"Profane" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came round to my hotel to announce the result, told me that he had never seen so many spoiled votes at any election. The usual way of invalidating the voting paper was to bracket the three names and write "All of them liars" across the paper. Sometimes the word "liars" was qualified by a profane adjective. Sometimes distinctions were made between the candidates and one of us was declared to be a more skilful or determined liar than the other two. O'Donoghue was sometimes placed in the position of ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... inevitable bunch of juniper, the honor of decorating the entrance and justified an appellation one might have regarded as disrespectful to the fair sex. The original design had been repainted in dazzling colors by the artist charged with restoring the church. This alliance of the profane with the sacred had, it is true, scandalized the parish priest, but he did not dare say a word too much, as Madame Gobillot was one of his most important parishioners. A woman in a rose-colored dress and large panniers, standing upon very ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... with what an extraordinary combination of gestures, with what attitudes in the management of the long-stringed guitar, with what acrobatic swingings of the body do they accompany their singing of their legends and poetry which could not be more profane. The instinct of the old actor was awakened in Caterna. He could not keep still; it was too much ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... glass, set in a border worth comparing at leisure with the twelfth-century borders of the western lancets. Even at Chartres, the artists could not risk displeasing the Virgin and the Church by following a wholly profane work like the "Chanson" itself, and Roland had no place in religion. He could be introduced only through Charlemagne, who had almost as little right there as he. The twelfth century had made persistent efforts to get Charlemagne into the Church, and the Church had made very little effort ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... disobedience; but generosity of spirit, devotion to high aims and capacity for self-sacrifice often outweigh serious offences. Nelson is less a hero because he yielded to a great temptation; but he remains a hero in spite of the stain on his fame. It is much better not to be profane under any circumstances, but when Washington swore fiercely at Charles Lee on the battle field of Monmouth his profanity was the expression of the righteous wrath of a good man. In judging the hero one must take into account the age in which he lived, ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... something from sounds, and I knew he was a man, because he swore once. I think he intended to leave me lying there, and himself escape through the back door. I know he lifted the bar and looked out. It was then he shut the door again quickly, and became profane. Something he saw outside compelled a change of plan, for he came back quickly, dragged the table to one side, and opened the trap leading down into the cellar. Whoever he was he evidently knew all about the house. Then, he caught me up again, took me down the steps in his arms, and dropped ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... these two qualities. An acquaintance of the writer, who spent many years of his early life roving through the wilderness of the far West, and who had often met Kit Carson, said he never heard an oath from his lips. Even the rude and profane trappers around him could appreciate the superior ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... he repeated. "Do you dare mention the Name even when you propose to profane it? Do you ask me, your father, Reb Shemuel, to consent to such a ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... infirmities a life free from annoyance. As has been shown, Grace had practiced the one with heart as light as her purse; and had interposed her own sweet self between the irritable veteran and everything that could vex him. The calling world had had its revenge. The major was profane, they had said; Grace was proud, or led a slavish life. The most heinous sin of all was, they were poor. There were several families, however, whom Grace and the major had found congenial, with various shades of difference; and the young girl ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... rushes into her stigmata, singing its song, like the blood of heaven, in the myriad tubes of the tracheal sacs, nourished on space, that fill the centre of her body. She rises still. A region must be found unhaunted by birds, that else might profane the mystery. She rises still; and already the ill-assorted troop below are dwindling and falling asunder. The feeble, infirm, the aged, unwelcome, ill-fed, who have flown from inactive or impoverished ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... from his youth up, he had been very profane. He knew no Sabbath, worshipped no God, and was himself the highest law. He was filled with a grand religious sentiment, and only needed the grace of God to bring it out, and the love of God to ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... their flight. Some removed their trousers before they fled, but others tried to get them off while fleeing. Those last did not fare too well. Mostly they stumbled and other men fell over them, when both fallen and fallen-upon uttered hoarse and profane lamentations—they howled ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... What David did when he anhungered was, And all they that were with him? How he entered Into the house of God, and ate the shew-bread, Which was not lawful, saving for the priests? Have ye not read, how on the Sabbath-days The priests profane the Sabbath in the Temple, And yet are blameless? But I say to you, One in this place is greater than the Temple! And had ye known the meaning of the words, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, The guiltless ye would ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... be it said with all reverence, and far from profane ears—is to steal the Christ-child out of his cradle in the church of his worshippers and carry him into the chambers of the East, the chambers of the Sun, into the "Green fields and happy groves" of primitive Arcadian innocence, where the feet of the dancers are light upon the dew of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... and for contriving a last serving as a model for a boot or shoe which is adapted to the form of the foot from the first, instead of having to be broken in by a painful series of limping excursions, too often accompanied by impatient and even profane utterances. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... persons, forgetting the duties which the sabbath imposes, and the benefits which these duties confer on society, are known to profane its sanctity, by following their pleasures or their affairs; this way of acting being contrary to their own interest as Christians, and calculated to annoy those who do not follow their example; being also of great injury to society at large, by spreading ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... hackneyed enough, could Ashe but have known it. There was the usual patter about spiritual and physical freedom, about faith and perfection, "the Deific principle as a rule of health," a jumble of things medical and things physical, things profane and things holy mingled in a strange and unintelligible jargon. By the time that the eager-eyed speaker had talked for an hour Ashe felt his mind to be in confusion, and he could not but feel that not a few of the hearers ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... authenticity has been obstinately contested, but, as I confess it seems to me, without excuse. Both external and internal evidence go to prove, I think, that they are substantially the work of La Bruyere, and for those who are not alarmed at theological discussions conducted in rather a profane spirit, they make ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... Don't be profane or tell questionable stories to your bunkies or around the company. There is a much greater number of silent and unprotesting men in camp than is generally supposed, to whom this is offensive. Keep everything ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... child. Sit down, Prissie. I will forgive your profane words about Cicero, for I see you are excited. What is ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... friends, the prophetess soared into loftier spheres, and discoursed of astrology and other occult sciences. 'For hours and hours this wonderful white woman poured forth her speech, for the most part concerning sacred and profane mysteries.' From time to time she would swoop down to worldly topics, 'and then,' as her auditor frankly observes, 'I was interested.' She described her life in the Arab camps, and explained that her influence over the tribes was partly due to her long sight, a quality held in high esteem in the ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... true of "discussion." Once effectually submit a subject to that ordeal, and you can never withdraw it again; you can never again clothe it with mystery, or fence it by consecration; it remains forever open to free choice, and exposed to profane deliberation.[3] ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... curious hands, that, hid from vulgar eyes, By search profane shall find this hallow'd cake, With virtue's awe forbear the sacred prize, Nor dare a theft, for love and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... might be employed to the ensemble of the effect produced by these idioms upon foreigners. Many words occur in Polish which imitate the sound of the thing designated by them. The frequent repetition of CH, (h aspirated,) of SZ, (CH in French,) of RZ, of CZ, so frightful to a profane eye, have however nothing barbaric in their sounds, being pronounced nearly like GEAI, and TCHE, and greatly facilitate imitations of the sense by the sound. The word DZWIEK, (read DZWIINQUE,) meaning sound, offers a characteristic example of this; it would be difficult to find ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... his work a poem in terza rima. But Botticelli, who wrote a commentary on Dante, and became the disciple of Savonarola, may well have let such theories come and go across him. True or false, the story interprets much of the peculiar sentiment with which he infuses his profane and sacred persons, comely, and in a certain sense like angels, but with a sense of displacement or loss about them—the wistfulness of exiles, conscious of a passion and energy greater than any known issue of them explains, which runs through all ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... What!—Away, away, for shame!—You, profane rogues, Must not be mingled with these holy relicks: This is a sacrifice;—our shower shall crown His sepulchre with olive, myrrh, and bays, The plants of peace, of sorrow, victory: Your ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... continued to earn it until the ship had neared the Yangtse-Kiang. Marked for the officers' attentions by his initial profane and irreverent comment on his transferral by the tug-captain, he was assaulted on the slightest provocation by the mates—no bigger than he or more skillful of fist, but justified by the law—and, though easily the best sailorman of the mixed crew, was put at distasteful tasks ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... operation, owing to grudges and tiffs of quarrel that had risen, but it proved successful under the delicate guidance of Voltaire. Voltaire is up to oiling the wheels: "There you are, Monsieur, like the [don't name What, though profane Voltaire does, writing to Maupertuis a month ago]—Three Kings running after you!" A new Pension to you from France; Russia outbidding France to have you; and then that LETTER of Friedrich's, which is in all the Newspapers: "Three Kings,"—you plainly great man, Trismegistus of the Sciences called ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... witness, as weel in holy writt as in profane history, of the honour in quhilk husbandrie was held of old, and how prophets have been taken from the pleugh, and great captains raised up to defend their ain countries, sic as Cincinnatus, and the like, who fought not the common enemy with the less valiancy that their alms had been exercised ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... in his favour was a discovery made at the spot where the body was found. Some profane and ribald words, also in French, had been scrawled in chalk on the door and doorsill, being in the nature of a coarse defiance to the police to find the assassin, and experts in handwriting who were called testified unanimously that Burwell, who wrote a refined, scholarly hand, could never ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... was so human of you to translate it out loud! It isn't profane. Look at him now. Don't you think it is a good name for ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... well, Lady Davers," added Mr. B., "the power your sex have over ours, and their subtle tricks: and so will never, in my weakest moments, be drawn in to make a blindfold promise. There have been several instances, both in sacred and profane story, of mischiefs done by such surprises: so you must allow me to suspect myself, when I know the dear slut's power over me, and have been taught, by the inviolable regard she pays to her own word, to value mine—And now, Pamela, speak all that is in your heart ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... tone. Upon his refusal, it is said, they stole to the printing-office and did it themselves. But the proofs came back for Jackson's perusal. The lad who brought them was the late Mr. J. S. Ham, of Providence, R. I. He used to say that he had never known what profane swearing was till he listened to General Jackson's comments ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the center of the present thought; and new date and new create the whole. Whenever ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... this isolation from him which broke her calm. It seemed profane even to look upon his suffering. She shrank away from him, and hid her face in her hands. That roused him, and in a moment the old tenderness ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... appreciable effect in checking his departure. Again, the scene when the projectile reaches the neutral point between the earth and moon, so that there is no longer any gravity to keep the travellers on the floor of their travelling car, is well conceived (though, in part, somewhat profane); but in reality the state of things described as occurring there would have prevailed throughout the journey. The travellers would no more be drawn earthwards (as compared with the projectile itself) than we travellers ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... that notion, and grave as Saturn she was, morning, noon, and, night; and hard things she thought if any unhappy wight—especially of the female sex—who dared in her presence to show the light of a gay heart on a sunny countenance. In her estimation, to be mirthful was to be profane, to be cheerful was to be frivolous. She drew no distinctions. Yet she was a very good wife, a very careful mother, looked after her children unceasingly, was sincerely attached to her husband; only the worst of it was, if she could have had her will, she would not have permitted ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... and adorn his Lodge; set his crafts to work with good and wholesome laws, or cause the same to be done." The Master now gives three raps, when all the brethren rise, and the Master, taking off his hat, proceeds as follows: "In like manner so do I, strictly forbidding all profane language, private committees, or any other disorderly conduct whereby the peace and harmony of this Lodge may be interrupted while engaged in its lawful pursuits, under no less penalty than the by-laws, or such penalty as a majority of the brethren present may see fit to inflict. Brethren, ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... here are a splendid set of men, all of them young.... There is more bone and muscle here, but less culture ... I have heard far less profanity here than on the Potomac, among officers and men." He believed there were fewer profane words used and less whiskey drunk than among the troops in the East. There was not as much attention paid to ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... large enough to allow a man to pass through was made. A gallery running within the mountain around the obstacle which the well offered to the profane, led to a square hall, the blue vault of which rested upon four massive pillars ornamented by the red-skinned, white-garmented figures which so often show, in Egyptian frescoes, the full bust and the head in profile. This hall opened into another, the vault of which was somewhat higher and ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... held up his hand. "Under both the sacred and the profane law, ignorance is no excuse for nonperformance of one's duties. Indeed, ignorance can be punished as an act of willful neglect, based upon the Total Personal Responsibility Act of '23, to say nothing of the Lesser Codicil." ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... yell from Kirby broke in on the smug instructions. The American had recovered enough of his breath to expend a lungful of it in one profane bellow. In a flash he visualized the whole scene at the fellaheens' quarters—Najib's crazy explanation of the strike system and of the supposed immunity from punishment that would follow sabotage and other violence; the fellaheens' duller brains gradually seizing ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... for his model, and many of the beautiful faces which Titian painted at that time show the features of his lady-love. With his new love Titian's serious work seemed to begin, and at twenty-one he painted his first truly great picture, "Sacred and Profane Love." To day this picture hangs upon the walls of the Borghese Palace, ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... Sabbath with us, and inculcating on its own ground a wise and devout use of the Sunday hours. The evidently pious and sincere tone of this discourse impressed me, and I felt that I had no right to reject as profane and undeserving of examination the doctrine which it enforced. Accordingly I entered into a thorough searching of the Scripture without bias, and was amazed to find how baseless was the tenet for which in fact ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... him to be witness to the truth of what is said: That is, if they that swear, swear by him. Some indeed swear by Idols, as by the Mass, by our Lady, by Saints, Beasts, Birds, and other creatures; but the usual way of our profane ones in England, is to swear by God, Christ, Faith, and the like: But however, or by whatever they swear, Cursing is distinguished from ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... in shore-boats rowed by white-clad Asiatics, who clamoured fiercely for payment before coming alongside the gangway-ladder. The feverish and shrill babble of Eastern language struggled against the masterful tones of tipsy seamen, who argued against brazen claims and dishonest hopes by profane shouts. The resplendent and bestarred peace of the East was torn into squalid tatters by howls of rage and shrieks of lament raised over sums ranging from five annas to half a rupee; and every soul afloat in Bombay Harbour became aware that the new ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... unifying element is of interest in connection with the theory of Hildebrand,[16] that the landscape should have a narrow foreground and wide background, since that is most in conformity with our experience. He adduces Titian's Sacred and Profane Love as an example. But of the general principle it may be said that not the reproduction of nature, but the production of a unified complex of motor impulses, is the aim of composition, and that this aim is best reached by focusing the eye by a narrow background—i.e., ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... bars with his free hand and getting them down with a fool's luck. "You can't do it—I got you firs', las', an' always; an' I got you good. Yessir, I got you good. Quit that rearing, you ol' fool! Stan' still, can't you?" The pony sidled as the saddle hit its back and evoked profane abuse from the indignant puncher as he risked his balance in picking it up to try again, this time successfully. He began to fasten the girth, and then paused in wonder and thought deeply, for the pin in the buckle would slide to no hole but the first. "Huh! Getting fat, ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... round again, And careless feet these hills profane; These sunsets waste on vacant eyes The lavish splendor of the skies; Fashion and folly, misplaced here, Sigh for their natural atmosphere, And travelled pride the outlook scorn Of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in the Burial-service, "in the sure and certain hope of a blessed resurrection[653]," too strong to be used indiscriminately, and, indeed, sometimes when those over whose bodies it is said, have been notoriously profane?' JOHNSON. 'It is sure and certain hope, Sir; not belief.' I did not insist further; but cannot help thinking that less positive words would ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... going to write any more, not because I haven't lots to say, but because writing much or talking much about a thing—being queer and Scots, it is hard for me to say love—seems somehow to cheapen it, profane it. ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... Italian Renascence reached England. But this ray was communicated neither through the clergy nor through the Universities; and such influence as was exercised by it upon the national mind, was directly due to profane poets,—men of the world, who like Chaucer quoted authorities even more abundantly than they used them, and made some of their happiest discoveries after the fashion in which the "Oxford Clerk" came across ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... simply part of a public oration by Francois Fanchon, one of the most illustrious chancellors of the faculty of medicine of Montpellier in the seventeenth century." "From time immemorial," he says, "'the faculty' of Montpellier had made itself remarkable by a singular mixture of the sacred and the profane. The theses which were sustained there began by an invocation to God, the Blessed Virgin, and St. Luke, and ended by these words: 'This thesis will be sustained in the sacred ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... revolutionists (I think Rollin) compared himself with the victim of Calvary. Even this profane rant is a plagiarism. Gracchus Baboeuf, who headed the extreme republican party against the Directory, exclaimed, on his trial, that his wife, and those of his fellow-conspirators, "should accompany them even to Calvary, because the cause of their ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... the evil passion and to incite the soul to virtue; the soul meditates upon the capital sin and its opposite virtue, moved to abhorrence of the evil and to admiration of the good by examples drawn from sacred and profane history; vocal prayer is addressed to God and it brings forth grace to purify and strengthen the soul. Hard in the beginning is this work of repentance, but it becomes easy as the habit of virtue ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... break the Sabbath. Yet we for ever in our Churches put these out of their right order; count ourselves righteous if we slander our neighbour, so it be on the way to worship; and in petty cruelties practice the lust of murder, interrupting it to shudder at a profane oath uttered by some good fellow outside in the street. To love God and your neighbour, summed up, for Christ, all the Law and the Prophets: and his love was for the harlot and the publican, as his worst word always ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... "Martha to the Stakes" sooner than concede to her husband the unrestricted supervision of her correspondence. I have indeed a dim recollection of having heard of one bride of seventeen, who, during the honeymoon, was weak and (selon les dames) wicked enough to submit to profane male eyes epistles received from the friends of her youth, in their simple entirety, instead of reading out an expurgated edition of the same. She had been brought up in a very dungeon of decorum by a terrible grandmother, a rigid moralist, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... devoting too much attention to individual instances. The profane boy. Case described. Confession of the boys. Success. The untidy desk. Measures in consequence. Interesting the scholars in the good order of the school. Securing a majority. Example. Reports about the desks. The new College building. Modes of interesting the boys. The irregular class. Two ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... Wesley, (Journal, iv. 74), 'give up to all Deists in Great Britain the existence of witchcraft, till I give up the credit of all history, sacred and profane. And at the present time, I have not only as strong but stronger proofs of this from eye and ear witnesses than I have of murder; so that I cannot rationally doubt of one any ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... cannot fully appreciate the amount of satisfaction which a parent derives from the good character of his child. Though the worthy shipmaster had a beautiful estate and plenty of money, if his son had been a liar, a thief, a profane swearer,—in short, if Frank had been a bad boy,—he could not have been happy. If a wise and good father could choose between having his son a hopeless drunkard or villain, and laying his cold form in the ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... hymns, and songs, and ballads, and odes; all the nestfuls hatched during the last seven years, in fact. There lie their muses, thick with dust, bespattered by every passing cab, at the mercy of every profane hand that turns them over to look at the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... had to court his people by his domestic regulations. He early issued a remarkable proclamation, which one would think reflected on his favourite companions, and which strongly marks the moral disorders of those depraved and wretched times. It is against "vicious, debauched, and profane persons!" who ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and now declare that I will abstain from [323] the use of all low or profane language; from the taking of the name of God in vain; and from all impurity, or from taking part in any unclean conversation or the reading of any obscene book or paper at any time, in any ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... and unmarrying lovers beside them. There are always the same set of gratified elders, like the benchers in King's Inn, marched up to the head of the table, to eat, drink, and be happy, removed from the more profane looks and soft speeches of the younger part of the creation. Then there are the hoi polloi of outcasts, younger sons of younger brothers, tutors, governesses, portionless cousins, and curates, all formed in phalanx round the side-tables, whose primitive ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... sense of propriety that close by it should hang an ivory crucifix. I would rather, I think, have seen all things material and pagan entirely, with every view of the future life shut out, than have found a medley of things sacred and profane, where the emblems of our highest hopes and aspirations were placed in insulting indifference side by side with the embodied forms of sensuality. Here, in this scene of magical beauty, it seemed to me for a moment that the years had rolled back, that Christianity ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... Now, to explain my method fully would require no less than a formal treatise. It is a thing so simple and so vast, so common and so extraordinary, so true and so misunderstood, so sacred and so profane, that to name it without developing and proving it would serve only to excite contempt and incredulity. One thing at a time. Let us establish equality, and this remedy will soon appear; for truths follow each other, just as crimes and ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... the close of the sixteenth century. The two song writers best worth studying are Thomas Campion (1567?-1619) and Nicholas Breton (1545?-1626?). Like all the lyric poets of the age, they are a curious mixture of the Elizabethan and the Puritan standards. They sing of sacred and profane love with the same zest, and a careless love song is often found on the same page with ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... upon the floor along three sides of The Enormous Room. The planton entered. Walked over to the light. Said something about everybody being present, and was answered by a number of voices in a more or less profane affirmative. Strutted to and fro, kicked the cabinet, flashed an electric torch, and walked up the room examining each paillasse to make sure it had an occupant. Crossed the room at the upper end. Started down ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... The gems for Gretchen brought, Them hath a priest now made his own!— A glimpse of them the mother caught, And 'gan with secret fear to groan. The woman's scent is keen enough; Doth ever in the prayer-book snuff; Smells every article to ascertain Whether the thing is holy or profane, And scented in the jewels rare, That there was not much blessing there. "My child," she cries, "ill-gotten good Ensnares the soul, consumes the blood; With them we'll deck our Lady's shrine, She'll cheer our souls with bread divine!" At this poor Gretchen 'gan to pout; 'Tis a gift-horse, ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... springing from it, is purity; which shows itself by a careful avoidance of everything profane, obscene, coarse, or in any way offending delicacy, either in word, tone, or suggestion. This purity cannot be too much insisted upon; for its opposite poisons the fountains of the heart, defiling the temple which should be a dwelling-place ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... I found that hard drinkers and fast livers and profane-tongued men often proved to be the kindest-hearted, squarest friends one could ever have," one ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... profane; I hate ye all; Both the great vulgar, and the small. To virgin minds, which yet their native whiteness hold, Not yet discoloured with the love of gold (That jaundice of the soul, Which makes it look so gilded and so foul), To you, ye very few, these truths I tell; The muse inspires my song, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... public have not a word to say for them; it may be urged that that is because they had not read the 'Indicator' But why then do they praise the 'Rambler' and Montaigne? That comforting word, 'Mesopotamia,' which has been so often alluded to in religious matters, has many a parallel in profane literature. ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... as a phantom: I have read him in Greece in his own words.' To Ostendorp, then a young man, but afterwards to become head master of Deventer school, he gave the counsel: 'Read the ancients, sacred and profane: modern doctors, with their robes and distinctions, will soon be drummed out of town.' At Mount St. Agnes once he was asked why he never used rosary nor book of hours. 'I try', he replied, 'to pray always. I say the Lord's Prayer once every ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... profane, Salemina, and don't be unromantic, which is worse; but if you insist, trust ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of their migration from Sumatra, and for about 116 years after, little can be known, because the writers, whose works have reached us, lived since the period of conversion, and as good Mahometans would have thought it profane to enter into the detail of superstitions which they regard with abhorrence; but from the internal evidence we can entertain little doubt of its having been the religion of Brahma, much corrupted however and blended with the antecedent ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... not this most revolutionary of all claims receive immediate and ample attention? More than that, as I said before, if there is any tribunal that could give undivided time and dignified attention, is it not this committee? If there is one peaceful haven of rest, never disturbed by any profane bill or resolution of any sort, it is the Committee on Revolutionary Claims. It is, in parliamentary life, described by that ecstatic verse ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... be absorbed in the contemplation of saintly things, and imbibing inspiration from her "Hours," the "Lives of the Saints," or "An Introduction to a Holy Life," a book very much in vogue at that period, the child would be devouring such profane books as Montaigne, Scarron's romances and Epicurus, as more in accordance with her ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... in times past it happened, that one of the two guardians, who were upon duty in the temple, left it on some business, and the other fell asleep, and suffered the fire to go out. When he awaked and saw that he had incurred the penalty of death, he went and got some profane fire, as tho' he had been going to light his pipe, and with that he renewed the eternal fire. His transgression was by that means concealed; but a dreadful mortality immediately ensued, and raged for four years, during which many Suns and an infinite ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... if these persons dole you out show-money or send you paltry beeves; [Footnote: Entertainments were frequently given to the people after sacrifices, at which a very small part of the victim was devoted to the gods, such as the legs and intestines, the rest being kept for more profane purposes. Tho Athenians were remarkably extravagant in sacrifices. Demades, ridiculing the donations of public meat, compared the republic to an old woman, sitting at home in slippers and supping her broth. Demosthenes, ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... arise in us; but they are driven back by what we read of the personal character of these men. "Both prophet and priest," says Jeremiah, "are profane; yea, in My house have I found their wickedness, saith the Lord." "I have seen," he says in God's name, "in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery and walk in lies." Jeremiah's view of them ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... streets as we debarked from the train. The land seemed dry as ashes, and the hills which rose near resembled those of Montana or Colorado. The little hotel swarmed with the rudest and crudest types of men; not dangerous men, only thoughtless and profane teamsters and cow-boys, who drank thirstily and ate like wolves. They spat on the floor while at the table, leaning on their elbows gracelessly. In the bar-room they drank and chewed tobacco, and talked in loud voices upon nothing ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... I refrain from declaring, that I have not writ these essays for the profane or vulgar; but for those only who are well versed, or at least initiated in theological or medical studies: and for this reason I chose to publish it in Latin; which language has for many ages past ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... measured by the same principles in both situations. In the former Justice Murphy asserted: "There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or 'fighting' words—those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... curious flowers, drooping from a natural arch; or to pluck the pendant and waving boughs of the most graceful of Indian tress, the imperial mimosa, sensitive and sacred as love, shrinking from the touch of the profane. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... close observers of the working of Divine Providence, that "The darkest hour is just before day," and also, that "The Creator ever wisely and well provides agents perfectly adapted to carry out His beneficient designs in the crisis of human affairs." History, both sacred and profane, gives unwavering and very numerous evidences of the justice and verity of these propositions. In matters theological as well as political this is equally the case. When there could scarcely be greater ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller
... Then was the abomination of desolation set up in the Temple, and idol altars were builded throughout the cities of Juda, and the books of the law were burned. Howbeit many in Israel chose rather to die that they might not be defiled with meats and profane the Holy Covenant. In those days arose Mattathias, a priest of the sons of Joarib. He dwelt in Modin, and had five sons—Joannan, Simon, Judas who was called Maccabeus, Eleazar, and Jonathan. The king's officers came to Modin ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... religious," said he, "she loves a church much better than a playhouse, and she never laughs nor goes to sleep in church as I do. And she is breaking me of swearing—by degrees. She says that no fashion can justify what is profane, and that it must be vulgar as well as wicked. And she is frankness ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... had some weicht upon Tam Dale; but it passed again, and him nane the better. Ae day he was flyting wi' anither sodger-lad. "Deil hae me!" quo' Tam, for he was a profane swearer. And there was Peden glowering at him, gash an' waefu'; Peden wi' his lang chafts an' luntin' een, the maud happit about his kist, and the hand of him held out wi' the black nails upon the finger-nebs—for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she wanders among the box rustlers, the beer jerkers, biscuit shooters, and plunges out into the sand and barrenness, but finds everything dumb. The six toothbrushes in the bathroom make her wild and profane. She flirts with death at the top of a dark, deep pit, and thinks out the stages of decomposition if she yielded herself to Death, who would dearly love to have her. She confesses herself a thief on several occasions, but comforts herself because the stolen money was ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... the rushing stream that lay between him and the land of God's chosen people, and his eye resting perhaps on the mountaintop that looked down upon Jerusalem. He felt shut out from the presence of God. We need not suppose that he believed all the rest of the world to be profane and God-forsaken, except only the Temple. Nor need we wonder, on the other hand, that his faith did cling to form, and that he thought the sparrows beneath the eaves of the Temple blessed birds! He was depressed, because he was shut out from the tokens of God's presence; and because he was depressed, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... I live, no one shall look in here! Take your post and help!" Brangaene's voice is heard, calling her mistress. Kurwenal's excitement, his rage of determination to keep the sight of those helpless embraced bodies sacred from profane eyes, shuts his reason to every sign. Brangaene's cry to him not to close the gate he takes to signify that she is in league with the enemy. Melot's voice, just outside: "Back, madman! Bar not the way!" calls forth a fierce laugh: "Hurrah for the day which gives me the chance to have at ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... a little profane, mademoiselle," observed the captain; "but his journal probably was not intended for the ladies, and you must overlook it. Well, sir, you went to that ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... laden with the results of his sacrilege, the Holy Place suddenly sent forth these words: "Although these were the gifts of the wicked, and to me abominable, so much so that I care not to be spoiled of them, still, profane man, thou shalt pay the penalty with thy life, when hereafter, the day of punishment, appointed by fate, arrives. But, that our fire, by means of which piety worships the awful Gods, may not afford ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... will not stir from it until Thou givest the sign. But may she not say in her own name, and the name of her guilty brethren: "O God, be merciful to us sinners!"[12] Send us away justified. May all those on whom Faith does not shine see the light at last! O my God, if that table which they profane can be purified by one that loves Thee, I am willing to remain there alone to eat the bread of tears, until it shall please Thee to bring me to Thy Kingdom of Light: the only favour I ask is, that I may never give ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... that we should understand the saying of Keats—to wit, that in a great many cases the happiest conjunction of music and the soul occurs during what the profane call silence; the very fact of music haunting our mind, while every other sort of sound may be battering our ear, showing our highest receptivity. And, as a fact, we do not know that real musicians, real ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... children, they who are the only rich, Creating for the moment, and possessing Whate'er they choose to feign,—for still with them Kind Fancy plays the fairy godmother, Strewing their lives with cheap material For winged horses and Aladdin's lamps, 250 Pure elfin-gold, by manhood's touch profane To dead leaves disenchanted,—long ago Between the branches of the tree fixed seats, Making an o'erturned box their table. Oft The shrilling girls sit here between school hours, And play at What's my thought like? while the boys, With whom the age chivalric ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... responsible for the reality of others!" Round the Capucian church certain stanzas are written, under what are called the fourteen stazioni or stations of the cross, (places where our Saviour is supposed to have halted, or fainted under his load, on his way to Calvary.) Stanzas we were at first profane enough to attribute to Metastasio, but afterwards found that it was only the metastasis of his metre adapted to the use of the church. They are much better than most of our sacred poetry, as it is strangely miscalled, which is frequently neither poetry ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... nor greyhounds, nothing but a tame partridge or a bold ferret or two; I have six dozen or so of books, some in our mother tongue, some Latin, some of them history, others devotional; those of chivalry have not as yet crossed the threshold of my door; I am more given to turning over the profane than the devotional, so long as they are books of honest entertainment that charm by their style and attract and interest by the invention they display, though of these there are very few in Spain. Sometimes I dine with my neighbours and friends, and often invite them; my entertainments are neat ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... hands before him, lifted up his eyes to heaven, and by the movement of his lips I supposed him to be engaged either in prayer or thanksgiving. One or two of the men in the boat with me laughed, and a third must needs display his wit by calling out a profane jest; but I silenced them sharply, for there was an intense abandonment in this strange man's manner and behaviour that showed him to be under the influence of extraordinary emotion. Presently he rose to his feet, and, scrambling down into the boat with the ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... while he approached Amasa, who was then near him, as though he would kiss him, he took hold of Amasa's beard with his other hand, and he smote him in his belly when he did not foresee it, and slew him. This impious and altogether profane action Joab did to a good young man, and his kinsman, and one that had done him no injury, and this out of jealousy that he would obtain the chief command of the army, and be in equal dignity with himself about the king; and for the same cause it was that he killed Abner. ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... in my life I experienced the desire to murder—"saw red," as some of our picturesque writers phrase it. Life in general might still be sacred, but life in the particular case of Thomas Mugridge had become very profane indeed. I was frightened when I became conscious that I was seeing red, and the thought flashed through my mind: was I, too, becoming tainted by the brutality of my environment?—I, who even in ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... valuable, and for the time a surprising performance. The book opens with a description of this island which would not have disgraced a classical author; and he has prefixed to it a chronological abridgment of sacred and profane history connected, from the beginning of the world, which, though not critically adapted to his main design, is of far more intrinsic value, and indeed displays a vast fund of historical erudition. On the whole, though this father of the English learning seems to have been but a genius of the middle ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... English, Italian, and profane clashed together. Three small boys strangled each other in a race for the fire-bell. In Back Hill, men, women, and children were hustling themselves through the ground-floor window of the doomed house. Thick, languid flames blocked the doorway, swaying ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... sibilant whisper coming from the adjoining room. Hardly had he made sure of it when there fell on his ears a small crash, sharp, as of some object dropped on the parquet. It was followed by a smothered exclamation in a man's voice, brief and profane. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... in it still a slight flavour of the ripe archaic just merging into full perfection. It was reserved for Titian to give in his early time the fullest development to the Giorgionesque landscape, as in the Three Ages and the Sacred and Profane Love. Then all himself, and with hardly a rival in art, he went on to unfold those radiantly beautiful prospects of earth and sky which enframe the figures in the Worship of Venus, the Bacchanal, and, above all, the Bacchus and Ariadne; to give back his impressions of Nature ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... side. At the top is a hollow just large enough to hold her two or three white eggs. A full-grown flamingo stands between five and six feet high. There is another species of this bird much smaller, called the little flamingo. The Romans ate these birds, and Heliogabalus, the profane Emperor, delighted in a dish of their tongues, which are large, considering the size of the bird. In modern times, however, the flesh is rejected as fishy, but the ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... dealing with it had ever been issued thence. The office whispered that he answered personally—and not by dictation either, but actually writing in his own hand, with pen and ink, and, it was to be supposed, taking a copy in his own private press copy-book, inaccessible to profane eyes. Some scornful young men, insignificant pieces of minor machinery in that eleven-storey-high workshop of great affairs, expressed frankly their private opinion that the great chief had done at last something silly, and was ashamed of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... block further when I heard a voice, "Hello! Billy!" I turned. Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! Of all the thankless encounters—Edgerton Rosythe, moving picture critic of the Western City "Times." Precisely the most cynical, the most profane, the most boisterous person in a cynical and profane and boisterous business! And he had me here, in full daylight, with a figure just out of a stained glass window ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... say, brother," said Father Johannes, "that in my profane and worldly days I tried that experiment on a dog, and the poor brute died in five minutes. Ah, brother," he added, observing that his obese companion was now thoroughly roused, "you see before you the chief of sinners! Judas ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... at Alexandria of noble parents, who had instructed him in all profane learning. He had even been allured by the falsehoods of the poets, and in his early youth had been misguided enough to believe that the human race had all been drowned by a deluge in the days of Deucalion, and had argued ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... out taut and full, and she would say, as calm as a summer's day, "It's synonymous with supererogation," or some godless long reptile of a word like that, and go placidly about and skim away on the next tack, perfectly comfortable, you know, and leave that stranger looking profane and embarrassed, and the initiated slatting the floor with their tails in unison and their faces ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... they did wrong thee foully—they who mocked Thy honest face, and said thou wouldst not burn; Of hewing thee to chimney-pieces talked, And grew profane, and swore, in bitter scorn, That men might to thy inner caves retire, And there, unsinged, abide the day ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... pieces of prose comedy and satire. Of these, the Mass of Topers and Mass of Gamesters, the Gospel according to Marks, and the description of a fat monk's daily life deserve quotation.[34] They are for the most part, however, too profane to bear translation. ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... eat with silver forks, or that all persons that go about in carriages deserve those gracious names. I have met with persons calling themselves gentlemen, who evidently thought it manly and high-spirited to swear at their servants, and who were incapable of appreciating any anecdote which was not profane or coarse; and I have met, as all who go amongst the poor have met, men who well deserved that noble epithet in cottages and corduroy. Who has not seen illustrious snobs in satin, and sweet, modest gentlewomen in homely print and serge? A gentleman! There's no title ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... brought him over to us and invited us to consider his merits. When we had singly and together declined to consider the proposition of eating him in each of the three languages we knew—namely, English, bad French, and profane—the master sorrowfully returned him ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... volume with the terrible industry of a Sunday-school boy dredging up pearls of smut from the Old Testament, they achieved a list of no less than 89 alleged floutings of the code—75 described as lewd and 14 as profane. An inspection of these specifications affords mirth of a rare and lofty variety; nothing could more cruelly expose the inner chambers of the moral mind. When young Witla, fastening his best girl's skate, is so overcome by the ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... IMOGEN. Profane fellow! Wert thou the son of Jupiter and no more But what thou art besides, thou wert too base To be his groom. Thou wert dignified enough, Even to the point of envy, if 'twere made Comparative for your virtues, to be styl'd The under-hangman of ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... lord," said she, "I am ready to undergo the sentence passed against me by the commander of the believers; you need only make it known to me." "Madam," answered Jaaffier, falling also down till she had raised herself, "God forbid any man should presume to lay profane hands on you. I do not intend to offer you the least harm. I have no farther orders, than to intreat you will be pleased to go with me to the palace, and to conduct you thither, with the merchant that lives in this house." "My lord," replied the favourite, "let ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... also in the words of Christ, in His personification of the lilies: "They toil not, neither do they spin." Consider such expressions as, "The sea saw that, and fled. Jordan was driven back. The mountains skipped like rams; and the little hills like lambs." Try to find anything in profane writing like this; and note farther that the whole book of Job appears to have been chiefly written and placed in the inspired volume in order to show the value of natural history, and its power on the human heart. I cannot pass by it without pointing ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin |
