"Devout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gravity and unpretentiousness of the little cavalcade. First rode a stout muleteer, leading a pack-mule laden with the provisions of the party, together with a few cheap crucifixes and hawks' bells. After him came the devout Padre Jose, bearing his breviary and cross, with a black serapa thrown around his shoulders; while on either side trotted a dusky convert, anxious to show a proper sense of his regeneration by acting as guide into the wilds of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... satisfied of the propriety of their costume, and wearing, to complete the comic effect, a most ultra-serious expression of countenance, and he will easily believe that it was impossible for me to be very devout in their presence. The attire of the females, though not quite so absurd, was by no means picturesque; some wore white, or striped men's shirts, which did not conceal their knees, and others were wrapped ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... letter is intimately connected with that of the last; and in proportion to your faithfulness in the duty now under consideration, will be your interest in the word and worship of God. Religious meditation is a serious, devout and practical thinking of divine things; a duty enjoined in Scripture, both by precept and example; and concerning which, let ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... received and corrected the last proof of the foregoing volume, and was walking down the Strand from Temple Bar to Charing Cross, when on passing Exeter Hall I saw a number of devout- looking people crowding into the building with faces full of interested and complacent anticipation. I stopped, and saw an announcement that a missionary meeting was to be held forthwith, and that the native ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... piety, and in that lofty and solemn enthusiasm which was a characteristic of his whole life. This must have been the secret in no small degree of the power he exerted so successfully over his semi-barbarous followers, who were more affected by awe than by fear. It was the devout and lofty aspect of their commander which controlled his sailors under circumstances so trying. We can conceive of his previous sorrows, but what imagination can form an adequate conception of his hopefulness and gratitude when the tokens of the neighborhood of land first greeted his senses? What ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... man who could not act according to the belief of his master without committing sacrilege according to his own? The want of reverence must have been expected from Lord Nottingham or his suite, for there was no one else present who was not a devout Romanist]. ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... by the council and general assembly of this State, That while we acknowledge with feelings of devout gratitude our obligations to the Great Ruler of Nations for His mercies to us as a people that we have been preserved alike from foreign war, from the evils of internal commotions, and the machinations of designing and ambitious men who would prostrate the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... German, Dutch, and Flemish art of the fifteenth century; just as Gothic came into fashion in England largely in consequence of the writings of Walpole, Scott, and Ruskin. Like our own later Pre-Raphaelite group, German art critics began to praise the naive awkwardness of execution and devout spirituality of feeling in the old Florentine painters, and German artists strove to paint like Fra Angelico. Friedrich Schlegel gave a strong impulse to the study of mediaeval art, and Heine scornfully describes him and his friend Joseph Goerres, rummaging about "among the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... should be added, but for want of room, anecdotes which show the quick decision and vivacity of her mind. Her face was in harmony with this combination. Her brow is as ideal and the eyes and lids as devout and modest as the Italian picture of the Madonna, while the lower part of the face has the simplicity and childish strength of the Indian race. Her picture presents the finest specimen of Indian beauty ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... 26th.—Last Sunday we held our quarterly meeting at York. About thirty of the Indian brethren were present; their cleanliness, modesty, and devout piety were ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... to temporal purposes, which has been said to be extinct, but which I contend, is still existing. In 1807 Pope Pius VII. sent to the Catholic bishops of Ireland a bull, which granted an indulgence of three hundred days to all those persons who should with devout purpose repeat a certain ejaculatory address; and by the same instrument another indulgence of one hundred days was granted, for the repeating of a certain other formula, both of them applicable to souls in purgatory. It is painful ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... fingers was something of a distraction and a delay; then came the long preparations for supper, and finally Tit'Be brought his mittens to be mended, so all this time the Ayes made slow and impeded progress, like some devout procession brought to halt by ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... that, in that season {18} on a day, In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay, Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage To Canterbury with devout corage, At night was come into that hostelrie Wel nine and twentie in a compagnie Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle In felawship; and pilgrimes were they alle, That toward Canterbury wolden ride. The chambres and the stables ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... heights our prayers lead us when they are thus spontaneous and irrepressible! How well David has expressed the gratitude, the holy trust and majestic praise common to every devout child of God. 'The Lord is my shepherd,' is blessed affirmation of supreme trust, the naming of God's glorious gifts, the gratitude for peace, life, love, protection, friendship, all the heavenly blessings of God's presence in God's house. In this wonderful psalm we find, no doubt, ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... in careful and copious historical induction; and he believed that Mr Mill's work rested upon a vicious reasoning a priori. Upon this point he felt the more earnestly, owing to his own passion for historical research, and to his devout admiration of Bacon, whose works he was at that time studying with intense attention. There can, however, be little doubt that he was also provoked by the pretensions of some members of a sect which then commonly went by the name of Benthamites, or Utilitarians. This sect included many ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... The warehouses of Manchester are famous for their size and solidity, and could Arkwright come back and see what his cotton-spinning machinery has produced, he would be amazed. It was in Manchester that the famous Dr. Dalton, the founder of the atomic theory in chemistry, lived; he was a devout Quaker, like so many of the townspeople, but unfortunately was color-blind; he appeared on one occasion in a scarlet waistcoat, and when taken to task declared it seemed to him a very quiet, unobtrusive color, just like his own coat. Several fine parks grace the suburbs of Manchester, and King ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... it's really so," declared Ethel Blue, who was an especial admirer of Gertrude Merriam's and a devout believer in her ability to turn Elisabeth from a skeleton ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... the general of the station. In the afternoon he preached to a crowd of poor natives, five, to eight hundred, rude, noisy, wretched beggars, for whose souls he felt a tender care. Again in the evening, the best of the day, he had a meeting with the more devout of his flock. These ministrations so earnestly performed were most exhausting, yet he knew not how to forego them; at this time, too, from England came the sad and sudden news of the death of his sister, the one who had ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... ceremony still noted in our Calendar as the Translation of King Edward. Buried at first in his own low-browed heavy-arched Norman structure, which he had built, as he believed, at the express bidding of St. Peter; the Confessor, whose tender-hearted and devout nature had, by force of contrast with those of his fierce foreign successors, come to assume a saintly halo in the eyes not merely of the English, but of their Angevin lords themselves, was, now to reign on almost equal terms with the great Apostle himself, as one of the hallowing patrons of ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... God to man, handed down from heaven and written by inspired men." Its message is free salvation for all men through Jesus Christ; its spirit is divine love. No wise person is without this letter, and every thoughtful and devout person reads it daily. One may never find time to follow a course of study, nor to pursue a plan of daily reading; he may never know the wealth of Dante, the grandeur of Milton, nor the genius of Shakespeare, but every one ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new. Shall I not call God the Beautiful, who daily showeth himself so to me in his gifts? I chide society, I embrace solitude, and yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely and the noble-minded, as from time to time they pass my ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in those on the higher education of women she is very strong, talking a good deal about the physical training of the Greeks, whom she adores, or did. Every philosopher and man of science who ventilates his theories in the monthly reviews has a devout listener in her; and this subject of the physical development of her sex has had its turn with other things in her mind. So she had the place built on her very first arrival, according to the latest lights on athletics, and in imitation of those at ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... attendance at Saint-Francois on Sundays and saints'-days, were on friendly terms with the beadle and the lowest ecclesiastical rank and file, commonly called in Paris le bas clerge, to whom the devout usually give little presents from time to time. Mme. Cantinet therefore knew Schmucke almost as well as Schmucke knew her. And Mme. Cantinet was afflicted with two sore troubles which enabled the lawyer to use her ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... apprenticeship prevails, they are especially applicable to Antigua, where the results of the great measure, of entire freedom, so humanely and judiciously granted by the legislature, cannot be contemplated without the most devout thanks givings to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... man and that He makes His abode with him, is known from the Word; for which reason it is customary for preachers to declare that men ought to prepare themselves to receive God, that He may enter into them, and be in their hearts, that they may be His dwelling-place. The devout man says the same in his prayers, and some speak more openly respecting the Holy Spirit, which they believe to be in them when they are in holy zeal, and from that zeal they think, speak, and preach. That the Holy Spirit is the Lord, and not a God who ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... for ecclesiastical reasons, though he had taken orders before his appointment under Fugger. Proske, in the preface to vol. ii. of his Musica Divina, calls him a priest of Regensburg, and is inclined to give him the palm for the devout and ingenuous mastery of his style. Certainly this impression is fully borne out by the beautiful and somewhat quaint works included in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Paul says (1 Cor. 7:1): "It is good for a man not to touch a woman." For a priest has the intermediate position of neither marrying nor burning, but of restraining himself by the grace of God, which he obtains of God by devout prayer and chastising of the flesh, by fasting and vigils. Furthermore, when they say that Christ taught that all men are not fit for celibacy, it is indeed true, and on this account not all are fit for the priesthood; but let the priest pray, and he will be ble to receive ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous
... years of age, the lovely Theodora, to atone for her mother's gay life, wished to retire into the bosom of the Church. With this idea she placed herself in the hands of a cardinal, in order that he might instruct her in the duties of the devout. This wicked shepherd found the lamb so magnificently beautiful that he attempted to debauch her. Theodora instantly stabbed herself with a stiletto, in order not to be contaminated by the evil-minded priest. This adventure, which was consigned to the history ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... taken as the origin of the movement. This period is usually spoken of as the moment of Pascal's "first conversion." The word "conversion," however, is too forcible to be applied at this point to Blaise Pascal himself. The family had always been devout, and the younger Pascal, though absorbed in his scientific work, never seems to have been afflicted with infidelity. His attention was then directed, certainly, to religious and theological matters; but the term "conversion" can only be applied to his sisters—the elder, ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... that Faber's words justify themselves: 'Christian Art, rightly considered, is at once a theology and a worship; a theology which has its own method of teaching, its own ways of representation, its own devout discoveries, its own varying opinions, all of which are beautiful so long as they are in subordination to the mind of the Church.... Art is a revelation from heaven, and a mighty power for God. It is a merciful disclosure to men of His more hidden ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... was a really devout hermit, who told his beads, and lived on bread and water," said Monica. "He dug his own grave in the rock about a hundred yards from here. You can see it still, though his bones have long ago been taken away ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... was a portrait of Byron with flowing tie and open shirt. Much as a devout Catholic wears a gold cross around his neck to signify his belief, with a like devoutness I took to wearing my shirt open at the neck, and a loose, flowing black tie. And I ruffled my hair in ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... ill-fated quarters on the following morning, when on the very night before (27 Aug. 413 B.C.) an eclipse of the moon took place. The soothsayers who were consulted said that the army must wait thrice nine days, a full circle of the moon, before it could quit its present position; and the devout and superstitious Nicias forthwith resolved to abide by ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... in the accomplishment of the final result, the destruction of the power of the nobility. In the first place, they glorified the character of feudalism by enforcing the principles of chivalry. To be a "true knight," a man must be devout, just, merciful, and pure. Many Crusaders, indeed, fell far short of this high ideal; but there can be no doubt that, on the whole, it elevated the standard of morality, and checked the rampant tyranny which had previously prevailed. Founded on a principle of sincere though mistaken ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... pogroms, poverty, disease, distress, militarism, orthodoxy and Pan-Slavism. Russia has a soul in spite of these; a gentle and beautiful soul, only half revealed, and too much concealed by her dilapidation and her dilemma; a peaceful soul, abnormally humble and devout, and in respect to these ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... trials are to be. Come they may, but from what quarter I can not form an idea: should they come, however, I trust we shall show our gratitude for the past blessings, and our faith derived from past deliverances, by a devout submission to whatever the Almighty may please to try ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... devout man, named Mr. Solomon M'Slime, an attorney—but, indeed, an attorney that almost shames the Bible itself, he's ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... of the worship of the Church of Rome as well fitted to make men devout, only betray their complete ignorance of all that constitutes worship. Men must be devout before they can worship. There is no error in the world more common than that of putting worship for religion. Worship is not the cause, but the effect. Worship ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... moved from theirs. The magnitude of their wrongs would admit of nothing like routine or monotony. The chairs were pushed back, and I saw five tall, slim figures standing erect, in straight black gowns, white kerchiefs and spotless caps. They were devout Lutherans, and their pew at the Sunday service was never vacant; but I had never seen them outside ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... into the theoretical and the practical, it is to the latter realm that he assigns morality and religion. Clearly this is genuine rationalism. I am not forgetting Kant's great religious contribution. He was the son of devout German pietists and saturated in the literature of the Old Testament. It is to Amos, who may justly be called his spiritual father, that he owes the moral absoluteness of his categorical imperative, the reading of history as a moral order. He was following Amos when he took God out of the ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... of Mr. Liddon, the saintly and learned preacher; of the devout worshippers at All Saints', whose black nails show they are artisans; of the society formed to pray daily for the ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... woman cut off that Knight's head and brought it and threw it at the feet of Sharrkan and Zau al-Makan and the Wazir Dandan. Now when Sharrkan sew her, he sprang up hastily before her and exclaimed, "Praised be Allah for thy safety and for our sighting thee, O holy man and devout champion of the Religion!" Replied she, O my son, I have sought martyrdom this day, and have thrown my life away amid the Infidel array, but they feared me with dismay. When ye dispersed, I waxed jealous for your honour; so ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... If ignorant yet devout speculation may be borne with here, I venture to say that I think the change of some kind that was necessary somehow before the body of the Son of Man could, like the Spirit of old, move upon the face of the waters, ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... would have entered into his head had he been left alone, or, if so, whether he would have cared enough about it to carry it out regularly. She doubted. Whatever the shortcomings of the Church of England may be, she certainly trains her children into a devout observance of Sunday. ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... celebrate the morning masses when everybody is asleep and the late masses when everybody is doing. It is they who get up at night to take the sacrament to the poor, and who sit up with the corpses of the devout rich and catch cold standing under the dripping church porches at funerals, and get sunstroke or pneumonia in the cemetery. They do all the dirty work. For a five or ten franc fee they act as substitutes for colleagues who have good livings and are tired of service. They are men under a cloud ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... What, in the name of infatuation, could entice you to take a step so detrimental to the interests of your soul? Virgen Santa! once no one was to be found more assiduous at the ceremonies of our religion; you were in very troth the most devout beata[44] of the whole parish, and now here's a change, in the name of Satanas! Oh, Maria Rufa, ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... so plain, his style so sparkling, and his spirit so devout, that the reading of his productions is almost sure to excite a mental glow and awaken holy aspirations. This book is brimful of quickening, soothing, soul-lifting power and is admirably adapted to ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 3, March, 1889 • Various
... powerfully influence the devout minds of the so Catholic princes in that epoch, much more should they influence that of your Majesty in this, wherein they have not only the same but greater force, because of the many unexpected difficulties that ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... night, behind the curtain of my open window. Are they spent amiss? Every spot, so near the church as to be visited by the circling shadow of the steeple, should be deemed consecrated ground, to-day. With stronger truth be it said, that a devout heart may consecrate a den of thieves, as an evil one may convert a temple to the same. My heart, perhaps, has not such holy, nor, I would fain trust, such impious potency. It must suffice, that, though my form be absent, my inner man goes constantly to church, while many, whose bodily ...
— Sunday at Home (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Especially is devout supplication needed, because of the fact that society is so full of artificialities that men are deceived as to whom they are marrying, and no one but the Lord knows. After the dressmaker, and the milliner, and the jeweler, and the hair-adjuster, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... article, in the way of a jewel—a frog of Turkish agate for burning pastiles in, my Lady; just such as they use in the seraglio; and indeed this one I may call invaluable, for it was the favourite toy of one of the widowed Sultanas till she grew devout and gave up perfumes. One of her slaves disposed of it to my foreign partner. Here it opens at the tail, where you put in the pastiles, and closing it up, the vapour issues beautifully through the nostrils, eyes, ears, and mouth, all at once. Here, sir," turning to Douglas, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... glory of God has been made a pretext for the injustice of man. The safety of the Church! Sir, if, which God forbid, that Church is really possessed by the evil spirit which actuates this Presbytery; if that Church, having recently lost hundreds of able ministers and hundreds of thousands of devout hearers, shall, instead of endeavouring, by meekness, and by redoubled diligence, to regain those whom she has estranged, give them new provocation; if she shall sharpen against them an old law the edge of which has long rusted off, and which, when ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... opened one little primary school in a small unlettered heathen village. Ten bright Hindu boys sought instruction at the hands of the devout old Christian teacher placed there. Today these boys have grown into manhood and, with one or two exceptions, have entered into the Christian life and have been formed into a Christian congregation. They are not only intelligent, but firm and beautiful in their new-found ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... to dethe: but they alle with on accord seyd, that he him self had slayn him, when he was dronken, and schewed him his swerd alle blody: and he trowed, that thei hadden seyd sothe. And than he cursed the wyn, and alle tho that drynken it. And therfore Sarrazines, that be devout, drynken nevere no wyn: but sume drynken it prevyly. For zif thei dronken it openly, thei scholde ben repreved. But thei drynken gode beverage and swete and norysshynge, that is made of galamelle: and that is that men maken sugar of, that ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... to you it doth impart Authentic tidings of invisible things; Of ebb and flow and ever-during power; And central peace subsisting at the heart Of endless agitation. Here you stand, Adore and worship, when you know it not; Pious beyond the intention of your thought; Devout above the meaning of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... however, to Carr's Lane Chapel, where a humble friend had begged me to go, because there she had been converted, and there the Rev. R. W. Dale happened to preach on "Where prayer was wont to be made." He said that consecration was not due to a Bishop or to any ecclesiastical ceremony, but to the devout prayers and praise of the faithful souls within it—that thousands over Scotland and England, and others in America, Australia, and New Zealand, look back to words which they had heard and praises and prayers in which they had joined as the holiest ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... authors who did not leave Erlcort so cheerful when they failed to see their books on his shelves or tables. Some of them were young authors who had written their worthless books with a devout faith in their worth, and they went away more in sorrow than in anger, and yet more in bewilderment. Some were old authors who had been all their lives acceptably writing second-rate books and trying to make them unacceptably first-rate. If he knew them he kept out of ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... Lyas, or Uncle Lyas, as Iskender always respectfully called him, said a grace of twenty minutes before he sat down, and one of equal duration after he got up. He was perpetually counting his beads and uttering devout sayings—which partly accounted for his influence with the priests. He and I agreed very well at the beginning, although in our very first conversation he forced on a religious discussion, and plainly told me to what place all heretics ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... rather of the want, than of the excess, of the humility and charity which are the inseparable companions of faith. I do not say that I would imitate all the unmeaning and irreverent practices of the Romish church; and least of all could one wish to see the devout and solemn manner of the Protestant ministering at the altar supplanted by the unintelligible mumblings of the Latin breviaries: but why have we denounced the holy symbol of the cross, the ornaments of the ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... he, "are attestations from a most learned physician, whose skill and honour are well known to my good Lord of Leicester, and from an honest and devout Protestant, a man of credit and substance, one Anthony Foster, the gentleman in whose house she is at present bestowed, that she now labours under an illness which altogether unfits her for such a journey as betwixt this Castle and the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... each family of apothegms revealing the chief traits of the people who gave them birth. In these collective expressions of national mind, we can recognize—if so incomplete a characterization may be ventured—the indrawn meditativeness of the Hindu, the fiery imagination of the Arab, the devout and prudential understanding of the Hebrew, the aesthetic subtilty of the Greek, the legal breadth and sensual recklessness of the Roman, the martial frenzy of the Goth, the chivalric and dark pride ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... illustrious Father more odious in their eyes where he by any means could fix his scandals, he would not spare that incomparable piece of his writing, his Eikon Basilike, but in a scurrilous reply thereto, which he entitled Eikonoklastes, he would not spare his devout prayers (which no doubt the Lord hath heard and will hear): in all which he expressed, as his inveterate and causeless malice, so a great deal of wicked, desperate wit and learning, most unworthily misbestowed, abused, and misapplied, to the reviling of his Prince, God's vice-gerent ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... criticise their works and their intentions and thoughts, but receives their prayers immediately. But when an individual prays, the Holy One—blessed be He!—regards and scrutinizes his heart, whether it be devout and whether he be a righteous man. Therefore, one should always pray with the community, and this is why the text (Ps. cvii. 17) ends with the words, "And not despise their prayer." Although there are some of the community whose prayers, on account of their evil deeds, deserve to be ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... met them. Good morning." And with bows the gentlemen parted, for at that instant the young man caught sight of a tall lady going down the church steps with a devout expression in her fine eyes and ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... study for a painter. These large black mantles of heavy silk brought over the heads of the women, and covering their persons, fall into such fine folds of drapery, that they cannot help being picturesque and noble. See, kneeling by the side of two of those fine devout-looking figures, is a lady in a little twiddling Parisian hat and feather, in a little lace mantelet, in a tight gown and a bustle. She is almost as monstrous as yonder figure of the Virgin, in a hoop, and with a huge crown and ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... attorneys refused to consider the matter, declaring upon their honour that although they did not accuse Grandier of being the cause, yet they believed that the nuns were veritably possessed, being convinced by the testimony of the devout ecclesiastics in whose presence the evil spirits had come out. This was only the ostensible reason for their refusal, the real one being that the advocate was a relation of Mignon's, and the attorney a son-in-law of Trinquant's, to whose office he had succeeded. Thus Grandier, against ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of nothing less than madness, and could hardly have succeeded under any circumstances, though it might have ended in killing or disabling the commander. Christy felt that a kind Providence had saved him, and he rendered devout thanks for the merciful interposition, as it ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... consistent piety, regulated by the constant reading of the sacred word, made her a proper guide for the shattered and wearied mind of her mother. Cassy yielded at once, and with her whole soul, to every good influence, and became a devout and tender Christian. ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in a bit tighter, men," suggested the Captain grimly; "if I understand all they tell me, the Indians can beat the most devout Christians in fasting. 'Tis one virtue we may learn ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... knew the joy it gives to my old heart to meet you in this sacred place and in that devout attitude, it would bring ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... crusaders, the knights fought valiantly and shed their blood in defence of the Sepulchre of our Lord, earning the devout admiration of Western Christendom, and receiving splendid endowments of lands, castles, and riches of all kinds as contributions to the cause of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... singularly immoral. It has no history, for history belongs to time. No one knows when its sacred books were written, when its civilization began, what caused its progress, what its decline. Gentle, devout, abstract, it is capable at once of the loftiest thoughts and the basest actions. It combines the most ascetic self-denials and abstraction from life with the most voluptuous self-indulgence. The key ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Her devout expression of gratitude for mere existence usually included the monument in the centre of the square, all bristling with wings as if about to fly away from the ground. Victor Hugo! . . . It was enough for her to have heard this name on the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Bethune, and called down curses upon all flying and creeping insects. Since then we have undergone certain so-called "operations" in the neighbourhood of Loos, and have put in three months in the Salient of Ypres. As that devout adherent of the Roman faith, Private Reilly, of "B" Company, put it to his ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... think they do diligently study the Scripture, and seek to conform their lives to its teachings; and for the Light of which they speak, it is borne— witness to not only in the Bible, but by the early fathers and devout men of all ages. I do not go to excuse the Quakers in all that they have done, nor to defend all their doctrines and practices, many of which I see no warrant in Scripture for, but believe to be pernicious and contrary to good order; yet I must need look upon them as a sober, earnest-seeking people, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... accordion. Following the sound he came at last upon a little hollow among the sycamores, where the children were disposed in a ring, in the centre of which, with a handkerchief in each hand, Concha the melancholy!—Concha the devout!—was dancing that most extravagant feat of the fandango—the ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... between one man and another is by no means so great as the superstitious crowd supposes. But the same feelings which in ancient Rome produced the apotheosis of a popular emperor, and in modern times the canonization of a devout prelate, lead men to cherish an illusion which furnishes ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... self-respect or increase the reputation of a benevolent ecclesiastic. The same remark applies to a subsequent legacy of the poet's library, with specification of one work which was plainly neither decent nor devout. We are thus left on the horns of a dilemma. If the chaplain was a godly, philanthropic personage, who had tried to graft good principles and good behaviour on this wild slip of an adopted son, these jesting legacies would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Orthodox religion is a mistake, but a kind of moral-philosophical Deism (something of the Wolmar type) is highly extolled. You must be technically "virtuous" yourself, even if you bring a whole second volume of tedious tortures on you by being so; but you may play Lady Pandara to a friend who is a devout adulteress, may force yourself into her husband's carriage when he is carrying her off from one assignation, and may bring about his death by contriving another in your own house. In fact, the whole thing is topsy-turvy, without the slightest ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... parts. Go northwards out of this Market Square, and you would soon find yourself amid the wild and hilly moorlands, sprinkled with iron-and-coal villages whose red-flaming furnaces illustrated the eternal damnation which was the chief article of their devout religious belief. And in the Market Square not even the late edition of the Staffordshire Signal was cried, though it was discreetly on sale with its excellent sporting news in a few shops. In the hot and malodorous ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... claim her. And I knew another boy who was good-looking, and wrote a story (during study-time, of course, and by stealth) about a handsome hero who went to Court in fine clothes, and was worshipped by all the girls. I think now that he was the manlier, but that the first would have made the more devout lover. But the drawback of luckless adorers is that their constancy has not been tried by the ordeal of success. Many a fellow who lived loyal and heart-broken would have made an ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... from Erlangen, Carl Sand, who had accompanied the standard at the Wartburg festival, formed the silent resolve of sacrificing his own life in order to punish the enemy of his country. Sand was a man of pure and devout, though ill-balanced character. His earlier life marked him as one whose whole being was absorbed by what he considered a divine call. He thought of the Greeks who, even in their fallen estate, had so often died to free their country from Turkish oppression, and formed the deplorable conclusion that ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... to our Pallas Athene," said his friend, "to whom we artists are especially devout." And he would have led Agellius on, and made him place them in her niche ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Christian martyr, and Brother Kline the last then known, they closed their discourses in heartfelt realization of these words: "And devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him." We all took part in the lamentation—the writer himself being present and speaking on the occasion—and felt that the ruthless hand of violence had wickedly torn from our midst a ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... word to apply to any young lady, George Warrington!" exclaims Lambert, "much less to the charming Miss Lydia. She artful—the most innocent of Heaven's creatures! She wicked—that angel! With unfeigned delight that the quarrel should be over—with devout gratitude to think that blood consanguineous should not be shed—she spoke in terms of the highest praise of you for declining this quarrel, and of the deepest sympathy with you for taking the painful but ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the equality of the Son with the Father in the Trinity, and other orthodox beliefs, and rejoiced in her later years in the writings of such men as Jowett, Colenso, and Stanley. The last named, indeed, was her ideal Christian gentleman, suave, polished, broad-minded, devout in a stately way. The baldness of a typical Evangelical service outraged her taste as much as the crudity of Evangelical dogmas outraged her intellect; she liked to feel herself a Christian in a dignified ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... had, the interest of a strange psychological riddle to solve, and of a great portrait to paint. He was, I found, extremely good,—the type of the perfectly conscientious young Englishman, the sort of man who ought to have been the Christian soldier kind of thing; devout, pure-minded, brave, incapable of any baseness, a little intellectually dense, and puzzled by all manner of moral scruples. The condition of his tenants and of his political party—he was a regular Kentish Tory—lay heavy on his mind. He spent ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... that God, who is the same as Brahma, Vishnu, Narayana, or Krishna, is omnipotent, omnipresent, and possessed of all good qualities; that matter forms the body of souls, and souls form the body of God; that the soul attains salvation as a result of devout and loving meditation upon God, worship of him, and study of the scriptures; and that salvation consists in eternal union of the soul with God, but not in identity with him, as Samkara taught. The scriptures on which Ramanuja took his stand were mainly the Upanishads, ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... fancy, my darling, if you do. You remember those odd but no less devout lines of George Herbert? Just after he says, so beautifully, 'And now with darkness closest weary eyes,' ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... profession to which worldly prudence rather than inclination called him, and was perfectly bewildered in theological controversy. In the course of his reading (which was neither pursued with that seriousness or that devout mind which such a study requires) the youth found himself at the end of one month a Papist, and was about to proclaim his faith; the next month a Protestant, with Chillingworth; and the third a sceptic, with Hobbes and Bayle. Whereas honest Tom Tusher never permitted his mind to stray out of ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... for God and his devotion to the Church had often been expressed in verse. On days which the Church specially celebrated, he had from time to time written short poems to utter from the heart his own devout sense of their spiritual use and meaning. As the number of these poems increased, the desire rose to follow in like manner the while course of the Christian Year as it was marked for the people by the sequence of church services, which had ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... Kiev in himself is a very ordinary and rather mendacious traveller, a harmless, devout pilgrim, as careless in all matters of fact as Antonine the Martyr. But, as representing the beginnings of Russian expansion, he is of almost unique interest and value. His tract upon the Holy Road is one of the first proofs of his people's interest ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... forgotten by the next generation. His work consists of religious and pastoral poems, satires, and a number of miscellaneous prose tracts. His religious poems are sometimes wearisome by their excess of fluency and sweetness, but they are evidently the expression of a devout and earnest mind. His praise of the Virgin and his references to Mary Magdalene have suggested that he was a Catholic, but his prose writings abundantly prove that he was an ardent Protestant. Breton had little gift for satire, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... excommunication. One of the greatest bishops of his time, St. Avitus of Vienna, characterises him with the words, "Rather a timid lover than a public asserter of the opinion broached by Eutyches: he praised, indeed, what he had taken from him, but did not venture to preach it to a people still devout, and therefore unpolluted by it". Another equally great bishop, Ennodius of Ticinum—that is, Pavia—says: "He utterly surrendered the glory which he had gained, in combating Basiliscus, of maintaining the truth"; while the next Pope Gelasius charges him with intense pride; the effect of which ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... a matter of devout gratitude to the wise Disposer of all events, that, just before the death of Mrs. Shuck, her particular friends, Dr. and Mrs. Devan, should become members of her family; and now the five motherless children may find in Mrs. Devan one so well qualified and ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... his beautiful and valuable treatise, which will open new views to many a pious student, give definiteness to the aspirations of many a devout soul, and be the means, we doubt not, of encouraging a more intelligent use of that Psalter which forms so large a part of our daily prayer and praise, and which is the best interpreter of the wants and feelings of the human soul, its deepest ...
— Mr. Murray's List of New and Recent Publications July, 1890 • John Murray
... history was mostly Scotish, or connected with Scotish affairs; the theology was entirely of the New England type of corrupted Calvinism, with which in Scotland they saddle the memory of great-souled, hard-hearted Calvin himself. Thoroughly respectable, and a little devout, Mr. Galbraith was a good deal more of a Scotchman than a Christian; growth was a doctrine unembodied in his creed; he turned from everything new, no matter how harmonious with the old, in freezing disapprobation; he recognized no element in God or nature which could not be reasoned about after ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... a handsome pecuniary interest in my success, if I became Mrs. Armadale of Thorpe Ambrose. The chance of turning this mischievous morsel of paper to good account, in the capacity of a touchstone, was too tempting to be resisted. I asked my devout friend's permission to say one last word before ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... faults of character, their conduct toward the Spaniards, their lack of religious devotion, etc.—exempting, however, from these censures in the main the Pampangos, who are more noble, brave, and honorable, and are "the Castilians of these same Indians;" and the women, who are devout, modest, and moral (although he ascribes this to the subjection in which they are held by the men, and the necessity for the women to support not only their children but their husbands). After all these complaints, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... behind the scenes of a theatre. But mean and sulky as the scene might be in the eyes of most of us, it was not altogether so in the Major's, for along the coarse gravel footway was coming a thing which was to him what the passing of a religious procession is to a devout person. A large, heavy man, with fish-blue eyes and a ring of irradiating red beard, was pushing before him a barrow, which was ablaze with incomparable flowers. There were splendid specimens of almost every order, but the ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... death and desolation of European battlefields, I saw the courage and resolution, I felt the inspiration, of American youth. In these young men I felt America's buoyant confidence and irresistible will-to-do. In them I saw, too, a devout ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... of a chief clerk. He was unable to write clearly in any language, because incapable of a fully developed thought upon any subject. It may be supposed that nothing but an abortive policy, therefore, would be produced upon the occasion thus suddenly offered. "'Tis a devout man, that poor Master Hopper," said Granvelle, "but rather fitted for platonic researches than ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... not entirely free from scandal. Amongst the monks, there are many who are openly a disgrace to their calling, though I firmly believe that by far the greater number lead a life of privation and virtue. Their conduct can, to a certain extent, be judged of by the world; but the pale nuns, devout and pure, immured in the cloister for life, kneeling before the shrine, or chanting hymns in the silence of the night, a veil both truly and allegorically must shade their virtues or their failings. The nuns of the Santa Teresa and of other strict orders, who live sparingly, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... was filled with a brighter illumination than before. Leaning backward with the book in front of his face and his shapely legs extended in front, he studied with an interest more absorbing than was ever felt by the most devout novel reader. He seemed to lose all consciousness of time and place, and pored over the volume which to him was more precious than any treasure it is possible for ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... him, she might well think, to come unexpectedly, without invitation or announcement. She was alert, ready to take the offensive as the best means of defence, and wishing, in devout futility, that he had stayed away. He was smiling happily at everything in cosmos and at her as a part ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... no comment of ours to point out how thoroughly the nation must be saturated by the doctrines under discussion for such amazing utterances to be possible. If so-called Christians can think thus, the non-Christian majority must indeed be devout Emperor-worshippers and Japan-worshippers. Such the go-ahead portion of the nation undoubtedly is—the students, the army, the navy, the emigrants to Japan's new foreign possessions, all the more ardent spirits. The peasantry, as before noted, occupy themselves little with ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... and impious a meaning which does not offend either piety or reason. We may therefore conclude that it was not men in an early stage of philosophic thought (as philosophy is now understood)—not men like Empedocles and Heraclitus, nor reasonably devout men like Eumaeus, the pious swineherd of the Odyssey—who evolved the blasphemous myths of Greece, of Egypt and of India. We must look elsewhere for an explanation. We must try to discover some actual and demonstrable ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... thrill of exultation. She was not negatively relieved that she was somebody; she rejoiced to find herself Lydia Emery. She pounced on her own personality with a positive joy which for a moment moved her to a devout thanksgiving. ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... following letter from Henry to his father, somewhat more than words of course, or matter-of-form expressions, indicative (unless the writer be a hypocrite,—and hypocrisy has never been laid to Henry of Monmouth's charge[191]) of filial dutifulness and affection, as well as of a pious and devout trust in Providence. At all events, it is incumbent on those who forbid our inference in favour of any one from such testimony to show some act, or to quote some words, or direct us to some implied sentiments in the individual, whose letters we are (p. 192) discussing, which would ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... there with devout piety written upon his sallow, shrunken countenance, he certainly presented a most saintly, picturesque appearance, his attitude being that of a most humble ascetic of the Middle Ages. Saint Francis of Assisi ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... the degree of which could not be foreseen. In later days, Farragut told that in the confusion of these moments, feeling that all his plans had been thwarted, he was at a loss whether to advance or retreat. In this extremity the devout spirit that ruled his life, and so constantly appears in his correspondence, impelled him to appeal to Heaven for guidance, and he offered up this prayer: "O God, who created man and gave him reason, direct me what to do. Shall I go on?" "And it seemed," said the admiral, "as if in answer ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... contrary to the Divine right. It is incumbent on him who thinks otherwise, that is, who accuses the whole ancient Church of folly and impiety, to prove his opinion. That Episcopacy[584] was received by the whole Church appears from the general councils, which have always had great authority with all devout men; witness the national and provincial councils, where we find certain marks of the Episcopal precedency; witness all the Fathers without exception. Episcopacy began with the Apostles[585]: to be convinced of this we need only have recourse to the catalogues of Bishops ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... philosophy, under a great, and smooth, and honourable name colouring and disguising their own errors: and almost all who in that and former ages were such, are in that book censured and set forth: there also is made plain that wholesome advice of Thy Spirit, by Thy good and devout servant: Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And since at that time (Thou, O light of my heart, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... their evening meal; while the elephants stood silently at a distance, occasionally moving their long trunks, or flapping their ears. The cries of the birds and the screams of the monkeys, as they composed themselves for the night, came forth from the neighbouring forest; while, at a distance, the devout Mussulmans were engaged in the muggreet, or evening prayer, as they knelt on their little mats, and bowed their heads to kiss the ground. Richly-dressed officers moved about amid the tents, and scantily-clothed warriors reclined in groups in all directions. The most actively engaged persons ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... The Bible in Spain. His elders would succumb at once, particularly if the boy had the good sense to call their attention to the sub-title—'The Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula.' Nothing could be said by the most devout of seniors against so prepossessing a title-page.[155] But what of the boy who had thus passed the censorship? What a revelation of adventure was open to him! Perhaps he would skip the 'preachy' parts in which Borrow was doubtless sincere, although the sincerity has so uncertain a ring to-day. ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... estates, trustee and guardian of the young. He was the friend of all. I know not where to find a more perfect union of the hero and the Christian; of all that is manly and chivalrous with all that is tender, benevolent, and devout. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... his departure, felt himself much at a loss what course to pursue. His line of education, as well as his father's tenets in matters of church and state, had taught him a holy horror for Papists, and a devout belief in whatever had been said of the Punic faith of Jesuits, and of the expedients of mental reservation by which the Catholic priests in general were supposed to evade keeping faith with heretics. Yet there was something of majesty, depressed indeed and overclouded, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... nautical parlance, "pump or sink," the crew, although a hardy, vigorous set of men, became exhausted and disheartened, and, to my astonishment and disgust, instead of manifesting by their solemn looks and devout demeanor a sense of the danger with which they were threatened, alternately pumped, grumbled, and swore, and swore, grumbled, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... good: yet at the same time do all in his power to draw men from their natural reverence of God, that, in due time, they may acknowledge himself without fear. The Satanic ideal of this age is, then, an improved social order, a moral and cultured people, who are devout worshippers of himself, though for the present they may imagine they are worshipping Jehovah through their empty religious forms and ceremonies, while they are really in a state of God-dishonoring unbelief, and all their thoughts are energized by Satan ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... to his wife, 'This bird sits as quiet as a muni; let him go where he likes,' amused himself with laughing at its awkward attempts to walk. Then the swan suddenly spoke: 'O king, though in the form of a swan, I am a devout brahman; and since you have thus, without cause, ill-treated me while sitting quiet here, engaged in meditation, I lay my curse upon you, and you shall endure the pain of separation from ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... had paid the thousand piastres, and Giacomo had given his consent. Nothing now stood in the way of the execution of this terrible deed, which was fixed for the 8th of September, the day of the Nativity of the Virgin; but Signora Lucrezia, a very devout person, having noticed this circumstance, would not be a party to the committal of a double sin; the matter was therefore deferred till ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with an admirable Sancho-like gravity and naivete, which one could not desire improved? How good is that touch of sly indignation about the LITTLE CATAFALQUES! how rich the contrast presented by the economy of the Catholics to the splendid disregard of expense exhibited by the devout Jews! and how touching the "APOLOGETICAL DISCOURSES on the Revolution," delivered by the Protestant pastors! Fancy the profound affliction of the Gardes Municipaux, the Sergens de Ville, the police agents in plain clothes, and the troops with fixed bayonets, sobbing round ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and inspiration are inherent in the heads of the church down to the present day, through the laying on of hands, so that infallibility, majority and inspiration make all our convictions, all resignation, all devout intuitions, superfluous. And yet, notwithstanding all these connecting links, the first question returns in all its simplicity: How can B know that A is inspired, if B is not equally, or even more, inspired than A? For it is of more consequence to know that A was inspired than for ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... of light. And not only is there a lack of sympathy in the worldly-minded for the men and women who are led of God, but there is often positive hatred for them—a hatred which spends itself in actual, persistent persecution. To be devout, to refrain from sinful words and sinful deeds, to shun the vain and dangerous amusements of worldlings, to attend much to prayer and recollection, to love the house and worship of God, to be seen often approaching the sacraments ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... impression of this awful, most moving, yet most soothing thought, be a law of spiritual breadth and height, there is still a peril in it. Such an impression may inform the soul with a devout mingled sense of grandeur and nothingness, or it may blacken into cynicism and antinomian living for self and the day. It may be a solemn and holy refrain, sounding far off but clear in the dusty course of work and duty; or it ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... domains, surrounded by his relatives and friends, Count Julian went on to complete his web of treason. In this he was aided by his brother-in-law, Oppas, the Bishop of Seville: a man dark and perfidious as the night, but devout in demeanor, and smoothly plausible in council. This artful prelate had contrived to work himself into the entire confidence of the king, and had even prevailed upon him to permit his nephews, Evan and Siseburto, the exiled sons of Witiza, to return into ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... same treatise it would appear that angling is a more industrious and devout employment than it is generally considered: "For when ye purpose to go on your disportes in fishynge ye will not desyre greatlye many persons with you, which might let you of your game. And that ye may serve God devoutly in saying effectually your customable prayers. And thus ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... after they were married: 'For you are the gift of the sun I have loved so long and so well.' And my grandfather Titbottom would lay his hand so tenderly upon the golden hair of his young bride, that you could fancy him a devout ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... this preliminary stage than by a mild demonstration of this kind. Appearances were everything; so they had concluded, not for the first time. And it was precisely then that the simple-minded PARROCO, surrounded by a knot of devout believers, pointed to the playful cloudlets of smoke as they issued from the mouth of the crater and apposite, but calculated to calm the minds of his hearers. He said that no rosy schoolboy, smoking his first cigarette, ever looked more innocent. An ominous, fateful speech! ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... so certain of that. The convent has great hopes of inheriting her fortune. She is rich, and she is a devout Catholic; and we have heard of cases where zeal for the Church ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... himself examined the games with great care, and finding that he ought to have won, he was astonished that his adversary should have gained contrary to all reason, and suspected that he had used some secret art whereby he was prevented from seeing clearly; and as he was very devout, and was possessed of a rosary rich with many relics of saints, he resolved to play again with his antagonist, armed not only with the rosary, but strengthened by having previously received the sacrament: by these means he conquered his adversary, who, after his defeat, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... which will move mountains and translate them into the sea?(103) Can you not overcome your indolence and your repugnance, and patiently and persistently implore from on high that superior vision which pierces the clouds and sees in everything the hand of God? Surely you can say, with the devout author of the Imitation of Christ, "Behold, Oh beloved Father, I am in Thy hands, I bow myself under the rod of Thy correction. Strike my back and my neck too, that my crookedness may be conformed to Thy will."(104) Here again, remember ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... excelling him in richness—it has a warm, graceful garb of its own. It is tinged with the glowing hues of Spenser's fancy; baptized in the fountains of sacred love, it draws an earthly inspiration from the beautiful in nature and life, as in the devout paintings of the great Italian masters, we find the models of their angels and seraphs ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... people was not imbittered by any mixture of theological rancor; nor was it confined by the chains of any speculative system. The devout polytheist, though fondly attached to his national rites, admitted with implicit faith the different religions of the earth. [3] Fear, gratitude, and curiosity, a dream or an omen, a singular disorder, or a distant journey, perpetually disposed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... for men to mix up their own fancies, or the vain conceits of others, with divine truth,—or rather, how hard it is to avoid doing so,—we may see by the case of John Wesley. Wesley was one of the most devout, and conscientious, and, on the whole, one of the most rational, Scriptural, practical and common-sense men the Christian Church ever had. Compared with theologians generally, he was worthy of the highest praise. He had the greatest reverence for the ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... inhabited for a few hours once a week. But, while he was anticipating earthly misery by the loss of the greatest blessing that kind Heaven had ever bestowed upon man, my angelic mother's soul and body were alike absorbed in the most devout and earnest prayer. In the mean time, the beautiful rosy hue, that had spread such a lustre over her fair face, disappeared. My father's intense anxiety now became so obvious to me that the dreadful uneasiness of mind which he displayed drew my attention to the paleness which had succeeded ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... was because the only church in the place had been cut off in the last slicing away by the engineers. Hymns of thanksgiving ascended to heaven, and the whole garrison fell on their knees, praying fervently to Almighty God, with devout and grateful hearts. It was not an ignoble spectacle to see those veterans kneeling where there was scarce room to kneel, amid ruin and desolation, to praise the Lord for his mercies. But to explain this general ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... lightning snapped across the heavens. It was as though the sky screened a world of dazzling glory into which a glimpse had now been offered by a momentary crack in the screen. The flash was followed by a devout peal of thunder, as if a giant whose abode was in those dark clouds broke into a murmur of glorification at sight of the splendors above the sky. The trees shuddered, awe-stricken. I went under cover. A farmer was chasing ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... always followed by the noun which is the name of the thing possessed, expressed or understood."—Felton's Gram., p. 61; Revised Edition, pp. 64 and 86. "Hadmer of Aggstein was as pious, devout, and praying a Christian, as were Nelson, Washington, or Jefferson; or as are Wellington, Tyler, Clay, or Polk."—H. C. WRIGHT: Liberator, Vol. xv, p. 21. "A word in the possessive case is not an independent noun, and cannot stand by its self."—Wright's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... incidents. But there is much of the bright, sharp, unerring skill, with which in boyhood he gave the look of age to the head of a faun by chipping a tooth from its jaw with a single stroke of the hammer. For Dante, the amiable and devout materialism of the middle age sanctifies all that is presented by hand and eye; while Michelangelo is always pressing forward from the outward beauty—il bel del fuor che agli occhi piace, to apprehend the unseen beauty; trascenda nella forma universale— that abstract form of beauty, ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... argument than that of its place in the body. Mine own belief is that the soul hath her seat in the abdomen—in which faith we may discern and interpret a truth hitherto unintelligible, namely that the glutton is of all men most devout. He is said in the Scripture to 'make a god of his belly' —why, then, should he not be pious, having ever his Deity with him to freshen his faith? Who so well as he can know the might and majesty that he shrines? Truly and soberly, the soul and the stomach are one ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... being in Vendome. As I studied her, I detected signs of an inmost thought, in spite of the blooming health that glowed in her dimpled face. There was in her soul some element of ruth or of hope; her manner suggested a secret, like the expression of devout souls who pray in excess, or of a girl who has killed her child and for ever hears its last cry. Nevertheless, she was simple and clumsy in her ways; her vacant smile had nothing criminal in it, and you would have pronounced her innocent only ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... The Rabbis, we are told, forbade the children of Israel to puff the fire on the Sabbath with bellows, though they might keep it going by blowing through a straw. Wherefore, to this day, certain of the devout 'keep it a-going' by means of a straw—only by some strange mistake in interpretation, or by some vowel-points getting mislaid, they, instead of blowing from them in the straw, suck toward them. And their 'society' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... somewhere in nooks and corners, under the eye of the tythingmen. On each side of the entrance places were reserved where, on entering, the men could deposit their loaded guns under the care of an appointed guard. While the faithful pastor was warning his devout hearers against the wiles of the tempter within, the sentinel, stationed in the turret above, watched all approaches, to guard against surprisal ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... what may be the cause, but the American visitor does notice that the English attitude towards the laws of the realm is not so devout as he had been led to expect. We have from our earliest youth been taught to believe that the law-abidingness of the Englishman was innate and impeccable. It was not that, like the good man of whom the Psalmist speaks, he meditated on the law day ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... At Eton he had Gladstone for a school-mate, and at Oxford he was in the same college with Dalhousie, the future governor-general of India. He was also distinguished in two ways: he was a sincere Christian of the devout evangelical type, and he had a gift of speech that would have been remarkable in any man, but was remarkable most of all in a high official of a rather tongue-tied race. His native gift of eloquence was carefully cultivated and proved to be of great value in many points in his public career. ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... bought from the national domain under the Reign of Terror by the father of Mademoiselle Gamard, no one objected under the Restoration to the old maid's retaining it, because she took priests to board and was very devout; it may be that religious persons gave her credit for the intention of leaving the ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... attending more than half a day in the week. To attend public worship more than one hour in seven days must be very fatiguing to a person of genteel habits—besides it would be countenancing an old established custom. In former times, a serious and devout attention to divine service was not thought improper; but should a gentleman of modern manners attend public worship, to discover, according to the law of the polite, what new face of fashion appears, I need not mention the absurdity ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... of the wind it began to fill and sink, and at the same time to revolve swiftly. John understood that all was finished, and that to stop in the cart would only mean certain death, because they would be held under water by the canvas tent. So with a devout aspiration for assistance he seized Jess round the waist with one arm and sprang off into the river. As he leapt the cart ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... things; the way and will and providential dealings of God are investigated. All this is done with the greatest propriety, with the most consummate skill; and, notwithstanding the expression of some erroneous opinions, all is under the influence of a devout and sanctified temper ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... doubt accurate. The writer adds that there was no actual edifice on this site before the one now existing was built, but there was a miraculous picture of the Virgin placed in a mural niche, before which the pious herdsmen and devout inhabitants of the valley worshipped under the vault of heaven. {190} A miraculous (or miracle-working) picture was always more or less rare and important; the present site, therefore, seems to have been long one of peculiar sanctity. Possibly ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... of spirits, as he so wondrously does in his treatise on prayer. To use the language of Milton—'These are works that could not be composed by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and send out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases, without reference to station, birth, or education.' The tent-maker ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... became of him, till he was profess'd; and then he wrote his own Story to the Prince his Father, to his Mistress, and his ungrateful Brother. The young Princess did not long survive his Loss, she languished from the Moment of his Departure; and he had this to confirm his devout Life, to know she ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... in the height of the season, still quite numerous, for spring was very late this year, and it came with delightful freshness. The flower-sellers besieged the hurried passers-by, as well as those who paused at the shop-windows, and, devout Catholic as Montfanon was, he tasted, in the face of the picturesque scene of a beautiful morning in his favorite city, the pleasure of crowning that impression of a bright moment by a dream of eternity. He had only to turn his eyes to the ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... slipped back and counted itself with the years that are spent and the first yellow gleam appeared in the sky, Michael saw the tall figures go down on their knees and press their foreheads to the sand. It was their third prayer of the day: devout Mohammedans begin their new day at sunset; their second prayer is at nightfall, when it is quite dark; their third is ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Why he consented to the method of arbitration is one of the mysteries of his career. Taking all the possibilities into account, the fact that the issue passed without civil war is an occasion of devout thankfulness to Almighty God. But the method of determining the question is one which the good sense of the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... solid rock to enable his boats to get close to the shore. His real name was Carter. He became the leader of the Cornish smugglers, and kept the "Old King of Prussia Inn," though having the reputation of being a "devout Methodist." He was said to be so named because he bore some resemblance to Frederick the Great, the King of Prussia. We had seen other inns in the south of the same name, but whether they were named after the king or the smuggler we could not say. He seemed ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... believe it, when Sylvia came home, ablaze with excitement over the story, she found that the only thing that her relatives were able to see in it was the Book of Job! Under the burden of her afflictions the woman had become devout; and how could anyone fail to see in this the deep purposes of Providence revealed? "Verily," said "Miss Margaret," "'whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth.' We are told in the Lord's Word that 'the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children, even unto ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... Valentine said, assuming a devout earnestness to trick her more, and watching for the puzzled expression to grow and to deepen in her eyes,—"this man had a holy nature, or I will say an unalterable will to do only things pure, reserved, refined—things ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... in Rome, for I saw them only to-day, going into the Gesu. They must be very devout gentlemen, for I often see them in churches, and their servant has been valet to a bishop, and understands the ceremonials perfectly. It is a pleasure to talk with him. He can tell the meaning of every vestment and of every change in a pontifical ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... view of half a century on the lecture platform brings to me precious and beautiful memories, and fills my soul with devout gratitude for the blessings and kindnesses which have been given to me so far beyond my deserts. So much more success has come to my hands than I ever expected; so much more of good have I found than even youth's wildest dream included; so much more effective have been my weakest endeavors ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... kindly humorists. Davidson was a Borderer, born on the skirts of 'stormy Ruberslaw,' in the country of James Thomson, of Leyden, of the old Ballad minstrels. The son of a Scottish peasant line of the old sort, honourable, refined, devout, he was educated in Edinburgh for the ministry of the United Presbyterian Church. Some beautiful verses of his appeared in the St. Andrews University Magazine about 1863, at the time when I first 'saw myself in print' in the same periodical. ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... bound by vows to live a life of religious worship or service. Devout adherents of a cult or religion. Persons fervently devoted to a leader or ideal; faithful followers. Persons filled with enthusiasm, as for ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward |
