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More "Edifying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour. Let him that stole steal no more, let no corrupt conversation proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice. And be ye kind one to another, tender hearted, ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... they were unable to do so. Seeing this wonder they were moved to repentance and they gave themselves to God and to Mochuda for ever and, till the time of their death, they remained under his guidance and rule and many subsequent edifying and famous acts ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... approached. We have some moralizing on Haman's fall and the working of Providence ([Greek: to theion]), which teaches that "what mischief anyone prepares against another, he unconsciously contrives against himself." Less edifying is the addition that "God laughed to scorn the wicked expectations of Haman, and as He knew what the event would be, He was pleased at it, and that night He took away the king's sleep." The Book of Esther does not mention God: Josephus calls in directly the operation of the Divine ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... yellow fever prevailed to an alarming extent, and that, indeed, the manufacture of coffins was the only business that was at all flourishing at present. Although by no means daunted by these alarming stories, we were glad when the announcement of our boat relieved us from their edifying conversation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... delightful and edifying sight it is, to see hundreds of the most able doctors, all stripped for the combat, each closing with his antagonist, and tugging and tearing, tooth and nail, to lay down and establish truths which have been floating in the air for ages, and which the lower ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... naturally prompts him to insist that the opinions do not really clash, but are in fact identical. You may call this a weakness if you choose, and it certainly involved Mr. Gladstone in much unfruitful and not very edifying exertion; but it is at any rate better than the front of brass that takes any change of opinion for matter-of-course expedient, as to which the least said will be soonest mended. And it is better still than the disastrous self-consciousness ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... was well-known all along the road, to partake of his family supper. If good old Will found a fitting opportunity, he would on such occasions suggest reading a chapter in the Bible, which he expounded in his own peculiar phraseology, in a clear and edifying manner, never failing to offer up a fervent prayer that a blessing might rest on the house of his entertainers, that his honoured master might prosper, and that he and his companions might be preserved from ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... not attempt to conceal his fears. He was certain that they were about to perish and sought consolation in the constant practice of religion, which was edifying but scarcely improved him as a companion. As for Otter, he also believed that the hour of death was nigh, but being a fatalist this did not trouble him much. On the contrary, in spite of Leonard's remonstrances he began to live hard, ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... official, Nassedkine, who has been enriched by the gratuities which he has exacted from those who have had to do business with him, has made it his duty to play censor in his little town. He makes use of a very discreet and edifying method: to all of the citizens whose honor is in danger, he sends one or more anonymous letters telling them of the "extent of ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... national repose of manner which we were to see so often again, south as well as north, and which I find it so beautiful to have seen. In a Europe abounding in volcanic Italians, nervous Germans, and exasperated Frenchmen, it was comforting, it was edifying to see those Castilian peasants so self-respectfully ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... that night, that as votaries of science and devotees of truth and persons of culture and refinement, mutual acquaintance could not but be pleasant as well as helpful, enabling those who sat together while witnessing the astounding and edifying phenomena they were soon to behold, to discuss these phenomena with reciprocal benefit—in view of all this, he hoped everybody would consider themselves introduced ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... tabooed subject which must not be mentioned on the stage or anywhere else outside a criminal court. Hamlet, Oedipus, and The Cenci, Mrs Warren's Profession, Brieux's Maternite, and Les Avaries, Maeterlinck's Monna Vanna and Mr. Granville Barker's Waste may or may not be great poems, or edifying sermons, or important documents, or charming romances: our tribal citizens know nothing about that and do not want to know anything: all that they do know is that incest, prostitution, abortion, contagious diseases, and nudity are improper, and that all conversations, or books, ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... well as adversity, and on the whole the rich are just as much addicted to crime as the poor. The progress of civilisation will not destroy crime. Many savage tribes living under the most primitive forms of social life present a far more edifying spectacle of respect for person and property than the most cultivated classes in Europe and America. All that civilisation has hitherto done is to change the form in which crime is perpetrated; in substance it remains the same. Primary Schools will not accomplish much ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... private room, and the reason of their withdrawal is, that, according to the Chaplain of Newgate, the practice of garroting was suggested to the English thieves by this representation of Indian Thugs. It is edifying, after what I have written in the preceding paragraph, to find that the only lesson known to have been inculcated here is that of a new mode ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he had distinguished himself as a wit and a scholar, as a soldier and a sailor. He had even set his heart on rivalling Bourdaloue and Bossuet. Though an avowed freethinker, he had sate up all night at sea to compose sermons, and had with great difficulty been prevented from edifying the crew of a man of war with his pious oratory. [31] He now addressed the House of Peers, for the first time, with characteristic eloquence, sprightliness, and audacity. He blamed the Commons for not having taken a bolder line. "They have been afraid," he said, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the edifying deaths of the sons of Loyola, who brought the glad tidings of the gospel to the Hurons?—Father Jogues, who returned from the banks of the Niagara with a broken shoulder and mutilated hands, and went back, with sublime persistence, ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... way with their papal rulers. So did our forefathers, and so may any people whose form of government no longer answers the end for which God has commanded civil government to be instituted. The Quakers are now a minority in all the countries in which they exist, and furnish an edifying example of submission to the laws which they can not conscientiously obey. But should they come, in any political society, to be the controlling power, it is plain they would have the right to conduct it ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the relative value of "national character" as compared with the precious metals, will be very edifying to the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... virgins, and summon the wise men of the age and let them teach them philosophy and the rules of behaviour before Kings, and the art of conversation and making verses; and let them talk with them of all manner science and edifying knowledge. And the sages must be Moslems, that they may teach them the language and traditions of the Arabs, together with the history of the Caliphs and the ancient annals of the Kings of Al-Islam; and if we persevere in this for four years' space, we ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... introduce our reader to the interior of the fisher's cottage mentioned in CHAPTER eleventh of this edifying history. I wish I could say that its inside was well arranged, decently furnished, or tolerably clean. On the contrary, I am compelled to admit, there was confusion, there was dilapidation,there was dirt good store. Yet, with all this, there was about the inmates, Luckie Mucklebackit and ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... grown-up fairy-tales of modern times.... The characters ... are finely various and their conversations piquantly fresh and edifying ... a dramatic climax of great strength and beauty ... ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... whether the martyrology of any nation in history can exhibit anything more noble, more edifying—more elevating and inspiring—than the last hours of these doomed Irishmen. Their every thought, their every utterance, was full of tenderness and holiness—full of firmness and cheerful acceptance of God's will. The farewell letters addressed by them to their relatives and friends—from ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... another year, in the convent of San Agustin, where those most godly fathers received him into their house as if he were one of their own order. He, in turn, served them and the whole city with such edifying results as contributed not a little to win their affection; and greatly influenced them to demand our fathers, and receive us in their city—which was done, as we have said. Don Rodrigo Ronquillo de ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... courts in Liverpool which at night-time were absolutely in the dark. Not a single ray of gaslight illuminated them. The doers of evil liked such places; and the courts at nightfall were often full, and sounds the reverse of edifying were apt to proceed ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... thousand men of whom he sent to Lebanon ten thousand every month, and when ten thousand went the others came home, and so two months were they at home, and Adonias was overseer and commander on them. Solomon had seventy thousand men that did nothing but bear stone and mortar and other things to the edifying of the temple, and were bearers of burdens only, and he had eighty thousand of hewers of stone and masons in the mountain, without the prefects and masters, which were three thousand three hundred that did nothing but command and ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... faith, in purity? Did we indeed enter on this office with a single eye to serve God, trusting that we were inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon us this ministration, for the promoting of His glory, and the edifying of His people? Where are the seals of our apostleship? Who that were dead in trespasses and sins have been quickened by our word? Have we a burning zeal to save souls from death? Are we dead to the world ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... these views on the drama wholly edifying. Circuses and sassafras tea were within the range of her experience, and finding that she had struck a point of contact, Mrs. Owen expressed her pity for any child that did not enjoy a round of sassafras tea every spring. Sassafras ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... for the Abbot of Lorsch, for certain friends at Passau, and for other friends in Bohemia, for the monastery at Tegernsee, for the monastery at Preyal, for that at Obermunster, and for my sister's son. Moreover, I sent and gave at different times sermons, proverbs, and edifying writings. Afterward old age's infirmities of various kinds hindered me." Surely Othlonus was justified in retiring when his time came, and enjoying some ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... the City of Rome, among the Canons Regular of the Lateran Church: At length, having his Soul thoroughly tempered with religious Virtue, enlightened with the true Evangelical Faith, and his Understanding enlarged by the most profitable and edifying Studies, he arrived in Ireland about the 60th Year of his Age; and in the Year of our Lord 432, landed in the County of Wicklow, where he began his Ministry, by the Conversion of Sinel, a great Man in that Country, the Grandson of Finchad, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... Allah, I have been heedless of mine affair, and had not God overcome me with His mercy and put this woman at my service, so she might adduce to me manifest instances and truthful cases and goodly admonitions and edifying traits, such as should restore me to the [right] road, [I had come to perdition!]. Wherefore to God be the praise for this and I beseech Him to make my end with her like unto that of the vizier and Shah Bekht." Then ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... dollars for him.' (Every one familiar with the South, must have heard similar encomiums hundreds of times: each household appears to pride itself on the possession of some singularly admirable negro, whose capacity, honesty, and fidelity are vaunted with an air of conscious magnanimity edifying to witness. The desired inference is that the institution, productive of so much mutual appreciation, must be excellent. It never seems to occur to the eulogists that the good is exceptional, or that the praised characteristics might be alleged as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... looking out contemplatively from its squalor at the inspiring view of Nouvelle Orleans, with the freighters, granaries and steamboats, three stories high, floating past; comparing its own inertia—if a city can be presumed capable of such edifying consciousness!—with the aspect of the busy levee, where cotton bales, sugar hogsheads, molasses casks, tobacco, hemp and other staple articles of the South, formed, as it were, a bulwark, or fortification of ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... time of David or Solomon, which J and E inserted in their narrative. Some recent critics,[5] however, are inclined to place them in the post-exilic period, in which case a late editor has substituted them for earlier, probably less edifying, oracles. But the features which are held to indicate late date may be ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... man oweth to the Common-wealth for his defence. It is not enough, for a man to labour for the maintenance of his life; but also to fight, (if need be,) for the securing of his labour. They must either do as the Jewes did after their return from captivity, in re-edifying the Temple, build with one hand, and hold the Sword in the other; or else they must hire others to fight for them. For the Impositions that are layd on the People by the Soveraign Power, are nothing else but the Wages, due to them that ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... edifying, Mrs. Ploughman," said Mrs. Crabbe, "real edifying. Yes," she exclaimed with energy, "these are terrible times. Now they give me tea without sugar in it. For there's no sugar to be had. Well, I won't drink it. I spit it ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... account of the state of her soul, in order to be taught and directed by her confessors, has been examined by me, and with much attention, and I have not found anywhere in it anything which, in my opinion, is erroneous in doctrine. On the contrary, there are many things in it highly edifying and instructive for those who give themselves to prayer. The great experience of this religious, her discretion also and her humility, which made her always seek for light and learning in her confessors, enabled her to speak with an accuracy on the ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... over the edifying conversation of those two ladies—Miss Favoretta was kept awake, and in such high spirits by flattery, that she did not perceive how late it was—she begged to stay up a little ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... into this the pilgrims plunge their palms and vigorously rub their eyes with them, as a protection against blindness. This concludes the religious side of the Pardon, and immediately after its less edifying ceremonies begin. ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... as inconceivable anything that savors of the theatrical. We must believe that he was always true to himself, and that the subjection which he rendered to Joseph and Mary sprang from a real sense of childhood's dependence, and was not a show of obedience for any edifying end ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... Tennyson called "the chips of the workshop" is not as a rule an edifying business, but the evolution of a great national ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... Love puts into English The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, "with more put to in certain parts, and also with drawing out of divers authorities and matters as it seemeth to the writer hereof most speedful and edifying to them that be of simple understanding."[131] Such incidental citation of authority is evident in St. Paula, published by Dr. Horstmann side by side with its Latin original.[132] With more simplicity and less display of learning, the translator of religious works ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... that same Spirit divides severally, as He will, spiritual gifts for service. As a natural result of being untaught in these important practical matters, believers' meetings had proved rather opportunities for unprofitable talk than godly edifying which is in faith. The only hope of meeting such errors and supplying such lack lay in faithful scripture teaching, and he undertook for a time to act as the sole teacher in these gatherings, that the word of God might have free course ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... not his disguise:—along The galleries from room to room they walk'd, A virgin-like and edifying throng, By eunuchs flank'd; while at their head there stalk'd A dame who kept up discipline among The female ranks, so that none stirr'd or talk'd Without her sanction on their she-parades: Her title was 'the ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... in Clones, who was talking to me on Sabbath School work and missionary enterprise in a highly edifying manner, could only express her surprise about the poor of her own people who were doomed to the poor house, that they did not go in at once without struggle or fuss. And yet she had been a mother, and must have known what ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... authority that a distinguished informer of antiquity seized with remorse, threw away his blood-money, 'went forth and hanged himself.' We know that in times within the memory of living men a government actually set the edifying and praiseworthy example of hanging an informer when they had no further use of his valuable services—thus dropping his acquaintance with effect. I have no wish for such a fate to any of the informers who have cropped out so luxuriantly in these latter ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... appeared to me, had no business in such a place at all, further, at least, than as casual inquirers. Among all the beer-drinkers present, however, my red-nosed acquaintance and his curate were the most industrious. It was quite edifying to see with what rapidity their pitchers were emptied, and how sedulously the hostess,—uninvited, though certainly unchecked,—replenished them; and when I add, that each pitcher contained a good quart, the amount ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... were not quite throwing away our time. Albert B—— dined with us, and in the evening, with one accord, we went to hear Dr. Hamilton again. We had good seats and heard a most beautiful as well as edifying discourse on the first verses of the 103d Psalm. Some of the images were very fine, and the whole tone of the sermon was moderate, sensible, and serious. I use these words advisedly, for I had an impression that he ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... made. I was handed over to Shegaw, and the whole of Wamegon's tribe set to work to drink up the spirits. They were not long in doing that. When last I saw my Indian mother and tyrannical old father, they both lay on the ground helplessly tipsy. It was not a very edifying spectacle, but I was very well aware that my new owners would, should an opportunity occur, reduce themselves ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... ungodly, both at Kilwinning and Dalry; and if it has no respect to Protestant principles, I doubt it's but another dose o' the radical poison in a new guise." Mr. Icenor, however, thought that "the observe on the great Doctor Drystour was very edifying; and that they should see about getting him to help ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... we rode through a crowd, murmuring hymns, pouring from the chapel, where, no doubt, they had heard some edifying discourse about the "sweet Jesus," and "sweet experiences," and "new birth," the omnipotence of faith to salvation, and all and every topic but a man's just indignation, and a religious man's most solemn denunciation against the bloody and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... ladylike knowledge of botany and geology, the knack of making poetry, the power of rattling sonatas in the Herz-manner, and so forth, are far more valuable endowments for a female, than those fugitive charms which a few years will inevitably tarnish. It is quite edifying to hear women speculate upon the worthlessness and the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... barest necessaries were left behind, and the Austrians gave hardly anything beyond bread, and at times a little meat. The typhus patients were thus dependent almost entirely on the aliments which the Scottish Mission could furnish out of their own means. It was edifying to see how they solved the problem. Every day, their Chief, Dr. Inglis, and Mrs. Haverfield at the head, the nurses off duty, with empty sacks and baskets slung over their shoulders, tramped for miles to the villages around Krushevatz, and after several hours' march through the narrow, ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... but would have held themselves free to consider whether the district in which martial law was exercised was materially affected by the state of war or not. The legal controversy ended in a manner hardly edifying to the layman; in the course of 1865 the Supreme Court solemnly tried out the question of the right of one Milligan to a writ of habeas corpus. At that time the war, the only ground on which the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... about me?" he inquired, as he came. "Don't let me interrupt, I beg. I know I'm an edifying ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... to deal with countless numbers of families, and what he saw was not always edifying. Home was a conception which was only now forcing its way downward from the middle classes. Even in periods of normal employment the workers earned little enough when it came to providing a decent family ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... a liar and an idler from his infancy. Enter again the Miser along with poor Lowry, who asks the Miser for meal and other articles, but gets nothing but threatening language. There is then a very edifying dialogue between Mr Contemplation and Mr Truth, who, when they retire, are succeeded on the stage by the Miser and John the Tavern-keeper. The publican owes the Miser money, and begs that he will be merciful to him. The Miser, however, swears that he will be satisfied with nothing but bond ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... to him whatever impulse he pleases. In this sort of dream he raves and resolves, he fights or he flies, and then wakes to confused memory of just what the author thinks fit to call to his recollection. It is very interesting and edifying, truly, to watch the movements of an irrational puppet! I do beg of you, when you take up the functions of the novelist, not to distribute this species of intoxication amongst your dramatis personae, more largely than is absolutely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... but being a novelty to the London "gamins," it attracted more notice from them than we could have wished. After Signora Mortera and her children had attended the confessional she seemed to be much easier in her mind, and was so amiable as to tell my mother on our return home that it was edifying to behold the signorina walking like a Roman matron, in contrast to those who were giggling and turning their heads first one way and then the other, like so many pulcinelle. Notwithstanding this compliment, however, I perceived that she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... no untrue assertions. Ask anyone of sound, natural judgment, how many sensible, edifying, worthy women are found at once in a ball-room or concert-room, or any other rendezvous of fashionable society. The answer, if not convincing, would at least be surprising. And yet, every year, numbers of these golden-haired, blue eyed girls leave ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... conflict with the nature of a confession as long as it is not mere cold intellectual reflection and abstraction, but the warm, living, and immediate language of the believing heart. With all its thoroughness and erudition the Apology is truly edifying, especially the German version. One cannot read without being touched in his inmost heart, without sensing and feeling something of the heart-beat of the Lutheran confessors. Jacobs, who translated the Apology into English, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... the yellow omnibus was waiting for some of us as we dawdled about in the school-room, titivating; the masters nowhere, as usual on a Sunday morning; and some of the boys began to sing in chorus a not very edifying chanson, which they did not "Bowdlerize," about a holy Capuchin friar; it began (if I ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... of England and France. Their great period was the fifty years from 1470 to 1520, and |147| they were performed, like the divozioni, by confraternities of religious laymen. The actors were boys belonging to the brotherhoods, and the plays were intended to be edifying for youth. They are more refined than the northern religious dramas, but only too often ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... imperative. He hurried thither, and was mysteriously lost to sight (529). Tradition accounts for his death in several ways. If Xenophon is to be credited, he died peaceably on his bed, surrounded by his children, and edifying those present by his wisdom and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... tragedian, and my uncle was also a great tragedian, and that we had a baby in the nursery who I thought must be a great tragedian too, for she did nothing but cry, and what was that if not tragedy?—which edifying discourse found its way back to my mother, to whom Talma laughingly repeated it. I have heard my father say that on the occasion of this visit of Talma's to London, he consulted my uncle on the subject of acting in English. Hamlet was one of his great parts, and he made as ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... select the handsomest material procurable,—why not now, for an occasion so great that I ought hardly mention it in comparison? But, after all," mused she, later, "the children's arrangement is the best. I am happy that Constance is so free from frivolity, and has shown so edifying a spirit." ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... infidel haruspex. We see the same men diligently attending religious services; uttering assents to confessions of which they really reject every syllable; kneeling, rising, bowing, with deceptive solemnity; even partaking of the sacrament with a consummate devoutness that is very edifying to all who are not in the secret, and who do not know that they are acting a part, and making a mock both of their own reason and their own probity, merely to please persons whose delusions they pity and despise from the bottom ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... Captain Bonneville's supervision of the industrious and frolicsome community of beavers, of which he has given so edifying an account, he succeeded in extricating himself from the Wind River Mountains, and regaining the plain to the eastward, made a great bend to the south, so as to go round the bases of the mountains, and arrived without further incident of importance, at the old place of rendezvous ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... If they are regarded as actual evils, they will probably be endured with sullenness, or submitted to with defiance and scorn, or surmounted with pride and self-inflation. Even in the writings of the later Stoics, which abound in edifying precepts of fortitude and courage under trial, there is an undertone of defiance, as if the sufferer were contending with a hostile force, and a constant tendency to extol and almost deify the energy of soul which the good man displays in fighting with a hard destiny. If, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... that will keep it forever a sealed book to the Young Person. His translations of Camoens is said to be a wonderful rendition of the spirit of the Portuguese Homer. His Catullus is familiar to students, but not edifying. He wrote a curious volume on Falconry in India, and a manual of bayonet exercise. He collated a strange volume of African folk-lore. He translated several Brazilian tales. He translated Apulius' "Golden Ass." And he had notes for a book ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... meetings for mutual inspiration. "What is it then, brethren: When ye come together, each one hath a psalm, hath a teaching, hath a revelation, hath a tongue, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying." Here was room for variety to suit the needs ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... concerning prayer in some directions, the same has surely to be said about the ethical temper of the age, as shown in our enlarged conceptions of God. To put it bluntly, much of the language about what used to be called "special providences" has become unreal and ceased to be edifying for us. On this whole subject some words of Principal Adeney's can ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... cries. Regardless of this effect of his interference in the proceedings of the evening, Donald, with a countenance beaming with hilarity, and eyes sparkling with wild and reckless glee, took up a conspicuous position in the room, and from thence commenced edifying the dancers by a series of short abrupt shouts or yells, accompanied by a vigorous clapping of his hands, at once to intimate his satisfaction with the performances, and to encourage the performers themselves ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... until its devotions for the day are over. There was just one exception to this. For some reason best known to himself, Sir John Gorst (he is usually at variance with his friends) had come down early on June 28th, and was in his place with edifying aspect to listen to the solemn ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... some newly put up, and others mossy and grey; it was a humbling yet an edifying sight, preaching, as forcibly as ever Maister Wiggie did in his best days, of the vanity and the passingness of all human enjoyments. Mouldered to dust beneath the turfs lay the blithe laddies with whom I have a hundred times played merry games on moonlight nights; some were soon cut off; others ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... pealing anthem of the organ. It was the men's temperance retreat conducted by the missioner, the reverend John Hughes S. J., rosary, sermon and benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament. They were there gathered together without distinction of social class (and a most edifying spectacle it was to see) in that simple fane beside the waves, after the storms of this weary world, kneeling before the feet of the immaculate, reciting the litany of Our Lady of Loreto, beseeching her to intercede ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... herself, who read so many novels as Madame Fribsby. She had plenty of time for this amusement, for, in truth, very few people besides the folks at the Rectory and Fairoaks employed her; and by a perpetual perusal of such works (which were by no means so moral or edifying in the days of which we write, as they are at present) she had got to be so absurdly sentimental, that in her eyes life was nothing but an immense love-match; and she never could see two people together, but she fancied they were ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of Paratounca. On Sunday, the 26th, I attended him to church. The congregation consisted of his own family, three Kamtschadale men, and three boys, who assisted in singing part of the service; the whole of which was performed in a very solemn and edifying manner. The church is of wood, and by far the best building either in this town or that of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. It is ornamented with many paintings, particularly with two pictures of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, presented by Beering; and which, in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... priests received Holy Communion from his hands. The priests at the same time offered the holy sacrifice at other altars. With one accord they supplicated the Queen of Heaven to bless their undertaking, and forever keep the Isle of Montreal under her special protection. At the close of the edifying ceremony the Associates assembled at the Hotel de Lanzon to hold their first meeting. The plan being already matured, it was resolved that in the spring of the year they would get ready a sufficient number of ships, three of which were ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... her, would give up anything in London just to be quietly with her, would marry her now, ravaged though she was, worn, twice a widow, with a past behind her which he must know about, and which was not edifying. And yet she could not love him, partly, perhaps chiefly, because there was still rooted in her that ineradicable passion—it must be that, even now, a passion—for youth and the fascination of youth. When at last he had gone she had felt unusually bitter for a few minutes, had asked herself, ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... been up to the elbows, as it were, in the diplomacy of an unscrupulous, grasping age ever since his college days. He had been behind the scenes in more than one European crisis, and that which goes on behind the scenes is not always edifying or conducive to a squeamishness of touch. He was not the man to be mawkishly afraid of soiling his fingers. But the small ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... themselves" in the broadest sense of the term) were surprisingly good, considering that the adults of her people were decidedly cow-like in white society, and scoffed sea-eggs, shell-fish, and mutton-birds at home with a gallop which was not edifying. Her appetite, it was true, was painful at times to the poetic side of the teacher's nature; but he supposed that she'd been half-starved at home, poor girl, and would get over it. Anyway, the copy he'd get out of her ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... It would not be edifying to follow the great Chief through the various campaigns—including those of Minisink and Mohawk Valley—in which he was engaged until the Treaty of 1782 put an end to the sanguinary war. In that Treaty, which restored peace between Great Britain ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... is Mrs. Painter, who passes for a most respectable woman, and a model in society. There is no use in saying what you really know regarding her and her goings on. There is Diana Hunter—what a little haughty prude it is; and yet WE know stories about her which are not altogether edifying. I say it is best, for the sake of the good, that the bad should not all be found out. You don't want your children to know the history of that lady in the next box, who is so handsome, and whom they admire ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pompous ceremonials in the worship of God, for they seemed useless and idolatrous. God was a Spirit, and to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. And set singing was to be dispensed with, like set forms of prayer, and only edifying as prompted by the Spirit. He even objected to splendid places for the worship of God, and dispensed with steeples, and bells, and organs. The sacraments, too, were needless, being mere symbols, or ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... week we had dolls' day, when all the children who owned them brought their dolls, and the exercises were ordered with the single view of amusing and edifying them. The picture of that circle of ragged children comes before me now and dims my eyes with its ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... filled with a fashionable mob, including ladies of the highest rank. An admission by noble non-subscribers with notes, gold, and cheques in hands, was begged for with a polite insinuating humility that was quite edifying. A hatful of ten-guinea subscriptions was thrust upon the unwilling secretary at the door with as much eagerness as if he had been the allotter of shares in a ten per cent railway in the day of Hudsonian guarantees. And it must be observed that this crowd included among the mere fashion-mongers ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... such a hand better than mine," said he, with a sneer. And then, turning lightly about, he added: "Are there to be no more of these d—-d fine blows, gentlemen? For shame, to give up such a profitable and edifying game!" ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... stretched. Ferguson rolled lazily off the couch. "Well," he said with a yawn, "this has been very edifying. I've heard it all before in a hundred bull sessions, and I suppose I'll hear it all again. I don't know why I've hung around. There's a little dame that I've got to write a letter to, and, believe me, she's a damn sight more interesting than all your bull." He strolled out of the door, ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... the most touching and edifying fairy-tale imaginable, this true story of H.M. Albert I. and H.M. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... these delightful meetings that a great deal of such highly-spiced talk was to be heard at them. But even this fly was afterwards removed from the amber; for Mrs Bulteel—the brewer's lady—who wore London dresses, and was much the most fashionable person in Cullerne, proposed that some edifying book should be read aloud on Dorcas afternoons to the assembled workers. It was true that Mrs Flint said she only did so because she thought she had a fine voice; but however that might be, she proposed it, and no one cared to run counter ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... themselves; their salvation was merely a matter of obeying the teachings of the Koran unquestioningly. Obedience and surrender were their watchwords. How much better were Akhnaton's "Love and the Companionship of God"! To walk and talk with God, how much more enjoyable, how much more edifying to man's higher self, than the mere obeying of His laws! Even though they prayed, these simple Moslems, five times a day, they never recognized God's voice in the song of the birds: they did not know that it was He Who was singing—the ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... my morals were too edifying those years. But they were as good as the men I went with and I kept myself in hand. I saw men go to pieces with drink—and I didn't drink. I saw men go to pieces over women—and I kept away from that kind of woman. A man has to have women in his life ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... there. Since then he had come into the world again, much to his annoyance and repentance; having fallen desperately in love in his old age with a French actress, who had done, as most ladies of her character do,—ruined him, left him, and laughed at him. His repentance was very edifying. Under the guidance of Messieurs of the Irish College, he once more turned his thoughts towards religion; and his only prayer to me when I saw him and asked in what I could relieve him, was to pay a handsome fee to the convent into which ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pleasure. Disappearing in the narrow streets, he disappears also from the pages of our narrative until, in the extraordinary vicissitudes of time, he makes his appearance again in a scene both touching and edifying. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... United States, without which the Ashburton Treaty would have been nothing, and the negotiator of that treaty less than nothing." The quickness and fitness of this at once banished every doubtful or unfriendly feeling. The company clustered around the magnate, whose sprightly and edifying conversation never failed to excite admiration, and the remainder of the evening was spent in a manner most agreeable ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... very simple affair, for she herself would have instantly killed father or mother at an order from above, and nothing, she averred, could displease the Lord if the intention were commendable. The Countess, taking advantage of the sacred authority of her unexpected ally, drew her on to make an edifying paraphrase, as it were, on the well-known moral maxim: "The end ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... And this eccentric specialty, the Duke, though he was no Solomon, had the wit to discover. In his cups the ex-groom, ex-valet, was not reticent about his sovereign master, and his talk was not altogether of an edifying nature. One sally sticks in my memory. "Ah, yes! He was a grand favourite with the women. But I have had the grooming of him; and it was a wuss job than ever ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... career by ridiculing a poetical country, Greece, whose guest he had been, and whose sovereign and ministers had received him with confidence,—repaying three years of hospitality by a satire of three hundred pages. "Greece and the Greeks" was translated into several languages. This edifying publication, which put the laughers on his side, was followed by a different sort of work, which came near producing on this budding reputation the effect of an April frost upon an almond-tree in blossom. Voltaire's heir had found no better ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... looked on this occasion as more than mortal; the venerable ecclesiastics, to whose advice and zeal this glorious conquest ought in a great measure to be attributed, moved along with hearts swelling with holy exultation, but with chastened and downcast looks of edifying humility; while the hardy warriors, in tossing plumes and shining steel, seemed elevated with a stern joy at finding themselves in possession of this object of so many toils and perils. As the streets resounded ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... those who have lent themselves with such delight to the execution of bad laws? of laws that, for the sake of religion and Christianity, never ought to have been effected? Are they men of moral and Christian lives? men whose walk has been edifying in the sight of their fellows? are they men to whom society could look up as examples of private virtue and the decorous influence of religion? are they men who, on the Sabbath of God, repair with their wives ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... in this edifying fashion, the table had been laid, and we sat down to supper. She ate for two and I for four, our excellent appetite being excited by the delicate cheer. A sumptuous dessert was served in splendid silver-gilt ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... 1880, quickly, of an attack of pneumonia or acute bronchitis. She died a most edifying death, in perfect consciousness, assisted by the Confessor ... and the Community around her, and having received the last Sacraments only a few hours before she expired. As to her appearance, she was short, rather fair, not at all stout, but ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... the shower and started drying himself. Up to now, he thought, he had depended on Dr. Thomas O'Connor for edifying, trustworthy and reasonably complete information about psionics and psi phenomena in general. He had looked on O'Connor as a sort of living version of an extremely good edition of the Britannica, always available ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... in America, is now for the first time published in English. A brief sketch of the religious Order to which he belonged, of the life he led, and of the Monastery he founded, may give added interest to his own simple and edifying narrative. ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul
... This edifying ceremony could easily be seen from the square, as the windows are very near the ground, and were also open. On such occasions continual salutes are fired from the imperial ships, and sometimes ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... pleasures, of the time. We learn, from a poem of his enemy Milbourne, that Dryden's person was advantageous; and that, in the younger part of his life, he was distinguished by the emulous favour of the fair sex.[14] And although it would not be edifying, were it possible, to trace instances of his success in gallantry, we may barely notice his intrigue with Mrs. Reeve, a beautiful actress, who performed in many of his plays. This amour was probably terminated before ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... Both were at the same time, at Altona, accepted as members of the body of Christ [the Labadist church].... She loved her husband tenderly, but when God called him elsewhere, to the service of His work and children, she embraced His will therein with much love; which was especially edifying in her, since before this, when she was living in the world, she was wont to be in great anxiety whenever he was away from home on their own concerns. At Bremen, when a portion of our community was there, then at Altona, and ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... to gore without mercy. Shelley said the Mosaic and Christian dispensation were inconsistent. I swore they were not, and that the Ten Commandments had been the foundation of all the codes of law on the earth. Shelley denied it. I affirmed they were, neither of us using an atom of logic.' This edifying controversy continued until all parties grew very warm, and said unpleasant things to one another. After this dinner, Haydon made up his mind to subject himself no more to the chance of these discussions, but gradually to withdraw from ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... exercise our most solemn thoughts, and employ our gravest discourses: all our speech therefore about them should be wholesome, apt to afford good instruction, or to excite good affections; "good," as St. Paul speaketh, "for the use of edifying, that it may minister grace ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... uttering words "unbecoming an officer and a gentleman;" for "being overhauled by a girl" after he had "made a confounded fool of himself trying a land-lubber's stunt" was not a role which seemed in any degree an edifying ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... deserved their praises, By an impartial indemnification For all her past exertion and soft phrases, In a most edifying conversation, Which turned upon their late guests' miens and faces, Their families, even to the last relation; Their hideous wives, their horrid selves and dresses, And ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... this follows a hushing up and wiping up among the juvenile population, and a series of remarks commences from the various shelves of a very edifying and instructive tendency. One says that the woman did not seem to know where anything was; another says that she has waked them all up; a third adds that she has waked up all the children, too; and the elderly ladies make moral reflections on the ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... be meditating upon heaven and hell, giving little heed to the pettiness of this earth, and she could not shield her son from such edifying spectacles. Petra's educational system consisted only of giving Manuel an occasional blow and of ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... Whether the view of criminals chained in pairs and kept at hard labour would not be very edifying ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... Prigs"—a royalist captain of some distinction, was hanged, drawn, and quartered, in 1652. Some good stories are told of him. He had the credit of robbing Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Peters. His discourse to Peters is particularly edifying. ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... confident that in many to whom our unexampled past of four thousand years' duration is now terra incognita, it will arouse enthusiastic interest, and even to those who, like the translator himself, differ from the author in religious views, it will furnish edifying and suggestive ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... himself with a practically simple recital of the initiations, later redactors, under the influence of the Crusades, and the Longinus legend—possibly also actuated by a desire to substitute a more edifying explanation than that originally offered—added a directly Christian interpretation of the Lance. As it is concerning the Lance alone that Gawain asks, the first modification must have been at this point; the ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... to the Purgatory of St. Patrick, which is also included in the same Middle English Legendary. Ireland further contributed in some measure to the common stock of medieval stories which were used as illustrations by the preachers and in works of an edifying character. ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... of the absurdity of the attempted amalgamation of Judaism and Christianity. But what he dealt most fully with was the indiscriminate selection of what were very properly termed the "Lessons" from the Hebrew Bible. It was, he said, far from edifying to hear some chapters read out from the lectern without comment; though fortunately the readers were as a rule so imperfectly trained that the most objectionable passages had their potentiality of mischief minimized. He concluded his indictment by a reference to a sermon preached by the average clergyman ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... and style of the innumerable extracts in this volume, we find passages of pure sublimity, of solemn and pathetic eloquence, of flower-like grace and sweetness, followed by exhortations apparently modelled upon those of Mr. Chadband, but doubtless comforting and edifying to Mrs. Snagsby in the congregation, and not, we suppose, without use to Mrs. Snagsby in the parlor where she sits down to peruse the volume on Sunday afternoon. For according to the story which Mr. Beecher tells his publishers in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... to the foot of a considerable hill. As we ascended it Rouville began to ask questions concerning our conditions and prospects at home, and Shaw was edifying him with a minute account of an imaginary wife and child, to which he listened with implicit faith. Reaching the top of the hill we saw the windings of Horse Creek on the plains below us, and a little on the left we could distinguish ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... 'Well, Sally, there you are!' involved himself in a discursive address from Mrs Sprodgkin, revolving around the result that she regarded tea and sugar in the light of myrrh and frankincense, and considered bread and butter identical with locusts and wild honey. Having communicated this edifying piece of information, Mrs Sprodgkin was left still unadjourned in the hall, and Mr and Mrs Milvey hurried in a heated condition to the railway station. All of which is here recorded to the honour of that good Christian pair, representatives of ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... patches against the stable walls or the trunk of a tree. Indeed, the clever way G——'s miserable little Basuto pony actually climbs inside a good-sized bush, and sways himself about in it with his legs off the ground until the whole thing comes with a crash to the ground, is edifying to behold to every one except the owner of the tree. Tom, the Kafir boy, tried hard to persuade me the other day that the pony was to blame for the destruction of a peach tree, but as the only broken-down branches were those which had been laden with fruit, I am inclined ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... absolutely believed yourself. But you did not know how boundless is a child's readiness to accept what comes as from a spiritual authority, or you would have drawn the line more strongly between doctrine and opinion, fact and allegory, the true and the edifying.' ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... else. The ancient Dutch spinster was a lady, well-bred, dignified and courteous, who held a high place in the elect circle or Old Colonie society, and was not the less esteemed because of her straitened circumstances. Her walk and conversation were no doubt edifying, but the curriculum of her scholastic institute possibly left something to be desired in the departments of higher education. She had one available qualification for her position, however,—being an expert in making and mending quill pens. She spent much of her time during school ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... an autumnal moon. In all the habits of the family she was most exact. Her devotional composure at prayer appeared to be fraught with the humblest piety; her attendance at Meeting was remarkably punctual, and her deportment edifying to an extreme degree. The history, too, of her insanity and its cause had gone far and wide, as did the sympathy which it excited. In all her innocent ramblings with Agnes around her father's house, and through the adjoining fields, no rude observation or unmannered gaze ever ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... ornamented—all stinking to a degree that was perfectly intolerable, and the same thing whether empty or full; it is the smell of stale incense mixed with garlic and human odour, horrible combination of poisonous exhalations. I must say, as everybody has before remarked, that there is something highly edifying in the appearance of devotion which belongs to the Catholic religion; the churches are always open, and, go into them when you will, you see men and women kneeling and praying before this or that altar, absorbed in their occupation, and who must ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... cost of rebuilding exceeded the original estimate. Heminges tells us that on one share, or one-fourteenth, he was required to pay for "the re-edifying about the sum of L120."[415] This would indicate a total cost of "about" L1680. Heminges should know, for he was the business manager of the organization; and his truthfulness cannot be questioned. Since, however, the adjective "about," especially ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... migration has landed him. On these points Hector is not quite convinced: he still thinks that the British are apt to make merits of their stupidities, and to represent their various incapacities as points of good breeding. English life seems to him to suffer from a lack of edifying rhetoric (which he calls moral tone); English behavior to show a want of respect for womanhood; English pronunciation to fail very vulgarly in tackling such words as world, girl, bird, etc.; English society to be plain spoken to an extent which stretches ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... with her prettiest color. "He despises me, but he will take the case, anyway! And he has done nothing but mortify and enrage me all day, but I feel that I should miss it if it stopped! So we are going to sacrifice our lives to each other—isn't it edifying and beautiful of us? We'll tell you all about ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... Johnson's religion to remember that, odd compound as it was, it saw him through the long struggle of life, and enabled him to meet the death he so honestly feared like a man and a Christian. The Prayers and Meditations may not be an edifying book in Cowper's sense of the word; there is nothing triumphant about it; it is full of infirmities and even absurdities; but, for all that, it contains more piety than 10,000 religious biographies. Nor must the evidence it contains of weakness be exaggerated. Beset with infirmities, a lazy ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... ignorant of forbidden things as a nun, who cared no more for love than she did for an old slipper! She, who did not even venture on any veiled allusions, who was always laughing, who took life as it came, who performed her religious duties with edifying assiduity, she to pay him back, so as to make him look ridiculous, and to gad about at night? Never! Anyone who could think such a thing ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... except to fly straight on, one behind another. If church ceremonials are still open to amendment, I would suggest, in no spirit of irreverence, that a study of pelican processionals would be certain to yield edifying results. Nothing done in any cathedral could be more solemn. Indeed, their solemnity was so great that I came at last to find it almost ridiculous; but that, of course, was only from a want of faith on the part of the beholder. The birds, as I ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... a quarter of a million, made by selling soft goods and attending church, and with other books relating pathetic anecdotes of boys who died young and, before they died, delighted society with observations of the most edifying character on the shortness of life. We had rather have been a horsedealer and kept ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... any family among his parishioners at whose table he could find his daily bread for a reasonable consideration. Loring, as has been seen, was a man to whom the converse of his fellow-men, as found upon our frontier, was neither edifying nor improving. He preferred the society of his own thoughts. The rector, the General (Colonel Newcome, it will be remembered, always accorded the head of column to the church), the adjutant-general of the new department and one solitary subaltern of cavalry were the ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... differences and their passionate sympathies, throw light on each other, and the agreeable pages achieve a double end, without ever affecting the real unity of the book. Thus handled, biography, so often the drudge of literature, rises into its high places and becomes a delight instead of an edifying or informing necessity. ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... see an invalid rejoice in knowing that the hour of death is certainly approaching; because it proves the depth and poignancy of the previous sufferings: but then the sight is comforting and edifying also. It is comforting, because it proves that the dying person is supported by the only "help that faileth not;" and it is edifying, because it invites those who behold it to endeavour to believe, that they also may live and die ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... slim parchment volume he deciphered the faded legend, hand-written, in rust-coloured ink, "De tintinnabulis by Jerome Magius, 1664"; then, pell-mell, there were: A curious and edifying miscellany concerning church bells by Dom Remi Carre; another Edifying miscellany, anonymous; a Treatise of bells by Jean-Baptiste Thiers, curate of Champrond and Vibraye; a ponderous tome by an architect named Blavignac; ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... found yet another vent; a mode of manifesting itself scarcely less edifying than the Requiem Masses; namely, funeral processions. The brutal vengeance of the law consigned the bodies of Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien to dishonoured graves; and forbade the presence of sympathising friend or sorrowing relative who might ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... portions allotted by the state, constituted the first, and in the eyes of the masses, the most agreeable part of the spectacle. The Doge, on this occasion, who was the thrice renowned Pietro Candiano, "did his spiriting gently," and in a highly edifying manner. The bishop bestowed his blessings, and confirmed by the religious, the civil rites, which allied the chosen couples. To these succeeded the voluntary parties, if we may thus presume upon a distinction ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... might have been added to the list of ancient travellers in search of the picturesque, both because he visited nearly every province of his empire, and because he expended good round sums wherever he went, in restoring, re-edifying, or beautifying the public edifices which the provincials had suffered to fall into decay. But Hadrian's journeys were primarily journeys of business; he wished, like the Czar Nicholas, to see with his own eyes how matters ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... names of many of our own countrymen are recorded. These pillars of the church, these lights in the midst of darkness, seem indeed to have entertained sentiments, as to the duties and responsibilities of the Christian priesthood, worthy of the purest age. Some of their recorded doctrines are truly edifying, and find a response in some of the best episcopal charges and admonitions of the Protestant church ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... of tents and tepees around the town. It was a great occasion for them, an Indian powwow, for by the law all Indians who had lands in severalty were to be permitted to vote the following year. They were present, therefore, to study the ways of the white man, and an edifying exhibition of these ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... therefore, may not enjoin quod libet, that which liketh them, nay, nor always quod licet, that which is in itself lawful, but only quod expedit, that which is expedient and good to the use of edifying. And to them we may well say with Tertullian,(38) Iniquam exercetis dominationem si ideo negatis licere quia vultis, non quia debuit non licere—You exercise an unjust dominion, if, therefore, you deny anything ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... ended, for the time being; but the Good Turn took on a new interest because of the mystery with which it was associated and Pee-wee was continually edifying his companions with startling and often grewsome theories as to the fate or present whereabouts of Harry Stanton, until—until that thing happened which turned all their thoughts from this puzzle and proved that bad turns as well as good ones have the ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... since more correctly informed, that Mr. Cleishbotham died some months since at Gandercleuch, and that the person assuming his name is an impostor. The real Jedediah made a most Christian and edifying end; and, as I am credibly informed, having sent for a Cameronian clergyman when he was in extremis, was so fortunate as to convince the good man, that, after all, he had no wish to bring down on the scattered remnant of Mountain folks, "the bonnets of Bonny Dundee." Hard ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... was a patriot of unquestioned zeal; but I am inclined to think his extraction was similar to that of Macfarlane, for he combined patriotism with profit in a most edifying manner. He shaved the German officers during the whole of their stay in St. Meuse; he accompanied them on their march to the frontier; he earned the last centime in Conflans; and then, driving forward to the frontier ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... Nights. Did ever Kadee tow an Englishwoman round a Sheykh's tomb before? but I thought his determination to show the people that he considered a Christian not out of place in a Muslim holy place very edifying. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... Arabian Author, topsy-turvy into space. But if the reader insists on more specific information, I am happy to say that a recent revolution hurled him from the throne of Bohemia, in consequence of his continued absence and edifying neglect of public business; and that his Highness now keeps a cigar store in Rupert Street, much frequented by other foreign refugees. I go there from time to time to smoke and have a chat, and find him as great a creature as in the days ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lighting candles, stuck for weeks into the looking-glass, and otherwise damaged. The sound of our pens going refreshed us exceedingly, insomuch that I sometimes found it difficult to distinguish between this edifying business proceeding and actually paying the money. In point of meritorious character, the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... touch of earth which we miss in the more declamatory passages. If, however, declamation is anywhere in place it is in the three orations of the rural parson, which occupy the larger portion of the poem. It is all very lovely and edifying; full of sacred eloquence and a grand amplitude of phrase ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... a ruined church. Its history is not very edifying. Mr. Drummond, the banker, who built the Catholic Apostolic cathedral near by, obtained permission to shut up the old church if he built a new one elsewhere. He built the new church, and the old, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... benefits of this high privilege, but it is identified for the most part with the functions of the regular clergy, whose leisured and tranquil existence was more consonant with the punctual observance of the custom, and by whom it was handed down to successive generations as a laudable and edifying practice importing much comfort for the living, and, it might be hoped, true succour ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... on the best existing authority that a distinguished informer of antiquity seized with remorse, threw away his blood-money, 'went forth and hanged himself.' We know that in times within the memory of living men a government actually set the edifying and praiseworthy example of hanging an informer when they had no further use of his valuable services—thus dropping his acquaintance with effect. I have no wish for such a fate to any of the informers ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... considerable intellectual energy is displayed in the discussions; but to see a conclave of learned professors devoting their time to the examination and discussion of Aristotle's writings is about as edifying as to see a geographical society devoting its time to discussing ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... the presbyterian mode of publick worship; upon which Dr. Johnson delivered those excellent arguments for a form of prayer which he has introduced into his Journey[980]. I am myself fully convinced that a form of prayer for publick worship is in general most decent and edifying. Solennia verba have a kind of prescriptive sanctity, and make a deeper impression on the mind than extemporaneous effusions, in which, as we know not what they are to be, we cannot readily acquiesce. Yet I would allow also of a certain portion of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Richard's gentleness was eminently successful with the little girls, impressing good manners on them in a marvellous way; and Mary's importance and happiness with alphabet scholars, some bigger than herself, were edifying. Cocksmoor was fairly launched. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... faithfulness and devotion, he would have had few enthusiastic hearers. If he had said that an awkward and surly manner, no matter what virtues it concealed, was the greatest bar to ultimate mundane success, it would have been quite true, though perhaps not particularly edifying. But what I desired was not startling paradox or cynical comment, but something more really manly, more just, more unconventional, more ardent, more disinterested. The boys were not exhorted to care for beautiful things for ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... their passionate sympathies, throw light on each other, and the agreeable pages achieve a double end, without ever affecting the real unity of the book. Thus handled, biography, so often the drudge of literature, rises into its high places and becomes a delight instead of an edifying or ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to Shelby's law office, where arrangements had been perfected to receive the returns by messenger and private wire. The Whig bulletin over the way had already massed a constituency extending to the Temple lawn, which, in default of definite news, it was edifying with views of foreign travel and cartoons bearing on the larger issues of the election. Within doors the telegraph operator was already installed at the ancient table which had graced the grand-paternal ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... Rebellion, whilk I hae heard spoken of among the ungodly, both at Kilwinning and Dalry; and if it has no respect to Protestant principles, I doubt it's but another dose o' the radical poison in a new guise." Mr. Icenor, however, thought that "the observe on the great Doctor Drystour was very edifying; and that they should see about getting him to help at the ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... a previous chapter (p. 120) artificial birth control was originally based on Atheism, and on a philosophy of moral anarchy. Further proof of this fact is to be found in the course of a most edifying dispute between two rival Neo-Malthusians. This quarrel is between Dr. Marie C. Stopes, President of the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress, who is not a Doctor of Medicine but of Philosophy, ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... The committee of the Benevolent Asylum complimented me by so pressing an invitation to visit an institution which I remembered and was interested in from its first commencement, that it was imperative on me to find the time to do so. The spectacle was alike most edifying and most interesting. The institution had enormously extended since my time, both in its accommodation and the number of its inmates. There were nearly 700 men and women, all of them helpless and destitute, and nearly all passed into old age. Some who ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... shades, when Yahweh-Elohim walks abroad. The God of these primitive men is surprised: "Where art thou?'' By degrees, he obtains a full confession—-not from the serpent, whose speech might not have been edifying, but from Adam and Eve. The sentences which he passes are decisive, not only for the human pair and the serpent, but for their respective races. Painful toil shall be the lot of man; subjection and pangs that of woman.15 The serpent too (whose unique form preoccupied the early men) shall be ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... sins to confess related his pilgrimage to Mecca; the supposed infidelity of his wife; and his consequent resolve to spend his days in visiting sacred places and holy personages, among whom she stood so famous, that to hear her edifying conversation, and entreat the benefit of her prayers for his unhappy wife, was the object of his having travelled to her sacred abode. When he had finished his narrative the lady dismissed him to another chamber, and heard one by one the confessions ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... day of this year we find from his private devotions, that he had then recovered from sickness[891]; and in February that his eye was restored to its use[892]. The pious gratitude with which he acknowledges mercies upon every occasion is very edifying; as is the humble submission which he breathes, when it is the will of his heavenly Father to try him with afflictions. As such dispositions become the state of man here, and are the true effects of religious discipline, we cannot but venerate in Johnson one of the most exercised ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... suddenly made his presence in the far East imperative. He hurried thither, and was mysteriously lost to sight (529). Tradition accounts for his death in several ways. If Xenophon is to be credited, he died peaceably on his bed, surrounded by his children, and edifying those present by his wisdom and his almost ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... seem amiable to those who heard them, and to suggest palliative thoughts about Diocletian. Finally, there were the romances of Arthur and his knights, which later, by means of allegory, contrived to be both entertaining and edifying; every one who listened to them paying the minstrel his money, and having his choice whether he would take them as song or sermon. In the heroes of some of these certain Christian virtues were typified, and around a few of them, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... Nassedkine, who has been enriched by the gratuities which he has exacted from those who have had to do business with him, has made it his duty to play censor in his little town. He makes use of a very discreet and edifying method: to all of the citizens whose honor is in danger, he sends one or more anonymous letters telling them of the ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... by Portalis, p. 40.—Emile Ollivier, "Nouveau manuel de droit ecclesiastique," P.193. (Reply by Portalis to the protests of the Holy See, Sep. 22, 1803.) Before 1789 Portalis writes: "The spectacle presented by the monks was not very edifying.. .. The legislature having decided that religious vows could not be taken up to twenty-one years of age,... this measure keeps novices away; the monastic orders, sapped by the state of morals and by time, could obtain no recruits; they languished in a state of inertia and of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a pleasant and an edifying thing to contrast the difference between the fates of the reputable and the Bohemian even in the lists of love. Clearly these matters are managed by some scrupulously equitable power. One hesitates to dub it Providence for fear of seeming sentimental, but one may safely describe it as something ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... hastily recapitulating Crabbe's story—the years of prosperity, curacies, rectories, the praise of great contemporaries, but nothing surely more edifying than the burning of piles of manuscripts so extensive that no fireplace would hold them. The son's account of his assisting at these conflagrations is not the least interesting part of his biography, the merits of ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... will talk over the matter further. Your project attracts me enormously. But in the meantime go back to the Orphanage and put everything tidy and light the lights, so that the occasion may seem a little solemn. And then we will spend a little edifying time together, my dear Engstrand, for now I am sure you are in a ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... chin. She was followed by the pious Madame Le Clerc, now Princesse Borghese, who was sighing deeply and loudly. After her came limping the godly Talleyrand, dragging his pure moiety by his side, both with downcast and edifying looks. The Christian patriots, Gravina and Lima, Dreyer and Beust, Dalberg and Cetto, Malsburgh and Pappenheim, with the Catholic Schimmelpenninck and Mohammed Said Halel Effendi,—all presented themselves as penitent sinners imploring ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... held certain of the opinions of "the Hebdomadal Meeting," satirised by Steele in the Spectator (No. 43). "We are much offended at the Act for importing French wines. A bottle or two of good solid Edifying Port, at honest George's, made a Night cheerful, and threw off Reserve. But this plaguy French Claret will not only cost us more Money but do us less good." Hearne had a poor opinion of "Captain Steele," and of "one Tickle: this Tickle is a pretender to poetry." ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... pittance of L20: of him we need not speak. But the translator at his best, works, when reproducing the matter and the manner of his original, upon two distinct lines. His prime and primary object is to please his reader, edifying him and gratifying his taste; the second is to produce an honest and faithful copy, adding naught to the sense or abating aught of its especial cachet. He has, however, or should have, another aim wherein is displayed the acme of hermeneutic ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... man and a pleasant, entertaining, and edifying companion. He deserves all the success he has ever received. "Long may ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... remark is Xenophon-Hellenic, but less edifying; fortunately it is only the penultimate, for there is the final {khairete} [good-bye] and message to his wife. Why was she not present? I suppose she was ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... herself would have instantly killed father or mother at an order from above, and nothing, she averred, could displease the Lord if the intention were commendable. The Countess, taking advantage of the sacred authority of her unexpected ally, drew her on to make an edifying paraphrase, as it were, on the well-known moral maxim: "The end ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... most touching and edifying fairy-tale imaginable, this true story of H.M. Albert ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... well-bred, dignified and courteous, who held a high place in the elect circle or Old Colonie society, and was not the less esteemed because of her straitened circumstances. Her walk and conversation were no doubt edifying, but the curriculum of her scholastic institute possibly left something to be desired in the departments of higher education. She had one available qualification for her position, however,—being an expert in making ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... me of the long grace in Latin which the priests said before meals, and which the hungry people couldn't understand. The horses are hinting broadly that oats would be more edifying. If it were Monday, I'd wager you a plum that they would all leave your oats to eat clover-hay out of ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... a sermon. Master Nicolas Midy, one of the lights of the University of Paris, preached upon the edifying text: "When one limb of the Church is sick, the whole Church is sick." He wound up with the formula: "Jeanne, go in peace; the Church ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of his work which can be perused with perfect gravity. His blunders are diverting, his excuses exquisitely comic. But his anger is the most grotesque exhibition that we ever saw. He foams at the mouth with the love of truth, and vindicates the Divine benevolence with a most edifying heartiness of hatred. On this subject we will give him one word of parting advice. If he raves in this way to ease his mind, or because he thinks that he does himself credit by it, or from a sense of religious duty, far ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ties, or home relationships, hardly seemed in harmony with the Rat! Still, in this case, it was perhaps very debatable ground as to which was the more pernicious, the old woman or the son! Ostensibly, she kept a little variety store; but her business, if report were true, was the edifying occupation of school mistress—the children graduating under her tuition being ranked by common consent as the most accomplished ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... dec. 6, lib. 3, cap. 4.) Pedro Pizarro admits the truth of the design imputed to Gonzalo, which he was prevented from putting into execution by the commands of the governor, who, the chronicler, with edifying simplicity, or assurance, informs us, was a man that scrupulously kept his word. "Porque el marquez don Francisco Picarro hera hombre que guardava mucho su palabra." Descub. ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... ends. But his judges want more—a few edifying lies wherewith to show that he did not die impenitent, and stop the mouth of anyone who may hint, the day after the execution, that old men are too fond of putting younger ones out of the way. They shall have his confession; but it must be ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... appeared to abound in descriptions of scenery; there was much mention of mountains, valleys, streams, and waterfalls, harebells and daffodils. These descriptions were interspersed with dialogues, which, though they proceeded from the mouths of pedlars and rustics, were of the most edifying description; mostly on subjects moral or metaphysical, and couched in the most gentlemanly and unexceptionable language, without the slightest mixture of vulgarity, coarseness, or pie-bald grammar. Such appeared to me ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... his children, should have taken upon himself to trouble this tender little blossom with dread of his death. He lived thirty years longer, and, indeed, survived sinful little Katy. Another child of his died when two years and seven months old, and made a most edifying end in prayer and praise. His pious and incessant teachings did not, however, prove wholly satisfactory in their results, especially as shown in the career of his son ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... saying this I cast no reflections whatsoever upon that edifying race of living creatures whom I admire and respect more than any other—are so rare that it did not take the neighbors of the Barkis family many days to discover that the little chap was worth watching, and if need be caring for in a way which ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... which I was laid out, as a body might say, at five weeks old. She tells me they traced the stone, out of feelin' like, and followed it up until they fairly found it, set down as the head-stone of an elderly single lady, with a most pious and edifying inscription on it. Mother says it contains a whole varse from the bible! That stone may yet stand me in hand, for anything I know ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... produced in the way of devotional literature is chiefly limited to edifying booklets and biographies of their own members; writings which were distinguished rather by their pious tenor and sincerity than ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... learning and the arts, perpetually increasing, activity. The Grecian gods seem indeed to have been personally more innocent, although it cannot be said, that as far as temperance and chastity are concerned, they gave so edifying an example as their successor. The sublime human character of Jesus Christ was deformed by an imputed identification with a Power, who tempted, betrayed, and punished the innocent beings who were called into existence by His sole will; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... as well as adversity, and on the whole the rich are just as much addicted to crime as the poor. The progress of civilisation will not destroy crime. Many savage tribes living under the most primitive forms of social life present a far more edifying spectacle of respect for person and property than the most cultivated classes in Europe and America. All that civilisation has hitherto done is to change the form in which crime is perpetrated; in substance it remains the same. Primary Schools will not accomplish much in eliminating ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... last few months a plague had come amongst us that we had heard much about, and now caused us much trouble—a plague of lice. It is not an edifying subject, but anyone can understand how the itching caused many a sleepless night. We were not to blame. When we no longer were able to change our clothes, we could not guard against the vermin that ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... stranger is but seldom seen. They are apparently simple-minded females, just a trifle shame-faced in their demeanor before a stranger, sitting apart by themselves while listening to the conversation between myself and the men. This, of course, is very edifying, even apart from its pantomimic and monosyllabic character, for I am now among a queer people, a people through the unoccupied chambers of whose unsophisticated minds wander strange, fantastic thoughts. One of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... uncongenial work,—and, being rendered somewhat flabby and nerveless by his previous evening's carouse with Macfarlane's whisky, Mr. Dyceworthy was in a plaintive and injured frame of mind, he was bound on a mission—a holy and edifying errand, which would have elevated any minister of his particular sect. He had found a crucifix with the name of Thelma engraved thereon,—he was now about to return it to the evident rightful owner, and in returning it, he purposed denouncing it as an emblem of the "Scarlet Woman, that sitteth ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... They are now in the more private room, and the reason of their withdrawal is, that, according to the Chaplain of Newgate, the practice of garroting was suggested to the English thieves by this representation of Indian Thugs. It is edifying, after what I have written in the preceding paragraph, to find that the only lesson known to have been inculcated here is that of a new mode ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... morals were too edifying those years. But they were as good as the men I went with and I kept myself in hand. I saw men go to pieces with drink—and I didn't drink. I saw men go to pieces over women—and I kept away from that kind of woman. A man has to have women in his life no matter how much ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... noise and riot was the greater, that the inexperienced cudgel players, among whom Hayraddin ran the gauntlet, hit each other more frequently than they did him, till at length, desirous of ending a scene which was more scandalous than edifying, the Prior commanded the wicket to be flung open, and the Bohemian, darting through it with the speed of lightning, fled forth into the moonlight. During this scene, a suspicion which Durward had formerly entertained, recurred with additional strength. Hayraddin ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... extremely jealous that you suspect his incapacity. When she saw that some remark was necessary, she resembled exactly in her criticism the devotee who pitched on the "sweet word Mesopotamia" as the most edifying note which she could bring away from a sermon. She indeed hastened to bestow general praise on what she said was all "very fine;" but chiefly dwelt on what I, had said about Mr. Timmerman, as she was pleased to call the ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... Sacrament, leaving the poor woman "unhouselled"—although not "unanointed." He feared that she had given in to the persuasions of the minister to refuse further help. But after her death, which occurred a few days later, the good priest ascertained that she had died in most edifying dispositions. The minister had not visited her, and she had thought it best to wait a little before seeing the priest again, merely on account of her family. The McGruers, who were present at the last, assured him ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... State a republican form of government; that slavery and such a form of government are incompatible; and, finally, as a conclusion from these premises, that Congress not only have a right, but are bound to exclude slavery from a new State. Here again, sir, there is an edifying inconsistency between the argument and the measure which it professes to vindicate. By the argument it is maintained that Missouri cannot have a republican form of government, and at the same time tolerate negro slavery. By the measure it ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... old rent rolls. He next bought up quantities of old fly-leaves of books, and on this ancient paper he indicted a sham confession of faith, which he attributed to Shakespeare. Being a strong "evangelical," young Mr. Ireland gave a very Protestant complexion to this edifying document. And still the critics gaped and ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... sea and of adventure thereon, and whether he is writing of EDWARD PELLEW, JOHN FRANKLIN, DAVID FARRAGUT, or of Trafalgar, it is only possible to escape from his grip when he endeavours to be a little edifying. Boys may conceivably resent this tendency to point out what they can see extraordinarily well for themselves, but all the same they will admit their heavy debt to him. The Book of the Blue Sea (I must write that again), excellently ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... guardians, though irreligious and a sportsman, was scrupulously exacting in matters of integrity and veracity. His associates included the most respectable, yet the morals of the sporting fraternity of a frontier settlement are not likely to have been edifying. That his nephew, as he himself declares, was an ardent frequenter of races, "house-raisings,"* (* Anglice, house-warmings.) and country dances is hardly surprising, and it is assuredly no ground whatever for reproach. Nor is it strange that, amid much laxity, he ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... clear type, contains alphabet and edifying and entertaining stories for children. 12mo. Paper covers Per ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... the scholars of the said Hall, but by their means to all the students of the before-named university for ever, in the form and manner which the following chapter shall declare. Wherefore the sincere love of study and zeal for the strengthening of the orthodox faith to the edifying of the Church, have begotten in us that solicitude so marvellous to the lovers of pelf, of collecting books wherever they were to be purchased, regardless of expense, and of having those that could not ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... not altogether flourish. But this time it was through the fault of Aldred himself, for, on his translation to York in 1060, he retained very many of the possessions of the abbey that had been pledged to him on account of his expenses in repairing and re-edifying the church." ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... may be, leaving aside psychological investigations that I have no authority for making, since I am not acquainted with Pepita Ximenez, it is quite certain that she lived in edifying harmony with the old man during three years, that she nursed him and waited upon him with admirable devotion, and that in his last painful and fatal sickness she ministered to him and watched over him with tender and unwearying affection, until he expired ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... no talker. He was brought up with the idea that to be beautiful was to make good. His conversation was about as edifying as listening to a leak dropping in a tin dish-pan at the head of the bed when you want to go to sleep. But he and me got to be friends—maybe because we was so opposite, don't you think? Looking at the Hallowe'en mask that I call my face when I'm shaving seemed ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... reader must be warned; the theory, namely, that these biographies were written as religious romances; edifying, but not historical; to be admired, but not believed. There is not the slightest evidence that such was the case. The lives of these, and most other saints (certainly those in this volume), were written ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... diabolical suitor was jailed as a punishment. Champlain relates how a pugnacious parson was dealt with by a pugnacious clergyman of a different persuasion respecting some knotty controversial points. The arguments, however irresistible they may have been, Champlain observes, were not edifying either to the savages or to the French: "J'ay veu le ministre et nostre cure s'entre battre e coup de poing sur le differend de la religion. Je ne scay pas qui estait le plus vaillant et qui donnait le meilleur coup; mais je scay tres bien ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... money on such vanities as novels or short stories, but she read the edifying romances in the Sunday-school paper and an occasional book from the Sunday-school library, mainly about children whose angelic qualities gave her a picture of child life that would have contrasted strongly with what their children would have been if ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... office expresses his surprise about the external symptoms of a change for the better, perhaps seen in the color of the skin or the shading of the iris in the eye and reaffirmed by some pseudotests of the muscle reflexes. All that is not very edifying and the decent physician, who justly feels somewhat dragged down to the level of the quack in applying such means frequently, will abstain from them wherever possible. He knows that in the long run, even the psychasthenics are best treated with frankness and sincerity ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... went the others came home, and so two months were they at home, and Adonias was overseer and commander on them. Solomon had seventy thousand men that did nothing but bear stone and mortar and other things to the edifying of the temple, and were bearers of burdens only, and he had eighty thousand of hewers of stone and masons in the mountain, without the prefects and masters, which were three thousand three hundred that did nothing but command and oversee them that wrought. Solomon commanded ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... not only incongruous but highly absurd and disgusting. One can hardly imagine that any mortal, to whom a vision of the divine being had been granted, could fail so utterly to furnish us with an edifying description ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... a vague uneasiness sets Richardson to work on the style, unable to locate the center of his trouble. On page v "strongly interest them in the edifying Story" becomes "attach their regard to the Story," but this is barely to nibble at his phrase "so probable, so natural, so lively" just preceding, which perished ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... saw that they proceeded thus in edifying conversation until they came to the Thames embankment. It was somewhat difficult to preserve his presence of mind as Mr. Bumpkin descended the gangway and stepped on board the boat, which was belching forth its volumes of black smoke and rocking under the influence ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... inspired by God, containing a true history of facts, in which we are deeply concerned—a true recital of the laws given by God to Moses, and of the precepts of our blessed Lord and Saviour, delivered from his own mouth to his disciples, and repeated and enlarged upon in the edifying epistles of his Apostles; who were men chosen from amongst those who had the advantage of conversing with our Lord, to bear witness of his miracles and resurrection—and who, after his ascension, were assisted and inspired ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... because it formed an incident in Mr. Chamberlain's Birmingham career and left its mark upon the business that went up and the businesses that went down. Moreover, it is a little instructive and edifying, as showing how Mr. Chamberlain's combative nature manifested itself in his everyday life. He recognised, as other men have done, that business is not a matter to be played with, and that trade is in fact a commercial conflict in which one must whip and the other be whipped, and as ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... soul. Even the early Christians, who hated so bitterly many of the myths of paganism, and found in them nothing but doctrines of devils, treated this story tenderly, blended the picture of Orpheus with that of their own Good Shepherd, and found it edifying ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... through which the light came as through porcelain. Yet the eyes were closed, and the pale lips moved, and the wasted hands, embracing a crucifix, were joined in prayer. She could still beg God to heal the feud. How edifying, how beautiful, how sublime the spectacle!—sublimer than the deeds of heroes, the conceptions of poets, the aspirations of genius. What is Archimedes moving the world to the humblest ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... Mallowcoid averred, herself growing every minute more irate. "You don't see it, my dear, I know, but it is grossly unfair. A most cultivated, charming young man! Why, the way he spoke about poetry this morning,—nothing could have been more edifying. As for your Lord Henry,—he doesn't know what ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... in them but the unexpected, and that brings its joys and terrors, its laughter and its tears. Here a great deal of unrestrained human nature is given free play, and the results are exciting if not edifying. Let us spend an evening, but not a night—that is too much to ask-with ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... as JENKINS would say, are very numerous, and it is truly an edifying sight to see judges, legislators, eminent politicians, and other "Heads of the People" bobbing about in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... have another such book as makes the reading of it a luxury, even in hot summer weather. It takes us to an island home, in the chill regions of the North Sea, and introduces us to pastoral scenes as lively and as edifying as those of Oberlin, in the Ban de ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... philanthropic audience was not exactly prepared for this edifying culmination in favor of Africa; but, while my friends were busy in obliterating the red and the wrinkles from their cheeks, I took the liberty to enjoy, from behind the shadow of my tea cup, the manifest disgust they felt for the bad taste ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... common law, but of a specially enacted coercive code applicable to the whole or any part of the country at the mere caprice of the chief of the Executive. The record, it must be admitted, is not edifying. Irish history, one may well say, is not of such a nature as to put one "on the side of the angels." Lecky's "History of the Eighteenth Century" has made many converts to Home Rule, and I venture to think ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... and stretched. Ferguson rolled lazily off the couch. "Well," he said with a yawn, "this has been very edifying. I've heard it all before in a hundred bull sessions, and I suppose I'll hear it all again. I don't know why I've hung around. There's a little dame that I've got to write a letter to, and, believe me, ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... difficulties of the Earl of Dorincourt were discussed in the English newspapers, they were discussed in the American newspapers. The story was too interesting to be passed over lightly, and it was talked of a great deal. There were so many versions of it that it would have been an edifying thing to buy all the papers and compare them. Mr. Hobbs read so much about it that he became quite bewildered. One paper described his young friend Cedric as an infant in arms,—another as a young man at Oxford, winning all the honors, and distinguishing himself by writing Greek poems; ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... incorrigible as red hair in a red-haired man—the conservatism of the form. You make new and original people sing new songs to an accompaniment that looks second-hand, you have four acts, the characters deliver edifying discourses, there is a feeling of alarm before long speeches, and so on, and so on. But all that is not important, and it is all, so to speak, drowned in the good points of the play. Pertchihin—how living! His daughter is enchanting, Tatyana and ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... any Gessler in Uri to perform all the wicked things ascribed to him, and to get that arrow through him in such dramatic and effective manner in the Hollow Way; for has not Kopp published, with edifying explanation, "Documents for the History of the Confederation," (Lucerne, 1835,) in which, in the list of Bailiffs (Landvoigte) at Kuessnacht, we do not find the name of Gessler? Perhaps there was a mistake in the name, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... wasting their Spirits in laborious Compositions of their own, would endeavour after a handsome Elocution, and all those other Talents that are proper to enforce what has been penned by greater Masters. This would not only be more easy to themselves, but more edifying to the People. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Unexpectedly edifying as this admission was, his listeners sought in vain to connect it with the immediate issue, and consequently ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... credulity by Providential interpositions, except in the intercalated anecdotes which do not touch the story itself. The wicked man's career is not brought to the abrupt or sensational issues so much in favour with ordinary didactic tale-writers. Such issues are the exception, not the rule, and the edifying story loses its effect when the reader turns from it to actual life, and perceives that the majority are not punished in any such way. Bunyan conceals nothing, assumes nothing, and exaggerates nothing. He makes his bad ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... without which the Ashburton Treaty would have been nothing, and the negotiator of that treaty less than nothing." The quickness and fitness of this at once banished every doubtful or unfriendly feeling. The company clustered around the magnate, whose sprightly and edifying conversation never failed to excite admiration, and the remainder of the evening was spent in a ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... arrival of the Vice-Chancellor. When he came, our freshman and two other white-tied fellow-freshmen were summoned to the great man's presence; and there, in the ante-chamber of the Convocation House, the edifying and imposing spectacle of Matriculation was enacted. In the first place, Mr. Verdant Green took divers oaths, and sincerely promised and swore that he would be faithful and bear true allegiance to her Majesty Queen Victoria. He also professed (very much to his own astonishment) ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... chamber of the heart to him, it brings in the Beloved into the very secrets of the soul, to lie all night betwixt his breasts as a bundle of myrrh, Cant. i. 13. And indeed all the sweet odours of holy duties, and all the performing of good works and edifying speeches, spring out only, and are sent forth, from this bundle of myrrh that lies betwixt the breasts of a Christian, in the inmost of his heart, from Christ dwelling in the affections ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... another year or two, and watching you get changed into a parson. It would have been well worth my while, too. It isn't every sinner like myself that has the chance to see a saint in the making. I should have found it an edifying spectacle." Then suddenly he broke off, and spoke with obvious sincerity. "Hang it all, Scott! What's the use? Chuck theology, and come along with me and be some sort of an engineer, or else the chemist old Mansfield has set his heart on making ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... is little better than a pagan!" I hear one of my readers exclaim. "How much more edifying it would have been if you had made him give Arthur some truly spiritual advice! You might have put into his mouth the most beautiful things—quite as good as reading ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... but fiction has any claim on our attention, and that anything real and true is of no account. I may be old-fashioned and singular, but I find that these small details of the lives of our aristocracy are full of interest, not to say edifying. What ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... Pope, "myself disremimbers the particlar passidges they allidge out ov them ould felleys," says he, "though sure enough they're more numerous nor edifying,—so we'll jist suppose that a heretic was to find sich a saying as this in Austin, 'Every sensible man knows that thransubstantiation is a lie,'—or this out of Tertullian or Plutarch, 'the bishop ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... before dinner had the usual sobering effect, and young people, who later on would be valsing together on the easiest of terms, now shyly looked over photograph books, and discoursed with an edifying amount of diffidence and respect. Each one was to go in to dinner with his companion of the sleigh—an arrangement of questionable wisdom, and, as Bertie said, "It behoved one to be doubly careful whom one ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... what you are saying seems to you very wise and edifying, Joseph Putnam, but I have a bad headache, and do not care ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... similar occasions; and the messengers he sent with these letters were very cordially treated by his Majesty. Theodore also wrote to Mr. Rassam on one or two occasions; and we had a ludicrous repetition of the courteous and edifying correspondence that had passed formerly between the two in the sunny ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... more or less celebrated, not forgetting the name of Dickens, attracted, properly enough, huge crowds, who were willing to pay high prices to hear a popular author interpret his works. A species of lion-taming, which, if not exactly exciting, is harmless and withal edifying. The last two varieties of entertainment usually took place in the "Egyptian Hall," in Piccadilly, "St. James' Hall," or "The Gallery of Illustration" in ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... regular life. He has a sanctimonious expression of face, he reads nothing but religious and edifying books, but at the christening party, in his delight that Lyubov Spiridonovna had passed through her confinement successfully, he had permitted himself to drink four glasses of vodka and a glass of wine, the ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... summed up, was not a bit less edifying, was not indeed half as unpleasant, as that of many of the men, less rich and less prominent than he, who were marrying lovely girls everywhere, with the full consent and approval of parents and guardians. Susan had seen the newspaper accounts of the debauch that preceded young Harry van Vleet's ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... becoming obedient to the gospel, and turning to Jesus with their whole heart. The schools were also attended with the blessing of God, and both children and adults made good progress in their learning; and the missionaries remark, "That it was very edifying to hear them exercising themselves in their own dwellings, in reading and singing hymns." Morning and evening prayer, ere the close of the year, had been set up in every family; and while the melody of praise ascended from every dwelling, tears of holy ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... of truth in all that. Of course, I could give you a very different notion of how those things hung together. Perhaps they knew a few more of these edifying anecdotes. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... common world, I myself am, I trust, often amiable—always in some respects exemplary. In my castle, I am always all that I ought to be—all that I wish to be. I am as stately as Juno, as beautiful as Adonis, as elegant as Chesterfield, as edifying as Mrs. Chapone, as eloquent as Burke, as noble as Miss Nightingale, as perennial as the Countess of Desmond, and as robust as Dr. Windship. I also understand everything but entomology and numismatology; and if I do not understand them, the only ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in New York, in part to see a volume of my short stories through the press—which you may or may not have read, in its elaborate "gift-book" form, under the title of The Aspirants,—and in part about less edifying employments. I was trying to forget Elena, and in Lichfield it was not possible to induce such forgetfulness without affording unmerited pleasure for gabbling busybodies.... It was not in me to apologise, except in a letter, where the wording ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... was that Jeremy received six strokes on the hand with a ruler. Mr. Cole was not good at this kind of thing, and twice he missed Jeremy's hand altogether, and looked very foolish. It was not an edifying scene. Jeremy left the room, his head high, his spirit obstinate; and his father remained, puzzled, distressed, at a loss, anxious to do what was right, but unable to touch his ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... Bac, the street was full of people, chiefly females, who were anxiously looking towards the bridge. One garcon, as he aided his master in closing the shop-window, was edifying him with anathemas against "ces messieurs les republicains," who were believed to be at the bottom of the disturbance, and for whom he evidently thought that the artillery augured badly. The next day he would be ready to shout vive la republique under a new impulse; ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... suspects that the above edifying and idiomatic homily was intended for some sporting contemporary, but, with his accustomed courtesy, he gives it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... may be curious and edifying to observe to whom we mainly owe those enlightened views on this subject, which might have been expected to proceed in their natural channel, but for which we look in vain, from the "triumphant heirs of universal praise," ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... Farther particulars of the lady's pious and exemplary behaviour. She rejoices in the gradual death afforded her. Her thankful acknowledgments to Mr. Belford, Mrs. Smith, and Mrs. Lovick, for their kindness to her. Her edifying address to ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... avowedly and definitely deduced; and they could not yet take in the idea that the exercise of the speculative and imaginative faculties may be its own end, and may have indirect influences and utilities even greater than if it was guided by a conscious intention to be edifying and instructive. ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... hither at this time of year abundance of people resort, solacing themselves in the mutual enjoyment of all those pleasures the place affords, and at spare hours pass away the time in many useful and edifying discourses. When Callistratus the Sophist lived here, it was a hard matter to dine at any place besides his house; for he was so extremely courteous and obliging, that no man whom he invited to dinner could have the face ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the Book. The book containing the writings of Ben Sira was known under a variety of titles. The Latin Church followed the Greek in calling it Ecclesiasticus. This term was applied to those books which were not in the canon, but were held to be edifying and proper for public use in the churches. The Hebrew text of Ben Sira enjoyed wide currency, was frequently quoted by the later rabbis, and was often referred to by later Jewish and Christian writers. It was ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... it, won't you, Leila?" he said, apparently oblivious that he had expressed himself as able to adjust the matter in one hundred equally edifying and satisfactory manners. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... indictment. There, at any rate, are certain things set down in black and white, and some progress may be made in useful knowledge without any desire to be wise above what is written. The manifesto drawn up by the "Two Conservatives" is not altogether edifying reading. At a first glance it reminds us of a round-robin got up in the servants' hall for the purpose of springing a mine upon the steward and housekeeper, or of the whisperings sometimes heard in the lower ranks of a mercantile establishment where a conviction ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... was present at the persecution would draft a written account of the martyrdom—he related the arrest, the examination, the tortures, and the death. These brief accounts, filled with edifying details, were called The Acts of the Martyrs. They were circulated in the remotest communities; from one end of the empire to the other they published the glory of the martyrs and excited a desire to imitate them. Thousands of the faithful, seized by a thirst for martyrdom, pressed forward ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... I only wish he were here to see the sight himself. He does not know what he is missing by being late for dinner. It is too bad that he must get the story second-hand, when he might have enjoyed the edifying sight himself if he had ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... thing seriously; what vulgar types! what square, bony faces. Don't their low, stupid expressions contrast oddly with their wings? Do you see that little chap twisting his mouth and rolling his eyes? His air of contrition is quite edifying. The other day he was caught stealing fagots from a neighbor. . . . And look at that other one who has lost his wings! What an unlucky accident! He is stooping to pick them up, and tucks them under his arm like a cocked hat. The idea is a happy one! But thank ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... d'Italie." Besides, he has fallen into the bad habit of uttering moral platitudes. He is always telling us that to be good is to be good, and that to be bad is to be wicked. At times he is almost edifying. Robert Elsmere is of course a masterpiece—a masterpiece of the "genre ennuyeux," the one form of literature that the English people seems thoroughly to enjoy. A thoughtful young friend of ours once told us that it reminded him of the sort of conversation ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... thus prepared, assembled in the great square, the place chosen for the exhibition, long before the appointed hour. The ladies were arranged in the foremost rank, with a politeness that was perfectly edifying, whilst knots of fashionable dogs and cats got as near as possible to the reigning favourites; curs of inferior degree occupied the outermost ranks, and a bird or two got gallery places above the heads of the animal spectators. It was when expectation was raised to that pitch ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... and died leaving a quarter of a million, made by selling soft goods and attending church, and with other books relating pathetic anecdotes of boys who died young and, before they died, delighted society with observations of the most edifying character on the shortness of life. We had rather have been a horsedealer and ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... worthy Fray Antonio Agapida) looked on this occasion as more than mortal: the venerable ecclesiastics, to whose advice and zeal this glorious conquest ought in a great measure be attributed, moved along with hearts swelling with holy exultation, but with chastened and downcast looks of edifying humility; while the hardy warriors, in tossing plumes and shining steel, seemed elevated with a stern joy at finding themselves in possession of this object of so many toils and perils. As the streets resounded with the tramp of steeds and swelling peals of music the Moors ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in the humble and endearing scenes of private life; uniform, dignified, and commanding, his example was as edifying to all around him as were the effects of ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... you, Amen. I being taken from you in presence, and so tied up, that I cannot perform that duty that from God doth lie upon me to youward, for your further edifying and building up in faith and holiness, &c., yet that you may see my soul hath fatherly care and desire after your spiritual and everlasting welfare; I now once again, as before, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, so 'now' from the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... yesterday, his intellectual self-respect naturally prompts him to insist that the opinions do not really clash, but are in fact identical. You may call this a weakness if you choose, and it certainly involved Mr. Gladstone in much unfruitful and not very edifying exertion; but it is at any rate better than the front of brass that takes any change of opinion for matter-of-course expedient, as to which the least said will be soonest mended. And it is better still than the disastrous self-consciousness that makes a man persist in a foolish ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... it were—of holding the attention as in a vice, and the words and syllables seemed to reverberate through your own brain. To see Madame Moronval open her mouth to sound her o's, to hear the r's rattle in her throat, was more edifying than agreeable. The mouths of the eight children opposite mechanically followed each one of her gestures, producing a most extraordinary effect; one absolutely ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... of the Catholic Church to drape their churches? It is a libel to utter the base charge. No, no. With the acts of those men at that rescue we had nought to say. Of their innocence of murder we were convinced. Their patriotic feelings, their religious devotion, we saw proved in the noble, the edifying manner of their death. We believed them to have been unjustly sacrificed in a moment of national passion; and we resolved to rescue their memory from the foul stains of their maligners, and make it a proud one for ever with Irishmen. ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... with a strength proportion to the quantity of matter they contain— the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength of their tendency to approach one another. This is a lovely and edifying illustration of how science, having made A the proof of B, makes B ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... perfect. Hence after the Apostle had said (Eph. 4:7): "To every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the giving of Christ," having enumerated the various graces, he adds (Eph. 4:12): "For the perfecting of the saints . . . for the edifying of the body ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... was the fifty years from 1470 to 1520, and |147| they were performed, like the divozioni, by confraternities of religious laymen. The actors were boys belonging to the brotherhoods, and the plays were intended to be edifying for youth. They are more refined than the northern religious dramas, but only too ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... resolution of rewriting the whole of my sermon, and found the advantage; in fact, nothing in the way of public speaking can be done without a thorough preparation. How high parties are running! It has a sad effect on my mind; but my refuge must be in keeping off controversy and adhering to edifying and practical subjects." In the same month he records the death of a dear friend, whom he visited on his deathbed. "Nothing," he says, "could be more satisfactory than his state of mind;" the Dean lost a kind Christian, attached and ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... been playing at marbles for "havings" with Cole, Fowle, and both the Drakes at the village-inn, and, having found this vegetable repast too strong for his digestion, went home to his mother and wreaked his discomfort on edifying moral maxims. Or else he was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... told me, 'He's an idiot.' Which was possible. Before that I overheard once somebody declaring that he had a criminal type of face; which I knew was untrue. The sentence was pronounced by artificial light in a stifling poisonous atmosphere. Something edifying was said by the judge weightily, about the retribution overtaking the perpetrator of 'the most heartless frauds on an unprecedented scale.' I don't understand these things much, but it appears that he had juggled with accounts, cooked balance sheets, had gathered in deposits ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... countless numbers of families, and what he saw was not always edifying. Home was a conception which was only now forcing its way downward from the middle classes. Even in periods of normal employment the workers earned little enough when it came to providing a decent family life, and the women knew nothing of making a comfortable ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... and a sailor. He had even set his heart on rivalling Bourdaloue and Bossuet. Though an avowed freethinker, he had sate up all night at sea to compose sermons, and had with great difficulty been prevented from edifying the crew of a man of war with his pious oratory. [31] He now addressed the House of Peers, for the first time, with characteristic eloquence, sprightliness, and audacity. He blamed the Commons for not having taken a bolder line. "They have been afraid," he said, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... severe upon you, it is true; but remember, it is your duty to keep watch over your soul, that it may be ever in harmony with that of your wedded husband." "Soul!" cried Undine, laughing; "that sounds very fine, and for most people may be very edifying and moral advice. But if one has no soul at all, pray how is one to keep watch over it? And that is my case." The Priest was deeply hurt, and turned away his face in mingled sorrow and anger. But she came up to him beseechingly, ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... slow-moving river through a tangled meadow-flat,—not a rush nor a bush but was reflected in it; in short, Sam gave his philosophy of matters and things in general as he went along, and was especially careful to impress an edifying moral. ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "Stimulating, edifying, interesting, horrifying in turns, the book has not a dull moment. As it is the best, it will surely prove the most prized and popular of modern books on London."—Notes ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... yielded to the priest's passionate entreaties, and he was taken before his Bishop. Throwing himself on his knees before the Holy Man, he implored mercy, declaring that he would lead a new life, and set an example of all that was edifying, whereas before he had given nothing but scandal. Blessed Francis on his part knelt down before the culprit, and with many tears, addressed these remarkable words to him; "I, too," he said, "ask you to have pity upon me, and upon all of us who are priests in this ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... times to kill him but they were unable to do so. Seeing this wonder they were moved to repentance and they gave themselves to God and to Mochuda for ever and, till the time of their death, they remained under his guidance and rule and many subsequent edifying and famous ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... more edifying than to confront a nervous Gorgeous Girl who had discovered that her maid had been ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... Gammon had thus got rid of his distinguished guest, he ordered the table to be cleared of the glasses, and tea to be ready within half an hour. He then walked out to enjoy the cool evening; on returning, sat pleasantly sipping his tea, now and then dipping into the edifying columns of the Sunday Flash, but oftener ruminating upon his recent conversation with Titmouse, and speculating upon certain possible results to himself personally; and a little after eleven o'clock, that good man, at peace with all the world—calm and serene—retired ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... two.... Both were at the same time, at Altona, accepted as members of the body of Christ [the Labadist church].... She loved her husband tenderly, but when God called him elsewhere, to the service of His work and children, she embraced His will therein with much love; which was especially edifying in her, since before this, when she was living in the world, she was wont to be in great anxiety whenever he was away from home on their own concerns. At Bremen, when a portion of our community was there, then at Altona, and here in Friesland, God visited her with great sufferings," and ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... nearly fourteen; very large of her age, with a dead white skin, pale blue eyes, and a little light hair. To hear her talk is most edifying. Her babies are all "babes"; she never begins anything but "commences" it; she never cries, she "weeps"; never gets up in the morning, but "rises." But what am I writing all this for? Why, to escape my own thoughts, which are anything but agreeable companions, ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... the upper galleries. Yet the private dreams of Miss Winchelsea, already vivid and concrete enough, became now realistic in the highest degree. She figured that pleasant young man, lecturing in the most edifying way to his students, herself modestly prominent as his intellectual mate and helper; she figured a refined little home, with two bureaus, with white shelves of high-class books, and autotypes of the pictures of Rossetti and Burne-Jones, ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... who bore aloft on their heads the sacred vessels of gold and silver; and the martial shouts of the Barbarians were mingled with the sound of religious psalmody. From all the adjacent houses a crowd of Christians hastened to join this edifying procession; and a multitude of fugitives, without distinction of age, or rank, or even of sect, had the good fortune to escape to the secure and hospitable sanctuary of the Vatican. The learned work, concerning the City of God, was professedly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... proof, stand the test; pass muster, pass an examination. challenge comparison, vie, emulate, rival. Adj. harmless, hurtless[obs3]; unobnoxious[obs3], innocuous, innocent, inoffensive. beneficial, valuable, of value; serviceable &c. (useful) 644; advantageous, edifying, profitable; salutary &c. (healthful) 656. favorable; propitious &c. (hope-giving) 858; fair. good, good as gold; excellent; better; superior &c. 33; above par; nice, fine; genuine &c. (true) 494. best, choice, select, picked, elect, recherche, rare, priceless; unparagoned[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... all the poverty and trouble without even having one gleam of success in their miserable dangerous lives? There are theatres and theatres—there are managers and managers; but in some places the common conversation of the women is not edifying—and a good girl must insensibly lose her finer nature if she has ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... which I shall examine is the moralistic or Platonic. According to this, art is an image of the good, and has value in so far as through expression it enables us to experience edifying emotions or to contemplate noble objects. The high beauty of the "Sistine Madonna," for example, would be explained as identical with the worth of the religious feelings which it causes in the mind of the beholder. The advantage of art over life is supposed to consist in its power ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... it was this same Mason Weems that was afterward known in Virginia as Parson Weems, of Pohick parish, near Mount Vernon. See Magazine of American History, iii. 465-472; v. 85-90. At first an eccentric preacher, Parson Weems became an itinerant violin-player and book-peddler, and author of that edifying work, The Life of George Washington, with Curious Anecdotes equally Honourable to Himself and Exemplary to his Young Countrymen. On the title-page the author describes himself as "formerly rector of Mount Vernon Parish,"—which Bishop Meade calls ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
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