"Blasphemy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blaspheme not!" said the girl, with an expression of fear.—"God pardon us both! I meant no harm. I speak of our blessed Saint Catherine of Sienna!—may God forgive me that I spoke so lightly, and made you do a great sin and a great blasphemy. This was her nunnery, in which there were twelve nuns and an abbess. My aunt was the abbess, till the ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... Affairs. NANSEN (page 49 and following.) The artfulness of this legal construction becomes immediately obvious. It is exceedingly remarkable also to find that Norwegian parliamentarism can commit such a blasphemy towards the Constitution, that it has confered a position of ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... men, out of the numbers who hastened to the assistance of their master, fell dead on her body; while the chief himself, sorely wounded, and breathing revenge and blasphemy, was forced off by the survivors. "Where do you carry me, villians?" cried he. "Separate me not from the vengeance I will yet hurl on that demon who has robbed me of my victim, or ye shall die a death more horrible than hell can inflict!" He raved; ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... parted with his reason to have attempted that grotesque sally. Listening to Wadakimba's tale, I pictured the crazed man, scorched to tatters, heedless of bruises and burns, scrambling up that difficult and perilous ascent, and hurling his ridiculous blasphemy into the flares of smoke and steam that issued from that vast caldron lit by subterranean fires. At its simmering the whole island trembled. A mere whiff of the monster's breath and he would have been snuffed out, annihilated ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... thy empty words, the mighty intellect of Ferdinand of Spain. Thou hast now to defend thyself against still graver charges than those of treachery to the king whom thou didst profess to serve. Yea, misbeliever as thou art, it is thine to vindicate thyself from blasphemy against the God thou shouldst adore. Confess the truth: thou art of the tribe and faith ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." In John 10, verse 30, He declares, "I and my Father are one"; in verse 36, same chapter, He denies that it was blasphemy to call Himself the Son of God. In the presence of death He refused to deny the claim (Matt. ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... that grates ajar its rusty throat, Like to a bow of iron that gnarls upon an iron rote, Grinded; and tears, and shriekings, the anathema, the lewd taunt, Refusal of viaticum, refusal of the font, And clamour, and malediction, and dread blasphemy, among That hurtling crowd of rumour from the diverse human tongue, Went by as who beholdeth, when the valleys thick t'ward night, The long drifts of the birds of dusk pass, blackening flight on flight. What was this sound whose thousand echoes vibrated unsleeping? ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... ritual, bible, or of speech; Wrote in thy mind's transparent table, As far as the incommunicable; Taught thee each private sign to raise Lit by the supersolar blaze. Past utterance, and past belief, And past the blasphemy of grief, The mysteries of Nature's heart; And though no Muse can these impart, Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, And all is ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Love,'' a peculiarly gross scandal, in which Prince and one of his female followers were involved, led to the secession of some of his most faithful friends, who were unable any longer to endure what they regarded as the amazing mixture of blasphemy and immorality offered for their acceptance. The most prominent of those who remained received such titles as the "Anointed Ones,'' the "Angel of the Last Trumpet,'' the "Seven Witnesses'' and so forth. In 1862 "Brother Prince'' sent "to the kings ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a whole article on "Mr. Punch." The writer, a Herr Professor, finds our cartoons lacking in "modest refinement." Indeed, he goes so far as to say that the treatment of the Kaiser savours of blasphemy. One is so apt to forget that the Kaiser is a divinity, so prone to remember that Luther wrote, "We Germans are Germans, and Germans we will remain—that is to say, pigs and brutish animals." This was written in 1528: but "the example of the Middle ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... by Hills and Field we may find such abundant errata, reducing the text to nonsense or to blasphemy, making the Scriptures contemptible to the multitude, who came to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... preachearis to be summoned;[763] for whome, when we maid intercessioun, beseiching hir Grace not to molest thame in thare ministerie, onles any man war able to convict thame of fals doctrin, sche could not bryddill hir toung from open blasphemy, but proudlie sche said, [SN: SCHE HAD GOTTIN HIR LESSOUN FROM THE CARDINALL.] "In dispite of yow and of your ministeris boith, thei shalbe banisshed owt of Scotland, albeit thei preached als trewlie as evir did Sanct Paule." Which proud and blasphemous ansuer ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... in the world are shocked at the thought that God is a personality. To them the idea that God is simply a "man made perfect," a being similar to us, but exalted to deity, is akin to blasphemy. And then to add the idea of a heavenly mother is beyond comprehension. To Latter-day Saints, on the other hand, these thoughts are the very glory of God. To them a man made perfect is the noblest conception possible. It makes of Him a reality. And the ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... may be worthy of notice, that the king and his next heir, the lady Mary, were professedly of different religions; and religions which threw on each other the imputation of heresy, schism, idolatry, profaneness, blasphemy, wickedness, and all the opprobrious epithets that religious zeal has invented. It was almost impossible, therefore, for the people, if they spoke at all on these subjects, not to fall into the crime so severely punished by the statute; and the jealousy of the commons ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... she revels in a little mild blasphemy; hardly blasphemy—imaginary details, say, about hell, in the manner of Mark Twain. "Aw, my dear soul!" she exclaims. "How yu du go on! Aw, my dear soul! Yu'm going to hell, ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... noise as brutal as a blasphemy, there came a thunder of footsteps on the stairs; and a man burst into the room, with glaring eyes and ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... their conscious communion with God was the only good life, the life which he must seek to attain and from which he feared above all things to fall short; and that being so, it would have been easier, far easier, to call his new belief folly, heresy, nay, blasphemy if that were needful, and to repent of it, if he could have done so. He could not, do what he would; he saw ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... when the said prize be delivered, and a great deal more to that effect: so, then, he passes to the other legacy, of exactly the same sum, to the hospital, usually called and styled ——, in the city of London, and says, 'And whereas we are assured by the Holy Scriptures, which, in these days of blasphemy and sedition, it becomes every true Briton and member of the Established Church to support, that "charity doth cover a multitude of sins," so I do give and devise,' etc., 'to be forever termed in the deeds,' etc., 'of the said hospital, "The Vavasour Charity;" and always ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... God is a deity who is all-wise, all-powerful, infinite, holy, the personification of all the highest virtues. To accuse this Deity of the slightest moral flaw would be blasphemy. Now, without going so far down as the lowest savages, let us see what conception such barbarians as the Polynesians have of their gods. The moral habits of some of them are indicated by their names—"The ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... "Renmark!" he cried, "that's blasphemy. For Heaven's sake, man, hold something sacred. If you don't respect the press, what do you respect? Not my most cherished feelings, at any rate, or you wouldn't talk in that flippant manner. If you speak kindly of my daily paper, ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... way of balancing accounts. And while the owner of the sugar-cane was bellowing red doctrine about that, Ismail went out and helped himself likewise, only more liberally, carrying in an armful of the stuff, and slamming the gate in the faces of all concerned. In cynical enjoyment of the blasphemy outside he sat down then in the shadow of the wall to chew the cane and count the change extorted from ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... it should be true?—what then? But he had not courage enough to face an answer; he put the possibility away from him, in the extreme background of his mind, refused to let his brain piece its observations together. The mere suspicion was a blasphemy, a blasphemy against her dignified reserve, against her sweet pale face, her supreme disregard of those about her. Not thus would guilt ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... profane swearing, affidavit, cursing, profanity, anathema, denunciation, reprobation, ban, execration, swearing, blaspheming, imprecation, sworn statement. blasphemy, malediction, vow. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... By me are utter'd, teach them even so To those who live that life, which is a race To death: and when thou writ'st them, keep in mind Not to conceal how thou hast seen the plant, That twice hath now been spoil'd. This whoso robs, This whoso plucks, with blasphemy of deed Sins against God, who for his use alone Creating hallow'd it. For taste of this, In pain and in desire, five thousand years And upward, the first soul did yearn for him, Who punish'd in himself ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... it and rushed home to read. Many that had gone before had proved disappointing, and I was obliged to admit had contributed little towards my intellectual advancement; but this—this that I had heard about so long—not a queer phrase, not an outrage of any sort of kind, not even a new blasphemy, nothing, that is to say, nothing but a hundred and fifty francs. Having thus rudely, and very pikelike, knocked my nose against the bottom—this book was, most assuredly, the bottom of the literature of 1830—I came up to the surface and began to look around ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... its founder, a Jew! There is a Latin inscription on it which explains the paradox. There stood on the same spot a wooden statue of Christ in the XVI century. One day an opulent Jew, on passing by, made some scoffing or contemptuous remark on it. He was overheard by some of the people, accused of blasphemy and condemned to die; but on expressing great contrition and offering to pay a fine to any amount, he was pardoned, on the condition of his promising to erect a bronze statue gilt of Jesus Christ on the same spot, at his own expense, with an inscription explaining ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... social impulses which were telling on men about him was simply to let them alone. Religion grew more and more identified with patriotism under the eyes of a king who whispered, and scribbled, and looked at picture-books during mass, who never confessed, and cursed God in wild frenzies of blasphemy. Great peoples formed themselves on both sides of the sea round a sovereign who bent the whole force of his mind to hold together an Empire which the growth of nationality must inevitably destroy. There is throughout a tragic grandeur ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... they are all slaves, and all is lost." Colonial charters were, however, "undoubtedly no more than those of all corporations, which empower them to make bye-laws." As for "liberty," the word had so many meanings," having within a few years been used as a synonymous term for Blasphemy, Bawdy, Treason, Libels, Strong Beer, and Cyder," that Mr. Jenyns could not presume to say what ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... truth, I did nothing now in my manhood so really perilous as I had done in my childhood, when I had climbed to the top of the cross on the church and sat astride of it. But they had called that mischief and blasphemy: they called the things I did now gymnastics, and applauded them till the noise might have wakened the Etrurian ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... hag heard of this instantly, and therefore determined to attend the sacrament on the following Sunday; for this end she despatched Wolde to the priest, bidding her tell him she had a great desire to attend the holy rite, and would go to confession that day after noon. At this horrid blasphemy a cold shudder fell upon the priest (and I trust every Christian man will feel the like as he reads this), for he now saw through her motive clearly, how she wanted to blind the eyes of the people as to the death of the porter, by this mockery of the holiest rites of religion. Besides, amongst ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... and torture is often applied to the witnesses, it is not difficult to obtain the number required. Many a life is falsely sworn away by the witness, that he may save his own. The chief crimes which are noticed by the Inquisition are those of sorcery, heresy, blasphemy, and what is ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... not comprehended the warning. As he had looked at the stars he had thought of the coming of the most wonderful Child who had ever visited this earth. Perhaps then, too——He tried to snap off his thought, half confusedly accusing himself of some sort of blasphemy. At the top of the staircase he turned and ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... his mind was an impulse of mirth—there was a touch of humorous blasphemy in the conception of the Almighty as managing director of "Fish Palaces, Limited"—but the nominal earthly managing director saw not the slightest ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... press is completely open to treason, sedition, blasphemy, and falsehood, with impunity.... I do not know whether you see Cobbett's Independent Whig, and many other papers now circulating most extensively, and which are dangerous much beyond anything ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... things as fundamental laws of socio-economics; merely usually reliable generalized statements of what can more or less be depended upon to happen under most circumstances. He resisted the temptation. Count Erskyll had had enough shocks, today, without adding to them by gratuitous blasphemy. ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... which is shown by the repetition of the same thought 'All philosophers are agreed that mind is the king of heaven and earth' with the ironical addition, 'in this way truly they magnify themselves.' Nor let us pass unheeded the indignation felt by the generous youth at the 'blasphemy' of those who say that Chaos and Chance Medley created the world; or the significance of the words 'those who said of old time that mind rules the universe'; or the pregnant observation that 'we are not ...
— Philebus • Plato
... a chorale ("To God on High"), set to a famous old German hymn-book tune, "Allein Gott in der Hoeh' sei Ehr," which is serenely beautiful in its clearly flowing harmony. The martyrdom of Stephen follows. The basses in vigorous recitative accuse him of blasphemy, and the people break out in an angry chorus ("Now this Man ceaseth not to utter blasphemous Words"). At its close Stephen sings a brief but beautiful solo ("Men, Brethren, and Fathers!"); and as the calm protest dies away, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... Evil Should run riot in his fair Creation. Him the maker we behold not; calm He veils himself in everlasting laws, Which and not Him the sceptic seeing exclaims, 'Wherefore a God? The World itself is God.' And never did a Christian's adoration So praise him as this sceptic's blasphemy. ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... and pearls; sometimes in a personality and insolence of demeanor towards every rank and class in Rome, which made him ask a senator to supper, and ply him with drunken toasts, on the very evening on which he had condemned his son to death; sometimes in sheer raving blasphemy, as when he expressed his furious indignation against Jupiter for presuming to thunder while he was supping, or looking at the pantomimes; but most of all in a ferocity which makes Seneca apply to him the name of "Bellua," or "wild monster," and say that he seems to have ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... had fled down the stairs. "His Tonsils" rang in her ears. What blasphemy! What sacrilege! She could scarcely pretend to listen to ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... and brave people saw reason to think me quick on a look-out; but those times are gone, and many a true and tried friend has passed away with them. Ah's me! if I could choose a change in the orderings of Providence—which I cannot, and which it would be blasphemy to attempt, seeing that all things are governed by a wiser mind than belongs to mortal weakness—but if I were to choose a change, it would be to say, that such as they who have lived long together in friendship and kindness, and who have proved ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... flushed with passion when I came up, my rifle cradled in the hollow of my left arm; his distorted features worked silently as he pointed at the whitening ashes. Suddenly he burst out into a torrent of blasphemy. ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... divine animals, or to commit incest, which was a divine prerogative, was analogous to "the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost," which in the New Testament is proclaimed an unpardonable offence, and in pagan legend was punished by the divine wrath, thunder, lightning, rain, floods, or petrifaction being the avenging instruments. Oedipus put out ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... "Truly she could not, she had something else to do." Adams rebuked her for disputing his commands, and quoted many texts of Scripture to prove "That the husband is the head of the wife, and she is to submit and obey." The wife answered, "It was blasphemy to talk Scripture out of church; that such things were very proper to be said in the pulpit, but that it was profane to talk them in common discourse." Joseph told Mr Adams "He was not come with any design ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... who makes the wheels go round is the one who really drives the coach. Believe me, there is more of expediency than nobility in the attitude of our men towards our women, and more of laziness than either, perhaps! But Fielding Hall would call this blasphemy, ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... our army of careless agnostics. Barring a very small minority, principally Irishmen, there is no place for religion in Tommy's intellectual kit. It has just degenerated into being an old magazine from which he draws his swear-words—a sort of bandolier of blasphemy. It was hot in that tent, and the sweat made the foreheads of these deep-voiced choristers shine against the dark shadows cast behind them on the canvas. It was curious to notice how the knees and elbows of their clothes showed signs of wear from their favourite shooting attitude, and there ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... portrait before mentioned; then resumed his heavy, quick, irregular tread, swearing under his breath; and you would imagine, from what you heard, that all his thoughts and the movement of his mind were a blasphemy. Then again—but this was only once—he heaved a deep, ponderous sigh, that seemed to come up in spite of him, out of his depths, an exhalation of deep suffering, as if some convulsion had given it a passage to upper air, instead of its being hidden, as it generally was, ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... The blasphemy shocked him into his senses, which had wandered. Now he knew that from some hidden place the Dark Master was watching him and listening for his ravings, and upon that Brian sternly caught his lips together and said no more, though he prayed hard within himself. ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... happened that the Reverend Mr. Pemble had thought fit to tell his audience only of the first two articles of this creed, it would have been difficult to resist the suggestion that they presented us merely with an example of stupid, or, perhaps, impudent, blasphemy caused by the events of the day. But the negative nature of the first two items of the creed is counterbalanced by the positive nature of the second two items; and thus this example shows us the importance of considering evidence as to all ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... one of them he had seen himself before the Great White Throne, worthless, sin-stricken. What was he that dared to enter such a holy calling as the ministry? He who was as the dust of the earth, a priest of the Most High God! He beat his brow at the blasphemy of the thought. It was Nadab or Abihu he was or a son of Eli, and the Ark would depart forever from God's people, did he dare to raise his profaning hands in its ministry. And so, partly to escape his sister's reproaches, he had sailed away to ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... State of New York. It was said it was to save the country,—it was whispered it was to save the party. The state committee called it and representative men gathered to attend it.... They applauded to the echo the very blasphemy of treason, but they attempted by points of order to silence DeWitt Clinton's son because he dared to raise his voice for the Constitution of his country and to call rebellion by its proper name."—Speech of Roscoe Conkling, September 26, 1862, A.R. Conkling, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Jefferson had said about all there was to say, economics insisted that the struggle between labor and capital was an everlasting see-saw. But life told them that society was brutal: an episode like the shirtwaist factory fire drove them to blasphemy and dynamite. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... at the best and why had people given it so high a place? Its weakness, its limits broke upon him; tacitly blaspheming he looked with a lustreless eye at the palpable, polished, "toned" objects designed for suspension on hooks. That is, he blasphemed if it were blasphemy to feel that as bearing on the energies of man they were a poor and secondary show. The human force producing them was so far from one of the greatest; their place was a small place and their connexion ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... envious lookers-on, shabbiness and meanness in money matters. That which, to the liar, is only prudent diplomatic reticence, to the listener is falsehood. That which, in the man that judges his own conduct, is but 'a choleric word,' is, in his friend, when he judges him, 'flat blasphemy.' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... tell in how many forms the Devil has assaulted me, and with what subtlety and energy his assaults have been carried on, it would strike my friends with horror. Sometimes, temptations to vice, to blasphemy, and atheism, and the abandonment of all religion as a mere delusion, and sometimes to self-destruction itself. These, even these, do follow thee, O miserable Mather, with astonishing fury. But I fall down into ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... despair nor blasphemy nor hymn helped in any way. The destruction seemed as irresistible, perfect, and pitiless as Predestination itself. Around Pompey's Amphitheatre stores of hemp caught fire, and ropes used in circuses, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... may injure or approach too closely to our neighbor. For to bear false witness is nothing else than a work of the tongue. Now, whatever is done with the tongue against a fellow-man God would have prohibited, whether it be false preachers with their doctrine and blasphemy, false judges and witnesses with their verdict, or outside of court by lying and evil-speaking. Here belongs particularly the detestable, shameful vice of speaking behind a person's back and slandering, to which the devil spurs us on and of ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... the stories respecting Lord Kenyon's historical allusions and quotations are surely greatly exaggerated, or are pure inventions. In addressing a jury in a blasphemy case, he is reported to have said that the Emperor Julian "was so celebrated for the practice of every Christian virtue that he was called 'Julian the Apostle'"; and to have concluded an elaborate ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... though to drown the blasphemy on his lips. She swept to him with a rescuing gesture. "Don't say such things. I forbid you! It degrades ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... learned her name, they began to assail her with harsh reproaches, asserting that her brother had lured them from an endurable situation to plunge them into the most horrible position, when she heard imprecations and blasphemy, and saw the furious wrath of the black eyes that flashed in the brown faces framed by masses of tangled hair and beards, her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of heaven to judgment. He held that by their relation to Himself and to His ideals the lives of all men should be tested, and the verdict passed upon their deeds. For making these and similar claims He was convicted of blasphemy ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... carlines wi' besoms, and they wad bewitch a sailor's wife—I was lang eneugh there—and out I wad be, and out John Blower gat me, but wi' nae sma' fight and fend.—My Lady Penelope Penfitter, and the great folk, may just take it as they like; but in my mind, Dr. Cacklehen, it's a mere blasphemy for folk to gar themselves look otherwise than their Maker made them; and then the changing the name which was given them at baptism, is, I think, an awful falling away from our vows; and though Thisby, which ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Poitiers unwarily deviates into the style of a Christian philosopher. "It is a thing," says Hilary, "equally deplorable and dangerous, that there are as many creeds as opinions among men, as many doctrines as inclinations, and as many sources of blasphemy as there are faults among us; because we make creeds arbitrarily, and explain them as arbitrarily. The Homoousion is rejected, and received, and explained away by successive synods. The partial or total resemblance of the Father and of the Son ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... an eternal lust, And with pale thrift destroy the red of love, The curse of Pan has sworn your destiny. Unloving, unbeloved, you go your way Toiling forever, and unwittingly You bear love's precious burden every day From flower to flower (for your blasphemy), Poor eunuch, making ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... All this I tolerated, but did not say Amen. Finally he prayed for the utter extermination of the Southern people. He besought God to wipe them out of existence—men, women and children—from the Ohio River to the Gulf of Mexico. This blasphemy and contemptible wickedness I could not endure, and I arose from my knees. Perhaps five hundred people saw me when I got up. The point in the prayer at which I got up aroused suspicion, and inquiry was in a moment rife. They learned who I was and where I was ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... I will again," replied the Rector. "Atheism, mockery, cynicism, blasphemy, lust, and blood-thirstyness cannot rage and raven within a few leagues of a godly and just nation without stinking in their nostrils. Sir, it is our mission from the Lord to quench Bony, and to conquer the bullies of Europe. We don't look like doing it now, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... who can come to them and say to his servant, 'Go,' and he goeth, and to this man, 'Do this,' and he doeth it. Obedience to any besides is treason against the dignity of our own nature; disobedience to Him is both treason against our nature and blasphemy against God. 'Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ, Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.' There is the deepest ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the same time, the licence of the press was such, that it grew dangerous to refuse them either: for they would forthwith publish slanders unpunished, the authors being anonymous, and skulking under the wings of publishers, a set of men who never scrupled to vend either calumny or blasphemy, as long as the ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... parties then and there assembled laughed very heartily, with the single exception of Mr. Grummer, who seemed to consider that any slight cast upon the divine right of magistrates was a species of blasphemy ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... devils that bore testimony to the Son of God. But when they said that he should from his table sing forth wickedness, evidently doth it appear that he who never stood on the truth, but who from the beginning was a liar and the father of lies, did in his blasphemy utter these ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... been turned wrong side out. So I took him to a tavern and I sat with him through the night, and nursed him when he suffered, and revealed my mission when he awoke. 'I am out to do good to all men,' I told him, and he searched through his pockets with blasphemy, and he said that I had done him—and he haled me before the court, and the judge said that no man could publicly profess such disinterestedness and escape suspicion, because people in these days are all looking for the main chance. So he did not believe ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... dangerous rush] Hold on! Hold on! [To MORE] Swear to utter no more blasphemy against ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... humour of the Germans often amuses me. I think it was Palmerston who described Germany as "that land of damned Professors." They are all so desperately in earnest, and their "Kultur" is so serious, that jokes and fun seem like blasphemy. My penury has again been relieved by Mr. S——'s kind loan of L1. Lady M—— came in to tell me that the American Vice-Consul had telegraphed to Mr. W—— the good news that we are all to go on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... consecrated bread be really the body of Christ that was given for the salvation of the world, what horrible blasphemy to state such things of it, what vileness to believe them, what a barefaced imputation on the reason of man to spread these shocking details before him and ask him to accept them as true of the ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... the seat. It is, I should say, the most difficult post in House; far more so than SPEAKER'S. SPEAKER is robed about with authority that does not pertain to Chairman. Observations which, addressed to SPEAKER, would be flat blasphemy, are, when flung at Chairman of Ways and Means, merely choleric words. Apart from that, position is, through long stretches of sitting, more arduous. When full-dress debate going on, SPEAKER of judgment and experience can go easy; may even, upon occasion, strategically doze. One did ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various
... to fight so long [5450]"till their headpiece, bucklers be all broken, and swords hacked like so many saws," for they must not see her abused in any sort, 'tis blasphemy to speak against her, a dishonour without all good respect to name her. 'Tis common with these creatures, to drink [5451]healths upon their bare knees, though it were a mile to the bottom, no matter of what mixture, off ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... hands grew chill, for now she was sure he raved, "I have not the joy to comprehend. There is no king in Athens, please Athena, there never will be. Treason and blasphemy you speak all in one." She sought vainly with her eyes for refuge. None in sight. The hill slope seemed empty save for the scattered brown boulders. Far away a goat was wandering. She motioned to Cleopis. The old woman was staring now, and doubtless thought Democrates ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... literature, and affection for his Mahometan subjects who afforded him aid in carrying out the plans of civilization which his powerful mind had formed;(291) and it was his indifference to a crusade, induced probably by other causes, which led the Pope to impute to him the blasphemy just quoted. The contact with the East, half a century later, in like manner afforded the pretext for fastening a charge of unbelief on the Knights Templars.(292) Contact with Mahometans had thus, we have reason to believe, ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... scarcely then been told [V] Since, travelling southward from our pastoral hills, I heard, and for the first time in my life, The voice of woman utter blasphemy—385 Saw woman as she is, to open shame Abandoned, and the pride of public vice; I shuddered, for a barrier seemed at once Thrown in, that from humanity divorced Humanity, splitting the race of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... Fraeulein von Klettenberg told him till he had a "reconciled God." Goethe's rejoinder was that it should be put the other way. Considering his recent sufferings and his own good intentions, it was God who was in arrears to him and who had something to be forgiven. The Fraeulein charitably condoned the blasphemy, but she and her fellow-believers were assuredly in the right when they denied the blasphemer the name of Christian. Yet, as has been said, Goethe in his own way was seriously in search of a faith that would satisfy both his intellect and his heart, and he even attempted to ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... his Order, was for Gioacchino one of the characteristics of the new era. "The truth which remains hidden to the wise," he says, "is revealed to babes; dialectics closes that which is open, obscures that which is clear; it is the mother of useless talk, of rivalries and blasphemy. Learning does not edify, and it may destroy, as is proved by the scribes of the Church, swollen with pride and arrogance, who by dint of ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... the fleet who does not bear a certificate of confession and communion. If there be any such, he must confess within three days to the religious in the fleet, or be put on short rations of water until he does confess. Severe punishment for blasphemy of "the name of God, our Lord, his glorious Mother, or of any of the saints" is stipulated, varying in degree according to the blasphemy. The religious are to receive every consideration, that the natives may see "how we honor the ministers of the Gospel." All weapons are to be kept in a special ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... them at the sound of the voice, and such a stream of obscene blasphemy poured from his lips as to cause even the Texan to wince. Without a word the cowboy reached for a bar of soap that lay awash in the filthy water of a basin upon a bench beside the door, and jammed it down the man's throat. The sounds changed ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... white, friend," said Adam, good-naturedly. "Blasphemy, or hypocrisy either, is sufficient to ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... down and organize and vote 'em afterwards according to the dictates of your own conscience. Politics is the antidote for free speech!" The Doctor glared at the Courts, smiled amiably at Business and winked conspicuously at Religion. Religion blushed at the blasphemy and as there seemed to be nothing further before the house the Doctor and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... line from those who saw him do it. Small time for cheering then; for neither could recover his breath before there came a volley of musketry, and all around them, outside the bayonets, was a wild sea of fierce men's faces, horses' heads, gleaming steel, and French blasphemy. A strange scene for the commencement of an acquaintance! And yet it throve; for that same evening, Buckley, talking to his Colonel, saw the artillery officer coming towards them, and asked who he ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... inner tragic meaning,—not in Pisan Maremma—not by Campagna tomb,—not by the sand-isles of the Torcellan shore,—as the slow stealing of aspects of reckless, indolent, animal neglect, over the delicate sweetness of the English scene: nor is any blasphemy or impiety, any frantic saying, or godless thought, more appalling to me, using the best power of judgment I have to discern its sense and scope, than the insolent defiling of those springs by the human herds ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... George and the Rev. Mr. Calthrop lifted the box to their shoulders, Cleggett was startled by a loud and violent oath; a veritable bellow of blasphemy that made him shudder. Turning, he saw than an automobile had paused in the road. In the forward part of the machine stood Loge, raving in an almost demoniac fury and pointing at the box. He writhed in the grip of three ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... quick admiration for the Christian soldier. All know too that, could the admiring throng only hear the words to which these hymn tunes were sung, the crowd would fly with fingers to their ears, from such apparent blasphemy. Well, these well-known ballads were first sung at the padre, and especially at the padre who was masquerading as a soldier. And when the soldier saw that the padre could see the jest and laugh at it too, and know that it meant nothing, then he felt that he had got a good fellow for his ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... said that even St. Peter, if he were now Pope, could not bestow greater graces; this is blasphemy against St. Peter and ...
— Martin Luther's 95 Theses • Martin Luther
... the first assault; and the richest city in Christendom was given over to a motley, leaderless horde of German, Spanish and Italian soldiery. The Pope again fled to the castle of St. Angelo; and for weeks Rome endured an orgy of sacrilege, blasphemy, robbery, murder and lust, the horrors of which no brush could depict nor tongue recite. "All the churches and the monasteries," says a cardinal who was present, "both of friars and nuns, were sacked. Many friars were beheaded, even priests ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... asked me for the truth; but, to show the truth in all her nakedness, I must also show you and make you sound the depths of the well from which she comes. I appeal to the gentleman and the poet to pardon words which the eldest son of the Church might take for blasphemy,—I believe that God does not concern himself ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... God put His adamantine fate Between my sullen heart and its desire, I swore that I would burst the Iron Gate, Rise up, and curse Him on His throne of fire. Earth shuddered at my crown of blasphemy, But Love was as a flame about my feet; Proud up the Golden Stair I strode; and beat Thrice on the Gate, and ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... robust enough to bear the turning of our most sacred language into its depolarized equivalents. You have only to look back to Dr. Channing's famous Baltimore discourse and remember the shrieks of blasphemy with which it was greeted, to satisfy yourself on this point. Time, time only, can gradually wean us from our Epeolatry, or word-worship, by spiritualizing our ideas of the thing signified. Man is an idolater or symbol-worshipper by nature, which, of course, is no fault of his; but sooner or later ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in the contemplation of that scene when a cry, succeeded by a volley of horrid blasphemy, drew my attention of a sudden to my companions. They stood grouped together, and their eyes were on the road by which we had scaled those heights. Their first expression of loud astonishment had been succeeded by an utter silence. I stepped ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... the arm of my son so burdensome.' She continued a little longer in French till, observing the children did not understand her, she added in patois a long harangue in the same strain, a diatribe on the blasphemy of the age and the desecration of the Sabbath— 'only some old women go to mass.' After her speech, and having twice charged the children to make known her discourse, 'a tout mon peuple,' she glided up the path between the railings, followed by the children, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... despair of Heaven's pardon. Wretched Girl, you must stay here with me! Here amidst these lonely Tombs, these images of Death, these rotting loathsome corrupted bodies! Here shall you stay, and witness my sufferings; witness what it is to die in the horrors of despondency, and breathe the last groan in blasphemy and curses! And who am I to thank for this? What seduced me into crimes, whose bare remembrance makes me shudder? Fatal Witch! was it not thy beauty? Have you not plunged my soul into infamy? Have you not made ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... original basis for the philosophy of the world, and that all other forms are degeneracies from that primitive and perfect state. If there be such a man left, to him what I have to say about philosophy is blasphemy. ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... transport officers always putting in their oars, and being infernally insolent to everybody. I took the high and mighty line with them; and, as I had the Bulgarian commandant on my side, after about two hours' blasphemy got ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... any other God than the Lord," says the preamble of the code, "shall surely be put to death." This is followed by ten or twelve enactments of the same kind, copied verbatim from the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. Blasphemy, sorcery, adultery,[31] and rape were punished with death; an outrage offered by a son to his parents, was to be expiated by the same penalty. The legislation of a rude and half-civilized people was thus transferred to an enlightened and moral community. The consequence ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... scored up—upon him and his pots and his pipes, and the tavern-chorus which he and his friends are singing. Such a man as Charles should have had an Ostade or Mieris to paint him. Your Knellers and Le Bruns only deal in clumsy and impossible allegories: and it hath always seemed to me blasphemy to claim Olympus for such a wine-drabbled ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this subject, that liberty, or rather the most limited justice, was less to be expected from the kingship than from the episcopate. St. Louis's extreme severity towards what he called the knavish oath (vilain serment), that is, blasphemy, an offence for which there is no definition save what is contained in the bare name of it, is, perhaps, the most striking indication of the state of men's minds, and especially of the king's, in this respect. Every blasphemer was to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... hour is 11.30 a.m.; he knows his objective—Suffolk Trench; he knows the strong point at its northern end which the sappers are going to consolidate. The Sapper has found his section subaltern and his section nursing coils of barbed wire and shovels, and has been informed with much blasphemy that the guide had lost his way, and the party had been wandering all night. The machine-gun officer has delivered words of wisdom to various guns' crews—both Lewis and otherwise—who came under his eagle ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... With curses and blasphemy the crowd hurled itself down the stairs to the floor below. Here lived Deputy Latour, who had slunk into hiding. There may be papers in his room; if not, they can break it up as they have done the room above. ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... but utterly shocked; though she was not unacquainted with those frightful fits of morose unbelief, even of fierce blasphemy, to which the excitable West-country mind is liable, after having been over-strained by superstitious self-inspection, and by the desperate attempt to prove itself right and safe from frames and feelings, while fact and conscience ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... to be drawn up by a board of Commissioners as a substitute for the Canon Law of the Catholic Church, although it shrank from the penalty of death, attached that of perpetual imprisonment or exile to the crimes of heresy, blasphemy, and adultery, and declared excommunication to involve a severance of the offender from the mercy of God and his deliverance into the tyranny of the devil. Delays in the completion of this Code prevented its legal establishment during Edward's reign; ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... a unit. It is true that within the bosom of a nation there is room for diversities of the treatment of government and of administration, but a unit Ireland is and Ireland must remain.... The two-nation theory is to us an abomination and a blasphemy." ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... character from so foul a slander. If slaveholders are determined to hold slaves as long as they can, let them not dare to say that the God of mercy and of truth ever sanctioned such a system of cruelty and wrong. It is blasphemy against Him. ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... her, and refused to move until they had drunk their fill of her astounding beauty. I well remember one occasion on which the horses in a West Kensington omnibus met her at Piccadilly Circus and refused to leave her until she reached Highgate, in spite of the whip of the driver, the blasphemy of the conductor, the more formal complaints of the passengers, and direct ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... your day that woman's physical constitution doomed her by its necessary effect to be sick, wretched, and unhappy, and that at most her condition could not be rendered more than tolerable in a physical sense. A more blighting blasphemy against Nature never found expression. No natural function ought to cause constant suffering or disease; and if it does, the rational inference is that something is wrong in the circumstances. The Orientals invented the myth of Eve and the apple, and the curse pronounced ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... men of desparate and socialistic politics who had sworn to overturn as far as they could the authority of society, to despise the rights of property, and to trample on the laws of order. There was no city in the world guilty of more blasphemy than this beautiful Geneva; and even to this day, as the sins of fathers descend to their children, the teachings of Calvin, of Bayle, and of Servetus hang like a chronic curse over the city to warp every noble ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... consequently the whole society is a gigantic mistake. To be a sincere member of it, a man must be a half-witted fool, a religious fanatic, or a rogue for whom no duplicity is too scurrilous, even though it amount to blasphemy. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... to bring to the perusal of this work the same spirit of earnestness that I shall put into the task of producing it. We read in the language of Jesus that "every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven" (Matt. 12:31). "And every one who shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against ...
— The Spirit and the Word - A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational - Interpretation of the Word of Truth • Zachary Taylor Sweeney
... growl of amazed fury from the Magpie: then his step down the room; and, as he reached the safe, a torrent of unbridled blasphemy—and then, in a sort of staggered gasp, as he leaned suddenly forward examining the knob ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... spirit e'en the merest "nip" shun. It's poison, that is clear, Ballyhooly "ginger-beer," As ye'll own when I have given the prescription. You take heaps of Party "rot," spirit mean, and temper hot, Lies, blasphemy, and insult; mix them duly; For sugar put in salt, bitter gall for honest malt, Faith, they call it "Statesmanship" in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... but was earnest that, if such must be established, it should not be coercive. He did not formally demand unlimited toleration, and indeed conceded something in words to the effect that in cases of "known heresy, or blasphemy, or idolatry," offenders would have to be "obnoxious to the Civil Power;" but I rather think that the concession was prudential, and that his heart did not go with it. I will retain him therefore among the Unlimited Tolerationists. Far outshining him in this class, however, was John Goodwin.—Well, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Council arose the King of Arizim. He said: "I fear that thou hast spoken blasphemy against the Sea, and I have a dread that ill will come of it. Indeed I had not thought she was so fair. It is such a short while ago that she was quite a small child with her hair still unkempt and not yet attired in the manner of princesses, and she would go up into the wild woods unattended ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... people, the many millions of the Jewish population of Russia. The unassuming representatives of that Jewish Community of Archangel take the liberty to affirm that neither the Jewish people as a whole, nor any of its socially organized groups, are responsible for the savagery, violence, acts of blasphemy, and mockery of human rights which characterize ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... Father,"—whereas the Western Church adopts the additional words, "and from the Son." That the Russo-Greek Church is very tenacious of its position in this respect, and considers the position of the Western Church—Catholic and Protestant—as savoring of blasphemy, is well known; and there was a curious evidence of this during my second stay in Russia. Twice during that time I heard the "Missa Solennis" of Beethoven. It was first given by a splendid choir in the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... oldsters, and especially of the tyrant Murphy. I was let into all the secrets of the mess in which the youngsters were placed by the captain to be instructed and kept in order. Alas! what instruction did we get but blasphemy? What order were we kept in, except that of paying our mess, and being forbidden to partake of those articles which our money had purchased? My blood boiled when they related all they had suffered, and I vowed I would sooner die than ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... was different, Lin made a step toward them. There were hours and spots where he could readily have descended upon them at that, played the role of clinking affluence, waved thanks aside with competent blasphemy, and tossing off some infamous whiskey, cantered away in the full self-conscious strut of the frontier. But here was not the moment; the abashed cow-puncher could make no such parade in this place. The people brushed ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... say that God owes anything to his creatures. They accumulate responsibility upon man, but deny responsibility to God. But in doing this they take from the Almighty all moral character. Calvinism, especially, makes of the Deity infinite power and infinite will. But no blasphemy is worse than that which, though with the best intentions, virtually destroys the moral character of the Almighty, reducing him to an infinite will: that is, making of him an infinite tyrant. For the essence of tyranny is the union ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... discussion is attacked when a man is prevented from coarsely and brutally insulting his neighbours' honest beliefs. And this apart from the question of bad policy, inasmuch as abuse stultifies argument. But if prosecutions for blasphemy are permitted, it would be but just to penalize some of the anti-scientific blasphemers for their coarse and unmannerly attacks on opinions ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... dull, rampant, and indignant; but the solemn face of the dead interdicted dispute, and Love was ready to hope, if not quite to believe. Nevertheless to those guileless souls, the words of the soutar sounded like blasphemy: was not her fate settled, and for ever? Had not death in a moment turned her into an immortal angel, or an equally immortal devil? Only how, at such a moment, with the peaceful face before them, were they to argue the possibility that she, the loving, the gentle, whose ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... sound of this blasphemy Huon drew his sword and turned upon the miscreant, who, little disposed to encounter the prowess of which he had so lately seen proof, betook himself to flight. He ran to Huon's horse, and lightly vaulting on his back, clapped spurs to his side, and ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... The cook knocked the saucepans about, slammed the oven door, muttered prophesies of damnation for all the ship's company; and Donkin, who did not admit of any hereafter (except for purposes of blasphemy) listened, concentrated and angry, gloating fiercely over a called-up image of infinite torment—as men gloat over the accursed images of cruelty and revenge, of greed, and ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... shameful distinction was set up, it was of a piece with all the rest—a part of the brutal, unchristian, blundering feudal system. Distinctions of rank were then so strongly insisted upon, that it would have been thought blasphemy to doubt them, as blasphemous as it is in parts of the United States now for a nigger to set up as the equal of a white man. A ruffian like Henry VIII. talked as gravely about the divine powers vested in him, as if ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pilgrims—one who is instructed in the better way by all the personified powers which make for righteousness; the other finding his companions on the primrose path, and arriving at the everlasting bonfire. Certain Moralities attack a particular vice—gluttony or blasphemy, or the dishonouring of parents. From satirising the social vices of the time, the transition was easy to political satire or invective. In the sixteenth century both the partisans of the Reformation and the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... it was blasphemy. Ah, wall, you gave us a divine setting, with moonlight and stars, flowers and vines, the four winds for music, and Shakespeare for prompter! Yes, our fathers made us go through the motions, but it was Love that made us speak: it ...
— The Romancers - A Comedy in Three Acts • Edmond Rostand
... subject them to ridicule, abuse, and actual persecution. They habitually violated numerous laws on the statute-book, ranging from those requiring good order to those forbidding what was construed as blasphemy. They were, therefore, beaten and stoned by the mob; abused, fined, and imprisoned by the magistrates; ridiculed and prosecuted by the clergy; subjected to starvation, exposure, and other hardships by sheriffs and jailers. [Footnote: Besse, Sufferings of the Quakers, I., ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... cesspool of vice, envy, malice, impurity, pride, hatred, etc., yet human law does not and ought not to punish him for this, as long as his actions do not disturb the public peace nor trench upon the happiness of his neighbor. Even his open outward acts which injure only himself, such as gluttony, blasphemy, impiety, private drunkenness, self-abuse, even seduction and fornication, are not usually legislated against or punished in our courts. Does it follow that they are innocent acts and lawful before God? No man in his right ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... which doth willingly sin or consent, After he hath received the knowledge of the verity, Remaineth no more sacrifice, but a fearful looking for judgment, And a terrible[159] fire, which shall consume the adversary; And Christ saith that this blasphemy Shall never be pardoned nor forgiven In this world, nor in the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... herself was there, And that Profaneness had made choice, By way of trump, to use his voice; That, in all mean and low things great, He had been bred at Billingsgate; 390 And that, ascending to the earth Before the season of his birth, Blasphemy, making way and room, Had mark'd him in his mother's womb. Too honest (for the worst of men In forms are honest, now and then) Not to have, in the usual way, His bills sent in; too great to pay: Too proud to speak to, if he meets The honest tradesman ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... for bringing the ship safely in sight of harbour. The pilot, in reply, rebuked him as an infidel, and still piously continued to return thanks as before; while the captain, joined by the crew, tried to drown his voice by oaths and blasphemy. They were still shouting their loudest, when the vengeance of Heaven descended ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... "though Blasphemy's loud scream With that sweet music of deliverance strove! Though all the fierce and drunken passions wove A dance more wild than e'er was maniac's dream! Ye storms, that round the dawning east assembled, The Sun was rising, though ye hid his light!" And when, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... reechoed along the streets. A fierce yell greeted the reaeppearance of Radcliff in front of the Patent Office. He announced the result of the interview with the editor of the Era. Shouts, imprecations, blasphemy, burst from the crowd. "Down with the Era!" "Now for it!" "Gut the office!" were the exclamations heard on all sides, and the mob ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... would now express the hope that we may all henceforth find our happiness in taking Him for our teacher, guide, and model who never shrank from duty, even when to perform it wrung from him tears of agony and a bloody sweat, and who held on his course through evil report and good report, spite of blasphemy, persecution, and a bitter and shameful death, till he had finished the work which his Father had given him to do, and had won for us the victory over sin and death, and an imperishable ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... and led the way through the sparkling curtains. As she passed, an arm around Ruth's neck, I saw the marks of Ventnor's fingers upon her white shoulder, staining its purity, marring it like a blasphemy. ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... rendered it peculiarly the object of ridicule, whenever, like other old fashions, it began to fall out of repute; and the weapons of raillery could be employed against it, without exciting the disgust and horror with which they would have been rejected at an early period, as a species of blasphemy. The principles of chivalry were cast aside, and their aid supplied by baser stimulants. Instead of the high spirit which pressed every man forward in the defence of his country, Louis XI substituted the exertions of the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Thee to defend the Moloch Priest prefers 185 The prayer of hate, and bellows to the herd, That Deity, Accomplice Deity In the fierce jealousy of wakened wrath Will go forth with our armies and our fleets To scatter the red ruin on their foes! 190 O blasphemy! to mingle fiendish ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... way ran through stench and fire, close to the mouth of the bottomless pit. He began to be haunted by a strange curiosity about the unpardonable sin, and by a morbid longing to commit it. But the most frightful of all the forms which [v.04 p.0804] his disease took was a propensity to utter blasphemy, and especially to renounce his share in the benefits of the redemption. Night and day, in bed, at table, at work, evil spirits, as he imagined, were repeating close to his ear the words, "Sell him, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... anything wrong about it, but hastily wrote the few lines which preceded it, and sent it to the printers. And what has my kindness done for me? It has done nothing but bring down upon me a storm of abuse and ornamental blasphemy. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... had sunk into fathomless silence. It was only half after eight! He stuck his head out of the window. Soft flakes touched and soothed his feverish head. "Damn money!" he whispered suddenly, then stood back in the room, startled, staring his blasphemy in the face. He'd go out in the snow, and get rid of ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... seemed to take the little Cockney and shake him by the throat; he trembled from head to foot, his face shockingly congested, and spat out dust and fragments of lurid blasphemy like an ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Word is meant by "the name of God," and the profanation of it means a denial of its holiness, and thus contempt, rejection, and blasphemy, it follows that the name of God is interiorly profaned by a life contrary to the commandments of the Decalogue. For there can be a profanation that is inner and not outer, and there can be a profanation ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg
... his jaw at her, with the grimace of an irreverent schoolboy. Upon that aged face it seemed a blasphemy. Then he took out of his bosom a long leather purse, and emptying its contents on the settle, began to count and recount the pieces, ringing and examining each, and suddenly he leapt like a young man. 'What!' he screamed. 'Bad? ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Reason damaged Paine's reputation in America, where the name of "Tom Paine" became a stench in the nostrils of the godly and a synonym for atheism and blasphemy. His book was denounced from a hundred pulpits, and copies of it were carefully locked away from the sight of "the young," whose religious beliefs it might undermine. It was, in effect, a crude and popular statement of the deistic argument against ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... in the world's art, the Americans were squabbling over the blasphemy of instruments and of notation! This is not the place to treat the history of our music. The curious can find enlightenment at such sources as Mr. Louis C. Elson's "National Music of America." It must be ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... can be more disastrous, and yet more inevitable, than to mistake our corrupt instincts for the voice of God, or, on the other hand, to condemn the Divine intimations as sinful? How can we avoid at every instant committing the unpardonable sin of blasphemy against the ineffable Holiness? And if, indeed, the distinction be groundless, are we not of necessity dislocating our conceptions of the universe, and hopelessly ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... them to the worst end, if, in convenient time, they repent them not, verily forsaking and revoking openly the slander that they have put, and every day yet put to CHRIST's Church. For, certain, so open blasphemy and slander, as they have spoken and done in their revoking and forsaking of the Truth, ought not, nor may not, privily be amended duly. Wherefore, Sirs, I pray you that ye busy you not for to move me to follow these men in revoking and forsaking of the Truth ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... writer has been promised "an European reputation" (Madame LAFFARGE has a reputation equally extensive), and he is at this moment to be found upon drawing-tables, whose owners would scream—or affect to scream—as at an adder, at SHELLEY. Nay, Shelley's publisher is found guilty of blasphemy in the Court of Queen's Bench; and that within these few months. We should like to know Lord Denman's opinions of Mr. BOONE. What would he say of Queen Victoria being compared to the Redeemer—of Lord LONDONDERRY, et hoc genus omne, being ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... in anguished tones; for the first time, he did not appear to my inner sight. But some dark veil suddenly lifted within me; I saw clearly the blasphemy of my life. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... "You and your noansense! What do I want with a Christian faim'ly? I want Christian broth! Get me a lass that can plain-boil a potato, if she was a whure off the streets." And with these words, which echoed in her tender ears like blasphemy, he had passed on to his study and shut the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... says, "[Dr. Newman uses] the blasphemy and profanity which he confesses to be so common in Catholic countries, as an argument for, and not against the 'Catholic Faith.'"—p. 34. That is, because I admit that profaneness exists in the Church, therefore I consider it a token of ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... over his national affairs now; and, as I have pointed out before, each of the belligerents calls upon Him in beseeching reverence as a Divine compatriot, to give this Almighty power to aid in demolishing their common foe, who has broken every law of God and man. This form of blasphemy is as rampant now as it ever was. It is not a hungry belief in God that gives the initial impulse for human slaughter. It is a craving lust for the invention of all that is devilish in expeditiously ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... wine and gives the others to drink, he washes their feet and they go out to the Mount of Olives. This is followed by a scene of Judas coming to Annas and Caiaphas, showing his piece of bread and telling them that he had heard Christ speak blasphemy. Carmelo explained that the priests were Hebrews—there were Hebrews, he said, in those days, living in that country—and Hebrews believe that bread is the Body of God; therefore for a man—and they thought Christ was merely a man—to declare that the bread was ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... humbug or an ass," continued the Count, his wrath growing fiercer as he poured it out,—"an ass if he believes such an infamous law to be constitutional; and if he does not believe it, he is a humbug and a scoundrel for advocating it." Beacon Street, of course, was aghast at this outburst of blasphemy; and the high circles thereof were speedily closed against the plain-spoken radical who dared to question Mr. Webster's infallibility, and who made, indeed, but small account of the other ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... Cullen, his son the advocate, Dr Adam Fergusson, and Mr Crosbie, advocate. Witchcraft was introduced. Mr Crosbie said, he thought it the greatest blasphemy to suppose evil spirits counteracting the Deity, and raising storms, for instance, to destroy his creatures. JOHNSON. 'Why, sir, if moral evil be consistent with the government of the Deity, why may not physical evil be also consistent with it? It is not more strange that there should ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... mad with rage, was heard above the rest, shouting frenziedly a curse which was a horribly grotesque blasphemy upon the name of God. Men who had used that oath in their insane anger had been known to commit suicide out ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... you," exclaimed the captain, "to bait a poor innocent lad with horrid blasphemy and profanity. I tell you every one of you ought to ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who's over me? Truth ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... made her the Rose of the World (her name was Rosamond, too!), appeared in visible form no prettier, no, not as pretty, as The Fair One with The Golden Locks in the other book! And what an outcry she made to her indifferent family when first confronted by the unbelievable blasphemy of an illustration that differed ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... burden to himself and his successors. He was stern with blasphemers, whose lips he caused to be branded with a hot iron. "I have heard him say," writes Joinville, "with his own mouth, that he would he were marked with a red-hot iron himself if thereby he could banish all oaths and blasphemy from his kingdom. Full twenty-two years have I been in his company, and never have I heard him swear or blaspheme God or His holy Mother or any Saint, howsoever angry he may have been: and when he would affirm anything, he ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... of these we were ignorant. All was hidden from our eyes; the veil of the night cloaked from us the work we had done. If men cried in agony, if groans mocked angry boasts, if we heard the splashing of the oars, the hoarse command, the vile blasphemy, the rest was in imagination's keeping. The outposts of Czerny's crew, we said, had tried to rush the gate where our own men watched; but our own were behind the steel doors now and the gun's hail swept the barren rock. The dawn would show ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... no said grace?" remarked the lantern-jawed fellow, as we sat to table; and then, raising his hands in impudent mockery, he began to utter some blasphemy, but Black turned upon him as with the growl of ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton |
