"Profanely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him. I thought I would see if I could distinguish them by my eye without looking at the catalogue I found I could do so. I knew them by a certain misty quality in the atmosphere. I was disappointed in them, very much. Certainly, they were good paintings; I had nothing to object to them, but I profanely thought I had seen pictures by modern landscape painters as far excelling them as a brilliant morning excels a cool, gray day. Very likely the fault was all in me, but I could not help it; so I tried the Murillos. There was a Virgin and Child, with clouds around ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... a vain and ostentatious bravery, which, in cases of extreme peril, affords rather a presumptive proof of secret timidity than of fortitude; nor any betraying an unmanly or unsoldierlike impatience to quit the ship; but, with the becoming deportment of men neither paralyzed by, nor profanely insensible to, the accumulating dangers that encompassed them, they progressively departed in the different boats with their soldiers; those who happened to proceed first leaving behind them an example ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... is perhaps one of the most remarkable incidents in all the business of whaling. One day the planks stream with freshets of blood and oil; on the sacred quarter-deck enormous masses of the whale's head are profanely piled; great rusty casks lie about, as in a brewery yard; the smoke from the try-works has besooted all the bulwarks; the mariners go about suffused with unctuousness; the entire ship seems great leviathan himself; while on all hands the din ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... almost all the men on the floor had ceased to run. They began to gather in little groups. They knew flight was useless. They talked briefly. Profanely. Here and there men started disgustedly back toward the Platform. Their lips moved in expressions of furious scorn. Their ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... faults in his tragedies (which was not often the case), he has made us amends by the character of Falstaff. This is perhaps the most substantial comic character that ever was invented. Sir John carries a most portly presence in the mind's eye; and in him, not to speak it profanely, 'we behold the fullness of the spirit of wit and humour bodily'. We are as well acquainted with his person as his mind, and his jokes come upon us with double force and relish from the quantity of flesh through which they make their way, as he shakes his fat sides with laughter, or ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... Mr. Hicks was putting the food away, commenting profanely upon the flies, the heat, the tardiness of Mr. Stott, the injustice of things in general, and in particular the sordid necessity which obliged him to occupy this humble position when he was so eminently fitted to fill a ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one[50] must, in your allowance,[51] o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely,[52] that, neither having the accent of christians, nor the gait of christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... expect or to exact from it a very high standard of moral honesty; that is out of the question; but they are sure to gain the good opinion of their fellows by committing all sorts of depredations, fraud, and violence against the community at large. So (not to speak it profanely) some of Mr. Croker's friends may be very respectable people in their way—'all honourable men'—but their respectability is confined within party limits; every one does not sympathise in the integrity ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... days when I was, for a short period, a curate at Hoxton; and the other curate, then my colleague, induced me to attend a meeting which he described, I must say profanely described, as calculated to promote the kingdom of God. I found, on the contrary, that it consisted entirely of men in corduroys and greasy clothes whose manners were coarse and ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... of worship toward God, in such way and manner as every such person shall in conscience believe is most acceptable to God. And so long as such person useth not this Christian liberty to licentiousness or the destruction of others—that is, to speak loosely and profanely or contemptuously of God, Christ, the Holy Scriptures, or religion, or commit any moral evil or injury against others in their conversation—he or she shall be protected in the enjoyment of the aforesaid Christian liberty by ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... doubt," replied the Consul, "but not altogether, nor chiefly. No, Sir, it was her genius which made her beauty so glorious. She was wonderfully handsome, though. She was a phantom of delight, as that Lake fellow says,"—it was thus profanely that the Consul designated the poet Wordsworth, whom he could not abide,— "and the best thing he ever said, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... position so little to his taste, that he had drunk pretty heavily in the public-house for half an hour before-hand, to keep up his spirits. And now he had been paid back in his own coin, and lay grovelling in the mud, and calling profanely on the Lord, whose mercy such men always cry for in their trouble, if they never ask it for their sins. He was so confused and blinded by drink and fright, that he did not see the second ghost divest himself ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... a unity in the grapes when they grow together in the clusters upon the vine, and holding the bunch in your hand you speak of it as one; but there is another unity when you throw these grapes into the wine-press, and the feet of those that bruise these grapes trample them almost profanely beneath their feet together in the communion of pure wine; and such is the union and communion of hearts that have been fused by tribulation and sorrow, and that meet together in the true feeling of an honest grief to express the homage of their affection, as well as to render a tribute of praise ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... But the occasions for personal heroism were no fewer than always, and the opportunities for the exercise of such powers of trained and appreciative understanding and sympathy as Crane possessed, were abundant. For the most part, these tales are episodic, reports of isolated instances—the profanely humorous experiences of correspondents, the magnificent courage of signalmen under fire, the forgotten adventure of a converted yacht—but all are instinct with the red fever of war, and are backgrounded with the choking ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... was enraptured, claiming now to have a system of getting even with people that beat the invention of Torquemada. When it was represented to him that Caput might die, fade away entirely, in which case the office would be left without any indictment clerk, the Honorable Peckham profanely declared that he didn't care a damn. Caput Magnus was going to try Higgleby, that was all there was to it! And ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... professed Followers of the Mode. They would face me down, that all Women of good Sense ever were, and ever will be, Latitudinarians in Wedlock; and always did, and will, give and take what they profanely term Conjugal Liberty ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... were, my salad days—I aspired to becoming what old Simon Cameron called "one of those damned literary fellows" and Thomas Carlyle less profanely described as "a leeterary celeebrity." But some malign fate always sat upon my ambitions in this regard. It was easy to become The National Gambler in Nast's cartoons, and yet easier The National Drunkard through ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... all this to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley Coffin, of Nantucket, both messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and they united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were altogether insufficient. Charley profanely hinted they were humbug. Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me. This fundamental thing settled, the next point is, in what internal respect does the whale differ from other fish. Above, Linnaeus ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... uncertainty in the House of Commons last Wednesday, as to what should be taken to constitute "A Religious Body." Not to go harking back to the Rev. SYDNEY SMITH'S definition of "a Corporation"—which, without speaking it profanely, cannot be here quoted without offending eyes polite,—one may say that "A Religious Body" is a contradiction in terms. It is simply ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various
... Trinity, and left a door open for controversy as to what books were included in the Sacred Scriptures. Furthermore, the law against blasphemy might easily have been used as a weapon of persecution, providing, as it did, that whoever should "despitefully blaspheme or speak loosely and profanely of Almighty God, Christ Jesus, the Holy Spirit or the Scriptures of Truth, and is legally convicted thereof, shall forfeit and pay the sum of ten pounds for the use of the poor of the county where such offence shall be committed, or suffer three ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... morning paper, eulogising the Licensed Victuallers' fete at Vauxhall Gardens, on Tuesday evening, bursts into the following magnificent flight:—"Wit has been profanely said, like the Pagan, to deify the brute" (the writer will never increase the mythology); "but here," (that is, in the royal property,) "while intellect and skill" (together with Roman candles) "exhibit their various ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... other than that made by the heat of the sun, and he was oblivious to fatigue and the passage of time. When he filled a pan with dirt, he ran down the hill to wash it; nor could he forbear running up the hill again, panting and stumbling profanely, to refill the pan. ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... Mr. Jackson broke forth profanely. "I've been shipmates," he declared between oaths, "with freak names of all nations; but this gang beats me. Say, you," he called,—"you with the cro'-jack eye there,—what's that name you go by? ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... Levitical city, and himself a Levite. There is an Obededom in the lists of David's Levites in Chronicles who is probably the same man. He did not fear to receive the ark, and, worthily received, the presence which had been a source of disaster and death to idolaters, to profanely curious pryers into its secret, and to presumptuous irreverence, became a fountain of unbroken blessing. This twofold effect of the same presence is but a symbol of a solemn law which runs through all life, and is especially manifest in the effects of Christ's work upon ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... The man on Earth profanely agreed. Cochrane signed the contract before him. The other man signed. Not only the documents but all conversation was recorded. There were plugged-in ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... itself, but threatened dangerous consequences to all who were concerned. It was the policy of Mr. K- to ask no questions in his dealings with the trade. 'They bring the body, and we pay the price,' he used to say, dwelling on the alliteration - 'QUID PRO QUO.' And, again, and somewhat profanely, 'Ask no questions,' he would tell his assistants, 'for conscience' sake.' There was no understanding that the subjects were provided by the crime of murder. Had that idea been broached to him in words, he would have recoiled in horror; but the ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... before we found my late accuser sitting under a copse of willows, and apparently awaiting his death. As the settlers say when it freezes on the prairie, you can't fool with that kind of cold. Harry for some reason swore profanely. ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... by its name, but the truth is, that the mighty we, with all its pretension, is in general a very sorry creature, who, instead of saying nous disons, should rather say nous dis: Porny in his "Guerre des Dieux," very profanely makes the three in one say, Je faisons; now, Lavengro, who is anything but profane, would suggest that critics, especially magazine and Sunday newspaper critics, should commence with nous dis, as ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... have taken for a Quaker schoolmaster; the other a stout, ruddy, blue-eyed, laughing, ragged lad of sixteen, who certainly did not pass for a rebel deserter. Strange to say, these pilgrims of the dusty roads and rocky wildernesses were welcomed (not to speak it profanely) like angels from heaven by the old man, his daughter, and Toby,—their brown hands shaken, their coarse, torn clothes embraced, and their sunburnt faces kissed, with a rapture amazing to strangers of the household. They were travelling ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... reverses our own heraldry and sticks a surname like a burr upon us. The nickname is the idiom of nomenclature. The sponsorial appellation is generally meaningless, fished piously out of Scripture or profanely out of plays and novels, or given with an eye to future legacies, or for some equally insufficient reason apart from the name itself. So that the gentleman who named his children One, Two, and Three, was only reducing to its lowest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... artificial, had interposed itself; but in the presence of a man she should really care for, this false, flimsy structure would rattle to her feet, and the emancipation of Olive Chancellor's sex (what sex was it, great heaven? he used profanely to ask himself) would be relegated to the land of vapours, of dead phrases. The reader may imagine whether such an impression as this made it any more agreeable to Basil to have to believe it would be indelicate in him to try to woo ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... meeting-place I would find out the wagon to which I was assigned. Riding to it, I turned my horses into the saddle-band and reported to the wagon boss, or, in his absence, to the cook—always a privileged character, who was allowed and expected to order men around. He would usually grumble savagely and profanely about my having been put with his wagon, but this was merely conventional on his part; and if I sat down and said nothing he would probably soon ask me if I wanted anything to eat, to which the correct answer was that I was not hungry and would wait until meal-time. The bedding ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... has slipped a cog," Opdyke returned profanely. "Being interpreted, my reverend sire thinks I'd do better work at the School of Mines and then in Europe. I'm sorry, too, confound it, even if I know his head is level. I'd been looking forward to the pleasure of romping along here for another year or two, and watching you get changed ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... o'clock before we reached Oravicza; the drive of twenty-five miles had taken eight hours instead of four, as the Wallack had profanely promised. ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... warning of her leave-taking. At exactly half-an-hour before the hour set for sailing, she always blew one long blast from her whistle. At fifteen minutes to the hour she blew two shorter toots, and just on the eve of departure three blasts loud and sharp. This final warning, which Doctor Blair had profanely named the last trump, had been sounded, and Roderick began to look anxious for she had not yet appeared nor Mrs. Adams either. But he had gone sailing on picnics via the Inverness too many times to be seriously alarmed. The door ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... to Shakespeare's tomb as she had heretofore supposed. There was an unmistakably distinct reference to a tomb, but it might be Bacon's, or Raleigh's, or Spenser's; and instead of the "Old Player," as she profanely called him, it might be either of those three illustrious dead, poet, warrior, or statesman, whose ashes, in Westminster Abbey, or the Tower burial-ground, or wherever they sleep, it was her mission to disturb. It is ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Uncle Sir Oliver, and more especially in that college named in honour (as they profanely call it) of the Blessed Trinity, there are great conjurors or chemists. Now the said conjurors or chemists not only do possess the faculty of making the precious metals out of old books and parchments, but out of ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... was generally conceded that the real casus belli was political. "Is this a dashed Puritan meeting?" had asked the Colonel, savagely. "It's no Pike County shindig," had responded the floor-manager, cheerfully. "You're a Yank!" had screamed the Colonel, profanely qualifying the noun. "Get! you border ruffian," was the reply. Such at least was the substance of the reports. As, at that sincere epoch, expressions like the above were usually followed by prompt action, a fracas ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... for an estate? In smaller compass lies Pygmalion's fame; Not domes, but antique statues, are his flame: Not Fountaine's self more Parian charms has known, Nor is good Pembroke more in love with stone. The bailiffs come (rude men profanely bold!) And bid him turn his Venus into gold. "No, sirs," he cries; "I'll sooner rot in jail; Shall Grecian arts be truck'd for English bail?" Such heads might make their very busto's laugh: His daughter starves; but(7) Cleopatra's safe. Men, overloaded with a large estate, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... Malcolm MacPherson—not profanely or angrily, but as in sheer bewilderment. Then he added, "Nillie, you must be joking. It's careless enough I am—the west isn't a good place to learn finicky ways—but you can teach me. You're not going to throw me over because I track ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... girl in her, and felt in himself the sudden exciting outflow from her of that temperamental fluid whose springs had been dried up since the day when she learnt of her widowhood. She flushed. He looked away into the dark water, as though he had profanely witnessed that which ought not to be witnessed. Earlier in the interview she had inspired him with shyness. He was now stirred, agitated, thrilled—overwhelmed by the effect on her of his own words and his ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... Count Hamilton, somewhat profanely,—"if that were true, I should no longer deny the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play,—and heard others praise, and that highly,—not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... everything that might administer ground for suspicion. During this examination, Androcles, one of the demagogues, produced certain slaves and strangers before them, who accused Alcibiades and some of his friends of defacing other images in the same manner, and of having profanely acted the sacred mysteries at a drunken meeting, where one Theodorus represented the herald, Polytion the torch- bearer, and Alcibiades the chief priest, while the rest of the party appeared as candidates for initiation, and received ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... not care a profanely small amount for to-morrow's paper, and that all he knew was that to the station-house the newspaper men would go. There they would have a hearing, and if the magistrate chose to let them off, that was the magistrate's business, ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... retired from his rural sanctuary, the hidden and moveable part of his congregation were glad to get away. Some of the callous ones endeavoured afterwards to chaff Abe about the open-air service, but most of them were glad to say nothing on the subject, inwardly determining never again to venture profanely within the sacred precincts of ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... bet God ain't smart enough to make an engine like that," he said profanely. He waited for the effect of this, but there was apparently none; so he proceeded to give forth some more of the unorthodox views that never failed to shock pretty Miss Marjorie Scott, his Sunday-school teacher. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... niches, and there was more appropriateness in the little picture of the Holy Child embracing His Cross, now that it hung as the solo ornament of the library, than when it was vis-a-vis to Venus blindfolding Cupid, and surrounded by a bewildering variety of subjects, profane and sacred, profanely treated. She could not help feeling that there was a following in those steps when she saw how many luxuries had been laid aside, and how the brother and sister, once living in an atmosphere of morbid refinement, were now toiling away, solely thoughtful of what might best serve their ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... well for the house to recollect that what is at issue is of some price. You must remember, not to use the word profanely, that we are dealing really with a peculiar people. There is no country at the present moment that exists under the circumstances and under the same conditions as the people of this realm. You have, for example, an ancient, powerful, richly-endowed Church, and perfect religious liberty. You ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... it," one remarked profanely. "My lease quits. They can sue and be damned. I decline to have anything more to do with any freak-lined skyscraper ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... the letters. I care nothing whether God be pleased or displeased; I bear His will, without either pain or resistance. I simply feel as if there had been some vast and overwhelming mistake somewhere; a mistake so incredible and inconceivable that nothing else mattered; as if—I do not speak profanely—God Himself were appalled at what He had done, and dared not smite further one whom He had stunned ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... eighth edition makes the reflection evident, the tragedy of 'Cato' being just eight times printed. He has also endeavoured to show that every particular passage of the play alludes to some fine part of the tragedy, which he says I have injudiciously and profanely abused."[4] ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... lived down to and even beneath all the vicarious traditions of his kind, a pariah of the waste places, tolerated in the environs of this or that desert town chiefly because of Young Pete, who was popular, despite the fact that he bartered profanely for chuck at the stores, picketed the horses in pasturage already preempted by the natives, watered the horses where water was scarce and for local consumption only, and lied eloquently as to the qualities of his master's caviayard when ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... judicious grieve; the censure of The which one must in your allowance Overweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, And heard others praise, and that highly, Not to speak it profanely, that neither Having the accent of Christians nor the Gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so Strutted and bellowed, that I have thought Some of nature's journeymen had made men, And not made them well, they imitated Humanity ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... Adelaide, with her beautiful sympathy, explained that she supposed he simply meant that the thing was to use it, don't you know? but not to think too much about it. "To take it, but not to thank you for it?" I still more profanely enquired. For a quarter of an hour afterwards she wouldn't look at me, but this didn't prevent my asking her what had been the result, that afternoon—in the Regent's Park, of her taking our friend ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... surrounding towns. It was said that in one of these a party of roguish boys loaded an old cannon with molasses and fired it in the direction of Colchester. How they did this has not been stated, and some irreverent disbelievers in the more uncommon of our grandfathers' stories have profanely declared it a myth. ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... the censures of that stern divine, Daddie Auld, who charged him with the sin of absenting himself from church for three successive days; for having, without the fear of God's servant before him, profanely said damn it, in his presence, and far having gallopped on Sunday. These charges were contemptuously dismissed by the presbyterial court. Hamilton was the brother of the Charlotte to whose charms, on the banks of Devon, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... use. They saw a quiver of the muscles over the chest and redoubled their efforts, telling one another hopefully that he was alive, all right. They saw finally a quiver of the nostrils as well, and one after another they laid palms upon his heart, felt there a steady beating and proclaimed the fact profanely. ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... and sliding back the companion-hatch, descended into a small evil-smelling cabin, and stood feeling in the darkness for the matches. They were not to be found, and, growling profanely, he felt his way to the state-room, and turned in ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... not speak profanely or extravagantly—it is not the best way to thank God. But to say only that I was in the desert and that I am among the palm-trees, is to say nothing ... because it is easy to understand how, after walking straight on ... on ... furlong after furlong ... dreary day after dreary day, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... that she could look into the future by telling fortunes on the cards. She did nothing herself without first consulting the cards. She could give no more serious proof of her interest in my welfare than the proof which she was offering now. I don't say it profanely; I only mention the fact—the cards had, in some incomprehensible way, got themselves jumbled up together with her religious convictions. You meet with people nowadays who believe in spirits working by way of tables ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... full of wine, Honour will make him fast. Freely then Let's be honest men And kick at fate, For we may live to see Our loyalty Valued at a higher rate. He that bears a sword Or a word against the throne, And does profanely prate To abuse the state, Hath ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... upon this vice. He not unfrequently punishes it, by directly answering the prayer that is profanely uttered. J. H. was a notorious swearer. He had a singular habit of calling on God to curse his eyes. After some years, this awful imprecation was verified. He was afflicted with a disease in his eyes, which terminated in total ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... mend. 10 But when to common sense they give the lie, And turn distorted words to blasphemy, They give the scandal; and the wise discern, Their glosses teach an age, too apt to learn. What I have loosely, or profanely, writ, Let them to fires, their due desert, commit: Nor, when accused by me, let them complain: Their faults, and not their function, I arraign. Rebellion, worse than witchcraft, they pursued; The pulpit preach'd the crime, the people rued. 20 The stage was silenced; for the saints would ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... mortals towards their young ones. When, some twenty years ago, I was told by a Kentish countryman that the church bell was tolled to drive away evil spirits from a departing soul, I supposed the man to be profanely jocose; but since then I have travelled much in this country and on the Continent, and have seen enough to satisfy me that superstition prevails comparatively less in Asia than in Europe and the pages of "N. & Q." abundantly ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... upholsterer's daughter with many virtuous endearments, to propitiate the establishment and reduce the bill; of these matters I say nothing, either, for the same reason as that just mentioned. The discovery of the cottage I seriously regard as a blessing (not to speak it profanely) upon our efforts in this cause. I had heard nothing from the bank, and walked straight there, by some strange impulse, directly after breakfast. I am sure they may be happy there; for if I were older, and my course of activity were run, I am sure I could, with God's blessing, for many and many ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... I think, I have had your concurrence; perhaps you will not be with me in what I believe is most needful for me to say. There IS one dangerous science for women—one which they must indeed beware how they profanely touch—that of theology. Strange, and miserably strange, that while they are modest enough to doubt their powers, and pause at the threshold of sciences where every step is demonstrable and sure, they will plunge headlong, and without one thought of incompetency, into that science in which ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... in a fretful agony of impatience. She rose and looked out of the window, thought she heard somebody on the stairs, went outside on the landing, returned, walked up and down, and mentally cursed her husband, not profanely—she dared not do that—but with curses none the less intense. Poor man! he had been kept by a job he had to finish. She might have thought this possible, and, in fact, did think it possible; but it made no difference in the hatred which she permitted to ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... rarest thing of the kind that any of those interested in its formation had ever witnessed. The jostling, tumbling, scratching, pinching, pulling of hair, little ones crying and larger ones punching each other's heads and swearing most profanely, altogether formed a scene of confusion and riot that disheartened the teachers in the start, and made them begin to think they had undertaken a ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... hand would fain remove the veil— Sudden a burning chill assails his bones And then an unseen arm repulses him. "Unhappy one, what wouldst thou do?" Thus cries A faithful voice within his trembling breast. "Wouldst thou profanely violate the All-Holy?" "'Tis true the oracle declared, 'Let none Venture to raise the veil till raised by me.' But did the oracle itself not add, That he who did so would behold the truth? Whate'er is hid behind, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... droop amid the civilized luxury of Madison Avenue. He missed what he called his own "den." So he got it, rent free, and furnished it sparingly with furniture of a slabby variety until the effect produced might, profanely speaking, be described ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... good and tutelary were obliged to submit to n sort of gentle, involuntary servitude. From invisible beings were expected and demanded visible means of assistance—riches, health, friends, and long life. Thus the poor spirits were profanely maltreated, nay, sometimes severely punished, and even miserably flogged in effigy, when they betrayed symptoms of disaffection, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... on with their arguing. They were fighting the Boer War all over again with their mouths. Some of them had been in it. Many of them had tramped in South Africa. They shouted violently, profanely, at each other at the tops of their voices, contending with loud assertions and counter-assertions, as if about to engage ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... lashed by Mademoiselle, then he was fined a week's pay and threatened with discharge by the manager. But when the increasing wrath of the Champion Lady Equestrienne of America led her to demand his instant and painful annihilation the worm turned. The driver profanely declared that he knew his business. He had travelled with Yank Robinson, he had, and no female hair-grabber under canvas should call him down more than once in the same day. There was more of this, added merely for emphasis. Mlle. Zaretti ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... symbolical, and therefore this idea was most firmly attached to these ordinances. But the symbolical of that time is not to be considered as the opposite of the objectively real, but as the mysterious, the God produced ([Greek: mysterion]) as contrasted with the natural, the profanely clear. As to Baptism, which was administered in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit, though Cyprian, Ep. 73. 16-18, felt compelled to oppose the custom of baptising in the name of Jesus, we noted above (Chap. ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... while her sorrow made her the pity and the wonder of the people, it did not keep her sacred from the reach of gossip. Observing the frequency with which Bondo Emmins visited Old Briton's cabin, it was profanely said by some that the pale girl would ere long avert her eyes from the dead and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, or man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Unless it be," I added with the eagerness of a thought perhaps still happier, "some kind of game you're up to with your style, something you're after in the language. Perhaps it's a preference for the letter P!" I ventured profanely to break out. "Papa, potatoes, prunes—that sort of thing?" He was suitably indulgent: he only said I hadn't got the right letter. But his amusement was over; I could see he was bored. There was nevertheless ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... Auld Lichts went demented. The occasion was the fast-day at Tilliedrum; when its inhabitants, instead of crowding reverently to the kirk, swooped profanely down in their scores and tens of scores on our God-fearing town, intent on making a day of it. Then did the weavers rise as one man, and go forth to show the ribald crew the errors of their way. All denominations were represented, but Auld Lichts led. An Auld Licht would have taken no man's ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... embroiderers; and the sacred peplos which robed her statue, and was renewed every year, was embroidered by noble maidens, under the superintendence of a priestess of her temple. It represented the battles of the gods and the giants (fig. 4), till the portraits of living men were profanely introduced into the design. The new peplos was carried to the temple, floating like a flag, in ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... chairs were formed in a crescent about one side of the stove. The Swede began to talk; he talked arrogantly, profanely, angrily. Johnnie, the cowboy, and the Easterner maintained a morose silence, while old Scully appeared to be receptive and eager, breaking in ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... own horse. Another had smashed a window, also by accident, and clearly the fault of the bar-keeper, who shouldn't have dodged. Men, and youths of men's stature, were laying arms about each other's necks, advising one another, with profanely affectionate assumptions of superiority, to come along home, promising on triple oath to do so after one more drink, and breaking forth at unlooked-for moments in blood-curdling yells. Three or four would take a fifth or seventh stirrup cup, mount, start home, ride ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... I'm like my self, profanely wicked. A little room for Life—but such a Life As Hell it self shall wonder at—I'll have a care To do no one good deed in the whole course on't, Lest that shou'd save my Soul in spite of Vow-breach. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... days of our youth—rescuing them and printing them without pity or apology, just as the weakest and commonest of us do in our gray age. More—she still frankly admires them; and in her introduction of them profanely confers upon them the holy ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... down and turned into their bunks. John Bar was not a meddler, nor what is contemptuously called, in such reckless societies as ours was, "a preacher;" but as he was loyal to his country, and loyal to his parents, he was far more loyal to his God. It would madden any man to hear his mother's name profanely used; it made John Bar's heart sick—yes, and I have seen him tremble with rage—when the name of his Saviour was taken as an oath. Sometimes then, and at other times when the wickedness in camp was rampant, he would break out in words of fire—words of fire that soon mingled with, and ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... uncle Sir Oliver, and more especially in that college named in honour (as they profanely call it) of the blessed Trinity, there are great conjurors or chemists. Now the said conjurors or chemists not only do possess the faculty of making the precious metals out of old books and parchments, but out of the skulls of young lordlings and gentlefolks, which verily promise less. And this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... the hush of the enchanted moment, a sullen sound broke—the sound of a voice they knew, threateningly raised, louder and louder, growling, profanely menacing. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... to mutter profanely. "It looks like they had us, and all because Fraser's tongue is ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... now sung a service, King in F. They sung "The Magnificat" rudely, and rather profanely, but recovered themselves ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... handled without risk; and the dark spirit that had seemed to be in and over all was vanished. Even the majestic Ark of the Covenant, which the sinful Uzza once died for so much as touching reverently, was now seen to be an ordinary stove for the burning of anthracite coal, to be rattled profanely and polished for an extra quarter by Sherman Tranquillity Tyler after he had finished whitewashing the cellar. Fearlessly the little boy, grown somewhat bigger now, walked among the debris of this idol, ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... strange, if, during all that wild excitement, Massachusetts put to death twenty? The only wonder is in the independence of the Rhode Island people, who declared that "there were no witches on the earth, nor devils,—except" (as they profanely added) "the New-England ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... children to take it with him, and made an earnest declaration of his faith in Christianity. It now appeared what part of his conversation with the great could be remembered with delight. He related, that being present when the Duke of Buckingham talked profanely before King Charles, he said to him, 'My lord, I am a great deal older than your Grace, and have, I believe, heard more arguments for atheism than ever your Grace did; but I have lived long enough to see there is nothing in them, and so I hope ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... surprise. "Jerushy!"—accented on the second syllable—was the positive, "Jerushy Jane!" the comparative, and "Jerushy Jane Pepper!" the superlative. Who that poor lady might be I often wondered, but never ventured to inquire. In times of stress I have heard him swear by "Judas Priest," but never more profanely. In his youth he had been a sailor on the lake, when some artist of the needle had tattooed a British jack on the back of his left hand—a thing he covered, of shame now, when he thought of it. His right hand had lost its forefinger ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... while I watched, a tuskless elephant or mutna got his log stuck in the mud and was tugging and roaring profanely about his trials, when the tusker's mahout bid that royal beast go help his troubled brother. Straightway, therefore, went the tusker, leaving great holes in the mud at each footprint as if a tree had been uprooted there, gave a mighty shove to the recalcitrant log, and ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... said 'forgive me' as a prelude to my remarks," resumed Vergniaud, "I am talking profanely, sceptically, and cynically,—I am talking precisely as the world talks, and ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... observed profanely. "Look here, Weldon, you've no business to funk in this fashion. It's ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... is all the better for being vague and dim and shadowy, all pervading, yet never tangible; and the living people have a charm about them which is as lifelike and real as the legendary folks are ghostly and remote. Phoebe, for instance, is a creation which, not to speak it profanely, is almost Shakespearian. I know no modern heroine to compare with her, except it be Eugene Sue's Rigolette, who shines forth amidst the iniquities of "Les Mysteres de Paris" like some rich, bright, fresh cottage ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... profanely as emphatically made, thrills the hearts of those hearing it with fear. Not fear of the common kind, but ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... horror and dismay when this ominous stranger fairly seated himself on the stocks, rested his heels profanely on the lids of two of the four round eyes, and taking out a pencil and ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were of such a sort in language and matter, that the town of Warwick did not think them fit for the public records, and so enjoined that the clerk should keep them in a file by themselves. This was known as "the Impertinent File," and, more profanely, but not less appropriately, as "the Damned File." A certain "perditious letter," written by Roger Williams himself, serves as the nucleus of this deposit; and we read of another of the documents as being as "full of uncivil language ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... lieutenant again began to bellow profanely. Regardless of the vindictive threats of the bullets, he went about coaxing, berating, and bedamning. His lips, that were habitually in a soft and childlike curve, were now writhed into unholy contortions. He ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... you have received any disrespect since you entered this palace? There is but one person from whom it could have proceeded. I know him; and if, against his solemn oath, he has dared an unseemly look or word—if he has touched you profanely—you may choose the dog's death he shall die, and I will give it him. For that I wear ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... have become a habit. They bring with them women of their own kind—women who, through years of dissipation, have still, like misers, managed to hoard some trace of bloom. They drink deeply, for the men are spenders. The wine flows free and the talk grows loud. Occasionally a man quarrels profanely with his companion and a soft-footed waiter with a thug's face whispers him to ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... frame to the opposite wall would touch, say 150 pairs of feet. They were a noisy crowd down there, and one night their noise so provoked the guard in front of the door that he called out to them to keep quiet or he would fire in upon them. They greeted this threat with a chorus profanely uncomplimentary to the purity of the guard's ancestry; they did not imply his descent a la Darwin, from the remote monkey, but more immediate generation by a common domestic animal. The incensed Rebel opened the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy |
