"Profane" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... part and the occasion is interwoven with the Breton's existence as unalterably as sacred and profane elements are into the occasions of his religious festivals. A feast day well and piously begun is interspersed and concluded with a gaiety and abandon which by contrast strikes a note of profanity. Yet Brittany is quite the most devotedly ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... in itself a reformation, and its benefits were chiefly felt by the great masses of the people. The clergy possessed their libraries, where they might read and study if they chose; the castles contained collections of MSS., sacred and profane, illuminated with the most exquisite taste; while the citizen, the poor layman, though he might be able to read and to write, was debarred from the use of books, and had to satisfy his literary tastes with the sermons of travelling Franciscans, or the songs ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... saw. Not since the irruption of the Northern Barbarians has there been the like. Everywhere immeasurable Democracy rose monstrous, loud, blatant, inarticulate as the voice of Chaos. Everywhere the Official holy-of-holies was scandalously laid bare to dogs and the profane:—Enter, all the world, see what kind of Official holy it is. Kings everywhere, and reigning persons, stared in sudden horror, the voice of the whole world bellowing in their ear, "Begone, ye imbecile hypocrites, histrios not ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... ministers from the pulpits, and hold forth themselves instead—in which kind of practice Colonel Hewson and Major Axtell are reported to have been conspicuous; but the contempt for established decencies of worship had vented itself, at least in occasional instances, in very profane humours. Soldiers had scandalized country-congregations by sitting with their hats on during prayer and singing; and Hewson's men were said once to have kept possession of a parish-church for eight days, having a fire in the chancel, and smoking tobacco ad libitum. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... drink and swear and otherwise lead outwardly debased lives. Well, the surroundings, the "atmosphere" in which they have been forced to live, encourage them in their blasphemy. I never marvel that they are often profane; I wonder more greatly that they are not infinitely more so. But it seems to me that you will "uplift" them far more by pulling down their filthy habitations than by preaching the "Word of God" at them at every available opportunity. They are the landlords, the profiteers, the members of ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... to or of an ecclesiastical great gun. But if such big wigs will come abroad in disguise, and with names as long as Fielding's Hononchrononthononthologus, they must submit to be hustled by pickpockets and critics, and to have their names docked as well as profane authors. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... was distrusted by most English people, who still preferred post-horses and stage-coaches— all the good old ways beloved by hostel-keepers, Tony Welters, postilions and pot-boys. There was something fearful, supernatural, almost profane and Providence-defying in this new, swift, wild, and whizzing mode of conveyance. Churchmen and Tories were especially set against it; yet I have been told that later, that Prince of conservatives, F. M., the Duke of Wellington, did, on the occasion of one of Her Majesty's accouchements travel ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... only persons, beside the sexton and his assistants, who stood by the open grave. Mr. Melton, recognizing Amelius, was at a loss to understand who his companion could be. It was impossible to suppose that he would profane that solemn ceremony by bringing to it the lost woman at the cottage. The thick black veil of the person with him hid her face from view. No visible expressions of grief escaped her. When the last sublime words of the burial service had been read, those two ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... the full impressions of Shakspeare. And we know that there is such a thing as keeping the sympathies of love and admiration in a dormant state, or state of abeyance; an effort of self-conquest realized in more cases than one by the ancient fathers, both Greek and Latin, with regard to the profane classics. Intellectually they admired, and would not belie their admiration; but they did not give their hearts cordially, they did not abandon themselves to their natural impulses. They averted their eyes and weaned their attention from the dazzling object. Such, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Hence, ye profane; I hate ye all; Both the great vulgar, and the small. To virgin minds, which yet their native whiteness hold, Not yet discoloured with the love of gold (That jaundice of the soul, Which makes it look so gilded and so foul), To you, ye very few, these truths I tell; ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... but the truth is, that the mighty we, with all its pretension, is in general a very sorry creature, who, instead of saying nous disons, should rather say nous dis: Porny in his "Guerre des Dieux," very profanely makes the three in one say, Je faisons; now, Lavengro, who is anything but profane, would suggest that critics, especially magazine and Sunday newspaper critics, should commence with nous dis, as the first word would be significant of the conceit and assumption of the critic, and the second of the extent of the critic's information. The we says its say, but when ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... midst of the monarchical system—ready materials for a conflagration far more formidable than their authors had anticipated, should a burning spark unhappily light upon them. Others had already taken care to profane the religion of the people; and what remains sacred to the people when religion ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... hangs a bit of romance, if I may profane the word in speaking of such men. His companion is a young fellow, described as being more like a beautiful woman than a man, and bearing the most singular likeness in features to the great Captain Touan himself, who, as you have heard, is a handsome dog. In short, there is very little ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... friends look on with sadness while they view me laying profane hands on the sacred text of my originals. I have actually at times introduced or deleted whole incidents, have given another turn to a tale, or finished off one that was incomplete, while I have had no scruple in prosing a ballad or softening down over-abundant dialect. This ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... rug when it was finished and laid in front of the sofa in the fore-room. Diadema was very choice of it. When company was expected she removed it from its accustomed place, and spread it in a corner of the room where no profane foot could possibly tread on it. Unexpected callers were managed by a different method. If they seated themselves on the sofa, she would fear they did not "set easy" or "rest comfortable" there, and suggest ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... bad enough to steal, even from his father; from which my readers can understand that it is an excellent thing to have a good reputation. Bobby knew that he would lie and use profane language; that he spent his Sundays by the river, or in roaming through the woods; and that he played truant from school as often as the fear of the rod would permit; and the boy that would do all ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... little, if any, instruction, he became especially proficient in geography and mathematics, and acquired a thorough practical knowledge of navigation and civil engineering. He could speak and read German. He was a general reader, and throughout his life was a constant student of both sacred and profane history, and devoted much attention to a study of the Bible. In September, 1811, he left Sharpsburg, on horseback, on a prospecting tour over the mountains to the West, destination Ohio. He kept a journal (now before me) of his travels, showing each day's journey, the places ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... was profane? I had not spoken a word! Could it be possible she was able to read my thoughts? This was too much, and ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... my method here. For, in my opinion, it is useless to say a thing unless we prove it. Now, to explain my method fully would require no less than a formal treatise. It is a thing so simple and so vast, so common and so extraordinary, so true and so misunderstood, so sacred and so profane, that to name it without developing and proving it would serve only to excite contempt and incredulity. One thing at a time. Let us establish equality, and this remedy will soon appear; for truths follow each other, just as crimes and ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... (the whole inspection of the situation, formation of the plot, and visual dialogue had really been so rapid as to make no long break after the lictor ceased speaking), "do you dare thus to do what even the most profane and impious have never dared before? Will you lay hands on two inviolate tribunes of the plebs, and those under their personal protection; and by your very act become a sacer—an outlaw devoted to the gods, whom it is a pious thing for any man ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... suspicions on the purity of their own minds. And young persons, who talk and think in this way, are in extreme danger of falling into sinful habits. As to the volumes before us, the authors have, in their fanatical panegyrics of virginity, made use of language downright profane.' ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... ferret or two; I have six dozen or so of books, some in our mother tongue, some Latin, some of them history, others devotional; those of chivalry have not as yet crossed the threshold of my door; I am more given to turning over the profane than the devotional, so long as they are books of honest entertainment that charm by their style and attract and interest by the invention they display, though of these there are very few in Spain. Sometimes I dine with my neighbours and friends, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a man of paramount influence at home, for he was public spirited, he was chief of the fire department, he had an admirable command of profane language, and had killed several "parties." His shirt fronts were always immaculate; his boots daintily polished, and no man could lift a foot and fire a dead shot at a stray speck of dirt on it with a white handkerchief with a finer grace than he; his watch chain weighed a ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... is the most brutal and the most pathetic scene that profane history has to record; it was, as Goethe has said, the most senseless deed that ever was done. It was wholly useless, for it did not and could not save Rome from monarchy. The deed was done by a handful of men, who, pursuing a phantom liberty and following ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... chosen my bedroom on that side of the house so that even times of hair-brushing may not be entirely lost, and the young woman who attends to such matters has been taught to fulfil her duties about a mistress recumbent in an easychair before an open window, and not to profane with chatter that sweet and solemn time. This girl is grieved at my habit of living almost in the garden, and all her ideas as to the sort of life a respectable German lady should lead have got into a sad muddle since she came ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... itself. He was sent there to represent seven convents of his own order, who were at variance with the Vicar-general. He had always imagined Rome to be the abode of sanctity. Ignorance, levity, dissolute manners, a profane spirit, a contempt for all that is sacred, a scandalous traffic in divine things. Such was the spectacle afforded by this unhappy city. Even when performing their most sacred ceremonies, the priests ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... modern times, at best a dualism and often an open warfare.... The opposition of Church and State expresses an opposition between two sides of human nature which we must not too easily label as good and evil, the heavenly and the earthly, the sacred and the profane. For the State, too, is divine as well as the Church, and may have its own ideals and sacramental duties and its own prophets, even its own martyrs. The opposition of Church and State is to be regarded rather as the pursuit of one great aim, pursued by contrasted means. The ultimate aim of all ...
— Progress and History • Various
... secretly hoped and suspected she would refuse. The drum-major was called in, one Gideon Greatbatch by name—a long, straight-haired, sallow-faced personage, of some note among the brethren for zeal and impiety. By this we mean that awful and profane use of Scripture phraseology with which many of these gifted preachers affected to interlard their everyday discourse, attaching a ludicrous solemnity to matters the most trivial ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... master of the great charity, the help of creatures, and I expound the law to believers and to the profane alike. To save the world I wished to be born amongst men; the gods wept when I went away. At first, I sought a woman suitable for the purpose—of warlike race, the spouse of a king, exceedingly virtuous and beautiful, with a deep navel, a body ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... my boy. Every hero and martyr in sacred or profane history would view the matter as the commodore and ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... getting them down with a fool's luck. "You can't do it—I got you firs', las', an' always; an' I got you good. Yessir, I got you good. Quit that rearing, you ol' fool! Stan' still, can't you?" The pony sidled as the saddle hit its back and evoked profane abuse from the indignant puncher as he risked his balance in picking it up to try again, this time successfully. He began to fasten the girth, and then paused in wonder and thought deeply, for the pin in the buckle would slide to no hole but the first. "Huh! Getting fat, ain't ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... Lady Davers," added Mr. B., "the power your sex have over ours, and their subtle tricks: and so will never, in my weakest moments, be drawn in to make a blindfold promise. There have been several instances, both in sacred and profane story, of mischiefs done by such surprises: so you must allow me to suspect myself, when I know the dear slut's power over me, and have been taught, by the inviolable regard she pays to her own word, to value mine—And now, Pamela, speak all that is in your heart to say." "With your requisite ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... a minister; he was a tinker, and a very wicked man, so profane that he was a terror to good people. But he was converted and became a Christian, and went about doing good, as Christ did, preaching the Gospel in his way, in houses, by the way side, anywhere that he could, until he was sent to prison ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... left her and walked to the rock he had pointed out, she slipped from her saddle and followed him. But she still held fast to her bridle rein and the pony offered no resistance to the leading, though the big brute of the profane name remained in the middle of the road, his forefeet pointed forward, his hind ones backward, his whole ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... shew-bread], and offered burnt-offerings upon the new altar [of burnt-offering]. Now it so fell out that these things were done on the very same day on which their divine worship had fallen off and was reduced to a profane and common use after three years' time; for so it was, that the Temple was made desolate by Antiochus, and so continued for three years. This desolation happened to the Temple in the hundred forty and fifth year, on the twenty-fifth day of the month Apelleus, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... Socrates' case, mistaking his reverent irreverence for Atheism, and martyred him accordingly, as it has since martyred Luther's memory. Probably, too, if a living struggle is going on in the writer's mind, he will not have distinguished the two elements in himself; he will be profane when he fancies himself only arguing for truth; he will be only arguing for truth, where he seems to the respectable undoubting to be profane. And in the meanwhile, whether the respectable understand him or not, the young and the inquiring, much more the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... have said if he had said it, and in any case it was true. Merely hearing Mrs. Wilkins's evil communications at meals—she did not listen, she avoided listening, yet it was evident she had heard—those communications which, in that they so often were at once vulgar, indelicate and profane, and always, she was sorry to say, laughed at by Lady Caroline, must be classed as evil, was spoiling her own mental manners. Soon she might not only think but say. How terrible that would be. If that were the form her breaking-out ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... else than the Madonna and the saints; he has not Carpaccio's care for human life at large, nor the Tintoret's nor the of the Veronese. Some of his greater pictures, however, where several figures are clustered together, have a richness of sanctity that is almost profane. There is one of them on the dark side of the room at the Academy that contains Titian's "Assumption," which if we could only see it—its position is an inconceivable scandal—would evidently be one of the mightiest of so-called sacred pictures. So ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... mission plunged him into the extremes of self-torment, and his lucid moments grew more and more rare. He destroyed what he had written of the second part of "Dead Souls," in the attacks of ecstatic remorse at such profane work which followed. (By some authorities it is believed that he did this unintentionally, meaning to destroy an entirely different set of papers.) In 1848 he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and went thence to Moscow, where he resided until his death, becoming more and more extreme in his ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... If this was so understood at the time, we must lament that our countrymen should have consented to take part in what must be considered as a profane farce. ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... sect. When I say 'churches,' I am using the term in the official and colonial sense, for the word 'chapel' stinks in the nostrils of a Dissenting community, and many of these churches are not much bigger than an ordinary dining-room, and, having been built for profane purposes, have no external odour of sanctity beyond a black board, whereon you are informed, in gilt letters, that the building belongs to whatever sect it does belong, and that Divine Service is held there by the Rev. So-and-So at certain ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... the goods of the Church,—to convert them to profane uses would, I need not say, be a sacrilege as horrible to Heaven as impossible to so pious ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... personification of the lilies: "They toil not, neither do they spin." Consider such expressions as, "The sea saw that, and fled. Jordan was driven back. The mountains skipped like rams; and the little hills like lambs." Try to find anything in profane writing like this; and note farther that the whole book of Job appears to have been chiefly written and placed in the inspired volume in order to show the value of natural history, and its power ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... of his lessons. The subject is the barometer. The establishment happens to possess one, an old apparatus, covered with dust, hanging on the wall beyond the reach of profane hands and bearing on its face, in large letters, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... that these orders do not extend to any profane authors and works in any language, that have been heretofore commonly received or allowed in any of the universities or schools, but the same may be printed, and used as by good order they were accustomed."—Cardswell's Documentary ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... pattern of life that no parent or teacher should ever wish to forbid or destroy. Day by day, he sees visions and dreams dreams, and so builds for himself a world in which he finds delight and profit. In this world he is king, and only profane hands would dare attempt to ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... were 140 lusty stout fellows in it: for shame, gentlemen! conferre Notes!) That Colonel Norton at Rumsey took 200 prisoners. (I saw them counted: they were just two millions.) Then the Dove hath this sweet passage: O Aulicus, thou profane wretch, that darest scandalize GOD'S saints, darest thou call that loyal subject Master Pym a traitor? (Yes, pretty Pigeon,[334] he was charged with six articles by his Majesty's Atturney Generall.) Next he says, that Master Pym died like Moses upon the Mount. (He did not die upon the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... themselves to fall into fits, and had affected to be struck dead on the production of certain popular books, such as the assembly's catechism, and Cotton's milk for babes, while they could read Oxford's jests, or popish and quaker books, with many others, which were deemed profane, without being in any manner affected by them. These pretences, instead of exposing the fraud to instant detection, seem to have promoted the cheat; and they were supposed to be possessed by demons who were utterly confounded at the production of those holy books. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... henchman into the middle of the street and spoke vigorous words that all the Honeycutts could hear. Then they rode to the Hawn store, and old Jason called his henchman out and spoke like words that all the Hawns could hear. And each old man ended his discourse with a profane dictum that sounded like the vicious snap ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... arbitrary, fickle, and passionate. When her blood was up, she would swear like a trooper, spit on a courtier's new velvet suit, beat her maids of honor, and box Essex's ears. She wrote abusive and even profane letters to high Church dignitaries,[1] and she openly insulted the wife of Archbishop Parker, because she did not believe in a ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... are formed for that higher species of friendship, of which common souls are inadequate to form an idea, however their fashionable puerile lips may, in the intellectual inanity of their conversation, profane the term. Yes, my Angelina, you are right—every fibre of my frame, every energy of my intellect, tells me so. I read your letter by moonlight! The air balmy and pure as my Angelina's thoughts! The ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the profane, their curious questionings will be sufficiently answered by the remark that the object of this institution is to give happiness to one woman. Which among them will be willing to deprive general society of any share in the talents with ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... Heaven, Poins, I feel me much to blame, So idly to profane the precious time When tempest of commotion, like the south Borne with black vapour, doth begin to melt And drop upon our bare, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... a repeal of the corporation and test acts, oppressions which goaded the dissenters, and which in themselves were as profane as they were hypocritical. Of course the duke and Mr. Peel resisted this, but the House ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... arise in us; but they are driven back by what we read of the personal character of these men. "Both prophet and priest," says Jeremiah, "are profane; yea, in My house have I found their wickedness, saith the Lord." "I have seen," he says in God's name, "in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery and walk in lies." Jeremiah's view of them might be thought to be coloured by his own melancholy temperament; ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... did not even see him. He lies cradled in rose leaves, no doubt, and the singing of the west wind is not sweet enough for his lullaby. No profane eye must rest on this sacred treasure fresh from the hands of the gods! Is he not the heir of Kingsland? But Achmet the Astrologer has cast his horoscope, and Achmet, and Zara, his wife, wilt see that the starry destiny is fulfilled. Shall ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... of his party for the Presidency was exceedingly obnoxious to him. Meeting the Colonel the morning after the adjournment of the convention I inquired, "Are you happy?" To this he replied, that he was somewhat in the condition of a very profane youth who had just got religion at a backwoods camp-meeting. Soon after his conversion, the preacher, taking him affectionately by the hand, inquired: "My young friend, are you very happy?" "Well, parson," replied the only ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... stirred uneasily. "Hush, hush, Shadrach!" he pleaded. "Don't be so profane. Remember you've just come from ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Milton to English readers, and the former rendered the additional service of acting as the interpreter of Wordsworth. But to give an idea of Hazlitt's scope would require a summary of opinions embracing poetry from Chaucer and Spenser to Wordsworth and Byron, prose sacred and profane from Bacon and Jeremy Taylor to Burke and Edward Irving, the drama in its two flourishing periods, the familiar essay from Steele and Addison to Lamb and Leigh Hunt, the novel from Defoe to Sir Walter Scott. This does not begin to suggest Hazlitt's versatility. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... profane expressions, and I shall insist upon the original bargain. So, then—now we're quits. I wish you a very good-morning, Mr Sawley, and better luck next time. Pray remember me to your ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... called Shushinak (the Susian), Dimesh or Samesh, Dagbag, As-siga, Adaene, and possibly Khumba and AEmman, whom the Chaldaens identified with their god Ninip; his statue was concealed in a sanctuary inaccessible to the profane, but it was dragged from thence by Assurbanipal of Nineveh in the VIIth century B.C.* This deity was associated with six others of the first rank, who were divided into two triads—Shumudu, Lagamaru, Partikira; Ammankasibar, Uduran, and Sapak: ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... must be [Greek: kairios], not sullen and ill-natured; 'nam sic etiam tacuisse nocet'?—of all things in the world a prating religion and much talk in holy things does most profane the mysteriousness of it, and dismantles its regard, and makes cheap its reverence and takes off fear and awfulness, and makes it loose and garish, and like ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... me to linger in, so I chucked away the megaphone and got mixed up with the tail of the third wave. I was swept on and came to anchor in the enemy trenches, where I found, as I expected, my profane and breathless predecessor, the movie-merchant. I had nothing to say to him, so I stuck to the trench till it ended against the ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... hours after they were taken; and when some one ventured a remonstrance he curtly replied, "Nous ne faisons pas de la legalite, nous faisons de la revolution." Some ruffian in the mob cried out the word "liberte," which reached Darboy's ears, and he said, "Do not profane the word of liberty; it belongs to us alone, because we die for it and for our faith." This sainted man was the first to be shot. He died instantly; but President Bonjean crossed his arms and, standing erect, stared full in the faces of his assassins with his ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... mingled affection and patriotic fervour; it had been a great relief to pour it all out in Margaret's sympathetic ear, though that ear were a thousand miles away. Now she really must go to bed. It was one o'clock, her watch told her. It seemed wicked, profane, to sleep under such moonlight as this; but still, the body must ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... and private is entitled to the use of the institute except when excluded for profane or other improper language, for intoxication or other misconduct, for such time as the committee in charge shall deem advisable. The management of the institute is entrusted to several committees of non-commissioned ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... natural son of Henry VIII., was the first to employ the profane oath of God's Wounds, which Queen ELIZABETH adopted, but the ladies of her court minced and softened ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... been otherwise, the proceeding itself admitted complete justification. Indeed, when Guy recollected the frenzy of his rage, and his own murderous impulse, he was shocked to think that he had ever sought the love of that pure and gentle creature, as if it had been a cruel and profane linking of innocence to evil. He was appalled at the power of his fury, he had not known he was capable of it, for his boyish passion, even when unrestrained, had never equalled this, in all the strength ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... daylight seemed crepuscular; immeasurable clouds, passing slowly overhead, darkened the whole country at broad noon. The wind blew constantly with the sound of a great cathedral organ at a distance, but playing profane, despairing dirges; at other times the noise came close to the door, like the howling of ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... seemed to be nothing else to do. It did not help his feelings to hear, as George Kent was left standing in the road, a disgusted and profane ejaculation from ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... ancient privileges, endeared to them by as many ages as had passed since distinctions of colour were made by an Almighty hand. He invited them to pledge themselves with him to denounce and resist such profane, such blasphemous innovations, proposed by shallow enthusiasts, seconded by designing knaves, and destined to be wrought out by the agency of demons—demons in human form. He called upon all patriots to join him in his pledge; and in token of their faith, to drink deep to one now ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... hysterically, intent on instant flight. She sat up in her bed with her hair in curl papers and a revolver beside her, and through her open door shouted advice to her lodgers. But they were unsympathetic, and reassured her only by banging their doors and retiring with profane grumbling, and in a few moments the silence was broken only by the voice of the justice as he fled down the main street of Ventersburg offering ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... distressed old man had risen to stand with assumed carelessness by the door, having writhed miserably in his chair until he could no longer endure the profane flood. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... led to the back of the island. Sheltered by some hazel-bushes from the intense heat of the sun, we sat down by the cool, gushing river, out of sight, but, alas! not out of hearing of the noisy, riotous crowd. Could we have shut out the profane sounds which came to us on every breeze, how deeply should we have enjoyed an hour amid the tranquil beauties of ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... you mean to insult the court, sir? Do you mean to profane this sacred temple of justice with untimely levity? Take your hat off, sir, or I will fine you for contempt. Do ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... profane historians has told us that the Scythians of his time were a very warlike people, and that they elevated an old scimitar upon a platform as a symbol of Mars, for to Mars alone, I believe, they built altars and offered sacrifices. To this scimitar ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... and seeks them as something never to be attained by such as he is. And Humility is one of them, and is Queen and Empress and Sovereign over them all. In fine, one act of true humility in the sight of God is of more worth than all the knowledge, sacred and profane, in the whole world. ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... figurative predecessor, successor genuine, artificial positive, negative practical, theoretical optimism, pessimism finite, infinite longitude, latitude evolution, revolution oriental, occidental pathos, bathos sacred, profane military, civil clergy, laity capital, labor ingress, egress element, compound horizontal, perpendicular competition, cooeperation predestination, freewill universal, particular extrinsic, intrinsic inflation, deflation ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... postulants of all these religions at the present day will claim exception in favor of their own cult, and regard as sacrilegious and profane any attempt to institute ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... door. He rode up and detached it, and found it was a violent and scurrilous attack upon the Archbishop for his supposed share in the death of the two Papists. It denounced him as a "bloody pseudo-minister," compared him to Pilate, and bade him "look to his congregation of lewd and profane persons that he named the Church of England," for that God would avenge the blood of his saints speedily ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... thirteen hardened characters who were his roommates said next morning, when they discovered the "Eastern punkin-lily" which had blossomed in their midst, is lost to history. It was unquestionably frank, profane, and unwashed. He was, in fact, not a sight to awaken sympathy in the minds of such inhabitants as Little Missouri possessed. He had just recovered from an attack of cholera morbus, and though he had ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... was common on the lips of men. But Mrs. Eppingwell was the wife of a captain; also a social constellation of the first magnitude, the path of her orbit marking the most select coterie in Dawson,—a coterie captioned by the profane as the "official clique." Sitka Charley had travelled trail with her once, when famine drew tight and a man's life was less than a cup of flour, and his judgment placed her above all women. Sitka Charley was an Indian; his criteria were primitive; but his word ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... master afar off; next falsehood, and from this he proceeded to perjury. It did seem that a disciple of Christ could go no further; but for falsehood and perjury there might be excuse in the hope of reward, and Peter found a lower deep, for "he began to curse and to swear." A profane swearer is without temptation, and serves the devil for the pure love of the service. What more could Peter do to prove that he knew ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... profane and impecunious, and he had been shifted from one boarding-house to another till at last, having exhausted credit in Lebanon, he had found a room in the house of old Madame Thibadeau in Manitou. She had taken him in because, in years gone by, he had nursed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of the change of plans and foreman was a bit profane, and their manner toward him a bit familiar, Rowdy didn't mind. He knew that they did not grudge him his good luck, even while they hated the long drive. He also knew that they watched him furtively; for nothing—not even misfortune—is as sure a test of a man's character as success. They liked ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... Dale," resumed the Parson, not heeding this sarcastic compliment to the sex, but sinking his voice into a whisper, and looking round cautiously—"there's my dear Mrs. Dale, the best woman in the world—an angel I would say, if the word was not profane; BUT—" ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... her. Not only had he been strictly faithful to his wife; but he had even before his marriage, been perfectly spotless. It does not appear from his own confessions, or from the railings of his enemies, that he ever was drunk in his life. One bad habit he contracted, that of using profane language; but he tells us that a single reproof cured him so effectually that he never offended again. The worst that can be laid to the charge of this poor youth, whom it has been the fashion to represent as the most ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that no apparel of that profane nature is under his hand, St. Martin, with his customary serenity, takes off his own episcopal stole, or whatsoever flowing stateliness it might be, throws it on the destitute shoulders, and passes on to perform indecorous public service in his waistcoat, or such mediaeval ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... with their glittering costumes—hats festooned with red or blue ribbons, sashes of variegated colors, barred shirts— tightly wedged, three by three, in caleches, like Neapolitans— patrolling the streets—interlarding a French song occasionally with an oath, tolerably profane—at all times to be met, whether in the light of day or the still hours of night. No police in those halcyon days; but with the thickening shades of evening issued forth that venerable brotherhood, the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... a thing as taking ourselves and the world too seriously, or at any rate too anxiously. Half of the secular unrest and dismal, profane sadness of modern society comes from the vain idea that every man is bound to be a critic of life, and to let no day pass without finding some fault with the general order of things, or projecting some plan for its improvement. And the other half comes from the greedy notion ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... good?" asked the profane Howarti. "Try," I replied; "you know the opinion of Mohammedans; now then, Howarti, say 'Bismillah,' and throw just in that hole close to the weeds. Spin your net so that it shall fall perfectly round, and advance very quietly to the edge, ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... executing the commissions which had been promised him the year before in New Hampshire. In all his journeyings back and forth the road invariably led through Concord, and the pure love of the young people for each other increased as the months rolled by. I shall not profane the sacredness of this love by introducing any of the more intimate passages of their letters of this and of later years. The young girl responded readily to the religious exhortations of her fiance and became a ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... bells ring from every tree and the enchanted nightingales sing in all the thickets, and the sages and the lovers smile like children; and the laughter passes naturally into the divine beauty of Mozart's religion, which is solemn because laughter and pity are reconciled in it, not rejected as profane. ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... use profane language unless under extraordinary circumstances, such as seeing your comrade shot, or getting coal ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... calming wisdom. The same man who once swore five consecutive minutes, because he was forbidden by his landlady to swear on penalty of leaving her house, and then made all the inmates vote to refrain from profane language, and rigidly enforced the rule thus democratically established, is now, after a lapse of more than thirty years, (particularly provoking impulse aside,) a careful and dignified gentleman, who might be a Judge, if the public ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... divinity, who hides beneath innumerable spheres in an unexplored centre, through which all worlds in turn must pass? Sacrifice, solitary and secret, rich in pleasures only tasted in silence, which none can guess at, and no profane eye has ever seen; Sacrifice, jealous God and tyrant, God of strength and victory, exhaustless spring which, partaking of the very essence of all that exists, can by no expenditure be drained below its own level;—Sacrifice, there is the ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... to be comfortable while lying on a bed of nettles which are constantly pricking him. There is no way under heaven by which a person can be really happy without being good, clean, square, and true. This does not mean that a person is happy because he does not use tobacco, drink, gamble, use profane language or does not do other vicious things. Some of the meanest, narrowest, most contemptible people in the world do none of these things but they are uncharitable, jealous, envious, revengeful. They stab you in the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... dear child. Sit down, Prissie. I will forgive your profane words about Cicero, for I see you are excited. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... on the press. John Wilkes, member of Parliament for Aylesbury, was singled out for persecution. Wilkes had, till very lately, been known chiefly as one of the most profane, licentious, and agreeable rakes about town. He was a man of taste, reading, and engaging manners. His sprightly conversation was the delight of greenrooms and taverns, and pleased even grave hearers when he was sufficiently under restraint to abstain from detailing the particulars ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had been told, "Ay," says he, "she looks menseful. She minds me - "; and then, after a pause (which some have been daring enough to set down to sentimental recollections), "Is she releegious?" he asked, and was shortly after, at his own request, presented. The acquaintance, which it seems profane to call a courtship, was pursued with Mr. Weir's accustomed industry, and was long a legend, or rather a source of legends, in the Parliament House. He was described coming, rosy with much port, into the drawing-room, walking direct up to the lady, and assailing her with pleasantries, to which the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to her husband the unrestricted supervision of her correspondence. I have indeed a dim recollection of having heard of one bride of seventeen, who, during the honeymoon, was weak and (selon les dames) wicked enough to submit to profane male eyes epistles received from the friends of her youth, in their simple entirety, instead of reading out an expurgated edition of the same. She had been brought up in a very dungeon of decorum by a terrible grandmother, a rigid moralist, whom no man ever yet beheld without a shiver; ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... objection is pointed out by Barclay in his Apology, where, after stating that "the formal customary way of singing hath no foundation in Scripture, nor any ground in true Christianity," he adds, "all manner of wicked, profane persons take upon them to personate the experiences and conditions of blessed David; which are not only false as to them, but also to some of more sobriety, who utter them forth." "Such singing doth more please the carnal ears of men, than the pure ears of the Lord, who ...
— On Singing and Music • Society of Friends
... true for generations, had become in her less a moral conviction than a fixed quality of soul. To dwell even for a minute on "the dark side of things" awoke in her the same instinct of mortal sin that she had felt at the discovery that Oliver was accustomed to "break" the Sabbath by reading profane literature. ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... were in fact but as different pens in the hand of one and the same Writer, and the words the words of God Himself: and that on this account all notes and comments were superfluous, nay, presumptuous—a profane mixing of human with divine, the notions of fallible creatures with the oracles of Infallibility—as if God's meaning could be so clearly or fitly expressed in man's as in God's own words! But how often ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... fete at the palace of the Ober-Amtmann. I had long gazed with adoration upon that angelic face, and treasured it in my heart. I already worshipped yon saintly portraits, because in one—God forgive me the profane thought!—I had found a faint forth-showing of the beam of her bright eye; in another, the gentle, dimpled smile of her sweet mouth; in a third, her pure and saint-like brow. It was not for such as I, a poor artist, to be invited to the noble Amtmann's fete; but I thought that, through ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... thing visibly perfect in its kind; where, in short, in spite of the general tendency of the "devouring element" to spread, the rest of his spiritual furniture, modest, scattered, and tended with unconscious care, escaped the consumption that in so many cases proceeds from the undue keeping-up of profane altar-fires. Adam Verver had in other words learnt the lesson of the senses, to the end of his own little book, without having, for a day, raised the smallest scandal in his economy at large; being in this particular not unlike those fortunate bachelors, or other gentlemen ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... also, as Josephus writes, against diseases. "As for my part," says Cornelius Agrippa, in allusion to this subject, "I do not doubt but that God revealed many things to Moses and the prophets, which were contained under the covert of the words of the law, which were not to be communicated to the profane vulgar: so for this art, which the Jews so much boast of, which I have with great labour and diligence searched into, I must acknowledge it to be a mere rhapsody of superstition, and nothing but ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... seek to weave, In weak, unhappy times, Efficacious rhymes; Wait his returning strength. Bird that from the nadir's floor To the zenith's top can soar,— The soaring orbit of the muse exceeds that journey's length. Nor profane affect to hit Or compass that, by meddling wit, Which only the propitious mind Publishes when 't is inclined. There are open hours When the God's will sallies free, And the dull idiot might see The flowing fortunes of a thousand years;— Sudden, at unawares, Self-moved, fly-to the doors. Nor sword ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson |
