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Iniquity   /ɪnˈɪkwɪti/   Listen
Iniquity

noun
(pl. iniquities)
1.
Absence of moral or spiritual values.  Synonyms: dark, darkness, wickedness.
2.
Morally objectionable behavior.  Synonyms: evil, immorality, wickedness.
3.
An unjust act.  Synonyms: injustice, shabbiness, unfairness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Iniquity" Quotes from Famous Books



... no great resemblance between the pair. How could there be indeed between a man on the wrong side of middle age, one-eyed, grizzled, battered, and bearing about with him an atmosphere of iniquity, and a young gentleman, handsome, distinguished, and wayward, but assuredly no criminal? Yet the likeness existed. She had seen it first when Adrian was pointing out to her how, were he a general, he would ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... other laudatory of the readiness of its service. "A pox o' these pretenders to wit!" runs the first passage. "Your Three Cranes, Mitre, and Mermaid men! Not a corn of true salt, not a grain of right mustard amongst them all." And here is the other side of the shield, credited to Iniquity in "The Devil ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... undertake, therefore, to deny artists the right to probe the wounds of society and lay them bare before our eyes; but is there nothing better to be done to-day than to depict the terrifying and the threatening? In this literature of mysteries of iniquity, which talent and imagination have made fashionable, we prefer the mild, attractive figures to the villains for dramatic effect. The former may undertake and effect conversions, the others cause fear, and fear does not ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... interest. Finger-prints, in those days, had not yet been recognized by the public or the police as effective means of identification. But they were well known to scientific men and I had given the subject some attention myself. And the sight of those signs-manual of iniquity had an immediate effect on me; they converted the unknown perpetrator of this horror from a mere abstraction of disaster into a real, living person. With a sudden flush of hate and loathing, I realized that this wretch was even now walking the streets or lurking ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman

... infliction of temporary punishment. A set of desperate and hardened villains leagued themselves for the purposes of depredation, and, as it generally happens, had art enough to persuade some others, less deeply versed in iniquity, to be the instruments for carrying it on. Fortunately the progress of these miscreants was not of long duration. They were detected in stealing a large quantity of provisions at the time of issuing them. And ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench

... that he was unable to articulate. At six months, I caught him gnawing a pack of cards. At seven months he was in the constant habit of catching and kissing the female babies. At eight months he peremptorily refused to put his signature to the Temperance pledge. Thus he went on increasing in iniquity, month after month, until, at the close of the first year, he not only insisted upon wearing moustaches, but had contracted a propensity for cursing and swearing, and for backing his assertions ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... written against all that is unjust, written by God in the nature of man and in the nature of the Universe, because it is in the nature of the Infinite God. No wrong is really successful. The gain of injustice is a loss; its pleasure, suffering. Iniquity often seems to prosper, but its success is its defeat and shame. If its consequences pass by the doer, they fall upon and crush his children. It is a philosophical, physical, and moral truth, in the form of a threat, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... would I have deserved had I done that which the blind Gentiles do when the sun rises resplendent or the moon shines clear and they exult in their hearts and extend their hands toward the sun and throw kisses to it,' an act of very grave iniquity which is equivalent to ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... seems, one day, been talking to him of the omnipotent power of God, and his infinite abhorrence of sin, insomuch that the Scriptures styled him a consuming fire to all the workers of iniquity; and that it was in his power, whenever he pleased, to destroy all the world in a moment, the greater part of ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... happy as a baby in a sand pile. Doing?" Olive made a helpless little gesture. "How should I know? I'm no student of germs. He had a row of glass pans in front of him, with hideous messes in them, and he appeared to be sounding the depths of iniquity in them with a small ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... gives time, and two or three more years are thus gained for the Sultan and for the Powers, too; and in the mean time the people are pacified, because they think something is being done toward wiping out the great iniquity in the East. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... affair with Verres, there are two matters to interest the reader—indeed, to instruct the reader—if the story were sufficiently well told. The iniquity of Verres is the first—which is of so extravagant a nature as to become farcical by the absurdity of the extent to which he was not afraid to go in the furtherance of his avarice and lust. As the victims suffered two thousand ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... I not sin, but thou wilt be My private protonotary? Can I not woo thee, to pass by A short and sweet iniquity? I'll cast a mist and cloud upon My delicate transgression, So utter dark, as that no eye Shall see the hugg'd impiety. Gifts blind the wise, and bribes do please And wind all other witnesses; And wilt not thou with gold be tied, To lay thy pen and ink aside, That in the ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick

... man to accomplish. It is, when his heart is filled with sincere faith, he resolves to root out from his mind all evil promptings and desires, and when, in order to attain this end, he ceases to walk the path of iniquity. ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch

... coming, boys, A good time coming; And war in all men's eyes shall be A monster of iniquity, In the good time coming. Nations shall not quarrel then, To prove which is the stronger; Nor slaughter men for glory's sake— ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... picked up, and they returned to town. The fame of wicked Dodge never interfered with the transaction of business, its iniquity catering largely ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams

... feared,—and she was aware, after a sort of muddled fashion, that the claims of these two wicked young men were antagonistic to each other. But they were both regarded by her as emanations from the same source of iniquity, and, therefore, without going deeply into the machinations of Lady Laura,—without resolving whether Lady Laura was injuring her by pressing her brother as a suitor upon Miss Effingham, or by pressing a rival of her brother,—still she became ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... as he said, "in his body." Alfgar and Hermann, who have both been wounded (the latter for the second time), are with him still. But the enemy never discovered our retreat. Praise be to God for sparing this little Zoar! The saints are not unmindful how we protested against the iniquity of St. Brice's day. But of one thing we all feel sure; Anlaf cannot be alive, or revenge would lead ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... going to ask me to do. You will ask me to see these people, these editors, reviewers, whatever they are, to talk to them, to impress upon them what you are and who you are, and who your mother was, and what is the end of the base man who imagines lies and the end of all the workers of iniquity. You will ask me to tell them that it is all false, all abominable intrigue and treachery and I shall demand in your name and in my own as your only near relative and a minister of the Gospel, an apology. ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... hand, was a bitter opponent of what she called "ring rule," and Adelaide Rich, who was the only recruit that they could succeed in adding to their party, had never forgotten the depths of iniquity which her pessimistic acquaintance had revealed in the seemingly innocent and well conducted first meeting, and was prepared to distrust everything, down to the ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton

... so many who fall that they defend their former iniquity by authority, and who make, as it were, a business of sinning, that hope itself ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair

... us about that old Plural Voting Bill. His idea seemed to be to get us to promise to behave nicely while the overworked House of Commons considered the iniquity of some men having more than one vote—they hadn't a minute this session to consider the much greater iniquity of no women having any vote at all! Of course he said he had been a great friend to Woman Suffrage, until he got shocked with our tactics.' She smiled broadly. 'We asked him what ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... "Monster of iniquity!" cried the painter, "fiend of wickedness! thou art caught in thine own snares. Hast thou not sold me five pounds' worth of plate for twenty? Have I it not in my pocket? Art thou not a convicted dealer in stolen goods? Yield, scoundrel, yield ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... differ essentially from the same iniquity under other auspices. There are the same useless articles for sale and the same aggressive methods of disposing of them; the same varieties of fancy work, knit, embroidered, drawn, quartered and crocheted; the same display ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... full of contrasts, wealth and beggary, beauty and squalor, the palace of Caesar, and the haunt of vice and shame, were close together. The city was ruled over by a cruel tyrant, at once a hypocrite and a monster of iniquity. ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... educated by his father, God, so must the child be educated by his father, the adult man. If the nature of Man is intrinsically evil, the child must needs have been conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity. If Man, even in his maturity, cannot be trusted to think or desire or do what is right, still less can he be so trusted when he is that relatively immature and helpless being, the child. If the adult man has to be ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... seen, of course poor beggar! Can't you imagine him, with those tall surprised black soldiers all round him and the great dangerous bulk of negro king before him, trying to make them understand, trembling with horror and fury, raging in homely useless English against the everyday iniquity of Africa? Can't you imagine ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... by declaring on his honour that he had seen his brother the evening before go to the till, slip his hand in, and take out some money. The brother was confounded and silenced by so audacious a lie; he hesitated, stammered, and was turned out of the house. Derues worthily crowned this piece of iniquity by obliging his mistress to accept the restitution of the stolen money. It cost him three livres, twelve sons, but the interest it brought him was the power of stealing unsuspected. That evening he spent in prayer for the pardon of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... I, sympathy for the slave will surely be found. But I found it not. The people were kind and hospitable, but the slave had no place in their thoughts. I therefore shut up my grief in my own heart. I remembered that I was a Carolinian, from a State which framed this iniquity by law. Every Southern breeze wafted to me the discordant tones of weeping and wailing, shrieks and groans, mingled with prayers and blasphemous curses. My heart sank within me at the abominations in the midst of which ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." This declaration of the Bible puts the brand of infamy upon every woman who ever bore a child; and this, it is claimed, elevates the Mothers of the Race. The wife who places her destiny in the keeping of the father of her children bestows ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... heaped on wrong; and oppression cried, and it seemed as if no ear had heard its voice; till the measure of the circle was at length fulfilled, the finger touched the hour, and as the strokes of the great hammer rang out above the nation, in an instant the mighty fabric of iniquity was shivered into ruins. Wolsey had dreamed that it might still stand, self-reformed as he hoped to see it; but in his dread lest any hands but those of friends should touch the work, he had "prolonged its sickly days," waiting for the convenient season which was not to be; he ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... me do, O daughters of Eve?" I cried. "What is my sin? what my iniquity?" Then the clamour recommenced with tenfold violence, disappointment at the loss of a free ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... morning feeling as if he had been guilty of some iniquity the day before. He began considering. He could not remember having done anything wrong; he had committed no evil act, but he had had evil thoughts. He had thought that all his present resolutions to marry Katusha and ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... volunteered in the service of Satan for the moral destruction of unhappy man. To finish this work of malignity the stage has lent all its splendid apparatus of mischief; the shop has been converted into a show-box of temptations; and its owner into a pander of iniquity.' And in another place; 'Genius, in every age, and in every country, has, to a great extent, prostituted its elevated powers for the deplorable purpose of seducing thoughtless minds to this sin.' Are these remarks too sweeping? In ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... or the other. He had served out to him on his arrival at his depot a set of obsolete garments which he was forbidden to wear and was compelled to return to stores, when a new outfit at his own cost had been supplied to him. My gorge rose at this bare-faced iniquity, and as a protest against it, I attired myself on my first Sunday in barracks in the clothes which had been fraudulently assigned to me, and joined the regiment on church parade. I suppose no soldier had been so attired since Waterloo, ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... the same information to those who were not friends. My identity as a journalist became known, and as time passed by it seemed to me as if half the world had heard of my alleged iniquities. People who have never set eyes on me seem to regard me in the light of a monster of iniquity who ought not to be suffered to exist. All these outsiders believe that I have committed 'nameless' offenses times innumerable and lift up their hands in speechless horror at the audacity of a man who, so situated, dares to appear openly ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... people. He was too earnest in his religious views and feelings to take much interest in the works of art, or the pleasures, which occupied the attention of the Italians; and the impression of the general iniquity and corruption of Rome never passed away, and probably gave a new ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... were put here to get pleasure out of it," said the old Puritan, shaking his head. "The valley of the shadow of death don't seem to me to be the kind o' name one would give to a play-ground. It is a trial and a chastening, that's what it is, the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity. We're bad from the beginning, like a stream that runs from a tamarack swamp, and we've enough to do to get ourselves to rights without ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... I see you are ignorant of the language of the craft; a creeper is one who furnishes the newspapers with paragraphs at so much a line, one that goes about in quest of misfortunes; attends the Bow-street office; the courts of justice and every other den of mischief and iniquity. We are paid at the rate of a penny a line, and as we can sell the same paragraph to almost every paper, we sometimes pick up a very decent day's work. Now and then the muse is unkind, or the day uncommonly quiet, and then we rather starve; and sometimes ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... fine gold, "Thou art my confidence"; if I rejoiced because my wealth was great, an' because mine hand had gotten much; if I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walkin' in brightness, an' my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand: this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge, for I should have denied the ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... beseech thee to change thy course. Restrain evil thoughts and banish them from thee. Try to keep thy mind quiet, and stayed upon thy Heavenly Father. He has done much for thee. He has followed thee in all thy wanderings. Ask him to forgive thy iniquity, and he will have mercy on thee. Thou mayest yet be happy thyself, and make those happy who have taken a deep interest in thy welfare. But if thou art determined to pursue evil courses, after all that has been ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... the beauteous first-born of the land into their huge forms, which were furnaces of fire; or Ashtaroth, throned in moonlit groves, and surrounded by orgies of ineffable demoralization. It required the declared will of God to redeem man from such fatal iniquity, which would have sapped the human race. But to confound such deeds with the commemoration of God's saints, who are only pictured because their lives are perpetual incentives to purity and holiness, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... or increases the happiness of others is a just criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it, is a criterion of iniquity. One should not quarrel with a dog without a reason sufficient to vindicate one through all the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... Woodroffe followed you in secret, and pretending to be my friend took me with him to Petersburg. He had learnt of my fortune from the Baron, and intended to marry me himself. But now that all is over it appears to me like some terrible dream. I never believed that so much iniquity existed in the world, or that men could fight a defenseless woman with such double-dealing and cruel ingenuity. Ah! the tortures I endured in Kajana are beyond human conception. Yet surely Oberg and Woodroffe will obtain their well-merited deserts—if not in this world, then in the world to come. ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux

... found nothing in Him. He had no root of sin in His heart; He was not born in Adam's sin. Far different are we. He was thus pure, because He was the Son of God, and born of a Virgin. But we are conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity. And since that which is born of the flesh, is flesh, we are sinful and corrupt because we are sinfully begotten of sinners. Even those then who in the end turn out to be saints and attain to life eternal, yet are not born saints, but have with God's regenerating ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... is never dealing with plain or uncomplicated matters. It is his business to perceive the mystery of iniquity in the saint and to recognize the mystery of godliness in the sinner. It is his business to revere the child and yet watch him that he may make a man of him. He must say, so as to be understood, to those who balk at discipline, and rail at self-repression, and resent ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... political, and religious beliefs. They shrink from the consequences of the good fight of faith. "Had I only myself to consider," says one, "how gladly would I sacrifice myself to attack this wrong or that iniquity." We need offer no opinion about the moral quality of such a position; enough to say that it is idle to ignore, or even to underrate, the ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd

... "the Romanist has always missed the mark. He prayed to a God of love to give him power to exterminate heretics—those who differed with him in belief. But he prayed with iniquity, hatred, murder in his heart; and God, who is too pure to know evil, heard him not. Prayer is the affirmation of omnipotent good. Is it good to murder one's fellow-men? The Psalmist wrote: 'If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me.' That is why the Church's ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... no matter how cursed with sin or polluted with iniquity you may be, put your trust in Jesus and all your sins will be blotted out. Are you a drunkard, with an appetite for drink that is gnawing your life away? Throw yourself into the arms of Jesus, and he will take away your appetite for strong drink and give you strength to ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith

... the victims had laid a trap for the King, we have only a vague surmise as to its aim, purpose, and method. The later light which seemed to fall on the affair, as we shall see, only darkens what was already obscure. The inconceivable iniquity of the Government, at a later date, reflects such discredit on all concerned on their side, that we might naturally, though illogically, be inclined to believe that, from the first, the King ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang

... too evident that he is the culprit," said Dr. Schwaryencrona. "But such a dastardly action betrays such an abyss of iniquity. What motive could he have for committing ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne

... these twilight gatherings that suggests the degeneracy of a rugged race; nor is the contamination of merely local significance. There are those who lie consciously, with a certain frank, commendable, whole-hearted plunge into iniquity. Such men return to their worldly callings with intellectual vigor unimpaired and a natural reaction toward the decalogue. Others of more casuistical temperament, unable all at once to throw over the traditions of a New England conscience to the exigencies ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson

... with the old love and so soon on with the new, or rather, to be off with the new love and again on with the old, we will not stop to inquire. Had Lady Arabella, in truth, known all her son's doings in this way, could she have guessed how very nigh he had approached the iniquity of old Mr Bateson, and to the folly of young Mr Everbeery, she would in truth have been in a hurry to send him off to Courcy Castle and Miss Dunstable. Some days before the commencement of our story, young Frank had sworn in sober earnest—in what he intended for his most sober earnest, ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... extravagant and magnificent in his style of living, and accustomed from his earliest years to the gratification of every wish and passion; and this, at last, led him from vice to vice and from crime to crime, till a blacker name than his is not to be found in any record of human iniquity. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... no fault of the Stoics. In this world, while we are still under the strange dominion of time and circumstance, the ideal can never wholly fit the real. There must still be difficulty and incompleteness here, only to be solved and perfected 'when iniquity shall have an end.' Our eyes may fail with looking upward, yet the upward look is well; and the jibes upon the Stoic 'king in rags' that Horace and others were so fond of, do not affect the question. It may have been, and probably ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall

... truly scriptural protest was laid in my character; and to this hour it is my prayer that whenever the Lord calls me hence, he may find his servant not only watching but working against the diabolical iniquity that filled the Lollard's pit with the ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... God is superior to kings, and greater than they. But how, Kate, you tremble, and the lovely smile has vanished from your countenance! Be not afraid of me, Kate! Be always frank with me, and without deceit; then I shall always love you, and iniquity will then have no power over you. And now, Kate, tell me, and explain to me. You do not know that ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... Egypt," exclaimed the reverend gentleman, uplifting his hands. "I beseech you, my child, to turn away from this place of sin and iniquity." ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... that he was most eminently 'a brand snatched from the fire'; a pitchy burning brand, known and seen as such by all who witnessed his conduct? He pointedly exemplified the character set forth by James, 'the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity, set on fire of hell' (James 3:6). This was as publicly known before his conversion, as the effects of the wondrous change were openly seen in his Christian career afterwards. He who, when convinced of sin, strained his eyes to see the distant shining light over the wicket-gate, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... respect to foreign powers; who reigns more absolutely now in the hearts of his people, and does greater things by the confidence they place in him, and by the efforts they make from the generous zeal of affection, than any monarch ever did, or ever will do, by all the arts of iniquity which you recommended. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... thus replying, dream that Dr. Magruder and Rufus Venner were one and the same; or that, in attributing to him a double life of shameful iniquity, Chick had hit the nail squarely ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter

... easy things said in its praise, is a great iniquity. It is, as others have said, hell. As an environment to the soul it is, for all the countervailing heroisms of men, a world of ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot

... volumes. I am going to take the book down, or up,—for it is not a little one,—and write out the title, which, I dare say, you remember, and very likely you have the book. "Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying, showing the Unreasonableness of prescribing to other Men's Faith, and the Iniquity of ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... to minister to him, the arrival in Africa with no humble companion at his side, to wonder with him at the black inhabitants and help him through the customs—to say nothing of the manners. He thought of the dread homes of iniquity into which he must penetrate by night in search of the material for the voracious "Catherine." He had meant to take Darrell with him to them all—Darrell, whose joyful delight in the prospect of exploring the Eastern fastnesses of crime had been so boyish, so truly ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens

... results of malformation or bad environment. God is love, not hate, and "rejoiceth not in the death of the wicked," nor in the punishment of the wrongly educated; for a large portion of the sin and seeming iniquity of humanity is the result of heredity and of a misunderstanding of the laws of God expressed through nature. Undoubtedly there have been good men and true among those who sought to interpret God's law ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... guile. They are not perfect by reason of any inherent goodness in themselves; for "all we like sheep have gone astray ... and the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all," Isa. 53:6. The redeemed church will be faultless, because its members will be sanctified and cleansed by the blood of Christ. Such will constitute "a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... He deigned to appear for a moment to the people, to the tortured, suffering people, sunk in iniquity, but loving Him like children. My story is laid in Spain, in Seville, in the most terrible time of the Inquisition, when fires were lighted every day to the glory of God, and 'in the splendid auto da fe the wicked heretics were burnt.' Oh, of ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... been of more service to him in describing battles than any closet study could have been; and Tacitus has this great advantage over Livy that he had helped to make history as well as to relate it. His elevation to the rank of senator enabled him to understand the iniquity of Domitian's government in a way that would otherwise have been impossible; and of the complicity shown by the servile fathers in their ruler's acts of crime, he speaks in the Agricola with something ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... his hat with a large, outward gesture of his arm, bowing slightly from the shoulders, in affable salutation. Or most of all, when his fists clench, his jaws display big nervous knots, his eyes gleam with hard blue light in wrath over some palpable iniquity, some base cowardice, some outrageous act ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... repugnance for certain doctrines preached by her father. It seemed to the old man a long way to look back; and then a long way to come forward again, past the death of his girl-wife while their child was still tender, down to the amazing iniquity of that child's revolt, in her thirty-first year. Dumbly, dutifully, had she submitted to all his restrictions and severities, stonily watching her girlhood go, through a fading, lining and hardening of her prettiness. Then all at once, with no word of pleading or warning, she had done the ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... will find it explained in full. I solicit the attention of the world to the foregoing part of Mr. Caldwell's speech, that they may see what man will do with his fellow men, when he has them under his feet. To what length will not man go in iniquity, when given up to a hard heart and reprobate mind, in consequence of blood and oppression? The last clause of this speech, which was written in a very artful manner and which will be taken for the speech of a friend, without close examination and deep penetration, ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet

... Archbishop, laying one hand upon both his, as he held them clasped together, demanded of him, in the name of God, and of the people of Normandy, whether he would be their good and true ruler, guard them from their foes, maintain truth, punish iniquity, and protect the Church. ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge

... pressed the coins to her cheek, and even put them between her lips to taste their sweetness, for money she loved beyond all things. The passion of her soul was avarice; her wickedness took its direction from the love of money, and scrupled at no iniquity ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... Columbus. Where there was such universal and incessant complaint, it seemed reasonable to conclude that there must exist some fault. If Columbus and his brothers were upright, they might be injudicious; and, in government, mischief is oftener produced through error of judgment, than iniquity of design. The letters written by Columbus himself presented a lamentable picture of the confusion of the island. Might not this arise from the weakness and incapacity of the rulers? Even granting that the prevalent abuses ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... pulled himself up. No light task this of conveying to the Creator, in covert terms, a due sense of the iniquity of the Jesuits, without, at the same time, stirring O'Flynn's bile, and seeing him get up and stalk out of meeting, as had happened ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... the gambling-houses of Paris, 'those dens of iniquity,' as he terms them. 'The varied scenes of frantic joy and human debasement,' he writes, 'which I witnessed at FRASCATI'S, were truly appalling. The extremes of excitement were as powerfully exhibited in the loser of twenty francs as in the man ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... Parish Priest (from within). Go, sin no more! Thy penance o'er, A new and better life begin! God maketh thee forever free From the dominion of thy sin! Go, sin no more! He will restore The peace that filled thy heart before, And pardon thine iniquity! ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... as well as a "something in the City," and if Helmsley had been asked to qualify that "something" by a name, he would have found a term by no means complimentary to the individual in question. Wrotham and Brookfield were always seen together,—they were brothers in every sort of social iniquity and licentiousness, and an attempt on Brookfield's part to borrow some thousands of pounds for his "lordly" patron from Helmsley, had resulted in the latter giving the would-be borrower's go-between such a ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... with the evil precedent of Colonel Napier's History of the Peninsular War. It is a specimen of the true French military school; not a thought for the justice of the war,—not a consideration of the damnable and damning iniquity of the French invasion. All is looked at as a mere game of exquisite skill, and the praise is regularly awarded to the most successful player. How perfectly ridiculous is the prostration of Napier's mind, apparently a ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... which had fallen with Frank Kennedy. It was now all overgrown with mussels and seaweed. The mouth of the cave opened black and dismal before him. Glossin drew breath before entering such a haunt of iniquity, and recharged his pistols. He was, however, somewhat heartened by the thought that Dirk Hatteraick had nothing to gain by his death. Finally he took courage to push forward, and immediately the voice of Hatteraick came hoarse from the back ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... which is to follow him, and the old man has far more in common with other old men, his own contemporaries, than with the youth who preceded him. How frequently do we see the youth vicious and depraved, and the man who follows him upright and virtuous, hating iniquity! How often, on the other hand, is a pure and innocent girlhood succeeded by a dissolute and shameless womanhood! In many cases age looks back upon youth with inexpressible longing and tenderness, and quite as often with shame and remorse; but in all cases with ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy

... doeth the will of My Father who is in the heavens. Many will say unto Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name, and through Thy name cast out demons, and in Thy name done many mighty works? But then will I confess to them, I know you not: depart from Me, ye workers of iniquity (Matt. 7:21-23). ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... Mr. Gay, all the characters are just, and none of them carried beyond nature, or hardly beyond practice. It discovers the whole system of that commonwealth, or that imperium in imperio of iniquity established among us, by which neither our lives nor our properties are secure, either in the highways, or in public assemblies, or even in our own houses. It shows the miserable lives, and the constant fate, of those ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... has fallen from his estate to die in disgrace, disease, exile. When we talk to-day with cultivated Frenchmen of that half-forgotten epoch, and of the book which bared its horrors, we are met by their response of ardent gratitude to the man who joined to passionate hatred of iniquity surpassing capacity for denouncing it; their avowal that with all its frequent exposure of their military shortcomings and depreciation of their national character, no English chronicle of the century stands higher in their esteem than the ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... pede, et vena corrupta, est justus cadens coram impio. Here is noted, that one judicial and exemplar iniquity in the face of the world doth trouble the fountains of justice more than many particular injuries passed ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... presumed to attribute to themselves a title, as well as estates, to which they have no just claim. In this state we found the church of Lhanpadarn, without a head. A certain old man, waxen old in iniquity (whose name was Eden Oen, son of Gwaithwoed), being abbot, and his sons officiating at the altar. But in the reign of king Henry I., when the authority of the English prevailed in Wales, the monastery of St. Peter at Gloucester held quiet possession of this church; but after his death, ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis

... condescension. That for your condescension! When a great man, my lord, does me the honour to confide in me, he'll find me trusty and respectful; but when he condescends to make me an agent and a partner in his iniquity, by your leave from that moment there's an ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... God's words to Ezekiel, which apply to every preacher of truth, "When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life: the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand." Paul went into the Jewish synagogues repeatedly to lead them into the full truth, although he raised strife and contention in so doing, and even suffered violence at their hands. Unfortunately, a large per cent. of Christians have formed a conspiracy ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz

... say," he added, his voice rising and trembling with indignation, "to him who came here uninvited and broke up this meetin', that it would be well for him to remember the words of Scriptur', 'Woe unto ye, false prophets and workers of iniquity.' Let him remember what the Divine wisdom put into my head to read to-night: 'The pastors have become brutish and have not sought the Lord; therefore they shall ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... content with the overthrow of the throne, and had not arrived at the hardihood which can not be sated without murder; and it is a remarkable instance of the rapidity with which unprincipled men sink deeper and deeper into iniquity, that they who now exerted themselves successfully to save the life of Louis, five months afterward were as unanimous as the most ferocious Jacobins in ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... Christian Science is full many a league in the line of light; but to go in healing from the use of 106:1 inanimate drugs to the criminal misuse of human will- power, is to drop from the platform of common manhood 106:3 into the very mire of iniquity, to work against the free course of honesty and justice, and to push vainly ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... two millions of American people in the Southern States, the tyranny of this nation assumes a gigantic form. The magnitude of the crime elevates the indignation of the soul. Such august villainy and stupendous iniquity soar above disgust, and mount up to astonishment. A conflagration like that of Moscow, is full of sublimity, though dreadful in its effects; but the burning of a solitary hut makes the incendiary despicable by the ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes

... of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Have mercy upon me, O God; according to thy loving kindness, blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... had happened. For a thousand years Europe had been trying to drive Mohammedanism out of the continent. No sacrifice had been considered too great if it would help to rid Christendom of that great iniquity. Now the Turkish Empire,—the spiritual heir and center of this old enemy,—no less vicious—no less an offense to the instincts of Christendom than before, was on the brink of extermination. It would have been a surprise to Richard the lion-hearted, and to ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... orders his Tomb at St. Praxed's Church. We are placed in the full decadence of the Renaissance. Its total loss of religion, even in the Church; its immorality—the bishop's death-bed is surrounded by his natural sons and the wealth he leaves has been purchased by every kind of iniquity—its pride of life; its luxury; its semi-Paganism; its imitative classicism; its inconsistency; its love of jewels, and fine stones, and rich marbles; its jealousy and envy; its pleasure in the adornment of death; its delight in the outsides of ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... what is it that we want here to a great act of national justice? Do we want a cause, my lords? You have the cause of oppressed princes, of desolated provinces, and of wasted kingdoms. Do you want a criminal, my lords? When was there so much iniquity ever laid to the charge of any one? No, my lords, you must not look to punish any other such delinquent from India. Warren Hastings has not left substance enough in India to nourish ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... with the fact that he had sinned, he ought to have turned back at once. "In for a penny, in for a pound," is about the worst motto that ever was invented. Interpreted, it means, "Having done a little mischief, I'll shut my eyes and go crashing into all iniquity." As well might one say, "Having burnt my finger, I'll shove my whole body ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne

... wrought by war is not the wanton destruction of life and property, sinful though it is; it is not even the lowered vitality of succeeding generations, though that is attended by appalling injury to the moral nature—the real iniquity of war is that it sets aside the arbitrament of right and justice, and looks to brute ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... deceit and fraud; in the secret places doth he murder the innocent. Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread? They have drawn out the sword, and bent the bow, to cast ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... Retrenchment Report, in 1828. Major Hamilton got Chilton's place as chairman—and called the dogs. Ingham worked honestly, like a beaver; Wickliff was as keen as a cutworm: all of them worked hard; and they did really, I suppose, convince themselves that they had found out a great deal of iniquity; or, what was more desirable, convinced the people that Andrew Jackson and his boys were the only fellows to mend shoes for nothing, and find their own candles. Everett and Sargeant, who made the ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott

... you have done that already without knowing it. For the rest, if you wish to visit that den of iniquity, you ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... therefore, whence thou camest, and depart across the river ere many days be fallen. As for me, I will fight no more, yet neither will I speak unto thee again, for thou didst hide from my son the tokens of his father, of thine iniquity thou didst lead him into ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... Hugh. "It is nothing, Margaret, nothing at all. So Miss Wolfe is a rich woman, is she, and spoilt for life? And you are glad, you and Uncle John! Well, I am sorry, for my part; sorry from the bottom of my heart. It is an iniquity." ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards

... worker of iniquity lived on earth, Carrigan might have judged Bateese as that man in these moments. The half-breed had worked himself up to a ferocious pitch. His eyes rolled. His wide mouth snarled in the virulence of its speech. His thick neck grew corded, and his huge hands clenched menacingly ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... connive at their conduct? No; we say, emphatically, No. On the contrary, she condemns vice in every shape, and denounces, like another Baptist in the wilderness, the wrath of Heaven on the workers of iniquity. Is there one of her precepts, counsels, or rules, that guards not against sin and its occasions? According to the accusations of her enemies themselves, who reproach her, with too much severity, of imposing too many restrictions on the passions, is she ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley

... deep-breasted, robust-loined, her golden hair not yet mingled with any trace of silver, the years had but caressed and embellished her. By the lines of a rich and vigorous maternity, she seemed destined to be the bride of heroes and the mother of their children; and behold, by the iniquity of fate, she had passed through her youth alone, and drew near to the confines of age, a childless woman. The tender ambitions that she had received at birth had been, by time and disappointment, diverted into a certain barren zeal of industry and fury of interference. She carried her thwarted ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... highest and best of us are monsters of iniquity and egoism, cruelty and corruption; and our planet (a very heaven for warmth and brilliancy and beauty, in spite of earthquakes and cyclones and tornadoes) is a very hell through the creatures that people it—a shambles, a place of torture, a ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... National Policy; the indignity of which was so great that he vowed to spend his life living it down. He went to sleep with blue books and the Bible under his pillow. He gave way to both. He has never gone back on either. The iniquity of a tariff to him was part of the moral law. The more he exhorted at revival meetings and local-preached and led class-meetings, the more deeply he was convinced that tariff-Tories are in constant need of economic salvation. At threshing bees I can fancy this broad-faced, ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... clergyman is the most contemptible. How much Commissioner Falconer has to answer for, who forced him, or who lured him, knowing how unfit he was for it, into the church! The commissioner frets because the price of iniquity has not yet been received—the living of Chipping Friars is not yet Buckhurst's. The poor paralytic incumbent, for whose death he is praying daily, is still living; and, as Buckhurst says, may shake on many a long year. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these many years. Yes, I should like to have him work in the plantations.' BOSWELL. 'Sir, do you think him as bad a man as Voltaire?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, it is difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them.' ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... center of an active domestic slave-trade. The pious young Quaker, now apprenticed to a saddler, was brought into personal contact with this traffic in human flesh. He felt keenly the national disgrace of the iniquity. So deep did the iron enter into his soul that never again did he find peace of mind except in efforts to relieve the oppressed. Like hundreds and thousands of others, Lundy was led on to active opposition to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy

... the old man, an hour ago the foremost in the realm, is hauled off and flung into the pit or den. It is useless and needless to ask its form. The entrance was sealed with two seals, one the king's, one the conspirators', that neither party might steal a march on the other. Fellows in iniquity do not trust each other. So, down in the dark there, with the glittering eyeballs of the brutes round him, and their growls in his ears, the old man sits all night long, with peace in his heart, and looking up trustfully, through the hole in the roof, to his Protector's stars, shining ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... pens that stab religion and throw their poison all through our literature; the men who use the power of wealth to sanction iniquity, and bribe justice, and make truth and honor ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... people. 'Don't they deserve to be decently governed, to be allowed a little happiness and prosperity? They are so docile, so contented; are they not a good people?' Those were his words as he was recounting some new iniquity. Of course half these acts are done under pretext of improving and civilizing, and the Europeans applaud and say, 'Oh, but nothing could be done without forced labour,' and the poor Fellaheen are marched off in gangs like convicts, and their families starve, and ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... "When I shall say unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die; if he turn from his sin and do that which is lawful and right; if the wicked restore the pledge, give again that he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life, without committing iniquity, he shall surely live, he shall not die." So the prophet gives us the second quotation at the head of this article, "Shall not die." It would be just as proper to make this last scrap of the law inexorable as its opposite. Such teachings do violence to the truth by overlooking ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various

... administration, the absenteeism of the landlords, and all the other too familiar elements of that mischievous and fatal system, were then in full force. As was shown afterwards, they made an impression upon Burke that was never effaced. So much iniquity and so much disorder may well have struck deep on one whose two chief political sentiments were a passion for order and a passion for justice. He may have anticipated with something of remorse the reflection of a modern historian, that the absenteeism of her landlords ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... see and enjoy the day when God shall restore its prosperity." When the community is in trouble, let no man say, "I will go home and eat and drink, and say, Peace be unto thee, oh my soul!" (Luke xii. 19); for to him Scripture hath solemnly said (Isa. xxii. 13, 14), "Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... all fair and square in the judgment of the trade itself, which made me doubtful, and which at last, unblinded by custom, I was confident were unfair, that is dishonest. Thereupon I began to argue with myself: 'What is here?' I said. 'Am I to use the wages of iniquity as if they were a clean God-gift? If there has been wrong done there must be atonement, reparation. I cannot look on this money as mine, for part of it at least, I cannot say how much, ought not to be mine.' The truth flashed upon me; I saw that my business in life must be ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... that kingdom of darkness which, through the power of the devil and the corruption of man, had been set up. "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil." He came "to redeem us from all iniquity, and to purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More

... colonel and destroyed his fort before the English traders were driven from the Indian villages, and no English flag was to be seen west of the mountains. It was the western tribes that brought Braddock's expedition to a disastrous end. While the Quakers at Philadelphia denounced the iniquity of war, these quondam allies of England ravaged the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and the northern tribes that had gladly come to Oswego to trade in 1754, assisted Montcalm to capture and ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker



Words linked to "Iniquity" :   status, devilry, darkness, transgression, sexual immorality, foulness, actus reus, wrongful conduct, wrongdoing, violation, condition, irreverence, wickedness, iniquitous, deviltry, immorality, foul play, evildoing, misconduct



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