"Blasphemous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... theologians and priests for scaring half-witted people into their individual folds has been telling them that they were in danger of committing the most dreadful of all sins, the "sin against the Holy Ghost." The utterly "unpardonable sin" of all sins. This blasphemous, fiendish proposition has frightened numbers of half-baked folks, and they have pestered their small modicum of brains over this mysterious say-so of priests and parsons even to the point of committing suicide, or of landing themselves in ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... satirist's nameless audacity; A man with a slave-woman's shameless pugnacity; One with a dirty dog's careless up-bound, The conscience thereto of a ravening hound. Like a stately noble he answers all speakers From a memory full as a Chronicle-maker's, With the suave behaviour of Abbot or Prior, Yet the blasphemous tongue of a horse-thief liar And he wise as false in every grey hair, Violent, garrulous, devil-may-care. When he cries, 'The case is settled and over!' Though you were a saint, I ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... sanctuary, where the grandeur of God's works, without any of the disfigurement of man, is all that remains to you now. I welcome you, my poor fallen son;' and he stretched out his hand. But our hero simply gave the blasphemous vagabond a look of scorn and ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... yet—but yet—the responsibility, the anxiety, the ceaseless fretting care! This fierce, unbroken city";—he spoke of it as though it were a newly-lassoed and untamed mustang,—I liked the simile; "this lawless, blasphemous, obscene, and dangerous community; these sights of heartlessness and cruelty; these sounds of selfish, greedy contention; the absence of all taste and culture,—no lines of beauty, no strains of music, no tones of kindness, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Uttered by the Jews.—Long prior to the time of Christ, certain schools among the Jews, ever intent on the observance of the letter of the law, though not without disregard of its spirit, had taught that the mere utterance of the name of God was blasphemous, and that the sin of so doing constituted a capital offense. This extreme conception arose from the accepted though uninspired interpretation of Lev. 24:16, "And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the blood thus shed. The pagans {71} claimed that the church had copied their most sacred rites by placing her Holy Week at the vernal equinox in commemoration of the sacrifice of the cross on which the divine Lamb, according to the church, had redeemed the human race. Indignant at these blasphemous pretensions, St. Augustine tells of having known a priest of Cybele who kept saying: Et ipse Pileatus christianus est—"and even the god with the Phrygian cap [i. e., Attis] ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... me. It is blasphemous. I cannot help it, if that is my first feeling. It might not be so, I dare say, if I understood the kind of feeling you describe. I do not want to vex you; and besides, we must speak gently, for mamma is asleep; but ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... bandits wasted some time in blasphemous bickerings as to the order of the boats in the procession of attack. I urged my views upon Castro in hurried whispers. His assent was of importance, since he could use an oar very well, and, if left to myself, I could not hope to scull fast enough to keep within hearing ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... they had heard sounds of flutes and timbrels, and mocking songs filling the place; and that the devil, dressed in skins and garlands like a wild man of the woods, had cleft the roof with his head, and disappeared with many blasphemous yells as ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... a strict accountability for all the deeds done in the body. To deny this, is to deny the whole doctrine of freewill agency, and with it that of all human responsibility, unless we go to the other and blasphemous extreme of branding with cruelty and injustice the entire system of revealed religion. In consequence, then, of this independent action of spirit, we see the soul of man constantly departing from its normal state, effecting evil as well as good, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... really the case with all but the desperately wicked, who show that they despise the magnificent boon of life by the bad use they make of it, by their blasphemous defiance of God and good, and their unwillingness to be renewed ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... sublime and simple than Job—more royally witty and wise, more to the quick and the point than Solomon—more picturesque, more intense, more pathetic than Dante—more Miltonic (we have no other word) than Milton—more dreadful, more curiously blasphemous, more sonorous than Marlowe—more worldly-wise and clever, and intellectually svelt than Goethe. More passionate, more eloquent, more impudent than Byron—more orthodox, more edifying, more precocious than Pollok—more absorptive and inveterate ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... no agent of discord, no firebrand of sedition. I anticipate history by a few days; I disclose a truth whose development we may try in vain to arrest; I write the preamble of our future constitution. This proposition which seems to you blasphemous—PROPERTY IS ROBBERY—would, if our prejudices allowed us to consider it, be recognized as the lightning-rod to shield us from the coming thunderbolt; but too many interests stand in the way!... Alas! philosophy will not change the course of events: destiny will fulfill itself regardless ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Mery, a poet and author of some celebrity; and here he managed to collect materials for a volume which we can recommend to the perusal of the daily increasing class of our countrymen who think that a book, although written in French, may be witty and amusing without being either blasphemous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... from all parts, at the Sound of a Trumpet? What is their Appearing sometimes Cloathed with Light or Fire upon them? What is their Covering of themselves and their Instruments with Invisibility? But a Blasphemous Imitation of certain Things recorded about our Saviour or His Prophets, or the Saints in the ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... his own to express, but he discovered the heretic's gospel in Gautier, and Baudelaire and set it forth in English in music that he might have learned from the Sirens who sang to Ulysses. He revelled in blasphemous and licentious fancies that would have made Byron's hair stand on end. Nowadays, much of the blasphemy and licentiousness seems flat and unprofitable as Government beer. But in those days it seemed heady as wine and beautiful ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... literal application of texts to the living men and women in a congregation is not only in bad taste, but presumptuous and blasphemous. What right has a clergyman to sit in judgment on me, for instance? To give forced constructions to parables and vague generalities in Scripture, about the actual meaning of which divines in all ages have differed; and, pointing his finger to me or to you, say—'The case ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... to even the most intelligent, a doctrine almost blasphemous. So incorporated with our education has the supposed aphorism become, that its belief is held to be part of our moral being, and the words themselves have, in our ear, the ring of religion. Still, seldom does Nature succeed in producing ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... this tirade was deliberate and murderously bitter. "That's what you want to see, is it, Mr. Blasphemous Barry Whalen? Well, you can want it with a little less blither and a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... shalt worship The Lord thy God, and only him shalt serve; And dar'st thou to the Son of God propound To worship thee accurst, now more accurst For this attempt bolder then that on Eve, 180 And more blasphemous? which expect to rue. The Kingdoms of the world to thee were giv'n, Permitted rather, and by thee usurp't, Other donation none thou canst produce: If given, by whom but by the King of Kings, God over all supreme? if giv'n to thee, By thee how fairly is the Giver now Repaid? But gratitude ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... and wits were ever busier than in any other part of Greece, I find but only two sorts of writings which the magistrate cared to take notice of; those either blasphemous and atheistical, or libelous. Thus the books of Protagoras were by the judges of Areopagus commanded to be burnt, and himself banished the territory for a discourse begun with his confessing not to know "whether there were gods, or whether ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... aggravating sins too much practised in our present mournful times: as Pride, Drunkenness, Blasphemous Swearing, together with the Profanation of the Sabbath; concluding with the sin of wantonness and disobedience; that upon our hearty sorrow and forsaking the same the Lord may save us for his ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... deal very honestly and fully with their subjects. The essays of Dr. Jessopp and Mr. Paul are of course merely Essays, of a score or two of pages: though the first is pretty wide in its scope. There would be nothing but good to be said of either, if both had not been, not perhaps blasphemous but parsimonious of praise, towards "Our Lady of the Rocks." It cannot be too often or too solemnly laid down that an adoration of Madame de Sevigne as a letter-writer is not crotchet or fashion or affectation—is no result of merely taking authority on trust. The ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... guarded with jealous care. How sacred the spot where lie the parents that tended us, the bosom that shielded our infancy, the hands that carried our weakness everywhither. Men will always deem the desecration of the body or the grave blasphemous. The physical house, standing, is the temple of God; falling, it must forever be sacred in ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... frequently breathe through the pipe. He fell into desuetude, however, of his daily walk, [Endnote: 1] and sent Elsie to play by herself in the graveyard (a dreary business enough for the poor child) instead of taking her to country or seaside himself. He was more savage and blasphemous, sometimes, than he had been heretofore known to be; but, on the other hand, he was sometimes softer, with a kind of weary consenting to circumstances, intervals of helpless resignation, when he no longer fought and struggled in his heart. He did not ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... maintain the spirit of mutiny for any length of time. Suffused with idiotic tears, they will confess that He who created them rebellious undoubtedly did so but to mock them. They will pronounce these words in despair, and such blasphemous utterances will but add to their misery—for human nature cannot endure blasphemy, and takes her own ...
— "The Grand Inquisitor" by Feodor Dostoevsky • Feodor Dostoevsky
... I might be revenged Upon this churl, I'd go out of myself, And give this fury leave to dwell within This ruin'd cottage, ready to fall with age! Abjure all goodness, be at hate with prayer, And study curses, imprecations, Blasphemous speeches, oaths, detested oaths, Or anything that's ill; so I might work Revenge upon this miser, this black cur, That barks and bites, and sucks the very blood Of me, and of my credit. 'Tis all one, To be a ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... Mr. Winterfield and the woman-rider in the circus pronounced a formula of words before a layman in an office. That is not only no marriage, it is a blasphemous profanation of a holy rite. Acts of Parliament which sanction such proceedings are acts of infidelity. The Church declares ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... of the third century. Calvin's character of this Supreme Being seems chiefly copied from that of the Jews. But the reformation of these blasphemous attributes, and substitution of those more worthy, pure, and sublime, seems to have been the chief object of Jesus in his discourses to the Jews: and his doctrine of the cosmogony of the world is very clearly laid down in the three first verses of the first chapter ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... have read somewhere of a monarch (in Spain I think it was) who was so out of humour with the Ptolemean system of astronomy, that he said, had he been of the Creator's council, he could have saved him a great deal of labour and absurdity. I will not defend this blasphemous speech; but often, as I have glided with humble stealth through the pomp of Princes Street, it has suggested itself to me, as an improvement on the present human figure, that a man, in proportion to his own ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... "The blasphemous dog!" said Yeo, fumbling at his bow-string, as if he longed to send an arrow through him. But Amyas had hardly laid his finger on the impatient veteran's arm, when another procession followed, which made them forget ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... dubersome to me—dretful dubersome. It don't look reasonable to me, that He, the mighty King of heaven and earth, would speak to His children through a senseless Indian jargon, or impossible and blasphemous speeches through a ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... exercising his wit. That he was more than willing to make his ribald drollery the fool's mask from behind which he might aim safely his shafts of ridicule at what he despised and hated, is indeed probable. But in this is supplied to him no sufficient excuse for his obscene and blasphemous pleasantry. Nor yet are the manners of the age an excuse sufficient. Erasmus belonged to the same age, and he disliked the monks not less. But what a contrast, in point of decency, between Rabelais ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... obvious. Blasphemy is an artistic effect, because blasphemy depends upon a philosophical conviction. Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If any one doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor. I think his family will find him at the end of the day in a state of ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Colossus from the earliest seethings of the fire-time. I never could call a Yo-Semite crag inorganic, as I used to speak of everything not strictly animal or vegetal. In the presence of the Great South Dome that utterance became blasphemous. Not living was it? Who knew but the debris at its foot was merely the cast-off sweat and exuviae of a stone life's great work-day? Who knew but the vital changes which were going on within its gritty cellular tissue were only imperceptible to us because silent and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... enunciated at one explosive effort of the breath, but it is monotonous when too freely employed. To be sure, you might with some justice reply that you had qualified said adjective strongly—but the qualification was trite though blasphemous. And you limited it very nicely—but the limitation to myself is unjust, as it overlooks my ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... governor over the first of these was one Spite-God, a most blasphemous wretch: he came with the whole rabble of them that came against Mansoul at first, and was himself one of themselves. He that was made the governor of Midnight Hold was one Love-no-Light; he was also of them that came first ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... fanatically-pious people, and the yoke of which could not be thrown off. The Holy Office grew every year in pride, pretensions, and exactions. It arrogated to its tribunal crimes of usury, bigamy, blasphemous swearing, and unnatural vice, which appertained by right to the secular courts. It depopulated Spain by the extermination and banishment of at least three million industrious subjects during the first 139 years of its existence. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... remains one mighty element in the program of Satan's counterfeits in addition to his outward forms, deep doctrines, church and ministers,—that is, the Man of Sin, the blasphemous counterfeit of the blessed Christ; who is yet to appear; who will be the very incarnation of Satan; and "whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders and all ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... to the Christian temple, and, treating the priests with violence, tore the image from its shrine and conveyed it to his own place of worship. The necromancer then muttered before it his blasphemous enchantment. But the light of morning no sooner appeared in the mosque, than the official to whose charge the palladium had been committed missed it from its place, and in vain searched every other to find it. In truth it never was found again; nor is ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... rode, athirst and blasphemous, and away sped Jimmy with his wondrous news, and out tumbled the loungers at Peter's bar, the judge and the sheriff last, and those who had horses mounted and galloped up to Folsom's and those who had not trudged enviously after, and a few minutes later there ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... The mental function involved is that of expectation or, when the expectation is controlled by our feelings, we may class it under the mental function of imagination. The melodrama shows us how the young millionaire wastes his nights in a dissipated life, and when he drinks his blasphemous toast at a champagne feast with shameless women, we suddenly see on the screen the vision of twenty years later when the bartender of a most miserable saloon pushes the penniless tramp out into the gutter. The last act in the theater may bring us to such an ending, ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... detected the fraud, but instead of reproving the lad for his sin and folly, only considered how he might turn the cheat to his own advantage, and render it conducive to his own preferment. The abandoned miscreant actually went through the blasphemous mockery of baptizing the youth as a convert from heathenism; named him after the brigadier, who stood godfather: claimed credit from the Bishop of London for his zeal; and was by the kind prelate ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... for an artist of the Renascence to look on a statuette of Leda and the Swan or Dana[:e] and the Descent of Jupiter as a shower of gold, as prefiguring the Incarnation. There was nothing blasphemous in this pagan symbolism of a pagan prophecy of the birth of a God from a virgin. It does not follow that Browning is not powerfully beautiful and essentially poetical, even when he reads modern meanings impossibly ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... hopin'—God forgive me—A've nipped him in the other arm an' brought him winged t' th' throne o' Grace! They followed the gully bed behind y'r Mountain, the white horse same as yon night under y'r Ridge, limpin', the one armed man rockin' in the saddle an' spittin' out blasphemous filth for th' others to wait. A've kept guard all night, yellin' an' howlin' like a vigilantee, knowin' they're not the gentry to run into the arms of them good old-time neck-tie com'tees; an' not dreamin' A hadn't another ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... of the gallows. Permission was given the two to say anything they wished. Brace broke forth in a loud rant, profane and obscene, and danced about like one demented. The clergyman felt obliged to stop his blasphemous harangue by cramming his handkerchief over his mouth. He broke away, nevertheless, and again poured forth a tirade, declaring that he was being murdered. At length he became exhausted and ceased speaking. All this time—and it was fully five minutes—Hetherington ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... dangerous; men eager to fight at the drop of the hat, or sooner, to be accommodating, and ready to employ in their assaults all the formidable and terrifying weapons of the rough-and-tumble; reckless, hard, irreverrent, blasphemous, to be gained over by no words, fair or foul; absolutely scornful of any and all institutions imposed on them by any other but the few men whom they acknowledged as their leaders. And to master these men's respect there needed either superlative ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... wears out, but only at the cost of terrible suffering for the man, because to him every day seems as a thousand years. He has no measure of time such as we have in the physical world. He can measure it only by his sensations. From a distortion of this fact has come the blasphemous idea of ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... of dead and living, one to be cherished even in her dreams, one whom "Heaven Above," together with those who had "gone below," built round with a wall of spells?—and more of such talk, which Thomas thought so horrible and blasphemous that he fled before ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... brought the conviction of strength. The audacity of the Reformers was wonderful to the mind of President Viglius, who could find no language strong enough with which to characterize and to deplore such blasphemous conduct. The field-preaching seemed in the eyes of government to spread with the rapidity of a malignant pestilence. The miasma flew upon the wings of the wind. As early as 1562, there had been public preaching in the neighborhood of Ypres. The executions which followed, however, had for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... blasphemous publication, that this is no longer a characteristic of the Romish Hierarchy. Why is it not? Has she ever changed for the better? When did she ever renounce these doctrines and practices? Never, no, never! Hers is the same ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... the blasphemous wretch swears! Out of my house, thou son of the whore of Babylon; offspring of Bel and the Dragon.—Bless us! ravish my wife! my Dinah! Oh, Shechemite! ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... soon teach you that;" cried a loud, coarse tongue, adding an exceedingly blasphemous oath, which I will spare ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... reality mere pawns on the chessboard of Fate, necessary tools in working out the game of civilization on this continent. Who can calculate the sum of the divine forces which the institution of slavery, and its blasphemous reversion of the commands of the Decalogue, and all its cruel outrages and inhuman crimes, have awakened in the souls of the freemen of the North? The loathsomeness of its example and the infernal malice of its designs against liberty and truth, righteousness and justice, and whatsoever ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the Laodiceans, whom the angel of the Apocalypse spewed out of his mouth. For instance, who, the orator asked, is now rising to check the outburst of idolatry in our midst? 'At this very moment,' he went on, 'there is proceeding, unreproved, a blasphemous celebration of the birth of Shakespeare, a lost soul now suffering for his sins in hell!' My sensation was that of one who has suddenly been struck on the head; stars and sparks beat around me. If some person I loved had been grossly insulted ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... the stairs, probably hydrophobia was tied up in the cupboard. Brief time I expended in making my arrangements to quit, having first seen Mr. Arcubus carted away to a hospital, where by skilful treatment he slowly recovered. For the Mangouste and the mice, the parrots and the blasphemous macaw, I engaged temporary board and lodging with a bird-and-rabbit man in the neighborhood, telegraphing De Vonville that I had departed from lodgings forever,—lodgings for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the old-school Americanism in which he had been bred, the Americanism of individual rights, of respect for the convention of property, had suddenly sprung into flame. He was ready to fight for it, to die for it. The curses he hurled at these people sounded blasphemous ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to admire and love. The writer has the art of the grand deceiver; the fatal art of carrying the worst poison under the name and appearance of wholesome food; of disguising all that is impious, or blasphemous, or licentious, under the ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... of manly beauty. Now here he was, old and mangy with drink at forty. In a most vivid and appealing sense he measured the change in her as well as the decay of the old-time cowboy. His incoherent salutation as his eyes fell upon her was like the final blasphemous word from the rear-guard of a savage tribe, and she watched him ride away reeling limply in his saddle as one watches a carrion-laden vulture take ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... dumb brute!" cried Starbuck, "that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous." ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... danger of Puritans and Jesuits; so to bring him in blindfold into the action saying, That the king is no king till he be crowned; therefore every man might right his own wrongs: but he is rex natus, his dignity descends as well as yours, my lords. Then Watson imposeth a blasphemous Oath, that they should swear to defend the king's person; to keep secret what was given them in charge, and seek all ways and means to advance the Catholic Religion. Then they intend to send for the Lord Mayor ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... "It is a popular tradition among the Mohammedans, which obtains to this day, that woman shall not enter Paradise;" and it requires some effort of the imagination to conceive how debased and wretched must be the condition of the female sex, to originate and sustain such a horrible and blasphemous tradition. ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... Oblige me by omitting blasphemous allusions in my presence. What answer are you prepared to ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson
... emergency, the people of Ireland had no other alternative but to appeal to the kindness and munificence of other countries less afflicted than themselves, to save them and their families from famine and death."[220] Besides making the Famine a money question, this address contains the blasphemous attack upon Divine Providence, so current at the time among politicians. William Bennett, one of those praiseworthy gentlemen whom the Society of Friends sent to distribute relief in the Far West, was, however, ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... dissolved his party into its parent elements, and the Opposition, as nonplussed as the Government, did not dare as yet to claim the recruit. Consequently he was left alone till he should see fit to take a further step. He refused to be interviewed, using blasphemous language about our free Press; and mercifully he showed no desire to make speeches. He went down to golf at Littlestone, and rarely showed himself in the House. The earnest young reformer seemed to have adopted not only the creed but the ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... we understood but the concluding phrase, and that was the bitter and blasphemous carajo! that hissed through his teeth with the energetic aspiration of rage ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... met at first with astonishing quiet, but it was not long before the stones began to fly. The "Witness" of January 11 lashed itself into a fury over the fact that the audience applauded this "anti-scriptural and most debasing theory...standing in blasphemous contradiction to biblical narrative and doctrine," instead of expressing their resentment at this "foul outrage committed upon them individually, and upon the whole species as 'made in the likeness of God,'" by deserting the hall in a body, or using some more emphatic form of protest against ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... attack on bigotry and superstition, and that was when he was induced to fight for Dr. Macgill in The Kirk's Alarm. But he had done his part in the series of satires of this year to expose the loathsomeness of hypocrisy and to purge holy places and the most solemn ceremonies of what was blasphemous and grossly profane. That in this Burns was fulfilling a part of his mission as a poet, we can hardly doubt; and that his work wrought for righteousness, the purer religious life that followed amply proves. The true poet is also a prophet; and Robert Burns was a prophet when he spoke ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... are making up a faction to their own way, the far most part whereof is fallen off to Anabaptism and Antinomianism: sundry also to worse, if worse needs be—the mortality of the soul, the denial of angels and devils; and cast off all sacraments; and many blasphemous things. All these are from New England." By May 9 he had begun to despair of the English altogether: "The humour of this people is very various and inclinable to singularities, to differ from all ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... contend for the right, does not inform us of the powers and weapons with which we might so contend. To gaze at unqualified and inevitable moral defeat will but leave us to the still worse laziness of pessimism, uttering its discouraging and blasphemous cry, 'It does not matter; nothing will ever ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... this is in part what Daniel meant. Now the second advent believers have professed all confidence in his visions: why then doubt this. Whoever feels disposed to defend and sustain the decrees of that "blasphemous" power, and especially Pope Gregory and the great Constantine, the murderer, shown to be the moral reformer in this work of changing the Sabbath, are welcome to their principles and feelings. I detest these acts, in common with all others which have emanated from these ten and one horned powers. ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign, from the Beginning to the Entering into the Gates of the Holy City, According to the Commandment • Joseph Bates
... don't care. What we do know is, that we are moving faster than any one ever moved before; and that there is every chance of our moving faster and faster. To inquire "whither" is the one thing that we recognize as blasphemous. The principle of the Universe is Acceleration, and we are its exponents; what is not accelerated will be extinguished; and if we cannot answer ultimate questions, that is the less to be regretted in that, a few centuries hence, there will be nobody ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... haunting reflection, and to the unhappiness it implied, he thought it through to the end—this strange, unsought knowledge, which had lain unsuspected in him, and now became articulate. Once considered, however, it made many things clear. He could even account to himself now, for the blasphemous suggestions that had plagued him not twenty-four hours ago. If he had then not, all unconsciously, had the feeling that Louise had known too long and too well what love was, to be willing to live without it, such thoughts as those would ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... youth-destroying labor, they had located a piece of road, out of the path of the slide and the washout, a well-groomed son of a politician would come up from the Capital, and, in the capacity of Government expert, condemn it all. Then strong men would eat their whiskers and the weaker ones would grow blasphemous and curse the country that afforded no ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... the light of day," replied Asad. "Thy marriage with that woman made an impious mock of the True Faith. It was no marriage. It was a blasphemous pretence, thine only aim to thwart me, abusing my regard for the Prophet's Holy Law, and to set her beyond my reach." He turned to Vigitello, who stood a little behind Sakr-el-Bahr. "Bid thy men put me this traitor into irons," ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... spite-cats," she insisted with even more violence, and went on to an almost quite blasphemous absurdity. "A prince in his palace wouldn't be any too good ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... my crest, The barren grasses blow upon my spear, A green, pale pennon: blazon of wild faith And love of fruitless things: yea, of my love, Among the golden loves of all the knights, Alone: most hopeless, sweet, and blasphemous, The love of God: I hear the crumbling creeds Like cliffs washed down by water, change, and pass; I hear a noise of words, age after age, A new cold wind that blows across the plains, And all the shrines stand empty; and ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... preach him a sermon. The old man was silent. He then made him get up on the table, and ordered him to pray. Uncle Solomon meekly replied, that "forced prayer was not good for soul or body." The overseer then knelt down himself, and in a blasphemous manner, prayed that the Lord would send his spirit into Uncle Solomon; or else let the old man fall from the table and break his neck, and so have an end of "nigger preaching." On getting up from his knees he went to the cupboard, poured out a glass of brandy for ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Iberian had an arrow for his god when he shattered the grain with hail and ruined the fruits of autumn; and a gloria when he fattened the barley and the oats that were to make bread to-morrow. "God of ruin, I worship because I wait and because I fear. I bend in prayer to the earth a blasphemous heart. ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... agreed upon between the protector and the two houses; but that dissenters from it should enjoy liberty of conscience, and the free exercise of their worship, unless they should reject the mystery of the Trinity, or the inspiration of the Scriptures, or profess prelatic, or popish, or blasphemous doctrines. The yearly revenue was fixed at one million three hundred thousand pounds, of which no part was to be raised by a land-tax; and of this sum one million was devoted to the support of the army and navy, and three hundred ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... I do. Our coming is sad enough when we do it voluntarily. It would be quite intolerable to have existence thrust upon us. Besides, it seems blasphemous to me to believe that God has given to every human being the power to bestow an eternal existence. The responsibility is great enough when it is simply a matter of so living that noble souls may seek to be born of us, and undertaking to give them ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... grace, 'tis superstition To stand so strictly on dispensive faith; And, should we lose the opportunity That God hath given to venge our Christians' death, And scourge their foul blasphemous paganism, As fell to Saul, to Balaam, and the rest, That would not kill and curse at God's command, So surely will the vengeance of the Highest, And jealous anger of his fearful arm, Be pour'd with rigour on our sinful heads, If we ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... exclaimed: "He blasphemeth! who can forgive sins but God only?"(461) My answer, therefore, will be equally applicable to old and modern objectors. It is not blasphemy for a Priest to claim the power of forgiving sins, since he acts as the delegate of the Most High. It would, indeed, be blasphemous if a Priest pretended to absolve in his own name and by virtue of his own authority. But when the Priest absolves the penitent sinner he acts in the name, and by the express authority, of Jesus Christ; for ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... document was passed gravely from hand to hand. Was it a fresh evidence of mental aberration—an audacity of frenzy—or a trick of the vaquero? The archbishop and alcalde shook their heads—it was without doubt a lawless, even a sacrilegious and blasphemous fete. But a certain curiosity of the ladies and of Father Felipe carried the day. Without formally accepting the invitation it was decided that the family should examine the afflicted man, with a view of ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... a most uncomfortable night, being unable to sleep because of the profanity of my fellow-prisoners, two clergymen, whose theological training had given them a fertility of impious ideas and a command of blasphemous language altogether unparalleled. But along toward morning the jailer, who, sleeping in an adjoining room, had been equally disturbed, entered the cell and with a fearful oath warned the reverend gentlemen that if he heard any more swearing their sacred calling would not prevent him from turning ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... more blasphemous than any of which Mahommed Gunga might be capable, where Jaimihr waited in the dark. He waited until the yellow dawn broke up the first dim streaks of violet before he realized that Alwa had given him the slip; and he cursed even the high priest of Siva when that ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... warst of a!" said Mrs. McNab, expanding her nostrils with a snort of contempt. "They bear na resemblance whatever to the Psalms o' David. I should as soon think o' singing the' sangs o' Robby Burns at a relegious service as them blasphemous things". ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... Demosthenes, Cicero, and Parliamentary debates from the Revolution to the year 1742; pretty copious divinity, including Blair, Tillotson, Hooker, with the characteristic addition—"all very tiresome. I abhor books of religion, though I reverence and love my God without the blasphemous notions of sectaries." Lastly, under the head of "Miscellanies" we have Spectator, Rambler, World, &c., &c; among novels, the works of Cervantes, Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, Mackenzie, Sterne, Rabelais, ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... days, after enumerating the books treating upon religious subjects which he had read, he says: "All very tedious. I hate books treating of religious subjects; although I adore and love God, freed from all absurd and blasphemous notions." ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... passing through various vicissitudes with which I need not trouble your Highness, he obtained the confidence of the notorious Dr. Weishaupt, the founder of the German order of the Illuminati, and together this precious couple have indefatigably propagated their obscene and blasphemous doctrines. That they preach atheism and tyrannicide I need not tell your Highness; but it is less generally known that they have made these infamous doctrines the cloak of private vices from which even paganism would have recoiled. The man now before me, among other open offences against society, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... unquestionably the cleverest of our ephemeral philosophers. This nation suffers a good deal from lack of humour in high places: our Great Pachyderms have all Won their Way to the Top by a Resolute Struggle. But Don has just chuckled and gone on refusing to answer letters or fill out Mr. Purinton's blasphemous efficiency charts or join the Poetry Society or attend community masques. And somehow all these things seem to melt away, and you look round the map and see Don Marquis taking up all the scenery.... He has such an oecumenical kind of humour. It's just as true in Brooklyn ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... worse than blasphemous; such a profane remark shows how little you understand the sanctity ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... doctrine of Purgatory with all its attendant horrors, and finally I need scarcely add he is a member of the Confraternity of the "Blessed Sacrament" which seeks openly to popularize the idolatrous and blasphemous cult of ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... words or feelings. But he spoke from the depth of his soul, and sincerely. It was to be felt that the pain, ecstasy, desire, and homage accumulated in his breast had burst forth at last in an irresistible torrent of words. To Lygia his words appeared blasphemous, but still her heart began to beat as if it would tear the tunic enclosing her bosom. She could not resist pity for him and his suffering. She was moved by the homage with which he spoke to her. She felt beloved and ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... from Althorp—where we spent six weeks. That there are 60,000 volumes you know. I read them all, excepting a pamphlet in a patois of the Sanscrit, written by a learned, but, I regret to add, profane Hindoo Sectarian, the blasphemous drift of which was to prove that Bramah's locks ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... blasphemous speeches and gestures of this speaker are silenced by an onslaught of snakes, before whose attack he attempts to flee, only to be overtaken and tortured by a serpent-ridden centaur, whom Virgil designates as Cacus. ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... with sorrow repeat, And O! that the number were less; 'Tis the blasphemous crew: What a pattern they'll shew To their ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... me, however, to set down the extravagant and often blasphemous harangue in which, styling M. de Guise the martyr of God, he told the story now so familiar—the story of that dark wintry morning at Blois, when the king's messenger, knocking early at the duke's door, bade him hurry, ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... toung prophanes the sacred name Of Ferdinand with any villany, Ile cut it out or stop his throate with bloud And so dam in his blasphemous upbraydes. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... with all the men while we three skirmished ahead, but he waxed so apoplectically blasphemous at the very thought of it that Fred assured him the proposal was intended for a joke. Then we argued among ourselves, coaxed, blarneyed, persuaded, and tried to bribe one another. Finally, all else failing, we tossed a coin for it, odd man out, and ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Montfort, in the year 1448, purchased absolution for that crime at that price. Was it strange that a century or so of this kind of work should produce a Luther? Was it unnatural that plain people, who loved the ancient Church, should rather desire to see her purged of such blasphemous abuses, than to hear of St. Peter's dome rising a little nearer to the clouds on these ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... votive offering had vanished, and blasphemous lamentations and curses against the Supreme Being, whom he abused for defrauding him of fortune by trickery, shocked the quietude. Then a spasm of religious fervour jerked him to his knees as he patronised the Almighty for ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... summoned the whole parish, which still numbered about 150 souls, without counting the children, and dictated ad protocollum whatsoever they could remember of the sermon, seeing that he meant to inform his princely grace the Duke of Pomerania of the blasphemous lies which I had vomited against him, and which must sorely offend every Christian heart. Item, what an avaricious wretch I must be to be always wanting something of him, and to be daily, so to say, pestering him in these hard times with my filthy ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... practically comes to this, that the sovereignty popularly ascribed to democratic majorities is an illusion—not socialists only, but other advocates of popular government also, will alike be against me, as the promulgator of some blasphemous paradox. It will be easy, however, to show them that their objections are quite mistaken, and that the exceptional powers of dictation which have just been ascribed to a minority are so far from being ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... superintendents as a whole impressed me as most uncouth, ignorant, immoral, and in many instances, the most brutal set of men that I have ever met. Blasphemous bullies. ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... they were often. The good Warham, who could take faithful and brave charge of his flock in the uncivilized wilds of Connecticut among ferocious savages, was tortured by doubts and "blasphemous suggestions," and overwhelmed by unbelief, enduring specially agonizing scruples about administering and partaking of the Lord's Supper, and was thus perplexed and buffeted until the hour of his sad death. The ministers went through various stages of ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... company. The work was not congenial. For one thing, although sea sickness has never troubled me on board ship, I was constantly ill when in a lighter. Moreover, the boatmen with whom I had constantly to associate were unintermittently foul-mouthed and blasphemous. I was not easily shocked; the men with whom I had for years foregathered were much given to realism of speech, as well as to picturesquely lurid verbal illustration. But this was different; the language of these men was crammed with filth ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... (suggestive of spirituous liquors), and in the disagreeable Provencal dialect, which must have altered strangely since the time of the troubadours: brief as his speech was, it found room for more than one of those expletives which are nowhere so horribly blasphemous as ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... than forty days he had forgotten it all. A flood of new and fierce temptations broke over him, and had it not been for a strong sustaining arm which unseen upheld him, his soul must have sunk in the deep and angry waters. At one time he was almost overwhelmed in a hurricane of blasphemous suggestions, and at another time his faith had wellnigh made shipwreck on the shoals of infidelity or deliberate atheism. But the very reluctance and dismay of his spirit showed that a new nature was in him. "I often, when these temptations have been with force upon me, did ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... tithes, the illiterate but not unmalicious beir[a]o shepherd who had led a hard life and whose chief offence was to have stolen grapes from time to time, the devout bootmaker who had industriously robbed the people during thirty years, the card-player blasphemous as the taful of King Alfonso's Cantigas de Santa Maria, the delinquent from Lisbon's prison (the Limoeiro) whom his confessor had deceived before his hanging with promises of Paradise, the peasant O Moreno who knows the dances of Beira, the negro chattering ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... "Blasphemous rubbish!" I can hear some Methodist exclaiming. And one may well be tempted to sneer at those pilgrims for the more enlightened of whom such literature is printed. For they are unquestionably a repulsive crowd: travel-stained old women, under-studies ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... to serve? Thus farr his bold discourse without controule 800 Had audience, when among the Seraphim Abdiel, then whom none with more zeale ador'd The Deitie, and divine commands obei'd, Stood up, and in a flame of zeale severe The current of his fury thus oppos'd. O argument blasphemous, false and proud! Words which no eare ever to hear in Heav'n Expected, least of all from thee, ingrate In place thy self so high above thy Peeres. Canst thou with impious obloquie condemne 810 The just Decree of God, pronounc't and sworn, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Quietists and Quakers; these set up a stricter sort of Discipline, and pretended to great abstinence and Contempt of the World, and also to a greater Familiarity and stricter Union with God than other Sects; they used a great many strange and extravagant actions and utter Blasphemous Expressions. Al Hosain Al Hallagi was eminent amongst them about the Year of the Hegira 300. 'Twas he that wrote in one of his Epistles, Blessed is he that possesses the shining light, &c. and pretended that God dwelt in him. ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... go down, step after step, to the dark dungeon of vice. We will not follow Walter to the revel, nor the gaming-table. We will close our ears to the blasphemous oaths of his companions, to the imprecations on his own lips. The career of folly and of sin was destined to be closed; and rather would we draw a veil over its every scene. Step by step, he trod the path of sin, until at last, urged by worldly and false friends to a quarrel, commenced on the ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... America, where he was greatly admired by the Red Indians, 'because of his much converse with the devil'. The pious of Wodrow's date distrusted these luminous appearances, as they might be angelical, but might also be diabolical temptations to spiritual pride. Thus the blasphemous followers of Gibb were surrounded by a bright light, no less than pious Mr. Welsh, a very distinguished Presbyterian minister. Indeed, this was taken advantage of by Mr. Welsh's enemies, who, says his biographer Kirkton, 'were so bold as to call him no less than a wizard'. When ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... alien, terrible or amusing, lovable or odious, which in some degree everyone possesses. This sense of the world's presence, appealing as it does to our peculiar individual temperament, makes us either strenuous or careless, devout or blasphemous, gloomy or exultant about life at large; and our reaction, involuntary and inarticulate and often half unconscious as it is, is the completest of all our answers to the question, 'What is the character of this ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... true British contempt on the warlike struggles of the restless Frenchman,—chuckled over the disasters which befell "his little popgun fleets,"—and damned the Democrats for a pack of poor, dirty, blasphemous cutthroats. Hate one another was the order of the day. The religious element, which always exasperates dissension, was present. French Democrats had set up the Goddess of Reason (in private life Mme. Momoro) as an object of worship; American Democrats were accused of making Tom Paine's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... hedges are broken down, producing its poisonous fruit. But it was at this period of our history that he became a frequent attendant at their reunions, returning at midnight, half intoxicated, to pour into the horrified ears of his wife and children the issue of the last blasphemous and revolutionary debate that marked the progress and development ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... called himself Johnson recognized denial as futile. He flung up the sponge with a blasphemous oath. "What do you want? What's your game? Do you want to sell me for the reward? By thunder, you'd ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... printed mystifications, when officers of the government and officers of the armed force, attest on their honour the truth of these impudent impositions upon the credulity of mankind, affirm the accuracy and bona fide character of these winking, blinking, blasphemous, lachrymal representations? ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... clergyman, turned loose a blast of theological language in purely secular connotation. Frankland, amazed at this blasphemous clamor from his usually pious comrade, realized that it must have been inspired by something more than a little serious, and began ordering his men to fall back. Before they had all gotten away, two of the three Union regiments accompanying ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... soon evident that Acts of Parliament could not effect ecclesiastical reform, though they might enforce exterior conformity to a new creed. In 1576, Sidney again complains of the state of the Irish Church, and addresses himself, with almost blasphemous flattery to the head of that body, "as to the only sovereign salve-giver to this your sore and sick realm, the lamentable state of the most noble and principal limb thereof—the Church I mean—as foul, deformed, and as cruelly crushed as any other part thereof, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack |
