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Profaned

adjective
1.
Treated irreverently or sacrilegiously.  Synonym: violated.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Profaned" Quotes from Famous Books



... Jaffery without money or luggage or even an overcoat travelled from London to Nice, for no other purpose than to save Doria's sacred little body from being profaned by the touch of ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... decorum which governed the hangings at Chickaloosa, and the resident authorities dreaded mightily the prospect of having it profaned by spiteful and unmannerly behaviour on the part of the Lone-Hand Kid. There was said to be in all the world just one living creature for whom the rebellious captive entertained love and respect, and this person was his half-sister. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... Carleton's (1619-1628) and in Richard Montagu's day (1628-1638) there was not much change, for the latter asks in every parish "whether communicants 'meekly kneel,' or whether they stand or sit at the time of reception: Whether the Holy Table is profaned at any time by persons sitting upon it, casting hats or cloaks upon it, writing or casting up accounts or any other indecent usuage." [39] And in consequence the archbishop desired to restore some sense of order and decency to the minds of both the clergy and ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette

... frequent it in the spring and fall, the white-bellied swallows (Hirundo bicolor) skim over it, and the peetweets (Totanus macularius) "teter" along its stony shores all summer. I have sometimes disturbed a fishhawk sitting on a white-pine over the water; but I doubt if it is ever profaned by the wing of a gull, like Fair-Haven. At most, it tolerates one annual loon. These are all the animals of consequence which ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... stranger land, and saluted the unknown mountains and fields. He was {now} going to offer sacrifice to Jupiter, and commanded his servants to go and fetch some water for the libation from the running springs. An ancient grove was standing {there, as yet} profaned by no axe. There was a cavern in the middle {of it}, thick covered with twigs and osiers, forming a low arch by the junction of the rocks; abounding with plenty of water. Hid in this cavern, there was a dragon sacred to Mars,[4] adorned with crests ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... the breast of Amalia. "Oh, heavens!" she exclaimed, "what madness could prompt you thus to expose your own life and my reputation? Haste, fly from this spot, which you have profaned; and know, that if my heart recoils at your death (and here she gave a deep sigh,) yet at my cry those would appear who would not suffer your insult to pass unpunished," so saying, she pointed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various

... but once in her life,—after the burial of a younger sister. The fact impressed her with a peculiar sense of sanctity and solemnity: it was a caress wrung forth by a season of tribulation, and therefore was too earnest to be profaned to the uses of joy. So far, therefore, from expecting a paternal embrace, she would have felt, had it been given, like the doomed daughter of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... all familiarity! You stand before the authority of the law, with whom you cannot trifle. Give me the keys of the cloister, that I may clean the profaned place." ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... lake, as well as the Malaksan, inspires the natives with superstitious fear on account of the suspicious neighborhood of the solfatara, and therefore has not been profaned by either mariner, fisher, or swimmer, and was very full of fish. For the purpose of measuring its depth, I had a raft of bamboos constructed; and when my companions saw me floating safely on the lake, they all, without ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... meets his glance. A long look, one long, silent look, infinitude in its assurance, its glow wrapping her, blue and smiling as heaven itself, reaching him like the evening star seen through tears,—a word, a touch, had profaned with a trait of earthliness so remote, so spiritual a betrothal. He goes, and still the upward-smiling girl sees the sunshine, hears the bird-song,—a boy dashes by the door and down the path to meet the last, close-lingering embrace of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... to the service of the great Creator, and to rest from bodily labour. When the government of France, in the height of her rage for innovation, fell into the hands of atheistical demagogues, when her temples were polluted and every thing sacred was invaded and profaned, the seventh day was considered as a relic of ancient superstition and the observance of it accordingly abolished; and, about the same time, it became the fashion among a certain description of people to use specious arguments against its continuance ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... a periodical which addresses a general audience. The appliances of the spiritual life belong to a more retired sphere—that of the priesthood, of the sacraments, of religious offices; that of prayer, meditation, and self-examination. They are profaned by exposure, and choked by the distractions of public affairs. The world cannot be taken into the confidence of our inner life, nor can the discussion of ascetic morality be complicated with the secular questions ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... war-party of the enemy had written threats and boasts, warning the "Boston people" away from the grizzly fastnesses of the dread Long House, and promising a horrid vengeance for every mile of the Dark Empire we profaned. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... zeal by the voluntary destruction of their temples, were distinguished by municipal privileges, and rewarded with popular donatives; and the new capital of the East gloried in the singular advantage that Constantinople was never profaned by the worship of idols. As the lower ranks of society are governed by imitation, the conversion of those who possessed any eminence of birth, of power, or of riches, was soon followed by dependent multitudes. The salvation of the common people was purchased at an easy rate, if it be true that, in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... childhood pat the palace-floor, Ye started forth and kissed away surprise: Will ye now meet me! how, and where, and when? And must I fill your bosom with my tears, And, what I never have done, with your own! Why have the gods thus punished me? what harm Have ever I done them? have I profaned Their temples, asked too little, or too much? Proud if they granted, grieved if they withheld? O mother! stand between your child and them! Appease them, soothe them, soften their revenge, Melt them to pity ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor

... wearied eyes glanced cautiously toward the singer around the edges of protecting rocks; fingers loosened their grasp upon the rifle barrels; smoke-begrimed cheeks became moist; while lips, a moment before profaned by oaths, grew silent and trembling. Out in front a revengeful brave sent his bullet swirling just above the singer's head, the sharp fragments of rock dislodged falling in a shower upon his upturned face; but the fearless rascal sang serenely on to the end, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... play Hamlet with a less shocking effect than a man may play Desdemona, but all the same she must not play Hamlet at all. That sublime ideal is the property of the human imagination, and may not be profaned by a talent enamoured of the impossible. No harm could be done by the broadest burlesque, the most irreverent travesty, for these would still leave the ideal untouched. Hamlet, after all the horse-play, would be Hamlet; but Hamlet played by a woman, to satisfy her caprice, or to feed her ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... impression. Five minutes brought me to where I might gather it unhindered as it bloomed in the white moonshine. The great Piazza of Siena is famous, and though in this day of multiplied photographs and blunted surprises and profaned revelations none of the world's wonders can pretend, like Wordsworth's phantom of delight, really to "startle and waylay," yet as I stepped upon the waiting scene from under a dark archway I was conscious of no loss of the edge of a precious ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... step as we ascend the winding path after leaving St. Scholastica, till a small gate admits us to the famous immemorial Ilex Grove of St. Benedict, which is said to date from the fifth century, and which has never been profaned by ax or hatchet. Beyond it the path narrows, and a steep winding stair, just wide enough to admit one person at a time, leads to the platform before the second convent, which up to that moment is entirely concealed. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... the insane blood lust of the hideous creature, the brutal attack upon La, and his own part of the grim tragedy when he had battled with the infuriated Oparian and left him dead at the feet of the priestess he would have profaned. ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... feeling the intellectual mischief arising out of a degraded idea of the Supreme Being; and have claimed for their own God an existence or personality distinct from the objects of ancient superstition; disowning in His name the symbols and images that had profaned His Temple. But they have not seen that the utmost which can be effected by human effort, is to substitute impressions relatively correct, for others whose falsehood has been detected, and to replace a gross symbolism by a purer one. Every ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... temple, and this day, must not be profaned with blood. My son will take this poor madman to the prison. Let him be judged and punished according to law. Make room, that he and my ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... breast, and as the sun approached the western horizon, the comrades drew near to the gate which separated them from the world of common life. The stony barrier opened before the charmed words, and when they had emerged from its gloom, closed again with a clap of thunder. Never since has mortal man profaned those regions ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins

... chorale should follow the din and lead to a mellow adagio close. And this he does with supreme skill. With ill-suppressed disgust, he turns from New to Old Home. "Constantinople no longer appertains to the Roman historian—nor shall I enumerate the civil and religious edifices that were profaned or erected by its Turkish masters." Amid the decayed temples and mutilated beauty of the Eternal City, he moves down to a melodious and pathetic conclusion—piously visits the remaining fragments of ancient splendour ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... reared; they worshipped him in the temples which His own hands had framed; and there the persecutor sought them, the destroyer found them, and the sword of the tyrant was bathed in the blood of the worshipper! Even the family altar was profaned; and to raise the voice of prayer and praise in the cottage to the King of kings, was held to be as treason against him who professed to represent Him on earth. At this period, too, Graham of Claverhouse—whom some have painted as an angel, but whose actions were worthy of a fiend—at the head ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... pure." It is sin to dispense ordinances to the unworthy, whether ordination, or communion in the sacrament. For the other, the pollution of ordinances is the Scripture language. I hope he means not to quarrel at the Holy Ghost's language: Ezek. xxii. 26, "Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and profane;" Mal. i. 7, "Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar;" ver. 12, "Ye have profaned it;" Matt. xxi. 13, "Ye have made it a den of thieves;" Matt. vii. 6, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... darling heads, To guard your fireside's sanctuary—ward off The last, the direst doom from all you loved? To Heaven I raise my unpolluted hands, To curse your act and you! I have avenged That holy nature which you have profaned. I have no part with you. You murdered, I Have shielded all that was most ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... profaned For me to profane it; One feeling too falsely disdain'd For thee to disdain it; One hope is too like despair For prudence to smother; And pity from thee more ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... I regret to say, spat upon the purple whiskers of the butterfly and took refuge in flight. The long stride of Peter Quick Banta soon overtook him. Silently struggling he was haled back to the profaned temple of Art. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... Colonnas, a means of overawing the Pope. A truce was concluded, wrote Moncada, "that the Pope, having laid down his arms, may be taken unawares".[484] On the 19th he marched on Rome. Clement, taken unawares, fled to the castle of St. Angelo; his palace was sacked, St. Peter's rifled, and the host profaned. "Never," says Casale, "was so ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... to the matter, nor any right side possible in so thoroughly vicious a system as that of the American mercantile marine. The Consul could do little, except to take depositions, hold forth the greasy Testament to be profaned anew with perjured kisses, and, in a few instances of murder or manslaughter, carry the case before an English magistrate, who generally decided that the evidence was too contradictory to authorize the transmission of the accused for trial in America. The newspapers ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... which practice was more grossly and notoriously in disaccord with pretensions and theory, and with respect to which the highest and most sacred of all conceivable human sanctions was so shamelessly desecrated and profaned to the lowest and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... what does the child say? No one who eats my bread shall see that day profaned. The wrath of the Almighty will fall on their heads, whoever they be, mind that, Mary Gifford, mind that! Ay, I know what you will say, that the Queen lends her countenance to them, and your grand folk in the great house, ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... profound respect I bear to the persons who have spoken before me, I could not forbear complaining of their not crying out against such a scurrilous, satirical paper, which was just now read, contrary to all forms of proceeding, and written in the same style as lately profaned the sacred name of the King, to encourage false witnesses by letters-patent. I believe that those persons thought this paper, which is but a sally of the furious Mazarin, to be much beneath themselves and me. And that ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... roses and sweet with mowing grass. Those who love fields and every briar in the hedge dislike to see them entered irreverently. I have just the same feeling myself even of fields and woods in which I have no personal interest; it jars upon me to see nature profaned. These fellows were a 'Black George' lot, in hamlet language. Nestor Hay knew everybody in the village round about, their fathers and grandfathers, their politics and religious opinions, and whether they were new folk or ancient inhabitants—an encyclopaedic knowledge ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... of the day of the execution. It is not probable that in the executions performed by the Romans this rule was observed; but as the next day was the Sabbath, and a Sabbath of peculiar solemnity, the Jews expressed to the Roman authorities[3] their desire that this holy day should not be profaned by such a spectacle.[4] Their request was granted; orders were given to hasten the death of the three condemned ones, and to remove them from the cross. The soldiers executed this order by applying to the two thieves a second ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... only be appealed to as a last resort, to free some tortured soul from a life of misery, caused by humiliation, shame and hatred, the very essence of all evil. When the sacred state of matrimony becomes so profaned and degraded that it soils everything it comes in contact with; when even the minds of our children are poisoned and distorted by the atmosphere, and the last ray of hope has vanished, only then the hour has struck to ask the law for ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton

... you unworthily—I played a knave's part. I distorted your lovely image, I presumed upon your gracious kindness. I was accursed—accursed. I did sacrilege—I profaned the temple." I strode about before her declaiming against ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... x. xi. 17, 18, 19, 20. Now what is meant in the Old Testament by "God's statutes, and God's ordinances," is not the Mosaic law always signified by these expressions? Again, Ezek. says, ch. xxxvi. 23, &c. "I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the nations, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the nations shall know that I am Jehovah, saith the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the nations, ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English

... novel for the greater number of the present generation, offered an aspect at once mournful and imposing. A monarch so justly regretted, a king so truly Christian, coming to take his place among the glorious remains of the martyrs of his race and the bones of his ancestors,—profaned, scattered by the revolutionary tempest, but which he had been able again to gather,—was a grave subject of reflection, a spectacle touching in its purpose and majestic in the pomp with which it ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... strangers, with all its glory gone. "Her sanctuary was laid waste, her feasts were turned into mourning, her Sabbath into a reproach, and her honor into contempt." Many even of the Jews became apostate, profaned the Sabbath, and sacrificed to idols, rather than lose their lives; for the persecution was the most unrelenting in the annals of martyrdom, even to the destruction ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord

... air of tepid and peaceful nights. He loved the narrow and sombre creeks, strangers to sunshine: black, smooth, tortuous—like byways of despair. He liked even the troops of sorrowful-faced monkeys that profaned the quiet spots with capricious gambols and insane gestures of inhuman madness. He loved everything there, animated or inanimated; the very mud of the riverside; the very alligators, enormous and stolid, ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... profaned This honest, shiny warp of thine, Nor hath a courtier's eye disdained Thy faded hue and quaint design; Let servile flattery be the price Of ribbons in the royal mart— A roadside posie shall suffice For us two ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... of deep-seated piety. But, though through life a sworn enemy of every kind of cant, Bunsen never would surrender the privilege of speaking the language of a Christian, because that language had been profaned by the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... conscientiousness"—and he stopped short, and eyed me with extraordinary candour, as if the proof were to be overwhelming—"I have never sold a picture! 'At least no merchant traffics in my heart!' Do you remember that divine line in Browning? My little studio has never been profaned by superficial, feverish, mercenary work. It's a temple of labour, but of leisure! Art is long. If we work for ourselves, of course we must hurry. If we work for her, we must ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James

... their past history; it goads and agonizes her very soul. She throws her arms frantically about his neck; presses him to her bosom; kisses him with the fervor of a child. Having pledged his forgiveness with a kiss, and sealed it by calling in a witness too often profaned on such occasions, George calms her feelings as best he can; then he smooths with a gentle hand the folds of her uplifted dress, and with them curtains the satin slippers that so delicately encase her ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... for breakfast; bread, vegetables, and water for dinner; bread, fruit, and water for supper was the bill of fare ordained by the elders. No teapot profaned that sacred stove, no gory steak cried aloud for vengeance from her chaste gridiron and only a brave woman's taste, time, and temper were sacrificed ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... hand a kit; and each To show how fit he was to teach A cit, an alderman, a mayor, Led in a string a dancing bear. 1560 Since the revival of Fingal, Custom, and custom's all in all, Commands that we should have regard, On all high seasons, to the bard. Great acts like these, by vulgar tongue Profaned, should not be said, but sung. This place to fill, renown'd in fame, The high and mighty Lockman[269] came, And, ne'er forgot in Dulman's reign, With proper order to maintain 1570 The uniformity of pride, Brought Brother Whitehead by his side. On horse, who proudly paw'd the ground, And ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... done, Romeo watched the place where the lady stood; and under favour of his masking habit, which might seem to excuse in part the liberty, he presumed in the gentlest manner to take her by the hand, calling it a shrine, which if he profaned by touching it, he was a blushing pilgrim, and would kiss it for atonement. 'Good pilgrim,' answered the lady, 'your devotion shows by far too mannerly and too courtly: saints have hands, which pilgrims may touch, but kiss not.' 'Have not saints lips, and pilgrims too?' ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... of that genuine freedom, which is the boast of this age and country, than the power of discussing and examining, with decency and respect, the limits of the king's prerogative. A topic, that in some former ages was thought too delicate and sacred to be profaned by the pen of a subject. It was ranked among the arcana imperii; and, like the mysteries of the bona dea, was not suffered to be pried into by any but such as were initiated in it's service: because perhaps the exertion of the one, like the solemnities of ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... that the time of corn planting was at hand.[151-2] The flames kindled by the lightning were of a sacred nature, proper to be employed in lighting the fires of the religious rites, but on no account to be profaned by the base uses of daily life. When the flash entered the ground it scattered in all directions those stones, such as the flint, which betray their supernal origin by a gleam of fire when struck. These were ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... came the Saracen Valdabrun, Of whom King Marsil was foster-son. Four hundred galleys he owned at sea, And of all the mariners lord was he. Jerusalem erst he had falsely won, Profaned the temple of Solomon, Slaying the patriarch at the fount. 'Twas he who in plight unto Gan the count, His sword with a thousand coins bestowed. Gramimond named he the steed he rode, Swifter than ever was falcon's flight; Well did ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various

... on him—I strove to draw his sword—I clung to his neck with the ferocious resolve to strangle him: he was obliged to call for assistance to disengage himself from me. On that night I led Juliet to the chapel of our house: I made her touch the sacred relics—I harrowed her child's heart, and profaned her child's lips with an oath, that she would be mine, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... might envy your innocence; but on earth all is abused, even angels are insulted, profaned, by men. This man, whom I will know, whom I will seize and force to have confidence in your love and honor, shall tell me—if he be not the vilest of beings—whether I am to call him father, or kill ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... statements to the members of our Law Amendment Society, are real events in the progress of law reform in this country. The injustice which the English people submit to in the revered name of Law, and in the sacred but in their case profaned name of Equity, is more enormous than the future historian will be able remotely to conceive. The keystone of the barbarous Gothic portal to Justice in our common-law procedure was struck out some twenty years ago, when the logical forms of legal contest were ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... repeated the imprecation. He repeated it because it shocked him. It struck at what he held to be most sacred. It profaned his holy of holies, and left it bare to sacrilege. It gave him a fierce, perverted joy to feel that she whom he would have loved to shield with everything that was most tender was now exposed to his cursing. It was rifling his ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King

... Is the name of the Divine Being and that of our Saviour to be profaned constantly without any check? If so, it will grow worse and worse, until we may expect national sin to bring down national punishment, and we shall have to say, "Because of swearing ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness

... which articles of martial equipment (though these are war-times, and nobody is meritorious or respectable now who does not wear a uniform) I, with my own irreverent hands, shook out on the floor; and straightway conveyed the empty cases down-stairs to be profaned by tea, sugar, Harvey's sauce, pickles, pepper, and other products of the arts of peace. In a word, and not to dwell too long on the purely piratical part of our preparations for the voyage, we doubled the number of our packages at this hospitable country house, ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... And you, good sir? [Exit. Caes. O, that profaned name!—- And are these seemly company for thee, [To Julia. Degenerate monster? All the rest I know, And hate all knowledge for their hateful sakes. Are you, that first the deities inspired With skill of their high natures and their ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... from her.) Away! you have profaned our hallow'd ground! And thus, pursued by those, whose mandates all submissive sanction, I am no more your ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various

... something I have stolen out of a temple—a wonderful winged crowned figure that I have stolen out of a temple and profaned. I feel as if we were in a black barge upon a scarlet sea, as if in a moment it would dip over the horizon line and we should be lost forever together. O, I feel as if all the light in the world were flowing from behind ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange

... at the fierceness of the outburst, puts it down with a deprecatory shrug. She takes it up and looks at it as if he had profaned a relic. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw

... the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament, were then wholly unknown to all nations except the Jews, and among the Jews were known only to priests and scholars. They were kept sacred at Jerusalem. The Jews would have considered them as profaned in being exhibited to the view of pagan nations. In fact, the learned men of other countries would not have been able to read them; for the Jews secluded themselves so closely from the rest of mankind, that their language was, in that age, scarcely ever heard beyond ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott

... mummeries," too often degenerated into abuse, as indeed was to be expected, when such pastimes had for their object to turn all lawful authority into ridicule, and more particularly to burlesque the services of the Church. On such occasions, "the rude vulgar occupied the Churches, profaned the holy places by a mock imitation of the sacred rites, and sung indecent parodies of the hymns of the Church;" and the lively representation of a scene of this kind is familiar to most readers, in a well known work of fiction, "The Abbot." Part of ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... for which the popular swarms of Europe had forsaken their homes was now accomplished. The Moslem mosques of Jerusalem were converted into churches for a purer faith, and the mount of Calvary and the sepulchre of Christ were profaned no longer by the presence or the power of the infidel. Popular frenzy had fulfilled its mission, and, as a natural consequence, it began to subside from that time forth. The news of the capture of Jerusalem brought numbers of pilgrims from Europe, and, among others, Stephen ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... Great, to restore Rome, to deliver it from tyrants, and to reform the almost annihilated Church. For the papacy had been still further dishonored by Benedict IX. It seemed as if a demon from hell, in the disguise of a priest, occupied the chair of Peter and profaned the sacred mysteries of religion by his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... how far have we Profaned thy heavenly gift of Poesy! Made prostitute and profligate the Muse, Debased to each obscene and impious use, Whose harmony was first ordain'd above For tongues of angels, and for hymns of love! O wretched we! why were we hurried down This lubrique and adulterate age, (Nay added ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... of the Muses was like some holy place that had been profaned. The dainty feet of the stranger had set themselves upon her path in more ways than one. What must life be out in the world, when the world was full of women like Mrs. Lee, perhaps even more beautiful? Was everyone, married or not, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... Sunday, as the early Christians had anciently changed it from the Jewish Saturday. This had taken place, had the Thursday voters not formed the minority. Another asserted, that Sunday was a working day, and that Saturday was the perpetual Sabbath.[A] Some deemed the very name of Sunday profaned the Christian mouth, as allusive to the Saxon idolatry of that day being dedicated to the Sun; and hence they sanctified it with the "Lord's-day." Others were strenuous advocates for closely copying the austerity of the Jewish Sabbath, in all the rigour of the Levitical law; ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... He profaned the Passover. The better day, says the proverb, the better deed. But, if a deed is evil, it is the worse if it is done on a sacred day. The Passover was the most sacred season of the entire year; and this very evening was the most sacred of the Passover ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker

... of greatness, though thy dearest From that Elysian food was yet unweaned; And many a deed of terrible uprightness 95 By thy sweet love was sanctified; And in thy smile, and by thy side, Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died. But when tears stained thy robe of vestal-whiteness, And gold profaned thy Capitolian throne, 100 Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness, The senate of the tyrants: they sunk prone Slaves of one tyrant: Palatinus sighed Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... pray for in this first petition? 2. What does the name of God mean? 3. Why is God's name holy in itself? 4. What does it mean to hallow God's name? 5. How is God's name hallowed? 6. Why do we pray for God's help? 7. How is God's name profaned? 8. Why do we pray God to preserve us from profaning ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump

... exposed the pilgrims to many insults, robberies, and extortions; and these zealots, returning from their meritorious fatigues and sufferings, filled all Christendom with indignation against the infidels, who profaned the holy city by their presence, and derided the sacred mysteries in the very place of their completion. Gregory VII., among the other vast ideas which he entertained, had formed the design of uniting all the western Christians against the Mahometans; but the egregious and violent ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... large number in the Church of England ready to assist their comrades outside in breaking down her fences. The High Churchmen, however, as may be guessed, would not sit tamely by, and see the leading idea of the Anglican Church thrown to the winds, her via media profaned, her park made a common, and her distinctive doctrines and fences levelled to the ground. What their feelings were, may be gathered from this ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various

... not know what to do. They prayed secretly where they could. The Priests of the Rain went on with their preparations, and the soldiers of Father Letrado—for he had a small detachment with him—broke up the dance and profaned the sacred places. Those were hard days for Ho-tai the Two-Hearted. The gods of the strangers were strong gods, he said, let the people wait and see what they could do. The white men had strong Medicine ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... fat Melted and fell and left the thigh bones bare. Such are the signs, taught by this lad, I read— As I guide others, so the boy guides me— The frustrate signs of oracles grown dumb. O King, thy willful temper ails the State, For all our shrines and altars are profaned By what has filled the maw of dogs and crows, The flesh of Oedipus' unburied son. Therefore the angry gods abominate Our litanies and our burnt offerings; Therefore no birds trill out a happy note, Gorged with the carnival of human ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... might sometimes (by accident, and without an unpardonable crime) trust as much to my own very careful, and very laborious, though, perhaps, somewhat purblind disquisitions, as to their soaring, intuitive, eagle-eyed authority. But the modern liberty is a precious thing. It must not be profaned by too vulgar an use. It belongs only to the chosen few, who are born to the hereditary representation of the whole democracy, and who leave nothing at all, no, not the offal, to us poor outcasts of the ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... the remains of the great duke to the grave. This preposterous request was naturally refused by the duchess, who replied, "that the car which had borne the Duke of Marlborough's dead body should never be profaned by another." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... formed the bulk of the Imperial army; let him be as arrogant as he would to the Senate, let him set up and pull down one "Shadow Emperor" after another, if only he would keep the streets of Rome from being again profaned by the ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... from which was at one time made a wine called amber-rosolli"—a name not easy to explain. 'Ambar-i-Rasul, "The Prophet's Bouquet!" would be too bold a name even for Persia, though names more sacred are so profaned at Naples and on the Moselle. Sir H. Rawlinson suggests 'Ambar-'asali, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... different consecrated spots in the Holy City, he set out on his return to Normandy. His health was already impaired by the fatigues of the journey, and he died at the city of Nicaea, in the year 1035. There, in the now profaned sanctuary, where was held the first general Council of the Church, rests, in his nameless and forgotten grave, the last of the high-spirited and ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... her pardon!" She sighed. "'One word is too often profaned for me to profane it,' etc." She put her elbows on the table. "Oh, Mike, aren't you an odd darling? I do love teasing you. If you weren't so easily ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... Manse," writes Hawthorne, in his charming introduction to the quaint stories, "Mosses from an Old Manse", "had never been profaned by a lay occupant until that memorable summer afternoon when I entered it as my home. A priest had built it; a priest had succeeded to it; other priestly men from time to time had dwelt in it; and children born in its chambers ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... was viewed by the more gentle slave-masters of the rest of Greece. They were branded with ineffaceable dishonour: no Helot might sing a Spartan song; if he but touched what belonged to a Spartan it was profaned—he was the Pariah of Greece. The ephors—the popular magistrates—the guardians of freedom—are reported by Aristotle to have entered office in making a formal declaration of war against the Helots—probably but an idle ceremony ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the most remarkable acts recorded of Alexander is this. Desiring that his likeness should be handed down to posterity with as little variation as possible, he refused to permit it to be profaned by a multitude of artists, and issued a proclamation to all the world over which he ruled that no one should rashly counterfeit the king's likeness in bronze or with the painter's colours, or with the sculptor's chisel. Only Polycletus might ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... return from Mount Sinai, that is was the zealot's task for the sake of God's law to slay those who commit unchastity with non-Jewish women?" Phinehas took the liberty of pointing out the law to his teacher Moses who had forgotten it, because, "when God's name is profaned, no man should consider the respect due to a teacher," wherefore Phinehas thought now only of establishing God's law, and in doing this it was necessary to recall it to Moses' mind. Moses indeed did ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... quite equal to the inventions of Fourier, St. Simon, Owen, and the rest of that ingenious company of schemers who have been so intent upon a reconstruction of the foundations of society. In 1843, he went to reside in the pleasant village of Concord, in the "Old Manse," which had never been profaned by a lay occupant until he entered it as his home. In the introduction ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... vows spoken under those spreading oaks—who knows? But if there were, the retentive ear which listened, and the cautious tongue which spake the vows, had no intention of having their confidences profaned on this page. Yet it was a night long to be remembered. Timid lovers sat apart, oblivious to the gaze of the merry revelers. Matrons and maidens vied with each other in affability to the sterner sex. I ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... is always the case. We are never in more danger of fresh assailants than when we have won some victory over evil in ourselves or around us. David repeated his former tactics. Not waiting to be attacked, and to have the soil of Israel profaned and wasted by enemies, he crossed Jordan to meet the would-be invader, and, when he met him, struck hard, and crushed him and his host, slew the commander, and dispersed the thunder-cloud. The coalition broke ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Moses, made no compromise with vice. He is inexorable. "There shall not be a harlot of the daughters of Israel." The daughter of a priest who profaned herself was to be burnt to death. The Old Testament is hot with warnings against patronizing "strange women," that is, foreign prostitutes who had invaded the Holy Land, like the imported white slaves of the French traders here today. Manu, the ancient lawgiver of India, provided ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various

... which was dusted and scrubbed at intervals, but never, under any circumstances, profaned by a fire. It was curtained by a gay remnant of figured plush, however, so nobody missed the fire. White and gold china vases stood on the mantel, and a little china dog, who would never have dared to bark had he been alive, so chaste and humble of countenance ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... illustrated interviews with prominent people, which have given me a deep sense of mental and moral nausea. I do not think I am afflicted with a strong sense of the sacredness of a man's home life—at least, if it is sacred at all, it seems to me to be just as much profaned by allowing visitors or strangers to see it and share it as it is by allowing it to be written about in a periodical. If it is sacred in a peculiar sense, then only very intimate friends ought to be allowed to see it, and ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Town House, churches, and other public buildings, obstructed travel, and men were appointed in each town by the selectmen to see that "free passage in the streets be kept open." Funerals were forbidden to be held on the Lord's Day, because it profaned the sacred day, through the vast concourse of children and servants that followed the coffin ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... o'clock train to London. Sometimes he sent the Kanaka back; at other times he would take him to town; but whether Cockatoo remained or departed, the museum was always locked up lest it should be profaned by the servants of the house. As a matter of fact, Braddock need not have been afraid, for Lucy—knowing her step-father's whims and violent temper—took care that the sanctity of the place should ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume

... pretext for its adoption. There are indeed now no masses said but by the Constitutional Clergy; but as the people are usually as ingenious in evading laws as legislators are in forming them, many persons, instead of attending the churches, which they think profaned by priests who have taken the oaths, flock to church-yards, chapels, or other places, once appropriated to religious worship, but in disuse since the revolution, and of course not violated by constitutional masses. The cemetery of St. ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... Roman general. As tribune of the people in 61 B.C., he wa$ chiefly instrumental in securing the acquittal of the notorious Publius Clodius when charged with having profaned the mysteries of Bona Dea (Cicero, Ad. Att. i. 16). In 59 Calenus was praetor, and brought forward a law that the senators, knights, and tribuni aerarii, who composed the judices, should vote separately, so that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... all, its curtains of crisp, clean muslin, cruelly torn and crushed—the bed, the wonderful canopied bed so brave and gay, of which Hilma had been so proud, thrust out there into the common road, torn from its place, from the discreet intimacy of her bridal chamber, violated, profaned, flung out into the dust and garish sunshine for all men to stare at, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... fills you with divine emotion; which sings of love and death, of hope and sacrifice, and awakens the sense of the infinite. "Jocelyn" always stirs in me impulses of tenderness which it would be hateful to me to see profaned by satire. As a tragedy of feeling, it has no parallel in French, for purity, except "Paul et Virginie," and I think that I prefer "Jocelyn." To be just, one ought to read them side ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... confiding innocence. And it was not the discovery of any omitted legislative ordinance that could have satisfied the accusing conscience in his own bosom, hourly calling out against him. But the heaven-consecrated son of that profaned marriage had found the reconciling point—had poured in the healing balm; and the spirit of his father ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... passed not into the power of the heathen, but destroyed them; and it lies at the bottom of the deepest reach of the haven whence the depth and swiftness of the tide will hardly let men bring it again. So I suppose that, profaned by heathen hands, it may no longer call men from across the water and woodland ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... doubt that, in vers. 27, 28, the exile is expressly designated as future: "Thy first father (the high-priestly office) hath sinned, and thy mediators have transgressed against me." (The sacrificial service was by a disgraceful syncretism profaned even by those whose office it was to attend to it). "Therefore I will profane the princes of the sanctuary, and will give Jacob to the curse, and Israel to reproaches." Even [Hebrew: vaHll] is the common Future, and to ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... one will die without a hearth or a home. Then one thinks of the statue, of the picture which one would not know what to do with and which one would not know where to place with due honor, if one owned it. One is content to know that they are in some temple not profaned by cold analysis, a little far from the eye, and one loves them so much the more. One says: I will go again to the country where they are. I shall see again and I shall love always that which has made me love and understand them. The contact of my personality will ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... of an unknown countenance come to disturb the worship of the temple?" demanded Meek, when astonishment permitted utterance. "Thrice hath this holy day been profaned by the foot of the stranger, and well may it be doubted whether we live ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... not so much profaned, were it not misused in easy good-nature, to extenuate lettered and sensual indolence, that worn old term might be applied, above all men, to "the Shirra." But perhaps we scarcely need a word (it would be seldom in use) for a character so rare, or rather so lonely, in its nobility and charm ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... let me say. They looked at me with dread as one accursed. 'Though I could order thy death by the laws of our fathers,' said Helge, 'yet will I be mild as Balder whose sacred dwelling thou hast profaned. Across the sea lives Angantyr, who tribute owes to us. Go thither and when summer comes bring back this tribute, or to every man thou wilt be as one without honour, and ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook

... compulsory conversion, which, from the time of the Seljukian Sultans to the present day, have raised the indignation and the compassion of the Christian world; how, when the lieutenants of Malek Shah got possession of Asia Minor, they profaned the churches, subjected Bishops and Clergy to the most revolting outrages, circumcised the youth, and led off their sisters to their profligate households;—how, when the Ottomans conquered in turn, and added an infantry, I mean the Janizaries, to their Tartar ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... his army, fleet, and many loyalists. The next day Washington entered Boston amid great rejoicing. For eleven months the inhabitants had endured the horrors of a siege and the insolence of the enemy. Their houses had been pillaged, their shops rifled, and their churches profaned. ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... whence her soul had been lifted up to God. And the dresser with her china and silver upon it, covered by years of dust. For I had once stolen the key from Willis's bunch, crept in, and crept out again, awed. That chamber would be profaned, now, and those dear ornaments, which were mine, violated. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... it all was prodigious. Romarin was pale as he listened. What! In order that this malignant growth in Society's breast should be able to say "I know," had sanctities been profaned, sweet conventions assailed, purity blackened, soundness infected, and all that was bright and of the day been sunk in the quagmire that this creature of the night had called—yes, stilled called—by the gentle ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... bewail the crags and bitter foam And angry sword-blades flashing left and right Which guard your glittering height, That none thereby may come! The vision which we have Revere we so, That yet we crave To foot those fields of ne'er-profaned snow? I, with heart-quake, Dreaming or thinking of that realm of Love, See, oft, a dove Tangled in frightful nuptials with a snake; The tortured knot, Now, like a kite scant-weighted, flung bewitch'd Sunwards, now pitch'd, ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore

... accurately surveyed him, turned their faces to each other, and set up a loud, yelling laugh, which resounded in his ears. The sound was so ghastly that Sir Kenneth started at hearing it, and hastily demanded, in the name of God, who they were who profaned that holy place with such antic gestures ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... quarrelsome, often insufferably pompous. The custom of daily service and even of fasting was kept up more widely than is commonly supposed. The Eucharist, though sparingly administered, and though it had been profaned by the operation of the Test Acts, was approached by religious people with deep reverence. But besides the better, and the worse, and the average members of this, which called itself the Church party, there stood out a number of men of active ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... previous year. It probably culminated in the solemn exhibition of a corn-ear, the symbol of Demeter. The obligation of silence was imposed not so much because there were any secrets to reveal, but that the holiest sacraments of the Greek religion might not be profaned by being brought into contact with common life. This feeling was strengthened by the belief that words are more than conventional symbols of things. A sacred formula must not be taken in vain, or divulged to persons who might ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... terrible outrage in the eyes of these barbarous soldiers of the farther East, who, even when covered with blood, and loaded with rapine, cast down their eyes before the females of their enemies' household. In this case, the profaned garment was sent by the lady to her brother, the son of the then Afghan king, and a bloody vengeance followed, not upon the author of the outrage, but on the king-making vizier, who, falling into the hands of the prince whom he had himself placed upon the throne, was literally ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various

... degree of commonsense can not go together. Margaret knew how to manage. After a short stay in Sudbury the couple rented a cottage at Ipswich for six pounds a year—a dovecot with three rooms. The proud beauty would not let the place be profaned by a servant: she did all the work herself; and if she wanted help, she called on her husband. Base is the man who will not fetch and carry for the woman he loves. They were accounted the handsomest and most distinguished couple in all Sudbury; and when they attended church, there ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... caught in nets of gold, And her own soul profaned by sects that squirm, And little men climbed her high seats and sold Her honour to the vulture and ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke

... not as badly injured as I had expected to find it, but the ravages of war were evident enough. Wrecked shops, crumbled houses, shot-torn walls were on every side, while the most sacred places to a Chinese and a Manchu had been profaned. At other times the Purple Forbidden City, the Winter and Summer Palaces, the Temple of Heaven and kindred imperial enclosures are inaccessible to the foreigner. But a pass from the military authorities opened to us every door. ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN



Words linked to "Profaned" :   violated, desecrated



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