"Profanation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is to be food for worms." Rabbi Johanan, son of Beroka, said, "whosoever profanes God's name in secret will be punished publicly, whether it be done ignorantly or presumptuously, it is all one in the profanation of ...
— Hebrew Literature
... He found these, not in rare conditions, but wheresoever he went. He was sincerity itself, and no cant or affectation is to be found in his writings. He was religious in his own way; incapable of any profanation, by act or thought, although his original living and thinking detached him from the social religious forms. He thought that without religion no great deed had ever been accomplished. He was disgusted with crime, and no worldly success could cover it. He loved nature so well, and was ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... to compare the address with accepted examples of poetry, I will dare to incur the condemnation of those who rightly look upon such a departure from Lincoln's own manner of writing the speech as profanation, and present it in the shape of vers libre. For the latter class of readers this, the greatest poem by Lincoln, the greatest, indeed, yet produced in America, may be preferably read in the original form on page 100 of this collection. I trust that these, ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... bosom friend. Still there was a softness, a purity, a delicacy and tenderness in this new feeling, in which the influence of sex secretly though unacknowledgedly predominated; and even while sensible it would have been a profanation of every thing most sacred and delicate in nature to have admitted a thought of love within his breast at such a moment, he also felt he could have entertained a voluptuous joy in making any sacrifice, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... high mission of our Republic is to maintain the fundamental principles initiated in our Declaration of Independence—that all true government rests on the consent of the governed. It is an impious profanation of our flag of freedom to make it the symbol of absolutism on any soil. In the conflict now waging for true American principles, I heartily concur in the views of the late Benjamin Harrison, who was one of the most clear-sighted and patriotic of our Presidents. ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... to which in fact no certain reply could be given, obtrudes itself upon the mind on an occasion like this; namely, how far the infidelity and atheism which pervaded Europe in the next and the following century sprung directly out of profanation such as this? Merely to narrate them, and to do so in the briefest manner, does violence to every genuine sentiment of piety. What must have been the effect produced upon frivolous and sceptical tempers when with sedulous ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... consecrated them as far as possible, and he surrounded himself with Bishops and clergy. His mother Helena made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to visit the spots where our blessed Lord lived and died, and to clear them from profanation. The churches she built over the Holy Sepulchre and the Cave of the nativity at Bethlehem have been kept up ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... upon the Scriptures, or even upon the places, persons, and forms set apart for the ministration of religion, fall within the meaning of the law which forbids the profanation of God's name; especially as that law is extended by Christ's interpretation. They are moreover inconsistent with a religious frame of mind: for as no one ever either feels himself disposed to pleasantry, or capable of being diverted with the pleasantry of others, upon matters in which he ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... who should presume to fancy that the best work of any native author could equal the poorest that Scott put forth. The Continental opinion which at that time often reckoned the American novelist as equal, if not superior to his British contemporary, seemed to men here like a profanation. It was, indeed, so ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... conversation. In her mother she had learned to venerate gray hairs, and it was an awful shock to learn that so many of the feeble creatures about her were coarse, wicked, and evil-disposed. How could their withered lips frame the words they spoke? How could they dwell on subjects that were profanation, even to such wrecks ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... heard the report of it, and saw the poor people's miserable lamentations, they had not seen one salmon in the river; and some of them were in despair that they should never see any more there; affirming it to be God's judgment upon them for the profanation ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... purer sentiments would have shown more reverence for the genius loci, and would have remembered that the walls were once vocal with Christian prayers, and that what in other instances would be only negligence, is profanation here. But probably the innkeeper pays his rent regularly, and we hope will be made the interlocutor in an imaginary conversation with the last ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... times, it has received from France. What would he have thought, if any person had told him, that, before the expiration of the century in which he lived, the French themselves would, in perfect hatred of Christ, destroy the finest churches of France? At their profanation of his favorite church of St. Bertin, in the town of St. Omer's, that is said to have happened which Victor Vitensis relates to have happened in the persecution of the Vandals, (Hist. Pers. Van. 31:) "Introeuntes maximo cum furore, corpus Christi et sanguinem ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... sumptuous banquet. After the wine and rum had produced their wonted effects, females were introduced, and compelled to partake of the feast. These poor creatures, having no suspicion of the King's intentions, shrunk with terror from a profanation punishable with death. But their resistance was unavailing: they were not only constrained to sit down to the repast in company with the men, but even to eat pork; and thus, to the great astonishment of such guests as were ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... cemetery. Animated with her new resolve, she thought little of the profanation, and crowned herself with flowers from the nearest grave. In an hour the villagers from Ettlingen saw her leaning on Fritz's shoulder in the waltz. That night the shade of Wilhelm stood at her bed-head: 'You have accepted the flowers growing on my grave ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... friends, became a changed man, and cast in his lot with the people of God, it had needed the utmost exercise of the strong restraint which he imposed on himself, as far as outward acts were concerned, to keep him from crying out against what seemed to him to be a profanation of God's ordinances. After old Mr Hollister's death, when others fell in with the new order of things, and one after another of his old friends found his place in the church, he kept back and remained a spectator, even when he would gladly ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... demagogs and demagoged: intent—yes—to kill. But he, having yet something to say, takes refuge at the altar; and there even a maddened mob dare not molest him. But the prize goes to a rising star, young Sophocles; and presently the Gods' Messenger is formally accused and tried for "Profanation of the Mysteries." ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... of paper were defacing the hill turf, and when she turned to get to the water's edge she found the rushy coverts trampled on every side. From somewhere among the trees came the sound of singing—a silly music-hall catch. It was a sharp surprise, and the girl, in horror at the profanation, was turning in all ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... our Saviour, by his making it a part of the selections from the Jewish euchologies which form his prayers. We profess to worship Deity in spirit and in truth. Do we hallow his name? Mere abstinence from profanation is a negative duty. How must it be hallowed? That is a positive duty. Christianity, rejecting the Hebrew form, regards this as a mere Hebraism, substituting the name for the being himself. The Israelites do not: and one secret society still existing, whose origin we shall ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... first, as we before said, there were only some slight suspicions advanced against Alcibiades. But afterwards, in his absence, his enemies attacked him more violently, and confounded together the breaking the images with the profanation of the mysteries, as though both had been committed in pursuance of the same conspiracy for changing the government. The truth is, his accusers alleged nothing against him which could be positively proved. One of them, being asked how he knew the men who defaced the images, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... and paced the walk a moment, then said, "Well, I don't know. A woman like Grace St. John shakes my faith in our old belief. It seems profanation to assert ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... I had known what you were aiming at with your talk, I wouldn't have answered your wily questions. By Hercules, such profanation is unheard of—he compares himself with me! Why, I could put an end to you with two words, if it ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... pathetic, goes without question. There is much to condemn in the rise of the economic over the imaginative spirit, much for which the energetic Philistine can never atone. Perhaps the deepest pathos of all may be found in the spectacle of John Ruskin weeping at the profanation of the world by the vandalism of the age. Steam launches violate the sanctity of the Venetian canals; where Xerxes bridged the Hellespont ply the filthy funnels of our modern shipping; electric cars run in the ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... hack away the emblems of the Holy Verity; I saw the name of the Apostle Paul replaced by a convicted felon's cap. Sometimes I was actually present at the confabulations of the Section, where I heard amazing errors propounded. At last I quitted this place of profanation and went to live on the pension of a hundred pistoles allowed me by the Assembly in a stable that stood empty, the horses having been requisitioned for the service of the armies. There I sing Mass for a few of the faithful, who come to the office to bear witness ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... needs no such accessories, and, instead of deriving advantage from them, is degraded into a mere show by their presence; and, in saying this much, I feel as though the application of the term was a profanation. ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... confusion of the sack of the city, the Gauls viewed them with awe, regarding them at first as more than human. One of the soldiers approached M. Papirius, and began reverently to stroke his long white beard. Papirius was a minister of the gods, and looked on this touch of a barbarian hand as profanation. With an impulse of anger he struck the Gaul on the head with his ivory sceptre. Instantly the barbarian, breaking into rage, cut him down with his sword. This put an end to the feeling of awe. All the old men were attacked and slain, ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the sick and the baptizing of the children occasioned. By these means, however, I came to the knowledge of their condition, their lives and conversation, of which the latter were the most deplorable—habitual profanation of the Sabbath-day, drunkenness, rioting, immodest dancing, revellings, fightings, an improper state of females on their marriage, and an absence and ignorance ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... tradition, from the father to the son, and so from generation to generation, without writing; or, unless it were casually, without the least communicating them to any other nation or tribe; for to do that they account a profanation. And, yet, it is thought that they, or some spirit worse than they, first told us, that lice, swallowed alive, were a certain cure for the yellow-jaundice. This, and many other medicines, were discovered ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... sold for three hundred dollars. This impressed the members greatly. It was a novel idea. A new work might thus be enshrined in a sort of holy of holies, which, if the collector so desired, could be forever sacred from the profanation of any vulgar or unappreciative eye. The possessor of such a treasure could enjoy it by the eye of imagination, having at the same time the exaltation of grasping what was for others the unattainable. The literary committee were so impressed with this idea that ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... splendid Bible, the gift of the King of France, a Psalter given by the Queen, a Missal, a crucifix and a censer, they entered the royal presence, taking good care not to touch the threshold of the door, which would have been considered profanation. Once in the royal presence, they sang the "Salve Regina." After the prince and those of the princesses who were present at the ceremony had examined the books, &c., that the monks had brought with them, the envoys were allowed to retire; it being impossible ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... bit funny at the time. I just felt awful. What would the dear old woman say to this profanation? Why the dickens did people have whitewashed walls on which sacrilegious stains were luridly visible? I looked up and down the hall like Moses when he slew that Egyptian, trembling lest the old woman should come in. How could ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... fine organ playing of Mr. Novello, and admired the soaring singing of his daughter,— "the tuneful daughter of a tuneful sire;" but he resented the misapplication of the theatres to sacred music. He thought this a profanation of the good old original secular purposes ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... Les Deux Amis, this sketch should have borne the title of The Two Friends; but to take the name of this divine story would surely be a deed of violence, a profanation from which every true man of letters would shrink. The title ought to be borne alone and for ever by the fabulist's masterpiece, the revelation of his soul, and the record of his dreams; those three words were set once and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... sweater she wore presented an inharmonious note on the field of velvety green;—it was strangely out of place, he thought,—almost an offence to the eye. He was conscious of an instant protest against this profanation. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... and cryed unto God with great fervency, and humbled themselves in sackcloth, and put ashes on their heads, and cried unto the God of Israel that he would not give their wives and their children and cities for a prey, and the Temple for a profanation: and the High-priest, and all the Priests put on sackcloth and ashes, and offered daily burnt offerings with vows and free gifts of the people, Judith iv. and then began Josiah to seek after the God of his father David: and after Judith ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... things; and in the corner a wash-stand, with real china-ware bowl and pitcher, and with soap in a china dish, and on a rack more than a dozen towels—towels too clean and white for one out of practice to use without some vague sense of profanation. So my face spoke again, and he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... doubt the seventh day sabbath is not of the law of nature, and so not moral; because though we read that the law of nature, and that before Moses, was charged upon the world, yet I find not till then, that the profanation of a seventh day sabbath was charged upon the world: and indeed to me this very thing makes a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... were now set in sullen lines which seemed a profanation of her fair young face. "But I do mean it, and I want Dr. Serviss to know just what is in my heart." Her voice choked with a kind of helpless, rebellious anger as she went on: "I'm tired of my life. I am sick of all ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... participated in, a more radical profanation of these crystal waters, when two hundred of the dirtiest children in Boston, South-enders, were brought down by train on a fresh-air-fund picnic and washed in the lake just in front of the spot where Thoreau's cabin stood, after having been duly swung in the swings, teetered on the see-saws, ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... for such profanation, but it really moves my spleen that people should wish to bring down the volatile figures of your romance to the level of an every-day novel. It is exactly the romantic atmosphere of the book in which I revel. You who could cast a glamour over the black scenery and personalities of ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... toward his store under the shadow of the dawn, was conscious of all this. The land was wrapped in the intensest quiet; the very crunch of his snowshoes seemed a profanation, though he trod lightly. When he had ascended the Point, he paused and gazed back. Already the thaw had commenced; down the still white face of the country, which lay at his feet like a shrouded corpse, the tears had begun to trinkle, ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... or at night, vastly other, sunnier men, with abundance of quip and jest and playful sally with the acid personal tang. But from warm beds of repose! We avoid each other's eyes, and one's subdued "please pass that sirup pitcher!" is but tolerated like some boorish profanation of a ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... another engagement with the enemy in my campaign," she insisted. "Oh, just think of it—the insult to love, the profanation of the sacrament ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... that is required to make her home clean, artistic, and comfortable. She places upon it the stamp of her character, industry, and good taste. She supplies it with things that delight the senses and point the way to culture. To such a home the crude and the bizarre are a profanation. She administers her home as a sacred trust in the interests of her family and never for exhibition purposes. Her home is an expression of herself, and her children will carry into life the standards that she inculcates through ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... 1:48 That they should also leave their children uncircumcised, and make their souls abominable with all manner of uncleanness and profanation: ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... you, Lawless," exclaimed I—for I felt certain who it was he was thinking of; and the idea of Miss Saville's name being mentioned and discussed with the tone of licence common on such occasions, appeared to me such complete profanation, that I determined, be the consequences what they might, to prevent it—"Excuse my interrupting you, but I should feel greatly obliged by your substituting some other toast for the one ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... render him more ardent in his quest, more eager to test his strength in the contest for a prize so well worth the winning. He acknowledged no right that such a man as Hampton could justly hold over so innocent and trustful a heart. The girl was morally so far above him as to make his very touch a profanation, and at the unbidden thought of it, the soldier vowed to oppose such an unholy consummation. Nor did he, even then, utterly despair of winning, for he recalled afresh the intimacy of their few past meetings, his face brightening in memory of ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... Capitol was besieged by the Gauls (A.U. 365) most of the inhabitants of Rome provided for their own safety by flight: but the Flamen Quirinalis or priest of Romulus, and the Vestal virgins loaded themselves with the sacred things, that they might secure those hallowed treasures from profanation. "They were proceeding" (says Livy lib. V, c. XXII) "along the way which passes over the Sublician bridge, when they were met on the declivity by L. Albinus a plebeian, who was fleeing with his wife and children ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... persons it is a profanation to make a stage spectacle out of religious things; and it has been urged that "Parsifal" is not only religious but specifically Christian; not only Christian but filled with parodies of elements which are partly liturgical, partly Biblical. In narrating the incidents of the play I have ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... until it came to the ears of the Prior himself. This holy man, who hated Father Gebhardt on account of his intimacy with the most respectable houses, was shocked at the scandalousness of the affair, which he considered as a profanation of the holy sacrament; and, refusing to decide on such a weighty matter, he referred it to the Archbishop. The Archbishop, wisely concluding that whatever sinful man wishes or thinks by day he dreams of by night, denounced the ban of the ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... impressions with respect to them are too strong, too real, too much sui generis, to be capable of a comparison with anything but themselves. We hardly inquire whether those for whom we are thus interested, and to whom we are thus knit, are better or worse than others—the question is a kind of profanation—all we know is, they are more to us than any one else can be. Our sentiments of this kind are rooted and grow in us, and we cannot eradicate them by voluntary means. Besides, our judgments are bespoke, our interests take part with ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... on his arm, entered, followed closely by Amy, who, in her surprise, looked with undisguised wonder at the scene before her. Never had she even imagined such a home. Indeed, it seemed like profanation of the word to call the bare, uncleanly room by that sweetest of English words. It contained not a home-like feature. Her eyes were not resting on decent poverty, but upon uncouth, repulsive want; and this awful impoverishment was not seen in the few articles of cheap, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... book!" he cried to her, his gentle face suddenly white with passion. "Who am I to commit such a profanation?" ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... abigail,—and the one not a Humphrey Clinker, nor the other a Winifred Jenkins,—and we are expected to admire the result as a good imitation of a lively, intelligent, well-bred American young lady! We protest against the profanation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... up evidence to transfer the burden of the imputed wrong to the memory of the dead Aurelius. But should he commit this profanation of the grave—as he regarded it? The voice of brotherly love—for he had tenderly loved his erring brother—said, "No." Would any amount of proof satisfy the nervous, doubting man before him? He feared not. Therefore Marcus Wilkeson did an act of awful solemnity, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... being now enveloped in flame, my keepers set me free, when, by an impulse of frenzy, I rushed' to the pile, to make a last vain effort to rescue Veenah, or to share her fate; but was stopped by some of the bystanders, who called my act a profanation. ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... but there was, I dare say, something honorable in that poverty, something sacred I would say. But seeing it made the object of a public appeal for commiseration, I feel as if everything that was sacred in my position had undergone a profanation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... family of the chief do not build tombs; and that now raised over the place where the late prince was buried is dedicated as a temple to Siva, and was made merely with a view to secure the place from all danger of profanation.[13] ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... what it is profanation to speak, nor let there be hereof any so dire example, if you despoil of its hair the head of any most transcendent and perfectly beautiful woman, and present her face thus denuded of its native loveliness, though ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... will be the destruction of those world-famous curiosities, the white and pink terraces, in the vicinity of Lake Rotomahana and the region of the famous geysers. The natives have a superstition that the eruption of the extinct Tarawera was caused by the profanation of foreign footsteps. It was to them a sacred place, and its crater a repository for their dead. The first earthquake occurred in this region. One side of the mountain fell in, and then the eruption began. The basin of the lake was broken up and disappeared, but again reappeared ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... Calvin's opinion nor Luther's are esteemed in England further than they are agreeable to the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, which are the rules and contain the state of religion professed in England. But by what state of religion is the profanation of the Lord's Day, and of images and ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... damning judgment that seemed to blot out the vaguely dawning and growing happy susceptibilities. It was, perhaps, just as well to have her mind reverted to realistic fact. The presence of Haze Ruff, the astounding truth of the contact with his huge sheep-defiled hands, had been profanation and degradation under which she sickened with fear and shame. Yet hovering back of her shame and rising anger seemed to be a pale, monstrous, and indefinable thought, insistent and accusing, with which she must sooner or later reckon. ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... easily satisfied people, whose existence you might forget except when they testify their happiness by their shouts; noisy without a thought of sedition; whose only care is to shun poverty without amassing wealth; lowly in fortune but rich in temper—it is a kind of profanation to rob ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... this able essay are these; first that Church and State should be independent of each other:—he speaks of the duty of protesting "against the profanation of Christ's kingdom, by that double usurpation, the interference of the Church in temporals, of the State in spirituals," (p. 191); and, secondly, that the Church may justly and by right retain its property, though separated from the State. "The clergy," he ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... used even those arms that respect for God and man denies to the wise; he employed his virtue, his honour, his renown, to aid in this overthrow; and his apostleship of reason had too often the appearance of a profanation of piety; he ravaged the temple instead of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... men infidels. Like the Israelites, in their battle with the Philistines, he has presumptuously and without warrant brought down the ark of God into the camp as a means of ensuring victory:—and the consequence of this profanation is that, when the battle is lost, the ark ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... as for gold and silver, we must tell them that they are in perpetual possession of a divine species of the precious metals placed in their souls by the gods themselves, and therefore have no need of the earthly one; that in fact it would be profanation to pollute their spiritual riches by mixing them with the possession of mortal gold, because the world's coinage has been the cause of countless impieties, whereas theirs is undefiled: therefore to them, as distinguished from the rest ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... more profound and more significant than ever before. Almost without knowing it she murmured—"It's like a dream." Another long silence ensued; the tranquillity of the universe had such an August ampleness that the sounds remained on the lips as if checked by the fear of profanation. The sky was limpid like a diamond, and under the last gleams of sunset the night was spreading its veil over the earth. There was something precious and soothing in the beautifully serene end of that ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... from the statutes of several states in reference to blasphemy and profanation of the Sabbath, commenting on each as he ran them through:] Pursuing the thread of his discourse, he said: Every American should see to it that all these laws are done away with ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Wine that had been offered to the gods was thrown into the public wells and fountains, and all the food that was sold in the markets was defiled in the same way. Two of his officers who complained of this profanation were put to death—not for their religion, Julian hastened to explain, but for ...
— Saint Athanasius - The Father of Orthodoxy • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... drawing a few long breaths, as if he were inhaling the aura of some unseen presence. He appeared so perfectly gratified and contented, and I was so impressed with this humble and silent absorption of the sacred interior, that I felt vaguely conscious that any interruption of it was a profanation, and I sat still, gazing at the dying fire. Presently he arose, stretched out his hand, shook mine warmly, said, "I reckon I'll meander along," took another long breath, this time secretly, as if conscious of my eyes, and then slouched sideways out of the house into the darkness ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... dog had disappeared, the whole church had vanished, I no longer saw anything, ... or more truly I saw, O my God, one thing alone. "Heavens, how can I speak of it? Oh no! human words cannot attain to expressing the inexpressible. Any description, however sublime it might be, could be but a profanation of ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... over the mental conditions which could make him capable of such a profanation. Step by step he traced their development, in his own harsh experiences of life, as he followed his father's body to the grave. He traced them back indeed to that father himself, since it was from ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... was first forbidden by Domitian; but Saint Paul, a Greek, had formally expressed his abomination of Le Vice (Rom. i. 26; i. Cor. vi. 8); and we may agree with Grotius (de Verit. ii. c. 13) that early Christianity did much to suppress it. At last the Emperor Theodosius punished it with fire as a profanation, because sacro-sanctum esse ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... sentiment (p. 317) must, in innumerable instances, have been compounded with the widely-extended romantic spirit which was ardent to hazard life on sacred ground of Judea, rather than to suffer the continuance of its profanation by the avowed enemy of ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... DEDICATION, a feast in commemoration of the purification of the Temple and the rebuilding of the altar by Judas Maccabaeus in 164 B.C., after profanation of them by the Syrians: OF THE PASSOVER, a festival in April on the anniversary of the exodus from Egypt, and which lasted eight days, the first and the last days of solemn religious assembly: OF PENTECOST, a feast celebrated on the fiftieth day after the second of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... labouring under an illusion as to the distance. He almost gave way to an impulse to thrust his bayonet through the corpse; but a dead body, seen under the shadows of night, inspires a certain air of imposing solemnity, which repels profanation; and this, acting upon the spirit of the sentinel, hindered him from yielding ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... be feebler than this "Instalment," except in the strength of impudence with which the writer professes to scorn the prostitution of fair fame, the "profanation of ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Ancestors,—burial in Brandenburg not yet common for these new Kurfursts:—his skull, in an after-time, used to be shown there, laid on the lid of the tomb; skull marvellous for strength, and for "having no visible sutures," says Rentsch. Pious Brandenburg Officiality at length put an end to that profanation, and restored the skull to its place,—marvellous enough, with what had once dwelt in it, whether it had ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... level contributions for their maintenance; but by the country people with such a degree of superstitious awe that they submit to be insulted, plundered, and even wounded by them, without making resistance, which they would esteem a dangerous profanation. Their appropriate title (not uncommon in other Malayan countries) is Iang de per-tuan, literally signifying he ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... repeating their mean accomplishments of "honesty, sobriety, humility," and on the precipice of reprobating such qualities,—which, however beneficial to the soul, gave no hope of preservation to the body,—they were prevented from this profanation by the fortunate remembrance of one qualification, which Henry, the possessor, in all his distress, had never till then called to his recollection; but which, as soon as remembered and made known, changed the whole prospect of wretchedness placed before the two ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... Sunday labor in the army and navy be reduced to the measure of strict necessity. The discipline and character of the national forces should not suffer, nor the cause they defend be imperiled, by the profanation of the day or the name ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... Secretaries to bring away papers, which the joiners might destroy!—President Bailly enters with Secretaries; and returns bearing papers: alas, within doors, instead of patriotic eloquence, there is now no noise but hammering, sawing, and operative screeching and rumbling! A profanation without parallel. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... fell on me. Since Brunswick's smile has authoris'd my muse, Chaste be her conduct, and sublime her views. False praises are the whoredoms of the pen, Which prostitute fair fame to worthless men: This profanation of celestial fire Makes fools despise, what wise men should admire. Let those I praise to distant times be known, Not by their author's merit, but their own. If others think the task is hard, to weed From verse ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... of fashionable insipidity. This is better than fashion—is it not? Yet this has but to be seen to become the rage—that is, with those who could afford it at the cost of their entire patrimony. I have guarded, however, against any such profanation. With one exception, you are the only human being besides myself and my valet, who has been admitted within the mysteries of these imperial precincts, since they have been ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... felt real desolation before. He rushed to the wide chasm which now admitted the winds and rains of heaven to the shrine which his adoration and reverence had consecrated with a tenderness so absorbing. Oh! what ruin—what profanation—what an irreparable havoc of all his treasure! And the tree, too—gone, blasted. Tears of passionate despair rained from his eyes: he wrung his hands, he stamped, raved, and ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... we are not skilled in."[32] So says the author of "Representative Men." "Evil," according to old philosophers, "is good in the making; that pure malignity can exist is the extreme proposition of unbelief. It is not to be entertained by a rational agent. It is Atheism; it is the last profanation." "The divine effort is never relaxed; the carrion in the sun will convert itself into grass and flowers; and man, though in brothels, or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way to all that is good ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... short, every bit of her was beautiful and desirable. And this feeling in its turn was overcome by a painful reflection: others besides himself would make a similar observation; she was about to show herself to a hundred other eyes: and this struck him as such an unbearable profanation, that he could have gone down on his knees to her, to implore her ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... to remove my objection to the practice of calling upon any individual to offer supplication in a public assembly. After prayer had been offered, they proceeded to the ballot, and we left the meeting, deeply impressed with the profanation of employing the most solemn act of devotion to ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... temple of Art, and he is little better than a barbarian who can enter it without a feeling of reverence for the presiding divinity of the place. Loud talking, laughing, pushing before others who are examining a picture or statue, moving seats noisily, or any rude or discourteous conduct, seems like profanation in such a place. Avoid them by all means, we entreat you; and though you wear your hat everywhere else, ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... of a departing boat, careless of who or what he was, I stole away to the most retired part of the boat, to conceal the weakness of friendship and relieve my overburdened heart with a flood of tears. I felt it would be a profanation of friendship even to be seen to feel in such a crowd. But for my overwhelming duty to the living I would have taken the boat and gone on with his remains. This is the end of the just in this world. He was a good and an upright man; never gave offense to a human ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... connection with each other, and with their country, and who resented every personal affront as a national indignity. When the tyrant Caligula was suspected of an intention to invest a very extraordinary candidate with the consular robes, the sacrilegious profanation would have scarcely excited less astonishment, if, instead of a horse, the noblest chieftain of Germany or Britain had been the object of his choice. The revolution of three centuries had produced so remarkable a change in the prejudices of the people, that, with the public approbation, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... indifference. Add to this, that I am one of the men whom women offend if they are not perfectly well-dressed. The miller's daughter was badly dressed; her magnificent figure was profaned by the wretchedly-made gown that she wore. I forgave the profanation. In spite of the protest of my own better taste, I resigned myself to her gown. Is it possible adequately to describe such infatuation as this? Quite possible! I have only to acknowledge that I took the rooms at the cottage—and there is the state of my mind, exposed ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... with those of the Jewish festival of the Dedication of the Temple. This feast was held in the winter time, on the 25th of Cisleu (December 20th), having been founded by Judas Maccabaeus in honour of the cleansing of the Temple in B.C. 164, six years and a half after its profanation by Antiochus Epiphanes. In connection with Dr. Cassel's theory it may be remarked that the German word Weihnachten (from weihen, "to consecrate, inaugurate," and nacht, "night") leads directly to the meaning, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... God's Saints, and may teach us how tenderly we need to deal with the failings of those who are just emerging from heathenism in our own days. The First Epistle to the Corinthians administers rebukes for schism, fornication, idolatrous tendencies, misuse of spiritual gifts, profanation of the worship of God, and misbelief. And even the Saints at Ephesus, who are addressed as if they had made great advance in the understanding of the mysteries of the faith, are warned to abstain from ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... "Oh, execrable profanation!" he cried. "Oh, unheard-of perfidy! Is it possible that a man calling himself a Californian could give utterance to such sentiments? Oh, abomination! You would invite, welcome, uphold, the American adventurer? ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of St. Francis never received, whose history throws a bright light on the simplicity of the early days. It will be remembered with what zeal Francis had repaired several churches; his solicitude went further; he saw a sort of profanation in the negligence with which most of them were kept; the want of cleanliness of the sacred objects, ill-concealed by tinsel, gave him a sort of pain, and it often happened that when he was going to preach somewhere he secretly called together the priests of the ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... in horror, clutching his staff as though to shield it from profanation. The others howled like a hound-pack at a full moon, except one of the short-tunic boys, who was slapping himself on the head with both hands and yodeling. The horn-crew hastily swung their piece around at ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... clergyman, "there is no choice left to me. It would be profanation to take persons in such a mood to make vows, and kneel to receive God's grace, which they evidently make light of. Whoever will not come and apologise must ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a profanation—an insult heaped on injury—an unjustifiable prying into the saddest secrets of the great prison-house of human woe—for us visiters to be standing here; and, though I apologised for it with a sovereign, which grain of sand will, I am ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... and appliances, and not an argument against her rights as contrasted with the rights of man. What! usurp an exclusive control—then degrade the modes of exercising power, and after that say the degradation is reason why the usurpation should continue unchallenged. What profanation of the very powers of thought is that! On the contrary, I am prepared to say that I see no reason, I never have seen any reason, why there might not be changes introduced in your modes of taking the sense of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... her, if not in the noblest yet in a very genuine, though at the same time very passionate way; and as she had, to use a Scots proverb, a crop for all corn, his attentions were acceptable to her. Had she been true-hearted enough to know anything of that love whose name was for ever suffering profanation upon her lips, she would, being at least a year and a half older than he, have been too much of a woman to encourage his approaches—would have felt he was a boy and must not be allowed to fancy himself a man. But to be ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... days,"—that is, years; for, as formerly noticed, all these expressions mean the same period of time; the period during which the witnesses prophesy, on the one side, and the gentiles tread the outer court, on the other. The profanation of the holy city,—the church nominal, and the testimony of the witnesses against that conduct, is the same contest which in this chapter is represented under other symbols. The waters of the symbolic flood have spread over all the ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... child, brother and sister. One does not refuse to exercise his mind for fear it will lead to insanity; but he takes care to exercise it healthily. So he should not repudiate the friendship of a woman, because it may lead to harm; he should cherish the friendship, and beware of the harm. It is a profanation to judge of the natural effect of intimacy with the innocent or the wise and virtuous from the effects of intimacy with the depraved and guileful. Poor, sinful Tannhauser, long enslaved in the Venusberg, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... they did not dare to make any new attempt; but unluckily on the 24th of April, 1566, the ammunition took fire and blew up the town and fort of Derry, so that the soldiers were obliged to embark for Dublin."[4] "This disaster was regarded at the time as a divine chastisement for the profanation of St. Columba's church and cell, the latter being used by the heretical soldiery as a repository of ammunition, while the former was defiled by their ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... hence her hatred of marriage, and her Amazonian exploits. But still the Piache[195-12] would not show her that trumpet, or tell her where it was: and as for going to seek it, even she feared the superstitious wrath of the tribe at such a profanation. But the day after the English went, the Piache chose to express his joy at their departure; whereon, as was to be expected, a fresh explosion between master and pupil, which ended, she confessed, in her burning the old rogue's hut over his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Mr. Castleford could have prevailed over the fear of profanation in the mind of my father, who was, in his old- fashioned way, one of the most reverent of men, and could not bear to think of holy things being approached by one under a stigma, nor of exposing his son to add to his guilt by taking and breaking ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... draughts, but knows that to take the bread of the beloved and cast it to the dogs is sin. She had acquired that knowledge, which is the only valuable kind of chastity worth having, that night when she had been forced to commit that profanation. Shading her eyes while there rushed over her the recollection of a pallid face looking yellow as it bent over the lamp, she reflected that even if she conquered this life-long indisposition to reply, the story was too monstrous to be told. It would not be believed. This girl would look at her under ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... house. "Thank you, Baldassare," said Vanna to her blinking old master; then she kissed him. Before she knew where she was, before she could say, "Gia!" he put his arm round her and whispered in her ear. Then she clung to him, sobbing, laughing, breathing quick; and the rest it were profanation to report. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... to sign her own death-warrant, of course. If you get a footing for your power-house you'll want the island next. I never heard of such grasping profanation." ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... brandy which had long passed muster among the relics of the cloister for the tears of the blessed saint. The venerable guardian of St. Bridget probably expected the interference of her patroness—she of Holyrood might, perhaps, hope that David Ruzzio's spectre would arise to prevent the profanation. But Mrs. Policy stood not long in the silence of horror. She uplifted her voice, and screamed as loudly as Queen Mary herself when the dreadful deed was ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... question to Rex directly, to be decided by his mysterious art. It would have been a relief to him if the decision had chanced to be contrary to his own vague forebodings, but on the other hand, it seemed like a profanation of his love to explain the situation to his friend. He never spoke of Hilda, and Rex did not know of ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... Bonvicini made no objection, though the suspicion was humiliating; he changed shirt, dress, and cowl. Then, when the Franciscans observed that Savanarola was placing the tabernacle in his hands, they protested that it was profanation to expose the sacred host to the risk of burning, that this was not in the bond, and if Bonvicini would not give up this supernatural aid, they far their part would give up the trial altogether. Savonarola replied that it was not astonishing ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... spring, of 1872 proved fatal to many cypresses as well as olive trees in the Val d'Arno. The cypress, therefore, could be introduced only into California and our Southern States.] In mere shape, the Lombardy poplar nearly resembles this latter, but it is almost a profanation to compare the two, especially when they are agitated by the wind; for under such circumstances, the one is the most majestic, the other the most ungraceful, or—if I may apply such an expression to anything but human affectation of movement—the most awkward of trees. The ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... some charming lines in which he has placed the heroine's name as it were on a string of pearls; they occur in his exquisite ballad 'Dames du temps jadis,' and, as it would be profanation to try and translate, I give ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... this way in a morning, that I was hardly ready. Donnellan, there's the tea; don't mind waiting. These gentlemen will perhaps join us." And then he looked hard at Aby, as though he trusted in Providence that no such profanation would ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... The awful profanation of the holy Sabbath which we witnessed on the streets of Paris, called forth the following appeal, in a letter to Mr. Macdonald of Blairgowrie. His spirit had been stirred in him when he saw the ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... the national forces should not suffer nor the cause they defend be imperiled by the profanation of the day or name of the Most High. "At this time of public distress," adopting the words of Washington in 1776, "men may find enough to do in the service of God and their country without abandoning themselves to vice and immorality." The first general order issued by the Father of his Country ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... worthy old sea captain, on landing, embraced his lady with tenderness and true affection. This, as there were many spectators by, gave great offence to the puritanical landsmen, and was considered as an act of indecency and a flagrant profanation of the Sabbath. The next day, therefore, the captain was summoned before the magistrates and selectmen, who, with many severe rebukes and pious exhortations, ordered him ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... are a profanation to any good woman. Ned Bannister, of the Shoshones, was one of them. He looked at his cousin, and his ribald eyes coasted back to bold scrutiny of this young woman's charming, buoyant youth. There was ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... What a profanation! That horrible cemetery, surrounded by a fence of barbed wire and superannuated railroad ties, to receive that beloved clay. He pictured her as he had seen her every day for ten years, and a rush of vain regret brought the big tears to his buttermilk eyes; the chords of memory twanged in his ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... this day, the five and twentieth day Of the month Caslan, was the Temple here Profaned by strangers,—by Antiochus And thee, his instrument. Upon this day Shall it be cleansed. Thou, who didst lend thyself Unto this profanation, canst not be A witness of these solemn services. There can be nothing clean where thou art present. The people put to death Callisthenes, Who burned the Temple gates; and if they find thee Will surely slay thee. I will spare thy life To punish thee the longer. Thou shalt wander Among ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... unconscious of the limits of sixteen in Bice's case as we all are in the case of Juliet. She was of no age. She was the ideal woman capable of comprehensions and intentions as far above anything possible to the genus boy as heaven was above earth. It would have been a profanation, a sacrilege too dreadful to be thought of, to compare that ethereal creature with the other things of her age with which he was so familiar. Of her age! Her age was the age of romance, of love, of poetry, of ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... could no longer practice. The child had flown from her in the instant of his grasping it, like a pale butterfly, but there remained where it had floated, a silken and nubile essence, fairy and humanity in one, clad in pure thoughts and sweet respect, the profanation of which would be as rare a game as Satan's struggle ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... to do. We don't either of us know what to do. He says he'll go mad with me on the stage, wearing myself out, the object of the jealousy of other women and of love-making from the men. He—says it's a profanation. I tried to tell him it couldn't be a profanation to serve art; but, Kate, he didn't seem to know what I meant. He has such different standards. He wanted to know what I was going to do when I was old. He said I'd have no real home, and no haven of love; and that I'd better ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... utterance of a great language, had been supreme. The air was full of intonations and cadences; not of the echo of smashing blows, of riven armor, of howling victims and roaring beasts. The spot is, in short, one of the sweetest legacies of the ancient world; and there seems no profanation in the fact that by day it is open to the good people of Arles, who use it to pass, by no means, in great numbers, from one part of the town to the other; treading the old marble floor, and brushing, if need be, the empty benches. This familiarity does not kill the place again; it makes it, on the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... of dress here pleases the eye, and their custom of going veiled to church, and always without a hat, which they consider as profanation of the temple as they call it, delights me much; it has an air of decency in the individuals, of general respect for the place, and of a resolution not to let external images intrude on devout thoughts. The hanging churches, and even public pillars, set up in the streets or squares ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... upon them. Hearing of the coming of the army, the proprietors had vainly endeavored to gather their crops, but the negroes would not work, and they had not modern implements, whereby to mow the grain rapidly. The profanation of those glorious stretches of corn and rye were to me some of the most melancholy episodes of the war. No mind can realize how the grain-fields used to ripple, when the fresh breezes blew up and down the furrows, and the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... were already gathering; and we entered, and walked up the steps among them, without encountering an unfriendly glance. At the door stood two Cossack soldiers, specially placed there to prevent the worshippers from being insulted by curious Christians. (Those who have witnessed the wanton profanation of mosques in India by the English officers will please notice this fact.) If we had not put off our shoes before entering the hall of worship, the Cossacks would have performed that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... Improve what was well begun by others before you, and not perfected by them.' Under this latter head he dwelt on the possible abuse of the Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and the irreligious profanation of the ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... her marriage would be something of an event. Heaven grant that he might read no journalistic description of the ceremony! Few things more disgusted him than the thought of a fashionable wedding; he could see nothing in it but profanation and indecency. That mattered little, to be sure, in the case of ordinary people, who were born, and lived, and died, in fashionable routine, anxious only to exhibit themselves at any given moment ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... necessity, [Pg 449] be followed by the outward one. The covenant-people which, inwardly, had submitted to the world, which, by its own guilt, had profaned itself, was, outwardly also, given up to the world, and was profaned in punishment. And this profanation, inflicted upon it as a punishment, again manifested itself just at that place, where the profanation by the guilt had chiefly manifested itself, viz., in the holy city, and in the holy temple. It is with a view to the former manifestation of the victory of the ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... the Greek word [Greek: iepeus], and means, "one who stands as a mediator between God and the people, and brings them to God by the virtue of certain ceremonial acts which he performs for them, and which they could not perform for themselves without profanation, because they are at a distance from God, and cannot, in their own persons, venture to approach towards him." In this sense of the word "priest," the term is not applied to the ministers of the Christian church, either by the Scripture, or by the authorized formularies of the Church ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... against the Catholic system of measurable sins and merits, with rewards and punishments legally adjusted and controlled by priestly as well as by divine prerogative. Such a supernatural mechanism seems to an independent and uncowed nature a profanation and an imposture. Away, it says, with all intermediaries between the soul and God, with all meddlesome priestcraft and all mechanical salvation. Salvation shall be by faith alone, that is, by an attitude and sentiment private to the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... impossible. He never wanted to understand her; the relentless passion for analysis was absorbed in a comprehensive enthusiasm which embraced the whole of Alison and took no count of the parts. To have pulled her to pieces, even with a view to reconstruction, would have been a profanation of her and of his love. For a whole year the student of the earthly and the visible lived on the substance of things unseen—on faith in the goodness of Alison Fraser. By a peculiar irony it was her very goodness—for she was a good woman—which made her give up Wyndham. As Miss Gladys ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... perfunctory librarian resumed his reading or his studies. The institution appeared to exist, not for the benefit of the people, but for that of the librarian; or for the benefit, besides, of a few sequestered scholars, like himself, and any wide popular use of it would have been viewed as a kind of profanation. ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... partisan; he has always been the consistent supporter of liberal measures per se, and not because they were the means adopted by a party to gain political power. With his political steadfastness he has preserved his intellectual integrity from profanation. For although, had he early devoted his powers to the study of abstract or practical science, as a leading and not a subsidiary pursuit, the acuteness of his mind was such, that he must have risen to eminence upon the basis of discovery, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... for them to enter, and then followed them in. It was Nora's dressing-room, a place of soft colors, of cool aloofness, and as Bat Scanlon breathed the air of it, with its delicate suggestion of scent, he had a feeling that he was venturing too far; he felt that his act was almost profanation. Through an open door at one end he caught a glimpse of a white bed; but it was only a glimpse, for after that he kept his head turned resolutely ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... considers the great defects of historical Christianity. It has exaggerated the personal, the positive, the ritual. It has wronged mankind by monopolizing all virtues for the Christian name. It is only by his holy thoughts that Jesus serves us. "To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul." The preachers do a wrong to Jesus by removing him from our human sympathies; they should not degrade his life and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the other has been fighting in the Peninsula many a long day, "by Shrewsbury clock," without gaining anything in 'that' country but the title of "the Great Lord," and "the Lord;" which savours of profanation, having been hitherto applied only to that Being to whom "'Te Deums'" for carnage are the rankest blasphemy.—It is to be presumed the general will one day return ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... meritorious thing to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, much more would it be a pious act to rescue the sacred spot from the profanation of infidels. This was the conviction that changed the pilgrim into a warrior,—this the sentiment that for two centuries and more stirred the Christian world to its profoundest depths, and cast the population of Europe in ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... these high festivals in their copes, that nothing might be lacking to do them honour. He offered no opposition to the deposition of King Richard II.: it was clearly inevitable. Braybrooke was a vigorous reformer of abuses, and denounced the profanation of the church by traffickers, shooting at birds ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... needed to set the School on fire. Then came the other, a stout workman—that one, the truest painter of the century, and altogether classical besides, a fact which not one of the dullards understood. They yelled, of course; they shouted about profanation and realism, when, after all, the realism was only in the subject. The perception remained that of the old masters, and the execution resumed and continued the best bits of work one can find in our public galleries. Both Delacroix and ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... the early received and uniformly continued sense of mankind. That sense not only, like a wise architect, hath built up the august fabric of states, but like a provident proprietor, to preserve the structure from profanation and ruin, as a sacred temple purged from all the impurities of fraud, and violence, and injustice, and tyranny, hath solemnly and for ever consecrated the commonwealth, and all that officiate in it. This consecration is made, that all who administer in the government of men, in which ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... great rage one day, lately, by a print-seller in the street, who was crying, "Here is Voltaire, the famous Prussian; here you see him, with a great bear-skin cap, to keep him from the cold! Here is the famous Prussian, for six sous!"—"What a profanation!" said she. To return to my story: M. de Chenevieres had shewn her some letters from Voltaire, and M. Marmontel had read an 'Epistle to ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... spoken to familiarly by thieves and assassins!' Oh, father, forgive me! but the more my position is elevated, the more I have been struck with the profound degradation into which I had fallen. At each new homage which is rendered me, I feel myself guilty of a profanation. Think of it, oh, heaven! after having been what I have been to suffer old men to bow before me—to suffer noble young women, women justly respected, to feel themselves flattered to approach me—to suffer finally, that princesses, doubly august by age and their sacerdotal character should ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... is great pity that these six pagan authors, here mentioned to have described the famous profanation of the Jewish temple by Antiochus Epiphanes, should be all lost; I mean so far of their writings as contained that description; though it is plain Josephus perused them all as extant ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... The Gregorian chant had become so overladen with mere embellishments as to make the prescribed church-form difficult of recognition in its borrowed garb, for it had become a mere jumble of sound. Musicians, indeed, carried their profanation so far as to take secular melodies as the themes for masses and motetts. These were often called by their profane titles. So the name of a love-sonnet or a drinking-song would sometimes be attached to a miserere. The council of Trent, in 1562, cut at ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... walk through Westminster Hall, thrust himself, it may be, through the very piece of space that once held Charles the Martyr pleading for his life, seems horrible profanation to Dayton, a last posthumous outrage; and he would, I think, like to have the front benches left empty now for ever, or at most adorned with laureated ivory tablets: "Here Dizzy sat," and "On this Spot William Ewart Gladstone made his ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells |
