"Layman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that, as the newly-formed languages were hardly made use of in writing, Latin being still preserved in all legal instruments and public correspondence, the very use of letters, as well as of books, was forgotten. For many centuries, to sum up the account of ignorance in a word, it was rare for a layman, of whatever rank, to know how to sign his name. Their charters, till the use of seals became general, were subscribed with the mark of the cross. Still more extraordinary it was to find one who had any tincture of learning. Even ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... preach the secularization of the government to the Pope, is to preach to the winds. Here you have a man who would not be a layman, who pities laymen simply because they are laymen, regarding them as a caste inferior to his own; who has received an anti-lay education; who thinks differently to laymen on all important points; and you expect this man will share his power with laymen, in an empire where he is absolute master ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... A layman cannot tell from the reports which of the duties demanded the most work—whether the continuous clearing out of transports, dhows, and sailing ships, generally found close to the well-gunned and attentive beach, or the equally continuous attacks on armed vessels of every kind. ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... ex-Liberal Cardinal Antonelli, now and henceforth his most influential counsellor, were determined not to concede. They had grown wise in their generation, for a priest whose ministers are laymen is as much an anomaly as a layman whose ministers are priests. The French government desired that the Statute should be maintained, and demanded judicial reforms and an amnesty for political offenders. None of these points was accepted except the last, and ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... found deposits of material which are by the layman termed gravel, which are really clayey sand or sand containing a few pebbles, but which are of value to the road builder for the sand clay type of surfacing. The term gravel is exceedingly general and unless specifically defined, gives little indication of the exact nature of to ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... any other existing single work in any language, gives the layman a clear idea of the scope and development of the broad ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Flavius Avitus, who was to be one of the ephemeral "Emperors" of the West and the Decadence, but was not injured by his father-in-law's dethronement, and enjoyed various civil honours and posts. In 471, though a married layman, he was peremptorily made a bishop, and accordingly took orders, put away his wife, and discharged his sacred duties as creditably as he had discharged his profane ones. Sidonius was a not contemptible poet, ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... home?" "Yes, sir; pray what name shall I say?" I looked at the man's face astonished. What name? what name? aye, that is the question. What is my name? I had no more idea who I was than if I had never existed. I did not know whether I was a dissenter or a layman. I felt as dull as Sternhold and Hopkins. At last, to my great relief, it flashed across me that ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... periscope taking each time a fresh bearing of the enemy, who is supposed to be at some distance and steaming at good speed. After two or three such quick sights, changing course after each sight, it will be time to discharge a torpedo or two at her. And—the layman may note it—with expert men at the periscope and diving-rudder, a porpoising sub can sight, discharge her torpedo, and dive—all ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... execute the decrees of the church without further examination, whether they be right or wrong, as Papists teach that the magistrate is to execute the decrees of their Popish councels with blind obedience, and submit his faith to them, because he is a layman and may not dare to examine whether the church doth erre or not, is clear. 1. Because, if in hearing the Word all should follow the example of the men of Berea, not relying on the testimony of Paul or any preacher, [and] try whether that which concerneth their conscience and ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... the society had branches throughout the city and perhaps far beyond, because elsewhere Cutbush spoke of the society as under the Presidency of John Goodman, Esq., and that its purpose was to bring about a reformation in education. Further, Goodman was a prominent layman in the Church of Old St. John, who with his associates, Messrs. Greiner and Braeutigam, fellow churchmen, deeply impressed with the new thought, seem to have established a school "formed out of the Lutheran congregation of the Church of St. John ... instituted several professorships ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith
... Catholics and non-Catholics, to the negro there were blacks and whites, to the prisoner there were the imprisoned and the free, and to the sick man there were the sick and the well.... So, without thinking of it once in his lifetime, he had been a civilian, a layman, a non-Catholic, a Gentile, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of pride, a pride which is certainly wide-spread and which leads to the disparagement of the practical doctor and medical layman, and then further to the disparagement of the craft of nature healers. The practical doctor and the nature healer on the one hand tend towards an understandable disparagement of medical science and analysis and, on the other hand, tend ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... forward, still smiling graciously. "I really don't see a great deal of point going into theory, gentlemen." She looked at Ross and Dr. Braun, then back at Crowley. "Don, I think that what the doctor was leading up to was an attempt to describe in layman's language the theory of the process onto which we've stumbled. He was using the jellyfish as an example of a life form all but invisible. But I'm sure you aren't interested in technical terminology, are you? A good deal of ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... displeased at the other's tone; and then, seeing my surprise, he addressed himself to me: "Nothing at present, but congratulate myself upon my old friend's confidence, and, as Abernethy said, 'take advice.' A banker must never encroach upon the province of the lawyer. But so far as a layman may judge, Major Hockin, I think you will have to transfer to me the care ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... and almost transfigured by the ardor of devotion, gave him the admirable expression of an old Christian soldier. 'Bonus miles Christi'—a good soldier of Christ—had been inscribed upon the tomb of the chief under whom he had been wounded at Patay. One would have taken him for a guardian layman of the tombs of the martyrs, capable of confessing his faith like them, even to the death. And when Julien determined to approach and to touch him lightly on the shoulder, he saw that, in the nobleman's clear, blue eyes, ordinarily so gay, and sometimes so choleric, sparkled unshed tears. His ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... women, of every garb and every character, from the poor parish priest, who lives like a saint, obscure and hidden, visiting, in rain and cold, the scattered cottages of his peasants, forgetting to receive his tithes, a model of abnegation, to the hunting monk, dressed like a layman, big, fat, with a head as shiny as a ball, who will make one day the finest abbot in the world, to the degenerate friar, who lives at the expense of others, a physician become poisoner, who destroys instead of healing them, and to the pardoner, a rascal of low degree, who bestows heaven ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... need the assumption of some other fact or facts attained through reasoning from the others, to make them fit together into a coherent and intelligible system. Every important new discovery in science makes necessary arguments of this sort. When the minute forms of life that the layman lumps together under the name "germs" were discovered there was a host of arguments to explain their manner of life and the way some of them cause disease and others carry on functions beneficent to mankind. A notable example of the arguments concerning ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... probable that the "cleansing" was merely a ceremonial, ordained for those attacked by the disease at a certain stage, implying some deeper meaning, than I for one, am able to discern. I therefore leave it to the theologian to whom it appertains, rather than to a humble and enquiring layman ...
— The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses • Robert Charles Hope
... adopted the code system generally. I do not say this as an opponent of general codes, but I am constrained to note as a fact that those States are the ones which have their legislation in the worst shape of any. The charm of the statute theory is that the half-educated lawyer or layman supposes he can find all the laws written in one book. Abraham Lincoln even is said to have had the major part of his "shelf of best books" composed of an old copy of the statutes of Indiana, though I can find no traces of such reading in the style of ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... author, my esteemed friend, Swamie Mukerji, a Yogi who comes out of a successive generation of Yogis, is able and proper instrument to handle the subject. He, in these lessons, prepares the layman for an understanding of the Yoga and through a series of wise and masterful sayings, impresses on the mind of the reader the necessity for rising above materialism, nay, solves the ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... it means, in terms of the school man, retardation and elimination. To the layman those words may need interpretation. Retardation means the checking of a pupil in his educational progress thru the grades, necessitating the spending of a longer period than that which is considered normal. For example, ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... amount. Then Tibble again put his question on behalf of the two young foresters, and the comptroller shook his head. He did not know the name. "Was the gentleman," (he chose that word as he looked at the boys), "layman or clerk?" ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it always seems to me as though there is need of rather more ballast in the boat, need of one of those great wheels which act as a check on the machinery in an engine; and the best fly-wheel is the layman. The tendency, you know, of the Pulpit is toward an unpractical sort of idealism. Its theories are all very good, but my professor in physics used to tell me that the best mathematical theory is put out of gear by friction when you come to illustrate it in practical physics, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... whether shabby or decent, whether singly or in groups, they were invariably received bareheaded by the respectful villagers waiting outside, whilst a double salvo of homage was awarded by priest and layman to a tall, elegant Italian monsignor from Brixen, who, tucking up gracefully his rich violet garments, walked with infinite care from the inn to the Widum, disappearing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... Le Faire, Lee Phaire, Le Fere, but usually Le Fevre, in the documents. There really was a priest styled Le Fevre. A man named Mark Preston was accused of being a priest and a Jesuit. When arrested he declared that he was a married layman with a family. He had been married in Mr. Langhorne's rooms, in the Temple, by Le Fevre, a priest, in 1667, or, at least, about eleven years before 1678.** I cannot find that Le Fevre was known as a Jesuit to the English members ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... his Ears? Oh save me Providence, from Vice refin'd, That worst of ills, a Speculative Mind![47] Not that I blame divine Philosophy, (Yet much we risque, for Pride and Learning lye.) Heav'n's paths are found by Nature more than Art, The Schoolman's Head misleads the Layman's Heart. ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... of such suspension to set up martial law in districts where the local courts were open but where, from one cause or another, the Administration had not confidence in their effectiveness. Under ex parte Milligan, both Presidents and both Congresses were guilty of usurpation. The mere layman waits for the next great hour of trial to learn whether this interpretation will stand. In the Milligan case the Chief ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... world just now. No syllabus, no act of Parliament can do this. There is no royal road which all can travel. It has been done, to some extent, in the past, and it will have to be done, to a much greater extent, in the future by the layman and the laywoman, by the teachers of all denominations, by some even whom inspectors may consider inefficient and whom children may tolerate as queer. It will be done best by the best teachers, but all teachers can share in the work on the one condition that they have consciously or ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... all Eastern Asia, gathered in councils to fix the doctrine, proclaimed dogmas and rules. As they became powerful they, like the Brahmans, came to esteem themselves as above the rest of the faithful. "The layman," they said, "plight to support the religious and consider himself much honored that the holy man accepts his offering. It is more commendable to feed one religious than many thousands of laymen." In Thibet the religious, men and women together, constitute a fifth ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... criticisms of which the War Office was the subject during the protracted broil were not fully warranted. Some of them were indeed most helpful. But others were based on a positively grovelling ignorance of the circumstances governing the subject at issue. Surely it is an odd thing that, whereas your layman will shy at committing himself in regard to legal problems, will not dream of debating medical questions, will shrink from expressing opinions on matters involving acquaintance with technical science, will even be somewhat guarded in his utterances concerning ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... a strong letter in reply, saying that no one ever believed the word of an inquisitor, and that if it should ever be my good fortune to capture Callao I would burn their buildings to the ground, and hang every official, priest, and layman belonging to it. There the matter dropped. Of course I did not get the chance of carrying my threat into execution, but if I had done so I should have certainly carried it out; and even if I had found afterwards that I had been mistaken about you I should not have regretted it, ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... for the men who will take the comprehensive view and become leaders in the greatest and most fundamental task of all time. Until these leaders appear, mission work, for those who seek to understand it as a world enterprise, will, as a layman said recently, remain worse than ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... remove the soil in which preventable diseases grow. These steps, worked out by the sanitarians of Europe and America after a century of experiment, are seen to be very simple and are applicable by the average layman and average physician to the simplest village or rural community. How many of these steps are taken by your city? by your county? ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... an exception, all had drawn back and bidden him be content with a spiritual warfare. One priest, indeed, had gone so far as to tell him that he was on dangerous ground ... and the one and single man who up to the present had seemed on his side, was the very man, Mr. Ballard, then a layman, whom he had met by chance in London, and who had been the occasion of first suggesting any such idea. It was, in fact, for the sake of meeting Ballard again that he was going to London; and, he had almost thought from his friend's last letter, it had seemed that it was ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... wonderfully good work, and to a layman their ingenuity was most marked. Piers were made out of all sorts of things; for instance, a boat would be sunk and used as a buttress, then planks put over it for a wharf. They built a very fine pier which was afterwards named Watson's. Again, the "monkey" of a pile driver they erected was ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... accounted for partly by the fact that for some centuries the Bishops of the diocese were interred in the chapter-house, and even most of these tombs have been lost or destroyed. Another reason for the scarcity of monuments is that no layman was allowed to be buried in the church until 1367, when Lord Ralph Neville obtained that distinction for himself and his wife, the Lady Alice de Neville, who was buried in 1374. This monument occupies the third ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... died, and either through forgetfulness or negligence the annual rental of one red rose was unpaid for many years. Then, one day a layman of the church found the old deed and the people prepared to pay the long-neglected debt once more. Since that renewal there is set apart each June a Sabbath day upon which the rose is paid to the nearest descendant ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... the exile are in possession of a new form of religious association which belongs to a high stage of growth. The temple worship is one in which the ordinary layman has no part, or only an occasional part to play. The priest does everything in it; even the singing of Psalms is done by choirs of priests. And the dweller in the country might rarely be a witness of these ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... verdict of the men most competent perhaps to judge upon these things that he had the greatest graphic power of his time, and that no one had had that power to such an extent since Hogarth. Upon these things the men of the trade must dispute; the layman cannot doubt that he had here a genius and a genius comprehensively national. It is the essence of a good draughtsman that what he wants to draw, that he draws. The line that he desires to see upon the paper appears there as his fingers ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... scientists conceal the basic simplicity of their knowledge by unnecessarily expressing their data with exotic verbiage and higher mathematics. In Jenny's time it was not considered demeaning if an intelligent layman could read and understand the writings of a scientist or scholar. Any serious gardener who wants to understand the wide differences in soil should become familiar with Factors in Soil Formation. About organic matter in virgin soils, ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... Pontius Pilate. We may find it hard to appreciate these and other arguments of the same kind, but Dante's passion never fail s to carry us with him. In his letters he appears as one of the earliest publicists, and is perhaps the first layman to publish political tracts in this form. He began early. Soon after the death of Beatrice he addressed a pamphlet on the State of Florence 'to the Great ones of the Earth,' and the public utterances of his later years, dating from the time of his banishment, are all ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... but it may well be open to question whether the same end could not be better attained by very different means. What is generally wanted in a horse is draught power and ability to trot well and far. It is not clear to the layman that a flying machine that can do a mile in a minute and a half is the ideal parent for this form of horse. On the other hand, the famous trotting-horses of America are just the kind of animal that is wanted for ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... non-proficient in anything, the "layman," he who was not technically trained in any art, craft, ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... conflict in which Rome would be against him. He knew also that many of his countrymen would be on his side. The same discovery was unexpectedly made by the next papal emissary, Miltitz, a Saxon layman, who was sent to convey the Golden Rose to Luther's patron, the elector Frederic. It was well understood at Rome that Cajetan, in pushing Luther one step beyond his original Thesis, by transferring the question from the discretion ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... his first acts was to issue two small tracts on the supremacy of the Pope and of St. Peter; and some hundred thousand of these, beautifully printed, were distributed in London. A copy came to the hands of a clever layman, well skilled in the Romish controversy; and he saw immediately that this little tract, if not well answered, ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... jeopard her person as risk life to save life. A wariness of mind he would answer as fitted all and, laying hand to jaw, he said dissembling, as his wont was, that as it was informed him, who had ever loved the art of physic as might a layman, and agreeing also with his experience of so seldomseen an accident it was good for that mother Church belike at one blow had birth and death pence and in such sort deliverly he scaped their questions. That is truth, pardy, said Dixon, and, or I err, a pregnant word. Which ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... of study, were greatly multiplied. On the other hand, romances were better heard than read, and only enough copies of them were made to supply wealthy households and the minstrels and jesters whose business it was to learn and recite them. Rarely, therefore, did the ordinary layman of medieval England own many books. The large class to whom romances appealed seldom owned books at all, simply because the people of this class, even if wealthy and of noble rank, could not in ninety cases out of one ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... time: some had been blinded, or had their ears cut off; some had marks worn on their arms by chains, or were bowed by hard labor in the mines. The Emperor, in purple and gold, took a seat in the council as the prince, but only as a layman and not yet baptized; and the person who used the most powerful arguments was a young deacon of Alexandria named Athanasius. Almost every Bishop declared that the doctrine of Arius was contrary to what the Church had held from the ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and make thy best bow, and behave thee as a little layman should behave in the presence of one who hath been mistaken for one holding so high an office in ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... not been removed through the rent, but by some other (undiscovered) outlet. All agreed that the robbers had made that rent only to mislead the detectives. That never would have occurred to me or to any other layman, perhaps, but it had not deceived the detectives for a moment. Thus, what I had supposed was the only thing that had no mystery about it was in fact the very thing I had gone furthest astray in. The eleven theories all named the supposed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... faith, whereas the faith which saves can never consist in the outward acceptance of an historical fact. He who makes salvation dependent on preaching and the Sacrament, confuses the invisible and the visible Church, Ecclesia interna and externa. The layman ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... of dreams, irrational beliefs and foolish actions with unconscious wishes has been brought to light, though with some exaggeration, by Freud and Jung and their followers. As regards the nature of these unconscious wishes, it seems to me—though as a layman I speak with diffidence—that many psycho-analysts are unduly narrow; no doubt the wishes they emphasize exist, but others, e.g. for honour and power, are equally operative and equally liable to concealment. ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... Without doubt, Memory is a most vital factor, though not the only one in mental efficiency.[Footnote: The true ideal of mental efficiency must include power of Will as well as of Memory.] It is an element in mental life which puzzles both the specialist in psychology and the layman. "What is this wonderfully subtle power of mind?" "How do we remember?" Even the mind, untrained in psychological investigation, cannot help asking such questions in moments of reflection; but for the psychologist they are questions of very vital significance in his science. For Bergson, ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... and, in a nation free, Assume an honest layman's liberty? I think, according to my little skill, To my own mother-church submitting still, That many have been saved, and many may, Who never heard this question brought in play. The unlettered Christian, who believes in gross, Plods on to heaven, and ne'er is at ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... said Perry; "but not too soon. Here is Marion waiting for me, as she has waited, like Rachel for Jacob, these many years. I shall preach no more, dear father, except as a layman. I see by your eyes that the demon is no longer in our home, and the remainder of my life will be spent in returning to you the joy ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... heard the doubts which De Vaux stated, with that acuteness of intelligence which distinguishes the Roman Catholic clergy. The religious scruples of De Vaux he treated with as much lightness as propriety permitted him to exhibit on such a subject to a layman. ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... Ambrose had not even been baptized. He was a layman. There is no evidence that he was a Christian except in name. He had passed through no deep experience such as Augustine did, shortly after this. It was a more remarkable appointment than when Henry II. made his chancellor, Becket, archbishop of Canterbury. Why was Ambrose elevated to that ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... antiquated prejudice against Biblical criticism. Assuredly the Bible must be studied like any other collection of documents, linguistically, historically, and in the light of the comparative method. The leading ideas of Wellhausen, for example, are conspicuous for acumen: the humblest layman can see that. But one may protest against criticising the Bible, or Homer, by methods like those which prove Shakspeare to have been Bacon. One must protest, too, against the presentation of inconsistent ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... and notebook. The field glasses should not be more than six power; and if possible you should get the sort with detachable prisms. The prisms are apt to cloud in a tropical climate, and the non-detachable sort are almost impossible for a layman to clean. Hang these glasses around your neck by a strap only just long enough to permit you to raise them to your eyes. The best notebook is the "loose-leaf" sort. By means of this you can keep always a fresh leaf on top; and at night can transfer ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... the minds of his contemporaries. Not much argument was needed to maintain the truth of a theory which to his own contemporaries seemed so natural and congenial. He speaks, or rather preaches, from the point of view, not of the ecclesiastic, but of the layman, although, as a good Catholic, he is willing to acknowledge that in certain respects the Empire must submit to the Church. The beginning and end of all his noble reflections and of his arguments, good and bad, is the aspiration 'that in this little plot of earth belonging to ...
— The Republic • Plato
... the hall to the opposite gallery, and perceived that his companion was referring to a small, delicate-looking elderly man, with the face of a priest and the clothes of a layman, who had ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... bashful young gentleman fresh from Oxford, who wears his stole over one shoulder rather than over two. It is the parson's wife who "serves tables" nowadays; and the results on parochial activity are in some ways remarkable enough. In the first place, men are fairly driven from the field. If a layman wishes to help in a parish he finds himself lost in a world of women. It is only those semi-clerical beings who seem to unite with a singular grace all the weaknesses of both the sexes who persist in the attempt. Then, too, all the ideas of the parochial world become feminine; the parish ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... runnagate hast said, that everie Layman is a Preast; and such lyik thow sayest, that the Pope hath no more power ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... pious hearts were greatly delighted and mightily strengthened when they heard that with all the strength and art which our opponents were then called upon to display, they were capable of producing nothing but this flimsy rebuttal, which now, praise God! a woman, a child, a layman, a peasant are fully able to refute with good arguments taken from the Scriptures, the Word of Truth. And that is also the true and ultimate reason why they refused to deliver [to the Lutherans a ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... its most poetic and easily understood side, I wished to give a specimen to the Spanish public of to-day, who had forgotten it; but, as I was a man of my epoch, a layman, not very exemplary as regards penitential practices, and had the reputation of a freethinker, I did not venture to undertake doing this in my own name, and I created a theological student who should do it in his. I then fancied ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... question, they almost invariably remarked: "It may last a long while yet." Today neutral opinion is no longer anxiously or even eagerly sought. The temporary need for this sort of moral support seems to have passed, and there are many indications that the well-informed layman expects 1915 to see the wind-up of the war, while I have talked with not a few professional men who have expressed the opinion that the war will be ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... religion consists in the mumbling of unmeaning forms and performance of unnecessary ceremonies; in the gaudy decoration of temples with pictures and statues, which some consider an incitement to devotion; in an entire abandonment of the soul of the layman to the care of the priest, as if the laic himself had no part in working out his salvation. As a good Protestant, I am bound to condemn and anathematize these errors; but, more distinctly, I hold that our Puritan brethren (to come back to the point of departure) are ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... fathers in the ancient burying-ground behind the meeting-house. He was not, to be sure, esteemed by all, especially the women, to be so great a man as the Reverend Jabez Jaynes, A.M., who, by virtue of his sacred office and academical honors, took formal precedence of every mere layman in the parish. But with this notable exception, Doctor Bugbee was the peer of every other dignitary, whether civil, military, or ecclesiastical, within the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... firing at the ford had ceased, Capt. Marcotte had returned to El Poso to investigate the movements of our artillery. These were then, and have remained, one of those inscrutable and mysterious phenomena of a battle; incomprehensible to the ordinary layman, and capable of being understood only by "scientific" soldiers. The charge upon the San Juan ridge was practically unsupported by artillery. No American shells had struck the San Juan block-house; none had struck or burst in its vicinity; not even a ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... of interest at this point to give the reader a layman's explanation of the electronic or ionic machinery of these ships, and of their general construction, for today the general public knows little of the particular application of the electronic laws which ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... here given are in no sense of the word a "brief," but merely present the facts in the language of a layman and in the simplest and most concise form. Those relating to property are in the nature of a curiosity. An attorney in San Francisco who was asked for information as to the laws in general for women in California, answered that ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... "Were I answering a layman, or even a rival detective, I should look very wise and talk indefinitely of clues; to you I will admit a blank ten days, not a forward ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... New York: "After due reading of your book I feel it my duty to congratulate you on same. True, you may have received so many congratulatory notes that the layman's opinion will be of little value. Nevertheless, I can assure you the perusal of your book caused me more pleasure and instruction than any other I heretofore read on the subject. I assure you it will find a prominent place in my library, ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... system of belief which, if based upon traditional practices, has been fed by entirely modern influences. Such records as these stretch back through the ages, and almost every village, certainly every county in the United Kingdom, has its records of trials for witchcraft, in which clergy and layman, judge, jury, and victim play strange parts, if we consider them as members of a civilised community. Superstition which has been preserved by the folk as sacred to their old faiths, preserved by tradition, has ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... Preserve that gift, and when you die you will, I hope, start on a plane many thousands of years in advance of me. There should be no more comparison between us than between a person with all his senses and one that is deaf and blind. Though you are a layman, you should, with your faith and frame of mind, soon be but little behind ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... lay some hundred yards behind the low crest held midway of our line by the Second Corps, whence the ground fell away in a gentle slope. The space back of our line was in what to a layman's eye would have seemed the wildest confusion of wagons, ambulances, ammunition mules, cattle, and wandering men. It was slowly assuming some order as the Provost Guard, dusty, despotic and cross, ranged the wagons, drove back stragglers, ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Pyecroft through professional appreciation; I with a layman's delight in the expert; and our guest because ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... Margarita talked together by the hour and I have seen his dog-like brown eyes fixed on her an hour at a time. I asked him once if he intended to "put her in a story"—the quaint query of the layman, so strangely irritating to the book-man—and he shook his loose-locked ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... shook him; he could not understand it, and his failure to understand appalled him. He was a physician; it was his business to understand; and yet here was death in a form as mysterious to him as to the veriest layman. It compelled him to pause and take stock of himself—always a disconcerting process to ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... cover the book is readable, and every word is intelligible to the layman. Dr. Dolmage displays literary powers of a very high order. Those who read it without any previous knowledge of astronomy will find that a new interest has been added to their lives, and that in a matter of 350 pages they have gained a true conception ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... this book I have received in written form Mr. Mullgardt's own wonderful interpretation, which I hereby append with his kind permission. I shall not correct my work, for it will be interesting to compare the work of a layman ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... and her generosity. Oh, Jack is to be envied. I can readily understand the deep-rooted antagonism the actress still finds among the laity. It is a foolish prejudice. I can point out many cases where the layman has married an actress and has been happy ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... ask, as a mere layman, what right has the Bible to usurp the title of "the word of God"? What evidence can be sharked up to show that it is any more a holy or an inspired book than any book of Thomas Carlyle's, or John Ruskin's, or William Morris'? ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... painters often do writers, with contempt because he was a layman, with tolerance because he practised an art, and with awe because he used a medium in ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Caribs to renounce this barbarous custom. The natives of a little island devoured a Dominican monk whom they had carried off from the coast of Porto Rico; they all fell sick, and would never again eat monk or layman. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... continuous and exclusive labour bestowed on producing them. Nobody except a professional lawyer is perhaps in a position completely to understand how much of the intellectual strength of individuals Law is capable of absorbing, but a layman has no difficulty in comprehending why it was that an unusual share of the collective intellect of Rome was engrossed by jurisprudence. "The proficiency[6] of a given community in jurisprudence depends in the long run on the same conditions as its progress in any other ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... gradual concentration of the Church into a priesthood, and the consequent rendering of the reciprocal functions of love and redemption and counsel between Christian and Christian exclusively official, and between disparates, namely, the priest and the layman. ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... astonished, and thought the latter should have been an extraordinary personage. And when he found the man to be the Sixth Patriarch of Zen, he and all his disciples decided to follow Zen under the master. Consequently Hwui Nang, still clad like a layman, changed his clothes, and began his patriarchal career at that Monastery. This is the starting-point of the great development of ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... man, this is not to be deprecated. Some degree of courteous compliance and deference of the ignorant to the better informed, is inseparable from the existence of political society as we behold it; such a deference as we may conceive the candid and conscientious layman to pay to the suggestions of his honest ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... their Sundays in gaming or boozing in low taverns along the water-front. To as many of these as would gather in some open space, at the sound of his voice raised tremulously in a hymn, he would preach as a layman, thus borrowing from the Methodists a device by which he hoped not only his present hearers, but also his own future Presbyterian congregations, should benefit. It was from one of these informal meetings, ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... a heretic? Do you not know that all this heresy springs from the reading of the Bible? You see, the Bible is a very strange book. It seems that there are many things in it which, when read by an ordinary layman, appear to mean this or that. When read by a consecrated priest, however, they mean something quite different. In the same way, there are many doctrines which the layman cannot find in the Bible that to the consecrated eye are plain as the sun and the moon. The difference ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the handwriting as well as to the thought. A number of students of about the same grade, under the same teacher, will write much alike. Fifteen or twenty of these students could each write a line on a page and it might baffle a layman, and perhaps puzzle an expert, to tell whether or not more than one person wrote the page. This constant striving after one ideal, and putting thought on the handwriting, had drawn them all toward that ideal and ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... judgment more valuable, employment, to produce this short sketch of the story of a great people, now our Ally. My motive has been mainly that I do not think that any such sketch, concentrated enough to be readable by the average layman who has other things to do (especially in these days) than to study more elaborate and authoritative histories, at present exists, and I have thought that in writing it I might perhaps be discharging some little part of the heavy debt of gratitude which I owe to ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... you had secrets from me, who am only a poor layman. I thought you confessed to our learned brother, that pillar of theology, that light of the Church, who will be a cardinal some day, and that you obtained absolution from him, and perhaps, ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... elated. He loved tracking, like a bloodhound, for the sheer pleasure of the "cold foot chase." The official views both layman and priest with contempt and aversion; both are equally his prey, both equally his profit: he lives by them and on them, as the galleruca does on the elm-tree, whose foliage it devours, but he despises them because they are not officials, as the galleruca doubtless, ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... another conservative paper, edited by Professor Gustaf Torelius, an eminent author and scholar, is an organ of the Swedish state church, and on that account is taken by every Lutheran clergyman and active layman in the kingdom. It contains the official announcement of the minister of religion and the archbishop, and is especially given to news of an ecclesiastical character. Its most prominent writer is Dr. C.D. af Wirsen, one of "the immortal eighteen" of the Swedish ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... ether and a Sumatran ether? Perhaps you imagine that the ether of Kent is in some way superior to the ether of Surrey, through which this train is now bearing us. There really are no bounds to the credulity and ignorance of the average layman. Is it conceivable that the ether in Sumatra should be so deadly as to cause total insensibility at the very time when the ether here has had no appreciable effect upon us whatever? Personally, I can truly say that I never felt stronger in body or better ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was as much a layman spectator as any tramp who crept into the gallery for a few hours out of the cold. The hurry and seethe of the racing sea touched him not at all, except to bewilderment, while he was carried with it, unknowing, toward the breakers. The shout of those ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... your earning capacity, but capitalizing your control of the market, capitalizing the profits which you got by your control of the market, and didn't get by efficiency and economy. These things are not hidden even from the layman. These are not half-hidden from college men. The college men's days of innocence have passed, and their days of sophistication have come. They know what is going on, because we live in a talkative world, full of statistics, full of congressional inquiries, full of trials of persons who have ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... seated, looking somewhat aimlessly at a Latin vocabulary, while Edwy was standing listlessly at the window. The "library," if it deserved the name, was very unlike a modern library; books were few, and yet very expensive, so that perhaps there was no fuller collection in any layman's house in the kingdom. There were Alfred's translations into Anglo-Saxon, the "Chronicle of Orosius," or the history of the World; the "History of the Venerable Bede," both in his original Latin and in English; Boethius on ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... not a monk yet," returned the Prior, calmly. "And it may not be your vocation to take the vows upon you. Now, do you see why you have been prevented from taking them hitherto? You may be called upon to act as a layman: to claim the estates, fight the battle with these Scotch heretics and come back to us a wealthy man! And in that case, you will act as a pious layman should do, and devote a portion of your wealth to Holy Church. But I do not say ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Hindenburg made his famous retreat in the winter of 1916 after the Allies had pressed heavily against the Teutonic front upon the ghastly field of the Somme. The record is one of great value to military strategists, to the layman it is only a succession of artillery barrages, of gas attacks, of aerial ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... small force of experts whose skills were almost as closed to the general scientific and technical world as the secrets of a medieval guild. The old A-bomb was an historical curiosity, and there was nobody on Ullr who had more than a layman's knowledge of the intricate technology of modern nuclear weapons. There were plenty of good nuclear-power engineers on Gongonk Island, but how long would it take them to design and ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... content that Mrs. John Caldigate should be Mrs. John Caldigate to all the world,—that all the world should be imposed on,—so that he was made subject to no imposition. In this matter, Sir John appeared to him to be no wider awake than a mere layman. It was clear to Mr. Seely that Dick Shand's story was 'got up,'—and very well got up. He had no pang of conscience as to using it. But when it came to believing it, that was quite another thing. The man turning up exactly at the moment! ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... me still, with vague expectant fear. Half turn'd from me, there stood beside the altar, Where incense-clouds nigh veiled him from my sight, A fair-haired priest—my quicken'd heart-beats falter! Or is he priest, or is he acolyte, Or layman devotee who ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... Creed, and who are bidden by the Church to repeat the same Creed every week, are in the same position as the clergy. But the Bishop again attempts to draw a distinction. 'The responsibility of joining in the Creed is left to the conscience of the layman,' but not to the conscience of the clergyman, nor, we suppose, of the choir.[41] This plea seems to us a very lame one. The Church of England has never thought of imposing severer doctrinal tests on the clergy than on the laity, and assent to the Creeds ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... do it so much better if I was not a clergyman," he would say to himself. And then, if old Brattle chose to turn his daughter out of the house, on such provocation as the daughter had given him, what was that to him, Fenwick, whether priest or layman? The old man knew what he was about, and had shown his determination ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... there are strong prejudices still existing in the layman's mind in regard to the use of aniline colors, who supposes that they are not only fugitive, but that the resulting tones are harsh and unattractive. This, unfortunately, was so twenty-five years ago, and the impression made then upon the layman's mind has not been ...
— Hand-Loom Weaving - A Manual for School and Home • Mattie Phipps Todd
... of disease manifests itself, by changes in the general appearance and behavior. But in order to ascertain the exact condition a general and systematic examination is necessary. The examiner, whether he be a layman or a veterinarian, must observe the animal carefully, noting the behavior, appearance, surroundings, ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... sufferings, and ask for counsel and admonition. Seeing this, the opponents of the elders declared that the sacrament of confession was being arbitrarily and frivolously degraded, though the continual opening of the heart to the elder by the monk or the layman had nothing of the character of the sacrament. In the end, however, the institution of elders has been retained and is becoming established in Russian monasteries. It is true, perhaps, that this instrument which had stood the test of a thousand years ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Prince could rally strength enough to be elected, so that two Arbitrators, an illustrious Poet and a holy Priest, were appointed to take cognizance of national causes. The associating together of a Priest and a layman, a southerner and a northerner, is conclusive proof that the bond of Celtic unity, frittered away during the Danish period, was never afterwards entirely restored. Con O'Lochan having been killed ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... White-Eye had recognized him and had not spoken was an insidious challenge, the kind of a challenge which a killer never lets pass. For the killer, strangely enough, is drawn to his kind through the instinct of self-preservation, a psychological paradox to the layman, who does not understand that peculiar pride of the gunman which leads him to remove a menace rather than to avoid it. Curiosity as to a rival's ability, his personal appearance, his quality of nerve, the sound of his voice, has drawn ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... Ireland had been slain by Cailte, one of Finn's companions. Mongan said it was on the banks of the Lame in Ulster, near his own palace; Forgoll said it was at Dubtar in Leinster. Forgoll, enraged at being contradicted by a mere layman, threatened to pronounce awful incantations against Mongan, which might put rat-hood on him, or anything. The end of it was that Mongan was given three days to prove his statement; if he should not have done so by that ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... all degenerates and criminals, that they may not contaminate the race with descendants. However, my office is to save life and I cannot do otherwise. But I am a surgeon, and every day I do things in the effort to save and prolong life that to a layman are repulsive and awful, more revolting to him than the sight of bloodless death itself. From the taking of human life I draw back. But no repugnance, no horror, unsteadies my hand elsewhere. The end of the crimes of your devilish confederacy ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... In some cases starving, unarmed and practically naked men were abandoned far from any white settlement. What is and what is not allowable in war seems so largely a matter of "military necessity" that the layman is reluctant to comment, for, in the last resort, it is only the needlessly barbarous that is ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... But Conyngham seemed to have got the hold he desired, for his assailant came suddenly swinging over the horse's neck, and one of his flying heels crashed through the window by Concha's head, making that ecclesiastic swear like any layman. The carriage was lifted on one side again, and ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... volume appeals to the editor of this series as one of the most significant books, viewed from the standpoint of the future of our educational theory and practice, that has been issued in years. Not only does the volume set forth, in language so simple that the layman can easily understand, the large importance for public education of a careful measurement of the intelligence of children, but it also describes the tests which are to be given and the entire procedure of giving them. In a clear and easy style the author sets forth scientific facts ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... early annals of Montreal a flood of new light has been thrown by the Abb Faillon. As a priest of St. Sulpice, he had ready access to the archives of the Seminaries of Montreal and Paris, and to numerous other ecclesiastical depositories, which would have been closed hopelessly against a layman and a heretic. It is impossible to commend too highly the zeal, diligence, exactness, and extent of his conscientious researches. His credulity is enormous, and he is completely in sympathy with the supernaturalists ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... as any layman who before or since his time has held the seals, Thomas Parker raised himself to the woolsack by great talents and honorable industry. As an advocate he won the respect of society and his profession; as a judge he ranks with the first expositors of ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... act independently of the rest. Many of them, you see, are headed by priests, not a few of whom have brought rifles with them. These will generally lead their own villagers, and their authority is far greater than that which any layman could obtain over them. I must appoint a leader to each body to direct their general movements; the village chiefs will do ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... show that a man who could look upon a chimpanzee as his equal, did not entirely ignore, as an uninformed layman, a poor philologist. Darwin did not in the least disdain the uninformed layman. He thought and wrote for him, and there is scarcely one of Darwin's books that cannot be read by the uninformed layman with profit. And in the interchange ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... about the High Court a signal air of gravity which to the layman is most compelling. The majesty of the Law is not apparent: of severity there is but a suggestion: something, indeed, of dignity, but less than a visitor will expect to find: something of silence. These are but equerries, subordinate. The ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... new a thing and so far from final, it seems to the layman so hopelessly accurate and extensive, that a moralist may well feel some diffidence in trying to estimate its achievements and promises at their human worth. The morrow may bring some great revolution in science, and is sure to bring many a correction and many a surprise. Religion ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... himself a worthy minister, for he read the marriage-service from the Church of England prayer-book with an earnest and slightly tremulous tone which betrayed the emotion of his heart. And if ever a true prayer, by churchman or layman, mounted to the Throne, that prayer was the fervent, "God bless you, Jessie!" to which the Highlander gave vent, as he pressed the bride to his heart when the ceremony ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... life of a layman until he was somewhat advanced in years, and had never learned any songs. For this reason often at the banquets where for the sake of merriment it was ruled that they should 25 all sing in turn at the ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... The "layman" need never think of his humbler task as being inferior to that of his minister. Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... a Catholic priest, so precise and explicit are the Roman Sacraments. A very abject life it is to murmur Absolve te over the heads of parishioners, and to place wafers on their tongues, when we have ceased to believe that we have power to forgive sins and to turn biscuits into God. A layman may have doubts, and continue to live his life as before, without troubling to take the world into his confidence, but a priest may not. The priest is a paid agent and the money an unbelieving priest receives, if he be not inconceivably ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... to oblige you, old man,' he said. 'Or desert my post and pretend to be a layman. I am a man under authority, like you. I wish the powers that be would send me out there, but it's for them to judge, and if they think I should be of less use as a padre than all the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys they are sending, it's not for me ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... the misconception which has existed on this point has arisen from supposing that the term publication refers to other than a publication in the country. But, when one remembers how rare it is to get lawyers to agree on a question like this, it becomes a layman to advance his opinion with great humility. I suppose, after all a good way of getting an accurate notion of the meaning of the law, would be to toss a dollar into the air, and cry "heads," or "tails." Sir Walter Scott seemed fully aware of the great circulation of his books in ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the vernacular, the English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German languages rapidly took shape. Their development was expressive of the new spirit in western Europe, as also was the fact that Dante (1264-1321), "the first literary layman since Boethius" (d. 524), wrote his great poem, The Divine Comedy, in his native Italian instead of in the Latin which he knew so well—an evidence of independence of large future import. New native literatures were springing forth all over Europe. Beginning with the troubadours ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY |
