ecclesiastical law, especially among the Spaniards. In Spain, all heresies in religion, all recantations from the faith, and all acts of sacrilege, either by Moor or Jew, were punished with fire and fagot. Such was the fate of the poor ignorant Indians, convicted of this outrage on the church. It is questionable whether Guarionex had any hand in this ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... obeyed for the time the strong hand which was upon them, trusting to the interference of accident or providence. They comforted themselves with the hope that the world would speedily fall back into its old ways, that Christ and the saints would defend the church against sacrilege, and that in the meantime there was no occasion for them to thrust themselves upon voluntary martyrdom.[383] But this position, natural as it was, became difficult to maintain when they were called upon not only themselves to consent to the changes, but to justify their consent to their congregations, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... your heart to cry out against so vulgar a sacrilege, you might at least have remembered the sonnet he wrote who saw with such sorrow and scorn the letters of John Keats sold by public auction in London, and have understood at last the ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... that from the covetousness and ignorance of such as are interested in this business; I name covetousness in the first place, as the root of all these mischiefs, which, Achan-like, compels them to commit sacrilege, and to make simoniacal compacts, (and what not) to their own ends, [2038]that kindles God's wrath, brings a plague, vengeance, and a heavy visitation upon themselves and others. Some out of that insatiable desire of filthy lucre, to be enriched, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... east of the Hudson and west of it, and all the grand valleys, and the great country of the Hodenosaunee, and the gorgeous green forest running hundreds and hundreds of miles, every way! I tell you, Robert—and it's no sacrilege either—after He did such a splendid and well-nigh perfect job He could stop for the night and call it a good and full day's work. I reckon that nowhere else on the earth's surface are so many fine and wonderful things ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... now, had once controlled a boy who dreamed in Windsor Forest and with the lightest of hearts planned to achieve the impossible. For what is more difficult of attainment than to achieve the perfected phrase, so worded that to alter a syllable of its wording would be little short of sacrilege? ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... as the keys were perfected, and in the hands of the impostor, the mariner was to cause a felucca, to cruise off shore, in readiness for immediate departure. Then, at a fixed time, the pedler should lurk near the convent, with a couple of mules; and, in the dead of night, the sacrilege ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... which were stretched forwards to grasp them; and amused his leisure with the most frivolous gratifications. A public sale of favor and injustice was instituted, both in the court and in the provinces, by the worthless delegates of his power, whose merit it was made sacrilege to question. [3] The conscience of the credulous prince was directed by saints and bishops; [4] who procured an Imperial edict to punish, as a capital offence, the violation, the neglect, or even the ignorance, of the divine law. [5] Among the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... bones; yet pray That when by the precise you are view'd, A supersedeas be not sued To remove you to a place more airy, That in your stead they may keep chary Stockfish or seacoal, for the abuses Of sacrilege have turned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... horrible sacrilege and unheard-of cruelty to the settlers and poor natives, if you throw these precious relics into the sea, and deprive them of ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... fascinating old house with an Italian garden, and furnishings selected from the whole round world. It does seem like sacrilege to turn that destructive child loose in such a collection of treasures. But he hasn't broken anything here for more than a month, and I believe that the Italian in him will ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... him too much to reverence taxes his powers until they are worn and impotent by the time he reaches manhood. Under Miss Hester's tutelage too many things became sacred to Fred Brent. It was wicked to cough in church, as it was a sacrilege to play with a hymn-book. His training was the apotheosis of the non-essential. But, after all, there is no rebel like Nature. She ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... finishing the work became more and more apparent, till even a minute spent in anything but purely mission-work, or his translation duties, seemed as wasted time. Writing when the end was near, he said: "When I take up a newspaper, it is only to glance at it with a feeling like that of committing sacrilege. I have sometimes been arrested with something interesting, and have read it with ten or more strokes in the minute added to my pulse, from the anxiety caused by the conviction that I am spending precious time apart from ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... have had a majority, when the Council of Ten interfered in time and banished the two proposers for life to Nicosia in Cyprus. About this time a Soranzo was hanged, though not in Venice itself, for sacrilege, and a Contarini put in chains for burglary; another of the same family came in 1499 before the Signory, and complained that for many years he had been without an office, that he had only sixteen ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... of Acham, who committed sacrilege at the great city of Jericho. Thereupon God took a great vengeance upon the children of Israel, and afterward told them the cause and bade them go seek the fault and try it out by lots. When the lot fell upon the very man who did it—being tried by the lot falling first upon his tribe and ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... waistcoat of costly velvet, magnificently adorned with golden foliage, a pair of splendid scarlet breeches, and the finest and glossiest of white silk stockings. His head was covered with a peruque, so daintily powdered and adjusted that it would have been sacrilege to disorder it with a hat; which, therefore (and it was a gold-laced hat, set off with a snowy feather), he carried beneath his arm. On the breast of his coat glistened a star. He managed his gold-headed cane with an airy grace, peculiar to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... It seemed like sacrilege to disturb little things that once had belonged to that upright gentleman, Captain Joseph Whidden. His pipe, his memorandum-book, and his pearl-handled penknife recalled him to my mind as I had seen him so many times of old, sitting in my father's drawing-room, with his hands folded ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... only deceive yourselves with the idea that you can build up a new edifice when you have overthrown the old one. Great God, what sacrilege! Who had intrusted you with the fate of our country, to tempt the Almighty? Who authorized you to lose all there is for the hope of what may be? For centuries past have so many honorable men fought in vain to uphold the old tottering constitution, as you call it? Or ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... sacrilege to thus befoul The mighty soul whose penetration deep Hath by selection brought this galaxy Of excellence to lead this groping state In paths which lead to freedom ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... few of those present, who, in despite of their own desire, and the Captain's express invitation, refused to taste it in the house of God's worship. Such, however, as were scrupulous he afterwards recommended to take it on the outside of the chapel door, which they did, as, by that means, the sacrilege of the act ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... indeed, speaks out sometimes, for wickedness is not always so wise as to be secret, especially when it is driven to despair. By some of their discourses, we may guess at whom he points; but he has fenced himself in with so many evasions, that he is safe in his sacrilege; and he, who dares to answer him, may become obnoxious. It is true, he breaks a little out of the clouds, within two paragraphs; for there he tells you, that "Caius Caesar (to give into Caesar the things that were Caesar's,) was in the catiline conspiracy;" a fine ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... "Is it your liquor or mine?" He quitted his chair end stalked to the well where he filled the flask with water. Infinitely disgusted, the judge watched the sacrilege. Mahaffy resumed his chair and again the flask ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... and recovering his presence of mind as quickly as he had lost it, he changed his tone, thanked those alike who had laughed with him, and who had wept with the "Lord of Tears;" and desired that the cup be consecrated to that genius of complex poetry which is tragedy and comedy in one. It was sacrilege, he declared, to part these two; for to do so was to hack at the Hermai[38]—to outrage the ideal union of the intellectual and the sensuous life in man. And from this new vantage-ground he launched another bolt ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... and, kneeling before the crucifix, implored forgiveness for the sacrilege which, all unwittingly, she ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... privileges; all that was ancient, all that was venerable, all that was poetic, even to abbey churches; yea, dug up the very bones of ancient monarchs from the consecrated vaults where they had reposed for centuries, and scattered them to the winds; and then amid the mad saturnalia of sacrilege, barbarity, and blasphemy to proclaim the reign of "Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality," with Marat for their leader, and Danton for their orator, and Robespierre for their high-priest; and, finally, to consummate the infamous farce of reform ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... Philonous, that in making God the immediate Author of all the motions in nature, you make Him the Author of murder, sacrilege, adultery, and the ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... that has only to wish for a thing to get it becomes closed in fifty years. It mistakes desire for right. It regards opposition as sacrilege. Other minds that differ from it are wicked because they differ. The thick armor of Prince Karl's self-complacency had been pierced as it were by a tiny needle that stung, however tiny, as if its point ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... common ancestors. The group of fellow-citizens was associated through its related groups of ancestral household-deities, and through religious rites performed in common to which it would have been sacrilege to have admitted a stranger. Thus the Ancient City was a religious as well as a political body, and in either character it was complete in itself and it was sovereign. Thus in ancient Greece and Italy the primitive clan-assembly or ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... was inwardly angry at this individual who took the liberty of admiring the cathedral by himself. He seemed to him to be conducting himself in a monstrous fashion, to be robbing him in a sort, and almost committing sacrilege. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... often lost the flavor of history; have, in truth, done so, save in isolated instances. The "Smithtons" and "Griggsby Stations" are monotonous and uninteresting, and the Tombstones are little short of sacrilege. In the crush of movers' wagons there appeared to be a scramble for names of any sort. Places multiply, imagination is asleep, and names nearest at hand are most readily laid hold of; yet, even in such ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... few days more the legal sword is turned aside. Hypocrisy is so completely a part of his nature, that even when there is no longer any hope, when he is irrevocably sentenced, and he knows that he can no longer deceive anyone, neither mankind nor Him whose name he profanes by this last sacrilege, he yet exclaims, "O Christ! I shall suffer even as Thou." It is only by the light of his funeral pyre that the dark places of his life can be examined, that this bloody plot is unravelled, and that other ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... who, poor soul, should have been born two or three hundred years ago, when her narrowness would have been more natural, is shocked, almost indignant; and though she is good enough to say she does not accuse me of "intentional sacrilege," still, addressing a prayer to God from a theatre is nothing less in her eyes than profanation. "For," says she, "you know we must only seek God in ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... Baker kindly propose to aid you in representing the hand of God?" she said, in her haughtiest tones. "He is so willing to lend himself to the other piece of sacrilege, that one can hardly expect him to ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... — N. impiety; sin &c 945; irreverence; profaneness &c adj.; profanity, profanation; blasphemy, desecration, sacrilege; scoffing &c v.. [feigned piety] hypocrisy &c (falsehood) 544; pietism, cant, pious fraud; lip devotion, lip service, lip reverence; misdevotion^, formalism, austerity; sanctimony, sanctimoniousness ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... placards; they have to choke it; if they perceive a piece of humour, for instance, the young Willoughby grasped by his master,—and his horrified relatives rigid at the sight of preparations for the seed of sacrilege, they have to blindfold the mind's eye. They are society's hard-drilled soldiery. Prussians that must both march and think in step. It is for the advantage of the civilized world, if you like, since men have decreed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... are the most cruel of all torments for an invalid, obliging him to feign a health he does not feel. To speak of the illness of the king is a crime, and the courtiers living under the shadow of the throne consider the slightest allusion to the king's health as a sacrilege, a crime worthy of punishment, as though he were not a human being subject like others ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... here, and so imperfectly, that our opinions must be formed on uncertain grounds, and therefore we have no right to be tenacious about them. Yet many persons are as touchy about their opinions as though it were a sacrilege to dispute them. Some of the greatest injustices have been done through obstinacy, in clinging to opinions that ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... in Mind of that Matter, that in these the Passives also obtain a second Accusative Case. The others will have a Genitive." You are taught Letters by me. They accuse me of Theft. I am accused of Theft. Thou accusest me of Sacrilege. I am accused of Sacrilege. I know you are not satisfied yet. I know you are not satisfied in Mind. For when will so great a Glutton of Elegancies be satisfy'd? But I must have Regard to the Company, who are not all equally diverted with these Matters. After Supper, as we walk, we will finish ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... chattering from terror, and repeating, "Do not do that, lord; she is a priestess, for whom He will take vengeance." Vinicius did not know who that He was, but he understood that he himself was going to commit some sacrilege, and he felt a boundless fear also. But when he went to the balustrade surrounding the summit of the tower, the Apostle with his silvery beard stood at Lygia's side on a ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... their own lives, will never disclose the knowledge of it, bound as they are, in addition to this, by an oath of the deepest and most dreadful solemnity—an oath the violation of which would constitute a fearful sacrilege in the eye of God. As for these orphans, whose parents were victims to the cruel laws that are grinding us, I have so trained and indoctrinated them into a knowledge of their creed, and a sense of their duty, that they are thoroughly trustworthy. On this very day ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... The scenes were painted in fresco, and the whole affair was very tolerably arranged. Most part of the scenery had been painted by my brother during his stay at this port in the Cambrian. The Chinamen consider this no sacrilege, as they always use ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... non-existent until he has been established by decree. Their fundamental dogma is that social omnipotence which treats the pretension of truth to be true without any official stamp, as a mere usurpation and sacrilege, and scouts the claim of the individual to possess either a separate conviction ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you mean to shut yourself away from the world," he interrupted me again. "But you shall not. It would be sacrilege. You—the most beautiful, the most ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... little or nothing was done. Soufflot was making feeble efforts to complete Perrault's north front when the Revolution came to arrest his work. So lost to reverence and devoid of artistic sentiment were the official architects of this period, that a sacrilege worse than any wrought by revolutionists was perpetrated at the instance of the canons of Notre Dame. Louis XIV. had begun the vandalism by demolishing the beautiful old Gothic high altar and replacing ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... English editions. The reader will find it as originally written under Appendix S, at the end of last volume.]—and the criticisms were as plentiful as they were frank. It was referred to as a "lamentable failure" and as an "audacious sacrilege" and in terms still less polite. Not all of the English critics were violent. The Daily Telegraph gave it something more than a column of careful review, which did not fail to point out the book's sins ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... nor of friendship, and the case is the same even though those who differ with respect to these colours be brothers or any other kin. They care neither for things divine nor human in comparison with conquering in these struggles; and it matters not whether a sacrilege is committed by anyone at all against God, or whether the laws and the constitution are violated by friend or by foe; nay even when they are perhaps ill supplied with the necessities of life, and when their fatherland ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... High Priest of the great and ancient Temple of Abouthis had been filled with the Spirit of Prophecy before she died, and foretold that her son should be Pharaoh, he was much afraid, and summoning some trusty guards—who, being Greeks, did not fear to do sacrilege—he despatched them by boat up the Nile, with orders to come to Abouthis and cut off the head of the child of the High Priest and bring it to him ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... and strong, and a very good athlete, he soon won the admiration of the Spartans, and made many friends. During his stay here, he heard that he had been tried at Athens, although absent, found guilty of sacrilege, ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... thee sick? And China bloom at best is sorry food? And Rowland's Kalydor, if laid on thick, Poisons the thirsty wretch that bores for blood? Go! 'twas a just reward that met thy crime— But shun the sacrilege ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... nothing, but that he was heir to a throne. Amelia shuddered at the thought that Ulrica had sacrificed her religion to this man, whom she knew not, and had promised at God's altar to love and be faithful to him. In the purity and innocence of her girlish heart she considered this a crime, a sacrilege against love, truth, and faith. "I will never follow Ulrica's example," she whispered to herself. "I will never sell myself. I will obey the dictates of my heart and give myself to the man I love." As she said ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... novice merely wetted his lips; and the rear was brought up by the fourth elder, who wiped all their mouths with his napkin. Then the high priest or one of the elders addressed the young men, warning them solemnly against the sacrilege of divulging to the profane any of the high mysteries they had seen and heard, and threatening all such traitors with ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... the most charming character in this story, "Mrs. Godd," and who positively refuses to permit the book to go to press until it has been explained that the character is a Grecian Godd and not a Hebrew Godd, so that no one may accuse the creator of sacrilege. ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... mendicant, a croaking idiot—I cursed him out roundly and refused him further attention. This is the wisest course sometimes. It is dangerous to humor too carelessly these sprawling Mallares. They are slyly at war with my omnipotence. I can understand the anger of God. Sacrilege confuses Him. And We are all alike—We Gods. We are forced into an attitude of indifference in order that We may keep Ourselves intact. Thus We look down with Consummate dispassion upon Our hallucinations—Our ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... their lost treasure by open force, the three guardian priests followed and watched it in disguise. The generations succeeded each other; the warrior who had committed the sacrilege perished miserably; the Moonstone passed (carrying its curse with it) from one lawless Mohammedan hand to another; and still, through all chances and changes, the successors of the three guardian priests kept ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... framers of the Nicene or Athanasian Creeds, or their imitators in subsequent ages. What a spectacle for gods and men! "All truth" summed up in Thirty-nine Articles, or a score of Oecumenical Councils! It is the profanity, I had almost said the sacrilege, of it, which is so shocking to the instinctive reverence of our minds. And what truths, too, are commended to our keeping in these canons and articles! Beginning with the natural depravity of human affections, purposely inflicted ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... with the Church. Strong as he was, he found the Church too strong for him. The Bishop of Soissons compelled him to agree to pay an annual and perpetual rent to the Abbey, and made him also take the cross and go to the Holy Land to expiate his sacrilege. There he fell in battle. The grandson of this baron, Robert de Coucy, in 1213 granted the people of Pinon 'a right of assize according to the use and custom of Laon,' and the next year founded there a hospital. Twenty years afterwards Pinon became a commune, and ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... of showing his dislike for the author of the "Rights of Man." The police sternly seized the foolish son of Albion. A blow inflicted upon the sacred person of a member of the Convention was clearly sacrilege, punishable, perhaps, with death. But Paine interfered, procured passports, and sent the penitent soldier safely out of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... "I consider it a sacrilege," exclaimed Miss Matilda, "and, as I remarked to Cecil this morning, that young person leaves the palace ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... It seemed like sacrilege to say more; but as his uncle waited, he added hastily—"She is sad, and I can make her happy. But I cannot live without her—voila! Now will ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... againe; "Haue you not (I beseech you) coffins of gold and siluer full of dead mens bones:" Meaning the shrines wherein the relikes of saints were inclosed. Which (as his words seemed to import) he would haue had them conuert into monie, therewith to helpe him in that need, iudging it no sacrilege, though manie did otherwise esteeme it, considering (as he pretended) that it was gathered for so godlie an vse, as to mainteine warres against Infidels and enimies ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (2 of 12) - William Rufus • Raphael Holinshed
... tenants, dirtily swill out This harmless liquor shall they knock and beat For sack, only to talk of rye and wheat? Oh, let not such preposterous tippling be; In our metropolis, may I ne'er see Such tavern sacrilege, nor lend a line To weep the rapes and tragedy of wine! Here lives that chemic quick-fire, which betrays Fresh spirits to the blood, and warms our lays; I have reserved, 'gainst thy approach, a cup, That, were thy muse stark dead, should raise her up, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... from fancy, but only from knowledge of the real facts. So the crowd surrounded this man, and asked him one after the other, "Who are you? Who knows you? How come you to know all this?" And at last he was convicted in this way, and confessed that he was one of those that had committed the sacrilege. And were not the murderers of Ibycus similarly captured? They were sitting in the theatre, and some cranes flew over their heads, and they laughed and whispered to one another, "Behold the avengers of Ibycus." And this being overheard by some who sat near, as Ibycus had now been some time missing ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... with a spell, and made the universe one wide mausoleum of the lost;—none but those can understand the mysteries of that regret which is shed over every after passion, though it be more burning and intense; that sense of sacrilege with which we fill up the haunted recesses of the spirit with a new and a living idol and perpetrate the last act of infidelity to that buried love, which the heavens that now receive her, the earth where we beheld her, tell us, with, the unnumbered voices of Nature, to worship ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be imagined, the savage tribesman will on no account EAT his tribal totem-animal. Such would naturally be deemed a kind of sacrilege. Also it must be remarked that some totems are hardly suitable for eating. Yet it is important to observe that occasionally, and guarding the ceremony with great precautions, it has been an almost universal custom for the tribal elders to call a feast at which an ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... but he repeated the imprecation. He repeated it because it shocked him. It struck at what he held to be most sacred. It profaned his holy of holies, and left it bare to sacrilege. It gave him a fierce, perverted joy to feel that she whom he would have loved to shield with everything that was most tender was now exposed to his cursing. It was rifling his own sanctuary and trampling its ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... admixture of acid, luscious, and peculiarly agreeable in a warm climate; and when partaken of with temperance and due regard to quality they are highly promotive of health. For this reason Booddhists regard the destruction of a fruit tree as quite an act of sacrilege, and their sacred books pronounce a heavy malediction on those who wantonly commit so great a crime. One who has tasted the fruits of the tropics only at a distance from the soil that produces them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... see stars at times that made him think of Sonia's eyes. The wind shook the branches gently, and made little moans and whispers in the corners, as if the ghosts of the portraits were discussing the sacrilege of the Monsignor's presence. Horace thought at the time his nerves were strung tight by the incidents of the day, and his interest deeply stirred by the conversation of the priest; since hitherto he had always thought of wind as a thing that blew disagreeably except at sea, ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... gropes in the folds of her habit) Sacrilege! To attempt my virtue! (A large moist stain appears on her robe) Sully my innocence! You are not fit to touch the garment of a pure woman. (She clutches again in her robe) Wait. Satan, you'll sing no more lovesongs. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... through the forms of the church over the grave of these men," the priest declares emphatically. "It would be a sacrilege. But I will say a ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... Doctor's day. It had once a coat of white paint; but the storms and sunshine of many years have almost obliterated it, and produced a sober, grayish hue, which entirely suits the antique form of the structure. To repaint its reverend face would be a real sacrilege. It would look like old Dr. Ripley in a brown wig. I hardly know why it is that our cheerful and lightsome repairs and improvements in the interior of the house seem to be in perfectly good taste, though the heavy old beams and high wainscoting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... the thought. Robbing the dead seemed sacrilege, yet it did not seem like robbery. And was I not sure that she would wish me to take it? It might comfort me during the little time I had to live, for I could carry it ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... be? Impossible! Yet there was a richness in her costume which was not usual for unmarried women. A diamond arrow had pierced her clustering and auburn locks; she wore, indeed, no necklace; with such a neck it would have been sacrilege; no ear-rings, for her ears were too small for such a burthen; yet her girdle was of brilliants; and a diamond cross worthy of Belinda and her immortal ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... merged itself into a lotus lake, covered over much of its extent with thousands of noble leaves and rose-pink blossoms. It seemed almost sacrilege to tear and bruise and break them and push rudely through them in our canoe. A sadder and lonelier scene could not be. I have seldom been more powerfully affected by nature. The lake lying in hot mist under dark clouds, with the swamp and jungle ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... as she said, she could not set herself up as a censor of things that she must keep on doing as other people did. She could have renounced the world, as there are ways and means of doing here; but she had no vocation to the religious life, and she could not feign it without a sense of sacrilege. In fact, this generous and magnanimous and gifted woman was without that faith, that trust in God which comes to us from living His law, and which I wonder any American can keep. She denied nothing; but she had lost ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... Nell's room, and my next dash was thither. The door of the room was wide-open, but I paused in the opening when I reached it, with the feeling strong upon me that I should commit something very like sacrilege by entering. A single glance, however, sufficed to reveal that the shrine of innocent girlhood had already been violated, for it, too, like Mr Lestrange's, had been turned topsy-turvy by the savages. But Nell—where was she? Instinctively ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... words: defending sin: shouting with laughter: making grimaces at any man: to sing secular songs and to love them: to praise ill-deeds: to sing more for the glory of men than of GOD. The sins of deed are these: gluttony: lechery: drunkenness: simony: witch-craft: breaking of the holy-days: sacrilege: to receive GOD'S Body in deadly sin: breaking of vows: apostacy: dissipation in GOD'S service: to set example of ill deeds: to hurt any man in his body, or in his goods, or in his fame: theft: rapine: usury: deceit: selling of righteousness: to hearken ill: to give to harlots: to withhold necessaries ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... sermons. The coronation of the King in his "holy" and "sacred" vestments was declared to be ridiculous. "We plain republicans," said one writer, "cannot understand how there could be anything more like sacrilege in stealing that mantle ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... distinguishing symbol of the divinity to whom it was dedicated; and it was held so sacred that if any malefactor fled to it his life was safe from his pursuers, and it was considered one of the greatest acts of sacrilege to force ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens |
