"Profaneness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... excommunication, had wherewithal to enforce the execution of his judgments. Thus the bishop had a considerable sway in temporal affairs, even before he was owned by the temporal power. But the Emperors no sooner became Christian than, the idea of profaneness being removed from the secular tribunals, the causes of the Christian laity naturally passed to that resort where those of the generality had been before. But the reverence for the bishop still remained, and the remembrance ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... regards those committed to his care as immortal beings, for whose well-doing while under his charge he is responsible to God, and who therefore counsels them well, and banishes to the utmost of his power, vice and profaneness from among them; affording them the usual domestic means of grace, and seeing that they are not neglected:—thus prepared, the lad enters upon a new scene, where he finds himself surrounded by a large number of youthful companions, ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... an involuntary look of surprise at this species of amusement, and remarked something on the violation of common feeling—to say nothing of the almost profaneness which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... of the Committee was held on 31st October, 1787, for the purpose of taking into consideration the Proclamation for preventing and punishing profaneness, vice, and immorality, by order of the Rev. Mr. Weston, present:—Daniel Lewer, Wm. Stamford, Jos. Beldam, Wm. Nash, Wm. Seaby, Thomas Watson, Michael Phillips, Wm. Butler, and ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... and 'leaving home without permission,' such fearful offenses as 'impudence,' 'swearing,' 'indecent language in the presence of the employer, his family, or agent,' or 'quarreling or fighting with one another.' The master or his agent might assail every ear with profaneness aimed at the Negro man and outrage every sentiment of decency in the foul language addressed to the Negro women; but if one of the helpless creatures, goaded to resistance and crazed under tyranny, should answer back with impudence, or should ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... the community thronged to the churches, from which they had been so long absent, and returned thanks for their unexpected deliverance. Others, who had been terrified into seriousness and devotion, speedily forgot their former terrors, and resumed their old habits. Profaneness and debauchery again prevailed, and the taverns were as well filled as the churches. Solomon Eagle continued his midnight courses through the streets; but he could no longer find an audience as before. ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Everything belonging or related to so popular an order, its possessions, its privileges, its doctrines, necessarily appeared sacred in the eyes of the common people; and every violation of them, whether real or pretended, the highest act of sacrilegious wickedness and profaneness. In this state of things, if the sovereign frequently found it difficult to resist the confederacy of a few of the great nobility, we cannot wonder that he should find it still more so to resist the united force of the clergy of his own dominions, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... nothing as to call him Lord, Lord, and yet not doe the things that he says. And this Mr. Badman was such an one: he could not abide this day, nor any of the Duties of it. Indeed, when he could get from his Friends, and so {30b} spend it in all manner of idleness and profaneness, then he would be pleased well enough: but what was this but a turning the day into night, or other than taking an opportunity at Gods forbidding, to follow our Callings, to solace and satisfie our ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... the Dean of St. Asaph—"I speak it not in defamation of his more noble qualities—hath a broad license in speech, and garnishes his discourse somewhat too freely with the cruel and superstitious oaths which savour both of profaneness ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... discipline of the convict ships, were Captain Brown and Dr. Reed, of the Morley: they endeavoured, by precept and example, to inculcate morality. Coercion had been found ineffectual, and the women, when restricted, filled the vessel with clamour and profaneness; but these gentlemen adopted a system of mental influence, and their prisoners, whatever was their subsequent conduct, were far superior to their predecessors. The result of this instance led to a permanent amelioration, and proved ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... of writing as the Restoration comedy could not continue to flaunt itself indefinitely. The growing indignation was voiced from time to time in published protests, of which the last, in 1698, was the over-zealous but powerful 'Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage' by Jeremy Collier, which carried the more weight because the author was not a Puritan but a High-Church bishop and partisan of the Stuarts. Partly as a result of such attacks and partly ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... some of our columns to this writer's merits, and we will not now repeat our convictions of his incurable absurdity. On the last occasion of our alluding to him, we were compelled to notice his horrid licentiousness and profaneness, his fearful offences to all the maxims that honorable minds are in the habit of respecting, and his plain defiance of Christianity. On the present occasion we are not met by so continued and regular a determination of insult, though there are atrocities ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... country;—our rulers, our free institutions, our benevolent societies; deliverance from slavery, Romanism, infidelity, Sabbath-breaking, intemperance, profaneness, &c. Ez. 9:6-15. ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... court would not suffer it to be debated, whether to write against Christianity was punishable in the temporal court at common law. Wood, therefore, 409, ventures still to vary the phrase and say, that all blasphemy and profaneness are offences by the common law; and cites 2 Stra. Then Blackstone, in 1763, IV. 59, repeats the words of Hale, that 'Christianity is part of the laws of England,' citing Ventris and Strange. And finally, Lord Mansfield, with a little qualification, in Evans's case, in 1767, says, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the Saints of the Commonwealth began to be still more disgusted by the open profligacy of the court and of the Cavaliers, and were disposed to doubt whether the sullen preciseness of Praise God Barebone might not be preferable to the outrageous profaneness and licentiousness of the Buckinghams and Sedleys. Even immoral men, who were not utterly destitute of sense and public spirit, complained that the government treated the most serious matters as trifles, and made trifles its serious business. A King might be pardoned for amusing his ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... time, on the following day, the subject was again brought before the school, and some plans proposed, by which the resolutions now formed, might be more certainly kept. These plans were readily and cheerfully adopted by the boys, and in a short time, the vice of profaneness was, in a great degree, banished from the school. This whole account is ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... In reasoning on human affairs, the shortest way will be to discover human motives. The spirit, or the assassin of Hobbes, arose from the bill brought into Parliament, when the nation was panic-struck on the fire of London, against Atheism and Profaneness; he had a notion that a writ de heretico comburendo was intended for him by Bishop Seth Ward, his quondam admirer.[365] His spirits would sink at those moments; for in the philosophy of Hobbes, the whole universe ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... little demoralize the people, and that since the soldiers cause back, there had been much trouble in Church and State. The General Court, two years ago, had made severe laws against the provoking evils of the times: profaneness, Sabbath-breaking, drinking, and revelling to excess, loose and sinful conduct on the part of the young and unmarried, pride in dress, attending Quakers' meetings, and neglect of attendance upon divine worship; but these laws had never been well ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... discourse; in the second part, as at a second sitting, though I alter not the draught, I must touch the same features over again, and change the dead colouring of the whole. In general I will only say, that I have written nothing which savours of immorality or profaneness; at least, I am not conscious to myself of any such intention. If there happen to be found an irreverent expression, or a thought too wanton, they are crept into my verses through my inadvertency; if the searchers ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... precious inheritance till the present time. The very objection, that some of them were borrowed from Jews or Pagans, is a proof of their primitive antiquity: Christ or the church removed from them all profaneness or superstition, and then adopted and sanctified them. (See Wiseman's Letters to Poynder). If all parties unite in approbation of the illumination of the cupola of S. Peter's, and of the fireworks of S. Angelo, considered as outward demonstrations ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... Calamy in a sermon to the Lords in Westminster Abbey, "I have known those that would be sure to receive the Sacrament on Christmas Day though they did not receive it all the year after. This was the superstition of this day, and the profaneness was as great. There were some that did not play cards all the year long, yet they must play at Christmas." Various protests were made against the suppression of the festival. Though Parliament sat every ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... last-mentioned person) stooped, and, raising a jar of whiskey on the corner of the altar, held a wineglass to its neck, which he filled, and with a calm nod handed it to me to drink. I shrank back, with an instinctive horror, at the profaneness of such an act, in the house, and on the altar of God, and peremptorily refused to taste the proffered I draught. He smiled mildly at what he considered my superstition, and added quietly, and in a low voice, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... points to himself as having never done such mischief: 'For my particular, I can, and from a most clear conscience, affirm that I have ever trembled to think toward the least profaneness.' Though—he says—he cannot wholly escape 'from some the imputation of sharpness,' he does not feel guilty of having offered insult to anyone, 'except to a mimic, cheater, bawd, or buffoon.' But—'I would ask of these supercilious ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... extirpation of Popery, Prelacy (that is, church government by arch-bishops, bishops, their chancellors and commissaries, deans, deans and chapters, archdeacons, and all other ecclesiastical officers depending on that hierarchy), superstition, heresy, schism, profaneness, and whatsoever shall be found to be contrary to sound doctrine and the power of godliness; lest we partake in other men's sins, and thereby be in danger to receive of their plagues; and that the Lord may be one, and his name ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... The play is interrupted, and all enjoyment, save that of riot and brawling, killed in various ways. The very boxes themselves are no sanctuary from ruffianish incivility; while the ears are stunned, and the cheek of Decency crimsoned with the profaneness, obscenity, and senseless brawl of barbarians in the gallery, the sight is intercepted, and all comfort destroyed by the unmannerly and unjust conduct of intruders in the boxes and pit, who think they have a right to push in and even stand up before another who has ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... his sermon said, "This day is the day which is commonly called the Feast of Christ's Nativity, or Christmas Day, a day that hath hitherto been much abused in superstition and profaneness. I have known some that have preferred Christmas Day before the Lord's Day, and have cried down the Lord's Day and cried up Christmas Day. I have known those that would be sure to receive the Sacrament ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... places, and now strike down by a secret power a family in Maine, and now at St. Mary's, and now at Texas, and now at St. Louis; what would the community think of wealth gained in such a traffic? Suppose he could, with the same ease, diffuse profaneness, and insanity, and robberies, and murders, and suicides, and should advertise all these to be propagated through the land, and could prevail on men to buy the talismanic nostrum for gold—what would the community think of such a traffic as this? True, he might plead that it brought a ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... groweth more criminal as it presumeth to reach persons eminent in dignity or worth, unto whom special veneration is appropriate. This adjoineth sauciness to scurrility, and advanceth the wrong thereof into a kind of sacrilege. 'Tis not only injustice, but profaneness, to abuse the gods. Their station is a sanctuary from all irreverence and reproach; they are seated on high, that we may only look up to them with respect; their defects are not to be seen, or not to be touched by ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... famous "Short View of the Immorality and the Profaneness of the English Stage," published in 1698; a book which, no doubt, struck at a real evil, but which is written in a spirit of violence and bigotry productive rather of amusement than of conviction. It ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... neighbours were amazed at this my great conversion, from prodigious profaneness, to something like a moral life; and truly, so they well might; for this my conversion was as great, as for Tom of Bethlehem to become a sober man. Now therefore they began to praise, to commend, and to speak well of me, both to my face, ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... over the petulant scribblers of this age. As Lord Chamberlain, I know, you are absolute by your office in all that belongs to the decency and good manners of the stage. You can banish from thence scurrility and profaneness, and restrain the licentious insolence of poets and their actors in all things that shock the public quiet, or the reputation of private persons, under the notion of humour. But I mean not the authority which is annexed to your office, I speak ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... of these Lectures, it was necessary to follow the order of thought, and beginning with Duty to end with God. But the order of fact is not the same. In actual fact man began with God and ends with a clearer perception of Duty. Hence in all the earlier stages the morality is imperfect. The profaneness of Esau is a serious offence. The ungenerous temper, the unfairness and duplicity of Jacob are light in comparison. Truth is not an essential. Blood-shedding and impurity when in horrible excess are treated as ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... they likely to take in the education and welfare of their families? What sciences will they improve, what learning will they cultivate, what monuments of past ages will they be studious to preserve, who are certain that there can be no future ones? Poetry will be censured as rank profaneness, eloquence will be converted into howls and execrations, statuary will exhibit only Midases and Ixions, and all the colours of painting will be mixed together to produce one grand conflagration: flammantia ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... sentiments made no part, his good sense could not digest; and the use of such language before a heart-searching God, merely as an hypocritical form, while the sentiments of his soul were contrary to it, justly appeared to him such daring profaneness, that, irregular as the state of his mind was, the thought of it struck him with horror. He therefore determined to make no more attempts of this sort, and was perhaps one of the first who deliberately laid aside prayer from ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... and scriptural phrases of the Puritans they were still at heart a religious people. The majority saw no great sin in field-sports, stage- plays, promiscuous dancing, cards, fairs, starch, or false hair. But gross profaneness and licentiousness were regarded with general horror; and the Catholic religion was held in utter detestation by nine-tenths of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to let us see a greater expediency for observing holidays. "Certainly (saith he)(285) nothing is so powerful to abolish profaneness, and to root out superstition out of men's hearts, as the exercise of divine worship, in preaching, praying and thanksgiving, chiefly then when the superstitious conceits of merit and necessity ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... poems are free from grammatical incorrectness or ambiguity of expression. Some are debased by the more serious fault of ribaldry and profaneness. His irreligion, however, seems to have been rather the fluctuating of a mind that had lost its hold on truth for a time, than the scepticism of one confirmed in error. He acknowledges his dependence on a Creator, though he casts off his belief in a Redeemer. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... that miserable, outcast horde, lead forth the strength and flower of all Italy! On the one side, chastity contends; on the other wantonness; here purity, there pollution; here integrity, there treachery; here piety, there profaneness; here constancy, there rage; here honesty, there baseness; here continence, there lust; in short, equity, temperance, fortitude, prudence, struggle with iniquity, luxury, cowardice, rashness; every virtue with every vice; and, lastly, the contest lies between well-grounded ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy |
