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Unbeliever

noun
1.
Someone who refuses to believe (as in a divinity).  Synonyms: disbeliever, nonbeliever.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Unbeliever" Quotes from Famous Books



... fairly behind them: as to success, only fools or traitors could question it. Even the Democratic journals were carried away by the tide, and hardly ventured to hesitate their doubts. The hero's own proclamation, issued on the south bank of the river, was surely enough to reassure the most timid unbeliever. ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... suffering upon the cross under the diabolical skill of his long fingers. The monstrous horror of the thought made him work marvels, and the fancied realisation of an idea that would startle even a hardened unbeliever, lent a feverish impulse to this ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... man fell a half dozen fierce plainsmen sprang into the room from where they had apparently been waiting for their cue in the street before the cafe. With cries of "Kill the unbeliever!" and "Down with the dog of a Christian!" they made straight for Tarzan. A number of the younger Arabs in the audience sprang to their feet to join in the assault upon the unarmed white man. Tarzan and Abdul were rushed back toward the end of the room by the very force ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... who "love Christ in sincerity," reflect on the fatal consequences of devoting their affections to such as can never accompany them to the house of God but with reluctance, or to the throne of grace but with weariness and aversion. If the object of your fondest regard be an unbeliever, what a cloud will darken your serenest days, what unutterable grief disturb your otherwise peaceful sabbaths! Your pleasures and your pains of a religious kind, which are the most intense, will be equally ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... been a religious woman and, married to an utter unbeliever, she had little enough to give a child of her own. But Clara's mother was a church woman, and her father a deeply religious man. It was his mother, "old lady Mumford"—Rachael's great-grandmother—who taught the child ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... shoulders. '"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." The present is what we have to deal with, not the future. Don't look so shocked, child. If you question me so closely, what am I to do? I am not an unbeliever. I go to church every Sunday morning, and, as you see, I keep up the old custom of family prayers once a day. Don't judge other people as heathen because they may not think exactly the same ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre

... it is, for those who do not, incredible and inaccessible. The reports of it, intense and gleaming as they may be, which are contained in the art of such of its inhabitants as Debussy, are, admittedly, little likely to conciliate the unbeliever. This is music which it is hopeless to attempt to justify or promote. It persuades, or it does not; one is attuned to it, or one is not. For those who do savor and value it, it is reasonable only to attempt some such notation of its qualities as is ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman

... door I stumbled over a man at the threshold. He was sobbing hysterically and his arms flapped like the wings of a goose. It was Wali Dad, Agnostic and Unbeliever, shoeless, turbanless, and frothing at the mouth, the flesh on his chest bruised and bleeding from the vehemence with which he had smitten himself. A broken torch-handle lay by his side, and his quivering lips murmured, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... office, captain Willoughby, or myself;" observed the chaplain, with a little more importance of manner than it was usual for one so simple to assume. "I do not believe the ministry was instituted to be brow-beaten by tribes of savages, any more than it is to be silenced by the unbeliever, or schismatic." ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... no-thing the miscreant." Q "Tell me of various kinds of hearts." "There is the whole heart, the sick heart, the contrite heart, the vowed heart and the enlightened heart. Now the whole heart is that of Abraham, the Friend of Allah; the sick heart is that of the Unbeliever in Al-Islam; the contrite heart is that of the pious who fear the Lord; the vowed heart is that of our Lord Mohammed (whom Allah bless and keep!) and the illuminated heart is that of his followers. Furthermore, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... as literary, of doubt; an analysis of the forms and a statement of the intellectual causes of it, would have a value, direct and indirect, in many ways. His desire, he is willing to confess, was to guide the student, rather than to refute the unbeliever. He did not expect to furnish the combatant with ready-made weapons, which would make him omnipotent in conflict; but he hoped to give him some suggestions in reference to the tactics for conducting the contest. The Lectures have a polemical aspect, but they seek to obtain their end by means of the ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... discrepancies by the side of the great central miracle of the Resurrection! Nevertheless their existence was indisputable, and was no less indisputably a cause of stumbling to many, as it had been to himself. His experience of his own sufferings as an unbeliever gave him a keener sympathy with those who were in that distressing condition than could be felt by any one who had not so suffered, and fitted him, perhaps, more than any one who has yet lived to be the interpreter ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... be no excuse for further misrepresentation, to show by whom this subject was introduced into politics, and to state explicitly that we attack no sect and no man, either Protestant or Jew, Catholic or Unbeliever, on account of his conscientious convictions in regard to religion. Who began the agitation of this subject? Why is it agitated? All parties have taken hold of it. The Democratic party in their State convention make it the topic of their longest resolution. In their platform ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... perished, and he would grieve over his unwisdom, in laying up store which could not stand the fire of the Lord. Clearly; if we are bound to act as though the end of all earthly concerns may come, "at cockcrowing or at midday," then to work for distant earthly objects is the part of a fool or of an unbeliever. ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... thy holy cross Bear peace from clime to clime, Till all mankind at length are freed From sorrow, shame and crime: Dispel the unbeliever's gloom, And end ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... decisive. Nowhere shall we find greater candour, consideration, indulgence: he throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason as well as its strength, its province and its limits. If he be an unbeliever, he will be too profound and large-minded to ridicule religion or to act against it; he is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in his infidelity. He respects piety and devotion; he even supports institutions as venerable, beautiful, or useful, to which he does not assent; he honours ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... Philip Duke of Orleans, Regent of France in the minority of Louis XV., a believer in judicial astrology, though an unbeliever ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... de Grancour, approaching the bishop, "it is all useless; we shall certainly have the distress of seeing that unhappy Tascheron die an unbeliever. He vociferates the most horrible imprecations against religion; he insults that poor Abbe Pascal; he spits upon the crucifix; and means to ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... accelerate the departure of his blessed daughter—daughter in the flesh and daughter in Christ. He could not measure the extent of that intercourse; the Searcher of hearts alone could do that, save the parties concerned; but, of course, as she was an unbeliever, they must fear the worst. For himself, he had felt that this was the root of everything. They would judge for themselves how fervently he must have appealed to the Mercy-seat, considering his position and relationship with his dear brother, before he had seen his way to take ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... an unbeliever now," she continued gently, "but should we be fortunate enough to escape the clutches of the black pirates and come again to the court of Matai Shang I think that we shall find an argument to convince you of the error ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... right through the helmet of Jimmy, the unbeliever. The fact that there was not also a hole through his head was due to his forethought in having put on a tam-o'-shanter underneath. The net result was a truncated "toorie." Wullie's bullet had struck his helmet at a more obtuse angle, and had ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... of la Peyrade,—for we ourselves are Peyrades of Canquoelle, but the two branches inherit from one another,—well, this young lady married, six years before the Revolution, a barrister who, after the fashion of the times, was Voltairean, that is to say, an unbeliever, or, if you choose, a deist. He took up all the revolutionary ideas, and practised the charming rites that you know of in the worship of the goddess Reason. He came into our part of the country imbued with ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... constantly reminded that "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God;" that they should "seek salvation with fear and trembling!" However, we are assured that the Christian's death has great consolations, of which the unbeliever is deprived. The good Christian, we are told, dies with the firm hope of enjoying eternal happiness, which he has tried to deserve. But this firm assurance, is it not a punishable presumption in the eyes of a severe God? The greatest saints, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... belief in a Redeemer. His incredulity does not appear so much the offspring of viciousness refusing the curb of moral restraint, as of pride unwilling to be trammelled by the opinions of the multitude. We cannot conceive that, with a faculty so highly imaginative, he could long have continued an unbeliever; or, perhaps, that he could ever have been so in his heart. But he is a portentous example of the dangers to which an inexperienced youth, highly gifted by nature, is exposed, when thrown into the midst of greedy speculators, intent only on availing themselves of his resources ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... that we are saved for the present time," said Mansoor, wiping away the sand which had stuck to his perspiring forehead. "Ali Wad Ibrahim says that though an unbeliever should have only the edge of the sword from one of the sons of the Prophet, yet it might be of more profit to the beit-el-mal at Omdurman if it had the gold which your people will pay for you. Until it comes you can ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle

... causes of skepticism and unbelief besides vice. Thomas was an unbeliever for a time,—a very resolute one,—yet the Gospel gives no intimation that he was chargeable with any form of vice. And John the Baptist, one of the noblest characters in sacred history, after having proclaimed Jesus as the ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... are lawful, but all things do not edify. [10:24]Let no one seek his own but the good of another. [10:25]Whatever is sold in the market eat, asking no questions for conscience' sake; [10:26]for the earth is the Lord's and all it contains. [10:27]But if an unbeliever invites you and you wish to go, eat whatever is set before you, asking no questions for conscience' sake. [10:28]But if any one says to you, This has been offered to an idol, eat not for his sake that informed you, and for conscience' sake. ...
— The New Testament • Various

... was, that he was a Scoffer, must have been inexcusable had she known Lovelace to be so, and had given the least attention to his Addresses. On the contrary, thus she comforts herself, when she thinks she must be his—'This one consolation, however, remains: He is not an Infidel, an Unbeliever. Had he been an Infidel, there would have been no room at all for hope of him; but (priding himself as he does in his fertile invention) he would have been utterly abandoned, irreclaimable, and a Savage[49].' And it must be observed, that Scoffers are too witty in their own opinion; in other words, ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson

... added that the Rome which survived after the conquest by Justinian only lived by the Primacy of which it was the seat. Two historians[186] of the city, writing from quite opposite points of view, one a Catholic Christian, the other a rationalistic unbeliever, unite in witnessing that from the time of Narses the spiritual power of the Primacy was the spring of all action. Not only such new buildings as arose were churches and the work of the Popes; St. Gregory also fed the city from the patrimonium of the church which ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... is opposed to him. The Bible is his enemy, and the Bible claims to be Divine.... What need to state that to deny the Inspiration of the Bible, and to undermine its authority, and to explain away its statements, becomes the next object of the unbeliever? It is precisely at this stage of his downward progress that public attention is excited, and public indignation aroused. The Church, (like its Divine Author,) may be outraged, and few will be found to remonstrate. The Creeds may be ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... Mr. Carleton was an unbeliever. Not maliciously, not wilfully, not stupidly; rather the fool of circumstance. His scepticism might be traced to the joint workings of a very fine nature and a very bad education that is, education in the broad sense of the term; ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... towards the close of his celebrated Essay on the Immutability of Truth, denounces every sincere outspoken unbeliever as a 'murderer of human souls,' and it being obvious that the murderer of a single soul must to the 'enlightened' majority of our people appear an act infinitely more horrible than the butchery of many bodies, it really does at first view seem 'passing strange' that body ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... Catholic Christianity, to account most satisfactorily for the world and especially for the moral world within; and thus, by what Newman calls "powerful and concurrent" reasons, he finds himself inexorably committed to the dogma of the Incarnation. To the unbeliever, this method seems disingenuous and perverse; for the unbeliever is, as a rule, not so greatly troubled to explain the world to himself, nor so greatly distressed by its disorder; nor is he generally ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... interposed to procure a happy delivery to a squaw in protracted pains of childbirth; [ Brbeuf, Relation des Hurons, 1636, 89. Another woman was delivered on touching a relic of St. Ignatius. Ibid., 90. ] and they never doubted, that, in the hour of need, the celestial powers would confound the unbeliever with intervention direct and manifest. At the town of Wenrio, the people, after trying in vain all the feasts, dances, and preposterous ceremonies by which their medicine-men sought to stop the pest, resolved to essay the "medicine" of the French, and, to that end, called the priests ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... It is still impossible to say absolutely that England is a Christian country or a heathen country; almost exactly as it was impossible when Herbert Spencer began to write. Separate elements of both sorts are alive, and even increasingly alive. But neither the believer nor the unbeliever has the impudence to call himself the Englishman. Certainly the great Victorian rationalism has succeeded in doing a damage to religion. It has done what is perhaps the worst of all damages to religion. It has driven it entirely into the power of the religious people. Men like Newman, men like ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... the desert night had closed about them. Cairo, friends,—civilization as she knew it—were left far behind. She, an unbeliever, was in the heart of the trackless wastes with a man whose word was ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn

... religion, science, and philosophy, with an occasional standard novel, or a modern novel of the 'improper' type by way of relaxation. I became a convinced and militant rationalist about five years ago, but have been an unbeliever since I left school. I was anemic and threatened with bowel complaint at the age of 7, and was in consequence taken abroad for my health. I am now strong and vigorous, with great powers of endurance, and enjoy all forms ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... Crabtree, who was an unbeliever in Lansberg, urged Horrox to discard the Flemish astronomer's works, and devote his talents to the study of Tycho Brahe and Kepler. This advice led Horrox to make a more rigorous examination of the Lansberg Tables, and after comparing them ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... to explain to these men the doctrines they misconstrued. When Wells, for instance, gave a crude and inaccurate statement of the doctrine of the Fall, Belloc laughed at him, Chesterton and Father McNabb both wrote long and picturesque articles, illuminating to a believer but, as instruction to an unbeliever, quite useless. A correspondence that seemed likely to drag on forever ended abruptly with Wells asking about the Fall, "Tell me, did it really happen?" to which Chesterton ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... meanest thing on earth! The pious people at the church yonder call me an unbeliever, but they've got themselves to thank for it. I may be a good-for-nothing but at least I will not preach what I ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... Tours, was one of the best men that I have known, but an unbeliever. The archbishop tried in his last illness to reconcile him to the Church: Bretonneau died as he had lived. But the archbishop, when lamenting to me his death, expressed his own conviction that so excellent a soul ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... falsely against me—I cannot and will not forgive them—I am not the man I have been represented to be—I did not commit the murder charged upon me in Ohio. I am thankful to the sheriff and his family for their kindness." He manifested no religious penitence to the last. He died an unbeliever. ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... ideas excited by my visits to the churches; but I am unable to gather these threads together, and group them in a skein, I cannot understand the sudden and silent explosion of light which took place in me. When I seek to explain to myself how one evening an unbeliever, I became without knowing it, on one night a believer, I can discover nothing, for the divine action has ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... on the Continent, and of making short visits to the country. In conversation she is said to have been witty, tolerant, and sympathetic. Poetry, music, and art absorbed much of her attention. She read very little contemporaneous fiction, and seldom any criticisms on her own productions. For an unbeliever in historical Christianity, she had great reverence for all earnest Christian peculiarities, from Roman Catholic asceticism to Methodist fervor. In her own belief she came nearest to the positivism of Comte, although he was not so great an oracle to her as he was to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord

... who is my relative and your enemy, has been here. He has persuaded my father that you are an unbeliever. I am denied pen and ink. If you cannot convince my father of his error, O! pity, and try to ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... He, so quick-sighted; he who meeting any sorrow looked steadily up at the Hand that smote him, knowing neither the coward's dread nor the unbeliever's disguise of pain—surely he must see what was impending. Yet he was as calm as if he saw it not. Calm, as no man could be contemplating the supreme parting between two who nearly all their lives had been ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... heard so much said of Johnson's slovenliness and roughness. I have preserved nothing of what passed, except that Crosbie pleased him much by talking learnedly of alchymy, as to which Johnson was not a positive unbeliever, but rather delighted in considering what progress had actually been made in the transmutation of metals, what near approaches there had been to the making of gold; and told us that it was affirmed, that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... castle of the Loscheks looked grim and inhospitable when she reached it that, night. Built during the years when the unbeliever overran southern Europe, it stood in a commanding position over a valley, and a steep, walled road led up to it. The narrow windows of its turrets were built, in defiance of the Moslem hordes, in the shape of the cross. Its walls had been hospitable enough, however, when the crusaders ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... to its destructive consequences; of how Edmund Massey, lecturer at St. Albans, preached against sinfully endeavoring to alter the course of nature by presumptuous interposition, which he would leave to the atheist and the scoffer, the heathen and unbeliever, while in the face of his sermon, afterwards reprinted in Boston, many of our New England clergy stood up boldly in defence of the practice,—all this has been told so well and so often that I spare you its details. Set this good hint of Cotton Mather against that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... peace with the great Judge. To have hinted, under such circumstances, that the ticking sounds were caused by a small wood moth tapping for its mate, would have subjected the hinter to the name of infidel or unbeliever in Scripture, as superstitious people ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... the Indian of America on the North, the Chinaman of Asia on the West, the descendant of Africa on the South, and the emigrant of Europe on the East, who poured, in great masses, through our Eastern gates, the German unbeliever, the Irish Catholic, the Mormon convert, and representatives ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 3, March 1888 • Various

... thy dreams, fair unbeliever! And leave me unto mine, if they be dreams, That take such shapes before me, that I see them; These effable and ineffable impressions Of the mysterious world, that come to me From the elements of Fire and Earth and Water, And the all-nourishing Ether! It is written, Look not on ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... consideration, indulgence; he throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason as well as its strength, its province, and its limits. If he can be an unbeliever, he will be too profound and large-minded to ridicule religion or to act against it; he is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in his infidelity. He respects piety and devotion; he even supports institutions as venerable, beautiful or ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser

... Prophet. The mosques, on the other hand, are considered merely as places of meeting for certain acts of worship, and are not held so especially consecrated as to demand the total exclusion of all who do not profess the true faith. Entrance into them is not denied to the unbeliever by any statute of the Mohammedan law; and hence it is not uncommon for Christians at Constantinople to receive from the government a written order to visit even the Mosque of St. Sophia. But the sultan himself could not grant permission to an infidel either to pass into ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... little, that is just the reason why he should read it much; for the frequent reading of the Scriptures creates a delight in them, so that the more we read them, the more we desire to do so. And if the reader should be an unbeliever, I would likewise entreat him to read the Scriptures earnestly, but to ask God previously to give him a blessing. For in doing so, God may make him wise unto salvation, 2 ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller

... is one peculiarly susceptible of Mr. Moody's usual method of treatment, and for three-quarters of an hour he kept the congregation at the morning meeting enthralled whilst he told how Daniel's simple faith triumphed over the machinations of the unbeliever. Mr. Moody's style is unlike that of most religious revivalists. He neither shouts nor gesticulates, and mentioned "hell" only once, and that in connection with the life the drunkard makes for himself. His manner is reflected by the congregation ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy

... knights, but not even Rinaldo knew him by sight, though he had proved his prowess in combat. Sobrino made him known to them, and great was the joy of all when they found one whose valor and courtesy were renowned through the world no longer an enemy and unbeliever, but a convert and champion of the true faith. All press about the knight; one grasps his hand, another locks him fast in his embrace; but more than all the rest, Rinaldo cherished him, for he more than any knew ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... Brother Jonathan must appear with his liberty-cap in one hand and a bag of dollars in the other, bowing humbly before a well-whiskered Mussulman, whose shawl is stuck full of poniards and pistols. The smooth-faced unbeliever begs that his little ships may be permitted to sail up and down this coast unmolested, and promises to give these and other dollars, if his Highness, the Pacha, will only command his men to keep the peace ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... was an unbeliever, but at that moment he realized that something had control of life, which could act ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden

... herself in a quiet empty room, thinking of something that wasn't there. You couldn't help feeling that she knew things. Mamma said she had always been the clever one, just as Aunt Charlotte had always been the queer one; but Aunt Bella said she was no better than an unbeliever, because she was a Unitarian ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... second court was less successful: Mustapha being a great coward, he was afraid to offer the sentinels a bribe; yet I have no doubt that the sight of a gold dollar never fails to gain admission for the unbeliever, whether Jew or Christian. Turning away from this forbidden paradise, we proceeded to examine a fine old plane tree, in the trunk of which three people live and keep a coffee-shop. A grove of plane, oak, chestnut, and cypress trees, conducted us out by ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo

... councils of the other reformed cantons of Switzerland approved the sentence with a unanimous voice. 4. It was of the utmost importance for the Reformation to separate distinctly its cause from that of such an unbeliever as Servetus. The Catholic Church, which in our day accuses Calvin of having participated in his condemnation, much more would have accused him, in the sixteenth century, ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... to my uncle's opinions and principles, for, Helen, he is an unbeliever!" said May, sighing, as she turned away to go up ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... Lady of the Broken Lances," said the Crusader, "I would not that the Turks were more courteous than they are Christian, and am well pleased that unbeliever and heathen hound are a proper description for the best of them, as being traitor alike to their God and to the laws of chivalry; and devoutly do I trust that I shall meet with them in the front rank of our army, beside our standard, or elsewhere, and have an open field to my devoir ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... of my religious training was to make me ashamed of discussing spiritual matters, and naturally I failed to perceive that this was because it laid its emphasis on personal salvation.... I did not, however, become an unbeliever, for I was not of a nature to contemplate with equanimity a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... from every corner of the scaffold. He uttered a long religious speech of contrition. Once, he said, he had been nearly drowned: but God preserved him for this great day of confession and repentance. But 'no unbeliever in the guilt of Gowrie,' says Calderwood, 'was one whit the more convinced.' Of course not, nor would the death of Henderson—which they clamoured for—have convinced them. They said, falsely, that Sprot was really condemned as a forger, and, having to die, took ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang

... person of the highest degree of unworth. Etymologically, the word means unbeliever, and its present signification may be regarded as theology's noblest contribution to the development of ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... By the Authority of my Government, Which yet I hold over the King of Spain, By Warrant of a Council from the Peers, And (as an Unbeliever) from the Church, I utterly deprive thee of that Greatness, Those Offices and Trusts you hold ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... is not merely that nobody punishes, but nobody protests. But if you speak of God as a fact, as a thing like a tiger, as a reason for changing one's conduct, then the modern world will stop you somehow if it can. We are long past talking about whether an unbeliever should be punished for being irreverent. It is now thought irreverent to be a believer. I end where I began: it is the old Puritan in Shaw that jars the modern world like an electric shock. That vision with which I meant to end, that vision of ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... there were members who possessed the gift of prophecy—a very valuable endowment. It was not the power of predicting future events, but a gift of impassioned eloquence, the effects of which were sometimes marvelous: when an unbeliever entered the assembly and listened to the prophets, he was seized with uncontrollable emotion, the sins of his past life rose up before him, and, falling on his face, he confessed that God was among them of a truth. Other members exercised gifts more like those we are ourselves ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker

... new ideals. The Crusades were preached in Wales; the grave of Christ was held by a cruel unbeliever, and it was the duty of a soldier to rescue it. It appealed to an inborn love of war, and many Welshmen were willing to go. It did good by teaching them that, in fighting, they were not to fight for themselves. It was in Powys that feuds were most bitter. A young warrior told ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards

... rather than he would leave her for a moment to her own reflections. The devoutest person could have rendered no greater homage to the efficacy of an honest prayer than he did in this distrust of his wife. It was as if a professed unbeliever in ghosts should be frightened by ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... front of him again and his round eyes vacillated between Richard and Ellen, growing rounder at each roll. Presently he swallowed a lump in his throat and addressed himself to her. "Ah, you're an unbeliever," he said. "Well, Captain Sampson says there's always a reason for it if people can't believe." He moistened his lips and panted the words out at her. "If you've been ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... other, do all acts of kindness to each other, as thou and I have done, Melchior, nay, be in the last extremity, and feel more agony for the friend than for one's self, and yet entertain such opinions of their respective creeds, as to fancy the unbeliever in the devil's claws all this time, and to entertain a latent distrust that the very soul which, in all other matters, is deemed so noble and excellent, is to be everlastingly damned for the want of certain opinions and formalities ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... conditions change and the thought is outworn: if the phrase that clothed the old thought remains and is used glibly as a verbal counter, then you have Cant, and the longer the phrase is parrotted by an unbeliever, the more venomous does the virus of cant become. To the fishers—childlike men—many of the old Methodist turns of speech are vital; to a cultured man the husk of words may be dry and dead, but if he is clever and indulgent he will see the difference between ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... them, a chasm no less because Adelheid's marriage bonds were broken. Her aversion had been for the man who believed in nothing, and to whom nothing was sacred, and that man was as great a scoffer, as great an unbeliever to-day as ever. ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... coat essential to salvation; to the descendant of the Puritan, who whether he be Socinian, Calvinist, Universalist, or any other "1st," appears to believe that the "rock" on which Christ declared he would found his church was the "Rock of Plymouth"; and to the unbeliever, who, in deriding all creeds, does not know where to turn to find one to substitute in their stead. Humility, in matters of this sort, is the great lesson that all should teach and learn; for it opens the way to ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... know that yon Syrian Yusef is a dog of a Christian, a kaffir?" (Kaffir—unbeliever—is a name of contempt given by Moslems, the followers of the false Prophet, to those who worship ...
— The Children's Portion • Various

... assurance doubly sure by pounding upon the walls and pulling up the rug in the cabinet, to prove that no sliding panel or trap-door trick was possible. There was something calculated to make an unbeliever very uneasy in the quiet confidence of these people, and the business-like way in which they went to work to make it impossible to account for any phenomenon that might appear, on any other but a supernatural theory. No doubt whatever now remained in the mind of Miss ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy

... strength of the movement lay in the fact that they hungered and thirsted after art, clamouring for beauty, so Mr. Chesterton says, as an ordinary man clamours for beer. But their aim was not to mystify or to enlarge their own consequence, but to convert the unbeliever, and ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... greatest import, and a good Mohammedan will not only refrain from eating pork, but will not hunt the wild boar or help carry it home for fear the contact might defile him. Wine is of course forbidden, though I have heard that in the Philippines food over which the shadow of an unbeliever has passed need not be thrown away, the Moros there being more thrifty and perhaps less fanatically devout than their ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... a very singular coincidence may be noticed, or, rather, is forced upon our notice by the pyramidalists, who strangely enough recognise in it fresh evidence of design, while the unbeliever finds in it proof that coincidences are no sure evidence of design. The side of the pyramid containing 365-1/4 times the sacred cubit of 25 pyramid inches, it follows that the diagonal of the base contains 12,912 such inches, and the two diagonals together contain 25,824 pyramid ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... utter words based on (plausible) reasons. Indeed, in assemblies, I always spoke of reasons (and never faith). I used to speak irreverently of the declarations of the Srutis and address Brahmanas in domineering tones. I was an unbeliever, skeptical of everything, and though really ignorant, proud of my learning. This status of a jackal that I have obtained in this life is the consequence, O regenerate one, of those sins of mine! If even after hundreds of days and nights I that am a ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... said the old man, falling on his knees, "what is to become of us? That I should live to hear you talk like an infidel and unbeliever!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... a willing unbeliever, a man who has sinned against the clearest light, a gambler, a libertine, an embodiment of selfishness? Can it be that Annie Walton will ever receive even friendship from one so stained, knowing the additional fact that I plotted against ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... time, I kept up my relations with them, notably with M. Le Hir, but I gradually came to feel that relations of this kind, between the believer and the unbeliever, grow strained, and I broke off an intimacy which could be profitable ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... show how glorious a redeemed soul might become, that you might be encouraged to pray. The holy Saint Monica thus saw the blessed Augustine standing clothed in white among the angels while he was yet a worldling and unbeliever, and thereby received the grace to continue her prayers for thirty years, till she saw him a holy bishop. This is a sure sign that this young man, whoever he may be, shall attain Paradise through your prayers. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... granted by the bishop or Pope. With regard to names, parents should never be induced by any motive to give their child some foolish or fancy name taken from books, places, or things. Above all, they should never select the name of any enemy of the Church or unbeliever, but the name of one of God's saints who will be a model for the child. Whatever name is taken, if it be not a saint's name, the name of some saint should be given as a middle name. If this has been omitted in Baptism, it should be supplied in Confirmation, at which time a new name ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead

... be expected, that an ecclesiastical school should inculcate the orthodox principles of religion. But our venerable mother had contrived to unite the opposite extremes of bigotry and indifference: an heretic, or unbeliever, was a monster in her eyes; but she was always, or often, or sometimes, remiss in the spiritual education of her own children. According to the statutes of the university, every student, before he is matriculated, must subscribe ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... gentleman-companion to move to another table. Out of the entire thirteen, I was the only one that was saved. I was asked at the time if I did not believe in the unlucky number thirteen. I told them I did not. In this case the believers were all lost and the unbeliever saved. ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... is a strange fact that, notwithstanding the explicitness and uniformity of the New Testament teachings on this subject, there is a widespread popular opinion that the Holy Spirit's work is directly and immediately on or in the heart of the unbeliever, without the intervention or agency of the Christian whatever. To hear what is said in the sermons, or sung in the hymns, or prayed in the prayers of many Christians, one might believe that the Holy Spirit is sent directly ...
— The Spirit and the Word - A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational - Interpretation of the Word of Truth • Zachary Taylor Sweeney

... excellent woman—a heart of gold—a noble soul! My dear friend, you have found the best way to convert me. I have always believed the religion of honor was sufficient for a man—eh, Camors? But I am not an unbeliever, my dear Countess, and, on my sacred word, when I see a perfect creature like you, I desire to believe everything she believes, if only to be pleasant ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... have been religious fanaticism of a character and extent unmatched in history. The founder of the Faith, Mohammed, taught from 622 to 632. He succeeded in imbuing his followers with the passion of winning the world to the knowledge of Allah and Mohammed his prophet. The unbeliever was to be offered the alternatives of conversion or death, and the believer who fell in the holy wars would be instantly transported to Paradise. Men who actually believe that they will be sent to a blissful ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... interrupted she, smiling; "then, unbeliever, I shall convince you. Attend closely to all that ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... beginning and root of religion by the Orthodox party in the Church. We are saved by the word of truth; and the Saviour himself is called "the Word,"—belief in whom constitutes eternal life. Rationally, it is argued that the essential difference between the Christian and the unbeliever, or the unchristian, must lie in seeing Christ or not seeing him. The first step in the religious life always consists in ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... what the nun, as distinguished from the mere woman, must have felt when she found herself trapped in a man's rooms and locked in. Even his unbelief instinctively placed Sister Giovanna higher in the scale of goodness than Angela Chiaromonte; he was an unbeliever, but not a scoffer, for somehow the rule of honour influenced him there, too. Nuns could really be saints, and were often holy women, and the fact that they were mistaken, in his opinion, only made their sacrifice more complete, since they ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford

... the awful, mysterious end, was drawing near; and she who was called was making no such preparations as the Christian makes to answer the dread summons. As she had lived, she meant to die—an avowed unbeliever. More than once Mary had taken courage, and had talked to her grandmother of the world beyond, the blessed hope of re-union with the friends we have lost, in a new and brighter life, only to be met by the sceptic's cynical ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... relationship between God and the world, the visible and the invisible? Every serious thinker, therefore, must recognize the importance of faith in the furtherance of science, the progress of nations and the life of the state. It is a fearful delusion that man can be immoral, an unbeliever, even an enemy of the cross of Christ, and yet a furtherer of morality and science, a good neighbor and ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg

... unbeliever, I thought I knew a great deal about the Bible, and I used to lay down the law, and talk very big about this inconsistency and that inconsistency in the Scriptures, and I just read those books which supplied ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... Laleli. But she drew the pale green veil that was round her throat a little higher, so as to cover her mouth. "What is this vile body that it should be any longer withheld from the touch of the unbeliever? What is your medicine, Giaour? Shall the touch of your unbelieving hand, wherewith you daily make signs before images, heal the sickness of her who is a daughter of the prophet of the ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... fell sadly short of her ideal of goodness. He was an unbeliever. But might not this very circumstance involve a duty? As his wife, could she not plead with him and bring him to the truth? Would not that be loving him, to make his spiritual good the end of her existence? It was as though a great light shot athwart her darkness. ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... tends to the glory of God is true; it is for the glory of God that infidels should be as bad as possible; therefore, whatever tends to show that infidels are as bad as possible is true. All infidels, he tells us, have been men of "gross and licentious lives." Is there not some well-known unbeliever, David Hume, for example, of whom even Dr. Cumming's readers may have heard as an exception? No matter. Some one suspected that he was not an exception, and as that suspicion tends to the glory of ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... unbeliever,' said Peak, endeavouring to avoid a sermonising formality, though with indifferent success, 'are, of course, of two kinds; there's the theory of evolution, and there's modern biblical criticism. The more I study these objections, the less able I am to see how they ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... the absolute inability of man and the universality of divine grace, without an attempt to solve these contradictory positions." (304.) "Thus the particularism of election and the universalism of vocation, the absolute inability of fallen man, and the guilt of the unbeliever for rejecting what he cannot accept, are illogically combined." (1, 330.) The real charge here raised against the Formula of Concord is, that it fails to modify the doctrines of sola gratia or universalis ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... on children in this state whom they are asked to treat medically; and the glee with which they record the success of their tricks, are certainly remarkable. From some passages I infer that, in the Roman Catholic view of the case, the rite of baptism may be administered even by an unbeliever. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin



Words linked to "Unbeliever" :   materialist, atheist, nonreligious person, disbeliever, irreligionist



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