"Freethinker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of them feel in Renan's case, of course,' said Madame de Netteville, 'is that every book he writes now gives a fresh opening to the enemy to blaspheme. Your eminent freethinker can't afford just yet, in the present state of the world, to make himself socially ridiculous. The ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the 28th of October, 1685, "You have, no doubt, seen the edict by which the king revokes that of Nantes; nothing can be more beautiful than its contents, and never did or will any king do anything more memorable." The noble libertine and freethinker replied to her, "I admire the steps taken by the king to reunite the Huguenots. The war made upon them in former times and the St. Bartholomew gave vigor to this sect; his Majesty has sapped it little by little, and the edict he has just ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Scripture history, will not be arrested by the sun's standing on Gibeon. If they speak out at all, they will speak out rather as to all they do believe than as to the little that they doubt. It was soon known to Bertram's world that those who regarded him as a freethinker did him no ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... prosecution was the seizure of our book packets and letters in the Post-office by the Tory Government. The "Freethinker's Text Book", the National Reformer, and various pamphlets were seized, as well as the "Fruits of Philosophy", and sealed letters were opened. Many meetings were held denouncing the revival of a system of Government ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... firing out of his window, wounded a gownsman of Brasenose. The Tories, "under terror of this dangerous and unexpected resistance, retreated from Oriel." Yet such was the academic strength of the Jacobites and the Churchmen, that a Freethinker, or a "Constitutioner," could scarcely ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... fiery tombs, the Florentine freethinker, the haughty Farinata, rises "with breast and brow erect, as holding Hell in great contempt," and tells Dante that the souls of the lost have no knowledge concerning things that are actually passing ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... expression, should be in this dark and heathenish condition! But there was infinite comfort in the thought that this precious soul to be saved had fallen into her hands, and not into those of some worldling like Miss Starbrow herself, or, worse still, of a downright freethinker like her own daughter. After having made her first survey of Fan's mind, finding nothing there except that queer farrago of Scripture lessons which had never been explained to her, and were now nearly forgotten, it seemed to Mrs. Churton that it was ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... "Now," said the Squire, "you can't see. Pronounce the word 'testimony' twice, slowly. Think of a number, multiply by four, subtract the Thirty-nine Articles, add a Sunday School and a packet of buns. Result, you're a freethinker." And with that he bowed BOB out ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... Freethinker at a time when to have thoughts of your own was to be an outcast. His restless mind was no more satisfied with an outworn theology than with an outgrown system of transportation. His religion was blended with his work ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... celebrated freethinker, who indulged in bold and independent speculations, and suffered much persecution for his ridicule of the Homeric deities. He flourished at the time of our history and lived to a great age, far on into the fifth century. We have quoted some fragments of his writings above. He committed his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... considered; but Pantheism is religion's practical annihilation. It is not for nothing that in Persia, e.g., the name of Sufi—in theory a pantheistic believer in the identity of the worshipper with his Deity—signifies in current use not a mystic, but a freethinker! ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... both for and against Him. She had read the New Testament. But could she quite honestly say that she had STUDIED the character of Christ? Had she not been predisposed to think her father in the right? He would not at all approve of that. Had she been a true Freethinker? Had she not taken a good deal to be truth because he said it? If so, she was not a bit more fair than the majority of Christians who never took the trouble to go into things for themselves, and study things from the point of ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... little defensible, from the philosophical point of view, as the religious dogmas of the Middle Ages, but it enjoys at present the same absolute power they formerly enjoyed. It is as unattackable in consequence as in the past were our religious ideas. Imagine a modern freethinker miraculously transported into the midst of the Middle Ages. Do you suppose that, after having ascertained the sovereign power of the religious ideas that were then in force, he would have been tempted to attack them? Having fallen into the hands ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... pair of thick black eyebrows almost covered the eyes of him; his look had in it something ominous, presage of the fate he met with: a tawny skin, torn by small-pox, increased his ugliness. He affected the freethinker, and carried libertinism to excess; a great deal of ambition and headlong rashness accompanied this vice." A dangerous adviser here in the Berlin element, with lightnings going!"Such a favorite was not the man to bring back my Brother ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... an unfair advantage of this alleged necessity of fate to employ it in excuse for our vices and our libertinism. I have often heard it said by smart young persons, who wished to play the freethinker, that it is useless to preach virtue, to censure vice, to create hopes of reward and fears of punishment, since it may be said of the book of destiny, that what is written is written, and that our behaviour can change nothing therein. Thus, they would say, it were ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... freethinker, and in leaving money to found a college devised that no preacher or priest should have anything to do with its management. The question at issue was, "Is a bequest for founding a college a charitable bequest?" If so, then the will must stand. But if the bequest were merely ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... missis—for one—wouldn't 'ave a feller like that in our place. We 'ad a lodger once and she found out that 'e was a freethinker or something, and she cleared 'im out, bloody quick, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... influence of an image of the Sacred Heart, which he had carved as a schoolboy, it is claimed that a reconciliation with the Church was effected. There has been considerable pragmatical discussion as to what form of retraction from him was necessary, since he had been, after studying in Europe, a frank freethinker, but such futile polemics may safely be left to the learned doctors. That he was reconciled with the Church would seem to be evidenced by the fact that just before the execution he gave legal status as his wife to the woman, a rather remarkable Eurasian adventuress, who had lived with him in Dapitan, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal |
