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Blasphemy   /blˈæsfəmi/   Listen
Blasphemy

noun
1.
Blasphemous language (expressing disrespect for God or for something sacred).
2.
Blasphemous behavior; the act of depriving something of its sacred character.  Synonyms: desecration, profanation, sacrilege.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Blasphemy" Quotes from Famous Books



... while the preparations were being made; but when Spotted Dog brought down the end of the rope he had rove through the block at the end of the gaff, and stood grinning anticipatively before Dolores, Rufe's tongue came loose, and he burst into a torrent of futile, raving blasphemy. ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... Sir Jeoffry broke into a torrent of blasphemy. He damned both kinsman and chaplain, and raged at the impudence of both in daring to approach him, swearing to horsewhip my lord if they ever met, and to have the chaplain kicked out of the house, and beyond ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... 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

... of poor-laws, a place where wretches are dying of starvation, and which could collect a mob capable of producing the most appalling catastrophes. In such a place, men become unbelievers like savages, because removed from all humanising influences, and booksellers can carry on a trade in blasphemy. Infidelity is bred in 'the filth and corruption of large towns and manufacturing districts.'[162] The disappearance of clerical influence has led to 'a mass of ignorance, vice, and wretchedness which no generous heart can contemplate without grief.'[163] It is not surprising that, in ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... am pleased with thy courage, and I would sooner hear what thou hast said than the wild shriek of despair. Be proud that the force of thy spirit has carried thee even to madness and blasphemy, for which the pain of hell awaits thee. Step out of thy circle; bury that wretched youth; thy part will then be played here, and thou must begin another, which will ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... few days after His triumphal entry into Jerusalem that the rulers of the Jews took the Lord Jesus, and having condemned Him in their own council for blasphemy, for professing Himself to be Messiah—"the Christ"—"the Son of God" (S. Luke xxii. 67-71), they charged Him before the Roman governor with treason, for saying "that He Himself is Christ a King" (S. Luke xxiii. 2). And this accusation, ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge

... for the government of her kingdom the most stringent were against blasphemy. Never had her subjects seen their gentle lady so instinct with wrath as she was when holding the wriggling arm of Patrick with one hand and the red plush shoulder of Isaac with the other, she resumed her place in the chair of authority. She leaned ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly

... much a fanatic as the men whom he was empowered to crush. His devotion to the Crown and to the Protestant faith was a passion as deep and sincere as that which moved the simple peasants of the West to find the gospel of Christ in the horrible compound of blasphemy and treason which too often made up the eloquence of the Conventicles. But his hardness, if not tempered with mercy, was at least guided by more justice than was common among his colleagues. He both advocated and practised the policy of distinguishing between the multitude and their ringleaders. ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris

... tries With his utmost strength to move; Fails, and in his fury cries, Smiting his hands, that those above, If any shall be passing there, Hear his blasphemy, or his prayer. ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... he, the Grand Duke Peter, had been the boor, the vulgar proletarian. The look in her 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

... erroneous impression if 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 ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... 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 of the long tresses which hung ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... the Christian, without hesitation, "that thou blasphemest the gifts of God, even with the blasphemy of thy father Ishmael. The juice of the grape is given to him that will use it wisely, as that which cheers the heart of man after toil, refreshes him in sickness, and comforts him in sorrow. He who so enjoyeth it may thank God for his winecup as for ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... last straw, the crowning blasphemy. She hardly expected him to endure it, and he did not; she was glad to have it so. But the extreme mildness with which he interrupted her almost unnerved her, so confidently had she ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... a "white man's Government," in the exclusive sense in which it is used. To say so is political blasphemy, for it violates the fundamental principles of our gospel of liberty. This is man's Government; the Government of all men alike; not that all men will have equal power and sway within it. Accidental circumstances, natural and acquired endowment and ability, will vary their fortunes. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... cold water swashed about its legs, and turned playfully to bite its groom. Gilmour, still stooping, dug his elbow up beneath its ribs. The animal wheeled in anger, but Gilmour ran to its head with most manful blasphemy, and led it to the stable door. The off hind ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... 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

... him the honour of playing truant—"playing wag" we called it. I felt that the occasion demanded it. To have the god of my idolatry in my own little town and not to pay him my devotions—why, the idea was almost like blasphemy. A half-dozen, or even a dozen, from my easily infuriated master would be a small price to pay. I should take the stripes as a homage to the hero. He would never know, but I should be proud to suffer in his honour. Unfortunately there was a canvas round the field where the hero ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... drink is scored up—upon him and his pots and his pipes, and the tavern-chorus 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 a wine-drabbled ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... had dashed the holy crucifix on the floor at their feet and spat on it, they could not have shuddered under the horror of a greater blasphemy. ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)

... furiously breaking in. "Blasphemy! He claims the might of the God! Back, dog, lest I kill thee ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... men were miserable, degraded, and outcast during these primitive centuries because the intelligence was dormant, then do not forget, first, that you are drawing an indictment against nature,—no trifling blasphemy in those days—and second, that you are attributing misery to a free creature with tranquil spirit and healthy body, and that must surely be a singular abuse of the term. We see around us scarcely any but people who complain of the burden of their lives; ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... Great White Throne, worthless, sin-stricken. What was he that dared to enter such a holy calling as the ministry? He who was as the dust of the earth, a priest of the Most High God! He beat his brow at the blasphemy of the thought. It was Nadab or Abihu he was or a son of Eli, and the Ark would depart forever from God's people, did he dare to raise his profaning hands in its ministry. And so, partly to escape his sister's reproaches, he had sailed away to Canada. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... a space of time, had a community been more changed for the better than was that of Big Stone Hole. Never had woman's humanising influence made itself more clearly felt. The azure cloud of blasphemy that hung over the workings and the rest of the camp was replaced again by the normal dust. Each man tried to beautify the inside of his shanty to the best of his means and ideas, for there was no knowing when the only "she" would take ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various

... lecturer continued, but he did not put his case in so many plain words as these; every argument he clothed with doubtful words, so as to make falsehood look like truth, and blasphemy like worship. He was an educated and intelligent man, gifted with that dangerous power of preaching the doctrine of devils in the guise of an angel of light, and handling deadly sophistry with as firm a grasp as if it were the sword of ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder

... a by-word in your mouth,)—James Naylor: what dreadful sufferings, with what patience, he endured even to the boring through of his tongue with red-hot irons without a murmur; and with what strength of mind, when the delusion he had fallen into, which they stigmatised for blasphemy, had given way to clearer thoughts, he could renounce his error, in a strain of the beautifullest humility, yet keep his first grounds, and be a Quaker still!—so different from the practice of your common converts from enthusiasm, who, when they apostatize, apostatize ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... saved,—as Thomas, the monk preacher, has shamelessly written, that when a man shall enter into one of these Orders, be it as vile as it may, it is as though he had but just come forth from his baptism; and then they promise him freedom and forgiving of sins by works of his own. Such blasphemy must we hear, while they set their human fancies and ludicrous conceits, destitute of faith, on a level with faith and baptism which God has established, and which are peculiarly his work. Who is to endure this and still keep silent? Such stories have the monks gotten up, and they ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther

... rather severe on the professors, but which to Ruth was blasphemy. She could not help but measure the professors, neat, scholarly, in fitting clothes, speaking in well-modulated voices, breathing of culture and refinement, with this almost indescribable young fellow whom somehow she loved, whose clothes never would fit him, whose ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... master. Such wits as they describe, I have never been so unfortunate as to meet in your company; but have often heard much better reasoning at your table, than I have encountered in their books. The wits they describe, are the fops we banish: For blasphemy and atheism, if they were neither sin nor ill manners, are subjects so very common, and worn so threadbare, that people, who have sense, avoid them, for fear of being suspected to have none. It calls the good name of their wit in question as it ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... difficult question to answer. "Yes" would probably drive Rubi away in anger—perhaps with a torrent of blasphemy on his lips. "No" would be false ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! it is quite another thing, it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy, than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... acts simply because by an accident they have become final words or acts. If a man dies, for instance, by some sudden death when he happens to be intoxicated, such a death is falsely regarded with peculiar horror; as though the intoxication were suddenly exalted into a blasphemy. But that is unphilosophic. The man was, or he was not, habitually a drunkard. If not, if his intoxication were a solitary accident, there can be no reason for allowing special emphasis to this act simply because through misfortune it became his final act. Nor, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... wished that He was served and honoured everywhere, I thought sorrowfully that from the depths of hell there does not go up to Him one single act of love. Then, from my inmost heart, I cried out that I would gladly be cast into that place of torment and blasphemy so that He might be eternally loved even there. This could not be for His Glory, since He only wishes our happiness, but love feels the need of saying foolish things. If I spoke in this way, it was not that I did not long to go to Heaven, ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... Isaiah and Hezekiah, that the chief men at Jerusalem had required any foreign assistance. The Assyrian prince marched immediately to meet the approaching enemy, after having written a letter to Hezekiah, full of blasphemy against the God of Israel, whom he insolently boasted he would speedily vanquish, as he had done all the gods of the other nations round about him. In short, he discomfited the AEgyptians, and pursued ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... Governor? Why should our notions of right towards each other, and to all sentient beings within our influence, differ so widely from what appears to be His notion and rule, if every thing were to end here? Would it not be blasphemy to say that, upon the supposition of the thinking principle being destroyed by death, however inferior we may be to the great Cause and Ruler of things, we have more of love in our nature than He ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... have also introduced abstinence from animal food, being ungrateful to God who created all things. They deny, also, the salvation of him who was first created. It is but recently that this opinion has been discovered among them, since a certain man named Tatian first introduced the blasphemy. He had been a hearer of Justin's, and as long as he continued with him he expressed no such views; but after his martyrdom [circa A. D. 165] he separated from the Church, and having become excited and puffed up by the thought of being a teacher, as if he were superior to others, ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... 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 only ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... minute in which to establish the fruitlessness of spurs, whip and blasphemy in this emergency, and then, descending to his own legs, he climbed over the fence into the road and ran as fast as boots and tops would let him towards the point whence the cry of the hounds was coming, ever more and more ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... "Blasphemy, idolatry, unnatural lusts, rape, murder, adultery, man-stealing, bearing false witness, rebellion against parents, were all equally made capital crimes. The law against the latter was in these words:—'If ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest

... priest. Ha! ha! one of your sort would sooner hang me. You had rather see me perish body and soul in this Huguenot dog-hole! What! do you stammer? Bring a psalm-singing heretic here, and I'll teach him and you what you MAY call blasphemy.' ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... forward, thrusting to left and right, irresistibly clearing the corner. There was no question of making arrests; it was the night of Bank-holiday, and the capacity of police-cells is limited. Enough that the fight perforce came to an end. Amid frenzied blasphemy Bob and Jack went their several ways; so ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... them at the sound of the voice, and such a stream of obscene blasphemy poured from his lips as to cause even the Texan to wince. Without a word the cowboy reached for a bar of soap that lay awash in the filthy water of a basin upon a bench beside the door, and jammed it down the man's throat. ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx

... of them but had felt, to some degree, the same, deep, passionless, revulsive anger that was working in him, and turning him from the old, secret habits of spiritual meditation and high thought, into passions of blasphemy and atheism which burned ever ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... rather than to apostatize, was burnt alive in that city about A. D. 166. That church had passed through the trial of poverty, and was found "rich toward God," Luke 12:21. It had suffered from the blasphemy of unbelieving Jews, who had a synagogue there and were particularly active at the martyrdom of Polycarp. But "He is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision which is outward in the ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... can certify me that Bel devoureth them, then Daniel shall die: for he hath spoken blasphemy against Bel. And Daniel said unto the king, Let it be ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous

... even he, in the last moments of the sufferer, was little more than a passive but shocked witness of remorse, suspended over the abyss of eternity in hopeless dread. We shall not enter into the details of the revolting scene, but simply add that curses, blasphemy, tremulous cries for mercy, agonized entreaties to be advised, and sullen defiance, were all strangely and fearfully blended. In the midst of one of these revolting paroxysms Spike breathed his last. A few hours later his body was interred in the sands of the shore. It may be well ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... enough to us on the western side of the Atlantic, in the middle of the nineteenth century, but it would have been rank blasphemy in New England in the middle of the seventeenth, many years after Jeannin spoke. It was a horrible sound, too, in the ears ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... to deny reason; that only conditions it. I wanted you to accuse me of blasphemy; but as you do not give me my legitimate openings I have to make them for myself. To me the abrogation of reason, on any pretense, is the most rooted blasphemy of which the mind of man is capable. Some modern Romanist penned once a hymn which had in it these or ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... 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 ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... had paused to read the full contents of the announcement. He shuddered as he took in the full import of the blasphemy. Surveying the crowd that stood around the notice, he was struck by the composition of the little mob. It was anything but a low-class crowd. Many of them were evidently of the upper middle class, ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... single look of his face—that is, he sat with both his hands resting on his knees, and his head stretched out toward the grocer. "Come, explain yourself," he said, "and tell me how you could possibly utter such a blasphemy. M. d'Herblay, your old master, my friend, an ecclesiastic, a musketeer turned bishop—do you mean to say you would raise ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... and he himself regarded those with as much respect as those of the angelic hierarchy: the "Dominations" might, or might not be as "good" as the "Powers," but they were certainly different, by Divine decree. It would be a species of human blasphemy, therefore, for himself not to stand up in Lord Talgarth's presence, or for a laborer not to touch his hat to Miss Jenny. This is sometimes called snobbishness, but it is nothing of the kind. It is merely ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... resigned his parish in 1818 after preaching against Christianity. He soon recanted and took another parish, but was dismissed by the Bishop almost immediately on the ground of heresy. As stated in the text, he was convicted of blasphemy in 1827 and was sentenced to a year's imprisonment, and again for two years on the same charge in 1831. He then married a woman who was rich in money and in years, and was thereupon sued for breach of promise by another woman. To escape paying the judgment ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... the ladies they were saved and helped thim to the wharf and saw thim started for the hotel. Thin I came back to the launch, but there was nobody there. Me bould gang had disappeared. Just thin the other launch came up, limpin' on one leg, covered with drippin' men and blasphemy. They didn't wait for the lines to be put out, but jumped for the float like rats out of biscuit barrels and swarmed for the hotel. Whiles I was watchin' thim the skipper of the Gladys pulls himself out of his wrecked pilot house and approaches me with heavy footfalls. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... night he got rid of the canvas suit and slouch hat. Next day he went home to Rodchurch Post Office, and, speaking to Mavis of Mr. Barradine's death, uttered that terrific blasphemy. "It is the finger ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... is responsible for a vast amount of most pitiable and entirely groundless terror among those newly arrived in Kamaloka who in many cases spend long periods of acute mental suffering before they can free themselves from the fatal influence of that hideous blasphemy, and realize that the world is governed not according to the caprice of some demon who gloats over human anguish, but according to a benevolent and wonderfully patient law of evolution. Many members of the class we are considering do not really ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater

... else would be right. Out of the heart are the issues of life. Christ said: "From within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness." That is Christ's own ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody

... warning. As he had looked at the stars he had thought of the coming of the most wonderful Child who had ever visited this earth. Perhaps then, too——He tried to snap off his thought, half confusedly accusing himself of some sort of blasphemy. At the top of the staircase he turned and ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... authority of the divine promises ought by itself to be great in our estimation. But this promise has also been confirmed by an oath. Therefore, if any one be not confident that he is forgiven, he denies that God has sworn what is true, than which a more horrible blasphemy cannot be imagined. For Tertullian speaks thus: He invites by reward to salvation, even swearing. Saying, "I live," He desires that He be believed. Oh, blessed we, for whose sake God swears! Oh, most miserable if we believe ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon

... too 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 ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.

... him sitting on our pariah. A free-thinker startles him as a kind of demon; but a female free-thinker is one of Satan's concubines. He took it upon himself to reproach me—flung his glove at my feet, because I sent a cheque to a poor man punished for blasphemy. The man had the right to his opinions, and he had the courage of his opinions. I doubt whether the Rev. Hampton-Evey would go with a willing heart to prison for his. All the better for him if he comes head-up out of a trial. But now see: all these parsons and judges and mobcaps insist upon ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the State of New York. It was said it was to save the country,—it was whispered it was to save the party. The state committee called it and representative men gathered to attend it.... They applauded to the echo the very blasphemy of treason, but they attempted by points of order to silence DeWitt Clinton's son because he dared to raise his voice for the Constitution of his country and to call rebellion by its proper name."—Speech of Roscoe Conkling, September 26, 1862, A.R. Conkling, Life and Letters ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... a wooden trough, turned from the old channel along which it has foamed for centuries perhaps, its bed excavated many feet in depth, and itself restored to its old home in the fall,—these things strike me as almost a blasphemy against nature, And then the idea of men succeeding in such a work here in the mountains, with machinery and tools of the poorest description, to say nothing of the unskilled workmen,—doctors, lawyers, ministers, scholars, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... No one can pass, the army is arrested. Frenzied fingers unhitch the poor frozen brute and drag it from the water. Men, frantic with rage, beat savagely at their beasts of burden to make up the precious time lost. There is no mercy, no humanity, no fellowship. All is blasphemy, fury and ruthless determination. It is the spirit of ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... Buckinghamshire militia, dined with us. I scarcely ever 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. These morals he glories in—for shame is a weakness he has long since surmounted.' The following anecdote in Boswelliana (p. 274) is not given in the Life of Johnson:—'Johnson had a sovereign contempt for Wilkes ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... wrote it, I am not curious. Probably it was written long after the Exile, but by some one who was somewhat familiar with the manners of Oriental courts. The name of God is not once mentioned in the book; and it seems like blasphemy to intimate that the Spirit of God could have had anything to do with its composition. It is absolutely sickening to read the commentaries, which assume that it was dictated by the Holy Ghost, and which labor to justify and palliate its frightful narrative. One learns, with ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... as soon as they learned her name, they began to assail her with harsh reproaches, asserting that her brother had lured them from an endurable situation to plunge them into the most horrible position, when she heard imprecations and blasphemy, and saw the furious wrath of the black eyes that flashed in the brown faces framed by masses of tangled hair and beards, her heart ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... complacency the crimes of the French Revolutionists, and the progress of Bonaparte towards the subjugation of Europe, as events tending to bring about the prophecies; and, under the same besotted persuasion, are ready at this time to co-operate with the miscreants who trade in blasphemy and treason! But you who neither seek to deceive others nor yourself, you who are neither insane nor insincere, you surely do not expect that the millennium is to be brought about by the triumph of what are called liberal opinions; ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey

... they will go wrong, and plead my argument for their excuse, it must be by their abusing my directions, and taking them in pieces, misplacing the words, and disjointing the sense, and by the same method they may make blasphemy of ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... churches; yea, dug up the very bones of ancient monarchs from the consecrated vaults where they had reposed for centuries, and scattered them to the winds; and then amid the mad saturnalia of sacrilege, barbarity, and blasphemy to proclaim the reign of "Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality," with Marat for their leader, and Danton for their orator, and Robespierre for their high-priest; and, finally, to consummate the infamous farce of reform by openly setting up a wanton woman as the idol ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... with effect, when the office of a mediator between them was rendered necessary by the satirical shrewdness of the one, or the assumed superiority of the other. Under Isabella's mild influence, the wrongs of Queen Mary were forgotten by her father, and Mr. Oldbuck forgave the blasphemy which reviled the memory of King William. However, as she used in general to take her father's part playfully in these disputes, Oldbuck was wont to call Isabella his fair enemy, though in fact he made more account of ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... the home, or in the individual life, purity at all. Those who look out upon scenes which disgrace our social system, and our city, and, with a shrug of the shoulders, lead people to believe they constitute a necessary evil which cannot be faced, are not only unconsciously believing in the blasphemy that God made His physical laws so that they could not obey His moral laws; they are not only condoning the most unblushing cruelty which is going on in our midst to-day, but, also, they are not realizing that Jesus Christ ...
— The After-glow of a Great Reign - Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral • A. F. Winnington Ingram

... they purchase the necessaries of life at four and five hundred per cent cheaper than the orderly traders.... Instead of showing good examples of moral conduct, beside the other part of life, they instruct the unknowing and imitating savages in many diabolical lessons of obscenity and blasphemy." ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner

... all his objections should be attended to, in case of promotions; his scruples removed, or his refusal submitted to. When Cardinal Fesch demanded His Holiness's Bull for the curate Miollis, the Cardinal Secretary of State, Gonsalvi, showed no less than twenty acts of apostasy and blasphemy, which made him unworthy of such a dignity. To this was replied that, having obtained an indulgence in toto for what was past, he was a proper subject; above all, as he had the protection of the Emperor ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... 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 ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... People have entirely left off the sin of profaneness; and, as to intemperance, there is very little of that.' But I can put on my old great-coat, and an old slouching hat, and in five minutes place myself amid the scenes of blasphemy and vice and misery, which I never could have believed to exist if I had not seen them. So a man may walk along Broadway, and think to himself, 'What a fine place this is! How civil the people ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... cried, 'Oh, fie!' and 'lor!' and then the visitors all laughed together? Then Miss ——, a little bolder, hissed at the lunatics herself, and poked them with a stick—and then there was a fresh storm of tears and howls and blasphemy and obscenity; and the keepers, rushing in with heavy cudgels, beat the 'patients' right and left like cattle—and it was all 'so horrible!' Bad, think you? These were the ladies and gentlemen of the old school—the Grandisons and Chesterfields ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... on everything that the war has brought into question for the Anglo-Saxon peoples that humorous detachment or any other thinness or tepidity of mind on the subject affects me as vulgar impiety, not to say as rank blasphemy; our whole race tension became for me a sublimely conscious thing from the moment Germany flung at us all her explanation of her pounce upon Belgium for massacre and ravage in the form of the most insolent, 'Because ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... take the little Cockney and shake him by the throat; he trembled from head to foot, his face shockingly congested, and spat out dust and fragments of lurid blasphemy like an ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... Blasphemy, cry you, good reader? Are you sure you understand it? The first line I gave you was easy Byron—almost shallow Byron—these are of the man in his depth, and you will not fathom them, like a ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... but it does take cognizance of all the fitnesses which he knows or believes. Virtue may coexist with a very low standard of emotional piety; but it cannot coexist, in one who believes the truths of religion, with blasphemy, irreverence, or the conscious violation or neglect of religious obligations. He who is willingly false to his relations with the Supreme Being, needs only adequate temptation to make him false to his human relations, and to the fitnesses of his daily life. ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... Brookes's, as one of the most spiteful and ill-natured satires that had ever disgraced the literary world; and one which no talent or classic lore could ever redeem. Certain it is, that Matthias fell foul of poor "Monk" Lewis for his romance: obscenity and blasphemy were the charges laid at his door; he was acknowledged to be a man of genius and fancy, but this added only to his crime, to which was superadded that of being a very young man. The charges brought ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow

... quantity?" And the question is a very pertinent one, and very difficult to answer. "Where is the founder of the Religion?"—or to put it in another form: "Is it necessary to suppose a human and visible Founder at all?" A few years ago such a mere question would have been accounted rank blasphemy, and would only—if passed over—have been ignored on account of its supposed absurdity. To-day, however, owing to the enormous amount of work which has been done of late on the subject of Christian origins, the question takes ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... some books, and read of what wonderful mechanism God gave you in your hand, in your foot, in your eye, in your ear, and then ask some doctor to take you into the dissecting-room and illustrate to you what you have read about, and never again commit the blasphemy of saying you have no capital to start with. Equipped? Why, the poorest young man is equipped as only the God of the whole universe ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... shudder to be alive, simply because of the misuse and blasphemy of the holy Name of God; through which, if it shall last much longer, we will, as I fear, openly worship the devil as a god; so completely do the spiritual authorities and the learned lack all understanding in these things. It is high time that ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther

... followed this blasphemy, though Black Sheep held himself ready to work his way to Aunty Rosa's withered throat, and grip there till he was beaten off. Perhaps Aunty Rosa was afraid, for Black Sheep, having reached the Nadir of Sin, bore himself with ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling

... 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 Vavasour Charity;" and always provided that ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... his own Pilgrim, was travelling through. But, as in his allegory, "by and by the day broke," and "the Lord did more fully and graciously discover Himself unto him." "One day," he writes, "as I was musing on the wickedness and blasphemy of my heart, that scripture came into my mind, 'He hath made peace by the Blood of His Cross.' By which I was made to see, both again and again and again that day, that God and my soul were friends by this blood: ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... O horrible blasphemy! Hinder me not of my prayer, nor drive me not into a choler. Victuals! why, heardest thou not the sentence, 'Thou shalt take no food, but fast ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... lepers were the very ones who had worshipped the Golden Calf, and had as a consequence been smitten with this disease, and it was for this reason that God separated them from the community. Thirteen sins are punished with leprosy by God: blasphemy, unchastity, murder, false suspicion, pride, illegal appropriation of the rights of others, slander, theft, perjury, profanation of the Divine Name, idolatry, envy, and contempt of the Torah. Goliath was stricken with leprosy because he reviled God; the daughters of Zion became leprous ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... Tell of the party, as having been the first to resist the tyranny of the oldsters, and especially of the tyrant Murphy. I was let into all the secrets of the mess in which the youngsters were placed by the captain to be instructed and kept in order. Alas! what instruction did we get but blasphemy? What order were we kept in, except that of paying our mess, and being forbidden to partake of those articles which our money had purchased? My blood boiled when they related all they had suffered, and I vowed I would sooner die ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... convict Him of some crime which would justify the infliction of the severest sentence of the law. To preserve the appearance of justice, witnesses were called to testify to some action or speech which would involve blasphemy against their law, and, if possible, against the Roman law as well; and it was necessary that two of them should agree in some specific charge. The chief priests, and elders, and all the council, Matthew tells us, sought for witness against ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... 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 manner of princesses, and she would go up into the wild woods unattended and ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... there!" he cried, with a volley of blasphemy. And he signed to those about Count Hannibal to stand away from him. "You are there, are you? And you are not afraid to show your face? I tell you, it's you and such as you bring us into contempt! so that it is said everywhere Guise does all and serves ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... Boston that if you passed down Washington Street, half a dozen men in the crowd would know you were Holmes, or Lowell, or Longfellow, or Wendell Phillips; but in Broadway no one would know who you were, or care to the measure of his smallest blasphemy. I have since heard this more than once urged as a signal advantage of New York for the aesthetic inhabitant, but I am not sure, yet, that it is so. The unrecognized celebrity probably has his mind quite as much upon himself as if some one pointed him out, and otherwise I cannot think that the sense ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... not blasphemy to hope that Heaven More perfectly will give those nameless joys Which throb within the pulses of the blood And sweeten all that bitterness which Earth Infuses in the heaven-born soul. O thou 5 Whose ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... directions were explicit. Had he delivered himself into the gods' hands? The eyes of Nellie O'Mora were on him compassionately; and all the eyes of his forerunners were on him in austere scorn: "See," they seemed to be saying, "the chastisement of last night's blasphemy." Violently, insistently, he ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... of the seat. It is, I should say, the most difficult post in House; far more so than SPEAKER'S. SPEAKER is robed about with authority that does not pertain to Chairman. Observations which, addressed to SPEAKER, would be flat blasphemy, are, when flung at Chairman of Ways and Means, merely choleric words. Apart from that, position is, through long stretches of sitting, more arduous. When full-dress debate going on, SPEAKER of judgment and experience can ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various

... Nobility and Estates," whom Knox addresses. "I would your Honours should note for the first, that no idolater can be exempted from punishment by God's Law. The second is, that the punishment of such crimes as are idolatry, blasphemy, and others, that touch the Majesty of God, doth not appertain to kings and chief rulers only" (as he had argued that they do, in 1554), "but also to the whole body of that people, and to every member of the same, according ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... the 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 to look at Judith!" he cried. The idea seemed ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... We observe families loaded down with small children, who might have been happy and reasonably cool at home, struggling desperately to get away for a day in the country, rising at 5 A. M., standing in line at the station, fanning themselves with blasphemy, and weary before they start. We observe them chased home by thunderstorms or colic, dazed and blistered with sunburn, or groaning with a ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... that even St. Peter, if he were now Pope, could not bestow greater graces; this is blasphemy against St. ...
— Martin Luther's 95 Theses • Martin Luther

... "Leave thy blasphemy; tremble for the profanation of thy sacred calling; tremble for the punishment ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... Cullen, his son the advocate, Dr. Adam Fergusson, and Mr. Crosbie, advocate. Witchcraft was introduced[123]. Mr. Crosbie said, he thought it the greatest blasphemy to suppose evil spirits counteracting the Deity, and raising storms, for instance, to destroy his creatures. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, if moral evil be consistent with the government of the Deity, why may not ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... humour of the Germans often amuses me. I think it was Palmerston who described Germany as "that land of damned Professors." They are all so desperately in earnest, and their "Kultur" is so serious, that jokes and fun seem like blasphemy. My penury has again been relieved by Mr. S——'s kind loan of L1. Lady M—— came in to tell me that the American Vice-Consul had telegraphed to Mr. W—— the good news that we are all to go on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson

... an 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 the depth of winter, yet he fled to the forest and found ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... vision of the Father of the Everlasting Arms receded into the realm of dreams; and instead there lowered overhead in this furious tempest of wrath a monstrous God with a stony Face and a stonier Heart, who was eternally either her torment or salvation; and Isabel thought, and trembled at the blasphemy, that if God were such as this, the one would be no less agony than the other. Was this man bearing false witness, not only against his neighbour, but far more awfully, against his God? But it was too convincing; it was built up on an iron hammered ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... blasphemy, and although Aphrodite be a kind and indulgent goddess, beware of drawing ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier

... King Eternal. So we did not expect Pilate to be present in this little company of the friends of Jesus who met on the resurrection side of the cross. Who was the missing man? It was not Caiaphas. He, too, had stood in the presence of Jesus, but his envy had made him blind. And he shouted "Blasphemy!" so loud that he drowned the voice of his conscience and the gentle whisperings of the Spirit of God. No, it was not Caiaphas, nor any of the indifferent or hostile crowd that we ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... contemplation of that scene when a cry, succeeded by a volley of horrid blasphemy, drew my attention of a sudden to my companions. They stood grouped together, and their eyes were on the road by which we had scaled those heights. Their first expression of loud astonishment had been succeeded by an ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini

... steps, 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 Horsingham accosted Aunt Deborah ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... swear without using (inserting) the name of my son. These are the two things which make the 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, to the eminence ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... these successes, he put no bounds to his pride and ambition. He vaunted that he would subdue, not Hungary only, but Germany and Italy besides; and that he would feed his horse with a bushel of oats on the altar of St. Peter's, at Rome. The Apostle heard the blasphemy; and this mighty conqueror was not suffered to leave this world for his eternal habitation without Divine infliction in evidence that He who made him, could unmake him at His will. The Disposer of all ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... a corner of the den, now the pale face of one of the players, and as the light blinked, the shadows of the men grew long or short on the sandy walls. From time to time was heard a curse or a blasphemy. ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... Almighty been invoked on the proceedings of the Union Parliament at the opening of its first session when, to its eternal shame and infamy, it placed upon its statute book a law that would debar Christ Himself from membership of the Dutch Reformed Church. A Parliament capable of such blasphemy ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... of kings, the Source and End of all, Gave answer from the ship and boldly asked:— "Tell, if thou canst, O prudent-minded thane, How on the earth it ever came to pass That faithless men, the nation of the Jews, Raised blasphemy against the Son of God 560 With hearts of wickedness. Unhappy men, Cruel, malicious, they did not believe In Him who gave them life, that He was God, Though many miracles among the tribes He showed ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown

... would only implicate your father still more. You would be arrested, but they would not release him, and you would both be tried and convicted. Let us, then, allow—I will not say justice, for that would be blasphemy—but these blood-thirsty men, who call themselves judges, to pursue their course, and attribute all that you have done to your father. When the trial comes, you will prove his innocence, and produce alibis so incontestable, that they will be forced to acquit him. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... twenty-eight survived? Three, sir! Three out of twenty-eight! Syphilis is above everything a murderer of children. Herod reigns in France, and over all the earth, and begins each year his massacre of the innocents; and if it be not blasphemy against the sacredness of life, I say that the most happy are those who have disappeared. Visit our children's hospitals! We know too well the child of syphilitic parents; the type is classical; the doctors can pick it out anywhere. Those little ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair

... 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 ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... foist Amsdorf's teaching also on Flacius. He wrote: Flacius "endeavors with all his powers to subvert this proposition, that good works are necessary to those who are to be saved; and tries to establish the opposite blasphemy, that good works are dangerous to those who are to be saved, and that they area hindrance to eternal salvation—evertere summis viribus hanc propositionem conatur: bona opera salvandis esse necessaria. Ac contra stabilire oppositam blasphemiam studet: Bona opera salvandis ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... the prison of Presumption, full of those who, whenever they were urged of old to be rid of their Wantonness, or drunkenness, or avarice, would say: "God is merciful, and better than His word; He will never damn his own creature upon a cause so trivial." But here they yelped blasphemy, asking: "Where is that mercy boasted to be infinite?" "Silence, ye whelps!" said a huge, crabbed devil who heard them, "Silence! would he have mercy who did nought to obtain it? Would ye that Truth should make its word a lie, merely to gain the company of ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... original basis for the philosophy of the world, and that all other forms are degeneracies from that primitive and perfect state. If there be such a man left, to him what I have to say about philosophy is blasphemy. ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... scrupulous companion. "Jest not with such awful work. Who knows but it may be blasphemy; and what would Father ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... say. Painting he thought not an independent art, but "a development of sculpture." To consider emotion, color, or light as the equal of form was monstrous, and to compare Rembrandt with Raphael was blasphemy. To this belief he clung to the end, faithfully reproducing the human figure, and it is not to be wondered at that eventually he became a learned draughtsman. His single figures and his portraits show him to the best advantage. He had a strong grasp of modelling and an artistic ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... omnipotent, And everlasting Parliament, Whose power and majesty Are greater than all kings by odds; And to account you less than gods Must needs be blasphemy. ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... It would seem that six daughters are unfittingly assigned to anger, namely "quarreling, swelling of the mind, contumely, clamor, indignation and blasphemy." For blasphemy is reckoned by Isidore [*QQ. in Deut., qu. xvi] to be a daughter of pride. Therefore it should not be accounted a daughter ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... tempted at times to cast himself face downwards to shun the flaming splendour of that gate opening into heaven. Then, amidst the adoration of his whole being, which stayed his words upon his lips, he remembered Brother Archangias's final rebuke, as he might have remembered words of blasphemy. The Brother often reproved him for his devotion to the Virgin, which he declared was veritable robbery of devotion due to God. In the Brother's opinion it enervated the soul, put religion into petticoats, created and fostered a state of sentimentalism ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... necessary scoundrels. No! crime is never useful! No! crime is never a good. Society saved by treason! Blasphemy! we must leave it to the archbishops to say these things. Nothing good has evil for its basis. The just God does not impose on mankind the necessity for scoundrels. There is nothing necessary in ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... (by Satan) let us have grace (in his Grace of Canterbury) whereby we may serve God acceptably (with the acceptable sacrifice of Elizabeth's body and blood of the communion of the Holy Ghost) with reverence (for truth) and godly fear (of the unpardonable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost) for our God (the Holy Ghost) is a consuming fire (to the nation that will not serve him in the Cottle Church). We cannot defend ourselves against the Almighty, and if He is our defence, no nation can ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... vicinity was noted, that the worst passions of the human heart had been exhibited here, and that betimes amid the laughter of the merry throng in midnight revelry and above the strains of the "harp and viol" one could have heard the voices of blasphemy and the sharp, loud reports of pistols in the hands of careless characters, whose deadly bullets had sent many a poor unfortunate wayfarer or unwary miner from the gold fields ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey

... assaulted bodies), being abused, teach poison the most violent destroyer? Doth not knowledge of law, whose end is to even and right all things, being abused, grow the crooked fosterer of horrible injuries? Doth not (to go to the highest) God's word, abused, breed heresy? and His name abused, become blasphemy? Truly a needle cannot do much hurt, and as truly (with leave of ladies be it spoken) it cannot do much good. With a sword thou mayest kill thy father, and with a sword thou mayest defend thy prince and country. So that, as in their calling poets ...
— English literary criticism • Various



Words linked to "Blasphemy" :   irreverence, violation, discourtesy, profanity, desecration, disrespect, blasphemous, profanation



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