"Priest-ridden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... occupy a rich valley above 70 miles in length watered by the Swat river above its junction with the Panjkora. Rice is extensively grown, and a malarious environment has affected the physique and the character of the people. The Swati is priest-ridden and treacherous. Even his courage has been denied, probably unjustly. Swati fanaticism has been a source of much trouble on the Peshawar border. The last serious outbreak was in 1897, when a determined, but unsuccessful, attack was made on our posts at ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... really it seems to me such extravagant notions about religion as you have been brought up in must have not a little to do with the present sad state of affairs—must in fact go far to make atheists. Civilization will never endure to be priest-ridden." ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... of religion the two races were most widely contrasted. The Gauls were a priest-ridden race. Their Druids were a dominant caste, presiding even over civil affairs, while in religious matters their authority was despotic. What were the principles of their wild Theology will never be ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the next, and producing an effect which, if judged by sample, would be considered bizarre and undirected. The book contains a few perversities, of course. The author attempts to rebut the idea "that priests have blighted societies with bitterness and gloom," by pointing out that in one or two priest-ridden countries wine and song and dance abound. Yes, but if people are jollier in France and Spain and Italy than in savage Africa, it is due not to the priests so much as to the climate which makes wine cheap and an open-air life possible. No amount of ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... is sound advice; and if the decision were to depend on himself, there can be as little doubt that he would be wiser in accepting the honest aid of England, than throwing his crown at the feet of France. But he reigns over a priest-ridden kingdom, and Popery will settle the point for him on the first shock. His situation certainly is a singular one; as the uncle of the Queen of England, and the son-in-law of the King of France, he seems ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... extremely trying climate prevails on these highlands, the hermit-like, priest-ridden people know no better home and are contented with their lot. Of its three and one-half million inhabitants, one in seven belongs to the ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... it for granted that the inhabitants of the United States know more of Mexico than any other nation which is priest-ridden, so we desire to dwell for a short time upon the characters of the Mexican peon. You will find Mexico, which lays right across from Texas on the Rio Grande River, a dividing line between ignorance and intelligence, crime ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... paper they were printed on, her Parliament ventured upon a 'coup de main' that would have appalled the stoutest of her statesmen under less desperate circumstances. They, in a manner, confiscated the domains of the Church! This in priest-ridden Italy! This in a land which has groped in the midnight of priestly superstition for sixteen hundred years! It was a rare good fortune for Italy, the stress of weather that drove her to break from ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the circumstances of a compact community in a way that illustrates the various oppressions which such communities put upon individual vagaries, whether viewed as sin, or ignorance, or folly, or merely as social impossibility. She has, of course, studied other communities than New York: the priest-ridden Italy of the eighteenth century in The Valley of Decision; modern France in Madame de Treymes and The Reef; provincial New England in The Fruit of the Tree. What characterizes the New York novels characterizes these others as well: a sense ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... at him. "You're not to be trusted. Well, I thought as much. Good-bye, Thomas Bolle, you coward. I'll find me a man for a friend, not a whimpering, priest-ridden hound who sets a Latin blessing which he does not understand above his honour. God in heaven! to think I should ever have loved such a thing. Oh! I am shamed, I am shamed. I'll go wash my hands. Shut your trap and get you gone down your rat-run, Thomas Bolle, and, living or ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... Froude's historical writing, which takes from them its trend and colour. Whatever else the male Tudors may have been, they were emphatically men; and even Elizabeth, whom Froude did not love, had a commanding spirit. Except poor priest-ridden Mary, who had a Spanish mother and a Spanish husband, they did not brook control, and no one was ever more conscious of being a king than Henry VIII. To him, as to Elizabeth, the Reformation was not dogmatic but practical, the subjection of the Church to the State. ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... for its handsome churches. Its streets are narrow and the whole population seemingly devoted to peddling lottery tickets. There are many Chinamen amongst its 150,000 inhabitants. The Roman Catholics control the country, which is absolutely priest-ridden, Reformed or other churches not being permitted in Peru. A revolution was attempted only a few days ago, the President having been seized and dragged out of his office to be shot. The military, however, rescued him and the revolution ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... suggestion, you have been a ringleader in strikes which have terribly shaken the Imperial system, more than its Ministers deem; now I want a man like you to assist in a bold demonstration against the Imperial resort to a rural priest-ridden suffrage, on the part of the enlightened working ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to those who cannot help themselves, or who need judicious and constant inspiration. This view we are considering is even less flattering to God, because the aspiring children of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries seem able to dispense with his co-operation, while the ignorant and priest-ridden children of earlier ages could do little of themselves. The theologians who have found this new formula are of the more liberal school. They do not attribute all the blunders and crimes and failures of the Middle Ages to ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... appointment with his father for the following morning. When they met William returned to the subject of their previous discourse, and insisted on his father returning with him to Montreal. The old man vowed that, come what might, he would never go back to his "priest-ridden family" as he chose to designate his wife and children. The battle waxed fast and furious, till at last William exclaimed with an oath: "By —— you shall leave your Yankee mistress, then; she shall suffer what my mother suffered;" ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... [gallantly] Ah, Senora, do not be anxious. You come to us from earth, full of the prejudices and terrors of that priest-ridden place. You have heard me ill spoken of; and yet, believe me, I have hosts ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... perhaps, of all the countries in the world, the most priest-ridden; the Lamas forming, it is said, one-third of the entire population. In most families, with the exception of the eldest son, who remains "a black man," all the sons are Lamas. Their future destiny is decided from the very cradle, by the fact of their parents causing their heads to be shaved. As they ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... been paid them. Connoting this with the influence of the Roman Church in Celtic regions and the power of the Protestant minister in the Highlands and in Wales, some have thought that there is an innate tendency in the Celt to be priest-ridden. If this be true, we can only say, "the people wish to have it so, and the priests—pagan, papist, or protestant—bear ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... ministrations of the clergy, and after a few Latin prayers, crossed himself, and so "made an end of his wicked days in this world,"—an example for all time how little education and accomplishments can do to keep man from sin, a martyr to a priest-ridden conscience unenlightened by ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... a terrific storm of abuse from Gowan. He called her "priest-ridden" and every kind of fool and idiot. She would soon learn to repent of her folly, for he would go straightway to a lawyer and change his will! Not a penny would she get—now or later—from him, as she would find one day to her cost! Then he ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... Marechal de Marillac; "death, or at best disgrace to some new victim. Shame to our brave France that she should submit even for a day to be thus priest-ridden!" ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... my duty not to let you starve, all the same." And he started off to see what he could find, as every good corporal does under such circumstances, taking with him Pache, who was a favorite on account of his quiet manner, although he considered him rather too priest-ridden. ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... really lived, and was lived in those very palaces which we are accustomed to consider as the sinks of wickedness and vice. From other descriptions we might have imagined Louis IX. as a bigoted, priest-ridden, credulous King. From Joinville we learn that, though unwavering in his faith, and most strict in the observance of his religious duties, the King was by no means narrow in his sympathies, or partial to the encroachments ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... tool of a swarm of needy and self-seeking adventurers. There is a strong feeling here, too, about the intolerant interference of those atheists at Paris with the rights of parents and with freedom of conscience. Yet we are not in the least a priest-ridden people. On the contrary! I can show you a commune where the people, vexed with the charges of their cure, have deliberately organized a Protestant chapel. They sent to the Consistory at Paris, and got a minister, and ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... to bequeath the kingdom to some catholic prince. The contest might have been attended with the horrors incidental to a religious civil war, and calamities might have been felt in England similar to those under Henry the Great in France, whom queen Elizabeth assisted in opposing his priest-ridden catholic subjects. As if Providence had the perpetual establishment of the protestant faith in view, the difference of the durations of the two reigns is worthy of notice. Mary might have reigned many years in the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... it was priest-ridden Spain that all through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries led the van of revolt against the rules and precepts of the grammarians. While Torquato Tasso remained the miserable slave of grammarians unworthy to lick the dust from his feet, Lope de Vega slyly remarked ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... whereas in Italy that was rare—the Virgin and Child being the most common. I remarked on this, which I suppose gave rise to a subsequent observation of the M.-A.'s: "I think the Tyrolese are a good people: they are not given over to Mariolatry like those poor priest-ridden Italians." I think, however, that they merely have that fundamental grace, religious simplicity, worshiping—just what they can get, for yesterday I saw two dear old bodies going round and telling their beads ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... priest-ridden country all the superstition is heaped up for their benefit and profit. But we must get out of here before dawn, run past the gree-gree if he is about, and make a dash for the open forest. It is our only chance of escape, for at dawn the priests ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... position for his nation. If the Magi occupied really the position at the Median Court which Herodotus assigns to them—if they "were held in high honor by the king, and shared in his sovereignty"—if the priest-ridden monarch was perpetually dreaming and perpetually referring his dreams to the Magian seers for exposition, and then guiding his actions by the advice they tendered him, the religious zeal of the young Zoroastrian may very naturally have been aroused, and the contest ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... and utter base and wilful falsehoods, that, he might have access to her, with another man, when Maria Monk, as they hoped, would be without a protector? For what ignoble design did he put an old Truth Teller into a parcel, and make his priest-ridden minion declare that it was a very valuable packet of letters from John Monk? That strange contrivance requires explanation. Did Priest Quarter believe that Maria Monk was in Montreal? Did he doubt her personal identity? Does not that fact alone verity that all the Roman Priests are ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... man thus priest-ridden? would the steeple of his church were in his belly: I am sure ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... substantial number of readers who would detect and approve the satire. As Fielding's Squire Western said to Parson Supple when the latter reproved him for some misdeed: "At'nt in pulpit now? when art a got up there I never mind what dost say; but I won't be priest-ridden, nor taught how to behave myself by thee." Only if it is read as a satire on rigorist sermons can there be full appreciation of the cleverness of the "parable of small beer" which Mandeville, with obvious contentment with his craftsmanship, reproduces ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... their opposition. It was owing to this criminal weakness on his part that Baron Eeuter's scheme of railways and commercial regeneration for the country proved a failure. Persia is undoubtedly the worst priest-ridden country in the world; the mollaha influence everything and everybody, from the monarch downward, to such an extent that no progress is possible. Barring outside interference, Persia will remain in its present ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... intent as the rulers of Spain had been to keep the American possessions free from all taint of heresy. Therefore he carried on the policy of excluding the Huguenots — the only colonizing element among his subjects, — and drove them into the English plantations. A small handful of obedient peasants, priest-ridden and over-administered, formed the basis of the colony. On this narrow foundation was raised a vast super- structure, ecclesiastical, administrative and military. His priests, and his officials civil and military, gave the French king many daring explorers. While the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... followed conviction; the world was my field; liberty, equality and fraternity were my objects. Not France alone, with her miserable millions, but Russia with her serfs, Poland with her wrongs, the enslaved Italian, the oppressed German, the starving son of Erin, the squalid operative of England, the priest-ridden slave of Jesuit Spain, and the oppressed but free-born Switzer. Great men and good men I found had already, with superhuman skill, constructed a system, a machine for the amelioration of mankind's ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... command. Let it always be borne in mind that it was no fault of mine that, immediately after my arrival in Madrid from my journey, a retrograde Ministry came into power, the head of which is a weak, timid, priest-ridden man. Sir George has several times told me, that had the Ministry of Calatrava and Mendizabal remained in place, he himself would have answered that I should have received no interruption in my labours, and that he will almost ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... the order, some of the monks being re-established in the college of Cagliari. Of late years, there seems to have been a considerable reaction in the temper of the Sardes as regards religion, at least, in the towns. No people were more bigoted, more priest-ridden, more credulous of the absurdest superstitions. But in a conversation I recently had on the subject with a very intelligent and well-informed friend in the island, he assured me that the utmost laxity now prevails in the religious sentiments of the people. They have lost all ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... elapsed, the other could credit that centuries had flown during his agony. Thus, the life of a man of virtue and talent, who should die in his thirtieth year, is, with regard to his own feelings, longer than that of a miserable priest-ridden slave, who dreams out a century of dulness. The one has perpetually cultivated his mental faculties, has rendered himself master of his thoughts, can abstract and generalize amid the lethargy of every-day business;—the other ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... spurs into the flanks of his mule as that puzzled animal was hesitating on the brink of a steep declivity. Whether the poor beast was indignant at this novel outrage, or had been for some time reflecting on the evils of being priest-ridden, has not transpired; enough that he suddenly threw up his heels, pitching the reverend man over his head, and, having accomplished this feat, coolly dropped on his knees and ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... progressive—presents probably the most remarkable evidence earth affords of the blessings of Protestantism, while the results of Roman Catholicism left to itself are writ large in letters of gloom across the priest-ridden, lax and superstitious South. Her cities, among the gayest and grossest in the world, her ecclesiastics enormously wealthy and strenuously opposed to progress and liberty, South America groans under the ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... rouses himself, shakes off the little vermin of an enemy, and walks away unmolested. Ah! the Irish soldiers might well say after the Boyne, "Change kings with us and we will fight it over again." Indeed, the fight was not fair between the two. 'Twas a weak, priest-ridden, woman-ridden man, with such puny allies and weapons as his own poor nature led him to choose, contending against the schemes, the generalship, the wisdom, and the heart of ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... the land has become a waste of widows, beggars and orphans. Then came the French Alliance, a sacrifice of the great interests, as well as the religion of this country to the biased views of a proud, ancient, crafty and priest-ridden nation. I always thought this a defensive war until the French joined in the combination. Now I look with disfavor upon this peril to our dominion, this enemy of ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... I write, "God's Vicegerent" is instigating and promoting a "Holy War" in Priest-ridden Spain, over the temporal power of the Vatican, angered to the point of murder over the "posting of notices of places of public worship," ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... deities, which gave the common people such interest in daily life. They would have been lost without their monsters; and the priests would have been lost without the temples necessary for the worship of such a menagerie. For Egypt was a priest-ridden country in old days. The explanation of the many gods and goddesses was this: each was a different phase of the one God, Ra, the Sun, by whom and through whom only the world could exist. Animals and birds were chosen to express the different phases, because ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... down-looked, smooth-faced hypocrites. Oliver Chadwyck is the boy for a snug quarrel. His fingers itch for a drubbing, and he scents a feud as a crow scents out carrion. The other—mercy on me!—is fit for nought but to be bed-ridden and priest-ridden like his father and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... against the brutal Saxon, and to hold meetings of the National League, a colourable successor to the Land League. All these meetings are convened by priests, addressed by priests, governed by priests. The Tuamites are among the most priest-ridden people in Ireland, and, after having seen Galway and Limerick, this is saying a good deal. The meeting was from beginning to end a screaming farce, wherein language was used fit only for an Irish House ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... is true for them. We are an unfortunate priest-ridden race and always were and always will be till the end ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... psychic properties, they were thought to derive them from evil sources, and so strong was the prejudice against these unfortunate animals on this account, that all through the Middle Ages we find them suffering such barbaric torture as only the perverted minds of a fanatical, priest-ridden people could devise (which treatment, no doubt, partly, at all events, accounts for the many palaces, houses, etc., in those particular countries, stated to have been haunted by the ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... day Gulliver rouses himself, shakes off the little vermin of an enemy, and walks away unmolested. Ah! the Irish soldiers might well say after the Boyne, "Change kings with us, and we will fight it over again." Indeed, the fight was not fair between the two. 'Twas a weak priest-ridden, woman-ridden man, with such puny allies and weapons as his own poor nature led him to choose, contending against the schemes, the generalship, the wisdom, and the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... use of talking?" he demanded. "What chance was there of reason being heard in a land that was king-ridden, priest-ridden, peer-ridden; where a lunatic was the nominal monarch, an unprincipled debauchee the real ruler; where such an insult to common sense as hereditary legislators was tolerated; where such a humbug as a bench of bishops, such an arrogant abuse as a pampered, persecuting established church was endured ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... to have been a priest-ridden race, and their devotion to sacrifice and ceremonial is well known. Yet this is what the poet of ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... Daddy—stormed a good deal, and lamented himself still more, when these facts became known to him. Dora had become a superstitious, priest-ridden dolt, of no good to him or anyone else any more. What, indeed, was to become of him? Natural affection cannot stand against the priest. A daughter cannot love her father and go to confession. Down with ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of all believers. Very well, if that principle is a true one—and it is a true one—it has other applications than simply controversial, and is meant for other uses than simply that you should brandish it in the face of sacerdotal claims and priest-ridden churches. 'Ye are all priests,' that is to say, the meaning of the existence of a Christian Church is to raise up a cloud of witnesses, and make every lip vocal with the name of Jesus Christ the Lord. And you, dear brethren, you, the idlers of a church and congregation, are doing ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... were the only minority that ever succeeded in twisting the whole British Parliament sharply out of its path. The Irish peasants are the only poor men in these islands who have forced their masters to disgorge. These people, whom we call priest-ridden, are the only Britons who will not be squire-ridden. And when I came to look at the actual Irish character, the case was the same. Irishmen are best at the specially HARD professions—the trades of iron, the lawyer, and the soldier. In all these cases, therefore, I came back to the same conclusion: ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... He meant to force her to listen to him—either now, or in the morning. For all her scorn, she should know, before they parted, something of this misery that burnt in him. And he would say, too, all that it pleased him to say of that priest-ridden fool ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "oh, no!" was pronounced in a more lugubrious note: he shook his head, and after a pause, he recommenced. "England is no longer priest-ridden, sir; but she is worse, she is law-ridden. Litigation and law expenses have, like locusts, devoured up the produce of industry. No man is safe without a lawyer at his elbow, making over to him a part of his annual income to secure ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the hunted fugitive. Such names of ignominy a true patriot must bear because he dares to defy his poor country's oppressors." Here Fra Diavolo scowled; he was getting into form. "But to His Majesty in our own Mexican capital, to His Glorious Resplendent Most Christian, Most Catholic, priest-ridden, bloodthirsty, foppish, imbecile decree-making fool of a canting majesty—to this Austrian archduke who drove forth the incarnation of popular sovereignty by the brutal hand of the foreign invader—to him I will yet make it known that ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the priesthood. One would almost imagine from the long list that is given of cannibal primates, bishops, arch-deacons, prebendaries, and other inferior ecclesiastics, that the sacerdotal order far outnumbered the rest of the population, and that the poor natives were more severely priest-ridden than even the inhabitants of the papal states. These accounts are likewise calculated to leave upon the reader's mind an impression that human victims are daily cooked and served up upon the altars; that heathenish cruelties of every ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... expression on the young man's face, he turned sharply upon him. "You are mocking me, you good-for-nothing!" he cried angrily. "You are laughing at me, at your master, you villain you wretch, you sickly hound, you priest-ridden worm! It is intolerable! It is the first time you have ever dared; do you think I am going to allow you to think for yourself after all the pains I have taken to educate you, to teach you my art, you ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... benefit was in question had refused to touch a penny of it!)—if he wished to spend it now, why not give it to his own flesh and blood, to poor Harry, who was suddenly deprived of his inheritance, and not to a set of priest-ridden peasants in France? This dispute had raged between mother and son during the whole of the latter's last days in Virginia. It had never been settled. On the morning of George's departure, Madam Esmond had come to his bedside after a sleepless night, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this is not all; for, in the very next line he says, "It was hoped the nation would have followed this example." You see the faction begins already to speak out; this is an open demand for the abbey-lands; this furious zealot would have us priest-ridden again, like our popish ancestors: but, it is to be hoped the government will take timely care to suppress such audacious attempts, else we have spent so much blood and treasure to very little purpose, in maintaining religion and Revolution. But what ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... Sand to visit them. They did not advertise the advantages of Majorca, as is the fashion with "health resorts" nowadays. She went there of her own accord; she found magnificent scenery; she flouted the sentiments of what she herself describes as the most priest-ridden country in Europe by never going to church, though and while she actually lived in a disestablished and disendowed monastery. To punish them for which (the non sequitur is intentional) she does little but talk of dirt, discomfort, bad food, extortion, foul-smelling oil and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... find of the firm hold the supernatural had taken of the Irish from the very beginning is their strong belief in the power of the priesthood. This is so striking among them that they have been called by their enemies and those of the Church "a priest-ridden people." Let us consider if this ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... that can be called a virtue which needs the constant presence of a sentinel to keep it from escaping: but it is fatal to mental robustness and moral courage; and if French Canada would fulfil its aspirations it must cease to be one of the most priest-ridden communities of ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... when apparently made; but in cultivating the intelligence of the people, a great and good work is being performed, one which must eventually shake the fabric of heathen mythology to its very centre. An idolatrous people must come from the ranks of ignorance,—from a priest-ridden race. When the Hindoo is capable of thinking and reasoning for himself, he no longer believes in the idol-gods of his fathers. The preaching of this or that special faith is of little avail, and to us seems to be the least of all missionary work. The ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... what is conveyed in the very idea of Ecclesiastical Canons? This: that Christians could not worship according to their fancy, but must think and pray by rule, by a set of rules issuing from a body of men, the Bishops, over whom the laity had no power whatever. If any men at any time have been priest-ridden, such was the condition of those early Christians. And then again, what becomes of the Protestant's watchword, "the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible," if a set of Canons might lawfully be placed upon their shoulders, as if a ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... not far short of forty thousand persons, who in some form or other lived upon and by the church, that is, in plainer words, doing no labour themselves, lived on the labour of others, he, I think, would answer then, that a city so priest-infested, priest- ruled and priest-ridden, would be much such a city as he had seen with me; such a ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... of the game, I can tell myself stories about it. That it was invented by a woman is obvious, for why else should the queen be the most powerful piece of them all? She lived, this woman, in a priest-ridden land, but she had no love for the Church. Neither bland white bishop nor crooked-smiling black bishop did she love; that is why she made them move sideways. Yet she could not deny them their power. They were as powerful as the gallant young knight who rode past her window singing to ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... of Tibet were rude and unlettered, and their chiefs were little better than savages. Buddhism had not taken that firm hold on the popular mind which it at present possesses, and the power of the lamas had not arisen in what is now the most priest-ridden country in the world. A chief, named the Sanpou—which means the brave lord—had, about the time of which we are speaking, made himself supreme throughout the country, and it was said that he had crossed the Himalaya ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... was a thick, short-necked, burly individual; his phisiog indicated at once that he was a priest-ridden. I won't ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... of Spain, in the year 1808, which led to consequences so important to the rest of Europe, though it has left herself as enslaved and priest-ridden as ever, was hailed by Sheridan with all that prompt and well-timed ardor, with which he alone, of all his party, knew how to meet such great occasions. Had his political associates but learned from his example thus to place themselves ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... no doubt. California, the most distant of the old American settlements of Spain, has felt already the bald eagle's claw; Texas is annexed; and unless European interests prevent it, which they must do, Mexico, Guatemala, Yucatan, and all the petty priest-ridden republics of the Isthmus, must follow, ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... that I was mistaken. Shortly afterwards I received also a brief epistle from my uncle; it was as kind as usual, and it mentioned Aubrey's return to Devereux Court. "That unhappy boy," said Sir William, "is more than ever devoted to his religious duties; nor do I believe that any priest-ridden poor devil in the dark ages ever made such use of ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and great archiepiscopal see and most important railway station in all Belgium. Magnificent old houses in carved stone with wrought-iron balconies were to be had for rents that were almost nominal. From the tall windows of some of these a frugal, sleepy, priest-ridden old nobility looked down on broad and splendid streets hardly ever trodden by any feet but their own, or those of some stealthy Jesuit priest, or ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... education, and their emancipation from their Priests should prepare them for complete independence." Jefferson's works, vol. 4, page 303. Mr. Jefferson well knew that from the discovery of America to the date of his letter, the Mexicans had unfortunately been the persecuted, pillaged, and priest-ridden slaves of the kings of Spain—a line of kings, with but few exceptions, more inimical to the rights of man, more opposed to the advancement of truth, and light, and liberty, more practised in tyranny, more hardened in crime, more infatuated with superstition, and more benighted with ignorance, ...
— Texas • William H. Wharton
... of all things, must go hand in hand. Education and civilization will do much for the ignorant inaka or boors, but for the cultured whose minds waver and whose feet flounder, as well as for the unlearned and priest-ridden, there is no surer help and healing than that faith in the Heavenly Father which gives the unifying thought to him ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... should be invoked, what sacrifice be offered; and the slightest mistake of pronunciation, the slightest neglect about clarified butter, or the length of the ladle in which it was to be offered, might bring destruction upon the head of the unassisted worshipper. No nation was ever so completely priest-ridden as the Hindus under the sway of the Brahmanic law. Yet, on the other side, the same people were allowed to indulge in the most unrestrained freedom of thought, and in the schools of their philosophy the very names of their gods were never mentioned. Their existence was neither denied ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... else. This is in no sense fiction—it is, in fact, a historical document of the most striking kind; but it makes background and canvas for fiction itself,[292] and it gives us, besides, a most vivid picture of the priest-ridden, caballing little crowd of folk who had made great renunciations but could not make small. It also shows us in Hamilton a somewhat darker but also a stronger side of satiric powers, differently nuanced from the quiet persiflage of the Contes themselves. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... stranger, carelessly, and with an expression approaching to scorn. "I know the gentlemen of your cloth in Scotland claim a strange right of intermeddling with men's private affairs. But I have been abroad, and know better than to be priest-ridden." ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... heaven of stars is beginning to arise over the night of Israel. Is it not wonderful—the transformation of our people? When I left Russia as a girl—so young,' she interpolated with a sad smile, 'that I had not even been married—I left a priest-ridden, paralysed people, a cringing, cowering, contorted people—I shall never forget the panic in our synagogue when a troop of Cossacks rode in with a bogus blood-accusation. Now it is a people alive with ideas and volitions; the young generation dreams noble dreams, and, what is stranger, dies to ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... the poor in Europe. I told him some things I knew of that hopeless land, that priest-ridden, king-ridden country—my own land. Then he went on to tell me of America and its hope of a free democracy of the people. Believe me, I listened to Mr. Calhoun. Never mind what we said of Mr. Van Zandt and ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... Blazing Bosville, the Flaming Tinman, is almost a relief. But in what perilous Faery Land forlorn do all these and a thousand more strange and moving incidents take place?—Why, in the quiet lanes and byways of nineteenth-century England, or perchance in priest-ridden Spain, where the ordinary traveler can for the life of him discover nothing more startling than beef and beer, garlic and crucifixes. Adventures ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... prostitute of their party; among whom there has been for some years past such a perpetual clamour against the ambition, the implacable temper, and the covetousness of the priesthood: Such a cant of High Church, and persecution, and being priest-ridden; so many reproaches about narrow principles, or terms of communion: Then such scandalous reflections on the universities, for infecting the youth of the nation with arbitrary and Jacobite principles, that it was natural ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... and strangers seldom visit more than one or two of the principal towns on the coast. Bari and Brindisi are known to tourists, as they are in the line of travel to and from Greece, but the inland towns are isolated in a barren priest-ridden country in which strangers are not welcome. The hardships which it is necessary to face deter all but the most adventurous even of the Italians, familiar with the language and manners of the people. Architects seldom visit this neighborhood, and little is known of its rich treasure of mediaeval ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 04, April 1895 - Byzantine-Romanesque Windows in Southern Italy • Various
... the jails; to poor Giles Corey, tortured with planks upon his breast, which forced the tongue from his mouth and his life from his old, palsied body; to bereaved and quaking families; to a whole community, priest-ridden and spectresmitten, gasping in the sick dream of a spiritual nightmare and given over to believe a lie. We may laugh, for the grotesque is blended with the horrible; but we must also pity and shudder. The clear-sighted men who confronted ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Where can we look for the Kingdom of God, Sire, if not among the German people? Consider your foes. The English are Pharisees, hypocrites. Woe to them, saith the Lord. The French are atheists. The Belgians are ignorant and priest-ridden. The Russians are sunk in mediaeval superstition. As for the Italians, half are atheists and the other half idolators. Only in Germany do you find a reasonable and progressive faith, devoid of superstition, abreast of scientific thought, and of the highest ethical value. Germany ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... the trend of Catholic opinion in Ireland is as clearly in the direction of denominationalism as the trend of Nonconformist English opinion is in the direction of undenominationalism, and that it is impossible to carry on the education of a priest-ridden Catholic people on the same lines as a Protestant one. Primary education has become almost absolutely denominational, and, directly or indirectly, a crowd of endowments are given to exclusively Catholic institutions. On such grounds, many who entertain the strongest antipathy to ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... especially in the vicinity of the Achensee, is absolutely priest-ridden, every one, from the peasants to the gentry, contributing, and the best in the land going into their larders ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... Venice are priest-ridden!" the young Senator cried angrily, breaking away from her. "If there is trouble, it is the priests who have brought it. They cannot be a ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... and feeling are Barclay's Ship of Fools and Eclogues thoroughly expressive of the unhappy, discontented, poverty-stricken, priest-ridden, and court-ridden condition and life, the bitter sorrows and the humble wishes of the people, their very texture, as Barclay himself tells us, consists of the commonest language of the day, and in it are interwoven many of the current popular proverbs ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... conquered myth with philosophy, especially at a time when the Western world was still steeped in the grossest superstition. Therefore we may be thankful that the Chinese were and are a peace-loving, sober, agricultural, industrial, non-military, non-priest-ridden, literary, and philosophical people, and that we have instead of ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... pitched into the road he exclaimed: "Here I lie in the name of the devil." This sounds a bit feeble, and I could probably do better myself under similar provocation; but such language at all is very shocking in a clergyman. It is chiefly German historians who complain of Charles as being priest-ridden, and also of neglecting the affairs of the Empire while concentrating too much on Bohemia. This is a matter for historians to wrangle about; personally I consider that by his Golden Bull, which very much ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... another bell, and still another, which doubtless had farther and farther responses, at various distances along the valley; for, like the English drumbeat around the globe, there is a chain of convent bells from end to end, and crosswise, and in all possible directions over priest-ridden Italy. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
