"Irreverence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sacred subjects, and abound in turns of broad humour which render them not a little startling from our nicer point of view. But they never are coarse, and their simplicity saves them from being irreverent; nor is there, I am sure, the least thought of irreverence on the part of those by whom they are sung. I noticed, though, that these lively numbers were the ones which most hit the fancy of the men; while the women as plainly showed their liking for those of a finer spirit in which the dominant ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... Douglas's simple statement, that if the people of a Territory wanted slavery they would have it, and if they did not, they would not let it be forced on them, was fully justified by the facts of American history. It has been characteristic of the American people that, without irreverence for law, they have not allowed it to stand in the way of their natural development: they have not, as a rule, driven rough-shod over law, but have quietly allowed undesirable laws to fall ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... This, to us, was almost what "playing church" is among white children, but our people seemed to think it an act of irreverence to imitate these dances, therefore performances of this kind were always enjoyed in secret. We used to observe all the important ceremonies and it required something of an actor to reproduce the dramatic features of the dance. The ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... turned to one of the truly good people in the hall, that had watched his devotion, and said, "Say, boss, this is evidently a new scheme. I thought this was Sherman's dancing school. You must excuse my seeming irreverence. If you will kick me down stairs I will consider it a special dispensation of providence," and he went down into the wicked world and asked a policeman where the dancing school was. All the way home the lady friend asked him what made ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... they are not nearly so superior as they suppose they are. They think "Irreverence for the dreams of youth" always comes from "the hardening of the heart." But youth has some fantastic as well as some noble dreams, so that docility is a better quality than independence in a very young person. If a worldly minded mother inculcates worldliness in her daughter, the daughter ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... certainly not of the Church's style, but I do not think, were there no absolute irreverence and scandal to be feared, that she would hesitate to use such a language, were it the only one understood by such a people. St. Francis Xavier's "catechisms" were often hardly less uncouth. Still, her whole tendency ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... veneration, reverence, deference, homage; probity, integrity, magnanimity, uprightness, chastity, decency, virtue, modesty; eminence, distinction, fame; glory, excellency, pride. Antonyms: dishonor, disesteem, irreverence, improbity, disrepute, reproach. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... his own reasoning, and moistening his hands vigorously, seized his spade and began to bank up a ridge of celery, singing "Bon jour, Monsieur le bon Dieu!" under his breath without the slightest idea of irreverence. And looking up at the bright sky occasionally, he wished he had seen the stray boy rescued from the streets ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... in which parents are convinced that the church does not furnish a normal and healthy atmosphere for the child's spiritual life? There are churches where the Sunday school is simply a training school in insubordination, confusion, and irreverence, or where religion is so taught as to cultivate superstition and to lead eventually either to a painful intellectual reconstruction or to a barren denial of all faith. There are churches of one type so devoted to the entertainment of adults, to the ministry to the pride of the flesh and the lust ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... he declined to be introduced to the Abbe Le Blanc, "on account of the irreverence with which he had treated Shakespeare." There can, indeed, be no doubt that the Abbe, although he wrote amusing letters, was a very prejudiced person, and his evidence and opinions touching the English stage must be received with caution. So far as can be ascertained, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... into deep reverie, lasting sometimes for hours. And although he contracted two marriages afterward, they were simply marriages of convenience, to which, after their termination, he frequently referred flippantly, sometimes with irreverence, ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... better things. On social ethics the poets of the mid-Victorian period wrote with philosophic sobriety; they maintained a strict moral standard. In their wildest emotional flights they abstained from irreverence or indecorum. They undoubtedly represented the prevailing cast of thought, the taste and tendencies of the society to which they belonged; the growing scepticism, the influence on established ideas of advancing science and philosophy. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... the senseless form he held on his breast. And if he tried to follow on by that clue which Armine had left him, whirlwinds of dismay seemed to sweep away all hope and trust, while he thought of wilfulness, recklessness, defiance, irreverence, and all the yet darker shades of a self- ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cousin, Mrs. Arthur Severn, has become more and more indispensable to him: she sits at the head of the table and calls him "the coz." An eminent visitor was once put greatly out of countenance by this apparent irreverence. After obvious embarrassment, light dawned upon him towards the close of the meal. "Oh!" said he, "it's 'the coz' you call Mr. Ruskin. I thought ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... patient furrowed earth and her blundering children. A rough earth-hint, a Rabelaisian ditty, a gross amazing jest, a chuckle of deep Satyric humour;—and the monstrous "thickness" of Life, its friendly aplomb and nonchalance, its grotesque irreverence, its shy shrewd common-sense, its tough fibres, and portentous indifference to "distinction"; tumbles us over in the mud—for all our "aloofness"—and roars over us, like ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... enjoyment of a fine spectacle, the pleasure of turning a week-day into a Sunday, dominated every other sentiment. Along the line of the boulevards, the spectators on the balconies almost seemed disposed to applaud; here, in the populous districts, irreverence was still more frankly manifest. Jests, blackguardly wit at the expense of the dead man and his doings, known to all Paris, laughter raised by the tall hats of the rabbis, the pass-word of the council experts, all were heard in the air between ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... if a loyalist would be greatly affronted by hearing any indecencies offered to the person of a temporal prince, how much more bitterly must a man who sincerely believes in such a being as the Almighty, feel any irreverence or insult shewn to His name, His honour, or His institution? And, notwithstanding the impious character of the present age, and especially of many among those whose more immediate business it is to lead men, as well by ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... not—you must not, indeed. Do you know this irreverence in speaking of the members of so sacred a profession is not at all what ought to be done. Don't Edgar. Dear papa, I may be foolish, but I do so ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... necessary arrangements for my father's funeral. Unhappily, I must begin my reign by disobeying my father's commands. I cannot allow this simple and modest funeral to take place. The world would not understand it, and would accuse me of irreverence. No, he must be interred with all the honors due to a king. That is my desire; see ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... looked upon this production as the height of irreverence and irreligion, and proposed to excommunicate the authors of it. Hence the dissenters declared themselves seceders, and took immediate steps to form a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... did, in deference to outraged susceptibilities, omit, and only the first edition contains a formal comparison of Julius Caesar with Jesus Christ. No irreverence was intended. It was Froude's enthusiasm for Caesar that carried him away. Still, the instance is only an extreme form of what comes from pushing parallels below the surface. It is only a shade less misleading, though many shades less startling, to represent Caesar as a virtuous philanthropist abstemious ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... out loud, that I might be impressed by the sound as well as by the knowledge o' th' fact—"for," saith I, a-hammering away on a shoe for Joe Pebbles's brown nag King Edward (though I had often reasoned with Joe on account o' th' name, first because o' its irreverence, second on account o' th' horse not being that kind o' a horse, as 'twas a mare)—"for," saith I, as I made th' shoe, saith I, "'tis sure a great wickedness to steal a lass's sweetheart away from her!" saith ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... much in common—although the one was full of saintly fire and the other, at times, of defiant irreverence. It was Pierce whose visits Toombs most enjoyed at his own home, with whom he afterward talked of God and religion. The good bishop lived to bury the devoted Christian wife of the Georgia statesman, ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... gift of God, so precious, so inspiring, is treated with such utter irreverence and contempt in the calculations of us mortals as this same air of heaven. A sermon on oxygen, if one had a preacher who understood the subject, might do more to repress sin than the most orthodox discourse to show ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... contagious. A small center of disturbance can easily spread until it results in a whole storm of disorder. Mischief grows through the power of suggestion, and a small beginning may soon involve a whole class. There is no place for a spirit of irreverence and boisterousness in the church school, and the teacher must have for one of his first principles the maintenance of good conduct in his classroom. No one can tell any teacher just how this is to be achieved in individual cases, but it must be done. And the teacher who cannot win control over ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... used to be in the old stage-coach times, when it was a long day's journey to London. One might as well be a vegetable at once if one is to be pinned down to one particular spot of earth. Why, the Twelve Apostles," exclaimed Mabel, innocent of irreverence, for she meant certain ancient and fast-decaying oaks so named, "see as much of life as your fine old English gentleman. Men have wider ideas nowadays. The world is hardly big enough for ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... the cliffs gave more than a single glance at "Israel's Tabernacle," as, without the least irreverence, he had named his boat. But, using the same ports as the smugglers, he was often brought into close relations with them. They asked him for information which was freely given, as from one friend to another. They trusted him, for though ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... lives in a Christian community he has accepted the Bible as the Word of God or rejected it as the work of man; if he is acquainted with Christ he has accepted or rejected Him. A child's heart cannot remain a vacuum. It is filled with reverence or irreverence. Those who think that the mind can remain unbiassed until one becomes of age and then be able to render impartial decisions, know little of human experience. Love comes first, reason afterward; the child obeys and later learns why it should obey. ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... brought to the level of the only creature whom he cannot change or influence, an outcast of the streets, a boy whom the mere animal appetites have turned into a small fiend. Never having had his mind awakened, evil is this creature's good; avarice, irreverence, and vindictiveness, are his nature; sorrow has no place in his memory; and from his brutish propensities the philosopher can take nothing away. The juxtaposition of two people whom such opposite means have put in the same moral position is a stroke of excellent art. There are plenty of ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... way, that the world would be deprived of a part of its beauty and glory, and that many species of trees would soon become extinct? Who would not give back the luscious pear and peach to their native acritude, rather than subject the highest forms of vegetable life to such irreverence? And, upon reflection, we shall say that such cruelty to inanimate life can be justified only as we justify the naturalist who dexterously and suddenly extracts a vital organ from a reptile, that he may observe the effect upon that ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... only worshiper of the professor's gods in Williamson Valley—to supply that companionship which seems so necessary even to those whose souls are so far removed from material wants. In short, as Little Billy put it, with a boy's irreverence, "Kitty rode herd on the professor." And, strangely enough to them all, Kitty seemed ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... tenderness and piety due to those poor dead people, once strutting majestically in power, beauty, wit, or genius; and now left shivering, poor, thin, transparent ghosts in those faded, thrice-crossed paper rags! I feel rebuked for my inhuman irreverence. Out upon it! I will speak only pious words about ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... this scene from the similar scene in Job is its irreverence. Indeed one might almost call it flippancy, and few would deny that at times this flippancy is painful to them. The only excuse that I can find for it is that, rightly or wrongly, Goethe meant us to be pained. I believe that here Mephistopheles represents ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... vulgar, in which we may of course trace the influence of his tavern associates. It is to his credit that he did not sink into Byronic misanthropy and bitter self-lacerating scorn, or even into Heine's irreverence and persiflage. ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... his family after the ark landed," whispered Shif'less Sol to Henry, in a tone that was far from irreverence. But Paul said aloud: ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... ignorance respecting these matters:' and then they would produce their books and read paragraphs, making such comments that every person was scandalized; they cared nothing about the Pope, and even spoke with irreverence of the bones of Saint James. However, the matter was soon bruited about, and a commission was dispatched from our see to collect the books and burn them. This was effected, and the skippers were either punished or reprimanded, since which ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... to live in the enjoyment of greater filial nearness to your covenant God; and thus, when the hour of departure does come, you will be able, without irreverence, to take the very words of your dying Lord, and make them your own—"FATHER! into Thy hands I commend my spirit." FATHER! It is going HOME! the heart of the child leaping at the thought of the paternal roof, and the paternal welcome! "Son, thou art ever ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... of early morning, the house was even uglier than at night. With an irreverence essentially modern, Dorothy decided, while she was dressing, to have all the furniture taken out into the back yard, where she could look it over at her leisure. She would make a bonfire of most of it, or, better yet, ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... passed forth between the tall stone gate-posts, as uncertain as the wandering Arabs where our tent might next be pitched. Providence took me by the hand, and—an oddity of dispensation which, I trust, there is no irreverence in smiling at—has led me, as the newspapers announce, while I am writing from the Old Manse, into a custom-house.[76] As a story-teller I have often contrived strange vicissitudes for my imaginary personages, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... half-past six this evening; I hope you will be regular attendants. You live in a godless house; take care that the atmosphere does not affect you. Mr. Tom Lester never entered the House of God after I spoke to him about the irreverence of his yawns during the sermon! Good-bye, and I hope you will prove pleasant neighbours. That ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... tak's sic guid care o' the body, Thamas," retorted Macwha, with less of irreverence than appeared in his words, "maybe he winna objec' to gie a look to my puir soul as weel; for they say it's worth a hantle mair. I wish he wad, for he kens better nor me hoo ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... E. Stop it. I will not have you add to your other misdeeds the crime of irreverence against one of the greatest and worthiest members of our ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... piece of twine); stuck a five-hundred-dollar scarab pin in his necktie—"Nothing finer in the Boston Museum," he maintained, and told the truth—and ever and always enunciated an English so pure and so undefiled that Stebbins, after listening to it for a few minutes, proposed, with an irreverence born of good-fellowship, that a subscription be started to have Joplin's dialect phonographed so that it might be handed down to posterity as the ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... none of my readers will be shocked at the seeming irreverence of my book, for that intimacy with the "Lord" was characteristic of the negroes. They believed implicitly in a Special Providence and direct punishment or reward, and that faith they religiously tried to impress upon their young charges, white or black; and "heavy, ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... which Abdurachman brought me (it is highly improper to smoke while the Koran is being read or recited). He thanked me for the respect, and I told him I knew he would not smoke in a church, or while I prayed; why should I? It rather annoys me to find that they always expect from us irreverence to their religion which they would on no account be guilty of to ours. The little boy was a fellah, the child of my friend Omar, who has lost all his cattle, but who came as pleasant and smiling as ever to kiss my hand ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... the mercy of God, I poured forth the feelings of my soul by conversing with him on loving and familiar language, as I had always done from my childhood, and then those who were watching me would accuse me of irreverence and disrespect towards God. Once, I happened to say that it appeared to me that I should be guilty of greater disrespect did I receive the Body of our Lord without having conversed familiarly with him, and I was severely reprimanded. ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... it be thought irreverence to this great name, if I observe, that by "matter evenly spread" through infinite space, he now finds it necessary to mean "matter not evenly spread." Matter not evenly spread will, indeed, convene, but it will convene as soon as it exists. And, in my opinion, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... Indelicacy or irreverence is unpleasant in itself, and yet when complication is added to it few of us can avoid laughing, and I am afraid that some considerably enjoy objectionable allusions. To tell a man to go to h—-, or that he deserves to go there, is merely coarse and profane ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... a code of honor in a gang of boys to thus express their derision. The members of a Protective Association of Jewish Peddlers organized at Hull-House related daily experiences in which old age had been treated with such irreverence, cherished dignity with such disrespect, that a listener caught the passion of Lear in the old texts, as a platitude enunciated by a man who discovers in it his own experience thrills us as no unfamiliar phrases can possibly do. The Greeks are ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... seem to, at all," Fran responded mildly. "No, I'm not making fun of education when I find fault with your school, any more than I show irreverence to my mother's God when I question what some people call 'religion'. I want to find the connection—looks like it's lost—the connection between life and—everything else. It's the connection to life that makes facts of any value to me; ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... intended no irreverence; indeed, he could not tell what he did intend, or what it was which prompted his ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... could not help a slight shudder at what seemed to him the irreverence of the epitaph, if indeed it was not deserving of a worse epithet. But he made no remark; and, after ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... Miles and Bea, early in autumn. They had received her with cries, with dusting of chairs, and a running to fetch water for coffee. Miles stood and beamed at her. He fell often and joyously into his old irreverence about the lords of Gopher Prairie, but always—with a certain difficulty—he added ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... Pearl, with her remarkable precocity and acuteness, might already have approached the age when she could have been made a friend, and intrusted with as much of her mother's sorrows as could be imparted, without irreverence either to the parent or the child. In the little chaos of Pearl's character there might be seen emerging and could have been from the very first—the steadfast principles of an unflinching courage—an uncontrollable will—sturdy pride, which might be disciplined into ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... warmed her inmost soul. Not alone, but cared for—sheltered, protected, loved. "Oh," breathed Rosemary, with her eyes shining; "Father, dear father—my father, taking care of me!" Then, in her thought, she added, without dreaming of irreverence, "I think God ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... Miss Stisted has no word of womanly sympathy for the wife who loved her husband with a love passing the love of women, and who was bowed down by her awful sorrow. On the contrary, with revolting heartlessness and irreverence, she jeers at her aunt's grief and the last offices of the dead. We may agree with the doctrines of the Church of Rome, or we may not; the solemn rites may be unavailing, or they may be otherwise; but at least they can do no harm, ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... filled with food and drink, the free-thinker Boutraix proposes that they shall equip themselves from these with costumes not unsuitable to the knight, squire, and page of the legend, and they do so, Bascara refusing to take part in the game, and protesting strongly against their irreverence. At last midnight comes, and they cry, "Where is Ines de las Sierras?" lifting their glasses to her health. Suddenly there sounds from the dark end of the great hall the fateful "Here am I!" and there comes forward a figure ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... servants' seats, and smiled a dazzling greeting to each in turn. They sat down in their usual positions, heads bent, hands folded on the middle of their clean white aprons; feet tucked carefully out of sight; there was no outward sign of irreverence or inattention in their demeanour, but Miss Briskett felt, that every single woman of them was absorbed—utterly, consumedly absorbed—in casting sly glances at that distracting white vision in the easy chair; at the dully glowing hair, the floating folds of white, the tiny, extended feet. ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... conversation. We spoke a good deal to-day on the subject of religion, the difference between Christianity and Mahometanism, and, above all, the absurdity of their repeating the Koran, like so many parrots, without understanding one word of what they say; and the irreverence of addressing God in words they do not understand, so that their hearts can take no part in their prayers. They agreed that it would be better to learn God's law, instead of trusting merely to their hadjis, who are often as ignorant as themselves. A respectable ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... young doctor has departed with his bride on a wedding tour to Texas, each upon a bicycle. Other strange affairs will no doubt take place. By and by the bishops will see no more irreverence in bidding Godspeed to girls starting on a journey to California upon bicycles than to girls departing to Europe ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... with the form of absolution in the Visitation of the Sick. This was, in Mr. Cleaver's opinion, sophistry almost as bad as Newman's, and Froude's tutorship came to an end. There was no quarrel, and, after a tour through the south of Ireland, where he saw superstition and irreverence, solid churches, well-fed priests, and a starving peasantry in rags, Froude returned for a farewell visit to Delgany. On this occasion he met Dr. Pusey, who had been at Christ Church with Mr. Cleaver, and was ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... my irreverence, 'it is so; the Bible says it, and all life shows it. Ah! I wonder what wretch committed the sacrilege, and why he had no pity on his poor ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... subjected in consequence of the apathy of others. Referring to the reluctance shown by many, of whom the utmost patriotism was expected, to rally around the flag of the country, he exclaims—in a partial perversion of Scripture language, but without irreverence, "Tell this not in ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... quality that some greater achievements do not possess: it is absolutely pure in thought, word and suggestion. If it is filled with nonsense, that nonsense at any rate is innocent. It is modest, cleanly and without malice or irreverence. A worthier and nobler work might have been written; a purer work could not ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... Here was irreverence almost atheistic. Keturah's face showed her shocked disapproval. Matilda Tripp voiced ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... incident, intended to please, scarcely ever to move, or to move, at most, like some Decameronian tale of Isabella and the Basil Plant, or Constance and Martuccio. On the other hand, there is none of the grotesque irreverence of Pulci. Boiardo and Ariosto are not in earnest; they are well aware that their heroes and heroines are mere modern men and women tricked out in pretty chivalric trappings, driven wildly about from Paris to Cathay, and from Spain to the Orkneys—on ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... range on the naked figures, but did not hit anyone nor prevent them all from bringing the punt safely to our side: a dashing exploit, of which their regiment—the 'Cockyolibirds,' as the army, with its customary irreverence, calls us on account of the cock's feather cockades we wear in our hats (miserable jealousy!)—are ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... Sweet Primal Truth to awaken from the sleep of negligence and selfish love of yourselves, and to offer humble and continual prayers, with many vigils, and with knowledge of yourselves, because the world is perishing through the crowding multitude of iniquities, and the irreverence shown to the sweet Bride of Christ. Well, then, let us give honour to God, and our toils to our neighbour. Ah, me, do not be willing, you or the other servants of God, that our life should end otherwise than in mourning and in sighs, for by no other means can be appeased ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... horrid Metaphor Mongers." "Another thing that brings great disrespect and mischief upon the clergy ... is their packing their sermons so full of similitudes" (p. 41.). Eachard has a museum of curiosities in this line. The Puritan Pulpit, however, far outstrips even the incredible nonsense and irreverence which he adduces. Let any one curious in such matters dip into a collection of Scotch Sermons of the seventeenth century. Sir W. Scott, in some of his works, has endeavoured to give a faint idea of the extraordinary way in which passages of Holy Scripture were applied in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... there be one profession in England of paramount importance, I believe it to be that of the schoolmaster; and if there be a position where selfishness and incompetence do most serious mischief, by lowering the moral tone and exciting irreverence and cunning where reverence and noble truthfulness ought to be the feelings evoked, it is that of the principal of a school. When a man of enlarged heart and mind comes among boys, when he allows his spirit to stream through them, and observes the operation of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... political bearing of such a doctrine upon the then existing status of the country is apparent. The Emperor, who is a god, the fountain of all virtue, honor, and authority, is now a prisoner at the court of Kioto, under the iron hand of the Tokugawa Shoguns. This state of impiety and irreverence can never be tolerated by the devout Shintoists. The Shogun must be dethroned and the Emperor raised to power. Here the line of arguments of the Shintoists meets with that of the scholars we have noted above. Thus both scholars ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... and humbly resolve to practise what is taught? Or, do we go to public worship with reluctant and hesitating steps, compelled alone by the force of habit, education, example, or terror? When arrived, do we enter with irreverence, assume a careless and familiar attitude, give the rein to our wandering thoughts, resign our bodies or our consciences to unhallowed slumber, or watch with frequent glances the slowly revolving hour that will free us from an irksome service? When retired ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... upon the portraits, which they regarded with insular irreverence (what were French knights and dames to them?), then without awe spread the contents of their wallets on the board, and feasted in serenity ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... eyes of knowledge and dislike. I see them becoming one of the two great classes in Japan— merchants with grasping hands to hold fast all they touch, or men of war. There is no other class. And, too, they have no religion to restrict them, irreverence already marks their attitude toward their gods. They will imitate and steal what they want from other countries, even as their ancestors took their religion, their art, their code of ethics, even their writing, from other peoples. Their ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... rose, and went to Mary's head like wine. This seemed a miracle, performed for her. Unconscious of irreverence, she thought that surely the saints had worked this wonder. She forgot that, because she won, others ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... principle of his life.' Essays on several religious Subjects, &c., by Joseph Milner, A.M., Master of the Grammar School of Kingston upon-Hull, 1789, p. 11. BOSWELL. Southey (Life of Wesley, i. 41), mentioning the names given at Oxford to Wesley and his followers, continues:—'One person with less irreverence and more learning observed, in reference to their methodical manner of life, that a new sect of Methodists was sprung up, alluding to the ancient school of physicians known by that name.' Wesley, in 1744, wrote The Humble Address to the King of the Societies in derision called ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... and explained all heaven and earth by a priori theories, and cosmogonies invented in the cloister; and dared, poor, simple, ignorant mortals, to fancy that they could comprehend and gauge the ways of Him Whom the heaven and the heaven of heavens could not contain. This, this is irreverence: but it is neither irreverence nor want of faith, if a man, awed by the mystery which encompasses him from the cradle to the grave, shall lay his hand upon his mouth, with Job, and obey the voice which cries to him from earth and heaven—"Be still, and know that as the heavens are higher than the ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... The crowd generally, and all the gossips of the quarter, who held Derues in great veneration, thought that the woman's cry was intended as an indirect insult, and threatened to punish her for this irreverence. But, placing one hand on her hip, and with the other warning off the most pressing by ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... he said to me, soon after his adventure with the "boys." "Such a compound of devotion and irreverence, meanness and generosity, cunning and child-like openness, was never seen. When I give Holy Communion with you, sir, on Sunday morning, my heart melts at the seraphic tenderness with which they approach the altar. ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... two-and-forty) were quite as remarkable for genius, warmth, manly strength, and a lofty eloquence, as the earlier writings mentioned were for clearness and logical precision,—how could I be guilty of such irreverence, not to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... into the stillness, the loneliness, and the chill rigor of winter. Though authoritative in his class without any effort, he was indulgent to everything but conceit, slovenliness of mind and body, irreverence, and above all handling the Word of God deceitfully. On one occasion a student having delivered in the Hall a discourse tinged with Arminianism, he said, "That may be the gospel according to Dr. Macknight, or the gospel according to Dr. Taylor of Norwich, but it is not the ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... ever on the watch to capture those who trespassed on their domain. In some cases the victim is supposed to be claimed on Midsummer eve, the time of the sacrifice in the pagan period.[637] The spirits of wells had also a harmful aspect to those, at least, who showed irreverence in approaching them. This is seen in legends about the danger of looking rashly into a well or neglecting to cover it, or in the belief that one must not look back after visiting the well. Spirits of wells were also besought to ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... his competitors in a certain rude, healthy masculinity, the humor of river and mining-camp and printing-office, where men speak without censorship. His country-men liked exaggeration, and he exaggerated; they liked irreverence, and he had turned iconoclast in "Innocents Abroad." As a professional humorist, he has paid the obligatory tax for his extravagance, over-emphasis, and undisciplined taste, but such faults are swiftly ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... Duchess Margaret. Culemburg was serving the cause of religious freedom by defacing the churches within his ancestral domains, pulling down statues, dining in chapels and giving the holy wafer to his parrot. Nothing could be more stupid than these acts of irreverence, by which Catholics were offended and honest patriots disgusted. Nothing could be more opposed to the sentiments of Orange, whose first principle was abstinence by all denominations of Christians from mutual insults. At the same time, it is somewhat revolting to observe ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... superstitions, and to spread the peace of a cheerful faith and the wholesome light of truth. The theories in theological systems being but philosophy, why should they not be freely subjected to philosophical criticism? I have endeavored, without virulence, arrogance, or irreverence towards any thing sacred, to investigate the various doctrines pertaining to the great subject treated in these pages. Many persons, of course, will find statements from which they dissent, sentiments disagreeable to them. But, where thought and discussion are so free and the press so accessible ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... was no sign of re-awakening courage in his followers; rather, indeed, of growing terror at the irreverence of his words. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... impudence and irreverence of his tender years, however, Matt Peasley scorned this well-meant advice, notwithstanding the fact that he knew it to be sound, for by shipping as second mate and remaining in the same ship, sooner or ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... end of religion is to pay God reverence and honor. Now it would savor of irreverence towards a superior, if one were to offer him that which properly belongs to his inferior. Since then whatever man offers by bodily actions, seems to be directed properly to the relief of human needs, or to the reverence of inferior ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Mrs. Blyth, and by all intimate friends, into "Madonna." One or two extremely strict and extremely foolish people objected to any such familiar application of this name, as being open, in certain directions, to an imputation of irreverence. Mr. Blyth was not generally very quick at an answer; but, on this occasion, he had three answers ready before the objections were quite ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... you're not often to be found here at this hour!" began Maurice. He looked on Caspar Brooke as a prophet and a hero in his heart; but his manner before the world was characterized by the frankest irreverence. Brooke was one of those men who are never ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... like the grotesque carvings in a Gothic cathedral. It is plain that in his mind they have not the slightest tinge of conscious irreverence. They are simply his natural mode of expression; forbid him to be humorous, and you might as well forbid him to speak at all. If the severity of our modern taste is shocked at an intermixture which seemed natural enough to his contemporaries, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... mean to say you don't know that?" responded the Philosopher, scandalised at the irreverence of the insects, but inwardly rejoicing at the prospect of a controversy in which he could not ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... awful presence of the Sphinx. He is not taken in by the glamor of Palestine; he does not lose his head there; he keeps his feet; but he knows that he is standing on holy ground; and there is never a hint of irreverence in ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... absurd. If indeed you are resolved on this form of composition, there is no topic which may not, with equal facility, be discussed on earth; and you may intersperse as much ridicule as you please, without any fear of censure for inconsistency or irreverence. Hitherto such writers have confined their view mostly to speculative points, sophistic reasonings, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... him, has caused this habitual transgression to be also a final one? Could the man have had any reason even dimly to foresee his own sudden death, there would have been a new feature in his act of intemperance—a feature of presumption and irreverence, as in one that by possibility felt himself drawing near to the presence of God. But this is no part of the case supposed. And the only new element in the man's act is not any element of extra immorality, but ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... surprising, disconcerting greeting. But Ruth quickly understood. There was no irreverence in it, only a man's stumbling, wholehearted confession. It was a plea that she had no will to deny. The quick, warm tears of joy came welling to her eyes as she silently took his hand and led him out of the little garden and to where his ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... is himself, so also are his ministers." Consequently, there can be no doubt that the wicked sin by exercising the ministry of God and the Church, by conferring the sacraments. And since this sin pertains to irreverence towards God and the contamination of holy things, as far as the man who sins is concerned, although holy things in themselves cannot be contaminated; it follows that such a sin is mortal ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... ideas. "Returning Thanks" is nearly as amusing, with its thirteen cats seated at table over their wine, while one offers thanks, and the remainder wear varying expressions of devotion, indifference, or irreverence. "Bringing Home the Yule Log" gives twenty-one cats, and as many individual expressions of joy or discomfort; and the "Snowball Match" shows a scene almost as hilarious as ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... freshly minted as to have taken no more than two impressions. Rory was her guide, philosopher, and crony. He was her overwhelming ideal of power, wisdom, and goodness; he was her help in ages past, her hope for years to come (no irreverence intended here; quite the reverse, for if true family life existed, we should better apprehend the meaning of "Our Father, who art in heaven"); he was her Ancient of Days; her shield, and her ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... authority of the teacher, and no uncomfortable questions were asked. It is easy to see that both of the pivotal moral ideals, i.e., loyalty and filial piety, would support this unquestioning habit of mind, for to ask questions as to authority is the beginning both of disloyalty to the master and of irreverence to the parents ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... an elaborate discussion of the different sorts of jokes, which proves the high value attached in Italy to all displays of wit. It appears that even practical jokes were not considered in bad taste, but that irreverence and grossness were tabooed as boorish. Mere obscenity is especially condemned, though it must be admitted that many jests approved of at that time would now appear intolerable. But the essential point to be aimed at then, as now, was the promotion of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... reading were stored in a quick and tenacious memory as ready rhetorical material wherewith to convince or astonish. Paradox was a passion with him, that was stimulated by complaints, and even by deprecations, to the point of irreverence. He liked to "make people's flesh crawl." Even in his advocacy of social and public reforms, which was strenuous and sincere, he delighted so to urge his cause as to inflame prejudice and opposition against it. With this temper it is not strange that when he came to enunciate his ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... I do not suppose you have done this from any designed irreverence toward God, or deliberate intention of giving me trouble and pain. You have several times lately assisted me in various ways, and I know, from the cheerful manner with which you comply with my wishes, that your prevailing ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... to the soul by this levity of my father's, and that he should speak with irreverence and jestingly about the most serious things; but a respectful son is not called upon to go further than I do in repressing his somewhat Voltairean freedom of speech. I say Voltairean, because I am not able to describe it by any other word. At heart my father ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... seen that the gravest menaces of democracy are the faults in mind and character in the multitude. Selfishness, fickleness, ignorance, irreverence in the people, with demagoguery in the leader— these are the menaces of American democracy. How then can the people be trusted, since democracy depends upon trusting them? This is an old indictment, ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... two bad consequences. People are apt to speak of the Lord Jesus—or at least to admire preachers who speak of him—as if he belonged to them, and not they to him; and, therefore, to speak of him with an irreverence and a familiarity which they dared not use, if they really believed that this same Jesus, whose name they take in vain, is none other than the Living God himself, their Creator, by whom every blade of grass grows beneath their ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... a minor key as we grow older. There are few majestic passages in the later acts of life's opera. Ambition takes a less ambitious aim. Honor becomes more reasonable and conveniently adapts itself to circumstances. And love—love dies. "Irreverence for the dreams of youth" soon creeps like a killing frost upon our hearts. The tender shoots and the expanding flowers are nipped and withered, and of a vine that yearned to stretch its tendrils round the world there is left but ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... was no irreverence in the exclamation that broke from the girl's lips. Instead, only a tense horror that touched ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... kind, ought to be. She knew nothing of what is called love except as a word, and from sympathy with the persons in the tales she read. Any remotest suggestion of its existence in her relation to Godfrey she would have resented as the most offensive impertinence—an accusation of impossible irreverence. ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... told his brothers what he had noticed, and said: "The first man had but two sons, and one slew the other; this man Noah has three sons, yet he desires to beget a fourth besides." Nor did Ham rest satisfied with these disrespectful words against his father. He added to this sin of irreverence the still greater outrage of attempting to perform an operation upon his father designed to ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... be satisfied at your boy rising no higher than this, then, again I say, guard the springs of reverence. Do not let your pride in your child's smartness or any momentary sense of humor make you pass over any little speech that savors of irreverence; check it instantly. Exact respect for yourself and for the boy's father, the respect which is no enemy, but the reverse, to the uttermost of fondness. Insist upon good manners and respectful attention to the guests of your ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... why vulgar superstitions and absurd conceptions that deform the pure faith of a Christian 220 should possess a greater immunity from ridicule than stories of witches, or the fables of Greece and Rome. But there are those who deem it profaneness and irreverence to call an ape an ape, if it but wear a monk's cowl on its head; and I would rather reason with this weakness than offend ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... nothing for the bishop in this matter." So much he spoke in anger, and then he corrected himself. "I crave the bishop's pardon, and yours as his messenger, if in the heat occasioned by my strong feelings I have said aught which may savour of irreverence towards his lordship's office. I respect his lordship's high position as bishop of this diocese, and I bow to his commands in all things lawful. But I must not bow to him in things unlawful, nor must I abandon my duty before God at his bidding, unless his bidding be given in accordance ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... drew in her breath sharply and winced at this irreverence, but quickly remembered that she must always be sending out messages of love, north, east, south, and west. So she sent a rather spiky one in the direction of her husband who was sitting due east, so that it probably got to him at once, and ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... all these theories consists in refusing to apply to God the same rules of justice which we apply to man. To do so implies no irreverence, but the highest reverence. There is nothing more honorable to the Almighty than to believe him to be actuated by the same great principles of right which he has written in our conscience and heart. Those laws of eternal justice, so deeply engraven ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... quoting examples, but scarcely described in general terms. It has been said of that class of American humorists of which Artemus Ward is a representative that their peculiarity consists in extravagance, surprise, audacity and irreverence. But all these qualities have characterized other schools of humor. There is the same element of surprise in De Quincey's {568} anticlimax, "Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other which, perhaps, at the time he thought little of," as in Artemus's truism that "a comic ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... enjoyed to excess, will cloy the fancy, but not so as entirely to unfit the mind for a higher species of intellectual enjoyment. We would have old and new alternate in the literary wreath, lest, by losing the comparison, the "bright lights" of other times should be treated with irreverence and neglect.] ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... Great Spiritual Plane exist Beings of whom we may speak as Angels; Archangels; Demi-Gods. On the lower Minor Planes dwell those great souls whom we call Masters and Adepts. Above them come the Great Hierarchies of the Angelic Hosts, unthinkable to man; and above those come those who may without irreverence be called "The Gods," so high in the scale of Being are they, their being, intelligence and power being akin to those attributed by the races of men to their conceptions of Deity. These Beings are beyond even the ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... needle, and, without lifting her head, gazed, with eyes raised from the wool-work, motionless at the posturing figure of her sister. It was sacrilege that she was witnessing, a prodigious irreverence. She was conscious of an expectation that punishment would instantly fall on this daring, impious child. But she, who never felt these mad, amazing impulses, could nevertheless ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... in its porch, as evening service was about to begin: and the defiant looks of the elect as they pushed past him one by one, had impelled him to assert his rights as a Christian, and push in too. The stupid ranting irreverence of the pastor, and the snuffling satisfaction of the flock, were soon, however, too much for him, and in a very short time he was again—where we find him—out in ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... made an instant sensation; it was denounced for its scandalous irreverence by the members of the Historical Society, especially by those who had Dutch ancestors, but was received with roars of laughter by the rest of the population. Those who read it now (from curiosity, for its merriment has long since departed, leaving it dull as any thrice-repeated joke) ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... him, and speaking low and steadily. 'It is bad to believe you in error. It would be infinitely worse to have known you a hypocrite.' She dropped her voice at the last few words, as if entertaining the idea of hypocrisy for a moment in connection with her father savoured of irreverence. ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Charles Reade to give him Christian printing—to confine him in the body of his narrative to one fount of type, and rigorously to deny him the use (except in their accustomed and orthodox places) of capitals, small capitals, and italics. And I cannot think that any irreverence could be charged against an editor who had the courage to put a moist pen through those expressions of egotism and naive self-satisfaction and vanity which do occasionally disfigure ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... from any frivolity or irreverence, but because the music, which sounds so grandly impressive here in the Sistine Chapel, strikes one as a mere confusion of discordant notes ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... persons temporarily and phenomenally obeyed. Since, then, the sensuous manifestation has now become merely symbolic, and is no longer an indispensable investiture of the idea, it may be altered at will in Christian art without irreverence. The utmost capacity of the artist is now exerted, not in enforcing or refining a generalised type, but in discovering some new facial expression which shall reveal psychological quality in a particular being. Doing so, he inevitably insists upon the face; and having formed ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... understood these ladies and their compassion for Alice, and she did not in the least resent it. She was willing that people should like Alice for any reason they chose, if they did not go too far. With her little flutter of futile deceits, her irreverence for every form of human worth and her trust in a providence which had seldom failed her, she smiled at the cult of Alice's friends, as she did at the girl's seriousness, which also she felt herself able to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... mountain than an old gray-headed man in tattered clothes came limping towards him and asking for help; but the selfish Pedro turned a deaf ear to the supplications of the old man, whom he pushed away with much disrespect. Ignorant of his doom, and regardless of his irreverence, Pedro walked on with hasty steps and high animal spirits. But lo! when his axe struck the oak, a large piece of wood broke off and hit him in the right temple, killing ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... unpopular rivals. His journey coincided with the year of the jubilee; but he passed through Italy without desiring, or deserving, the plenary indulgence which abolished the guilt or penance of the sins of the faithful. The Roman pope was offended by this neglect; accused him of irreverence to an image of Christ; and exhorted the princes of Italy to reject and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... because they fail to make out in it the human element which dignifies anything and rescues it from reproach. Unless I could go to my story that way I would not go to it at all. I am very sure that there is no irreverence in it—just ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... hang perfectly still while the outer hull of the ship pitched and rolled with the moving sea. It was a failure, but the theory was sound and looked practicable. At any rate, it is a parable of what may be in our lives. If I might venture, without seeming irreverence, to modernise and so to illustrate this command of our Lord's, I would say, that He here bids us do for our life's voyage across a stormy sea, exactly what the 'Bessemer' ship was an attempt to do in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and medicaments. They lay in disorder on the floor, and the sight of this confusion produced a favorable excitement and reaction; she succeeded in expressing herself in husky accents and broken, hardly intelligible sentences, so far as to scold them sharply for their irreverence for the precious documents, and for the disorder they had created. The waiting-woman proceeded to pick them up: but Damia again became unconscious. Gorgo bathed her brow and tried to pour some wine between her teeth, but she clenched ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the Valencian galleys, with their jib-sails spread to the wind, convoyed by a shoal of dolphins, which sported about in the foam of their prows!... When the Moors beheld them approaching, the infidels began to tremble, repenting of their irreverence toward the Shrine. And this, despite the fact that they were a set of hardened old dogs. Valencians, headed by the valiant blanquers! Who, indeed, would ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... "habitacion" in the Claverias. At the great ceremonies he walked in front of the Chapter in his pluvial, carrying a silver stick nearly as tall as himself, making the tiles of the pavement re-echo with its blows. During High Mass and the choir in the evening he walked about the naves to check any irreverence on the part of the congregation or any inattention on that of the staff. At eight o'clock at night in the winter, and at nine in summer, he locked the door of the staircase leading to the upper cloister, putting the key in his pocket, and so all the ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... in intellect any one grand and spiritual passage serves him as a starting post towards all the "two-and-thirty Palaces." How happy is such a voyage of conception, what delicious diligent Indolence!... Nor will this sparing touch of noble Books be any irreverence to their Writers—for perhaps the honors paid by Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the Benefit done by great Works to the Spirit and pulse of good by their ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... attitude toward the mediaeval stories, from that of the mediaeval artists and sculptors,—whose gargoyles and other grotesques were carved without a thought of travesty on anything religious,—he is at one with them in combining extreme irreverence of form with a total lack of irreverence of spirit toward the real spiritual mysteries of religion. He burlesques saints and devils alike, mocks the swarm of miracles of the mediaeval Church, makes salient all the ludicrous aspects of mediaeval religious faith in its devout credulity ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... exactly the thing which would make our press useless to us if it had it—rob it of the very thing which differentiates it from all other journalism in the world and makes it distinctively and preciously American, its frank and cheerful irreverence being by all odds the most valuable of all its qualities. "For its mission—overlooked by Mr. Arnold—is to stand guard over a nation's liberties, not its humbugs and shams." He thought that if during fifty years the institutions of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... repeated Commines; and added, without thought of irreverence, "Let him fall into the hands of ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... bronze-gold Buddha. They began to giggle like children at the entrance of the foreigner and never took their eyes off us. Later, individual monks came running round the shrines, beating a gong as though to call the attention of the deity, and shouting a few words of perfunctory praise or prayer. Irreverence more complete I have not seen even in Italy, nor beggary more shameless. Such is the latter end of the gospel of Buddha in China. It seems better that he should sit deserted in his Indian caves than ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... 60), we should refuse our approbation. Nor can we allow it to be said that the strife and trial of strength between tween the gods (Iliad, xx.) was instigated by Themis and Zeus.... Such language can not be used without irreverence; it is both injurious to us, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the election of United States Senators by popular vote, the initiative, the referendum and the recall as means supplementary to representative government, you shudder in your dignified way no doubt, at the audacity and irreverence of your crude countrymen. They must be in your eyes as far from grace as that American who visited one of the ancient temples of India. After a long journey through winding corridors of marble, he was ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... and faced the Squire with a solemnity presently yielding to his natural desire to grin at any form of joke, and his belief that when the Squire indulged such flagrant irreverence as this he must be joking. Yet he answered evasively: "You hearn't he says now he hain't ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... irreverence, Miss Clyde smiled. Blue Bonnet's tempestuous little outbursts were often entertaining if they were reprehensible. They sometimes reminded Miss Clyde of a Fourth of July sky-rocket. They glowed in brilliancy and ended in—nothing! Likely enough Blue Bonnet would finish ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... from nothing worse than thoughtlessness, cannot fail to exert a baneful influence on the Character, and diminish, perhaps destroy, the little respect for things holy still cleaving to the heart. This same irreverence shows itself in another form, in speaking of the calamities suffered by others, turning that into a jest which is to those under discussion cause of the most bitter anguish; and though the speakers probably would not for any consideration have their words come to the ears of those ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... one end to the other of the gospel narrative. What was of more significance, no one had clearly defined the conception of legend. Strauss was sure that in the application of this notion to certain portions of the Scripture no irreverence was shown. No moral taint was involved. Nothing which could detract from the reverence in which we hold the Scripture was implied. Rather, in his view, the history of Jesus is more wonderful than ever, when some, at least, of ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... might lead her to suspect I have betrayed the secret, but I have all the trouble in the world to get it into her head that authors are the most villainous of matches (in respect of fortune, be it understood). Really Laurentia is quite romantic. How she would hate me if she knew with what irreverence I allude ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... at the quaint conceit of the little woman, which lost its irreverence towards God in its reverence for His handiwork. "Now mother Tonks," said I, "I leave this lady in your charge for a time while I go into the town to see Master Dobson. I may be away some time, and you'll get us some supper. Anything you ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... afternoon, another procession, which had quite as much power of provoking noise as the first of imposing silence, traversed in its turn the Piazza of St. Peter's: this was the dinner procession. The people received it with the usual bursts of laughter, without suspecting, for all their irreverence, that this procession, more efficacious than the former, had just settled the election ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere |
