"Irreligion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... away, the wars at home and in the Netherlands had sadly depleted the treasury, the credit of the country was far from good, and gradually, as a natural reaction after the religious exaltation which had marked the whole of the sixteenth century, a spirit of irreligion and licentiousness became prevalent in all classes of society. As Philip had grown older and more ascetic in his tastes, he had gradually withdrawn from society and had left his court to its own devices. With his death, in ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... our gratitude becomes animated with its highest energies. If Providence were to unfold to us all the horrours which we have escaped; if all the blood which would have followed the assassin's dagger were to roll in reeking streams before us; if the full display of irreligion, flight, massacre, confiscation, imprisonment and famine, which would have graced a revolutionary triumph in these realms, were to be unbarred to our view, how should we recoil from the ghastly spectacle! With what emotions of admiration and esteem should we bend before ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... nor supports, with the diabolical talent and ingenuity of a Sand, the most subversive and anti-social doctrines. His works are not befouled with filth and obscenity, such as that impure old reprobate Paul de Kock delights and wallows in—or disgraced by the irreligion, and contempt of things holy, found in the writings of scores of French authors whom we could name, were they worth the naming. It is undeniable that the ingenious plots of his very entertaining books turn, for the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... on horseback; but the Clerical campaign strengthened at the same rate that popular sympathies went out toward him. In almost every sermon there were allusions to the immorality and the irreligion that reigned in the town. The support of the women was sought and they were exhorted to influence their husbands, brothers, and sons to resign ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... the clerical and other leaders of the dominant party of that time, were sure to be singled out for personal attack. They were also made to feel the chilling effects of social exclusiveness. The cry against them was that of ignorance, irreverence, irreligion, republicanism, disloyalty, etc. These charges were repeated in every form; and that, too, by a section both of the official and religious press, a portion of which was edited with singular ability; ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... whose life has been tainted with so many scandalous vices, and who has been so long condemned by the universal opinion of the world? To pass over the foul stains and ignominy of his youth, his corrupt management in all employments he has borne, his treachery and irreligion, his injustice and oppression, he has left of late such monuments of his villainies in Sicily, made such havoc and confusion there, during his government, that the province cannot by any means be restored to its former state, and hardly recover itself at all under many ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... spoken of as free-thinkers and frequently as anti-religious in temper and conviction. The charge of irreligion seems based upon the misconception or the misrepresentation of their orthodox critics. It is, at any rate, undeserved, as far as Gutzkow, the leader of the school, is concerned. It is true that they were ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... France but through sentiments due to Catholicism, and none of you are Catholics! Here am I, a priest, obliged to leave my own ground and argue with arguers. How can you expect the masses to become religious and obedient when they see irreligion and want of discipline above them? All peoples united by any faith whatever will inevitably get the better of peoples without any faith at all. The law of public interest, which gives birth to patriotism, is destroyed ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... contact with one another; never before had so many Americans of all classes heard the speech and observed the manners of Britons. It was an experience not to be forgotten. The Puritan recruit from Massachusetts might write home lamenting the scandalous irreligion that prevailed among the levies from other colonies; but the irritating condescension of British regulars made him aware that he had after all more in common with the most unregenerate American than with any Englishman. The provincial, subtly conscious of his limitations ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... is pathos. Heine is the greater poet, Becquer, the profounder artist. As Blanco Garcia well points out,[1] the moral inclinations of the two poets were distinct and different also. Becquer's instinct for the supernatural freed him from Heine's skepticism and irreligion; and, though he had suffered much, he ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... but even seriously injurious to truth. One and all, through a long series of two hundred and fifty years, think themselves called upon to tax their countrymen—each severally in his own age—with a separate, peculiar, and unexampled guilt of infidelity and irreligion. Each worthy man, in his turn, sees in his own age overt signs of these offences not to be matched in any other. Five-and-twenty periods of ten years each may be taken, concerning each of which some excellent writer may be cited to prove that it had reached ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... too apt to use it as a cloak for their personal ends. Absalom talking about his vow is a spectacle that might have made the most unsuspecting sure that there was something in the wind. Such a use of religious observances shows more than anything else could do, the utter irreligion of the man who can make it. A son rebelling against his father is an ugly sight, but rebellion disguised as religion adds to the ugliness. David suspects nothing; or, if he does, is too broken to resist, and, perhaps glad at any sign of grace in his son, or pleased to gratify any of his ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... his brother, and grieved for his irreligion, but hoped that grace would eventually bring him back to the fold of the Church. His brother encouraged him in his hopes, while laughing at them in private, but as they were both sensible men they never discussed ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... wonder that the fair tender plant of beautiful childhood refuses to grow in such a vitiated atmosphere. Here all distinctions between good and evil are speedily lost, if they were ever known; and men, women, and children become unnatural in vice, in irreligion, in manners and appearance. Such spots as these act like cankers, yearly spreading further and further their vitiating influences, preparing for all those fearful retributions in the shape of fever and pestilence which continually come down. Yet, lamentable as ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... beauty of his own invention, and that he both elevated and subjected all to beauty. Such a man was not likely to be ignorant of the great root of power in art, and I once saw him very indignant on hearing that he had been accused of irreligion, or rather of not being a Christian. He asked with great earnestness, "Do not my works testify to my Christianity?" I wish that these imperfect recollections may be of any avail to those who cherish the memory ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... rerum humanarum maximum momentum sit, quam propitiis rem, quam adversis agant dis.' Superior to the gods is necessitas (ix. 4, 16), and fortuna is also powerful (ix. 17, 3; v. 37, 1). He condemns the irreligion of his own day (x. 40, 10, 'iuvenis ante doctrinam deos spernentem natus'), cf. iii. 20, 5; viii. 11, 1. He retains the old belief in prodigies and portents, every war being introduced by a list of them, but recognizes that many reported instances were fictitious: ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... in your writings, induces me to send you a translated Copy of the Accusation and defence of M. Wolf, the most celebrated Philosopher of our days; who, for having carried light into the darkest places of Metaphysics, is cruelly accused of irreligion and atheism. Such is the destiny of great men; their superior genius exposes them to the poisoned arrows of calumny and envy. I am about getting a Translation made of the Treatise on God, the Soul, and the World,"—Translation ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... denounced as leading to irreligion; the doctrines of Locke were said to produce materialism; and in our own day, Dr. Buckland, Mr. Sedgwick, and other leading geologists, have been accused of overturning revelation with regard to ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... things that would brand them as apostates if they meant what they said. This or that one, in the midst of an orgy of sin, or after long practical irreligion, in order to strangle remorse that arises at an inopportune moment, may seem to form a judgment of apostasy. This is treading on exceedingly thin glass. But it is not always properly defection from faith. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... have had very little to say to this war, which is an outbreak of materialism and irreligion. The peoples did not want this war; there is no hatred of one another amongst them: but the governing cliques in each country have led or driven them like sheep to the slaughter. God has been ignored; His law has been put aside; Christianity is not allowed to govern ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... ignorance or cultivation are of great consequence to the welfare of the community. Some of these are of indispensable consideration to the legislator, and to the political economist. But it is in that general and moral view, in which ignorance in the lower orders is beheld the cause of their vice, irreligion, and consequent misery, that the subject is attempted, imperfectly and somewhat desultorily, to be illustrated in ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... knew there was something going on underneath, but the deuce himself would never have suspected this. So the innocent-faced madam has not been winding herself round the Lady Adelaide for nothing—the she-wolf in sheep's petticoats! Something was said, too, that I could not catch, about her irreligion. The hypocrite dare not go to confession, probably, and so keeps away. The letter of the wedding night is explained now, and that changing, as they both did, to the hue of a mort-cloth at sight of each other. May I die unabsolved if so sly a conspiracy ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... income as large as many an English nobleman. We find him corresponding with popes, cardinals, kings, and statesmen; and as he grew older, his mind became more fixed upon serious subjects. The ignorance and brutality of the monks, the corruption of the spiritual courts, the absolute irreligion in which the Church was steeped, gave him serious alarm. He had no enthusiasms, no doctrinal fanaticisms, no sectarian beliefs or superstitions. The breadth of his culture, his clear understanding, and the worldly moderation of his temper, seemed to qualify him above living men to conduct ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... of the episcopal clergy, anno 1638, does now plead for their care to prevent it in time coming. (3.) Because the people under their ministry, have hitherto been, and are perishing in ignorance and irreligion; being either starved for want of faithful and spiritual instruction, or poisoned with false instruction; and therefore pity to them, and zeal to propagate the gospel, should prompt to all endeavours to purge them out. (4.) ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... 1900 they numbered 1.2 per 1000. So that if it were not for this fall in illegitimate births the period 1896-1900 would show a positive rise in the effective rate of increase of .8 per thousand. The eminent persons therefore who ascribe our falling birth-rate to irreligion and so forth, either speak without knowledge or with some sort of knowledge beyond my ken. England is, as a matter of fact, becoming not only more hygienic and rational, but more moral and more temperate. The highly moral, healthy, prolific, pious England ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... and the gay husband, though his gayety may not be commendable, will always accuse his wife if she lacks a social disposition to a great extent. The religious wife will never excuse a tendency to irreligion in her husband, and though he may be far from being immoral, she is unhappy if he does not participate in her devotions. The one devoted to children will never be happy with one having a natural repugnance for them. ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... mingled, or universally mingled, you will discern that the ornamental, or pleasurable power, though it may be possessed by good men, is not in itself an indication of their goodness, but is rather, unless balanced by other faculties, indicative of violence of temper, inclining to cruelty and to irreligion. On the other hand, so sure as you find any man endowed with a keen and separate faculty of representing natural fact, so surely you will find that man gentle and upright, full of nobleness and breadth of ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... from that great Body of Writers who have employed their Wit and Parts in propagating Vice and Irreligion, I did not question but I should be treated as an odd kind of Fellow that had a mind to appear singular in my Way of Writing: But the general Reception I have found, convinces me that the World is not so corrupt as we are ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... up to the fanatics of the party as a monster of libertinism and irreligion. I had only one mistress; and as to the irreligion,—I let others do as they like, why ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... Sainte-Beuve and Renan are types, no such effects have been noted in these newer institutions. While the theological way of looking at the universe has steadily yielded, there has been no sign of any tendency toward irreligion. On the contrary, it is the testimony of those best acquainted with the American colleges and universities during the last forty-five years that there has been in them a great gain, not only as regards morals, but as regards religion in its ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Theodoret against the twelve chapters of the celebrated Cyril, and the epistle which was said to have been written by Ibas to Maris the Persian—without alteration this synod renews in all points the ancient decrees of religion, chasing away the impious doctrines of irreligion. And this our holy and ecumenical synod, inspired of God, has set its seal to the creed of the three hundred and eighteen Fathers, and again religiously confirmed by the one hundred and fifty, which also the other ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... nations; the fanatics going straightforward and openly, the politicians by the surer mode of zigzag. In the course of events, this, among other causes, produced fierce and bloody contentions between them. But at the bottom they thoroughly agreed in all the objects of ambition and irreligion, and substantially in all the means of ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... with ruffians; and brutal sports and brutal language existed to a frightful degree. Criminals were hanged, five or six together, at Tyburn. Gibbets existed at all the cross-roads throughout the country. The people were grossly ignorant, and altogether neglected. Scepticism and irreligion prevailed, until Wesley and Whitfield sprang up to protest against formalism and atheism. They were pelted with rotten eggs, sticks, and stones. A Methodist preacher was whipped out ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... there was not still a dark closet that must be explored before men could receive the message of religion and self-control. So in 1843 he organized the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, which ever since has remembered how Hartley found alcoholism back of irreligion, and how back of alcoholism and poverty and ignorant indifference he found indecent housing, unsanitary streets, unwholesome working conditions, and ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race, so fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle's words, "having no hope and without God in the world,"—all this is a vision to dizzy and appal; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Lune, and Histoire Comique des Etats et Empires du Soleil. Cyrano's taste, caught by the mannerisms of Italy and extravagances of Spain, was execrable. To his violences of temper he added a reputation for irreligion. His comedy Le Pedant Joue has the honour of having furnished Moliere with the most laughable scene of the Fourberies de Scapin. The voyages to the moon and the sun, in which the inhabitants, their manners, governments, and ideas, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... only substituted the authority of the book for that of the priest; it is a change of dynasty and nothing more. As to the majority of those who to-day call themselves free-thinkers, they confuse religious freedom with irreligion; they choose not to see that in religion as in politics, between a royalty based on divine right and anarchy there is room for a government which may be as strong as the first and a better guarantee of freedom than the second. The spirit of the older time put God outside of the world; the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... its Maker, rejecting the intervention of a priesthood or a sacramental system. Unlike the previous revivals in England, they warred not against the rulers of the Church or State, but only against vice or irreligion. Consequently in the characters which they produced, as compared with those produced by Wycliffism, by the Reformation, and notably by Puritanism, there was less of force and the grandeur connected with it, more of gentleness, mysticism, and religious love. Even Quietism, ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... was, I should think, as nearly a freethinker as anyone could be whose mind seldom turned upon the subject. She went to church, but disliked equally those who aired either religion or irreligion. I remember once hearing her press a late well-known philosopher to write a novel instead of pursuing his attacks upon religion. The philosopher did not much like this, and dilated upon the importance of showing people the folly of much that they pretended to believe. She ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... with the Recollets. No one ever accused him of being a bad Catholic. He was exact in the performance of his religious duties, and such trouble as he had with the ecclesiastical authorities proceeded from political aims rather than from heresy or irreligion. ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... which Burns sometimes spoke of things sacred, had been obliquely touched upon by his good and anxious friend Mrs. Dunlop: he pleads guilty of folly, but not of irreligion.] ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... organizations; and after a lecture or an oration, he would spend days and days with his books and magazines, alone save for his sister—a docile, pious woman who worshipped him, though she bewailed his irreligion—and for his little daughter, a blonde girl whom Rafael could scarcely remember, because her father's unpopularity with the "best people" kept the little child away ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... night completely and forever cured poor Jack of a common error which has brought many a poor soul into the wild surges of unbelief and irreligion. ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... the book. It attempts to demonstrate that all supernatural religions have been harmful to society and that the only useful religion is natural religion or morals. The book was refuted by Guidi, in a "Lettre a M. le Chevalier de... [Barthe] entran dans l'irreligion par un libelle intitul Le Militaire ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... wither and wane in a soul devoid of living faith. All the exercises and practices of the Christian life participate in the baneful effects. Prayer and the use of the sacraments are either seriously neglected or gradually given up, and the blighting influences of irreligion rapidly spread and overrun all the departments of life. The view one takes of God, the faith or lack of faith and trust one has in Providence, have their effect on the character and give a direction to all one's ways of thinking, feeling, acting, in regard to the world ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... relieved the painful situation. Turning his head, David found all the childish eyes converged upon a single figure, a bulging-headed lad who had sprung into a sudden position of eminence—upon an egg-box. He was clothed in the blue blouse of Radicalism and irreligion, and the faint down upon his upper lip suggested that he ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... those communistic systems and exclusive solutions which tend to suppress rather than to transform the elements of society; and to say to them, "You are communists, you desire to abolish property." It is immoral to accuse of irreligion and impiety men who have devoted their whole lives to the endeavor to reconcile the religious idea, betrayed and disinherited by the very men who pretend to be its official defenders, with the National movement. It is immoral to insinuate accusations of personal interest and of pillage, against ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... opportunity of bringing forward such an accusation; for in his youth Critias had been a companion of Socrates, and his later conduct was used as a proof that Socrates corrupted his surroundings. But it is always Critias's political crimes which are adduced in this connexion, not his irreligion. On the other hand, posterity looked upon him as the pure type of tyrant, and the label atheist therefore suggested itself on ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... Memoirs. By Charles Caldwell, M. D., Professor, &c. Containing, 1. An Introductory Address, intended as a Defence of the Medical Profession against the charge of Irreligion and Infidelity; with Thoughts on the Truth and Importance of Natural Religion. 2. A Dissertation in answer to certain Prize Questions, proposed by his Grace, the Duke of Holstein Oldenburg, respecting the "Origin, ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... does not seem easy to aver that one kind of age, one sort of 'culture' is more favourable to the occurrence of, or belief in, these phenomena than another. Accidental circumstances, an increase, or a decrease of knowledge and education, an access of religion, or of irreligion, a fashion in intellectual temperament, may bring these experiences more into notice at one moment than at another, but they are always said to recur, at uncertain intervals, and are ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... religion and no empire but its own. It indicates this respect to absolute truth by the use it makes of the symbols that are most stable and reverend, and therefore is always provoking the accusation of irreligion. ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... large,—that in all which has been manifestly employed as a co-agent in the mightiest revolution of the moral world, the propagation of the Gospel, and in the intellectual progress of mankind in the restoration of philosophy, science, and the ingenuous arts—it were irreligion not to acknowledge the hand of divine providence. The periods, too, join on to each other. The earliest Greeks took up the religious and lyrical poetry of the Hebrews; and the schools of the prophets were, however partially and imperfectly, represented by the mysteries derived ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... Notwithstanding the fashionable irreligion which prevailed in the age of the Antonines, both the interest of the priests and the credulity of the people were sufficiently respected. In their writings and conversation, the philosophers of antiquity asserted the independent dignity of reason; but they resigned their actions ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... think of the mischief she's always done here, by her example and her irreligion—I can't forgive her. I don't believe you'll make any impression on Mr. Freeland; he's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the characters of the actors were loose, exceedingly so; and if the audience could learn something of human nature there, it was only the debasing side of it. It is generally true that actors lend their influence to intemperance, licentiousness, and irreligion. They do not patronize Sabbath schools, churches, and other Christian institutions, but they patronize bars, gambling saloons, and houses of ill-fame. Many of those men even who go to the theatre, would be quite unwilling to introduce ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... together. In feeling after the central type of man, he must embrace all eccentricities; his cosmology must subsume all cosmologies, and the feelings that gave birth to them; his statement of facts must include all religion and all irreligion, Christ and Boodha, God and the devil. The world as it is, and the whole world as it is, physical, and spiritual, and historical, with its good and bad, with its manifold inconsistencies, is what ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... much opposed to steam and all new-fangled ways, and held ballooning to be sinful, and deplored the degeneracy of the times; which that particular member of each little club who kept the keys of the nearest church, professionally, always attributed to the prevalence of dissent and irreligion; though the major part of the company inclined to the belief that virtue went out with hair-powder, and that Old England's greatness had decayed amain ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Thy holy Church!" exclaimed the missionary, crushing the paper in his excitement. "If the ministers of God become the creatures of the king, despotism and irreligion must inevitably ensue. How long will virtue be accounted a crime? Shall every faithful shepherd be supplanted, to make room for the wolf of lay investiture, the instrument of a lustful tyrant, raised by simony, and upheld by ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... Usage and Economy in the Reign of Elizabeth,' 'A Reply to a Query on Singular Fishes,' 'The Fabulous Foundation of the Popedom' (abridged from Bernard), 'Migratory Birds of the West of England,' 'God's Arrow against Atheism and Irreligion,' 'A Dissertation on the Mermaid,' 'Observations on the Natural History of the Chameleon,' 'Ditto on the Jewish and Christian Sabbath Days,' 'Ditto on Cider-making and the Cultivation of Apple Trees,' 'Contributions to a Classification ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Hall is well. Why is he idle? I mean towards the public. We want such men to rescue this enlightened age from general irreligion." ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... had before this been confiscated, but he had secured favourable terms by an arrangement with the Parliament. This time it was again confiscated, and he narrowly escaped death by flight to the Continent. He was a prominent member of the exiled Court; but his open irreligion, his flighty character, and his continual plotting as an adherent of Prince Rupert, alienated him from the party of Hyde. His wit and personal charms won for him many friends, but his life was one perpetual succession of reckless schemes and bitter quarrels, ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... like the Shantung Protestant University, with its union of the best educational methods and the highest ideals of Christian character, will do more for the real enlightenment of China than a dozen provincial colleges where gambling, irreligion and opium smoking are freely tolerated and a failure to worship the tablet of Confucius is ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... accommodation, in short, but also the old confidence in human values and the resultant spontaneity, whether of the religious or of the romantic type. And this is then your dilemma: you find the two parts of your quaesitum hopelessly separated. You find empiricism with inhumanism and irreligion; or else you find a rationalistic philosophy that indeed may call itself religious, but that keeps out of all definite touch with concrete facts ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... when planted near garlic, and in like manner there are souls which grow more fervent in places where libertinism and irreligion seem to drag all virtue at ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... less noble occupation of "coaching." He could not be said to be absolutely unintellectual. As he had not profited by the experience of life, so he had not been contaminated by it. He was moral, chiefly in a negative sense, and was not inclined to irreligion. The faith of his parents sat, perhaps, uncomfortably upon him; and he had not sufficient strength of mind to adopt a new pattern. He was in short an amiable mathematician, and a feeble classic; and I think that is all that could ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... and maintains an ever-widening hotbed of corruption, so that habits and extravagances once unknown beyond that focus of all vice, are now spreading as fast as London; and wherever there are bricks and mortar there are profligacy and irreligion? Can you wonder that all the best and wisest in this city regret Cromwell's iron rule, the rule of the strongest, and deplore that so bold a stroke for liberty should have ended in such foolish subservience ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... enthusiasm and of sentiment. The worship of the Deity was blended with all that was ennobling and beautiful. Moved by these glowing fancies, her susceptible spirit, in these tender years, turned away from atheism, from infidelity, from irreligion, as from that which was unrefined, revolting, vulgar. The consciousness of the presence of God, the adoration of his being, became a passion of her soul. This state of mind was poetry, not religion. It involved no sense of the spirituality of the Divine ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... unreasonableness of my sorrow, and innumerable protestations of everlasting regard, he at last found that I was more affected with the loss of my innocence, than the danger of my fame, and that he might not be disturbed by my remorse, began to lull my conscience with the opiates of irreligion. His arguments were such as my course of life has since exposed me often to the necessity of hearing, vulgar, empty, and fallacious; yet they at first confounded me by their novelty, filled me with doubt and perplexity, and interrupted ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... ostrich was having the feathers that were not falling. He did use something. He saw the difference when it was a turkey. He needed all that inclination. He said some were useful. He did not mind irreligion. He had ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... Antoinette was married to the Dauphin, and while there had taken advantage of his official station to do a tremendous quantity of smuggling. He had also further and most deeply offended the Empress Maria Theresa, by outrageous debaucheries, by gross irreligion, and above all by a rather flat but in effect stingingly satirical description of her conduct about the partition of Poland. This she never forgave him, neither did her daughter Marie Antoinette; and accordingly, when he presented ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... no one think that irreligion is advocated in this book. With respect to religious tenets I wish to observe that I am a member of the Church of England, into whose communion I was baptized, and to which my forefathers belonged. Its being the religion in which ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... fresh light. I had got an impression,—I had had it for some time before I left America,—that my mind was not in a thoroughly healthy state,—that it was not exactly itself,—that it was so much biassed in favor of irreligion, that it was incapable of doing justice to arguments for a God and Providence, for a spiritual world and a future life. I partly believed, and now I know, that facts and arguments in favor of the great fundamental doctrines of religion, did not affect and ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the classics of Italy, prove that it neither was nor is so interpreted. That he intended to ridicule the monastic life, and suffered his imagination to play with the simple dulness of his converted giant, seems evident enough; but surely it were as unjust to accuse him of irreligion on this account, as to denounce Fielding for his Parson Adams, Barnabas,[334] Thwackum, Supple, and the Ordinary in Jonathan Wild,—or Scott, for the exquisite use of his Covenanters in the "Tales of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... already remarked(45) that Ennius scientifically inculcated the same irreligion in a didactic poem of his own; and it is evident that he was in earnest with this freethinking. With this trait other features are quite accordant—his political opposition tinged with radicalism, that here and there appears;(46) his singing the praises of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... in the face. Nor is it confined to those who are its direct victims. Those who still cling, and cling firmly, to belief are in an indirect way touched by it. Religion cannot fail to be changed by the neighbourhood of irreligion. If it is persecuted, it may burn up with greater fervour; but if it is not persecuted, it must in some measure be chilled. Believers and unbelievers, separated as they are by their tenets, are yet in these days mixed together in all the acts and relations ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... keeping of them more earnestly than the Lord's own day. Those prelates that will not abase themselves to preach upon ordinary Sabbaths, think the high holidays worthy of their sermons. They have been also often seen to travel upon the Lord's day, whereas they hold it irreligion to travel upon an holiday. And whereas they can digest the common profanation of the Lord's day, and not challenge it, they cannot away with the not observing of ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... poor mother and our poor father continuing their painful struggle in you. You were too young at the time, you couldn't know what went on. But I knew them both very wretched: he, wretched through her, who treated him as if he were one of the damned; and she, suffering through him, tortured by his irreligion. When he died, struck down by an explosion in this very room, she took it to be the punishment of God. Yet, what an honest man he was, with a good, great heart, what a worker, seeking for truth alone, and desirous of the love and happiness of all! Since we have spent our ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... is the practice of artificial birth control, or, as seems to be possible, a general lowering of fertility, birth-rates are more dependent on morals and religion than on race and country. During the past century irreligion spread throughout France, and the birth-rate fell from 32.2, during the first decade of the nineteenth century, to 20.6, during the first ten years of the twentieth century. In America, amongst the descendants of the New England ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... arrogant face MacIan could only fall back on the obvious answer: "But what about a man's irreligion?" The face only answered: "Well, you ought to ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... experienced pastor in Brooklyn, Says: "The American theater is a concrete institution, to be judged as a totality. It is responsible for what it tolerates and shelters. We, therefore, hold it responsible for whatever of sensual impurity and whatever of irreligion, as well as for whatever of occasional and sporadic benefit there may be bound up in its organic life. Instead of helping Christ's kingdom, it hinders; instead of saving souls, it corrupts and destroys." Dr. Buckley gives ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... more palpable than that Index Expurgatorius demanded by Rome in 1596, when the ruling doctrine of exclusion involved no question of morality or irreligion, but solely concerned books upholding rights of consciences ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... that you don't catch him paying for other men's drinks. The old men of pleasure (with their tooral ooral) got at least some social and communal virtue out of pleasure. The new men of pleasure (without the slightest vestige of a tooral ooral) are simply hermits of irreligion instead of religion, anchorites of atheism, and they might as well be drugging themselves with hashish or ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... the Church of England, and to receive the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the rites and usage of the said church, &c. is founded on falsity in matter of fact, is repugnant to the laws of England, contrary to the charter of the Proprietors, is an encouragement to atheism and irreligion, destructive to trade, and tends to the depopulation and ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... wrote, "permitted the thoughts agitating its spirit to be recognized. We were following the King at a slight distance and could judge very well of it. It was easy to read in all eyes that the people were hurt at seeing the King humbly following the priests. There was in that not so much irreligion as jealousy and animosity toward the role played ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... who, for that matter, had of late shown much less laxity of opinion than in his younger and more argumentative days; and there was little comfort in supposing that these were not real honest doubts at all, only apologies for general carelessness and irreligion. ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... however, another most interesting feature in the policy of Venice, which a Romanist would gladly assign as the reason of its irreligion; namely, the magnificent and successful struggle which she maintained against the temporal authority of the Church of Rome. It is true that, in a rapid survey of her career, the eye is at first arrested by the strange drama to which I have already alluded, closed by ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... personal bons mots and of never speaking of his love-affairs, though his smiles and his airs and graces were delightfully indiscreet. The worthy gentleman used his privilege as a Voltairean noble to stay away from mass; and great indulgence was shown to his irreligion because of his devotion to the royal cause. One of his particular graces was the air and manner (imitated, no doubt, from Mole) with which he took snuff from a gold box adorned with the portrait of the Princess Goritza,—a charming Hungarian, celebrated ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... surely extend itself contagiously to other modes of conscientious obligation; at any rate, my own experience would warrant me in doubting whether any instance were ever known of a woman, in the rank of servant, regarding infidelity or irreligion as something brilliant, or interesting, or in any way as favorably distinguishing a man. Meantime, this conscientious apprehension on account of the servants applied to contingencies that were remote. But the pity on account of the poor lady herself applied to a danger that seemed imminent and ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... plan of education proposed by the author, "far from being in accordance with Christianity, is not fitted to form citizens, or even men." He accuses Rousseau of irreligion and of bad faith; he denounces him to the temporal power as animated "by a spirit of insubordination and of revolt." He sums up by solemnly condemning the book "as containing an abominable doctrine, calculated to overthrow natural law, and to destroy the foundations of the Christian religion; ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... their lifetime. Keats was nothing more than an obscure poetaster; he had a few friends who believed in him, but which of them would have dared to predict the volume and magnitude of his subsequent fame? Shelley was in even worse case, for he was regarded by ordinary people as a monster of irreligion and immorality, the custody of whose children had been denied him by the most respectable of Lord Chancellors, on account of his detestable opinions and the infamy of his mode of life. There are, I will venture to say, a hundred living English ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... chose to dilate upon." His conversation was ever egotistical in the extreme: the bold assertion that his Lacon was the most clever work in the English language, was ever on his lips, and I regret to add, obscenity and irreligion too often supplied the place of wit ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... recourse to, namely, the square cap they wear on their head, which they take off, and put on again with inconceivable rapidity. One of them imputed to Voltaire, and particularly to Rousseau, the irreligion of the age. He threw his cap into the middle of the pulpit, charging it to represent Jean Jacques, and in this quality he harangued it, saying; "Well, philosopher of Geneva, what have you to object ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... slander against the university for irreligion was confined almost entirely to very narrow circles, of waning influence; and my hope is that, as its formative ideas have been thus welcomed by various leaders of thought, and have filtered down through the ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... principles. He wants to make a noise in the world, and he will succeed. Julian, the Apostate, did the same." "I never saw the King so animated before," observed Madame, when he was gone out; "and really the comparison with Julian, the Apostate, is not amiss, considering the irreligion of the King of Prussia. If he gets out of his perplexities, surrounded as he is by his enemies, he will be one of the greatest ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... of the Unitarians were called, after him, "Parkerites." Many of the Unitarian churches refused to "fellowship" with him; and the large congregation, or audience, which assembled in Music Hall to hear his sermons was {444} stigmatized as a "boisterous assembly" which came to hear Parker preach irreligion. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... light, conscientiously disprove what was said. Neither, as before, did he seem over-anxious to do so; the less, as in his sensitiveness it seemed to him, that hardly could he offer so to do without something like the appearance of a kind of implied irreligion; nor in his heart was he ungrateful, that since a spirit opposite to that pervaded all the herb-doctor's hopeful words, therefore, for hopefulness, he (the sick man) had not alone medical warrant, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... period was at a very strange crisis. That it could possibly be treated in the way I have mentioned shows how very deeply irreligion had spread. There is no such thing, of course, really as Irreligion—except by a purely conventional use of the word: the 'irreligious' man is one who has made up his mind either that there is no future world, or that it is so remote, as regards ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... the threefold danger of "ordinary law, martial law, and flat fighting." Nor was the state of religious affairs at all more promising. The Deputy describes the kingdom as "overwhelmed by the most deplorable immorality and irreligion;"[427] the Privy Council, in their deliberations, gives a similar account. "As for religion, there was but small appearance of it; the churches uncovered, and the clergy scattered."[428] An Act of Parliament was then ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... such nations, two cases, at the least, where the uses of a religion would be indispensable; viz. for the sanction of oaths, and as a channel for gratitude not pointing to a human object. If so, the answer is easy: religion was degrading: but heavier degradations would have arisen from irreligion. The noblest of all idolatrous peoples, viz. the Romans, have left deeply scored in their very use of their word religlo, their testimony to the degradation wrought by any religion that Paganism could yield. Rarely indeed is this word employed, by a Latin author, in speaking of an individual, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... exercise the grace of hope shall at last enjoy the object of it, or the thing hoped for. This must of necessity be concluded, else we overthrow the whole truth of God at once, and the expectation of the best of men; yea, if this be not concluded, what follows, but that Atheism, unbelief, and irreligion, are the most right, and profane and debauched persons are ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... cholera with sacrilegious impiety. In consequence of the indisposition that kept me at home, and of another circumstance, I only received to-day the certificate of the death of this victim of intemperance and irreligion. I must proclaim it to the praise of his reverence"—pointing to Rodin—"that he told me, the worst enemies of the descendants of that infamous renegade would be their own bad passions, and that the might look to them as our allies against the whole impious race. And so ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... princess, who (according to her knowledge) was sincerely pious, should decline to place such a man upon an Episcopal throne? This argues, beyond a doubt, that Swift was in that state of constitutional irreligion, irreligion from a vulgar temperament, which imputes to everybody else its own plebeian feelings. People differed, he fancied, not by more and less religion, but by more and less dissimulations. And, therefore, it seemed to him scandalous that a princess, who must, of course, in her heart regard ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... all the more because of what you confess you do not know, than because of what you say you believe. They seem to be very like that theism or natural religion, which Christians profess to confound with atheism or irreligion which is their exact opposite. But in the present state of my faith I should have to ascend rather than descend to accept your views, and I find it difficult to remain just where you are unless I ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... a military post under Ferdinand. The Cavalier doctrines and intense loyalty of Roland attached him, without reflection, to the service of a throne which the English arms had contributed to establish; while the extreme unpopularity of the Constitutional Party in Spain, and the stigma of irreligion fixed to it by the priests, aided to foster Roland's belief that he was supporting a beloved king against the professors of those revolutionary and Jacobinical doctrines which to him were the very atheism of politics. The experience of a few years in the service ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Clean, and the Blougram have no prototype or parallel among the poems of Browning's previous periods. In the early Dramatic Lyrics and Romances, and in the plays, there is exquisite rendering of religion, and also of irreligion; but the religion is just the simple faith of Pippa or of Theocrite that "God's in his world"; and the irreligion is the Humanist paganism of St Praxed's, not so much hostile to Christianity as unconscious of it. No single poem written before 1850 shows that acute interest in the problems ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... But men cannot bear to be deprived long together of anything they are used to, not even of their fears; and, by a reaction of the mind appertaining to our nature, new stimulants were looked for, not on the side of pleasure, where nothing new could be expected or imagined, but on the opposite. Irreligion is followed by fanaticism, and fanaticism ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... applauds. They dream together of the future; Addison sage, but speculative, and Steele practical, if rash. Each is disposed to find God in the ways of life, and both avoid that outward show of irreligion, which, after the recent Civil Wars, remains yet common in the country, as reaction from an ostentatious piety which laid on burdens of restraint; a natural reaction which had been intensified by the base influence of a profligate King. Addison, bred among the preachers, has a little ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... moment show fresh traces of hatred against the clergy. To exaggerate their riches, to make the sins of an individual appear to be common to all, to attribute to them all vices; calumny, murder, irreligion, sacrilege, all is ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... allied with them. After much sad brooding, I cannot but conclude that a fervent religious faith is the only thing that will give complete security; and it will be a bitter day for England and the world if ever flippancy and irreligion become general. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... and from what is recollected of his conversations, it appears that he often explicitly declared that, if powerful measures were not adopted to prevent it, a revolution in France would take place, both in church and state. He thought irreligion, and a general corruption of manners, gained ground everywhere. On the decay of piety in France, he once mentioned in confidence to the editor a circumstance so shocking, that even after what has publicly happened, the editor does not think himself justifiable in mentioning it in ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... ignoble, and essentially dull, finds its abode and pulpit. I do not like mankind; but men, and not all of these - and fewer women. As for respecting the race, and, above all, that fatuous rabble of burgesses called 'the public,' God save me from such irreligion! - that way lies disgrace and dishonour. There must be something wrong in me, or I ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... great the Mischiefs are that spring from thence; which if a Man should take a View of, it would perhaps, be one of the most Melancholy Prospects that ever he beheld. To look into our Modern Plays, and there to see the Differences of Good and Evil confounded, Prophaneness, Irreligion, and Unlawful Love, made the masterly Stroaks of the fine Gentleman; Swearing, Cursing, and Blaspheming, the Graces of his Conversation; and Unchristian Revenge, to consummate the Character of the Hero; ...
— Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage (1704); Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage in a Letter to a Lady (1704) • Anonymous
... among women (with few exceptions) that idleness and uselessness make for selfishness and sensuality. Also for irreligion. These ultra mondaines think of God in an amiable, well-bred way—they approve of God, and they say their prayers in an amiable, well-bred way; but none of this avails to regenerate their lives or to combat the sensuality ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... eminence may be led away by an ambiguity of language, is afforded by this very case. I refer to the famous argument by which Bishop Berkeley flattered himself that he had forever put an end to "skepticism, atheism, and irreligion." It is briefly as follows: I thought of a thing yesterday; I ceased to think of it; I think of it again to-day. I had, therefore, in my mind yesterday an idea of the object; I have also an idea of it to-day; this idea ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... which, while they stood single, had passed with little notice, when they were accumulated and exposed together, excited horror. The wise and the pious caught the alarm, and the nation wondered why it had so long suffered irreligion and licentiousness to be openly taught ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... of this sort of thinking, which is the essence of irreligion, is to be seen on every side of us in folk who, having thus lost all confidence in God and the reality of the spiritual world, still try to labour for the good of men. They have kept one part of Christianity, its ideals of character and service; they have lost ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... public, (meaning that said William Apes was a deceiver and impostor,) I (meaning said Reynolds,) took all prudent means to have him (meaning said William,) exposed, and stopped in his (meaning said William,) race of guilt, (meaning that said William had been guilty of immorality, dishonesty, irreligion, offences and crimes;) these men, (meaning one Joseph Snelling and one Norris,) were earnestly importuned to investigate his (meaning said William,) conduct, and enforce the discipline (meaning the discipline of the church,) upon him (meaning said William,) for crimes ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... flood; and profanity, beginning at the court, hath spread itself through every rank and quality in the land: so that immoralities and sins against every precept of both tables are greatly abounding." As, namely, great contempt of God and godliness, ignorance, atheism and irreligion, unsuitable walking to the knowledge of him and his perfections which we have, and not labouring in the use of means to attain more. Much neglect of pressing after peace and reconciliation with him, through a Mediator, and of living up to the profession which we make of him. Despising ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... infidelity—was quite a familiar one; and that, side by side with the theology of Aquinas and Bonaventura, there was working among those who influenced fashion and opinion, among the great men, and the men to whom learning was a profession, a spirit of scepticism and irreligion almost monstrous for its time, which found its countenance in Frederick's refined and enlightened court. The genius of the great doctors might have kept in safety the Latin schools, but not the free and home thoughts which found utterance in the language of the people, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... words had on his conscience. Everybody who heard her for an hour or two retired humbled from her presence, for her language was always directed to bring mankind to their level, to pull down pride and conceit, to strip off the garb of affectation, and to shame vice, immorality, irreligion, and hypocrisy." ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... In the next place, I will ingenuously confess, that the helps I have used in this small treatise, were many of them taken from the works of our own reverend divines of the Church of England: so that the weapons with which I combat irreligion, are already consecrated; though I suppose they may be taken down as lawfully as the sword of Goliah was by David, when they are to be employed for the common cause against the enemies of piety. I intend not by this to entitle ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... lived at the close of the fifteenth century, not only celebrated by an annual festival the foundation of Rome, and raised altars to Romulus, but openly expressed his contempt for the Christian religion, which this visionary declared was only fit for barbarians; but this extravagance and irreligion, observes Niceron, were common with many of the learned of those times, and this very Pomponius was at length formally accused of the crime of changing the baptismal names of the young persons whom he taught ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... of religion, this feeling about it, that the evolutionists have to deal when they endeavor to free themselves from the charge of irreligion. This is a state of the case which some of them do not seem to appreciate at its full importance. They shirk it, or at least they slight it; but Mr. Savage, it must be admitted, meets it fairly ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... anxiety are often the means whereby God brings men home to Himself. I thought it a hard saying of an ardent salvationist lad, who told me of a transport sergeant's prayers one night in a ditch by a shrapnelled roadside, and of the same sergeant's reversion to apparent irreligion on return to safety. "I call it," said the boy, "cowardice." But what I do say about it is, firstly, that religion thus mainly associated with danger, is not the Christian religion, and secondly, that many of the best men of all ranks have little to do with it, or what ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... years ago a pamphlet was published in which we find detailed the efforts made in France to spread irreligion by means of bad education. The letters of eighty of the Prelates of France are appended to the pamphlet. Alas! the sad forebodings of that noble episcopate have been too soon ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... be honest) to what I have been saying. Unrest; panting, desperate thirst, deceiving itself as to where it should go; slaking itself 'at the gilded puddles that the beasts would cough at,' instead of coming to the water of life!—that is the state of man without God. That is nature. That is irreligion. The condition in which every man is that is not trusting in Jesus Christ, is this—thirsting for God, and not knowing whom he is thirsting for, and so not getting the supply that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... had a dinner-party, at which was a witty, French, flippant sort of man, author of a History of Philosophy,[A] and now writing a Life of Goethe, a task for which he must be as unfit as irreligion and sparkling shallowness can make him. But he told stories admirably, and was allowed sometimes to interrupt Carlyle a little, of which one was glad, for that night he was in his more acrid mood, and though much more ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... all-destructive Being at the end of the Yuga. Then Brahman made over that sharp weapon to the blue-throated Rudra who has for the device on his banner the foremost of bulls, for enabling him to put down irreligion and sin. At this, the divine Rudra of immeasurable soul, praised by the great Rishis, took up that sword and assumed a different shape. Putting forth four arms, he became so tall that though standing on the earth he touched the very sun with his head. With eyes turned upwards and with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... for novelty with a bigotry for antiquity, the politeness of a monarchy with the roughness of a republick, refinement with coarseness, independence with slavery, haughtiness with servile compliance, severity of manners with debauchery, a kind of irreligion with piety. We shall do this in reading; as, in travelling through different nations, we make ourselves masters of their characters by combining their different appearances, and reflecting ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... agitating Germany. Simple-minded poets were celebrating atheism with an enthusiasm which seemed sincere; and, at the same time, men who are not simple-minded, journalists and demagogues, were laying hold of the irreligion as a lever with which to make a breach in the social edifice. In the year 1845, the attention of the Swiss authorities was drawn to certain secret societies, composed of Germans, and having for their object a revolution in Germany, but which had established their ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... a pension; but both his works were condemned by Parliament, and "Hobbism" became, ere he died, a popular synonym for irreligion and immorality. Prejudice of this kind sounded oddly in the case of a writer who had laid down, as the two things necessary to salvation, faith in Christ and obedience to the law. But the prejudice ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... Ignorance is exchanged for learning, obstinacy for docility, and precipitation for patience, rashness for prudence, lying for truth, cowardice for bravery, and avarice for generosity, tyranny for justice, irreligion for piety, deceitfulness for sincerity, hatred ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... gives so admirable an answer to the charge of irreligion which some might make against us if they mistook our intentions, that as we shall not offer any other reply, we have not hesitated to present it entire as it stands to ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... irreligion through its abuses. I have often thought it a misfortune that we Americans are under the necessity of meeting the infidel literature of the old world, for the simple reason that it is evolved out of the circumstances peculiar to state ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various
... There is something so touching in the simple faith of childhood,—its utter dependence,—its willingness to believe in the perfection of those to whom it looks for protection—that to betray that faith, to shake that dependence, seems almost akin to irreligion. ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... the aged Zacharias. He could not bear that judgment so unjust should go forth against us, and, moved with indignation, he asked leave to defend his brethren, and to prove that there was in them no kind of irreligion or impiety. Those present at the tribunal, among whom he was known and celebrated, cried out against him, and the governor himself, enraged at so just a demand, asked him no more than this question, 'Art thou a Christian?' Straightway with a loud voice he declared himself a Christian, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... are told, the progress of Wesleyanism excited the jealousy of the clergy, not so tolerant as they are now, and a meeting was held at the Bull Hotel, Horncastle, at which it was argued that the "spread of Methodism was one of the causes of the awful irreligion" prevalent, that the ministers were "raving enthusiasts, pretending to divine impulse, and thus obtained ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... warmth? And will not the days of the years of our pilgrimage be as short as theirs? It is an offence to Religion, an injury to Providence, to suppose That vast tract of land wholly seized by evil spirits; though licentiousness, rapacity, ambition, and irreligion have given rulers to it, of late, ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... punishment.[269] It was doubtless largely as a religious offense that the Code Napoleon omitted to punish it. The French law makes a clear and logical distinction between crime on the one hand, vice and irreligion on the other, only concerning itself with the former. Homosexual practices in private, between two consenting adult parties, whether men or women, are absolutely unpunished by the Code Napoleon and by French law of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... risk of imputing Atheism to many who are not justly chargeable with it—a fault which should be most carefully avoided;[3] and equally liable, on the other hand, to the danger of overlooking the wide gulf which separates Religion from Irreligion, and Theism from Atheism. There is much room for the exercise both of Christian candor and of critical discrimination, in forming our estimate of the characters of men from the opinions which they hold, when these opinions relate not to the vital truths ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... his religion and is undeceived, because he finds it inconvenient and useless to pass his life in trembling at phantoms which are made but to intimidate silly women or children. If, sometimes, libertinage, which reasons but little, leads to irreligion, the man who is regular in his morals can have very legitimate motives for examining his religion, and for banishing it from his mind. Too weak to intimidate the wicked, in whom vice has become deeply rooted, religious terrors afflict, torment, and burden imaginative minds. If souls have ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... dissolve the whole enchantment, and leaves the reader in a state of cold and anxious scepticism. This most lame and impotent conclusion has been variously imputed to the taste or irreligion of Virgil; but, according to the more elaborate interpretation of Bishop Warburton, the descent to hell is not a false, but a mimic scene; which represents the initiation of AEneas, in the character of a law-giver, to the Eleusinian mysteries. This hypothesis, ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... not the equality of conditions which makes men immoral and irreligious; but when men, being equal, are at the same time immoral and irreligious, the effects of immorality and irreligion easily manifest themselves outwardly, because men have but little influence upon each other, and no class exists which can undertake to keep society in order. Equality of conditions never engenders profligacy of morals, but it sometimes allows ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... conclusions of these lives of 'Wits and Beaux' are, it is admitted, just: vice is censured; folly rebuked; ungentlemanly conduct, even in a beau of the highest polish, exposed; irreligion finds no toleration under gentle names—heartlessness no palliation from its being the way of the world. There is here no separate code allowed for men who live in the world, and for those who live out of it. The task of pourtraying such characters ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... as a body might have been of the Church of England, instead of remaining (more or less) of the old religion until the perhaps unavoidable neglect of its authorities caused them to drift into the outward irreligion from which John Wesley rescued them. {12} But it is said by Scawen and by Bishop Gibson in his continuation of Camden’s Britannia, that they desired that the Prayer-book might not be translated, and, though the statement is disputed, it is quite possible that the upper ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... Irreligion had produced an enormous public evil. The religious laws having been abolished at the same time that the civil laws were overthrown, the minds of men were entirely upset; they no longer knew either to what to cling or where to stop. And thus arose a hitherto ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... form as is prescribed, and they (with old habit coming back to them) made response in the words and in the places where the old ritual enjoins. It was weird enough sight, that time-honoured service of adoration, forced upon these wild people after so long a period of irreligion. ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... gratify a senseless ambition of immortalizing their names by edifices of an enormous magnitude, and a boundless expense. It is remarkable, that those stately pyramids, which have so long been the admiration of the whole world, were the effect of the irreligion and merciless ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... sympathize with him about hero-worship; for I, too, have had my fits of rage at the stupid irreverence of little minds, which also is made a parade of by the pedantic and the worldly. Yet it is a good sign. Democracy is the way to the new aristocracy, as irreligion to religion. By and by, if there are great men, they will not be brilliant exceptions, redeemers, but favorable samples ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the root of failure lies in irreligion. Pride, conceit, disobedience, malice, evil-speaking, covetousness, idolatry, vice, oppression, injustice, and lack of truth and honor fight more strongly against one's career than any other foe. No sin is without its lash; no experience of evil ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... purpose. That is the justification of fiction. The novelist has a high vocation, if he could only see it; he can inculcate submission to authority, hope, charity, obedience—in fact, all the higher virtues; he can become a handmaid of the Church. And now, when irreligion, and immorality, and scepticism are rampant, we must not despise the ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... feelings. And even if these should effect no change, yet the delay will at least prevent the final approval of the decision from being alloyed by the inward censure of the rashness and vanity, by which it had been precipitated. It would be a sort of irreligion, and scarcely less than a libel on human nature to believe, that there is any established and reputable profession or employment, in which a man may not continue to act with honesty and honour; and doubtless ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... tenderness, a fine eye for nature, and a delicate appreciation of classic models, but give no hint of the author of a new style in poetry. Pope's youthful pieces have all the sing-song, wholly unrelieved by the glittering malignity and eloquent irreligion of his later productions. Collins' callow namby-pamby died and gave no sign of the vigorous and original genius which he afterwards displayed. We have never thought that the world lost more in the "marvellous boy," Chatterton, than ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... a sketch of that miserable life of fruitless pleasure, the other side of which was dishonourable poverty, into which Venetian society had fallen in the eighteenth century. To this the pride, the irreligion, the immorality, the desire of knowledge and beauty for their own sake alone, had brought the noblest, wisest, and most useful city in Italy. That part of the poem is representative. It is the end of such a society as is drawn in The Bishop orders his ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... mam'selle, means our Mother, the Church of our Mother.—Notter, or Noster, our,—Dam, Mother: Notter Dam. 'Here I was painfully impressed with the irreligion of the structure, and the general absence of piety in the architecture. Idolatry abounded, and so did holy water. How often have I occasion to bless Providence for having made me one of the descendants ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... all moral or physical distinctions. But if, as I think may be demonstrated, the purposes of even this life, viewing the whole, are subverted by practical rules built upon this ignoble base, I may be allowed to doubt whether woman was created for man: and though the cry of irreligion, or even atheism be raised against me, I will simply declare, that were an angel from heaven to tell me that Moses's beautiful, poetical cosmogony, and the account of the fall of man, were literally true, I could not believe what my reason told me was derogatory to the ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin] |
