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Irreligious

adjective
1.
Hostile or indifferent to religion.



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"Irreligious" Quotes from Famous Books



... Oriental colouring, the whole arrangement was traditional, and it was irreligious to depart from what had been fixed by statute many centuries before, and only perfected by the experience of many generations of men; and this veneration for traditional custom has hitherto been prevalent in European art to a certain point. But the old conservative perfection ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... repeat the often repeated saying, that it is unworthy a religious man to view an irreligious one either with alarm or aversion, or with any other feeling than regret and hope ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... meeting places, and has a total income from all sources of three-quarters of a million per annum. Now consider from whence all this has sprung. It is only twenty-five years since the author of this volume stood absolutely alone in the East of London, to endeavour to Christianise its irreligious multitudes, without the remotest conception in his own mind of the possibility of any ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... cleanliness, beauty, and good repair of the Japanese temples, those of Canton impress me as being very repulsive. In Japan the people preserve their temples for their exquisite beauty, and there are a great many sincere Buddhists; but China is irreligious; a nation of atheists or agnostics, or slaves of impious superstitions. In an extended tramp among temples I have not seen a single male worshiper or a thing to please the eye. The Confucian temples, to which mandarinism resorts ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... upon his people deplorable evils and perils for the sake of a fruitless enterprise. War against religious liberty was, for a long course of ages, the crime of Christian communities and the source of the most cruel evils as well as of the most formidable irreligious reactions the world has had to undergo. The thirteenth century was the culminating period of this fatal notion and the sanction of it conferred by civil legislation as well as ecclesiastical teaching. St. Louis joined, so far, with sincere conviction, in the general and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... heathen as "Any irreligious, rude, barbarous or unthinking class or person." This Eskimo is not "irreligious," for he has a well-formed conception of a Great Spirit and an Evil One, he looks to a place of reward or punishment after death, and he accedes to Kipling's line without ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... taxation; yet, for all that, such was the regard to a pious inauguration of all colonial enterprises, that no one provision or pledge of prosperity was held equally indispensable by all parties to such hazardous speculations. The merest worldly foresight, indeed, to the most irreligious leader, would suggest this sanction as a necessity, under the following reason:—colonies the most enviably prosperous upon the whole, have yet had many hardships to contend with in their noviciate of the first five years; were it only from the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... Baidara in the hope that, when once the deed was accomplished, all the chiefs in the kingdom would applaud their action, since El-Ashraf had slain and imprisoned many influential emirs, and was generally denounced as an irreligious man, who transgressed not only against the laws of Islam, but also against those of nature. Baidara, however, immediately proceeded to mount the throne, and a strong party, with the Emir Ketboga at its head, was formed ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... but she could not have been wholly displeased, since she ended by telling me that mine was a vast opportunity, and that the propriety of my residence at Arghouse entirely depended on the influence I exerted, since any acquiescence in lax and irreligious habits would render my stay hurtful to all parties. She worried me into an inclination to drop all my poor little endeavours, since certainly to have tried to follow out all the details of her counsel would have alienated ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... with his dying breath had designated his son Richard as his successor in the office of the Protectorate. Richard was exactly the opposite of his father,—timid, irresolute, and irreligious. The control of affairs that had taxed to the utmost the genius and resources of the father was altogether too great an undertaking for the incapacity and inexperience of the son. No one was quicker to realize this than Richard himself, and after a rule of a ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... families are there so conducted as to make it a matter of surprise that any of the children of such households should turn out otherwise than pious! How many that lead us greatly to wonder that any of the children should turn out otherwise than irreligious! On the other hand, how subduing and how melting are the fervent supplications of a godly and consistent father, when his voice, tremulous with emotion, is giving utterance to the desires of his heart to the God ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... appearance of great men "in great crises of human history" were events so striking "that men would be liable to term them providential in a pre-scientific age." On this Mr. Spencer remarks that "in common with the ancient Greek Mr. Gladstone regards as irreligious any explanation of Nature which dispenses with immediate Divine superintendence." And as an instance of the partnership "between the ideas of natural causation and of providential interference," he instances a case where a prince "gained ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... yourself about it, for it only makes your asthma worse, and does no especial good to anybody. Things may be as you say. Certainly I intended nothing irreligious. Yet these extended naps, appropriate enough for saints and emperors, are out of place in one's own family. So, if it is not stuff and nonsense, it ought to be. And that I ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... a beauty so long brooded upon that he has almost become that which he contemplated, owes much to the woman who may never be his; and if he or the world understood aright, he has no cause of complaint. It is the essentially irreligious spirit of Ireland which has come to regard love as an unnecessary emotion and the mingling of the sexes as dangerous. For it is a curious thing that while we commonly regard ourselves as the most religious people in Europe, the reverse is probably true. ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell

... thirteen thousand francs income. Mme. d'Epinay, in the midst of success, became acquainted with Mlle. Quinault, the daughter of the famous actor of the time, and herself a great actress. This woman invited Mme. d'Epinay to her so-called salon, which was, possibly, the most licentious and irreligious of the salons then in vogue, where she met Duclos, with whom she immediately ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... previous adaptation of imagination and affection. Otherwise, "there will be no stable political state" in France;[6106] "so long as one grows up without knowing whether to be a republican or monarchist, Catholic or irreligious, the State will never form a nation; it will rest on uncertain and vague foundations; it will be constantly exposed to disorder and change."—Consequently, he assigns to himself the monopoly of public instruction; he alone is to enjoy the right ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... successively pronounce such orations and other compositions, written by themselves, as the president and professors shall direct, on the last Wednesday of November, the second Wednesday of March, and the third Wednesday of May. Tragedies, plays, and all irreligious expressions ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... EGG, a rocky islet among the Hebrides, 5 m. SW. of Skye; St. Donnan and 50 monks from Iona were massacred here in 617 by the queen, notwithstanding a remonstrance on the part of the islanders that it would be an irreligious act; here also the Macleods of the 10th century suffocated in a cave 200 of the Macdonalds, including ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... priest for ever; who, being raised from the dead, died no more; and who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God." Paul's Epist. to the Hebrews, ch. ix. 10. It was on account of this gross absurdity, and the irreligious application of it, that our first reformers suffered, and so many were put to death in ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... which has become famous both in England and abroad, had its origin at Oxford, about A. D. 1838. Some distinguished members of the university thought that the church of England was in an alarming position, and that irreligious principles and false doctrines had been admitted into the measures of the government of the country on a large scale. To check the progress of these supposed errors and mischievous practices, they published ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... confutation of Bayle, by Leibnitz. JOHNSON. 'A confutation of Bayle, Sir! What part of Bayle do you mean? The greatest part of his writings is not confutable: it is historical and critical.' Mr. M'Lean said, 'the irreligious part;' and proceeded to talk of Leibnitz's controversy with Clarke, calling Leibnitz a great man. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, Leibnitz persisted in affirming that Newton called space sensorium numinis, notwithstanding he was corrected, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... had a servitor, a swarthy knave, Who showed an almost irreligious taste For wearing nothing but a turban, save ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)

... of the early churches did not dislike these long preachings and prophesyings; they would have regarded a short sermon as irreligious, and lacking in reverence, and besides, would have felt that they had not received in it their full due, their full money's worth. They often fell asleep and were fiercely awakened by the tithingman, and often they could not have understood the verbose and grandiose language of the ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... sacred music was in order. Even De Forrest and Addie joined in this with considerable zest. It was the proper, and about the only thing that could be done on a Sabbath evening. The most irreligious feel better for the occasional indulgence of a little religious sentimentality. When the aesthetic element is supreme, and thorny self-denial absent, devotion is quite attractive to average humanity. Moreover the dwarfed spiritual nature of the most materialistic often craves ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... inconsistency, scarcely possible to be credited, that anything should exist under the name of a religion that held it to be irreligious to study and contemplate the structure of the universe that God had made. But the fact is too well established to be denied. The event that served more than any other to break the first link in the long chain of despotic ignorance is that known by the name of the Reformation ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... Mr Pecksniff, 'has a right, an undoubted right, (which I, for one, would not call in question for any earthly consideration; oh no!) to regulate his own proceedings by his own likings and dislikings, supposing they are not immoral and not irreligious. I may feel in my own breast, that Mr Chuzzlewit does not regard—me, for instance; say me—with exactly that amount of Christian love which should subsist between us. I may feel grieved and hurt at the circumstance; still I may not rush to the conclusion that Mr ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... understood. Therefore the frames have preceded the portraits. Every one is aware that things influence beings. There are public buildings whose effect is visible upon the persons living in their neighborhood. It would be difficult indeed to be irreligious in the shadow of a cathedral like that of Bourges. When the soul is everywhere reminded of its destiny by surrounding images, it is less easy to fail of it. Such was the thought of our immediate grandfathers, abandoned by a generation which was soon to have no signs and ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... believe they have discharged their duty. That is not the case. When a man has the honour to be a priest, he must be active. It is necessary, as in the time of the persecutions, to make proselytes and win souls; to confront the irreligious propaganda with our propaganda; lampoons, with lampoons; speeches, with sermons; acts, with acts. In short, we must struggle. Can we remain still and idle, when our Holy Father is imprisoned ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... marry persons of your own faith and religious convictions, unless one is willing to adopt those of the other. Difference of faith is apt to divide families, and to produce great trouble in after life. A pious woman should beware of marrying an irreligious man. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... proud woman. And because she would lose the friendship of all proud women and clean thinking men if she condoned what you intend to do. It's horrible to see you turned from a simple, stupid, but honourable boy, into a hard, selfish, irreligious man—and all the result of being rich. I should never have thought it could have made such a dreadful difference so quickly. But I have not changed, Raymond. And I tell you this: if you don't marry Sabina; if you don't see that only so can you ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... the accomplishment of its political designs, or, in other words, treated the national religion in accordance with the view of Polybius as a superstition useful for imposing on the public at large. Where the way was thus paved, the Hellenistic irreligious spirit found free course. In connection with the incipient taste for art the sacred images of the gods began as early as the time of Cato to be employed, like other furniture, in adorning the chambers of the rich. More ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... color is dazzling and brilliant. Five successive influences marked his earlier life. First, his education under the Jesuits, which gave him an insight into their system; secondly, his introduction to the irreligious and immoral society of the fashionable abbes of the day, which showed him another side of the official religion of the time; thirdly, the beneficent friendship of the Abbe de Caumartin, who set him thinking about great and ambitious ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... less round or her smile less placid. The mode in which Peter earned their bread and butter interfered more with her daily comfort and digestion. Dealing in second-hand books, half of which were dramatic works, was a business not only irreligious, but ungenteel. She never passed under the swinging sign over the door without feeling that her cross was indeed heavy, and the old parlor, which had been turned into a shop, she left to the occupancy of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... Dr. Chalmers, not long before his death, spoke with disapprobation of Abolitionists in the United States, "for undertaking," as he said, "to decide, without sufficient evidence, upon the irreligious character of ministers and church-members. They, forsooth, undertake to exclude men from the Lord's table, who are in good and regular standing in the church of Christ, because they happen to hold slaves! They pretend to decide who, and who are not Christians!" It is marvellous ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... not propose at present to inquire. It is certain, at least, that the whole is not covered. And nothing more lends confidence to the method than this. For one thing, room is still left for mystery. Had no place remained for mystery it had proved itself both unscientific and irreligious. A Science without mystery is unknown; a Religion without mystery is absurd. This is no attempt to reduce Religion to a question of mathematics, or demonstrate God in biological formulae. The elimination of mystery ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... would be men indeed, to labour after the attainment of this his excellent art. He would often- times please himself {90a} with the thoughts of what he could do in this matter, saying within himself; I can be religious, and irreligious, I can be any thing, or nothing; I can swear, and speak against swearing; I can lye, and speak against lying; I can drink, wench, be unclean, and defraud, and not be troubled for it: Now I enjoy my self, and ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan

... displayed itself. He never avoided the most trying and irksome duties. If he had selfishness, those who knew him long and well as schoolmates and comrades never discerned it. More than once I have heard his beautiful Christian example spoken of by irreligious comrades. Bitter and inexplicable as may be the Providence which has removed one so full of promise of good to his fellows, I feel that we may thank God that we have been permitted to witness a life so Christ-like terminated by a death ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore

... reason, we shall bring under review, not only several systems of avowed Atheism, but also various theories, not necessarily atheistic, which have been applied to the support and defence of Atheism, and which have a tendency, as thus applied, to induce an irreligious ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... labored to bring about this most desirable end, others, such as Frederic of Prussia, and Joseph II. of Austria, by ill-advised measures, and the countenance which they gave to unsound and even irreligious doctrines, sowed the seeds of anarchy and unbelief, which failed not, in due time, to produce fruit according to their kind, and well-nigh accomplished the overthrow of society as well as that of the Christian Church. The Austrian Emperor appears to have understood the situation, and ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... by his Tenure, to obey the moral law; and if he rightly understands the Art, he will never be a stupid Atheist nor an irreligious Libertine. But though in ancient times Masons were charged in every country to be of the religion of that country or nation, whatever it was, yet it is now thought more expedient only to oblige ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... Oxford, but failed. He is the author of several works, amongst others a system of Cartesian philosophy, where a chapter on "Angels" revives the methods of the schoolmen. His chief opponent was Samuel Parker (1640-1688), bishop of Oxford, who, in his attack on the irreligious novelties of the Cartesian, treats Descartes as a fellow-criminal in infidelity with Hobbes and Gassendi. Rohault's version of the Cartesian physics was translated into English; and Malebranche found an ardent follower in John ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... his own person is guided by his own conscience; but in drawing out a system of rules he is obliged to go by logic, and follow the exact deduction of conclusion from conclusion, and be sure that the whole system is coherent and one. You hear of even immoral or irreligious books being written by men of decent character; there is a late writer who says that David Hume's sceptical works are not at all the picture of the man. A priest may write a treatise which would be called really lax ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... Hurd's view of the matter was nearer the truth. 'The truth of the case,' he writes, 'is no more than this. A few fashionable men make a noise in the world; and this clamour being echoed on all sides from the shallow circles of their admirers, misleads the unwary into an opinion that the irreligious spirit is universal and uncontrollable.' A strong proof of the absence of any real sympathy with the Deists is afforded by the violent outcry which was raised against them on all sides. This outcry was not confined to any one class or party either in the political ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... be sure we are in the right, and do not hold the truth guiltily, which becomes not, if we ourselves condemn not our own weak and frivolous teaching, and the people for an untaught and irreligious gadding rout, what can be more fair than when a man judicious, learned, and of a conscience, for aught we know, as good as theirs that taught us what we know, shall not privily from house to house, which is more dangerous, but openly by writing publish ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton

... was most irreligious, of course. Still, some homicides were fairly justifiable, others almost meritorious; and a criminal of this kind showed, in every case, undeniable traces of manliness; one could not help respecting him in an oblique sort of fashion. But a fool! Torquemada, the zealous priest, the man of God, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... I feel there is something wrong somewhere. I believe single women should have more to do—better chances of interesting and profitable occupation than they possess now. And when I speak thus I have no impression that I displease God by my words; that I am either impious or impatient, irreligious or sacrilegious. My consolation is, indeed, that God hears many a groan, and compassionates much grief which man stops his ears against, or frowns on with impotent contempt. I say impotent, for I observe that to such grievances ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... not an irreligious man, really; I am rather a religious man; and this is not an irreligious, ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... followed, vices entertained, if they be profane, irreligious, lascivious, riotous, epicures, factious, covetous, ambitious, illiterate, so will the commons most part be, idle, unthrifts, prone to lust, drunkards, and therefore poor and needy ([Greek: hae penia stasin empoiei kai kakourgian], for poverty begets sedition ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... much for the flannel for the Dorcas Society, and also for the gingham. I quite agree with you that it is nonsense their wanting to wear pretty things, but everybody is so Radical and irreligious nowadays, that it is difficult to make them see that they should not try and dress like the upper classes. I am sure I don't know what we are coming to. As papa has often said in his sermons, we live in an ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde

... and my comrades with the rich who did no work. If the Church had never set itself against me, perhaps I should never have set myself against the Church; but what is done is done: you will find me irreligious, ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... delegates from the people, with authority which they can only justly exercise so long as they remain in obedience to Rome. It follows from these positions that every nation must refuse fealty to an irreligious or contumacious ruler. In the last resort they may lawfully remove him by murder; and they are ipso facto in a state of mortal sin if they elect or recognize a heretic as sovereign. This theory sprang from the writings of the English Jesuits, Allen ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... unless the upper orders set a good example. I entreat my young friends to recollect that they belong to the educated classes, whose behaviour is sure to be imitated by those below them. If their conduct is unchristian, irreligious, or immoral, they will not only have their own sins to answer for at the day of judgment, but the sins of those whom they by their example have led astray. The dreadful excesses committed by the lower orders during the French Revolution were the ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston

... gravity by their sense of the ridiculous, which is at bottom a combination of sound moral judgment with lighthearted good humor. But they are concerned with the diversities of the world instead of with its unities: they are so irreligious that they exploit popular religion for professional purposes without delicacy or scruple (for example, Sydney Carton and the ghost in Hamlet!): they are anarchical, and cannot balance their exposures of Angelo and Dogberry, Sir Leicester Dedlock ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... from the daughter of the same business man whom my friend considered so unscrupulous. She was passing through Chicago and came to ask me to give her some arguments which she might later use with her father to confute the charge that Settlements were irreligious. She said, "You see, he has been asked to give money to our Settlement and would like to do it, if his conscience was only clear; he disapproves of Settlements because they give no religious instruction; he has always been a ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... of superstition is less prevalent, although, amongst many of the lower orders of Irish, the traces of it are to be discovered; it leads, however, to no injurious consequences, and deserves encouragement, in preference to those totally irreligious principles which might naturally be expected to shew themselves amidst a body of men, of characters and dispositions so hostile to every thing which is virtuous, ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann

... held at our selection. It was the first occasion, in fact, that the Gospel had come to disturb the contentedly irreligious mind of our neighbourhood. Service was to open at 3 p.m.; at break-of-day we had begun to ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

... genius, and continual application. She was not only happy in a fine imagination, a great memory, an excellent understanding, and an exact judgment, but had all these crowned by virtue and piety: she was too learned to be vain, too wise to be conceited, too knowing and too clear-sighted to irreligious. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... talk irreligious," said her elderly friend. "Besides, there's nothin' amiss with him, settin' aside his foolishness. I've a-thought sometimes, now, o' buildin' a boat down here, an', when the time came, makin' believe ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... but with shouts and laughter We drenched the altars of Love's sacred grove, Shaking to earth green fruits, impatient after The launching of the colored moths of Love. Love's proper myrtle and his mother's zone We bound about our irreligious brows, And fettered him with garlands of our own, And spread a banquet in his frugal house. Not yet the god has spoken; but I fear Though we should break our bodies in his flame, And pour our blood upon his altar, here ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... I am a soldier, and soldiers you know are seldom enthusiasts in this way, yet I verily believe, as I said before, that a man of enlightened and fervent piety must be infinitely happier in a cottage, than an irreligious ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... he said to her, walking slowly after all the other guests, "feels the liveliest interest in your dear Athanase; but I fear it will vanish through his own fault. He is irreligious and liberal; he is agitating this matter of the theatre; he frequents the Bonapartists; he takes the side of that rector. Such conduct may make him lose his place in the mayor's office. You know with what care the government is beginning to weed ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... character of a law and the qualifications of those who dispense it, there ought obviously to be an intimate correspondence. Of no law, however excellent, could the benefits be extended, were individuals either ignorant of its nature or opposed to its precepts engaged in its administration. While an irreligious or immoral governor would pervert the course of justice in the administration of laws truly excellent, he would be utterly incompetent to the improvement of those that might be defective. The acts of the ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham

... style of dress, without seeing that her energy and intelligence were of a high order; and there was principle likewise, though no one ever quite penetrated to the foundation of it. Certainly she was not an irreligious person; she conformed, as she said, to the habits of each family she lived with, and she highly estimated moral perfections. Now and then a degree of scorn, for the narrowness of dogma, would appear in reading history, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of the world that among the righteous awaked applause, he came forward and knelt at the mourners' bench. His religion "took," they said, as if speaking of vaccination, and before long he entered the pulpit, ready gently to crack the irreligious heads of former companions still stubborn in the ways of iniquity. From behind a plum bush, in the corner of the fence, he had seen Mrs. Mayfield and had blinked, as if dazzled by a great light. Nor was it till the close of day that he had the courage to come into her presence, and then for a moment ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read

... and for answer, I produced this book. A Calvinist minister of Orleans Writ this, to justify the admiral For taking arms against the king deceased; Wherein he proves, that irreligious kings May justly be deposed, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... tendency in that which has prevailed to conquer. We may say that, in the process of evolution, man becomes aware of differences to which at first he gave but little attention; and, so far as he becomes conscious of them, he sets aside what is illogical, immoral, or irreligious, because he is satisfied it is illogical, immoral, or irreligious, ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons

... sentiments in the individual, whose letters we are (p. 192) discussing, which would give presumptive evidence against our decision in his favour. But history has assigned no act, no sentiment, no word of an irreligious or immoral tendency, to Henry of Monmouth up to the date of this letter. It is not here implied, or conceded, that history possesses facts of another character subsequently to this date; that point must be the subject of our further inquiry. When this letter was written, as far as we can ascertain, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... Commandments fare no better, winch are in a particular Manner the Priests Office: This I have known done in so audible a manner, that sometimes their Voices have been as loud as his. As little as you would think it, this is frequently done by People seemingly devout. This irreligious Inadvertency is a Thing extremely offensive: But I do not recommend it as a Thing I give you Liberty to ridicule, but hope it may be amended ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... office. One of his first acts, notoriously under the influence of Peel, was to give office to Huskisson, the champion of free trade, and the energetic colleague of Canning! He added four more of Canning's colleagues. Thus, after he and Peel had declared Canning and his cabinet to be irreligious, revolutionary, and dangerous to the country, in all the cant phrases of the time, their very first act was to take possession, as it were, of the Canning cabinet itself, and next of the Canning policy, on account of which the illustrious ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... was expressly declared in the name of the Government for the first time in the history of the Christian world. There is a too common opinion that a college or university which is not denominational must therefore be irreligious; but the absence of sectarian control should not be confounded with lack of piety. A university whose officers and students are divided among many sects need no more be irreverent and irreligious than the community which in respect to diversity of creeds ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner

... sharp test, and I wonder how many of us would like to go out into the world, and say to all the irreligious people who know us, 'Now come and tell me what the faults are that you have seen in me.' There would be a considerable response to the invitation, and perhaps some of us would learn to know ourselves rather better than we have been ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... Domine quo Vadis. A wretched little church, no kind of beauty about it, full of decayed, greasy pictures, and, far better than they, penny coloured prints of the Saviour and Infant Baptist, and of the Life and Death of the Religious and the Irreligious Person about 1850, both in high hats and tail-coats. The old custodian crone tells me she is half blind, and envies me my glasses. She points out a bit of fresco: "Questo e Gesu Nazzareno"—as the housekeeper might say, "This is the present Earl"—also ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee

... confront the growing arrogance of Realism." Each person is, for himself, the keystone and the occasion of this universal edifice. "Nothing, not God," he says, "is greater to one than oneself is"; a statement with an irreligious smack at the first sight; but like most startling sayings, a manifest truism on a second. He will give effect to his own character without apology; he sees "that the elementary laws never apologise." "I reckon," he adds, with quaint colloquial arrogance, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... o' fun may be, I can't rightly say, young feller. But if I was you, I wouldn't call the boat which, under Providence, was the means o' savin' ye, names. In the first place, it's blame irreligious. In the second, it's annoyin' to my feelin's—an' I'm Disko Troop o' the We're Here o' Gloucester, which you ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... but one way to get rid of this irreligious crew. The chiefs agreed to be satisfied with five thousand golden florins. This sum was paid, and the knights companions, laden with plunder and absolved from their sins, set out in the highest spirits, singing the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... If she is irreligious and not a transgressor, it foretells that she will have that independent frankness and kind consideration for others, which wins for women profound respect, and love from the opposite sex as well as her own; but ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... no rabid Churchmen, of any school of thought, ever again take exception to the irreligious character of playhouse entertainments. Let them read the advertisement of the Lyceum Theatre in The Times for March 13:—"During Holy Week this theatre will be closed, re-opening on Saturday, March 28, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various

... knew how long an irreligious life, and the infamous society with which, as her father's wife, her mother was compelled to mingle, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... Moore knew that Byron was not irreligious?—And yet he pretended that he was. And finally, Who was better aware that Byron's greatest aim was to be useful to humanity, and yet encouraged the belief that Byron's expedition to Greece was purely to satisfy the desire that people should speak ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... they were inured to dangers—proud, because they were independent, and vindictive, because each was the avenger of his own wrongs. It would be unjust to the borderer to pursue the parallel much farther. He is irreligious, because he has inherited the knowledge that religion does not exist in forms, and his reason rejects mockery. He is not a knight, because he has not the power to bestow distinctions; and he has ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... approach to that very "otherness" in the person of the godhead. His healing and reconciling influence over the heart of man—the way the human spirit expands and blossoms in His presence—is moving beyond expression to any observer, religious or irreligious. Each new crusade in the long strife for human betterment looks in sublime confidence to Him as its forerunner and defense. To what planes of common service, faith, magnanimous solicitude could He not lift the embittered, worldlyized men and women of this torn and distracted age, which is ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... was thrown on the American shore, with one hundred and five pounds in her purse of clear gain on the voyage, a conviction arises that she could not guess wrongly. She might have tossed up, having coins in her pocket, heads or tails? but this kind of sortilege was then coming to be thought irreligious in Christendom, as a Jewish and a Heathen mode of questioning the dark future. She simply guessed, therefore; and very soon a thing happened which, though adding nothing to strengthen her guess as a true one, did much to sweeten it if it should prove a false ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... should go thither. The gods, the pitris, and the Brahmanas, never accept gifts from those that are fallen, or those that are begotten by Shudras on the girls of other castes, or the Vahikas who never perform sacrifices and are exceedingly irreligious.' That learned Brahmana had also said in the Kuru court, 'The Vahikas, without any feelings of revulsion, eat of wooden vessels having deep stomachs and earthen plates and vessels that have been licked by dogs and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... allusion to the theories of sensation which are attributed to him in the Theaetetus and elsewhere, or to his denial of the existence of the gods in a well-known fragment ascribed to him; he is the religious rather than the irreligious teacher in this Dialogue. Also it may be observed that Socrates shows him as much respect as is consistent with his own ironical character; he admits that the dialectic which has overthrown Protagoras has carried himself round to a conclusion opposed to his first thesis. The ...
— Protagoras • Plato

... went up to the south porch of the chapel, where we could hear the service proceeding within. I can remember Hugh saying, as the Psalms came to an end "Anglican double chants—how comfortable and delicious, and how entirely irreligious!" ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson

... really rather a darling, or the host proclaimed to the world that he never took potatoes with fish? What would the host and daughter say if their guest began to prophesy or discuss the nature of justice? There is something irreligious in the incongruity ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... to Him. If you deeply feel the bond that knits you to Christ, and really live near to Him, you will be near to your brethren. You will feel that 'blood is thicker than water,' and however like you may be to irreligious people in many things, you will feel that the deepest bond of all knits you to the poorest, the most ignorant, the most unlike you in social position; ay! and the most unlike you in theological opinion, who love the Lord ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... sentiment itself, largely the accident of untoward circumstances, is alien to the character and temperament of the Irish people. In short, I have urged that the policy of revenge is un-Christian and unintelligent, and, that, as the Irish people are neither irreligious nor stupid, it is un-Irish. I well remember taking up this position in conversation with some very advanced Irish-Americans in the Far West and the reply which one of them made. "Wal," said my half-persuaded friend, "mebbe ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett

... has not only been all my life my chief dependance, but my dearest enjoyment. I have, indeed, been the luckless victim of wayward follies; but, alas! I have ever been "more fool than knave." A mathematician without religion is a probable character; an irreligious poet is ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... have left a darknes so extreame behynde I cannot fynde a prayre to blesse theire soules. See here then, polytycke creature, subtyll man, Here see thy myscheife. Irreligious foole, That makst it contyence onlye when thou leavest Synns of preferment unaccomplyshed, Thou that repynst agaynst thy starrs & lucke When heaven prevents the bassnes of thy gayne; Littill thynkst thou wherefore thy gaynes will serve, Nor wherefore thy close pollycie ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... revealed naturally shows itself even more in the book itself, notwithstanding the fact that Mr Arnold expressly declines to reply to those who have attacked Literature and Dogma as anti-Christian and irreligious. Not even by summarily banishing this not inconsiderable host can he face the rest comfortably: and he has to resort to the strangest reasons of defence, to the most eccentric invitation of ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... wicked, the evil, the unjust, the reprobate; sons of men, sons of Belial, the wicked one; children of darkness. V. be impious &c. adj., profane, desecrate, blaspheme, revile, scoff; swear &c. (malediction) 908; commit sacrilege. snuffle; turn up the whites of the eyes; idolize. Adj. impious; irreligious &c. 989; desecrating &c.v.; profane, irreverent, sacrilegious, blasphemous. un-hallowed, un-sanctified, un-regenerate; hardened, perverted, reprobate. hypocritical &c. (false) 544; canting, pietistical[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... presented with a Christianity without knowledge (Gnosis), without discipline, without sacraments, resting partly on a narrative which these very historical critics tear in pieces, each in his own fashion, and partly on a categorical imperative which is really the voice of "irreligious moralism," as Pfleiderer calls it. The words are justified by such a sentence as this from Herrmann: "Religious faith in God is, rightly understood, just the medium by which the universal law becomes individualised for the particular man in his particular place in ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... critical day, got into so inveterate a habit of digging deep that we sometimes fail to see what lies before our very noses? Modern Japan is there to furnish an example. The Japanese are, it is true, commonly said to be an irreligious people. They say so themselves. Writes one of them, the celebrated Fukuzawa, teacher and type of the modern educated Japanese man: "I lack a religious nature, and have never believed in any religion." A score ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain

... existence, directed against the constitution of the Venetian state, and even, it would seem, aiming at its forcible overthrow. As might be expected, the members of these societies, persons whom it would not be too harsh to denominate conspirators, are chiefly drawn from certain free-thinking, irreligious, and lawless circles. Not to speak of what goes on in private, we learn that in the public squares and in coffee houses, the most outrageous, the most treasonable conversations, take place. But ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler

... against men. My studies lie low, and my penetration rises high. But there is Heaven;— THAT knows me [1]!' Not once throughout the Analects does he use the personal name. I would say that he was unreligious rather than irreligious; yet by the coldness of his temperament and intellect in this matter, his influence is unfavourable to the development of ardent religious feeling among the Chinese people generally; and he prepared the way for the speculations of the literati of medieval and modern times, which have ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge

... which it takes in its employments, or by the credit which it derives from them. More than this; if it be granted that Religion tends in general to produce usefulness, particularly in the lower orders, who compose a vast majority of every society; and therefore that these irreligious men of useful lives are rather exceptions to the general rule; it must at least be confessed that they are so far useless, or even positively mischievous, as they either neglect to encourage or actually discourage that principle, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... governments to afford a shallow secular education, without the learning of religious truth, or the moral obligations that it teaches. The child taught and trained for this world's vocations only, without a deep inculcation of the love and fear of God, and the penalty hereafter of an irreligious and wicked life, will have but one leading idea—self-aggrandizement and self-indulgence, and will be checked by no restraint of conscience in the way and means of securing them. Gigantic frauds will be perpetrated, if riches ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... animates them all—the same desire to know that which Infinite Mercy has concealed. There is but little probability that the curiosity of mankind in this respect will ever be wholly eradicated. Death and ill fortune are continual bugbears to the weak-minded, the irreligious, and the ignorant; and while such exist in the world, divines will preach upon its impiety and philosophers discourse upon its absurdity in vain. Still it is evident that these follies have greatly diminished. Soothsayers and prophets have lost the credit they formerly enjoyed, and skulk ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... how they were distributed, which they were sensible of, and very thankful for; I began to talk to them of the scandalous life they led, and gave them a full account of the notice the clergyman had already taken of it; and arguing how unchristian and irreligious a life it was, I first asked them if they were married men or bachelors? They soon explained their condition to me, and shewed me that two of them were widowers, and the other three were single men or bachelors. I asked them with ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... he looked towards me. "Do you know, Nikhil," he said, "I believe Sandip is not irreligious—his religion is of the obverse side of truth, like the dark moon, which is still a moon, for all that its light has gone ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... Mrs. Sampson. "Ever since I knew him he has been reciting to me a lot of irreligious rhymes by some person he calls Ruby Ott, and who is no better than she should be, if you judge by ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... how a good man may live in the midst of the ungodly, and keep his garments unspotted, and his name unsullied by the adverse influences around him. What a rebuke such a life is to many who excuse their looseness and irregularities because they are thrown among the irreligious; and how stimulative it becomes to others that are similarly situated, and trying to live consistently in the midst of all ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell

... mixture of pious demureness and querulous selfishness. She tells the Pope that all her life she has intensely desired to be a nun: that she is, unhappily, in the irreligious position of a matron, and, moreover, is the suffering wife of an impious husband. This sinful man requires of her—of her, a soul devoted to religion— that she shall behave as if she belonged to the wicked world which holds ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt

... Molly had begun life with less, and the ravens had somehow always fed them. As for the women, the question of poverty was one of pleasure to those sentimental souls, and Aunt Lambert, for her part, declared it would be wicked and irreligious to doubt of a provision being made for her children. Was the righteous ever forsaken? Did the just man ever have to beg his bread? She knew better than that! "No, no, my dears! I am not going to be afraid on that account, I warrant you! Look ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... clear understanding, and recognizes the error into which the government has fallen during the last few years, in trying to deprive the curas of the civil administration, by forcing them to reduce themselves to spiritual matters, and to tolerate irreligious acts. The province of Pangasinan, for example, finds itself in this case under the orders of the worthy alcalde-mayor, Don Francisco de Lila, a volunteer of the militia of Manila and a very decided liberal: I have traveled through this province ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... and told the story of my wrongs to Master Hugh; and I am happy to say of him, irreligious as he was, his conduct was heavenly, compared with that of his brother Thomas under similar circumstances. He listened attentively to my narration of the circumstances leading to the savage outrage, and gave many proofs of his strong indignation at it. The heart of my once overkind mistress ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... to the Count de Moustier but one hour ago. But I did not speak to him of the Almighty, because he is an atheist. Yet if we were prudent and merciful it was because we are religious. When men are irreligious, the Lord forsakes them; and if bloodshed and bankruptcy follow it is not to be ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... doves—young girls, all in muslin and lace veils, going with their mothers or chaperons to be confirmed. Here the duty of the godfather or the godmother comes in; and if a child is an orphan, or has careless or irreligious parents, the Church holds the godparent responsible that these children be brought to the bishop ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... demonstrations of respect, and wait at dinner reverently, but they mix freely in the conversation, and take part in all amusements, music, dancing-girls, or reading of the Koran. Even the dancing-girl is not an outcast; she is free to talk to me, and it is highly irreligious to show any contempt or aversion. The rules of politeness are the same for all. The passer-by greets the one sitting still, or the one who comes into a room those who are already there, without distinction ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... he is an enimie to religion; he is plagued with madnesse; Hebert king of the Eastsaxons dieth, his three sonnes refuse to be baptised, they fall to idolatrie and hate the professours of the truth, their irreligious talke and vndutifull behauiour to bishop Melitus, he and his fellow Iustus passe ouer into France, the three sonnes of Hebert are slaine of the Westsaxons in battell, the Estsaxons by their idolatrie ...
— Chronicles 1 (of 6): The Historie of England 5 (of 8) - The Fift Booke of the Historie of England. • Raphael Holinshed

... paralyzing it. The current view of Christianity as a religion of humility and sloth, which preaches only the courage of endurance and makes its followers indifferent to worldly honor, is unfavorable to the development of political vigor. The Italians have been made irreligious by the Church and the priesthood; the nearer Rome, the less pious the people. When Machiavelli, in his proposals looking toward Lorenzo (II.) dei Medici (died 1519), approves any means for restoring order, it must be remembered that he has an ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... him several years in the composition; from 1658, when Cromwell died, through the years of retirement and obscurity until 1667. It came forth in an evil day, for the merry monarch was on the throne, and an irreligious court gave tone ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... education, and yet, through the circumstance of his birth, the corruption of the age, but above all the depravity of nature, and want of restraining grace in his younger years, he became somewhat irreligious and profane, which, when he arrived at manhood, broke out into more gross acts of wickedness, and yet all the while the Lord never left him altogether without a check or witness in his conscience, yet sometimes when at ordinances, particularly sacramental occasions, he would be filled with some ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... carry me to hell, had filthie pleasure no other pillowe to leane vpon but his spreaded limmes? On thy flesh my fault shall bee imprinted at the day of resurrection. O beauty, the bait ordained to insnare the irreligious: rich men are robd for theyr welth, women are dishonested for being too faire. No blessing is beautie but a curse: curst bee the time that euer I was begotten: curst be the time that my mother brought me forth ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash

... seriously, and rationally, not from the purpose of pleasing her, but because she had aroused such a strain of thought in his own mind. There was a certain class of brilliant sayings of his, of a cleverly irreligious and sceptical nature, at which Rose never laughed: when this sort of firework was let off in her presence, she opened her eyes upon him, wide and blue, with a calm surprise intermixed with pity, but said nothing; and, after trying the experiment several times, he ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... upon his religious opinions (or, rather, irreligious), on his return voyage from England, as related to the errors and mistakes of his life. He had much time, during those three long, wearisome months, to study himself, past and present. Evidently he came to possess a more ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... come to some hints contained in 'Volpone,' which partly consist of an endeavour to expose Shakspere on account of plagiarisms committed against other writers, partly of references to irreligious tendencies, against which Jonson warns, and which he ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... public street or in a room, attract no attention from the bystanders. Of more than a hundred of the guards in the gallery of the Vizier's mansion at Tepellene, not more than five or six were seen at prayers. The Albanians are not reckoned strict Mahommedans; but no Turk, however irreligious himself, ever disturbs the devotion ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... from her strong feeling against cultivating intimacy with any one who was "of the world." It was almost the only practical point on which she and Lucy disagreed, for Lucy tried to persuade her that she might do real good if she would come more in contact with her irreligious schoolmates. But Mary replied that this might do for some, but she did not feel strong enough,—she might herself be led away. She was not yet fully persuaded in her ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar

... that adhered to it, (because, in spite of and alongside the tendency to a deeper perception, men still persisted in deducing righteousness from a punctilious observance of numerous particular commandments, because in so doing they became self-satisfied, that is, irreligious, and because in belonging to Abraham they thought they had a claim of right on God). For all that, so far as a historical understanding of the activity of Jesus is at all possible, it is to be obtained from the soil of Pharisaism, as the Pharisees were those ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... free colored people of Philadelphia, through two distinguished representatives, Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, "two men of the African race," as the chroniclers say, "saw the irreligious and uncivilized state" of the "people of their complexion," and finally concluded "that a society should be formed without regard to religious tenets, provided the persons lived an orderly and sober life," the purpose of the society being "to support one another in sickness and ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... the world like an extreme Mohammedan. Last time they overran this country they burned the Alexandrian library. You know that all representations of the human features are against the letter of the Koran. A statue is always an irreligious object in their eyes. What do these fellows care for the sentiment of Europe? The more they could offend it the more delighted they would be. Down would go the Sphinx, the Colossi, the Statues of Abou-Simbel,—as the saints went down in ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle

... of men, sons of Belial, the wicked one; children of darkness. V. be impious &c adj., profane, desecrate, blaspheme, revile, scoff; swear &c (malediction) 908; commit sacrilege. snuffle; turn up the whites of the eyes; idolize. Adj. impious; irreligious &c 989; desecrating &c v.; profane, irreverent, sacrilegious, blasphemous. un-hallowed, un-sanctified, un-regenerate; hardened, perverted, reprobate. hypocritical &c (false) 544; canting, pietistical^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... it must quicken in its own people the sense of social obligation and a realization of the delight in self-giving. A home that is selfish in relation to other homes, in relation to its community, can have no other than selfish, antisocial, and therefore irreligious children. The first step in the welfare of a child is to see that the home which constitutes his personal atmosphere is steeped in the spirit of ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... the efficiency of the Church at Amoy. Besides the objection furnished by the increase of denominations, which the heathen will thus, as readily as the irreligious in this country, be able to urge against Christianity, it will deprive the churches of the benefit of the united wisdom and strength of the whole of them for self-cultivation and for Christian enterprise, and will ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg

... child in purity; a child in faith; the Almighty always in his thoughts, his stay in trouble, his guide in every difficulty, Jackson's individuality was more striking and more complete than that of all others who played leading parts in the great tragedy of Secession. The most reckless and irreligious of the Confederate soldiers were silent in his presence, and stood awestruck and abashed before this great God-fearing man; and even in the far-off Northern States the hatred of the formidable "rebel" was tempered by an irrepressible admiration of his piety, his sincerity, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... trouble to go down into damp, unwholesome graves, for the purpose of fetching up a few trumpery sheets of manuscript; and if the public has been rather tired with their contents, and is disposed to ask why Mrs. Sand's religious or irreligious notions are to be brought forward to people who are quite satisfied with their own, we can only say that this lady is the representative of a vast class of her countrymen, whom the wits and philosophers of the eighteenth century have brought to this condition. The leaves of the Diderot ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... as Mr C. K. Sharp observes, "were strongly recommended in Naphthali, Jus Populi Vindicatum, and afterwards in The Hind let Loose, which books were in almost as much esteem with the Presbyterians as their Bibles." Sir George Mackenzie states, "These irreligious and heterodox books, called Naphthali and Jus Populi, had made the killing of all dissenters from Presbytery seem not only lawful, but a duty among many of that profession: and in a postscript to Jus Populi, it was told that the sending of the Archbishop of St Andrews' ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... or even Count, the name would have been less offensive. And then to her mind hereditary titles, as she had known them, had been recommended by hereditary possessions. There was something to her almost irreligious in the idea of a Duke without an acre. She could therefore only again shake her head. "He has as much right to it," continued Mrs. Roden, "as has the eldest son of the greatest peer ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope

... thought, religious and irreligious alike, the natural is supposed to be something that runs itself without any internal guidance or external interference. The supernatural, on the other hand, if there be any such thing, is not supposed to manifest ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton

... the pair who have taken the solemn vows of wedlock. Any third party that enjoys a superior confidence with one of them, whether relative or friend, even the pastor or family physician, is the man invoked against in the marriage charge, who "puts them asunder." Where unhappily the husband is irreligious and the wife is forced to seek confidential help and consolation of her spiritual adviser, she should strictly limit these to religious matters, else she will grow apart from her husband. George Moore, in his collection of stories entitled, "The Untilled Field," presents the propensity of ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller



Words linked to "Irreligious" :   pagan, nonchurchgoing, atheistic, heathen, impious, irreligiousness, atheistical, unbelieving, heathenish, ethnic, nonobservant, lapsed, religious



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