"Irreligious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... centuries of license, the Church reformed its discipline, and, to prove it, burned Giordano Bruno in 1600, besides condemning Galileo in 1630 — as science goes on repeating to us every day — it condemned anarchists, not atheists. None of the astronomers were irreligious men; all of them made a point of magnifying God through his works; a form of science which did their religion no credit. Neither Galileo nor Kepler, neither Spinoza nor Descartes, neither Leibnitz nor Newton, any more than Constantine ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... observe, that Signior Caraccioli, who was as ambitious as he was irreligious, had, by this Time, made a perfect Deist of Misson, and thereby convinc'd him, that all Religion was no other than human Policy, and shew'd him that the Law of Moses was no more than what were necessary, as well ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... itself, largely the accident of untoward circumstances, is alien to the character and temperament of the Irish people. In short, I have urged that the policy of revenge is un-Christian and unintelligent, and, that, as the Irish people are neither irreligious nor stupid, it is un-Irish. I well remember taking up this position in conversation with some very advanced Irish-Americans in the Far West and the reply which one of them made. "Wal," said my half-persuaded friend, "mebbe you're right. I have ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... As to religion, he seemed to me the most Christian of all the writers of his time. I pardoned his abjuration of Catholicism the more easily because its sacraments and title had been given to him in an irreligious manner, well calculated to disgust him with them." But with Aurore, too, the day of Catholicism was over,—its rites were become "heavy and unhealthy" to her. Her faith in things divine was unshaken; but the confessional was empty, the mass dull, the ceremonial ridiculous to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... language of Mivartian civility, do not "possess even a rudiment of humility or aspiration after goodness." "Surely," exclaims our new Guide to Hell, "surely if there is a sin which, on merely Theistic principles, merits the severest pains of hell, it is the authorship of an irreligious book." Which leads us in turn to exclaim, "Surely, yea thrice surely, will hell never be wholly abolished or deprived of its last torture-chamber, while Christians require a painful place for those who boldly differ from them." Mr. Mivart, it ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... that frequently the corruption of morals, a life of debauchery, a licentiousness of conduct, even levity of mind, may conduct man to incredulity; but is it not possible to be a libertine, to be irreligious, to make a parade of incredulity, without being on that account an atheist? There is unquestionably a difference between those who are led to renounce belief in unintelligible systems by dint of reasoning, and those who reject or despise superstition, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... involved in the traditional doctrine. We are not, however, now concerned with Milton's belief, but with his representation of his creed,—his picture, so to say, of it in "Paradise Lost"; still, as we cannot but think, that picture is almost irreligious, and certainly different from that which has been generally accepted in Christendom. Such phrases as "before all time," "eternal generation," are doubtless very vaguely interpreted by the mass of men; nevertheless, no sensitively orthodox man could have drawn the picture of a generation, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... my affections to centre so completely in one concerning whose antecedents I knew absolutely nothing. I have been almost culpably rash and blind,—but I could not look into your beautiful, sad eyes, and doubt that you were worthy of the love that sprang up unbidden in my heart. I knew that you were irreligious, but I believed I could win you back to Christ; and when I tell you that, after living thirty-eight years, you are the only woman I ever met whom I wished to call my wife, you can in some degree realize my ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... deny the inspiration of the Bible are, for the most part, but doubting Thomases who ask to see the nail- prints in the hands of their risen Lord; who are disposed to question him, not because they are irreligious, but because they want the Truth, and they know for a verity that it ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Tydore, sent him some large bronze cannon, culverins, and a considerable number of muskets; and sent him some engineers from those who came on those ships, so that they might inspect his fortifications and reside in them or in his city. Some accepted that abode, and the loose and irreligious liberty of life permitted in that country. There, by reason of the many trading-posts and fleets from the north, they lived as if they were not outside their own countries, since they had intercourse with ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... poetry. [93] Ovid draws largely from him in the Metamorphoses, and Manilius had evidently adopted him as a model. The writer of Etna echoes his language and sentiments, and Tacitus, in a later generation, speaks of critics who even preferred him to Virgil. The irreligious tendency of his work seems to have brought his name under a cloud; and those who copied him may have thought it wiser not to acknowledge their debt. The later Empire and the Middle Ages remained indifferent to a poem which sought to disturb belief; it was ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... made the fatal mistake of intrusting their children's education to those whose gifts were wholly intellectual and not spiritual, and who have misled the young pupils entrusted to their care, into an irreligious or infidel life, or, at best, a career of mere intellectualism and worldly ambition. In not a few instances, all the influences of a pious home have been counteracted by the atmosphere of a school which, if not godless, has been without that fragrance of spiritual devoutness and consecration ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... the flannel for the Dorcas Society, and also for the gingham. I quite agree with you that it is nonsense their wanting to wear pretty things, but everybody is so Radical and irreligious nowadays, that it is difficult to make them see that they should not try and dress like the upper classes. I am sure I don't know what we are coming to. As papa has often said in his sermons, we live ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... these persons are. For it is not the masters with free views about sexual questions who are especially open to suspicion from the point of view we are now considering; nor is it the masters who are morally defective or irreligious. Indeed, I am acquainted with some extremely pious schoolmasters who, according to their own admissions to me, have experienced sexual excitement when chastising children; and some of these have in other respects had ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... church-goer when she was a maiden, but after her marriage she only went in the afternoons, and a time came when she ceased altogether to attend. The minister admonished her many times, telling her, among other things, that her irreligious ways were a distress to her husband. She never replied that she could not go to church in the forenoon because Sanders insisted on a hot meal being waiting him when the service ended. But it was true that Sanders, for appearance's sake, would have had her go to church in ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... force, but in fact and fundamentally, through inveterate habit and by previous adaptation of imagination and affection. Otherwise, "there will be no stable political state" in France;[6106] "so long as one grows up without knowing whether to be a republican or monarchist, Catholic or irreligious, the State will never form a nation; it will rest on uncertain and vague foundations; it will be constantly exposed to disorder and change."—Consequently, he assigns to himself the monopoly of public instruction; he alone ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 1599. He received a reasonable measure of education, and yet, through the circumstance of his birth, the corruption of the age, but above all the depravity of nature, and want of restraining grace in his younger years, he became somewhat irreligious and profane, which, when he arrived at manhood, broke out into more gross acts of wickedness, and yet all the while the Lord never left him altogether without a check or witness in his conscience, yet sometimes when at ordinances, particularly sacramental occasions, he would ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... same spirit animates them all — the same desire to know that which Infinite Mercy has concealed. There is but little probability that the curiosity of mankind in this respect will ever be wholly eradicated. Death and ill-fortune are continual bugbears to the weak-minded, the irreligious, and the ignorant; and while such exist in the world, divines will preach upon its impiety and philosophers discourse upon its absurdity in vain. Still, it is evident that these follies have greatly ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... come to ask me for this . . . You—the only irreligious man in my parish! Why, it would be a scandal, a public scandal! The archbishop would give me ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... difficulties in the way of securing better ones in London. For the population and magistrates of London were prevailingly Puritan, and the great body of the Puritans, then as always, were strongly opposed to the theater as a frivolous and irreligious thing—an attitude for which the lives of the players and the character of many plays afforded, then as almost always, only too much reason. The city was very jealous of its prerogatives; so that in spite of Queen Elizabeth's strong patronage of the drama, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... are lawless and irreligious devices of the enemy, to lead men into sin and worldly abominations But, worthy Mariner, there is my disconsolate consort, Desire; though stricken in years, and given to wordy strife, yet is she the lawful partner of my bosom, and the mother of a ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... Manner the Priests Office: This I have known done in so audible a manner, that sometimes their Voices have been as loud as his. As little as you would think it, this is frequently done by People seemingly devout. This irreligious Inadvertency is a Thing extremely offensive: But I do not recommend it as a Thing I give you Liberty to ridicule, but hope it may be amended by the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... good men labored to bring about this most desirable end, others, such as Frederic of Prussia, and Joseph II. of Austria, by ill-advised measures, and the countenance which they gave to unsound and even irreligious doctrines, sowed the seeds of anarchy and unbelief, which failed not, in due time, to produce fruit according to their kind, and well-nigh accomplished the overthrow of society as well as that of the Christian Church. The Austrian Emperor appears to have understood the situation, and ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... to blaspheme against continuity, and to blaspheme against continuity would be to deny Eternity. Love you cannot help, and hate you cannot help; but contempt is—for you—the sovereign idiocy, the irreligious fancy!" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... years before. His rent, five pesos a year, had been prepaid for five years, but his time had run out. When they came to take out the body, which had been embalmed, it was found in a remarkable state of preservation. The custodian said, with an irreligious grin, that in the old days the condition of the body would have been called a miracle, and a patron saint would have been made responsible, and all the people would have come, bearing lighted candles, ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... Irreligious, illegal, and ruthless as had been this whole proceeding, into which the artful king had dragged the archbishop and sought to make him a consenting party to his plot, Christian had gained his purpose of providing a pretext for ridding himself of his political enemies, actual or possible, and proceeded ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... he had discovered the method by which evolution is accomplished. Before his time there was no general agreement as to the fact of evolution. People generally thought the idea absurd, as well as irreligious. All previous efforts on the part of advanced thinkers to persuade mankind of the truth of evolution had been nearly without effect. Among the early philosophers the whole idea was purely speculative. They made no attempt to prove it, and the conception was without ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... his dying breath had designated his son Richard as his successor in the office of the Protectorate. Richard was exactly the opposite of his father,—timid, irresolute, and irreligious. The control of affairs that had taxed to the utmost the genius and resources of the father was altogether too great an undertaking for the incapacity and inexperience of the son. No one was quicker to realize this than Richard himself, and after a rule of a few months, yielding to the pressure ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... political field and go to the religious at one jump—since your last visit here much has been said and written and published to the effect that a great change, or a considerable change at least, had taken place in your religious, or irreligious views. I would like to ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... author of certain articles in certain journals, in which these opinions were proclaimed with a vehemence far exceeding that which they assumed in his conversation. She had spoken to him with warm anger, mixed with passionate tears, on his irreligious principles; and from that moment Gustave shunned to give her another opportunity of insulting his pride and depreciating ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... round, and, above all, the penances of the followers of Buddh with those of Roman devotees. But he is not going to dwell here on this point; it is dwelt upon at tolerable length in the text, and has likewise been handled with extraordinary power by the pen of the gifted but irreligious Volney; moreover, the elite of the Roman priesthood are perfectly well aware that their system is nothing but Buddhism under a slight disguise, and the European world in general has entertained for some time past an inkling of ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... come of not believing in Apollo? Does it never strike you that doubt can be a madness, as well be faith? That asking questions may be a disease, as well as proclaiming doctrines? You talk of religious mania! Is there no such thing as irreligious mania? Is there no such thing in ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... little resemblance to what I had expected. My mental picture of an American policeman was that conglomerate average one unconsciously imbibes from a distant view of our city forces, and by comparison with foreign,—a heavy-footed, discourteous, half-fanatical, half-irreligious clubber whose wits are as slow as his judgment is honest. Instead of which I found the Z. P. composed almost without exception of good-hearted, well set up young Americans almost all of military training. I had anticipated, from other experiences, a constant bickering and ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... series of articles might be written on the subject of "London out of Church," dealing with the manners and customs of those people who patronize no sort of religious establishment on the Sunday. I have seen pretty well all the typical phases of religious London and London irreligious; but these would rather be characterized as non-religious than as irreligious folks. They do not belong to any of the varied forms of faith; in fact faith is from their life a thing apart. It is in this negative way that they are interesting. Sunday is with them only a regularly ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... that, "Among the English, French irreligious philosophy had been preached, even before the greater part of the French philosophers were born. It was Bolingbroke who set up Voltaire. Throughout the eighteenth century infidelity had celebrated champions in England. Able writers and profound thinkers ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... "ministers of foreign religions," rose in fierce indignation against the preaching of a firm believer in Buddha, who ventured to put an independent interpretation on points of faith. They burned the books of the Wytulians, as the new sect were called, and frustrated their irreligious attempt.[1] The first effort at repression was ineffectual. It was made by the King Wairatissa, A.D. 209; but within forty years the schismatic tendency returned, the persecution was renewed, and the apostate priests, after being branded on the back were ignominiously ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... the appearance of great men "in great crises of human history" were events so striking "that men would be liable to term them providential in a pre-scientific age." On this Mr. Spencer remarks that "in common with the ancient Greek Mr. Gladstone regards as irreligious any explanation of Nature which dispenses with immediate Divine superintendence." And as an instance of the partnership "between the ideas of natural causation and of providential interference," he instances a case where a prince "gained popularity ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... solemn vows of wedlock. Any third party that enjoys a superior confidence with one of them, whether relative or friend, even the pastor or family physician, is the man invoked against in the marriage charge, who "puts them asunder." Where unhappily the husband is irreligious and the wife is forced to seek confidential help and consolation of her spiritual adviser, she should strictly limit these to religious matters, else she will grow apart from her husband. George Moore, in his collection of stories entitled, ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... and middle classes throughout France. They, no doubt, indicate clearly enough the state of general opinion at this time. But what then? Their great compeers, the giants of thought, foreshadow what it will be. The profligate novels, licentious drama, and irreligious opinions of the middle class now in France, are the result of the infidelity and wickedness which produced the Revolution. The opinions of the great men who have succeeded the school of the Encyclopedie, who have been taught by the suffering it produced, will form the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... courted, remained cold and silent. The temper of the age, in fact, was changing and isolating her as it changed. Her own England, the England which had grown up around her, serious, moral, prosaic, shrank coldly from this child of earth, and the renascence, brilliant, fanciful, unscrupulous, irreligious. She had enjoyed life as the men of her day enjoyed it, and now that they were gone she clung to it with a fierce tenacity. She hunted, she danced, she jested with her young favourites, she coquetted, and scolded, and frolicked at sixty-seven as she had done at thirty. "The ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... were sensible of, and very thankful for; I began to talk to them of the scandalous life they led, and gave them a full account of the notice the clergyman had already taken of it; and arguing how unchristian and irreligious a life it was, I first asked them if they were married men or bachelors? They soon explained their condition to me, and shewed me that two of them were widowers, and the other three were single men or bachelors. I asked them with what conscience they could take these women, and lie with ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... present at a convention of representatives of religious orders. In practice there is still a clean-cut dividing line between those interested in social progress and those engaged in so-called religious work. The social workers are not irreligious; many of them believe their service to be of the highest type of religious expression. The representatives of the church are welcomed by social workers into their councils, but it is feared that often these representatives are not taken seriously because for so ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt
... all, it is religion that is at the foundation of this trouble. Pray, Miss Ester, was Mrs. Burton's report irreligious?" ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... most intelligible approach to that very "otherness" in the person of the godhead. His healing and reconciling influence over the heart of man—the way the human spirit expands and blossoms in His presence—is moving beyond expression to any observer, religious or irreligious. Each new crusade in the long strife for human betterment looks in sublime confidence to Him as its forerunner and defense. To what planes of common service, faith, magnanimous solicitude could He not lift the embittered, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... community. There were, on the other hand, however, fanatics and rogues, men representing the worse elements of society. The people shunned the clergy, and held them up to ridicule. They formed a class apart, not in sympathy with the parishioners. They committed serious transgressions, were irreligious and transformed the service of God into ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... Antipas and Herodias then took place. The Jewish laws on marriage were a constant rock of offence between the irreligious family of the Herods and the strict Jews.[2] The members of this numerous and rather isolated dynasty being obliged to marry amongst themselves, frequent violations of the limits prescribed by the Law necessarily took place. John, in energetically ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... racing, general merriment, and curing the sick, the latter being the prime cause of the gathering. A man of distinction in the tribe was threatened with loss of vision from inflammation of the eyes, having looked upon certain masks with an irreligious heart. He was rich and had many wealthy relations, hence the elaborateness of the ceremony of healing. A celebrated theurgist was solicited to officiate, but much anxiety was felt when it was learned that his wife was pregnant. A superstition ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... and state. The Customs' Union has, notwithstanding the difference in political principle, brought despotic Prussia and constitutional Germany one step nearer. The influence of Russia on the one hand, of that of France on the other, has sensibly decreased. The irreligious and immoral tendencies now visible will, as has ever been the case in Germany, produce a reaction, and, when the necessity is more urgently felt, fitting measures will be adopted for the prevention of pauperism. The dangers with which Germany is externally threatened will also ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... replied; 'you persecute the poor and drag their faces through the dust. You're an irreligious man, because you never kneel to God; you're a dishonest man, because you profess to belong to a faith whose doctrines you do not accept, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... the philosopher, laughing. "But I have a question to propose. Have you ever observed the strange nature of our people? Pacific, they love warlike spectacles; democratic, they adore emperors, kings, and princes; irreligious, they ruin themselves in the pomps of the ritual; the nature of our women is gentle, but they have deliriums of delight when a princess brandishes a lance. Do you know the cause ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... that are sanctified. He himself is a priest for ever; who, being raised from the dead, died no more; and who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God." Paul's Epist. to the Hebrews, ch. ix. 10. It was on account of this gross absurdity, and the irreligious application of it, that our first reformers suffered, and so many were put to death in the reign of ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... chiefly of man-ism with but little deism, and is as near to atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious or an irreligious eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... and in another respect, I find so much coldness and hollowness as to the highest truths, and feel so strongly that the Heaven he looks up to is but a vault of ice,—that these two indications, leading to the same conclusion, go far to convince me he was a profoundly immoral and irreligious spirit, with as rare faculties of intelligence as ever belonged to any one. All this may be mere goody weakness and twaddle, on my part: but it is a persuasion that I cannot escape from; though I should feel the doing so to be a deliverance from a most ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... Supreme Pontiff. The people is the real sovereign; and kings are delegates from the people, with authority which they can only justly exercise so long as they remain in obedience to Rome. It follows from these positions that every nation must refuse fealty to an irreligious or contumacious ruler. In the last resort they may lawfully remove him by murder; and they are ipso facto in a state of mortal sin if they elect or recognize a heretic as sovereign. This theory sprang from the writings of the English Jesuits, Allen ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Harold; but she could not have been wholly displeased, since she ended by telling me that mine was a vast opportunity, and that the propriety of my residence at Arghouse entirely depended on the influence I exerted, since any acquiescence in lax and irreligious habits would render my stay hurtful to all parties. She worried me into an inclination to drop all my poor little endeavours, since certainly to have tried to follow out all the details of her counsel would have alienated all ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the whole arrangement was traditional, and it was irreligious to depart from what had been fixed by statute many centuries before, and only perfected by the experience of many generations of men; and this veneration for traditional custom has hitherto been prevalent in European ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... disembodied entity on his way to Devachan, and that is the intense and uncontrolled grief of his surviving friends or relatives. It is one among many melancholy results of the terribly inaccurate and even irreligious view that we in the West have for centuries been taking of death, that we not only cause ourselves an immense amount of wholly unnecessary pain over this temporary parting from our loved ones, but we often also do serious injury ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... seem to be irreligious," Sandy replied, "but I beg leave to state that if I owed the devil a debt of a thousand of the greatest liars on earth and he wouldn't take you and call the debt square, I'd cheat him out of it! Your fabrications ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... and again, clearer than the heaven's light, came the answer;—if the vices of the adult generation were traceable in a great degree to the want of early Christian training—as who could doubt?—was it not manifest that the only check to the transmission of its irreligious spirit, was the careful education of the young? Yes; let the ignorant be taught, and little by little God's work would be done. Success might at first be small, but it would be certain. Each mind enlightened, would be a heart converted, ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... aside when Sibyl spoke to her about her love for the Lord Jesus. Not that she considered herself by any means an irreligious woman. She went to church always once, and sometimes twice on Sunday. She subscribed to any number of charities, and as the little girl now spoke her eyes became ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... friend considered so unscrupulous. She was passing through Chicago and came to ask me to give her some arguments which she might later use with her father to confute the charge that Settlements were irreligious. She said, "You see, he has been asked to give money to our Settlement and would like to do it, if his conscience was only clear; he disapproves of Settlements because they give no religious instruction; he has always been a ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... and maybe a more clever rogue; but not necessarily a good, industrious, and loyal citizen, as religion must do; then poverty even might be borne with contentment and some sense of happiness. A single reflection on the present condition of irreligious France ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... on Hobbes, of whom he says that his "dirty recreation" of smoking did not interrupt any "immoral, irreligious, or unmathematical track of thought in which he happened to be engaged."— Lectures on Moral ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... distinction between those who professed religion and those who made no profession. Their own religion was national. There was no division between the religious and irreligious. All were religious. In other words, they were all educated in the same faith, all united in observing the same religious rites, and all entertained the same religious belief, as had been handed down to them from ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... been something. Here, again, is a point of unity. All are equally assured there ever has been something. Something is, something must always have been, cry the religious, and the cry is echoed by the irreligious. This last dogma, like the first, admits not of being evidenced. As nothing is inconceivable, we cannot even imagine a time when there was nothing. Universalists say, something ever was, which something is matter. ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... when men attempted to treat Religion as if it were one department of life, instead of being the whole foundation of every and all life. To treat it so is, of course, to proclaim oneself as fundamentally irreligious—and, indeed, very ignorant ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... darknes so extreame behynde I cannot fynde a prayre to blesse theire soules. See here then, polytycke creature, subtyll man, Here see thy myscheife. Irreligious foole, That makst it contyence onlye when thou leavest Synns of preferment unaccomplyshed, Thou that repynst agaynst thy starrs & lucke When heaven prevents the bassnes of thy gayne; Littill thynkst thou wherefore thy gaynes ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... evangelizing a heathenish country by sending to it an illiterate, degraded and irreligious population, belongs exclusively to the advocates of African colonization. For absurdity and inaptitude, it stands, and must forever stand, without a parallel. Of all the offspring of prejudice and oppression, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... passed on to something more comfortable. He did not, of course, really believe this, but he had to tell himself so; for otherwise he would have to alter his whole way of life, or confess himself an irreligious man. But he was, on the contrary, a highly religious man, and he had no disposition to ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... o' fun may be, I can't rightly say, young feller. But if I was you, I wouldn't call the boat which, under Providence, was the means o' savin' ye, names. In the first place, it's blame irreligious. In the second, it's annoyin' to my feelin's—an' I'm Disko Troop o' the We're Here o' Gloucester, which you ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... if Christianity were embraced by the southerner with heartfelt purity and faith, it would undoubtedly have a beneficial influence, elevate the character of the slave, promote kindly feelings between him and his master, and ultimately prove profitable to both. But where Christianity, used by irreligious persons, whose very acts destroy the vitality of the means, is made the medium of enforcing superstition, and of debasing the mind of the person it degrades into submission, its application becomes nothing less than criminal. It is criminal because it brings ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... easy thing, and requires no previous preparation of heart by self-examination, for very wicked and thoughtless people to call upon the Lord in times of great danger, or in seasons of distress. Some years ago a very thoughtless and irreligious family near my home lived on the bank of a certain stream. Suddenly, after a great rain, their house was surrounded by a flood of water that threatened its destruction. They knew not what to do; and in their fright and consternation they began to call on the Lord for help. He may have heard them, ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... we be sure we are in the right, and do not hold the truth guiltily, which becomes not, if we ourselves condemn not our own weak and frivolous teaching, and the people for an untaught and irreligious gadding rout, what can be more fair than when a man judicious, learned, and of a conscience, for aught we know, as good as theirs that taught us what we know, shall not privily from house to house, which is more dangerous, but openly by writing publish to the world what ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... little study for a few minutes before Father Robertson came. She did not sit down, but moved about, looking now at this thing, now at that. In her white forehead there were two vertical lines which were never smoothed out. An irreligious person, looking at her just then, might have felt moved to say, with a horrible irony, "And can God do no more than that for the woman who dedicates her life ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... comprehended the part which he must necessarily play. To say that he was indifferent to religious matters was as ridiculous as to make a like charge against Barneveld. Both were religious men. It would have been almost impossible to find an irreligious character in that country, certainly not among its highest-placed and leading minds. Maurice had strong intellectual powers. He was a regular attendant on divine worship, and was accustomed to hear daily religious discussions. To avoid them indeed, he would have been obliged ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... obliged by his Tenure, to obey the moral law; and if he rightly understands the Art, he will never be a stupid Atheist nor an irreligious Libertine. But though in ancient times Masons were charged in every country to be of the religion of that country or nation, whatever it was, yet it is now thought more expedient only to oblige them to that religion in which all men agree, ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... a hundred of the guards in the gallery of the Vizier's mansion at Tepellene, not more than five or six were seen at prayers. The Albanians are not reckoned strict Mahommedans; but no Turk, however irreligious himself, ever disturbs the devotion ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... a characteristic time. Even irreligious people, who have no principles to send them to sleep, or to cause them to take a weekly walk, or to induce them to write an unnecessary letter to New Zealand—why are unnecessary letters to New Zealand invariably written on Sunday afternoons?—even irreligious people are generally in ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the Bishop. He a mortal like to US? Death was not for him intended, though communis omnibus: Keeper, you are irreligious, for to ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a total income from all sources of three-quarters of a million per annum. Now consider from whence all this has sprung. It is only twenty-five years since the author of this volume stood absolutely alone in the East of London, to endeavour to Christianise its irreligious multitudes, without the remotest conception in his own mind of the possibility of any ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... communication of knowledge from another, could he understand it as a practical effect. And to understand it not practically, but only in a speculative way, could not meet any religious wish, but merely an irreligious curiosity. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... Dissenting Crolians had receiv'd from them, and as it was exprest in the Act that all such Treatment was Unjust and Unchristian, so for them to read it in their Temples, was to acknowledge that they had been guilty of most unjust and irreligious Dealings to the Crolians, and that their Prince had taken care to do ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... a dog at the Temple in Mecca, so that I might bite every pilgrim in the leg," he is reported to have said. When he himself did once make the required pilgrimage, he did so in order to carry his loves up to the very walls of the sacred house. "Jovial, adventure-loving, devil-may-care," irreligious in all he did, yet neither the Khalif nor the whole Muhammadan world were incensed. In spite of all, they petted him and pronounced his wine-songs the finest ever written; full of thought and replete with pictures, rich in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... souls. Georges and Aurora had been caught up by the new current of Catholicism which was conquering many people of fashion and many intellectuals. Nothing could be more curious than the way in which Georges, who was naturally critical and perfectly irreligious, skepticism being to him as easy as breathing, Georges, who had never cared for God or devil—a true Frenchman, laughing at everything—suddenly declared that there lay the truth. He needed truth of some sort, and this sorted well with his need of action, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... The mode in which Peter earned their bread and butter interfered more with her daily comfort and digestion. Dealing in second-hand books, half of which were dramatic works, was a business not only irreligious, but ungenteel. She never passed under the swinging sign over the door without feeling that her cross was indeed heavy, and the old parlor, which had been turned into a shop, she left to the occupancy of her husband ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... religious faith renders emotion facile, so also it generally renders expression simple; that is to say a truly religious painter will very often be ruder, quainter, simpler, and more faulty in his manner of working, than a great irreligious one. And it was in this artless utterance, and simple acceptance, on the part of both the workman and the beholder, that all noble schools of art have been cradled; it is in them that they must be cradled to the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... is not suitable to a man in Froude's state of mind. But in Oxford at that time there flourished a lamentable system which would have been felt to be irreligious if the authorities of the place had known what religion really was. Most Fellows lost their Fellowships in a very short time unless they took orders, and Froude's Fellowship was in that sense a clerical one. They were ordained ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... stupefaction of the author can be well understood when he was told that the printer, instead of returning the proofs to him, submitted them to the publisher, with the emphatic declaration that the matter thereof was so indecent, irreligious, and improper that his proof- reader—a young lady—had with difficulty been induced to continue its perusal, and that he, as a friend of the publisher and a well-wisher of the magazine, was impelled to present to him personally this shameless evidence of the manner in which ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... not a Christian already? Why should the same thing be required of me as of a young Jew? If every one who, like me, has a conscience about money, and cares to use it well, had to give up all, the power would at once be in the hands of the irreligious; they would have no opposition, and the world would go to the devil! We read often in the Bible of rich men, but never of any other who was desired to part with all that he had! When Ananias was struck dead, it was not because he did not give up all his money, but because he pretended to have ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... reigns Here, where no trace of man the spot profanes, Nought but the chalets, [V] flat and bare, on high Suspended 'mid the quiet of the sky; Or distant herds that pasturing upward creep, 350 And, not untended, climb the dangerous steep. [89] How still! no irreligious sound or sight Rouses the soul from her severe delight. An idle voice the sabbath region fills Of Deep that calls to Deep across the hills, 355 And with that voice accords the soothing sound [90] Of drowsy bells, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... However, poor dear Sir Owen, in spite of all his nonsense, was at least an officer and a gentleman; whereas the nonsense these boys have picked up at Oxford and among their German refugee people is both irreligious, and, I may even say, indecent, or, to put it in the mildest way, indecorous. I wish with all my heart I'd never sent them to Oxford. I've always thought that if only Ernest had gone in for a direct commission, he'd soon have got all that absurd revolutionary rubbish knocked out of him in a mess-room! ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... a great deal of clever writing in it,—great observation of nature, and also of character among a certain class of persons. But it is almost too minute, and for me decidedly too theological. You see what irreligious people we are here. I shall come over to one of your camp-meetings and try to be converted. What will they administer in such a case? brimstone or brandy? I shall ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... phrases which had struck him that summer on reading Harnack's celebrated History of Dogma, and around these he framed his reply. "To act as if faith in eternal life and in the living Christ was the simplest thing in the world, or a dogma to which one has to submit, is irreligious. . . It is Christian to pray that God would give the Spirit to make us strong to overcome the feelings and the doubts of nature. . . Where this faith, obtained in this way, exists, it has always been supported by the conviction that the Man lives who brought life ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... several works, amongst others a system of Cartesian philosophy, where a chapter on "Angels" revives the methods of the schoolmen. His chief opponent was Samuel Parker (1640-1688), bishop of Oxford, who, in his attack on the irreligious novelties of the Cartesian, treats Descartes as a fellow-criminal in infidelity with Hobbes and Gassendi. Rohault's version of the Cartesian physics was translated into English; and Malebranche found ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... with the missionary spirit, exhibits in his preaching and, so far as may be, in his life, the self-denying and the Christian virtues, who is charged with sympathy for those among whom his lot is cast, who is patient of disappointment and of failure, and of the sneers of the ignorant or the irreligious, and who works steadily on with a single eye to the glory of God and the good of his fellow-men, is, of itself, an influence for good, and a centre from which it radiates, wholly independent of the number of converts he is able to enlist. There is a vast number ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... spiritual independence. It was no great discovery that we see many things as truths which we cannot prove. But it was a great impulse to thought, a great advance in the attitude of our thinking community, when the profoundly devout religious free-thinker took the ground of the undevout and irreligious free-thinker, and calmly asserted and peaceably established the right and the duty of the individual to weigh the universe, its laws and its legends, in his own balance, without fear of authority, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... matter belonging to matter—matter that keeps on in a dead, stupid way, just being matter. The idea that matter is not all alive with our souls, with our desires and prayers, with hope, terror, worship, with the little terrible wills of men and the spirit of God, is already irreligious to us. Is not every cubic inch of iron (the coldest-blooded scientist admits it) like a kind of little temple, its million million little atoms in it going round and round and round ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... process of time, and won to give His blessing in one age, to that which He hath cursed in another. Wherefor those that are wise, or whose wisdom if it be not great, yet is true and well grounded, will be able to discern the bitter fruits of irreligious policy, as well among those examples that are found in ages removed far from the present, as in those of latter times. And that it may no less appear by evident proof, than by asseveration, that ill doing hath always been attended with ill success; ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... of theology, which has become famous both in England and abroad, had its origin at Oxford, about A. D. 1838. Some distinguished members of the university thought that the church of England was in an alarming position, and that irreligious principles and false doctrines had been admitted into the measures of the government of the country on a large scale. To check the progress of these supposed errors and mischievous practices, they published a series ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... repeat a form of words a thousand times over; still, how could I be said to pray when the spirit was wanting?—It was only a jugglery, like the repeating machine in which the Burmese believe, or the beads of irreligious Catholics. ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... theory has been both at its first promulgation and since vehemently attacked and denounced as unchristian, nay, as necessarily atheistic; but it is not less true that it has been made use of as a weapon of offence by irreligious writers, and has been again and again, especially in continental Europe, thrown, as it were, in the face of believers, with sneers and contumely. When we recollect the warmth with which what he thought was Darwinism was advocated by such a writer as Professor Vogt, one ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... which would not be tolerated among respectable people, and would excite indignation if addressed to the most uncultivated and coarse servant girl, not openly vicious, by an ordinary young man, and profaneness which would brand him who uttered it as irreligious, are improper amusements for the young and for Christians of every age, then at least fifty of these ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... called a Duca. If it had been Baron, or even Count, the name would have been less offensive. And then to her mind hereditary titles, as she had known them, had been recommended by hereditary possessions. There was something to her almost irreligious in the idea of a Duke without an acre. She could therefore only again shake her head. "He has as much right to it," continued Mrs. Roden, "as has the eldest son of the ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... embarrassment thus revealed naturally shows itself even more in the book itself, notwithstanding the fact that Mr Arnold expressly declines to reply to those who have attacked Literature and Dogma as anti-Christian and irreligious. Not even by summarily banishing this not inconsiderable host can he face the rest comfortably: and he has to resort to the strangest reasons of defence, to the most eccentric invitation of ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... darkness of corruption and superstition as they were, did not, however, forget their first and natural duty to the Maker. Neglect of this obligation in a man betrays an absence, a loss of religious instinct, and an irreligious man is a pure animal, if he is a refined one. His refinement and superiority come from his intelligence, and these qualities, far from attenuating his guilt, ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... a chair and stood upon it, and carefully lifted down the tea-pot. It was of coarse blue and white pottery, and had been made in Staffordshire, when the art was emerging from its rudeness, and when the people were half barbarous and wholly irreligious—one of half a dozen that are now worth more than if made of the rarest china, the Blue Wesley Tea-pot; rude little objects, yet formed by loving, reverential hands, to commemorate the apostolic labors of John Wesley in that almost savage district. His likeness ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... man may live in the midst of the ungodly, and keep his garments unspotted, and his name unsullied by the adverse influences around him. What a rebuke such a life is to many who excuse their looseness and irregularities because they are thrown among the irreligious; and how stimulative it becomes to others that are similarly situated, and trying to live consistently in the midst of all their ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... Natural law we do not propose at present to inquire. It is certain, at least, that the whole is not covered. And nothing more lends confidence to the method than this. For one thing, room is still left for mystery. Had no place remained for mystery it had proved itself both unscientific and irreligious. A Science without mystery is unknown; a Religion without mystery is absurd. This is no attempt to reduce Religion to a question of mathematics, or demonstrate God in biological formulae. The elimination ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... bailiff that, blowing in pursuit, walked the London streets. A fine-hearted, warm-blooded character, without an atom of prudence, self-control, reticence, or forethought; quite as destitute of malice or envy; perpetually sinning and perpetually repenting; never positively irreligious, even when drunk; and often excessively pious when recovering sobriety,—Steele reeled his way through life, and died with the reputation of being an orthodox Christian and a (nearly) habitual drunkard; the most affectionate and most faithless of ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... the stairs with the rocking chair, she thought, "Nothing could be more suiterble. We are both about the same age; I am most respecterbly connected—in fact, I regard myself as somewhat his superior in this respect; he is painfully undeveloped and irreligious and thus is in sore need of female influence; he is lonely and down-hearted, and in woman's voice there is a spell to banish care; worst of all, things are going to waste. I must delib'rately face ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... I believe, are often very odd things in the eyes of irreligious people. Do you count yourself among the latter ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... churches did not dislike these long preachings and prophesyings; they would have regarded a short sermon as irreligious, and lacking in reverence, and besides, would have felt that they had not received in it their full due, their full money's worth. They often fell asleep and were fiercely awakened by the tithingman, and often ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... arising from her strong feeling against cultivating intimacy with any one who was "of the world." It was almost the only practical point on which she and Lucy disagreed, for Lucy tried to persuade her that she might do real good if she would come more in contact with her irreligious schoolmates. But Mary replied that this might do for some, but she did not feel strong enough,—she might herself be led away. She was not yet fully persuaded ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... way," cried Fichta, "I would shut up these irreligious American schools. Religion is the base of the social ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... did to enhance, even though in their means mistaken, the impression and power of the sufferings of Christ, or of his saints, is always in a measure noble, and to be distinguished with all reverence from the abominations of the irreligious painters following, as of Camillo Procaccini, in one of his martyrdoms in the Gallery of the Brera, at Milan, and other such, whose names may be well spared to ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... Bishop Butler threw out in a sermon before the House of Lords, in 1741, does honour to his political sagacity, as well as to his knowledge of human nature; he calculated that the irreligious spirit would produce, some time or other, political disorders similar to those which, in the seventeenth century, had arisen from religious fanaticism. "Is there no danger," he observed, "that all this may raise somewhat like that levelling spirit, upon atheistical principles, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... a force behind me as will make the prisons open their doors and the thrones of tyrants tremble.' That's what he said, your Holiness. The movement will come soon, too, I am sure it will, and then your Holiness will see that, instead of being irreligious men, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... respect for Christminster whatever, except, in a qualified degree, on its intellectual side," said Sue Bridehead earnestly. "My friend I spoke of took that out of me. He was the most irreligious man I ever knew, and the most moral. And intellect at Christminster is new wine in old bottles. The mediaevalism of Christminster must go, be sloughed off, or Christminster itself will have to go. To be sure, at times one couldn't help having a sneaking liking for the traditions ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... "We are not irreligious," Veronica replied, still at the point of laughter. "Most of us hear mass every morning—the church is close by the gate, on the other side of the great tower, you know—and we do not ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... attendant and stanch supporter of the church, and indeed had been spoken of for an elder. But from the church Macdonald Dubh held aloof. He belonged distinctly to the "careless," though he could not be called irreligious. He had all the reverence for "the Word of God, and the Sabbath day, and the church" that characterized his people. All these held a high place in his esteem; and though he would not presume to "take the books," ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... if it were to be a late affair, before—we would have family prayers, in which the servants joined. This was in deference to English custom; not that we were irreligious, but we had not before been accustomed to express our religious feelings in just that manner. All being grouped in a semicircle, my father would open the Bible and read a chapter; then he would take a prayer-book containing ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... no stone unturned; he had made his utmost effort dally. The democracy had been reinstated, and he was understood to be a moderate in politics. And the democracy was conventional-minded in religion; and he was understood to be irreligious, a disturber and innovator. And the democracy was still smarting from the wound; imposed on it by Critias and Charmides, understood to have been his disciples; and could not forget the treacheries of Alcibiades, another. And there were vicious ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... as such a man is now. But, says the honorable gentleman, they did not persecute Epicureans. No: the Epicureans had no quarrel with their religious establishment, nor desired any religion for themselves. It would have been very extraordinary, if irreligious heathens had desired either a religious establishment or toleration. But, says the honorable gentleman, the Epicureans entered, as others, into the temples. They did so; they defied all subscription; ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... concealed the true reason, and that Volapuk has been thus chosen because it is a diabolical invention; a universal language prevailed previously to the confusion of Babel, and the new language is an irreligious attempt to produce ordo ab chao by a return to ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... a temporary discomfort about the 39 Articles from an irreligious young man, who had been my schoolfellow; who one day attacked the article which asserts that Christ carried "his flesh and bones" with him into heaven. I was not moved by the physical absurdity which this youth mercilessly ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... of their acquaintance—an acquaintance which had latterly brought them much together, and given her a sort of intimacy with his ways—seen anything that betrayed him to be unprincipled or unjust—anything that spoke him of irreligious or immoral habits; that among his own connections he was esteemed and valued—that even Wickham had allowed him merit as a brother, and that she had often heard him speak so affectionately of his sister as to prove him capable of some amiable feeling; that had his actions ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... To make it plain beyond all controversy that there is another place of adjustment. So many of the bad up, so many of the good down. It seems to me that no man can look abroad without saying—no man of common sense, religious or irreligious, can look abroad without saying, "There must be some place where brilliant scoundrelism shall be arrested, where innocence shall get out from under the heel of despotism." Common fairness as well as ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... a sharp test, and I wonder how many of us would like to go out into the world, and say to all the irreligious people who know us, 'Now come and tell me what the faults are that you have seen in me.' There would be a considerable response to the invitation, and perhaps some of us would learn to know ourselves rather better than we have been able to do. 'We shall not find any occasion ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... make use of a library which admitted works of irreligious and immoral tendency? It was an undoubted fact (the Mercury made it known) that of late there had been added to the catalogue not only the "Essays of David Hume" and that notorious book Buckle's "History of ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... marriages should be forbidden. And much more than this; they demand preliminary censure of all works sold by the bookshops, an ecclesiastical committee to act as informers, and ignominious punishment to be awarded to the authors of irreligious books. Lastly they claim for their body the direction of public schools and the oversight of private schools.—There is nothing strange in this intolerance and selfishness. A collective body, as with an individual, thinks of itself ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... as a pretty pose, and found it as objectionable as the one he had painted. He was more curious, perhaps, but less disturbed than either of the Cardiffs as the days went by and Elfrida made no sign. He felt, however, that his curiosity was too irreligious to obtrude upon Janet; besides, his knowledge of her hurt anxiety kept him within the bounds of the simplest inquiry, while she, noting his silence, believed him to be eating his heart out. In the end it was the desire to relieve and to satisfy Janet that ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... as he looked towards me. "Do you know, Nikhil," he said, "I believe Sandip is not irreligious—his religion is of the obverse side of truth, like the dark moon, which is still a moon, for all that its light has gone over to ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... efficiency of the Church at Amoy. Besides the objection—which the heathen will thus, as readily as the irreligious in this country, be able to urge against Christianity—furnished by the increase of Denominations, it will deprive the churches of the benefit of the united wisdom and strength of the whole of them for self-cultivation and for Christian enterprise, and will introduce a spirit of ...
— History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China • J. V. N. Talmage
... have stooped to quote Shakespeare, considering him very irreligious and sometimes quite indelicate, and having forbidden the reading of him in the Gordon family. Nevertheless the unspoken thought of her mind was his—that the lady did protest ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... home will be unfit for its high vocation. Hence parents, in their marriage alliance as well as in their individual character, should qualify themselves for the responsible mission of home. Can the ungodly wife or husband fulfill this mission? Can the irreligious parent bring up his offspring "in the nurture and admonition ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... avoid the faults of public worship in the west. The practice of arranging the congregation in seats for which they pay seems to me more irreligious than the slovenliness of the heathen and makes the whole performance resemble a ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... From irreligious depravity, Billy had risen to reverent heights, and Hillcrest restraint was beautiful in his thought, as a ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... defines a heathen as "Any irreligious, rude, barbarous or unthinking class or person." This Eskimo is not "irreligious," for he has a well-formed conception of a Great Spirit and an Evil One, he looks to a place of reward or punishment after death, and he accedes to Kipling's ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... Islands, without being personally connected either with the trading community, the missionaries, or the whalers. It should not be inferred from the reflections Mr. Earle casts upon the missionaries that he was himself an irreligious man, because the journal of his residence on Tristan d'Acunha shows that, while living there, he read the whole service of the Church of England to that little community every Sunday, and his diary in many places exhibits a reverence for Divine ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... inefficient lamp of his youthful experience, he really believed he had failed in his apostolic mission because he had been unable to touch the hearts of the Vigilantes by oral appeal and argument. Feeling thus the reverence of these irreligious people that surrounded him, the facile yielding of their habits and prejudices to his half-uttered wish, appeared to him only a temptation of the flesh. No one had sought him after the manner of the camp-meeting; he had converted the wounded man through a ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... a religious man to view an irreligious one either with alarm or aversion; or with any other feeling than regret, and hope, and ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor |
