"Blasphemy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The headstones were fallen and broken across; brambles overran the ground; the fence was mostly gone, and cows and pigs wandered there at will; the place was a dishonor to the living, a calumny on the dead, a blasphemy ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... to have had any remarkable effect on crimes or executions in the generation to which it belonged, and with which it has passed away. Hogarth's idle apprentice is hanged; but the whole scene—with the unmistakable stout lady, drunk and pious, in the cast; the quarrelling, blasphemy, lewdness, and uproar; Tiddy Doll vending his gingerbread, and the boys picking his pocket—is a bitter satire on the great example; as efficient then, ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... their due office and place, in the maintenance of religion. But we may not take up the third sword, which is Mahomet's sword, or like unto it; that is, to propagate religion by wars, or by sanguinary persecutions to force consciences; except it be in cases of overt scandal, blasphemy, or intermixture of practice against the state; much less to nourish seditions; to authorize conspiracies and rebellions; to put the sword into the people's hands; and the like; tending to the subversion of all government, which is the ordinance of God. For this ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... act of life, since it gives birth to a higher state of existence. Were it not thus there would be something greater than God. It would be the just man immolating himself uselessly and hopelessly for his country. This supposition is a folly of blasphemy, and I repel it with contempt and horror. No! Vergniaud is not greater than God, but God is more just than Vergniaud; and He will not to-morrow suffer him to ascend a scaffold but to justify and ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... girl!" echoed Jernam; "an angel, you mean! I did not know there were such women in the world; and to think that such a woman should be here, in this place, in the midst of all this tobacco-smoke, and noise, and blasphemy! It ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... absolutely and infinitely better than evil, whether it pay or not to all eternity. Ask one of them: "Is it better to do right and go to hell, or do wrong and go to heaven?"—they will look at you puzzled, half angry, suspecting you of some secret blasphemy, and, if hard pressed, put off the new and startling question by saying, that it is absurd to talk of an impossible hypothesis. The human portion of their virtue is not mercenary, for they are mostly worthy men; the religious part thereof, that which they keep for Sundays and for charitable institutions, ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... and approval of the Religion of Jesus Christ. In view of the facts here presented, let these men seriously inquire of themselves, whether in advancing such a claim, they are not uttering a higher and more audacious blasphemy than any which ever fell from the pens of Voltaire and Paine. As if to cover them with confusion, and leave them utterly without excuse for thus libelling the character of a just God, these developments are making, and the veil rising, which for long years of sinful apathy has rested upon ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... England, so many of our respectable voters are still grovelling in a gloomy devil worship, of which the fires of Loki are the main bulwark, that no Government has yet had the conscience or the courage to repeal our monstrous laws against "blasphemy." ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... a woman doctor before, and his whole conservative soul rose up in revolt at the idea. He could not recall any Biblical injunction that the man should remain ever the doctor and the woman the nurse, and yet he felt as if a blasphemy had been committed. His face betrayed his feelings only ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich,) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... delivered, and a great deal more to that effect: so, then, he passes to the other legacy, of exactly the same sum, to the hospital, usually called and styled ——, in the city of London, and says, 'And whereas we are assured by the Holy Scriptures, which, in these days of blasphemy and sedition, it becomes every true Briton and member of the Established Church to support, that "charity doth cover a multitude of sins," so I do give and devise,' etc., 'to be forever termed in the deeds,' etc., 'of the said hospital, "The ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have again and again encountered the most indomitable cheerfulness in Londoners, in circumstances which would drive any Australian to tears, or blasphemy, or suicide, or to all three. And I know now that many Londoners wash as frequently as Australians, or nearly so. But my first impression of the appearance of those I saw was an impression of sour, cross, unwashed sadness. And, being an impressionable person, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... empty words, the mighty intellect of Ferdinand of Spain. Thou hast now to defend thyself against still graver charges than those of treachery to the king whom thou didst profess to serve. Yea, misbeliever as thou art, it is thine to vindicate thyself from blasphemy against the God thou shouldst adore. Confess the truth: thou art of the ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... breath.' They were terrible sma', common things she telled me, sic as near a' mithers minds about their bairns, but the kind o' holy way she said them drove my words down my throat, like as if I was some infidel man trying to break out wi' blasphemy ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... clothed. And there he stood, all but naked, godlike, in a white blaze of light. She had never conceived of the form of God except as nebulously naked, and the thought-association was startling. It seemed to her that her sin partook of sacrilege or blasphemy. ...
— The Game • Jack London
... consecrated bread be really the body of Christ that was given for the salvation of the world, what horrible blasphemy to state such things of it, what vileness to believe them, what a barefaced imputation on the reason of man to spread these shocking details before him and ask him to accept them as true of the God ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... dare to assail it. And what is this system which is to be held in so much reverence, and avoided with so much care? It is a system which has in itself no redeeming feature, but is full of blood—the blood of innocent men, women and children; full of adultery and concupiscence; full of darkness, blasphemy and wo; full of rebellion against God and treason against the universe; full of wrath—impurity—ignorance—brutality—and awful impiety; full of wounds and bruises and putrefying sores; full of temporal suffering and eternal damnation. It is, says ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... which he and his friends are singing. Such a man as Charles should have had an Ostade or Mieris to paint him. Your Knellers and Le Bruns only deal in clumsy and impossible allegories: and it hath always seemed to me blasphemy to claim Olympus for such ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fancy a more sceptical world than that in which men doubt if there is a world. It might certainly have reached its bankruptcy more quickly and cleanly if it had not been feebly hampered by the application of indefensible laws of blasphemy or by the absurd pretence that modern England is Christian. But it would have reached the bankruptcy anyhow. Militant atheists are still unjustly persecuted; but rather because they are an old minority than because they are a new one. Free thought has exhausted its own ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... our obsolete "blue laws," and their literal enforcement, if such a thing were possible, might to-day subject a Russian of freethinking proclivities, in Maryland or Delaware, to the penalty of having his tongue bored through with a red-hot iron for blasphemy. Happily the spirit of progress is of higher authority than the letter of outworn laws, and statutory enactments are not so inelastic but that they relax and change with the general advancement of peoples in the path ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... eloquent and pious young minister, taught that each person should think for himself in all religious matters, and be responsible to his own conscience alone. He declared that the magistrates had, therefore, no right to punish blasphemy, perjury, or Sabbath-breaking. The clergy and magistrates were alarmed at what they considered a doctrine dangerous to the peace of the colony, and he was ordered (1635) to be sent to England. It was in ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... sensibility, who, whatever their state of religious belief, would regard with abhorrence the exhibition on the ordinary commercial stage of the Christ whom they were brought up to regard as Divine, have a title to consideration. The traffic in blasphemy that would immediately follow the suggested enlargement of the boundary of the theatre is horrible to contemplate. Such abominations as a combination of Christ and semi-naked women doing more or less mitigated danses du ventre, would be ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... but if corruptible, the very statement showed it to be false and revolting." This argument then of Nebridius sufficed against those who deserved wholly to be vomited out of the overcharged stomach; for they had no escape, without horrible blasphemy of heart and tongue, thus thinking ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... child, as young boy, when He is dwelling in Vraja, in the forest of Brindaban, when He is living with the cowherds and their wives and their children, the marvellous child who stole the hearts of men. It is noticeable—and if it had been remembered many a blasphemy would not have been uttered—that Shri Krishna chose to show Himself as the great object of devotion, as the lover of the devotee, in the form of a child, not in that ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... bang went the door, and ere long we were safely consigned to the "string" of carriages bound for the same destination as ourselves. After much "cutting-in," and shaving of wheels, and lashing of coach-horses, with not a little blasphemy, "Miss Horsingham" and "Miss Coventry" were announced in a stentorian voice, and we were struggling in a mass of silks and satins, blonde and broadcloth, up the swarming staircase. Everything happened exactly as I had predicted; Lady ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... ever hear such dreadful blasphemy? That the loves, for example, of two such cultivated, exquisite creatures as Clara and myself would be nothing different from those of the barmaids ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... of the mob, as they received the reports of the committee, were reechoed along the streets. A fierce yell greeted the reaeppearance of Radcliff in front of the Patent Office. He announced the result of the interview with the editor of the Era. Shouts, imprecations, blasphemy, burst from the crowd. "Down with the Era!" "Now for it!" "Gut the office!" were the exclamations heard on all sides, and the ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... Majesty of Ra upon [her] back . . . . . And when these things had been done, men and women saw the god Ra, upon the back [of the cow]. Then these men and women said, "Remain with us, and we will overthrow thine enemies who speak words of blasphemy [against thee.], and [destroy them]." Then his Majesty [Ra] set out for the Great House, and [the gods who were in the train of Ra remained] with them (i.e., the men); during that time the earth was in darkness. And when the earth became light [again] and the morning ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... grown from a secret, stealthy disease into a wicked, open, raging plague, which hand in hand with the physical contagion sought to slay the soul as the other strove to destroy the body, so incredible were their deeds, so enormous their depravity! The air was filled with blasphemy and impiety, with the groans of the gluttons and the howling of drunkards. The wildest night hid not greater debauchery than was ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... mouth of the bottomless pit. He began to be haunted by a strange curiosity about the unpardonable sin, and by a morbid longing to commit it. But the most frightful of all the forms which his disease took was a propensity to utter blasphemy, and especially to renounce his share in the benefits of the redemption. Night and day, in bed, at table, at work, evil spirits, as he imagined, were repeating close to his ear the words, "Sell him, sell him." He struck at the hobgoblins; he pushed them from ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in the mouth that speaks them, are of no offence, he halloos on the whole pack against me: judge, justice, surrogate, and official are to be employed, at his suit, to direct process; and boring through the tongue for blasphemy, is the least punishment his charity ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... Paine Liberty of Man, Woman and Child Orthodoxy Blasphemy Some Reasons Why Intellectual Development Human Rights Talmagian Theology (Second Lecture) Talmagian Theology (Third Lecture) Religious Intolerance Hereafter Review of His Reviewers How the Gods Grow The Religion of our Day Heretics And Heresies The ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... uttering teeth and blasphemy, the Prussian recoiled like a serpent, gathered himself together and launched headlong at Lanyard, only to be met full tilt by a second blow and a third, each more merciless than its predecessor, beating ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... in the world's art, the Americans were squabbling over the blasphemy of instruments and of notation! This is not the place to treat the history of our music. The curious can find enlightenment at such sources as Mr. Louis C. Elson's "National Music of America." It must ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... unpractical fools. Also the Roman Catholic Church, embarrassed by recruits of your type and born scoffers like Belloc, who cling to the Church because its desecration would take all the salt out of blasphemy, will quietly put you on the unofficial index. The Irish will not support an English journal because it occasionally waves a Green flag far better than they can wave it themselves. And the number of Jews who will buy you just to see what you say about them is ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... his head. "Get the priests of the locally venerated gods to put him on trial for blasphemy, heresy, impersonating a prophet, practicing witchcraft without a license, or any other ecclesiastical crimes you or they can think of. Then, after he's been given a scrupulously fair trial, have the soldiers of King Yoorkerk behead him, ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... had a habit of swearing,—expletives in conversation, which, in truth, only expressed the warmth of his feelings; but in that age, when Puritanism had already possessed half the nation, an oath was considered as nothing short of blasphemy. Henry once made a keen allusion to this verbal frailty of his father's; for when he was told that some hawks were to be sent to him, but it was thought that the king would intercept some of them, he replied, "He may do as he pleases, for he shall not be put to the oath for ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... said the Sub-Prior, "thou hast little merit in abstaining from oaths or blasphemy, if it be only out of fear of ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... refused to move until they had drunk their fill of her astounding beauty. I well remember one occasion on which the horses in a West Kensington omnibus met her at Piccadilly Circus and refused to leave her until she reached Highgate, in spite of the whip of the driver, the blasphemy of the conductor, the more formal complaints of the passengers, and direct ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... was a man of mark and influence. Great therefore was this dignitary's astonishment when Jeffreys ordered him—clothed as he was in official scarlet and furs—to stand in the dock. For a few seconds the local potentate demurred; but when the Chief Justice poured upon him a cataract of blasphemy, and vowed to hang him instantly over the entrance to the tolsey unless he complied immediately, the humiliated chief magistrate of the ancient borough took his place at the felon's bar, and received such a rating as ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... and as a result of this almost necessary rule, every convict has an opportunity to listen to the vilest obscenity that ever falls upon human ears. At times, when some of these convicts, who seem veritable encyclopedias of wickedness, are crowded together, the ribald jokes, obscenity and blasphemy are too horrible for description. It is a pandemonium—a miniature hell! But worse than this horrible flow of language are the horrible and revolting practices of the mines. Men, degraded to a plane lower than the brutes, are guilty of the unmentionable ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... that, with the vote in the hands of woman, the moral elevation of the race is secured forever! "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" The feeling is common in America that to doubt the omnipotence of universal suffrage in its extreme development is not only treason, but a sort of blasphemy. And this feeling is now leading many minds, unconsciously, perhaps, to shrink from opposing the present movement in favor of womanhood suffrage. They bow the knee to the common idol. They dare not believe it possible for the suffrage to be carried too far. For ourselves ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... What right has James Martineau to call himself a Christian? When he denies Christ—the Lord who bought him! And makes no secret of it. How can you respect an infidel who uses Christ's name to cover up his blasphemy?" ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... persuaded to think that I am mistaken as to the style in which Essayists and Reviewers are to be dealt with[17]. Some respectable persons, I doubt not, will think my treatment of them harsh and uncharitable. I invite them to consider that we do not expect blasphemy from Ministers of the Gospel,—irreligion from the teachers of youth,—infidelity from the Professor's chair: nor are we called upon to tolerate it either. I have the misfortune to concur entirely with the verdict pronounced by the Bishop of Exeter on the subject of 'Essays and Reviews.' ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... might make such efforts as to fix a lasting impression on both Houses that the State appointment of bishops, coupled with the farce of a conge d'elire, is rank blasphemy. This outrage on good taste ought to occupy the attention of every man. It is quite enough to fill the ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... right, said Sarpi, is when one finds himself in contradiction to the Jesuits. They are most subtle masters in ill-doing, men who, if their needs demand, are ready to commit crimes worse than those of which they now are guilty. All falsehood and all blasphemy proceed from them. They have set the last hand at establishing universal corruption. They are a public plague, the plague of the world, chameleons who take their color from the soil they squat on, flatterers of princes, perverters of youth. They not only excuse but laud lying; ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... then, Coleridge succeeds with the supernatural, both by way of description in detail, and of suggestion. If you wish to see a failure, try the ghost, the moral but not affable ghost, in Wordsworth's "Laodamia." It is blasphemy to ask the question, but is the ghost in "Hamlet" quite a success? Do we not see and hear a little too much of him? Macbeth's airy and viewless dagger is really much more successful by way of suggestion. The stage makes a ghost visible and familiar, and this is one great ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... of them, and well; but each intrenched himself behind his own personal views, in virtue of the adage "One cannot argue about tastes." I protested in vain against this false principle, saying that it was inadmissible, and that the classic Brillat-Savarin would have been shocked at such blasphemy. Even his name had no weight, and the guests separated gayly, after uttering heresies that made you shiver. Among the eminent men present there was one, however, who seemed somewhat mortified that ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... [Fol. 65a.]] [Sidenote: God hates the wicked as "hell that stinks."] at alle ille[gh] he hates as helle at stynkke[gh]; Bot non nuye[gh] hy{m}, on na[gh]t ne neu{er} vpon daye[gh], [Sidenote: Especially harlotry and blasphemy.] As harlottrye vn-honest, hey{n}g of seluen; at schame[gh] for no schrewedschyp schent mot he wore! 580 Bot sauyo{ur} mon i{n} y self, a[gh] {o}u a sotte lyuie, a[gh] {o}u bere y self babel, by-enk e su{m}-tyme, Wheer he at stykked vche a stare i{n} vche ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... it grew more than he could bear, and he reached a hand to Maren's shoulder, a tentative hand, hesitating, as if it felt its touch blasphemy. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... in the bow of the long-boat, as if someone had suddenly struck him, broke into a tornado of blasphemy. ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... fiery enthusiast, fretting for the acted moral of a tale he knows too well, he whispers of British blasphemy and insolence,—of Brahmins insulted, and gods derided,—of Vedas violated, and the sacred Sanscrit defiled by the tongues of Kaffirs,—of Pariahs taught and honored,—of high and low castes indiscriminately mingled, an obscene herd, in schools and regiments,— of glorious institutions, old ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... along the line from those who saw him do it. Small time for cheering then; for neither could recover his breath before there came a volley of musketry, and all around them, outside the bayonets, was a wild sea of fierce men's faces, horses' heads, gleaming steel, and French blasphemy. A strange scene for the commencement of an acquaintance! And yet it throve; for that same evening, Buckley, talking to his Colonel, saw the artillery officer coming towards them, and ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... but for this crime he was deposed from the priesthood by St. John the Evangelist. No good end can, on any account, excuse the least lie; and to advance that pious frauds, as some improperly call them, can ever be lawfully used, is no better than blasphemy. All wilful lying is essentially a sin, as Catholic divines unanimously teach, with St. Austin, against the Prisciallianists. It is contrary and most hateful to the God of truth, and a heinous affront and injury offered to our neighbor: it destroys the very end and use of speech, and the sacred ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... has ever flowed from the confessions of Rousseau, or the autobiographical sketch of Hume? From the first we rise with a confused and miserable sense of weakness and of power—of lofty aspirations and degrading appetencies—of pride swelling into blasphemy, and humiliation pitiably grovelling in the dust—of purity of spirit soaring on the wings of imagination, and grossness of instinct brutally wallowing in "Epicurus' stye,"—of lofty contempt for the opinion of ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... I were to say that she seemed to be more in charity with all men, for assuredly I never knew her otherwise. But, if the words may be used, as I think they may be understood, without irreverence, or any meaning that would be akin to blasphemy, she seemed to me to be more in charity with her Creator. The ways of God to man had become more justified to her; and her outlook as to the futurity of the world was a more hopeful one. Of course optimism had with her to be long-sighted! But she seemed ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... invaded and set all Christendom aglow! However, Monsignor Fornaro whom he chanced to meet as he was leaving the church, inveighed against the Gothic style as rank heresy. The first Christian church, said the prelate, had been the basilica, which had sprung from the temple, and it was blasphemy to assert that the Gothic cathedral was the real Christian house of prayer, for Gothic embodied the hateful Anglo-Saxon spirit, the rebellious genius of Luther. At this a passionate reply rose to Pierre's lips, but he said nothing for ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... did not intervene, and that the Father of men could permit His dear world to be so ranged against Him? What did He mean to do? Was this eternal silence never to be broken? It was very well for those that had the Faith, but what of the countless millions who were settling down in contented blasphemy? Were these not, too, His children and the sheep of His pasture? What was the Catholic Church made for if not to convert the world, and why then had Almighty God allowed it, on the one side, to dwindle to a handful, and, on the other, the world to find its ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... and genius very commonly to be pitied. It stands twice the chance of the other of dying in a hospital, in jail, in debt, in bad repute. It is a perpetual insult to mediocrity; its every word is a trespass against somebody's vested ideas,—blasphemy against somebody's O'm, or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the left. Day and night ye shall devote yourselves to the study of the Torah.' Why, then, dost thou seek to corrupt the people of the Lord, saying, 'Baal is God, let us worship him'? If he really is what thou sayest, then let him speak like a god, and we will pay him worship." For the blasphemy they had uttered against Baal, Jair commanded that the seven men be burnt. When his servants were about to carry out his order, God sent the angel Nathaniel, the lord over the fire, and he extinguished the ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... That a child of God need not, nay ought not, to ask pardon for sin, and that it is no less than blasphemy ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... may, in some degree, excuse it. I will say nothing of his works; they speak sufficiently for themselves; they will live as long as taste and letters shall remain in this country, and be more and more admired, as envy and resentment shall subside. But I will venture this piece of classical blasphemy: which is, that however he may be supposed to be obliged to Horace, Horace is more obliged to him." Mr. Ruffhead (generally supposed to have had his information from Dr. Warburton) thus states:—"Mr. Pope was low in stature, and of a diminutive and ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... deeper than my doubts. He was here last evening, talking about the Naples Museum, the Aristides, the bronzes, the Pompeian frescoes, with such a beautiful intelligence that doubt of the ultimate future seemed blasphemy. I walked back to his lodging with him, and he was as mild as midsummer moonlight. He has the ineffable something that charms and convinces; my last word about him shall not ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... Galilee, where the water was miraculously turned into wine. In fact, he said he was an intimate friend of his, and had often warned him to be less romantic and imprudent, or he would finish his career miserably. This infamous blasphemy, strange to say, found believers; and ere three days had elapsed, it was currently reported that St. Germain was born soon after the deluge, and that he would ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... instead of reflecting peculiar glory on God, seemed to me to savor of blasphemy. It is no honor to be partial or capricious; it is a reproach. A father that should be tenderly indulgent to one of his children, and rigidly severe to the rest, would be regarded with indignation. The doctrine of Divine partiality shocks both our ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... of blasphemy the fane alarms, The cloister startles at the gleam of arms. [14] 60 The [15] thundering tube the aged angler hears, [G] Bent o'er the groaning flood that sweeps away his tears. [16] Cloud-piercing pine-trees nod their troubled heads, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... cramped with long rigors of cold, her delicate face reddened as if before a fire, her jaws felt almost locked as she went through the deadly cold of the lonely house back to bed; but that strange rage in her heart enabled her to defy it, and awakened within her something like blasphemy against life and all the conditions thereof, but never against Richard Alger. She never felt one throb of resentment against him. She even wondered, when she was back in bed, if he had bedclothing enough, if the quilts and bed-puffs ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... received a false kind of education, it does not introduce into the life of the people the teaching of the Spirit, but remains in the mere dead forms of outward ceremonial, at the same time despising these forms even to blasphemy; because the clergy itself continually presents examples of want of respect to religion, and transforms the service of God into a profitable trade. Can the people respect the clergy when they hear how one priest stole money from ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... of human nature, am not going to be surprised; and, quite aware of my own shortcomings, don't intend to be very savage at my neighbour's. Mr. Sampson was: in his chapel in Long Acre he whipped Vice tremendously; gave Sin no quarter; out-cursed Blasphemy with superior Anathemas; knocked Drunkenness down, and trampled on the prostrate brute wallowing in the gutter; dragged out conjugal Infidelity, and pounded her with endless stones of rhetoric—and, after ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Chinamen— Sat in that House that broke the Kings, And voted for all sores of things— And rose from Under-Sec. to Sec. Some grumbled. Growlers who gave less Than generous worship to success, The little printers in Dundee Who got ten years for blasphemy, (Although he let them off with seven) Respect him rather less than heaven. No matter. This can still be said: Never to supernatural dread, Never to unseen deity, Did Sir John Grubby bend the knee; Never did dream of hell or ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... hear Kipping, faintly now, bawling wrath and blasphemy. We could see Captain Falk shaking his fist at us, and very clearly we could hear his faint voice calling, "I'll sack that ship, so help me! We'll see then what's ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... Council arose the King of Arizim. He said: "I fear that thou hast spoken blasphemy against the Sea, and I have a dread that ill will come of it. Indeed I had not thought she was so fair. It is such a short while ago that she was quite a small child with her hair still unkempt and not yet attired in the ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... is tendered to Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge by appreciative citation of their work. Even among the general victims, Scotchmen and political economists have a still more direct olive-branch extended to them by the introduction of the personage of Mr. MacBorrowdale: there is no more blasphemy of Scott: and I do not at the present moment remember any very distinct slaps at paper money. Peace had been made long ago with the Church of England, through the powerful medium of Dr. Folliott; but it is ratified and cemented anew ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... these we were ignorant. All was hidden from our eyes; the veil of the night cloaked from us the work we had done. If men cried in agony, if groans mocked angry boasts, if we heard the splashing of the oars, the hoarse command, the vile blasphemy, the rest was in imagination's keeping. The outposts of Czerny's crew, we said, had tried to rush the gate where our own men watched; but our own were behind the steel doors now and the gun's hail swept the barren ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... a God-made arrangement for human development and happiness, and woe be to him who defiles it with sensuous abuses. It is before the Church, before any of the solemn ordinances of God's house, the primal decree of the Father for his human children. To degrade or abuse the Marriage covenant is blasphemy, irreverence, sacrilegious wickedness. If one would enter the portals of the church bowed in reverence to God, much more should he thus enter the sanctuary of Marriage. If he should sit reverently at the table of the ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... a few of the great Greeks has ever taken Nature so naturally as he did. And it is also due to him to say that no one outside Colney Hatch ever took Nature so unnaturally as it was taken in what Mr. Hardy has had the blasphemy to call Wessex Tales. This division between the two points of view is vital; because the turn of the nineteenth century was a very sharp one; by it we have reached the rapids in which we ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... affidavit, cursing, profanity, anathema, denunciation, reprobation, ban, execration, swearing, blaspheming, imprecation, sworn statement. blasphemy, malediction, vow. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... without dignity or picturesqueness of any kind. He had been drinking heavily for some time and was more than half stupefied. He thought he heard a noise as of someone at the door and looked up. Then he called half savagely to come in; but there was no response. With a muttered blasphemy he renewed his potations. Presently he forgot all around him, sank into a daze, but suddenly awoke to see standing before him someone or something like a battered, ghostly edition of his sister. For a few moments there came upon him a sort of fear. The woman before ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... felons and loose livers, and not informed of what they were accused. Leach and Edes kept diaries when in prison. "From the 2d July to the 17th," writes Leach, "a Complicated scene of Oaths, Curses, Debauchery, and the most horrid Blasphemy, committed by the Provost Marshal, his Deputy and Soldiers, who were our guard, Soldier prisoners, and sundry soldier women, confined for Thefts, &c.... When our Wives, Children, and Friends came to see us, (which was seldom they were permitted) ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... a recent meeting at the Egyptian Hall, a celebrated Irish Barrister is reported to have said, that 'blasphemy was the only trade that prospered.' The assertion, like many others in the same speech, was certainly a bold one, and one which the gentleman would have found some difficulty in establishing. If, however, the learned gentleman had substituted the word law for blasphemy, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Another considered that the sluggards who went on hospital service with red crosses on their caps were no better than cowards. Then they discovered a spy (as they supposed) in their midst, and time was consumed in hustling him out. Lastly an orator concluded his speech with awful blasphemy, wishing that he were a Titan, and could drive a ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... they prayed to Jesus Christ. The very first word, so far as we know, that Paul ever heard from a Christian was, 'Lord Jesus! receive my spirit.' He heard that cry of calm faith which, when he heard it, would sound to him as horrible blasphemy from Stephen's dying lips. How little he dreamed that he himself was soon to cry to the same Jesus, 'Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?' and was in after-days to beseech Him thrice for deliverance, and to be answered by sufficient grace. How little he dreamed that, when his ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Army: Why do loaves flame when hit by incendiary bullets? U. S. Customs: If bread intended for export, get export license or face prosecution. Russian Consulate in Chicago: Advise on destination of bread-lift. And some Kansas church is accusing us of a hoax inciting to blasphemy, of faking miracles—I don't ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... of Washington was one of bitter vehemence in political thought. In England the good Whig was taught that to deny Whig doctrine was blasphemy, that there was no truth or honesty on the other side, and that no one should trust a Tory; and usually the good Whig was true to the teaching he had received. In America there had hitherto been no national ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... was swearing abundance of oaths, and making tell thousands of exclamations, in proof of his innocence. Nothing, however, could stop the volubility of his wife, or calm her rage. By this time she had worked her passion up to such a pitch, that oath succeeded oath; and blasphemy blasphemy, in one raging, unceasing torrent. From her husband she fell on Zeenab, and from Zeenab she returned again to her husband, until she foamed at the mouth. She was not satisfied with words alone, but seizing the wretched girl by one ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... possessed by an evil spirit, and the priests at once begin to exorcise it; it is all but done, when one word of the Queen's, who sweetly calls him "Assad", spoils everything. He is in her hands: falling on his knees before her, he prays to her as to his goddess. Wrathful at this blasphemy in the temple, ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... bagman of blasphemy three days afterwards, reading in the papers the letter of Bishop Guilbert, burst into print with this incredible but most instructive effusion, addressed ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... affairs, could it have flourished so long, and have put forth such rank and fetid outgrowths. From it sprang the "elective affinities" of Goethe, and the loose morality of the French royalists, which rushed on into the roaring sea of infidelity, blasphemy, and anarchy of ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... this recreant Scot anathematizes the Scottish people for not applauding blasphemy, calumny, and every species of literary criminality! Such are the monstrous passions that swell out the poisonous breast of genius, deprived of every moral restraint; and such was the demoniac irritability which ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... the more mournful the maiden, the more raging became Grazian Likovay. Amid all terrors for the maiden, the most frightful were these wild banquets. It was from these that she sought refuge in the darkness of the church. She knew well that such a revel was nothing but a wild chorus of blasphemy. A hundred throats at once derided Heaven, the future state, and the departed souls,—and this was the way in which the dead brother's memory was celebrated. She tried with her prayers to crowd out the drunken yells on their upward path; while the revellers wandered to the cellars, and ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... bliss, however, is only approximately attainable in moments of mystic transport. And when, as in so many experiences, we see only in part, and have inadequate ideas, faith in the Eternal Whole is needed to keep us from blasphemy. ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... State Church of any kind, but was earnest that, if such must be established, it should not be coercive. He did not formally demand unlimited toleration, and indeed conceded something in words to the effect that in cases of "known heresy, or blasphemy, or idolatry," offenders would have to be "obnoxious to the Civil Power;" but I rather think that the concession was prudential, and that his heart did not go with it. I will retain him therefore among the Unlimited Tolerationists. Far outshining him in this class, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... fluent in that, for, inspired by love of Aurelia, I attacked it with extraordinary passion. All Italy, and above all Tuscany, took sacred air from her; there grew to be an aureole about everything which owned kinship with her. I was a severe ritualist, as every lover is: it became a blasphemy in me to think of Aurelia in any form of words but those of her own honey tongue. And that was of the purest in the land. She had very little Venetian at any time, and kept what she had for her husband and household management. To me she employed her native speech, not the harsh staccato ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... into the other's eyes. "D'ye ken what blasphemy is, Mr. Hornbut?" he asked, shouldering a ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... meetings to pray for peace. They are also praying earnestly that the Christians in Europe may be forgiven for killing each other, and, in particular, that the British and German churches and ministers may be forgiven for the blasphemy of praying to the Common Father for victory over one another, i.e. for Divine assistance in smashing and maiming and murdering more of their fellow Christians. I am also told that these Chinese Christians appreciate perfectly ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... wishing to have a clergyman there, should always be taken as a sign of grace, Lady Lufton. The air was impure, no doubt; but it was less impure with Robarts there than it would have been without him. But, gracious heavens! what blasphemy have I been saying about impure air? Why, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... BLASPHEMY, defined by Ruskin as the opposite of euphemy, and as wishing ill to anything, culminating in wishing ill to God, as ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... "Blasphemy," he said. "Blasphemy, of the worst sort." He looked away from Musa. "I believe that in this case, the Great One will require the ship's company to deal with you in their own way, that they may be purged of any contamination due to your presence." He ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... had fled down the stairs. "His Tonsils" rang in her ears. What blasphemy! What sacrilege! She could scarcely pretend to listen to Mme. Remy's ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... household would begin to enjoy itself as soon as formalities had been complied with, and it was left to do so at its own free-will and pleasure. Nevertheless, a hint at abolition would have been blasphemy, and however eager the rank and file of the establishment may have been for the disappearance of the bigwigs, not one of them—and still more not one of their many invited neighbours—ever breathed a hint ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... thee by the sound of it;—thou wilt fly from cant with a shudder never felt before; as from the opened litany of Sorcerers' Sabbaths, the true Devil-worship of this age, more horrible than any other blasphemy, profanity or genuine blackguardism elsewhere audible among men. It is alarming to witness,—in its present completed state! And Quack and Dupe, as we must ever keep in mind, are upper-side and under of the selfsame substance; convertible personages: turn ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... Theory. Its rise among the Greeks—Pythagoras, Philolaus, Aristarchus Its suppression by the charge of blasphemy Its loss from sight for six hundred Years, then for a thousand Its revival by Nicholas de Cusa and Nicholas Copernicus Its toleration as a hypothesis Its prohibition as soon as Galileo teaches it as a truth Consequent timidity of scholars—Acosta, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... "though Blasphemy's loud scream With that sweet music of deliverance strove! Though all the fierce and drunken passions wove A dance more wild than e'er was maniac's dream! Ye Storms, that round the dawning east assembled, The Sun was rising, though ye hid his light!" And when, to soothe my soul, that ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... secure his captive, dealt with the heavy life-preserver a blow at the assailant's head, which fortunately only reached his shoulder. The latter released Tom's throat to get possession of the pistol. In the struggle it went off. There was a hideous blasphemy, a groan, and a heavy fall between the wheels of ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... from the life of the populace. Not poetry only, but all good things and all good feelings,—religion, reverence, courtesy,—sane contentment, rational ambition,—the right sort of humility, the right sort of pride,—they all go down before it: whilst, in the ignorance which it disseminates, blasphemy, covetousness, bumptiousness, bad taste (and bad art and bad literature, to gratify it), every form of wrong-headedness and wrong-heartedness flourish like the seven plagues of Egypt. But it was all inevitable from the day that meddling German busybody invented printing—if ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... in our own neighbourhood. Shortly after the death of my father, one hot-headed individual endeavoured to do me an evil turn, but I soon requited him, causing him to be imprisoned on a charge of blasphemy, and in prison he remained a long time, till ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... why mere blasphemy by itself should be an excuse for tyranny and treason; or how the mere isolated fact of a man not believing in God should be a reason for my ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... was only seven behind Hobhouse on the poll; everybody thinks he is sure to win, even if Burdett should come forward with money. The day before there was great uproar and much abuse on the hustings. Burdett made a shameful speech full of blasphemy and Jacobinism, but he seems to have lost his popularity in a great measure even with the blackguards of Westminster. Hobhouse yesterday was long and dull; he did not speak like a clever man, and if the people would have heard Lamb, and he has any dexterity ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... to propose to her during service this afternoon by writing my feelings on the flyleaf of the hymn-book, or something like that; but I knew that Aunt Celia would never forgive such blasphemy, and I thought that Kitty herself might consider it wicked. Besides, if she should chance to accept me, there was nothing I could do in a cathedral to relieve my feelings. No; if she ever accepts me, I wish it to be in a large, vacant spot ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of whom was Legendre the Butcher. Every rank recess of prostitute pollution in Paris was ransacked to furnish materials for the celebration of their impure and impious orgies. The ode to Atheism, and the song of Blasphemy, were succeeded by the applauding ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... happened to dine in the company of Wilkes in September 1762, "met with a better companion; he has inexhaustible spirits, infinite wit and humour, and a great deal of knowledge; but a thorough profligate in principle as in practice; his life stained with every vice, and his conversation full of blasphemy and indecency."-E. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... But that my hearts on future mischeefe set, I would speake blasphemy ere bid you flye: But flye you must: Vncureable discomfite Reignes in the hearts of all our present parts. Away for your releefe, and we will liue To see their day, and them our Fortune giue. Away my ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the Azgher, to whom the Creator has given them once and for ever, and who are the sovereign and omnipotent rulers of this portion of earth—this large tract of Sahara." There has often been detected in the speeches of African princes a certain degree of blasphemy and resistance to the omnipotent sovereignty of the Deity they adore; and this kind of language was not new to me. The possessors of lawless power seem easily to identify ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... religion is an agency to produce right conduct. And its working is more like that of instinct than it is like that of reason. The irreligious man, testing a proposition by reason alone, may decide that it is to the interests of all concerned that he should not utter blasphemy. The orthodox Christian never considers the pros and cons of the question; he has the Ten Commandments and the teachings of his youth in his mind, and he refrains from blasphemy in almost the instinctive way that he refrains ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... been turned wrong side out. So I took him to a tavern and I sat with him through the night, and nursed him when he suffered, and revealed my mission when he awoke. 'I am out to do good to all men,' I told him, and he searched through his pockets with blasphemy, and he said that I had done him—and he haled me before the court, and the judge said that no man could publicly profess such disinterestedness and escape suspicion, because people in these days are all looking for the main ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... there is no nobility but flattery. Whoever flatters me best is created a great lord, and the titles I confer are synonimous to their merits. There is Kiss-my-breech-Can, my favourite; Adulation-Can, lord treasurer; Prerogative-Can, head of the law; and Blasphemy-Can, high-priest. Whoever speaks truth, corrupts his blood, and is ipso facto degraded. In Europe you allow a man to be noble because one of his ancestors was a flatterer. But every thing degenerates, the farther it is removed from its source. I will ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... another channel from the moment she came in. The baby was trying to solve a problem which had puzzled wiser heads than his. But he had no clue to the labyrinth of Audrey's soul; he was not even certain whether she was an intelligent being, though to doubt it was blasphemy against ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... day shall the Lord shave with the razor that is hired." With one sharp sweep He went across Judea and down went its pride and its power. In 1861 God shaved our nation. We had allowed to grow Sabbath desecration, and oppression, and blasphemy, and fraud, and impurity, and all sorts of turpitude. The South had its sins, and the North its sins, and the East its sins, and the West its sins. We had been warned again and again, and we did not heed. At length the sword of war cut from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf, and from Atlantic seaboard ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... that his cruelty, his blasphemy, his perfidy were strongly exposed and unanimously condemned, and that he was denounced as a violator of law and propriety, false to the dignity of the Church, and faithless to the State, he implored the princes to accept his contrition, and offered ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin, the supreme council of the Jews, and there He had been condemned to death, not on the charge for which He had been arrested—threatening to destroy the Temple—for the evidence against Him had broken down, but for blasphemy during the course of His trial, when adjured by the high priest to declare whether He was the Christ. But the presence of Pilate prevented the council from executing their sentence (as doubtless they would have done if ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... hands of the Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs. NANSEN (page 49 and following.) The artfulness of this legal construction becomes immediately obvious. It is exceedingly remarkable also to find that Norwegian parliamentarism can commit such a blasphemy towards the Constitution, that it has confered a position of ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... terrible, they will feel it would turn them to water, to live through unearthly moments of vision without creeds or beliefs. So they'll get beliefs first. Ah, poor creatures! The cart before the horse! Ah, the blasphemy (pitiful!) of their seeking high spiritual temples, with god-maps or bibles about them, made below in advance! Think of their entering into the presence of Truth, declaring so loudly and boldly they know her already, yet far from willing to stand or fall by her flames—to rise like a phoenix ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... kinds are usually reckoned. First, is feared the infection that may spread; but then all human learning and controversy in religious points must remove out of the world, yea the Bible itself; for that ofttimes relates blasphemy not nicely, it describes the carnal sense of wicked men not unelegantly, it brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against Providence through all the arguments of Epicurus: in other great disputes it answers dubiously and darkly to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... meanness in money matters. That which, to the liar, is only prudent diplomatic reticence, to the listener is falsehood. That which, in the man that judges his own conduct, is but 'a choleric word,' is, in his friend, when he judges him, 'flat blasphemy.' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... greatness to their King, and dwelt in perfect love. Among them I saw Peter, zealous still, but with a holy zeal. I heard him ask, 'How long shall those precious souls, redeemed by thy blood, be led astray? May I not fly on the wings of love, and destroy that city of blasphemy on the seven hills, that the glory may be thine?' But Jesus looked on him with an eye of love, and said, 'Simon, son of Jonas, the time is not yet come.' Then Peter only replied, 'Lord, thou knowest. Thy will ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... horrid blasphemy. "'Twas passion in me once, and I am none so sure there was not a time when you could have cooled it into love. But now 'tis hatred and revenge." He snapped his fingers in her face. "The thing they'll find here ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... all the women in town were present, he was going to say what he thought of any blankety-blank,—and so on at great length, despite the fact that the ladies crowded even a little closer, evidently reluctant to miss a word of his just and unbridled blasphemy. ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... "I suppose, though, you won't be able to drink much more of it than you do here:" on realizing which crushing fact, his melancholy became, if possible, more profound than ever. Indeed, since he crossed the Channel, he had spent most of his leisure moments in a sort of chronic blasphemy, which, it is to be hoped, afforded him some slight relief and consolation, as it was wholly unintelligible to his audience; for, to do Dick justice, in his sister's presence the door of his lips was always ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... done. My own men, knowing me, feared for me, as they did not know what a "savage" king would do in case I carried out my threat; whilst the Waganda, lost in amazement at what seemed little less than blasphemy, stood still as posts. The affair ended by my walking straight away home, giving Bombay orders to leave the present on the ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... arm of my son so burdensome.' She continued a little longer in French till, observing the children did not understand her, she added in patois a long harangue in the same strain, a diatribe on the blasphemy of the age and the desecration of the Sabbath— 'only some old women go to mass.' After her speech, and having twice charged the children to make known her discourse, 'a tout mon peuple,' she glided up the path between the railings, followed by the children, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... eruptive breathing of the sleeping and the drunken; the thoughts of home, and friends, and irreparable disgrace; the feeble hope that, after all, the family will not hear of this so far away; and the despair because they will—mad visions of suicide; blasphemy, repentant tears and prayers, each chasing the other amid the persistent thought that all things are impotent but freedom. Oh, what a night! What ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... wretchedness that has flowed from hereditary honours, riches, and monarchy, that men of lively sensibility have almost uttered blasphemy in order to justify the dispensations of providence. Man has been held out as independent of his power who made him, or as a lawless planet darting from its orbit to steal the celestial fire of reason; and the vengeance of heaven, lurking in the subtile flame, sufficiently punished his temerity, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... man thrust out his jaw at her, with the grimace of an irreverent schoolboy. Upon that aged face it seemed a blasphemy. Then he took out of his bosom a long leather purse, and emptying its contents on the settle, began to count and recount the pieces, ringing and examining each, and suddenly he leapt like a young man. 'What!' he screamed. 'Bad? O Lord! I'm robbed again!' And falling on his knees before the ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Sunnis hold that the "Anbiy" (prophets, or rather announcers of Allah's judgments) were not sinless. But this dogma is branded as most irreverent and sinful by the Shi'ahs or Persian "followers of Ali," who make capital out of this blasphemy and declare that if any prophet sinned he sinned ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... necessary to submit the matter to a Jury, what would the right of freedom of conscience be worth in the hands of such a man, "dressed in a little brief authority?" It was said at the time that the author was actually presented to the Grand-Jury, and an attempt made to procure an indictment for Blasphemy, or Misdemeanor. I know not how true the rumor was. The threat of prosecution came to nought, and Dr. Noyes, one of the most scholarly men in America, is now Professor of Theology in the Divinity School ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... answered by a stream of blasphemy that came from Leith himself. The big ruffian had fallen into a bunch of ribbon-grass, but now, with the assistance of One Eye, he got to his feet and staggered toward us. From the actions of his white partner, I surmised ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... and joining with the shrieks and shouts of the combatants and the dying, to create such a din as might well have given the impression that the chains of Pandemonium were unloosed and all the lost replying to the thunders of heaven with screams of blasphemy and desperation. ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... understand, lift a certain veil. Here, put in words at last, was manifestly the secret, that catch of understanding without which men are groping in the dark, perhaps that mere pointing of relations which would make clear, without blasphemy, time and the future, rebirth and old existence, it might be; and certainly the accident of personality. Here, crystallized, were the things that men almost know, the dream that has just escaped every one, the whisper in sleep that would have explained ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... 'They may bear her from my presence, but they can never untie the knot which unites my heart to her; for that heart, so tender and so constant, God alone divides with my lady, and the portion which God possesses He holds but as a part of her domain, and as her vassal.'" "This is blasphemy," Prince Edward now retorted, "and for such observations alone you merit death. Will you always talk and talk and talk? I perceive that the devil is far more subtle than you, messire, and leads you, like a pig with ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... that Frank never thought, as some boys do, that it is smart and manly to swear. Sometimes we hear a man talk, whom the vicious habit so controls that he cannot speak without blasphemy. With such, oaths become as necessary a part of speech as articles or prepositions. If deprived of them they are crippled; they seem lost, and cannot express themselves. They are therefore unfit for any society but ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... the Divine Spirit. To preach our doubts, to preach our own opinions, to preach poor platitudes, to talk about politics and morals and taste and literature and the like in the pulpit, is profanation and blasphemy. Let no man open his lips unless he can say: 'The Lord hath showed me this; and this I bring to you as His word.' Nor has a Christian organisation any right to exist, unless it recognises the communication and reception ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Pilgrim's Progress, with two pilgrims—one who is instructed in the better way by all the personified powers which make for righteousness; the other finding his companions on the primrose path, and arriving at the everlasting bonfire. Certain Moralities attack a particular vice—gluttony or blasphemy, or the dishonouring of parents. From satirising the social vices of the time, the transition was easy to political satire or invective. In the sixteenth century both the partisans of the Reformation and the adherents to the traditional creed employed the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... return the Amishman's salute. "I return your gifts, Lightless One," he announced. "They are tainted with your blasphemy." He nodded, and his servants dismounted to stack at the side of the road Aaron's guest-gifts of months before. The bale of tobacco was set down, the bolt of scarlet silk, the chains of candy, the silver-filigreed ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... as treasurer of the navy. Dashwood was utterly ignorant of the rudiments of finance, and was scandalously immoral; his house, Medmenham abbey, was the meeting-place of the Hell-fire club, of which he was the founder, and he took a foremost part in the childish mummery, the debauchery, and blasphemy of the "Franciscans," as his companions called themselves. Lord Halifax, a man of popular manners, loose morals, and small ability, succeeded Anson at the admiralty; Henley remained lord chancellor, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... any obligation between my heart and man, and so uplifted was I by the sense of a commission which even candidature could neither invalidate nor deform, that all sense of servility, all cringing thought of livelihood, all fear of faltering and all faltering of fear, seemed to flee away even as the blasphemy of darkness retreats before the sanctities of the morn. In very truth I forgot that I was a candidate of St. Cuthbert's and seemed but to remember that I ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... in red flannel shirts and clay-stained boots. On the first a dead man lay grinning up at the sun, his teeth just showing under his bushy mustache, a trickle of red running down from his temple. On the next a man groaned and mumbled blasphemy between his groanings. ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... do his duty without seeking for such aid and accepting it:—Fatuity! to seek for the unity of a living body of truth and trust in God, with a dead body of lies and trust in wood, and thence to expect anything else than plague, and consumption by worms undying, for both. Blasphemy as well as fatuity! to ask for any better interpreter of God's Word than God, or to expect knowledge of it in any other way than the plainly ordered way: if any man will do he shall know. But of all these fatuities, the basest is the being lured into the Romanist Church by the glitter of ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... shall do Mischief: not all the Joy she gave me but now, can atone for this Blasphemy ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... marriage, unrestrained liberty to indulge in sexual vice and intemperance, while one false step on the part of the woman has condemned her to social obloquy and, frequently, to a life on the street. This strange system, a blasphemy against the Christ who suffered death in order to purify the earth, has had its defenders not merely among the uneducated who do not think, but even among the most acute intellects. The philosopher Hume justifies it by commenting on the vastly greater consequences ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... the fierce, raucous blasphemy of the slayers, and the shrieks of agony, the groans, the prayers, and curses of ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... at last. "It is blasphemy, or madness, or both! It is the evil one's own doing! Forgive her, good God! She does not know what she is saying! Almighty and most merciful God, ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... blandly assented, and Clive listened with pleasure?... With Newcome, the admiration for the literature of the last century was an article of belief, and the incredulity of the young men seemed rank blasphemy. 'You will be sneering at Shakespeare next,' he said, and was silenced, though not better pleased, when his youthful guests told him that Dr. Goldsmith sneered at him too; that Dr. Johnson did not understand him, and that Congreve in his own day, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... man, and did not apologize for the blasphemy. He looked at her fixedly, as though unguessed-at horizons of innocence widened inimitably before his horrified eyes. And then, following some line of association which escaped Sylvia, "I'm not fit ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... venerable men, whose very features had been hallowed by lives of piety, were contorted now by intolerable pain or hellish passion, and now by an unearthly and derisive merriment. Had the pastors prayed, all saintlike as they seemed, it had been blasphemy. The chaste matrons, too, and the maidens with untasted lips, who had slept in their virgin graves apart from all other dust, now wore a look from which the two trembling mortals shrank, as if the unimaginable sin of twenty worlds ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Cortez.—It is blasphemy to say that any folly could come from the Fountain of Wisdom. Whatever is inconsistent with the great laws of Nature and with the necessary state of human society cannot possibly have been inspired by God. Self-defence is as necessary to nations as to men. And shall particulars ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... were, if possible, worse than those obtaining at most other firms. The men were treated like so many convicts, and every job was a hell where driving and bullying reigned supreme, and obscene curses and blasphemy polluted the air from morning till night. The resentment of those who were out of work was directed, not only against the heads of the firm, but also against the miserable, half-starved drudges in their employment. These poor wretches were denounced as 'scabs' and 'wastrels' ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... eyes had shamed him as the look in his own eyes had shamed her. She had known what his wooing meant, and it hadn't been what she wanted. The mention of love on lips that kissed as his had done was blasphemy. ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... modify his misery. I never read his item to see whether there was anything wrong about it, but hastily wrote the few lines which preceded it, and sent it to the printers. And what has my kindness done for me? It has done nothing but bring down upon me a storm of abuse and ornamental blasphemy. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... and authority once held by the ancient Roman empire. Of the leopard-like beast it is declared: "There was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies.... And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name, and His tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations." This prophecy, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White |
