"Profanation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chambers are not arranged on the simple plan which we meet with in the pyramids of earlier date. Experience had taught the Pharaohs that neither granite walls nor the multiplication of barriers could preserve their mummies from profanation: no sooner was vigilance relaxed, either in the time of civil war or under a feeble administration, than robbers appeared on the scene, and boring passages through the masonry with the ingenuity of moles, they at length, after indefatigable patience, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... not quite Sixty Years since, very narrowly escaped the unworthy fate of being converted into a barrack for French prisoners. May repose and blessings attend the ashes of the patriotic statesman, who, amongst his last services to Scotland, interposed to prevent this profanation! ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... submission to a contemptuous Fate? His whole nature rose up in revolt, and the self he had once abdicated rushed back to him, howling out taunts which were not the less bitter because they were false. Not pausing to wonder whether the present were a profanation of the past, or the past an insipid forecast of the present, he was conscious only that a change—perhaps a terrible change—had taken place in his mind—a change so sudden and so violent that it had paralysed every power of analysis and reflection. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... as far as possible, and he surrounded himself with Bishops and clergy. His mother Helena made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to visit the spots where our blessed Lord lived and died, and to clear them from profanation. The churches she built over the Holy Sepulchre and the Cave of the nativity at Bethlehem have been kept up even ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... discharged from the civil power, but the Apparitor of the Archbishop of Paris seized them, and conveyed them to the Ecclesiastical Prison; and, in three days more, they were tried and convicted of a scandalous profanation, by assuming to themselves the names, characters, and appearances, of an holy apostle and a blessed angel, with an intent to deceive a pious and well-meaning woman, and to the scandal of religion. On this they were condemned to be publicly whipped, burnt on the ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... enable the reader to understand the feeling with which they beheld the young woman keep the royal hand a prisoner in hers. Some of them shuddered and turned their faces not to witness a familiarity so closely resembling profanation. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... of hell. Amalia was also a believer, and she had a reputation for piety in the place: she belonged to several confraternities, she was patron of several asylums, she frequently made presents to the images, and she was generally seen with the clergy; but this profanation she regarded with the greatest indifference. Religion was for her a thing of respectability, but her own pleasures and wishes seemed the thing to be most respected. After a few minutes the count cautiously ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... had spoken more sharply. Even profanation of the fine chair has not roused her. She takes up her knitting, and they all suspect that she knows what ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... "one who stands as a mediator between God and the people, and brings them to God by the virtue of certain ceremonial acts which he performs for them, and which they could not perform for themselves without profanation, because they are at a distance from God, and cannot, in their own persons, venture to approach towards him." In this sense of the word "priest," the term is not applied to the ministers of the Christian church, either by the Scripture, ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... worthy daughter of a brilliant line of kings, in a firm grasp, as if it required the exertion of all his strength to master this delicate embodiment of charming womanhood. True, the proud blood of the outwitted lioness urged her to resist this profanation, and Proculejus—an enviable honour—made her feel the superior strength of his arm. I am no prophet, but Dion, I repeat, this shameful struggle and the glances which flashed upon him will be remembered to his dying hour. Had they been darted at me, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... turning into domestic beings, would be a failure, a trouble, an interruption, a desecration, and a bore; to get married merely to go on as they were at present, would, in the eyes of Alfieri, have been a profanation of the poetry of their situation, a perfectly ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... his trial. At first, as we before said, there were only some slight suspicions advanced against Alcibiades. But afterwards, in his absence, his enemies attacked him more violently, and confounded together the breaking the images with the profanation of the mysteries, as though both had been committed in pursuance of the same conspiracy for changing the government. The truth is, his accusers alleged nothing against him which could be positively proved. One of them, being asked how he knew the men who defaced ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... communion table, though still of wood and movable, is, as a matter of fact, never moved; it is placed altar-wise — that is, with its longer axis running north and south, and close against the east wall. Often there is a reredos behind it; it is also fenced in by rails to preserve it from profanation ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... almost thanked the rough voyageurs for their incessant melodies, which made conversation difficult for the time, and thus left her to her own sweet silent thoughts, which seemed almost too sacred for the profanation of words. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... festivals in their copes, that nothing might be lacking to do them honour. He offered no opposition to the deposition of King Richard II.: it was clearly inevitable. Braybrooke was a vigorous reformer of abuses, and denounced the profanation of the church by traffickers, shooting at birds inside, and ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... to release him, he found him confidently calculating on the representation of Westminster, then about to become vacant by the unjust disgrace of Lord Cochrane. On his return home to his wife, fortified perhaps by wine, Sheridan burst into a long and passionate fit of weeping, at the profanation, as he termed it, which his person ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... great city there is one place which is, in a sense, sacred from the profanation of too utilitarian progress. However commercialised Paris might become, you could not cheapen the environs of Notre Dame! Whatever happens to us, let us hope that we will always keep Washington Square as it is today,—our little and dear bit of fine, concrete history, the one perfect ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... Rabat was already irreparably disfigured when General Lyautey came to Morocco; but ferocious old Sale, Phenician counting-house and breeder of Barbary pirates, had been saved from profanation by its Moslem fanaticism. Few Christian feet had entered its walls except those of the prisoners who, like Robinson Crusoe, slaved for the wealthy merchants in its mysterious terraced houses. Not till two or three years ago was it completely pacified; and when it opened its ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... were not difficult to trace: love of dress, love of flattery, love of excitement. They had not dresses like the other ladies, so they stole them; they could not pay for flattery by distinctions, and the dower of a worldly marriage, so they paid by the profanation of their persons. In excitement, more and more madly sought from day to day, they drowned the ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... selfishness? For such must be the effect, if General Joseph Reed is to occupy a niche of glory in the same temple with George Washington. But there is no moral crucible to melt down such deeds into a general and indiscriminate mass. Truth revolts from such profanation. Justice spurns the contamination. Nature herself rises up in arms against the thought, as doing violence to all her holiest sympathies; her purest heart-throbs, her noblest aspirations. ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... mother remained inexorable. I am sure in her own mind she resented as a profanation her daughter's work about the church. She herself had never entered that familiar holy place since her daughter's disgrace. Sunday and holiday all these years she had trudged to Breagh, a long way round by the coast, for mass. All expostulations have been vain, even Father ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... terrified, and they fortified Judaea, and cryed unto God with great fervency, and humbled themselves in sackcloth, and put ashes on their heads, and cried unto the God of Israel that he would not give their wives and their children and cities for a prey, and the Temple for a profanation: and the High-priest, and all the Priests put on sackcloth and ashes, and offered daily burnt offerings with vows and free gifts of the people, Judith iv. and then began Josiah to seek after the God of ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... become a Christian, and a peaceable possessor of Normandy, ordered the abbey to be repaired, and had the relics restored which the monks had carried off to secure them from the profanation of the Normans. ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... it is striking—Hyperion to a satyr; Thersites to Hercules; mud to marble; dunghill to diamond; a singed cat to a Bengal tiger; a whining puppy to a roaring lion. Shade of the mighty Davis, forgive the almost profanation of ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... of the ancient, rustic, manly, homebred sense of this country.—I did not dare to rub off a particle of the venerable rust that rather adorns and preserves, than destroys, the metal. It would be a profanation to touch with a tool the stones which construct the sacred altar of peace. I would not violate with modern polish the ingenuous and noble roughness of these truly Constitutional materials. Above all things, I was resolved not to be guilty ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... their places in the topmost tower, they rolled them down the steps of the pyramid amid the groans of the natives and the triumphant shouts of their comrades, and then burnt them to ashes. The Totonacs, finding that their gods were unable to prevent or even punish this profanation of their temple, now believed that they were indeed less to be feared than the Spaniards, and offered no further resistance. By Cortes's orders the teocalli was then thoroughly purified, and an altar was erected, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... pleases:—the one gained a pretty woman, whom he deserved, by fighting for; and the other has been fighting in the Peninsula many a long day, "by Shrewsbury clock," without gaining anything in 'that' country but the title of "the Great Lord," and "the Lord;" which savours of profanation, having been hitherto applied only to that Being to whom "'Te Deums'" for carnage are the rankest blasphemy.—It is to be presumed the general will one day return to ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... had flushed at his first words. To hear the name by which her father and mother and lover had called her on Andrew Cameron's lips seemed like profanation. But, she told herself, the time was past for squeamishness. If she could ask a favour of Andrew Cameron, she could bear lesser pangs. For Sylvia's sake she shook hands with him, for Sylvia's sake she sat down in the chair he offered. But for no living human being's sake could this determined ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... personal and particular acceptance of Christ in the new covenant being the only fountain of acceptable entering into national covenants. Hence it concerns all that would be right Covenanters, to search and see how it may be betwixt God and them, because 'tis but a profanation of the covenant to have the hand and tongue at it, and the heart from it: a well informed head without a reformed heart is not sufficient: a good opinion and liking of the covenant without a heart and affection to the covenant avails nothing ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... Siva who here engage in trade, and accumulate much wealth.[12] The family of the chief do not build tombs; and that now raised over the place where the late prince was buried is dedicated as a temple to Siva, and was made merely with a view to secure the place from all danger of profanation.[13] ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... with the pall throwing the derelict into more sombre relief, Dan caught more strongly than ever the utter contrast which her presence brought to this abandoned hulk. Whenever she had walked along the deck it had seemed a profanation to him that the uneven planking should know her tread; that she should be on the derelict at all was, he felt, a working of Fate against everything that was ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... day sabbath is not of the law of nature, and so not moral; because though we read that the law of nature, and that before Moses, was charged upon the world, yet I find not till then, that the profanation of a seventh day sabbath was charged upon the world: and indeed to me this very thing makes a great scruple in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... who did not regard her faculty as an accomplishment but as a gift, treated it as a treasure to be hidden for the day of the Lord rather than a flag to be flaunted in a civic procession—was jealously shy over it, as a thing it would be profanation to show to any but loving eyes. To utter herself in song to any but the right persons, except indeed it was for some further and higher end justifying the sacrifice, appeared to her a kind of immodesty, a taking of her heart from its case, and ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... tradition, from the father to the son, and so from generation to generation, without writing; or, unless it were casually, without the least communicating them to any other nation or tribe; for to do that they account a profanation. And, yet, it is thought that they, or some spirit worse than they, first told us, that lice, swallowed alive, were a certain cure for the yellow-jaundice. This, and many other medicines, were discovered ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... hands, defaced by the coarse jests of polite society, its sanctity forever missed. The temple has been invaded, its white floors trodden by feet from muddy alleys, the gods thrown down. Is not the temple as much ruined when this profanation has been accomplished, as if the walls had fallen? I will not be misunderstood as doubting, for one moment, the purity of soul of American girls as a whole; but I assert, that the result of which I have spoken is terribly common in our large cities, and that it is much more likely to be ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... anyone, whether citizen, slave, or resident foreigner, who gave information concerning this or any similar crime. At first nothing was disclosed as to the mutilation of the Hermae, but other recent acts of profanation were brought to light, and among these was mentioned a derisive parody of the great Eleusinian Mysteries, alleged to have been performed in the house of Alcibiades, and elsewhere. The enemies of Alcibiades, who were both numerous and powerful, ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... that Sunday labor in the army and navy be reduced to the measure of strict necessity. The discipline and character of the national forces should not suffer, nor the cause they defend be imperiled, by the profanation of the day or the name ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... greatly console Clement and Cherry for the profanation of their Penbeacon. I declare I ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Indignant at this profanation of a tomb, the Khoja took a stout stick and made up his mind to chastise the intruder. But the dog, who saw what was coming, got up and ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... unconscious, the free-will, our only absolute Self, is coextensive and co-present. But not now dare I longer discourse of this, waiting for a loftier mood, and a nobler subject, warned from within and from without, that it is profanation to speak of these mysteries tois maede phantasteisin, os kalon to taes dikaiosynaes kai sophrosynaes prosopon, kai oute hesperos oute eoos outo kala. To gar horon pros to horomenon syngenes kai homoion poiaesamenon dei epiballein tae thea, ou gar an popote eiden ophthalmos ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a dead person who rose from the dead to suck the blood of the living during sleep. By way of reprisal the living dug up, exorcised, and mutilated the supposed vampires. This was called vampirism. The name vampire was then transferred to the living person who had so treated a corpse. All profanation of the corpse, whatever its origin, is now frequently called vampirism (Epaulow, Vampirisme, These de Lyon, 1901; id., "Le Vampire du Muy," Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, Sept., 1903). The earliest ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... a man will then have sought them not for themselves and handled them for the use they can be. To keep a person from premature spiritual experience, nn. 221-233, is obviously a law of providence, guarding against relapse and consequent profanation of what had ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... received from France. What would he have thought, if any person had told him, that, before the expiration of the century in which he lived, the French themselves would, in perfect hatred of Christ, destroy the finest churches of France? At their profanation of his favorite church of St. Bertin, in the town of St. Omer's, that is said to have happened which Victor Vitensis relates to have happened in the persecution of the Vandals, (Hist. Pers. Van. 31:) "Introeuntes maximo cum furore, corpus Christi et sanguinem pavimento sparserunt, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... profanation of the Lord's day, and sat down and contemplated the old Aztec god, who had been deified for his wisdom, and could not but regret the change that had been imposed upon these imbecile Indians. The next Sabbath after this was the national anniversary of the miraculous ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... trying to break them away. I started nervously and looked over my shoulder, half expecting to see the wrathful face of a slim, dark man. A cold air blew through the room. It almost seemed that viewless influences were interposing to save the stranger's treasures from profanation. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... was unthinkable. It was a desperate desecration, comparable only, in his vague analogies, to the Mecca pilgrimage and profanation of a Holy Tomb. But its very ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... and rustic sports being held in them as early as John's reign, but unfortunately I have not been an observer of your motto, and know not now where to refer for such instances. I shall therefore feel obliged to any of your readers who will specify a few instances of the profanation of churchyards at different periods, or refer me to works where such may be found. Churchyards appear to have been used in special cases for sepulture from the year 750, but not commonly so used till the end of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... order that he may deal with the cases of scandal referred to in the second paragraph, and with the cases of enmity referred to in the third. The main reason of the Church's action herein is the danger of profanation of the Lord's Table by the presence of unworthy Communicants. A second reason is the danger of injury to the consciences of the congregation by wounding their sense of corporate responsibility for individual wrong-doing. A third is the spiritual interest of the offenders themselves, ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown
... in violent indignation: "Do not deceive yourselves," cried he, "nor think the Christians will be faithful to their promises, or their King as magnanimous in conquest as he has been victorious in war. Death is the least we have to fear. It is the plundering and sacking of our city, the profanation of our mosques, the ruin of our homes, the violation of our wives and daughters—cruel oppression, bigoted intolerance, whips and chains, the dungeon, the fagot, and the stake—such are the miseries and indignities we shall see and suffer; at least, those ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... not of any church, but of standing in the community, tried to incite the sectarians to assert their rights, but found no following among them. They left the Temple together with certain others who had been trembling toward belief in Dylks, but whom the profanation repelled; when they were gone the tumult sank enough to let Enraghty announce another meeting a week hence, and ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... "conwenience," the store set by the worthy housewife upon her goods and chattels was sufficiently visible in the drugget that threaded its narrow way up the gay Brussels stair-carpet, and in certain layers of paper which protected from the profanation of immediate touch the mahogany hand-rail. And nothing could exceed the fostering care exhibited in the drawing-room, when the door thrown open admitted a view of its damask moreen curtains, pinned back from such impertinent sunbeams as could force their ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is at an earlier stage of this impression, when the thought of this profanation of the sacredness of life and the sanctity of love chills the life-blood of his heart, and then rushes burning through it like the shame of a personal insult, that he first stands before us in the palace of the King. In appearance nothing is changed. ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... author could equal the poorest that Scott put forth. The Continental opinion which at that time often reckoned the American novelist as equal, if not superior to his British contemporary, seemed to men here like a profanation. It was, indeed, so ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... shortly, and Margaret pondered on his strange manner, little guessing what profanation her mention of Amabel's letter had seemed to him, or how it jarred on him to hear this exaggerated likeness of ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conduct which Ambrose had adopted remained equally clear and straight, whether before or after the promulgation of this edict. It was his duty to use all the means which Christ has given the Church to prevent the profanation of the Basilica. But soon a new question arose for his determination. An imperial message was brought to him to retire from the city at once, with any friends who chose to attend him. It is not certain whether this was intended as an absolute command, or ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... feeling of trust rose in my bosom. I speak it not profanely—[when a writer says this, be sure of it that, as in the present case, he goes deep as he can in profanation]—when I say that the idea of the yet unknown Saviour, a child among the Doctors of the Temple, occurred spontaneously to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... "glorious wars and glorious cathedrals," he might surely have remembered that the age in which Rheims Cathedral was built, whatever else it was, was not an age of Pacifism. The insult to Jesus Christ is not in the sword (which in His own words He came to bring), but in the profanation of the sword. It is in cruelty, injustice, treachery, unbridled lust, the worship of unrighteous strength—in fact, in all that can be summed up in ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... be expected from the dissolute manners of the people who composed them; and to this improper practice must undoubtedly be attributed most of the vices that existed in the colony, pilferings, garden-robberies, burglaries, profanation ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... What right has Goethe, what right has Arnold, what right has any dictionary, to define the word Irreverence for me? What their ideals are is nothing to me. So long as I reverence my own ideals my whole duty is done, and I commit no profanation if I laugh at theirs. I may scoff at other people's ideals as much as I want to. It is my right and my privilege. No man has any ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... often the cold reasoning of souls more busied with their own ease and peace than with the happiness of others, or with truth? And if sincere men are conscious of it, how much they must suffer by such profanation of their ideal!... ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... licentiousness, ran through the convent, until it came to the ears of the Prior himself. This holy man, who hated Father Gebhardt on account of his intimacy with the most respectable houses, was shocked at the scandalousness of the affair, which he considered as a profanation of the holy sacrament; and, refusing to decide on such a weighty matter, he referred it to the Archbishop. The Archbishop, wisely concluding that whatever sinful man wishes or thinks by day he dreams of by night, denounced ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... have not the time—so may I model my answer after the great Agassiz. I am not a Werther of science, but rather you are a John Ruskin of these latter days. He wept at the profanation of the world, at the steam-launches violating the sanctity of the Venetian canals and the electric cars running beneath the shadow of the pyramids; and you weep at the violation of like sanctities in the spiritual world. A gondola is more beautiful, but the steam-launch takes one places, and ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... became a changed man, and cast in his lot with the people of God, it had needed the utmost exercise of the strong restraint which he imposed on himself, as far as outward acts were concerned, to keep him from crying out against what seemed to him to be a profanation of God's ordinances. After old Mr Hollister's death, when others fell in with the new order of things, and one after another of his old friends found his place in the church, he kept back and remained a spectator, even when he would gladly ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... had caught the apprentice with her spectacles, her sacred spectacles, perched on his nose, and the profanation had left a kind of religious horror ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... those world-famous curiosities, the white and pink terraces, in the vicinity of Lake Rotomahana and the region of the famous geysers. The natives have a superstition that the eruption of the extinct Tarawera was caused by the profanation of foreign footsteps. It was to them a sacred place, and its crater a repository for their dead. The first earthquake occurred in this region. One side of the mountain fell in, and then the eruption ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... Hallard, who shadowed him, feeling in his journalistic bones that a big story would break about him soon, noted his condition and called on Doctor Mosely. He was still shaken with the storm of defending his ideals from profanation, and Hallard easily drew from him an admission that Mr. Dyckman was bent upon matrimony, also a scathing diatribe on the remarriage of divorced persons as one of the signs of the ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... to last, the whole fabric is claimed to be "sacred and divine," and to question it, "sacrilege" and "profanation of holy things." Thus, that which seemed originally as wings to the toiling, sorrowing children of men, becomes at last a "millstone about the neck," a ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... most religiously observed by journeymen shoemakers, and other inferior mechanics. a profanation of that day, by working, is punishable by a line, particularly among the gentle craft. An Irishman observed, that this saint's anniversary ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... mental conditions which could make him capable of such a profanation. Step by step he traced their development, in his own harsh experiences of life, as he followed his father's body to the grave. He traced them back indeed to that father himself, since it was from him that he had inherited the bitter and perilous ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... his being at a loss, had the abbe thought fit to continue in this strain; but such a style of conversation, garnished with grave and solemn words, seemed almost sacrilegious in the mouth of a man of such ridiculous appearance—a profanation at once sad and grotesque. Derues seemed to comprehend the impression it produced, and tuning again ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... seem the least bit funny at the time. I just felt awful. What would the dear old woman say to this profanation? Why the dickens did people have whitewashed walls on which sacrilegious stains were luridly visible? I looked up and down the hall like Moses when he slew that Egyptian, trembling lest the old woman should come in. How could I make ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... thou wouldst have done just as thou hast done!"—"Come, come, Sir Jacob, you know not my inducement. You know not what an angel I have in person and mind. Your eyes shall by and bye be blest with the sight of her: your ears with hearing her speak: and then you'll call all you have said, profanation."—"What is it I hear? You talk in the language of romance; and from the housekeeper to the head of the house, you're all stark staring mad. Nephew, I wish, for thy own credit, thou wert—But what signifies wishing?—I hope you'll not bring ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... made no objection, though the suspicion was humiliating; he changed shirt, dress, and cowl. Then, when the Franciscans observed that Savanarola was placing the tabernacle in his hands, they protested that it was profanation to expose the sacred host to the risk of burning, that this was not in the bond, and if Bonvicini would not give up this supernatural aid, they far their part would give up the trial altogether. Savonarola replied that it was not astonishing that the champion of religion who put his faith ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... concerned, or in a manner constrained, to punish any other sin as this. He is bound in honour and interest to vindicate His name from the abuse, His authority from the contempt, His holy ordinance from the profanation, which it doth infer. He is concerned to take care that His providence be not questioned, that the dread of His majesty be not voided, that all religion be not overthrown by the outrageous ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... and scrip, so to speak, and having resisted the efforts of the cabman at the station to rob me, I started to walk up to the city alone. I understand they have a trolley line now,—just imagine the profanation of a trolley line in the ancient city of St. Francis!—but at the time of which I speak, the atmosphere of the Middle Ages still hung ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... there was a softness, a purity, a delicacy and tenderness in this new feeling, in which the influence of sex secretly though unacknowledgedly predominated; and even while sensible it would have been a profanation of every thing most sacred and delicate in nature to have admitted a thought of love within his breast at such a moment, he also felt he could have entertained a voluptuous joy in making any sacrifice, even to the surrender of life itself, provided the tranquillity of that gentle ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... Ghost cannot be too early instilled into the infant mind, which is open to the highest sentiments of veneration, devotion, and heroic religion. In youth there are the same motives. Indulgence in solitary vice is self-destructive of all that youth most values—a profanation of his ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... another way we are not skilled in."[32] So says the author of "Representative Men." "Evil," according to old philosophers, "is good in the making; that pure malignity can exist is the extreme proposition of unbelief. It is not to be entertained by a rational agent. It is Atheism; it is the last profanation." "The divine effort is never relaxed; the carrion in the sun will convert itself into grass and flowers; and man, though in brothels, or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way to all that is ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... a natural transition to pass on to the singularly incongruous uses to which the naves of some of our principal ecclesiastical buildings were in a few instances perverted. In the minds of modern Churchmen there would be the closest connection between culpable neglect of the sacred fabric, and the profanation of it by admission within its walls of the sights and sounds of common daily business or pleasure. There was something of this in the period under review. The extraordinary desecrations once general ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... be learned from the writings of Homer of the state of medicine in his time, although we need hardly expect to find in an epic poem many references to diseases and their cure. As dissection was considered a profanation of the body, anatomical knowledge was exceedingly meagre. Machaon was surgeon to Menelaus and Podalarius was the pioneer of phlebotomy. Both were regarded as the sons of AEsculapius; they were soldiers as well as doctors, and fought ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... arm, dear; I am so tired. It's such a perfect night, that it seemed a shame to stay indoors. The Major has been admiring 'The Flowery Way.' It certainly looks its best to- night." She turned towards Major Humphreys with her light, cynical laugh. "My son declares that it is profanation to allow ordinary, commonplace mortals to walk up those steps! He always escorts my visitors round by another way. He is ungallant enough to say that he has never yet seen a girl whom he would care to watch walk up those steps in the moonlight. She would have to be quite ideal in every ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... convinced it was perfectly sound, I would have taken measures for cutting it down and sending home planks of it to Windsor Castle. The fate that awaited it would have justified the profanation. The doubt of its soundness, however, and the difficulty of finding tools large enough to do it justice, procrastinated the period of its doom. I recommended the landlord of the tavern to direct his guests, from time to time, to inspect this Goliath of oaks."—Galt's "Autobiography."] ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... caustic humor nor poetical melancholy of Jacques, nor the brilliant wit and despotical fancifulness of the princess shepherd-boy duly given, we had the warbling of birds, and sheep-bells tinkling in the distance, to comfort us. I hope it is not profanation to say, "These should ye have done, and not have left the others undone." Nevertheless, and in spite of all, the enchantment of Shakespeare's inventions is such to me that they cannot be marred, let what will be done to them. As long ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... nothing! Your touch is profanation. I would sooner go down into my grave, out there in the churchyard, under the granite slabs, than become the wife of a man so unprincipled. I am neither piqued nor jealous, for your affairs cannot affect my life; I ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... had belonged to them, presents being even added thereto; hence it is a grievous scandal amongst all those nations when they see Europeans open graves to take out the beaver robes they have placed therein. The burial-grounds are places so respected that their profanation is accounted the most atrocious outrage that can be offered ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... features. It is like gazing on some scenes in the land which we inherit from them; we see the mountains, rising sternly and with frozen summits tip to heaven, and the forests, waving in massy depths where sunshine seems a profanation, and we see the gray mist, like the duskiness of years, shedding a chill obscurity over the whole; but the green and pleasant spots in the hollow of the hills, the warm places in the heart of what looks desolate, are hidden from our eyes. Still, however, a prevailing characteristic of ...
— Dr. Bullivant - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... how can you speak patiently of such profanation and cruelty? Papist butchers and Scottish thieves, for the child of your hearth! Were it not better that I stole her safely away and wedded her in secret, so that at least she ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the chair in which she used to sit, and let her rest her feet on the cushion which she embroidered? Perhaps you would even want me to call her mamma? Oh, dear papa! surely you do not think of such profanation!" ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... mind to happy repose. I care nothing for your five o'clock tea of modish drawing-rooms, idle and wearisome like all else in which that world has part; I speak of tea where one is at home in quite another than the worldly sense. To admit mere strangers to your tea-table is profanation; on the other hand, English hospitality has here its kindliest aspect; never is friend more welcome than when he drops in for a cup of tea. Where tea is really a meal, with nothing between it and nine o'clock supper, it is—again in the true sense—the homeliest meal ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... as an abstract one. I ask you only to suppose the case. Should you thrust conscience into the cellar, stifle its outcries, and give your consent to a profanation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... him. The worthy old sea captain, on landing, embraced his lady with tenderness and true affection. This, as there were many spectators by, gave great offence to the puritanical landsmen, and was considered as an act of indecency and a flagrant profanation of the Sabbath. The next day, therefore, the captain was summoned before the magistrates and selectmen, who, with many severe rebukes and pious exhortations, ordered him to ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... a hitherto unheard-of form; as a creature no longer of ecstasy only, but of voluptuousness; as Dea, with her head resting on the pillow. He was ashamed of this visionary desecration. It was like an attempt at profanation. He resisted its assault. He turned from it, but it returned again. He felt as if he were committing a criminal assault. To him Dea was encompassed by a cloud. Cleaving that cloud, he shuddered, as though he were raising her chemise. It was in April. The spine has its dreams. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... himself for the artist's profanation of his first attempt to approach Miss Francie by indulging at the end of another week in a second. He went about six o'clock, when he supposed she would have returned from her day's wanderings, and his prudence was rewarded by the sight of the young lady sitting in the court of the hotel ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... a thousand memories, exist only as dishonoured ruins. Some have been pulled down entirely, and the site used for gaols or barracks. Convicts labour where once monks prayed. The renowned abbey of Cluny is a racing stable, and Le Bec, the home of Anselm, has suffered a like profanation. Factories have invaded some of these consecrated sites. Many have been used as quarries for generations. All the carved and wrought stone has been cut off, and used for making bridges and roads and private houses. Nature has covered the remains with clinging ivy, and creeping plants, and wild ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... them in the first author; and, even when our understandings have convinced us that they were new to him, they are still old to us. This has been the fate of many of the finest passages of the most eminent writers. It is melancholy to trace a noble thought from stage to stage of its profanation; to see it transferred from the first illustrious wearer to his lacqueys, turned, and turned again, and at last hung on a scarecrow. Petrarch has really suffered much from this cause. Yet that he should have so suffered is a sufficient proof that his excellences were not of the highest order. A ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... outvying in richness, and utter wantonness of wasted expense, anything yet seen in America. They are open always. Haunts abound where, in the pretended seclusion of a few yards' distance, rich adventurers riot with the beautiful battalions of the fallen angels. It were gross profanation to the baleful memories of Phryne, Aspasia, and Messalina to find, from all the sin-stained leaves of the world's past, prototypes of these bold, reckless man-eaters. They throng the softly carpeted, richly tapestried interiors of the ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... usual fastidiousness of his extravagant class. As the dusty and travel-worn party trod the soft carpets and brushed aside their silken hangings in their slow progress with their helpless burden to the lace-canopied and snowy couch of the young gambler, it seemed almost a profanation of some feminine seclusion. Gideon, to whom such luxury was unknown, was profoundly troubled. The voluptuous ease and sensuousness, the refinements of a life of irresponsible indulgence, affected him with a physical terror ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... course out of the question; and now high Brahmans and low Chumars—who are never seen in the same temple even though they worship the same gods, as the presence of a Chumar there would be deemed a profanation—may be seen packed in the same carriage in as close contact as two human beings can be. When they separate the Brahmans have recourse to lustrations, and satisfy themselves the ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... (sense) contained therein is this, that by polygamical marriage in the Christian world, the marriage of the Lord and the Church is profaned; in like manner the marriage of good and truth; and still more the Word, and with the Word the church; and the profanation of those things is spiritual adultery. That the profanation of the good and truth of the church derived from the Word corresponds to adultery, and hence is spiritual adultery; and that the falsification of good and truth has alike correspondence, but in a less degree, may be seen ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... flower has wept, and bow'd toward the east, Above an hour since; yet you are not drest; Nay, not so much as out of bed; When all the birds have matins said, And sung their thankful hymns; 'tis sin, Nay, profanation, to keep in; When as a thousand virgins on this day, Spring sooner than the lark, to fetch ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of many persons it is a profanation to make a stage spectacle out of religious things; and it has been urged that "Parsifal" is not only religious but specifically Christian; not only Christian but filled with parodies of elements which are partly liturgical, partly Biblical. In narrating ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Animated with her new resolve, she thought little of the profanation, and crowned herself with flowers from the nearest grave. In an hour the villagers from Ettlingen saw her leaning on Fritz's shoulder in the waltz. That night the shade of Wilhelm stood at her bed-head: 'You have accepted the flowers growing on my grave and nourished from my heart. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... make the like judicial application of its laws to the public conduct of the governing authorities, that instant he debases Christianity to politics, most likely to party-politics; and a pious horror is affected at the profanation. Christianity is to be honored somewhat after the same manner as the Lama of Thibet. It is to stay in its temple, to have the proprieties of homage duly preserved within its precincts, but to be exempted (in reverence of ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... and appliances, and not an argument against her rights as contrasted with the rights of man. What! usurp an exclusive control—then degrade the modes of exercising power, and after that say the degradation is reason why the usurpation should continue unchallenged. What profanation of the very powers of thought is that! On the contrary, I am prepared to say that I see no reason, I never have seen any reason, why there might not be changes introduced in your modes of taking the sense ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... mirror and pin-cushion and dainty toilet things; and in the corner a wash-stand, with real china-ware bowl and pitcher, and with soap in a china dish, and on a rack more than a dozen towels—towels too clean and white for one out of practice to use without some vague sense of profanation. So my face spoke again, and he answered ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Many would have accepted them, but the priests threw all their influence in the scale against it; reminding the king of the fate of Montezuma, after all his hospitality to the Whites, of the seizure and imprisonment of Cacama, of the massacre of the nobles, of the profanation of the temple, and of the insatiable greed that had stripped the ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... Violation of a negative commandment not so punished. (3) Violation of a negative commandment the penalty for which is death at the hands of the court, and being "cut off" by divine agency; for example, profanation of the divine name or false oath. In cases of the first class a penitent is as good as one who never sinned. In the second class he is even superior, because the latter has not the same prophylactic against pride. In the third class the penitent ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... from nothing but the kindly terms between them; if you went to him when he was engaged to Doctor Holmes, he told you so with a sort of implication in his manner that the thought of anything else for the time was profanation. The good fellow who took him his drives about the Beverly and Manchester shores seemed to be quite in the joke of the doctor's humor, and within the bounds of his personal modesty and his functional dignity permitted himself a smile at the doctor's sallies, when you stood talking with him, or ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... calling to her to come—come quickly to!—or she would miss it; of that dear vanished sister's sweet beauty she could dwell upon, forgetful that it also was her own,—how she might have let these memories run riot in her heart, and break it, but that the very thing that provoked them was also their profanation—Mrs. Prichard at Strides Cottage! Who or what was Mrs. Prichard? A poor old ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... especial force, and the memory of Jane was to her so sacred that to allow the gaze of strangers to dwell upon the actions or the feelings of so precious a being would have seemed to her nothing short of profanation. In her old age she became aware that Jane's fame had not only survived but increased, and that a time might come when the public would wish to know more details of her life than had been given in the short memoir, written ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... Ranulph; "such profanation of the dead shall not be endured, were he ten times my brother. Stand aside," added he, advancing towards the bier, and motioning Luke away. "Withdraw your hand from my father's body, and remove what you ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... formless, undefined, without set bounds; and it is often a sore experience to discover that it is circumscribed, and limited like everything human. At first to speak of it as having qualifications was a profanation, and to find them out came as ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... intonations and cadences; not of the echo of smashing blows, of riven armor, of howling victims and roaring beasts. The spot is, in short, one of the sweetest legacies of the ancient world; and there seems no profanation in the fact that by day it is open to the good people of Arles, who use it to pass, by no means, in great numbers, from one part of the town to the other; treading the old marble floor, and brushing, if need be, the empty benches. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... never wanted to be alone—she who had been so fond of solitude such a short time ago. She was afraid of herself—afraid to think—afraid of that dim future that was drawing so very near. Every feeling of heart and soul revolted at the thought of that loveless marriage—the profanation of herself seemed more ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... in horror, clutching his staff as though to shield it from profanation. The others howled like a hound-pack at a full moon, except one of the short-tunic boys, who was slapping himself on the head with both hands and yodeling. The horn-crew hastily swung their piece around at the ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... looked aghast at the notion thus presented to him. That Caspar Brooke—his friend, his mentor, almost his hero—should not have been able to live with his wife was bad enough! That his daughter should not admire him seemed to Maurice a sort of profanation! Heavens, what did the girl mean? The mother might have been an aristocratic fool; but the girl?—she looked intelligent enough! There must be a misapprehension somewhere; and it occurred to Maurice that it might be his ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... nicety of feeling, but as a sentiment inspired by faith, which teaches us to venerate the word of God. If a great bishop has thought it proper to compare the abuse of the sacred word, when it is announced, to the profanation of the Body itself of Jesus Christ, may we not, in the same spirit, say that he who permits that word to be trampled upon when it is written, becomes in some measure as guilty as if he had allowed the Sacred Body of our Saviour to be ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... Walter Stewart over again? Indeed, Malcolm remembered how carefully King James was prevented from hearing the means by which the Countess intended to make the lady his own; and a sensation came over him, that it was profanation to call on St. Andrew to bless what was to be brought about by such means. Why was it that, as his eyes fell on the face of King Henry, the whole world and all his projects acquired so different a colouring? and a sentence ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heat. The bronzed faces of the soldiers ran lumps of sweat. The file upon the jail walls looked down into the wide yard yawningly. No wind fluttered the two battle standards condemned to unfold their trophies upon this coming profanation. Not yet arrived. Why? The extent of grace has almost been attained. The sentence gave them only till two o'clock! Why are they so dilatory in wishing ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... that they might establish the proud pretensions of the clergy, so we have no reason to believe that five men of this order have any more of the Divine Spirit in our time, after they are ordained, than they had before. It would be a farce to provoke laughter, if there was no suspicion of profanation in it, to see them gravely lay hands on one another, and bid one ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... possessions, should strip off the clothes of the dead, and make a market even out of them, was probable enough. But that Henry Dunbar, the wealthy, hyper-refined Anglo-Indian, should linger over the body of his valet and offer needless profanation to the dead, was something incredible, and not to be accounted for ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... something of an event. Heaven grant that he might read no journalistic description of the ceremony! Few things more disgusted him than the thought of a fashionable wedding; he could see nothing in it but profanation and indecency. That mattered little, to be sure, in the case of ordinary people, who were born, and lived, and died, in fashionable routine, anxious only to exhibit themselves at any given moment in the way held to be good form; but it was hard to think that custom's tyranny should lay its foul hand ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Their writings are all divine nectar, rich, racy, sparkling, delicate, and luscious wine. Nor does our sex wholly engross this honour; ladies have had their share of the glory; one of them, of the royal blood of France, whom it were a profanation but to name here, surprises the age at once by the transcendent and inventive genius in her writings and the admirable graces of her style. Imitate those great examples if you can; for my part I cannot. Everyone, you know, cannot go to Corinth. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... for the deceit he could no longer practice. The child had flown from her in the instant of his grasping it, like a pale butterfly, but there remained where it had floated, a silken and nubile essence, fairy and humanity in one, clad in pure thoughts and sweet respect, the profanation of which would be as rare a game as Satan's struggle ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... "Brother Jonathan's" adjudications of small cases which he tried as "justice of the peace." Among them was one where "His Majesty's tythingman" entered a complaint against Jona and Susan Smith for a "profanation of the Sabbath;" namely, "That on the —— day of —— during Divine Service on the Lord's Day they did smile." The culprits were adjudged to be guilty of the offence, and severally fined "five shillings ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... Nor did they draw the awful sword until the Thirteen Colonies, in Congress assembled, (1774,) solemnly pledged each other to stand as one people in defence of the old local government. This was in the majesty of revolution. It is profanation to compare with this patience and glory the insurrection begun by South Carolina. She—the first time such an organization ever did it—assumed to be a nation; and then madly led off in a suicidal war on the National Government, although ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... be trading in that port; and their captains, though not without much difficulty, succeeded in obtaining from the priests, who had the custody of the holy treasure, its deliverance into their hands, in order that it might escape profanation. It was necessary, however, that this transfer should be made in secrecy; for we are assured by Sabellico, who relates the occurrence minutely, that the miracles which had been daily wrought at the saint's shrine ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... words, "I burn," and all except the Sultan trembled. Rising from his prayer-carpet, he called in his guards, and commanded them to dig up the pavement and remove the tomb. It was in vain that the Muftis interposed, reprobating so great a profanation, and uttering warnings as to its consequences. The Sultan persisted, the foundations of the tomb were laid bare, and in a cavity skillfully left among them was found—not a burning Sultan, but a Dervise. The young monarch regarded him for a time fixedly ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... paced the walk a moment, then said, "Well, I don't know. A woman like Grace St. John shakes my faith in our old belief. It seems profanation to assert that she ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... tomb befitting his state hundreds of thousands toiled away their lives. For the classes who came next to him were all the sensuous delights of a most luxurious civilization, and high intellectual pleasures which the mysteries of the temple hid from vulgar profanation. But for the millions who constituted the base of the social pyramid there was but the lash to stimulate their toil, and the worship of beasts to satisfy the yearnings of the soul. From time immemorial to the present day the lot of the Egyptian peasant has been ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... time has dared to use spade or mattock. If an islander was impious enough to cultivate the meadow of Paao, the people believe that a terrible punishment would be the inevitable consequence of that profanation. Disastrous rains, furious torrents, would surely ravage the ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... wanted to understand her; the relentless passion for analysis was absorbed in a comprehensive enthusiasm which embraced the whole of Alison and took no count of the parts. To have pulled her to pieces, even with a view to reconstruction, would have been a profanation of her and of his love. For a whole year the student of the earthly and the visible lived on the substance of things unseen—on faith in the goodness of Alison Fraser. By a peculiar irony it was her very goodness—for ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... judges who think I ought not to have translated Chaucer into English, out of a quite contrary notion. They suppose there is a certain veneration due to his old language, and that it is little less than profanation and sacrilege to alter it. They are farther of opinion, that somewhat of his good sense will suffer in this transfusion, and much of the beauty of his thoughts will infallibly be lost, which appear with more grace in their old habit. Of this opinion was that excellent ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners.' Turn away, refresh your soul with solitude and fill yourself with the thought of God. For only by the thought of Him can man save his soul from profanation." ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... Campanella's Sonnets, published by the Grolier Club, had been sold for three hundred dollars. This impressed the members greatly. It was a novel idea. A new work might thus be enshrined in a sort of holy of holies, which, if the collector so desired, could be forever sacred from the profanation of any vulgar or unappreciative eye. The possessor of such a treasure could enjoy it by the eye of imagination, having at the same time the exaltation of grasping what was for others the unattainable. The literary committee were so impressed with this idea that ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... reverence for the presiding divinity of the place. Loud talking, laughing, pushing before others who are examining a picture or statue, moving seats noisily, or any rude or discourteous conduct, seems like profanation in such a place. Avoid them by all means, we entreat you; and though you wear your hat everywhere ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... each tooth appeared like an inestimable pearl. Such was my passionate warmth that—we had rattled out of the village, gentle reader, and were lonely as Adam and Eve in paradise—I plead guilty to no less freedom than a kiss. The gentle eye of Mrs. Bullfrog scarcely rebuked me for the profanation. Emboldened by her indulgence, I threw back the calash from her polished brow, and suffered my fingers, white and delicate as her own, to stray among those dark and glossy curls which realized my ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... madly. Then, indeed, did the spirit of autumn seem to be outraged. The racket came to be an insult. Always the ear expected its discontinuance, until finally the persistence ground on the nerves like the barking of a dog at night. At last it was an indecency, an orgy of unholy revel, a profanation, a provocative to anger of the inscrutable woods god. Then stillness again with the abruptness ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... looks are a profanation to any good woman. Ned Bannister, of the Shoshones, was one of them. He looked at his cousin, and his ribald eyes coasted back to bold scrutiny of this young woman's charming, buoyant youth. There was Something in his face that sent a flush of shame coursing through her rich blood. ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... protection against the winter's chill, Quintus is away to Jerusalem. The national Feast of Dedication attracts his notice. A courteous Hebrew explains to him that the joyful festival commemorates the cleansing of the Temple after its profanation by Antiochus Epiphanes, two hundred years before. The procession of pious Jews, carrying their palm branches and marching to the heights of Moriah, the chanting of the great Hallel within the imposing fane, the ascription of praise to Jehovah ...
— An Easter Disciple • Arthur Benton Sanford
... Christianity. It has exaggerated the personal, the positive, the ritual. It has wronged mankind by monopolizing all virtues for the Christian name. It is only by his holy thoughts that Jesus serves us. "To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul." The preachers do a wrong to Jesus by removing him from our human sympathies; they should not degrade his life and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... positions of this able essay are these; first that Church and State should be independent of each other:—he speaks of the duty of protesting "against the profanation of Christ's kingdom, by that double usurpation, the interference of the Church in temporals, of the State in spirituals," (p. 191); and, secondly, that the Church may justly and by right retain its property, ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... What a profanation! That horrible cemetery, surrounded by a fence of barbed wire and superannuated railroad ties, to receive that beloved clay. He pictured her as he had seen her every day for ten years, and a rush of vain regret brought the big tears to his buttermilk ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... Rome was a great national calamity, and it was something more: it was a profanation and a sacrilege. The literature which it evoked was a cry of anguish, a prophetic burden of despair. "Chants populaires," writes M. Emile Gebhart (De l'Italie, "Le Sac de Rome en 1527," 1876, pp. 267, sq.), "Nouvelles de Giraldi Cintio, en forme de Decameron ... recits ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... of spots was defended from profanation by the strictest edicts of the all-pervading 'taboo', which condemned to instant death the sacrilegious female who should enter or touch its sacred precincts, or even so much as press with her feet the ground made holy by ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... through the air: Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see The dew bespangling herb and tree. Each flower has wept and bow'd toward the east Above an hour since: yet you not dress'd; Nay! not so much as out of bed? When all the birds have matins said And sung their thankful hymns, 'tis sin, Nay, profanation to keep in, Whereas a thousand virgins on this day Spring, sooner than the lark, to fetch ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... fit to throw upon paper? and instead of condemning bad Poets (as they did in certain Countries) to lick out their Writings with their own Tongue, shall Books become for the future inviolable Sanctuaries, where all Blockheads shall be made free Denizens, not to be touch'd without Profanation? I could say much more on this subject; but as I have already treated it in my ninth Satire, I shall thither ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... is yours, my promise is yours. Through all trouble, through all profanation, through the hopeless separation that may be before us in this world, I live yours—and die yours. My Edwin, God bless and ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... Monday and Saturday within Burghs, causing intollerable profanation of the Lords Day, by carying of loads, bearing of Burthens; and other work of that kinde: It were expedient for the redresse thereof, that the care for restraining of this abuse be recommended by the Assembly unto the severall Burghs, and they to bee earnestly entreated to finde out some way ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... skittle-ground;—a person of loftier and purer sentiments would have shown more reverence for the genius loci, and would have remembered that the walls were once vocal with Christian prayers, and that what in other instances would be only negligence, is profanation here. But probably the innkeeper pays his rent regularly, and we hope will be made the interlocutor in an imaginary conversation with the last abbot ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... with the latter, and had issued a "Book of Sports" which recommended certain games as lawful and desirable on the Lord's day. On the other hand judges of assize and magistrates had issued orders against Sunday "wakes" and "profanation of God's Sabbath." The general religious sense of the country was undoubtedly tending to a stricter observance of the day, when Laud brought the contest to a sudden issue. He summoned the Chief-Justice, Richardson, who had issued the orders in the ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... had dark eyes and hair, and her elder daughter, Miss Halcombe, strongly reminds me of her. Miss Fairlie played to us in the evening—not so well as usual, I thought. We had a rubber at whist, a mere profanation, so far as play was concerned, of that noble game. I had been favourably impressed by Mr. Hartright on our first introduction to one another, but I soon discovered that he was not free from the social failings incidental to his age. There are ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... conceptions and their objects. His views of God are the most glaring defect of his system. He contended that we cannot attribute to the Deity intelligence or personality without making him a finite being like ourselves; that it is a species of profanation to conceive of him as a separate essence, since such a conception implies the existence of a sensible being limited by space and time; that we cannot impute to him even existence without compounding him with sensible natures; that no satisfactory ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... all his strivings and agonies in vain? Did he love this woman with any earthly love? Was he jealous of the thought of a future husband? Was it a tempting demon that said to him, "Lorenzo Sforza might have shielded this treasure from the profanation of lawless violence, from the brute grasp of an inappreciative peasant, but Father Francesco cannot"? There was a moment when his whole being vibrated with a perception of what a marriage bond might have been that was indeed a sacrament, and that bound together ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... not the Psalms make it clear, "The singers go before, and the minstrels" (which they understood to mean ministers) "follow after"? And then—those anthems! They were terrible inflictions. Every bumpkin had his favourite solo, and oh! the murder, the profanation! "Some put their trust in charrots and some in 'orses," but they didn't "quite pat off the stephany," as one of the singers remarked, meaning symphony. It was all ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... safeguard of her temple? What, O Mars Gradivus, and you, father Quirinus, of your Ancilia? Is it right that these sacred things, coeval with the city, some of them more ancient than the origin of the city, should be abandoned to profanation? And, observe the difference existing between us and our ancestors. They handed down to us certain sacred rites to be performed by us on the Alban and on the Lavinian mounts. Was it in conformity with religion that these sacred rites were transferred to us to Rome from the cities of our ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... of it, which is not claimed by the public offices of the church, dully drawls on in comfortless vacuity, or without improvement is trifled away in vain and unprofitable discourse. Not to speak of those who by their more daring profanation of this sacred season, openly violate the laws and insult the religion of their country, how little do many seem to enter into the spirit of the institution, who are not wholly inattentive to its ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... this myth and legend there was also evolved an account of a very different sort. The Jews who remained faithful to the traditions of their race regarded this Greek version as a profanation, and therefore there grew up the legend that on the completion of the work there was darkness over the whole earth during three days. This showed clearly ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... same order—mere ultras of fashionable insipidity. This is better than fashion—is it not? Yet this has but to be seen to become the rage—that is, with those who could afford it at the cost of their entire patrimony. I have guarded, however, against any such profanation. With one exception, you are the only human being besides myself and my valet, who has been admitted within the mysteries of these imperial precincts, since they have been bedizzened ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Christians, a mystical emblem of the Divine passion and goodness. Consequently, an oath taken on either the calf or the cross was considered equally solemn and sacred by Jew or Nazarene, and the breaking of it a soul-staining perjury on themselves, and an insult and profanation directly offered to the Almighty. To render the oath more impressive and solemn, it was customary to slaughter a dedicated calf in the temple, when, the priests having divided the carcase into a certain number of parts, and with intervening ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton |
