Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Worldliness   /wˈərldlinəs/   Listen
Worldliness

noun
1.
The quality or character of being intellectually sophisticated and worldly through cultivation or experience or disillusionment.  Synonyms: mundaneness, mundanity, sophistication.
2.
Concern with worldly affairs to the neglect of spiritual needs.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Worldliness" Quotes from Famous Books



... how it was, but as I wandered slowly down the shady road, for the first time in years of worldliness, the dream that had haunted my boyhood revived again. Do you know what I mean, Andre?—that dim yearning for lovelier beings and fairer places, whose ideals lie in the heaven-fitted mind, but not in the wilderness it wakes in; that mystery of our ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon

... valley, or yielded easily as the leaf to every breeze! A path has been appointed me. I have walked in it as steadily as I could. I am what I am; that which I am not, teach me in the others. I will bear the pain of imperfection, but not of doubt. E. must not shake me in my worldliness, nor —— in the fine motion that has given me what I have of life, nor this child of genius make me lay aside the armor, without which I had lain bleeding on the field long since; but, if they can keep closer to nature, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... and made him appear as something between a Sunday-school superintendent and the Creator. The "Mornings in Florence" and "Giotto and his Works in Padua" so insist upon the artist's holiness and conscious purpose in all he did that his genial worldliness, shrewdness, and humour, as brought out by Dante, Vasari, Sacchetti, and Boccaccio, are utterly excluded. What we see is an intense saint where really was a very robust man. Sacchetti's story of Giotto one day stumbling over a pig that ran between his legs and remarking, "And ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... school-girl's foolish dream! Instead of combating it, instead of reasoning with her, instead of trying to interest her in other things, he had even helped on her illusions. He had treated her as if the taint of her mother's worldliness and knowledge of evil was in her pure young flesh. He had recognized her as the daughter of an adventuress, and not as his ward, appealing to his chivalry through her very ignorance—it might be her very childish vanity. He had brought to a question of tender and pathetic interest only ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte

... revival of learning, artists were free to give greater importance to secular subjects, and an element of worldliness, and even of immorality, invaded the realm of art as it invaded the realms ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... will understand me, and I am very sorry I have been carried away to-night by the music. It isn't dancing itself that's a sin, and I am not judging any of you; but I know in my heart that dancing and theatricals are wrong for me; they are the essentials of worldliness, those and horse-racing, and card-playing, and other things of the same sort. I want to keep clear of them all, as I know if I go in for any I shall be gradually more and more engrossed in them. And the very proof I have had to-night of how my taste for dancing has not gone, will make ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre

... at Lancelot with one of those kindly thoughtful smiles, which came over him whenever his better child's heart could bubble up through the thick crust of worldliness. ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... dwelling upon it, you know how long, how constantly, how ardently I have loved Lady Flora Ardenne; how, for her sake, I have refused opportunities of alliance which might have gratified to the utmost that worldliness of heart which so many who saw me only in the crowd have been pleased to impute to me. You know that neither pleasure, nor change, nor the insult I received from her parents, nor the sudden indifference which I so ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... see such a very great difference, come to live among them! 'By their fruits ye shall know them.' To comfort the widow and the fatherless, and keep ourselves unspotted from the world!—thee's always preached that, father! I really can't see any more worldliness here than among many households with us,—and I'm sure if we haven't been the widow and the fatherless this summer, ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... is that if Keats had spent fifteen or twenty minutes more on his Grecian Urn, all of the stanzas would be as good as three of them. And so we think that if A. B. had put in, say, a half hour more on her sonnet she would not have rhymed "worldliness" and "moodiness." Of the harmony, counterpoint, thoroughbass, etc., of verse we know next to nothing—we play on our tin whistle entirely by ear—but there are things which we avoid, perhaps needlessly. ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... the most thrilling passages in the Bible. It has always been understood as a call to intimate religion, as the appeal of a personal Saviour to those who are loaded with sin and weary of worldliness. But in fact it expresses the sense of a revolutionary ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... a simple, old-fashioned woman, accustomed to old-fashioned ideas, living all her life in a little town where the line between the church and the world was strongly marked, where the traditions of Christianity were still held sacred in the hearts of many and where the customs of worldliness had not yet noticeably invaded. All the articles she had read in the religious press about the worldliness of the modern Sabbath, the terrible desecration of the day that had been dear and sacred to her all her life as being the time when she came closest to her Lord; all the struggle ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... have sacrificed them, also, had it been possible. To the tin gods she had offered her soul—to the things that did not matter she had yielded up the only things that mattered at all. And she knew now that, in spite of her clearness of vision, the worldliness which had ruined her life was still bound up in all that was essential and endurable in her nature. She still wanted the illusions as passionately as if she believed in their reality; she still winced as sharply at the thought of Patty's marriage and of all ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... its presence there at the end of the shaded village street was real to me, like my mother's. I did not repent in it as one must do in a Methodist or Baptist church, but I grew up in it like a daughter in the house of the Lord. As a girl on Sabbath mornings I entered it with all the mincing worldliness of my young mind unabashed. Later I was "confirmed" in it and experienced some of the vanity of that high spiritual calm which attends quick conversions in other churches. And to this day there ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris

... befal us too surely, and too irresistibly, unless, by earlier watchfulness and prayer, we may have been enabled to avoid them. For vain will it be, with faculties at once weakened by the decay of nature and perverted by long habits of worldliness, to essay, for the first time, to force our way into the kingdom of heaven. Old age is not the season for contest and victory; nor shall we then be so able to escape unharmed from the temptations of life as to stand before ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold

... Originally "Aunt Susan" had greatly admired Mrs. Besant, and had openly lamented the latter's concentration on theosophical interests—when, as Miss Anthony put it, "there are so many live problems here in this world." Now she could not conceal her disapproval of the "other-worldliness" of Mrs. Besant, Mrs. Bright, and her daughter. Some remarkable and, to me, most amusing discussions took place among the three; but often, during Mrs. Besant's most sustained oratorical flights, ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw

... path to happiness than worldliness, revelry, high life: for the whole object of it is to transform our miserable existence into a succession of joys, delights and pleasures,—a process which cannot fail to result in disappointment and delusion; on a par, ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... in a time of great activity and change, and intense worldliness. "Men run to and fro and knowledge is increased." Would that we could feel that there is an increase also in integrity and virtue, and respect for Religion. We all know that it is not so. So far as we can form accurate ideas of the social and religious condition of men at any particular ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... lightness on all the incongruities of life, always, too, in kindly spirit. No foible is too trifling for Chaucer's quiet observation; while if he does not choose to denounce the hypocrisy of the Pardoner and the worldliness of the Monk, he has made their weaknesses sources of amusement (and indeed object-lessons as well) ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... and she looked up fearlessly into Agatha's face, "we do know about you. It is spoken of by all how you follow a wicked and worldly profession. You can't touch pitch and not be defiled. The temple must be purged and emptied of worldliness ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... conception of a God gives an altogether new colour to worldliness and vice. Worldliness it changes into heathenism, vice into blasphemy. The carnal mind, the mind which is turned away from God, which will not correspond with God—this is not moral only but spiritual Death. And Sin, that which separates ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond

... divine, office, abstemious, and observant of the fasts of the Church. As a secular ruler he would have stood incomparably higher than any of the contemporary sovereigns of Europe, but he was out of place considerably as the head of a great religious organisation. Worldliness and indifference to the dangers that threatened the Church are the most serious charges that can be made against him, but especially in the circumstances of the time, when the Holy See should have set itself to combat the ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... I may say that I learned from the Andover life, or, at least, from the Andover home. That was an everlasting scorn of worldliness—I do not mean in the religious sense of the word. That tendency to seek the lower motive, to do the secondary thing, to confuse sounds or appearances with values, which is covered by the word as we commonly use it, very early came to seem to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various

... different. She knows nothing about sin and wickedness, and I got this position for her, so that as soon as she left the convent she was placed directly in the care of this good woman and her little innocent child. What does she know of sin or sorrow, or worldliness or vanity?" ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... meaning of Chiquita's passionate longing for the man she loved; a thing which the worldliness of the life she had lived hitherto had taught her to be too extravagant to exist anywhere outside of books, but which was true nevertheless. Her intuition told her this in the face of all the world might say to the ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, even Jesus Christ the Lord, the everlasting Rock, on which all morality and all society is founded. Whosoever shall fall on that Rock in repentance and humility, confessing, bewailing, and forsaking his worldliness and sinfulness, he shall indeed be broken: but of him it is written, 'The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.' And he shall find that Rock, even Christ, a safe standing-ground amid the slippery mire of this ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... Reasoning worldliness, especially when allied with sensuousness, cannot repress on some extreme occasions the human instinct to pour out the soul to some Being or Personality, who in frigid moments is dismissed with the title of ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... the Second; and, beside it, he describes a religious assembly of the same period. The first gathering appears to be altogether worldly: the second has nothing of the world about it. Yet, he says, Mary Godolphin lived her life at Court without being tainted by any shadow of worldliness, whilst many a man went up to those solemn assemblies with the world raging furiously ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham

... will, nor warmth of love, nor clearness of vision, left for better things. That is the history of the fall of many a professing Christian, who never apostatises, and keeps up a reputable appearance of godliness to the end; but the old worldliness, which was cut down for a while, has sprung again in his heart, and, by slow degrees, the word is 'choked'—a most expressive picture of the silent, gradual dying-out of its power for want of sun and air—and 'he' or 'it' 'becometh unfruitful,' relapsing from a previous condition ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... if you will excuse me, I will go up to my room. You can drop in, and look over those papers before you go. However, stay as late as it is agreeable for you to do so." Walter Jerrold understood him. Already captivated by Helen's beauty and worldliness, his ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... her father were now faint, and her poor little stock of eggs and bread looked like folly to her new-born worldliness. ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... young person who is fascinated by worldly pleasure, and supposes that wealth and honour are real apples of gold to the possessor, thinking less of goodness and a life of piety than he does of mere show and worldliness, will find that he has been playing with a costly whistle, when age and his last sickness comes, and death confronts him ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer

... to clash with the developing powers of the new age was its pessimistic and ascetic other-worldliness. The ideal of the church was monastic; all the pleasures of this world, all its pomps and learning and art were but snares to seduce men from salvation. Reason was called a barren tree but faith was held to blossom like the rose. Wealth was shunned as dangerous, marriage deprecated as a necessary ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... nothing to blame ourselves with, much more so when we feel that ours is the fault. It would not seem to matter very much, if it were not such a loss to both; for friendship is one of the appointed means of saving the life from worldliness and selfishness. It is the greatest education in the world; for it is education of the whole man, of the affections as well as the intellect. Nothing of worldly success can make up for the want of it. And true friendship is also a moral preservative. It ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black

... had never seen me in his life. He was in his ninetieth year, and he had climbed the stairs to the first floor to ask me to one of his breakfast parties. To say nothing of Rogers' fame, his wealth, his position in society, those who know what his cynicism and his worldliness were, will understand what such an effort, physical and moral, must have cost him. He always looked like a death's head, but his ghastly pallor, after that Alpine ascent, made me feel as if he had come ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... with his humor. He was the foremost of English sentimentalists, and he had that taint of insincerity which distinguishes sentimentalism from genuine sentiment, like Goldsmith's, for example. Sterne, in life, was selfish, heartless, and untrue. A clergyman, his worldliness and vanity and the indecency of his writings were a scandal to the Church, though his sermons were both witty and affecting. He enjoyed the titilation of his own emotions, and he had practiced so long at detecting the latent pathos that lies in the expression of dumb things and of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... astonishingly large and lithe and distinctly resembled one of the big gold-colored lions that live in the wilds of the Harpeth Mountains out beyond Paradise Ridge. His head, with its tawny thatch that ought to have waved majestically but which was sleek and decorous to the point of worldliness, was poised on his neck and shoulders with a singularly strong line that showed through a silk soft collar, held together by an exquisitely worldly amethyst silk scarf which, it was a shock to see, matched glints from eyes back under his heavy ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... kind of Etonian, with much good that he had got from Eton, with something better, not to be got at Eton or any other school. He had those pleasant manners and that perfect ease in dealing with men and with the world which are the inheritance of Eton, without the least tincture of worldliness. I remember well the look he then had, his countenance massive for one so young, with good sense and good feeling, in fact, full of character. For it was character more than special ability which marked him out from others, and made him, wherever he ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... by Emile Augier, the first act introduces us to the household of a merchant, of Havre, who has married a wealthy, but extravagant woman, and has a son and daughter who are being gradually corrupted by their mother's worldliness. We learn that Fourchambault, senior, has, in his youth, betrayed a young woman who was a governess in his family. He wanted to marry her, but his relations maligned her character, and he cast her off; nor does he know what has become of her and her child. In the ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... particle of worldliness, either of them, and I don't believe it will make any great difference if we have millions. Of course if you were, for instance, the president of the South Midland they would not have refused to receive you, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... only mean That makes us differ from base millers borne. Though we expect no knightly delicates, Nor thirst in soul for former soverainty, Yet may our minds as highly scorn to stoop To base desires of vulgars worldliness, As if we were in our precedent way. And, lovely daughter, since thy youthful years Must needs admit as young affections, And that sweet love unpartial perceives Her dainty subjects through every part, In chief receive these lessons from my lips, The true discovers ...
— Fair Em - A Pleasant Commodie Of Faire Em The Millers Daughter Of - Manchester With The Love Of William The Conquerour • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... I hef judged him hardly," said Lachlan Campbell, one of the Free Kirk Highlanders, and our St. Dominic. "I shall never again deny that the root of the matter is in the man, although much choked with the tares of worldliness and Arminianism." ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... as gaily as if she had known them both all her life, she introduced them to Pa. Pa, whose youngest daughter was just now in high favour, was mildly pleased with the invasion. This impromptu hospitality smacked of prosperity, of worldliness. He went stiffly into the study with John, to bore the poet with an old volume about California: "From ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... "It would take away all his reverence for the Sabbath, and the God who appointed that holy day of rest. His morals would be all broke up, and he would be a ruined boy. I expect that he will be there two months—that would make eight days of worldliness and wickedness; and I feel that long enough before the eighth day had come his principles would be underminded, and his morals all tottered and ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... his appointment with her the next morning. He also dreaded an encounter with Mrs. Winthrop. He felt that the reaction from her moment of womanly pity would strand her still farther on the rocks of her worldliness. He was detained on his way to the hotel so that it was nearly twelve when he arrived. It was a relief to find Carey alone. There was an appealing look in her eyes; but David felt that he could bear no expression of sympathy, and he trusted she would ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... breathed through his heated fancy like a cool and fragrant wind. It was vague and sweet and wandering at first, straying on into a strain more mysterious and melancholy, but very shadowy and subdued, and evoking the innocent and tender moods of early youth before worldliness had hardened around his heart. Gradually, as he listened to it, the fires in his brain were allayed, and all yielded to a sense of coolness and repose. He seemed to sink from trance to trance of utter rest, and yet was dimly aware that either something ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor

... slipper. With the feelings and the schemes that have been thus intimated, this sensible lady's mortification may well be conceived when she was startled by Darrell's proposal, not to herself, but to her daughter. Her egotism was profoundly shocked, her worldliness cruelly thwarted. With Guy Darrell for her own spouse, the Marquess of Montfort for her daughter's, Mrs. Lyndsay would have been indeed a considerable personage in the world. But to lose Darrell for herself, and the Marquess altogether—the idea was intolerable! Yet, since to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... been truly said that the best books are those which most resemble good actions. They are purifying, elevating, and sustaining; they enlarge and liberalize the mind; they preserve it against vulgar worldliness; they tend to produce high-minded cheerfulness and equanimity of character; they fashion, and shape, and humanize the mind. In the Northern universities, the schools in which the ancient classics are studied are appropriately ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... Medici, almost cynical in its positivism, the spirit of Sixtus IV., almost godless in its egotism, were abroad in Italy at this period;[162] indeed, the fifteenth century presents at large a spectacle of prosaic worldliness and unideal aims. Yet the work done by the artists was the best work of the epoch, far more fruitful of results and far more permanently valuable than that of Filelfo inveighing in filthy satires against his personal foes, or of Beccadelli endeavouring to inoculate modern literature ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... palettes of sombre and neutral rather than of brilliant colours; that actual "story interest" is not what they, as a rule,[124] aim at. Finally—though this may be a proposition likely to be disputed with some heat in one case if not in both—their conception of humanity has a certain "other-worldliness" about it, though it is as far as possible from being what is usually understood by the adjective "unworldly" and though the forms thereof in ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... principles of the Gospel. The existing social order is the product of a compromise between inherited influences and standards which are in a certain sense broadly Christian, and the natural man's instinctive selfishness in matters both individual and social. The conflict against the spirit of worldliness which should be one of the marks of a genuine Christian life is beset by peculiar difficulties, precisely because in a society which is in some respects partially Christian the issues are confused. ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson

... persistent emphasis upon man's existence after death, which it declared infinitely more important than his brief sojourn in the body. Under the influence of the Church this conception of life had gradually supplanted the pagan one in the Roman world, and it was taught to the barbarians. The other-worldliness became so intense that thousands gave up their ordinary occupations and pleasures altogether, and devoted their entire attention to preparation for the next life. They shut themselves in lonely cells; and, not satisfied with giving up most of their natural pleasures, they inflicted bodily ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... result, he himself was nearly in the condition of that diseased seaman, with as little prospect of being benefited by his secrets as was the man himself who first communicated their existence. Mary saw all this clearly, and mourned almost as much over the blindness and worldliness of her uncle as she did over the now nearly assured fate of him whom she had so profoundly ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... buoyant, perfectly sure of himself. No emergency could arise where he would be found wanting in the man's part. The man in him she admired,—it was what first had attracted her,—was proud of it, just as he was proud of her lithe figure, her beauty, her gayety, and her little air of worldliness. She began to assume that this was all of marriage, at least the essential part of it, and that the other, the passionate desire, was something desired by the man and to be avoided ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... condition that I should, like a coward, desert helpless and unfortunate women to whom my word is given, I would have fulfilled your best hopes and ambitions, and have made your age glad with my grateful love and service. In your cold-hearted worldliness you have overreached yourself, and you wrong yourself more than me, even though I perish in the streets. But I won't starve. Mark my words: I'll place the Atwood name where you can't, with all your money, and I shall not make broken faith with those who ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... short. He then let his beard grow, and, after some hesitation, his moustache. Many of the older people, we are told, were scandalised, but remained silent; some wrote to the newspapers in protest. The moustache was declared to invest ministers "with an air of levity and worldliness." A letter of approval purported to come from the shade of a Wesleyan minister, the Rev. H.D. Lowe, who, in 1828, had his beard cut off by order of the Wesleyan ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews

... into the living-room. Warrington longed to sit beside Patty, but of a sudden he had grown diffident. It amused him to come into the knowledge that all his address and worldliness would not stand him in good stead in the presence of Patty. Words were no longer at his command; he was no longer at his ease. He was afraid of Patty; and he was very, very lonely. That empty house over ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... type of national government has only once been reached in the history of the human race. And in spite of the seeds of evil in its own impatience, and in the gradually increasing worldliness of the mercantile body; in spite of the hostility of the angry soldier, and the malignity of the sensual priest, this government gave to Europe the entire cycle of Christian art, properly so called, and ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... reform of the bishops that must precede that of the clergy, the reform of the clergy that would lead to a general revival of religion in the people at large. The accumulation of benefices, the luxury and worldliness of the priesthood, must be abandoned. The prelates ought to be busy preachers, to forsake the Court and labour in their own dioceses. Care should be taken for the ordination and promotion of worthy ministers, residence should be enforced, ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... a grimace behind his hand, which I fancy he did not mean his father to see. Then, he went on, "'They say' that Mr Whitefield is so fanatical and extravagant in preaching against worldliness, that he counts it sinful to smell to a rose, or to ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... the bride has drifted back from her position of blessing into a state of worldliness. Perhaps the very restfulness of her new-found joy made her feel too secure: perhaps she thought that, so far as she was concerned, there was no need for the exhortation, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." Or she may have thought that the love of the ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor

... in the art of acting, but not in the art of dissimulation; she had been of the world without having been worldly; and sometimes she was as frank and simple as a child. And worldliness makes a buffer in times like these. Cathewe thanked God for his own shell, toughened as it had been in ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... clergy most was their severance from the general sympathies of the nation, their selfishness, and the worldliness of their temper. Immense as their wealth was, they bore as little as they could of the common burthens of the realm. They were still resolute to assert their exemption from the common justice of the land, though the mild punishments of the bishops' courts carried as little dismay as ever ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... Clear from the great Transgression; but indeed, all the Unreformed among us, may justly be cry'd out upon, as having too much of an hand in letting of the Devils into our Borders; 'tis our Worldliness, our Formality, our Sensuality, and our Iniquity that has help'd this letting of the Devils in. O let us then at last, consider our ways. 'Tis a strange passage recorded by Mr. Clark in the Life of his Father, That the People of his Parish, refusing to be Reclaimed from ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... thinking of the friends I had left on the other side of the mountains. I had not succeeded as I had hoped in my work. I came to the West expecting to meet with opposition, and I found only indifference. I expected infidelity, and found worldliness. I had around me a company of good Christian friends, but they were no converts of mine; they were from New England, like myself, and brought their religion with them. Upon the real Western people I had made no impression, and could not see how I should ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... helped him, that I have lifted a money-burden from his life; I have done that, I tell myself, over and over; but then I wonder, have I done anything but put the reckoning off? I have given all his other children a new excuse for extravagance, an impulse towards worldliness which they ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... mis-shapen) fold on fold A growth of sand-shoes rubber-soled, Clambering the door-posts, branching, spawning Their barbarous bunches like an awning Over the windows and the doors. But, framed among the other stores, Something has caught Miss Thompson's eye (O worldliness! O vanity!), A pair of slippers—scarlet plush. Miss Thompson feels a conscious blush Suffuse her face, as though her thought Had ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... given another. Hunting was not loyal enough even to such a woman as Annie to believe her implicitly. But it is the curse of conscious deceit to breed suspicion. Only the true can have absolute faith in the truth of others. Moreover, Hunting, in his hidden selfishness and worldliness could not understand Annie's ardent effort to save a fellow-creature from sin. Skilled in the subtle impulses of the heart, he believed that Annie, unconsciously even to herself, was drifting toward the man he hated ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... then, from the plain words of Scriptures, that there are vast numbers of evil spirits continually tempting men, each of them to some particular sin; to worldliness, for instance, for we read of the spirit of the evil world; to filthiness, for we read of unclean spirits; to falsehood, for we read of lying spirits and a spirit of lies; to pride, for we read of a spirit of pride;—in short, to all sins which a man CAN commit, to all evil passions ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... "blessings." She hunted up in the attic the long disused trundle-bed of her children; foraged in long-locked cupboards for the tiny sheets and quilts; dragged out of hiding a small chest of drawers and bestowed the twins' belongings therein, bemoaning meanwhile the worldliness that had selected such fanciful garments as a trio of young girls had done. However, there was plenty of good material somewhere about the house. A cast-off coat of Oliver's would make more than one suit for Benjamin; while for little Ruth, already the darling ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond

... harvest. By the arrangement of the seasons we are constantly kept at the door of Divine mercy, begging "Give us this day our daily bread." That eternal voice preaching through all our temporal interests is to us the solemn, never-ceasing protest against worldliness, earthliness, vanity, living for time, living for the body; and, above all, against every impure or ungodly method of attempting to secure ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King

... in Charlottesville praised the piety and, above all, the prudence of Mrs. Grey—"Such a young and beautiful woman to be so entirely weaned from worldliness and self-love and so absorbed in worship ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... any longer. George—[She almost breaks down, but she controls herself.] This funeral is enough, with its show and worldliness! I don't believe there was a soul in the church you didn't see! Look at your handkerchief! Real grief isn't measured by the width of a black border. I'm ashamed of you, Florence! I never liked you very much, although I tried to for your husband's sake, but now I'm ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch

... expositions.[208] Meanwhile, in his own diocese he set forth the example of a faithful pastor. Even so bitter an enemy of Protestantism as Florimond de Raemond, contrasting Roussel's piety with the worldliness of the sporting French bishops of the period, is forced to admit that his pack of hounds was the crowd of poor men and women whom he daily fed, his horses and attendants a host of children whom he caused to ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... of unselfish love, and fear of solitude; of the triumph of marrying a daughter, and dread of separation; of affection, and of implanted worldliness; touching Albinia at one moment, and paining her at another; but she soothed and caressed the old lady, and was a willing listener to what was meant for a history of the former transaction; but as it started from old Mr. ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... overlay their reason with heaps of antiquated traditions; who bid their conscience stand dumb before appalling iniquities in obedience to the ill-read letter of an ancient record; who, in the interest of power, wealth, worldliness, not seldom of unrighteousness and inhumanity, plead for a Tract society, a Bible, or a church; who compass sea and land to make a proselyte, and when he is made, are quite indifferent as to his being a practical Christian; who collect ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... of other boys brought up with the best surroundings in a Massachusetts village, where the college atmosphere prevailed. He had his boyish pleasures and his trials, his share of that queer mixture of nineteenth century worldliness and almost austere Puritanism, which is yet characteristic of many ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... in the mysterious temptation in the wilderness, between Christ, man's Redeemer, and the devil, the adversary of man. In the first parable the obstacles to the progress of the kingdom lay in the heedlessness, the hardness, and the worldliness of men; in the second, the old serpent is the opposer, and wicked men are wielded as instruments ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... are. They think "Irreverence for the dreams of youth" always comes from "the hardening of the heart." But youth has some fantastic as well as some noble dreams, so that docility is a better quality than independence in a very young person. If a worldly minded mother inculcates worldliness in her daughter, the daughter certainly ought to stand firm against the teaching; but if the daughter merely thinks she would rather read Browning than go to a party which her mother wishes her to attend, I think it is best ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... strengthened and enlarged. Thus the mind becomes constantly more and more wise. The merely intellectual man has the desire to become wise, but his eye is not single, and therefore his mind is obscured by many clouds,—the dark exhalations of worldliness. When a man fixes his eye upon the Lord he is filled with light, and sees with a clearness of vision such as can be ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler

... who now made her appearance from the inner cabin, though strikingly handsome, had not that in her appearance which would justify the implied eulogium of the British admiral's last speech. There was an appearance of art and worldliness in the expression of her countenance that was only so much the more striking when placed in obvious contrast to the ingenuous nature and calm purity that shone in every lineament of the face of Ghita. One might very well have passed for an image of the goddess Circe; ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... you she is an angel. But I am of her own sex, and see her as she is; no matter who she likes, she will never be content to make a bad match, as they call it. She told me so once with her own lips. But she had no need to tell me; worldliness is written on her. David, David, you don't know these great houses, nor the fair-spoken creatures that live in them, with tongues tuned to sentiment, and mild eyes fixed on the main chance. Their drawing-rooms are carpeted ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... too much other-worldliness about the Army. Like Frederick's grenadier, the Salvationist wants to live for ever (the most monstrous way of crying for the moon); and though it is evident to anyone who has ever heard General ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... people stood some way off in a meadow, has just been entirely renovated; but as with some English churches, the more closely a piece of old work is copied the more palpably does the modern spirit show through it, so here the opposite occurs, for the old-worldliness of the place has not been impaired by much renovation, though the intention has been to make everything as ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler

... abound in the heart; at other times the work is hindered, and oftentimes almost or quite undone, by the strivings and stirrings of inbred sin, by fits of temper, by lightness and frivolity, by neglect of watchfulness and prayer, and the patient, attentive study of His word; by worldliness, by unholy ambitions, by jealousies and envyings, by uncharitable suspicions and harsh judgments and selfish ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... mighty influence over the people, is not the generous, the upright, and morally spotless life, so much as the wandering, the monastic, or the secluded forest life of the ascetic, regardless of its spiritual character. In other words, it is not a stern and noble victory over sin and worldliness in the common relationships of life, but a fleeing from the sin and duties and responsibilities of life into the mutt, or wilderness, which has fascinated the inhabitants of this peninsula as the best type ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... Christmas utterances from the altar, she strove to lift her heart in devotion. She felt the better for it. It was an old habit, and the spasm was over. Having done a good thing, she turned her ear away from the suggestions of her good angel, and, in turning away, encountered the suggestions of worldliness from the other side, which came back to her with their old music. She came out of the church as one comes out of a theater, where for hours he has sat absorbed in the fictitious passion of a play, to the grateful rush and roar of Broadway, the flashing ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... leaving an heir to perpetuate his name, and serve the state as his fathers had before him—even that was gone. Nothing was left, with the many, but selfishness, which could rise at best into the desire of saving every man his own soul, and so transform worldliness into other-worldliness. The old empire could do nothing more for man; and knew that it could do nothing; and lay down in ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... the payment of tribute kept ever before them as the Roman authorities were to the slightest suspicion of revolt against their sway. In none of his words had Jesus so clearly asserted the simple other-worldliness of his doctrine of the kingdom of God as in his answer to the question about tribute. For him loyalty to the actual earthly sovereign was quite compatible with loyalty to God, the lower obligation was in fact a summons to be scrupulous also to ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees

... this fearful display of worldliness; and Cecil betook herself to the piano, but the moment her husband appeared she showed ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... indulge the avarice or ambition which had craved the appointment. It was in attempting to remedy this fatal innovation that Gregory found himself repeatedly thwarted by Henry; and yet he had been censured by those who lament the worldliness of a portion of the medieval clergy, for striking at the root ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... future store of bliss and pain. From the bright eyes the sunshine may depart, Youth flies—love dies—and from the joyous heart Hope's gushing fountain ebbs too soon away, Nor spares one drop for that disastrous day, When from the barren waste of after life, The weariness, the worldliness, the strife, The soul looks o'er the desert of its way To the green gardens of its early day: The paradise, for which we vainly mourn, The heaven, to which our ling'ring eyes still turn, To which our footsteps never ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler

... likeness which is so evident between the religion of the Avesta, the sacred book of the pre-Mohammedan Persians, and the religion of the Old and New Testaments, makes it in a sense easy for us to understand these followers of Zoroaster. Persian poetry, with its love of life and this-worldliness, with its wealth of imagery and its appeal to that which is human in all men, is much more readily comprehended by us than is the poetry of all the rest of the Orient. And, therefore, Goethe, Platen, Rueckert, von Schack, Fitzgerald, and Arnold have ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... husband's first frown, his first petulant word; it was the key that opened Elma's understanding to the true estate of the past. She could no longer blind her eyes, as she had done, to a certain worldliness in her husband, and which had also reached her through him. This morning, that revealed so much, Horace had impatiently exclaimed as Elma held forth her Bible to him, ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... Agar. As some play with nature, so had she played with her own heart. She had heard of a consuming love which is near akin to hatred. She had read of passion which is stronger than the strongest worldliness. She had smilingly doubted the existence of the broken heart pure and simple. And now she sat in her own room, numbly, blindly feeling herself, like one to whom the first warning of an internal deadly disease has been manifested. She was conscious of something ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... to mention here, had only just missed succeeding in the passing of Bar Exam owing to the inveterate malignancy of his stars and lack of a more industrial temperament; but from the coolness of his cheek, and complete man-of-the-worldliness, is a most judicious and tip-top adviser to friends ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... the rector dreamed certain dreams. First his mind went to his parish visiting list, so endless, so never cleaned up, and now about to be made a pleasure instead of a penance. And into his mind, so strangely compounded of worldliness and spirituality, came a further dream—of Delight and Graham Spencer—of ease at last for the girl after the struggle to keep up appearances of a clergyman's family in ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... also Mark 8:29; Luke 9:20). Peter's faith had already shown its vital power; it had caused him to forsake much that had been dear, to follow his Lord through persecution and suffering, and to put away worldliness with all its fascinations, for the sacrificing godliness which his faith made so desirable. His knowledge of God as the Father, and of the Son as the Redeemer, was perhaps no greater than that ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... change—Browning—as to be quite unable to partake of excruciation, even with a twin sister.... It is very disagreeable to think of, I admit. But so is nearly every concrete form in which one clothes an imaginary other-worldliness." ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... have taught me several things. Her sincerity and absence of vanity and worldliness were her really striking qualities. Her power of suffering passively, without letting any one into her secret, was carried to a fault. We who longed to share some part, however small, of the burden of her emotion were not allowed to do so. This ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... irresponsibility, freedom and formlessness, would persist and could be translated into terms of individual intellectual and moral discipline. In truth, it was, of course, a great mistake to conceive Americanism as intellectually and morally a species of Newer-Worldliness. A national intellectual ideal did not divide us from Europe any more than did a national political ideal. In both cases national independence had no meaning except in a system of international, intellectual, moral, and political relations. American national ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... been unfaithful to her high trust, had she infused into that infant heart lessons of ambition and worldliness, he had perhaps failed in the hour of trial, and another had led the tribes of Israel to the chosen land. A little band guarded Moses; the princess of Egypt, the mother of Moses, and his sister Miriam. Each one exerted her peculiar influence upon his ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous

... political and industrial problems upon which was riveted the attention of the men of light and leading. To most of us the faith of our fathers seemed little more than a medley of needless restraints, other-worldliness, and hostility to ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... where their motley vehicles stood among the stumps waiting, they could not at once shake off the impression of those earnest words. In amidst their talk of fall wheat, and burning fallow, and logging-bees, would glide thoughts from that sermon, arresting the worldliness with presentations of a mightier reality still; with suggestions of something which perhaps indeed was of deeper and more vital interest than what to eat, or what to drink, or wherewithal ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... the urgency of the Christian problem which since Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day had so largely and variously coloured Browning's work. It occurred to none of those worldly bishops to justify their worldliness,—it was far too deeply ingrained for that. But Blougram's brilliant defence, enormously disproportioned as it is to the insignificance of the attack, marks his tacit recognition of loftier ideals than he professes. Like Cleon, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... the service of hatred in that delicate woman, in appearance oblivious of worldliness, that masculine energy in decision which is to be found in all families of truly military origin. The blood of Colonel Chapron stirred within her and gave her the desire to act. By dint of pondering upon those reasonings, Lydia ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... nowise free from the worldliness that has regard to the world's regard. She would not have been satisfied that a daughter in law of hers should come of people distinguished for goodness and greatness of soul, if they were, for instance, tradespeople. She would doubtless ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... after John Fletcher's ordination. Little enough happened to her for a couple of years, save that she succeeded in increasingly impressing those around her that it was useless to invite her into paths of worldliness and frivolity. When a girl of nineteen she stayed for seven weeks in Bristol, renewing there her friendship with Miss Sarah Ryan—to whom Fletcher wrote some of his famous letters—through whom, and through Mrs. Crosby, Mary was introduced ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen

... attitude, and, explaining it, they condemn it also. We allow our surroundings to pass judgement on our longings. We bring the eternal to the bar of the hour, and postpone the verdict. Or it may be in the worldliness of our hearts we admit the false plea of urgency and the false claim of authority made by our outward life. And perhaps more commonly the soul lacks the courage of its desires. It costs little to follow a desire that ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth

... least fifteen years of real work. And it would have been work of the realest sort. Effort—to and beyond all other effort! The carrying of new life in fear, the delivery of it in torture, the nourishing of it in relinquishment f all the world's worldliness, the watching over it in sleeplessness, the healing of its sickness in heart-sickness, the bringing of it, with its body strong, its mind matured, up into the world of adults, up into the struggle for ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... of love been entirely in vain. To her it was that Arthur had alluded in his conversation with Miss Wiltshire, for childhood's heart is tender and impressible, and from her instructions he had imbided many of those lofty and noble sentiments which now characterized him; and often, when the tide of worldliness rushed in to bear him away on its fierce current, that gentle form would seem to stand before him, and he would hear again, in fancy, the soft tones of that voice, beseeching him to pause, and consider ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert

... of primaeval brutishness, simply by calculations of pleasure and pain, by observing what actions would pay in the long run and what would not; and so learnt to conquer his selfishness by a more refined and extended selfishness, and exchanged his brutality for worldliness, and then, in a few instances, his worldliness for next-worldliness. I hope I need not say that I do not believe this theory. If I did, I could not be a Christian, I think, nor a philosopher either. At least, if I thought that human civilisation had sprung ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley

... And how successful she is with them! how highly they relish her! While I, in the uselessness of my round, white youth, sit benched among the old women, dropping spiritless, pointless "yeses" and "noes" among the veteran worldliness of their talk, how they crowd about her, like swarmed bees on some honeyed, spring day! how they scowl at each other! and finesse as to who shall approach most nearly to her ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... not live without him he would henceforward live for truth alone, and not for the truth merely as it was in her, but as it was in everything. In those day's he learned to know himself, as he never had before, and to put off a certain shell of worldliness that had grown upon him. In his remoteness from it, New York became very distasteful to him; he thought with reluctance of going back to it; his club, which had been his home, now appeared a joyless exile; the life of a leisure class, which he had made ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... his affectation of worldliness and cynicism, the boy was a hero-worshiper at heart, and could never resist being attracted by a fine face and a handsome pair of eyes and a pleasant voice; Lawrence had in the first glance awakened an enthusiasm which was eager for near acquaintance. And now, although ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier

... than your forefathers had?" Thomas Walley's "Languishing Commonwealth" maintains that "Faith is dead, and Love is cold, and Zeal is gone." Urian Oakes's election sermon of 1670 in Cambridge is a condemnation of the prevalent worldliness and ostentation. This period of critical inquiry and assessment, however, also gives grounds for just pride. History, biography, eulogy, are flourishing. The reader is reminded of that epoch, one hundred and fifty years later, when the deaths of ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... sermons,—a manner of speech which, when tried by the sure test of natural, animated conversation, must be pronounced absurd and abominable. It is a wonder of wonders, that, in spite of such drawbacks, an individual here and there has been reclaimed from worldliness to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Archbishop's service he had been inspired by the thought that the Church would share in the rising splendour of England; now he began to wonder whether she could have strength to resist the rising worldliness that was bound to accompany it. It is scarcely likely that men on fire with success, whether military or commercial, will be patient of the restraints of religion. If the Church is independent of the nation, she can protest and denounce freely; ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... and vices and even ruin of their fellows. These influences must be resisted, the fiends of Hell in human form must be grappled with, and 'the prey be taken from the mighty'. People must be aroused from their indifference and selfishness; the cold-blooded carelessness and worldliness of formal religionists must be assailed as well as help rendered to those who are ready to perish. Our fighting programme must include all this, if we are to be consistent professors of holy consecration to God ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard

... us all shockingly full of worldliness, little guessing how much gaiety was due to her meek presence among us. We even gave dinner-parties in state, and what Richardson and I underwent from Eustace in preparation, no tongue can tell, nor Eustace's complacence ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... possessed no worldly ambitions of any sort, and who readily accepted his pension from the trustees of St. Bude's College at the earliest date, so that he might devote all his riper years to the prosecution of his passion for classical research, was a painful example of worldliness, and a woman who regarded position and wealth before all things. There was little enough sympathy between mother and daughter. Mrs. John D. Carruthers only saw in Elvine's unusual beauty an asset in her schemes of advancement. ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... in the society of their elders. At thirty-five she had more reluctance than her mother to face an unforeseen occasion, certainly more than her grandmother, who had preserved some cheerful inheritance of gayety and worldliness ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett

... idea of the worldly and the unworldly is found to emerge in literature as well as in life. In reality, the very same combinations of moral qualities, infinitely varied, which compose the harsh physiognomy of what we call worldliness in the living groups of life, must unavoidably present themselves in books. A library divides into sections of worldly and unworldly, even as a crowd of men divides into that same majority and minority. The world has an instinct for recognizing ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... virtues of probity, sincerity, and godly zeal. These were the qualities which obtained for him the celebration of Spenser in his "Shepherd's Calendar," where he is designated by the name of Algrind, and described as a true teacher of the Gospel and a severe reprover of the pride and worldliness of the popish clergy. The lines were written during the period of the prelate's disgrace, which is allegorically related ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... distorted, and all the true interests of home appear in a haze. Natural affection is debased, and love is prostituted to the base designs of self, and the entire family, with all its tender cords, ardent hopes, and promised interests, becomes engulfed in the vortex of criminal worldliness! ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... country the public school is bringing young minds under the spell of worldliness. The result is selfishness, jingoism, narrow nationalism—an unthinking, a gullible generation to become the easy prey of exploiters and the docile slaves ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... religion would fall, if it were not supported by the State. On this ground it is that the European nations endure the startling anomalies of their State Churches,—the interference of irreligious politicians in religion, the worldliness of ambitious ecclesiastics, the denial of liberty of conscience, the denial of truth. Therefore it is that they will see the canker of doubt slowly eating into faith beneath the outward uniformity of a political Church, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... dear?" returned Chapman, with a sigh. "A ball a year ought to satisfy any respectable family." Chapman was indeed becoming alarmed at his wife's extravagance and weakness for society. Her worldliness he feared would bring him to grief ere long. The last ball had entailed the expense of new carpets; and the young gentlemen had quite taken possession of the house, which they held until after daylight, ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams

... be galled and irritated by the insatiate assumption and swollen authority of "the best of mothers." The furious reproaches which she heaped upon him when she saw in Acte a possible rival to her power drove him to take refuge in the facile and unphilosophic worldliness of Seneca's concessions, and goaded him almost immediately afterwards into an atrocious crime. He naturally looked on Britannicus, the youthful son of Claudius, with even more suspicion and hatred than that with which he regarded Octavia. Kings have rarely been able ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... dilemma the reverend agitators devised a second scheme. It was a scheme bearing triple harvests; for, at one and the same time, it furnished the motive which gave a constructive coherency and meaning to the original purpose, it threw a solemn shadow over the rank worldliness of that purpose, and it opened a diffusive tendency towards other purposes of the same nature, as yet undeveloped. The device was this: in Scotland, as in England, the total process by which a parish clergyman is created, subdivides itself into several successive acts. The ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... seen a great deal of them lately, and I have found them out. I don't mean in anything wrong, but the order is so entirely opposed to the monastic spirit. It is difficult to explain; I really can't.... What I mean is ... well, that their worldliness is repugnant to me—fashionable friends, confidences, meddling in family affairs, dining out, letters from ladies who need consolation.... I don't mean anything wrong; pray don't misunderstand me. I merely mean to say that I hate their meddling in family affairs. Their confessional ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... she added, as a warning proviso, and with a touch of worldliness which her own life in England had made almost part of her nature, "though Mrs. Sampson is so deliciously simple and good, and Mr. Sampson is such an exquisite rough diamond, this Seth, whose trouble has brought ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... where its professors are asleep or dead. In communities where real religion flourishes, where its power is felt, and its votaries are consistent and decided; whatever hatred may rankle in the breasts of opposers, they are not apt to indulge in contemptuous derision. But where formality and worldliness prevail, and no conspicuous standard of Christian character is visible—the hearts of sinners will be manifested. They will, without hesitation, avow, in how low and degrading a light they regard the doctrines of the ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin

... the third Mrs. Cartaret as a woman of affectionate gaiety and a pleasing worldliness, so well surrounded by adorers of his own sex that she could probably furnish forth her three stepdaughters from the numbers of those she had no use for. He was more than ever disgusted with the Vicar who had driven from him a woman so admirably ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... me." But just before reaching the house she again turned and faced him. "It hurts, Brent," she faltered, "to know you are thinking unkind things of me! Your own worldliness makes you ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... happens in our day? Worldliness wars upon the sentiment of family, and I know of no strife more impassioned. By great means and small, by all sorts of new customs, requirements and pretensions, the spirit of the world breaks into the domestic sanctuary. What ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... which the people will bear, and to inculcate and preach that. Certainly Lord Palmerston did not preach it. He a little degraded us by preaching a doctrine just below our own standard—a doctrine not enough below us to repel us much, but yet enough below to harm us by augmenting a worldliness which needed no addition, and by diminishing a love of principle and philosophy which did ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... generally admitted that they are only needed, longed for and obtained, after a period of spiritual decline and general worldliness. A Church that is alive and active needs no revival. A lifeless Church does. Better then, far better, to use every right endeavor to keep the Church alive and active, than permit it to grow cold and worldly, ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding

... summer in the mountains,—a sojourn recommended for her mother's health; and in the autumn she had somewhat abruptly decided to go East to boarding-school at Farmington. During the brief months of her absence she had marvellously acquired maturity and aplomb, a worldliness of manner and a certain frivolity that seemed to put those who surrounded her on a lower plane. She was only seventeen, yet she seemed the woman of thirty whose role she played. First there were murmurs, then sustained applause. I scarcely recognized her: she had taken wings and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... showed manners but not the elementary passions of human nature. As a whole, it leaves an impression of hardness, shallowness, and levity. The polite cynicism of Congreve, the ferocious cynicism of Swift, the malice of Pope, the pleasantry of Addison, the early worldliness of Prior and Gay are seldom relieved by any touch of the ideal. The prose of the time was excellent, but the poetry was merely rhymed prose. The recent Queen Anne revival in architecture, dress, and bric-a-brac, the recrudescence of society verse in Dobson ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... investigating nature of a modern man of science. The Arabs have a proverb that a man is more the son of the age in which he lives than of his own father. This was not so with Columbus; he hardly seems to belong at all to his age. At a time when there was never more of worldliness and self-seeking; when Alexander Borgia was Pope; when Louis the Eleventh reigned in France, Henry the Seventh in England, and Ferdinand the Catholic in Arragon and Castille—about the three last men in the world to become crusaders—Columbus was penetrated with the ideas ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps

... no patience with the clergy!" she declared. "They bore me to death. There's that solemn-faced friend of yours, Mr. Ashe—his name ought to be Ashes!—he actually lectured me on my worldliness! My worldliness, if you please, and I working myself to a shadow for ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... Canada a few years ago, when everybody had money, wrote letters to one of the London papers about us. Commenting on our worldliness, he said: "The people of Western Canada have only one idea of hell, and that is buying ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... happiness, and yet Southey was happy at home and made his home happy; he not only loved his wife and children though he was a poet, but he loved them the better because he was a poet. He seems to have been without taint of worldliness. London with its pomps and vanities, learned coteries with their dry pedantry, rather scared than attracted him. He found his prime glory in his genius, and his chief felicity in home affections. I ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... man knew nothing of her preciousness and had no high thoughts about her beauty. That was the way I argued with myself about her innocence, and you may fancy the kind of laughter that came over me at the truth. It is a ghastly thing, William, the utter hardness, the grim and determined worldliness, of this girl. For she knew very well what she was doing, and all the ignorance was on my part. She had no care about anything in the world until that man came in, and the short half hour that I watched them was enough to tell her that her ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... religion, broadly speaking, means nothing to him. He is sharp enough to see through its contradictions and absurdities; he has no dread of losing what he never valued; his sense of antiquity, of history, is nil; and his life supplies him with excitement enough without the stimulants of 'other-worldliness.' Religion has been on the whole irrationally presented to him, and the result on his part has been an irrational breach with the whole moral and religious ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... himself. Now it was too late, even had she known what could be done. But the others had so far turned out well: why should not this one also? The moment his bad humors were over, she looked on him as reformed; and when he uttered worldliness, she persuaded herself he was but jesting. But alas! she had no adequate notion—not a shadow of one—of the selfishness of the man-child she had given to the world. This matter of the black ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... make lye of and a soap-kittle that cost four eighty-five, in the very Lord's stronghold. I dress my women comfortable and feed 'em well—not much variety but plenty of, and I've done right by 'em as a husband, and I tell 'em if they want to be led away now into the sinful path of worldliness, why, I ain't goin' to have any ruthers about it at all! But you be careful, Brother Rae, about turning your women loose in one of them ungodly stores up there. That reminds me, you had Prudence up to Conference, and I guess you don't know what that ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... of her family mingled; but ere she did so the voice of the Holy Ghost spake to her as to so many others, and showed her how true life was only to be found in Christ and lived in Him. Henceforth she lived no longer a life of mere worldliness, but a life spent in the service of Him who had loved her and given Himself for her; and then her greatest joy was found in visiting the poor, the afflicted, the tried—ay, and often ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous

... from extreme worldliness to a life of piety and prayer was deep and permanent. Hers was no half-way character. While she was of the world, she pursued its follies with entire devotion of heart; and when she once renounced it ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... the same time when Thomson's Seasons was published, which was in 1730, the third year of George II., that life which had burned on in the hidden corners of the church in spite of the worldliness and sensuality of its rulers, began to show a flame destined to enlarge and spread until it should have lighted up the mass with an outburst of Christian faith and hope. I refer to the movement called Methodism, in the midst of which, at an early stage of its history, ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... rich. And all for Madelaine. Sometimes he fiercely resolved that he would be rich; and again he lost heart at the thought that lovely, dainty Madelaine was certain to find another palace long before his was built. Her frank worldliness did not weaken his ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard

... of the Church its divine resources were uppermost in his mind—"the Church which is His Body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all." Perhaps the Church's greatest weakness is unbelief in its own divine sufficiency. We confront the indifference, the worldliness, the wickedness of men; we face an earth hideous with war and hateful with selfishness. We think of the Church's often absurdly needless divisions, the backwardness of its thought, the coldness of its devotion, the inefficiency of many of its methods, the want of consecration ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin

... as proud and ambitious a little minx as ever breathed, and was thoroughly grieved at heart at George's want of worldly success; but, like a nice little Robin Redbreast, she covered up the grave of her worldliness with the leaves of true love, and sung a "Who cares for that?" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... her figure large, well-proportioned, and somewhat voluptuous. No Bethlehem stable ever sheltered this haughty beauty; her home is in kings' palaces; she belongs distinctly to the realm of wealth and worldliness. She has never known sorrow, anxiety, or poverty; life has brought her nothing but pleasure and luxury. Her throne stands no longer in the sacred place of some inner sanctuary, where angel choristers make music. It is an elevated platform, at one ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... seasons were my salvation,—were saving me from my worldliness. Still, I sometimes had a guilty feeling, as if I were drawing from Emily her beautiful life,—as if I were getting something to which I had no right, something too good for me,—as if she might exclaim, at any moment, "Virtue is ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... poor mother, whose own heart and conscience were not really satisfied with these reasonings, had forgotten, or failed to see, that the same devotion to study which kept her daughter out of the ensnaring ways of worldliness and frivolity, equally kept her from treading that path of shining usefulness along which all must walk who would fulfil the great purpose for which God has put us into this land of probation and ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... carnal worldliness Paul includes the gross vices, enumerating in particular here, fornication, uncleanness, covetousness, and so on, things which reason knows to be wicked and condemns as such. The spiritual sins take reason captive and deceive it, leaving it powerless to guard against them. They are termed ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... the Chiliasm which haunted the Christians of Asia Minor in the early centuries; perhaps also it was the utterance of the spiritual yearning which marked the rise of the Franciscan order, and a protest against the worldliness of the times. It was connected too with the longings for political deliverance from the temporal dominion of the Popedom which were now beginning to be felt. In these latter aspects the idea, so far from being false, was an advance. Christianity from time to time admits a ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... it was her duty to marry, and especially her duty to marry well. Between her and her mother there had been no reticence on this subject. With worldly people in general, though the worldliness is manifest enough and is taught by plain lessons from parents to their children, yet there is generally some thin veil even among themselves, some transparent tissue of lies, which, though they never quite hope to deceive each other, does produce among ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... hand as if she had been physically hurt, and Eve smiled down into his sympathetic old face. It is a singular fact that utter worldliness in a woman seems to hurt women ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... suggested skill rather than feeling. He had nothing of the ardour of youth; his poise and deliberation were quite in keeping with the two score years that subtly graved his visage; the passions in him were sportive, half-fantastical, as though, together with his brain, they had grown to a ripe worldliness. He inspired no distrust; his good nature seemed all-pervading; he had the air of one who lavishes disinterested counsel, and ever so little exalts himself with ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... some special sense to us as a trust from the world. It is to me the steeple of democracy—of our democracy, England's democracy—the world's democracy. The hollow domes of Sts. Peter and Paul, and all the rest with their vague, airy other-worldliness, all soaring and tugging like so many balloons of religion and goodness, trying to get away from this world—are not to me so splendid, so magnificently wilful as the Metropolitan Tower—as the souls of these modern, heaven-striking men, taking the world ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... they are. Some author has wisely said: "That the world should be full of worldliness seems as right as that a stream should be full of water or a living body full of blood." To conquer this world, to get out of it a full, abounding, agreeable life, is what we are put here for. Else, why such gifts as beauty, talent, health, wit, and a power of enjoyment be given to us? To be worldly, ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood



Words linked to "Worldliness" :   outwardness, mundaneness, sophistication, otherworldliness, worldly, externality, naivete, quality



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com