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Reverential   Listen
adjective
Reverential  adj.  Proceeding from, or expressing, reverence; having a reverent quality; reverent; as, reverential fear or awe. "A reverential esteem of things sacred."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Reverential" Quotes from Famous Books



... galvanize the land; Gin palaces in tawdry splendor stand; The newsboys shriek of mangled bodies found; The last burlesque is playing in the Strand— In modern prose, all poetry seems drowned. Yet in ten thousand homes this April night An ancient people celebrates its birth To Freedom, with a reverential mirth, With customs quaint and many a hoary rite, Waiting until, its tarnished glories bright, Its God shall be the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... in literary advice made a bow which did him no discredit, and began to speak in a low, reverential tone not at all disagreeable to the ear. His breeding, in truth, had been that of a gentleman, and it was only of late years that he had fallen into the hungry region ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... the ground as at sight of an apparition, the glorious flash of a holy vision, Pierre and Victorine gazed at her with dazzled eyes. The servant had not stirred to prevent this extraordinary action, seized as she was with that shrinking reverential terror which comes upon one in presence of the wild, mad deeds of faith and passion. And the priest, whose limbs were paralysed, felt that something so sublime was passing that he could only quiver in distraction. And no thought of impurity came to him on ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... the world flooded with a serene and tender light? Was the moaning ocean filled with the wondrous music of immortal love and longing, reaching out to glad fruition? Was that sudden rare peace, creating a reverential atmosphere about him, an earnest of days to come? He experienced a vivid lightness as if he were being borne on clouds, while fragments of delicious remembrances floated through his brain. The very refinement of his nature ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... leisure in future years, and though burdened with little knowledge, possessed of an educated sense of beauty, and an ingrained love of what is noble and hatred of all that is the reverse. He would be more cultivated and human than the best type of young Spartan, more physically vigorous and reverential, though less intellectually developed, than the best type of young Athenian—a nascent soldier and servant of the state, not, like most young Athenians of ability, a nascent orator. And as he would be only half ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... What an inspiration to our reverential study! What a new revelation is borne upon its perfume! Its forms and hues, what invitations to our devotion! This spot upon the petal; this peculiar quality of perfume or odor; this fringe within the throat; this curving stamen; this slender tube! What a catechism to one who knows ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... impressive attitudes and groups it would be as well not to inquire too closely. It is a part of the philosophy of travel to take the goods the gods provide, and the blending of amused tolerance and unsuspected depths of reverential devotion by which the visitor will find himself moved, while in Assisi, can hardly be described. ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... parishes a dull, cold, lifeless, and therefore unhelpful ordinance, and at length regarding it as composed of beggarly elements, breathing of bondage, to fill the Baillies' Barn three times every Sunday—a reverential and eager congregation. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... not recover myself sufficiently to face him, strange as it was to do otherwise; and Perceiving me quite overcome he walked away, and I saw him no more. His kindness, his goodness, his benignity, never shall I forget—never think of but with fresh gratitude and reverential affection. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... into details concerning Bildy which were very entertaining, and gave much amusement to Val over our dinner. It appeared that the poor fellow had formed a most reverential opinion of the priest on his first visit to our church for Mass. On his return home he sat by the fire smiling delightedly and murmuring to himself. They did not catch what he said, but after repeated questioning Robina found that he was quite ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... miles from Mount Vernon; of the latter, at Pohick, about seven miles. The church at Pohick was rebuilt on a plan of his own, and in a great measure at his expense. At one or other of these churches he attended every Sunday, when the weather and the roads permitted. His demeanor was reverential and devout. Mrs. Washington knelt during the prayers; he always stood, as was the custom at that ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... now an opportunity," he said, in a subdued, reverential voice, "of seeing a spectacle which few Europeans have had the privilege of beholding. Inside that cottage you will find two Yogis—men who are only one remove from the highest plane of adeptship. They are both wrapped in an ecstatic trance, ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... arched frame of copper—a figure almost sacerdotal, with its face turned towards the east—and a little shower of rose leaves, which could scarcely have fallen there by accident, at the foot of the pedestal. Lutchester inclined his head gravely, as he looked towards it, a gesture entirely reverential, almost an obeisance. Nikasti's eyes were clouded with curiosity. He ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... belief in the future of These States (as, with reverential capitals, he loves to call them), made the war a period of great trial to his soul. The new virtue, Unionism, of which he is the sole inventor, seemed to have fallen into premature unpopularity. All that he loved, hoped, or hated, hung in the balance. And the game of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... as 'He is onefold, he is threefold' (Ch. Up. VII, 26, 2), teach us that the highest Self appears in manifold forms. Nor do we mean to object to the inculcation of unceasing concentration of mind on the highest Being which appears in the Bhagavata doctrine under the forms of reverential approach, &c.; for that we are to meditate on the Lord we know full well from Sm/ri/ti and Scripture. We, however, must take exception to the doctrine that Sa@nkarsha/n/a springs from Vasudeva, Pradyumna from Sa@nkarsha/n/a, Aniruddha from Pradyumna. It ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... moral insight; 'counsel and might,' to the qualities which give sound practical direction and vigour to follow, and carry through, the decisions of practical wisdom; while 'the knowledge and fear of the Lord' define religion by its two parts of acquaintance with God founded on love, and reverential awe which prompts to obedience. The fulfilment, and far more than fulfilment, of this ideal is in Jesus, in whom were 'hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,' to whom no circumstances of difficulty ever brought ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... he says, 'is the worship of the heart. God never rejects this homage, under whatever form it be offered to him. In old days I used to say mass with the levity which in time infects even the gravest things when we do them too often. Since acquiring my new principles [of reverential scepticism] I celebrate it with more veneration: I am overcome by the majesty of the Supreme Being, by his presence, by the insufficiency of the human mind, which conceives so ill what pertains to its author. ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... guide. As one, who aught before him suddenly Beholding, whence his wonder riseth, cries "It is yet is not," wav'ring in belief; Such he appear'd; then downward bent his eyes, And drawing near with reverential step, Caught him, where of mean estate might clasp His lord. "Glory of Latium!" he exclaim'd, "In whom our tongue its utmost power display'd! Boast of my honor'd birth-place! what desert Of mine, what favour rather undeserv'd, Shows thee to me? If I to hear that voice Am worthy, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... church or grand cathedral was more solemn and reverential than that of the men, as each in turn stepped softly forward with bowed head, and repeated his name to the tiny petitioner, who immediately included it with those for whom she had already prayed and it was wafted upward through space to Him who delights ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... would he have been His unpublished letters His rank among poets 'Often coarse, but never vulgar' Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' 'a most amusing and instructive medley' Burun, Ralph de, mentioned in Doomsday Book Busby, Dr., Dryden's reverential regard for ——, Thomas, Mus. Doct., his monologue on the opening of Drury Lane Theatre His translation of Lucretius Butler, Dr. (headmaster at Harrow) Reconciliation between Lord Byron and BYRON, Sir John, the Little, with the great beard ——, Sir John, 1st Lord, his high and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... high. And also I told them that Miss Fannie charged entirely too little for her work, and it was poor religion to go to church on Sunday and sing praises to God and underpay a poor little dressmaker. They said they supposed it was, but I don't think they thought it very reverential in me to speak of God in connection with a dress-maker and what she got for sewing. I gave each one a list of their expenditures, with the cost of everything on it, and each had a little left over after getting their slippers and some sachet powder and a bottle of violet-water ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher

... distinguished either by form, or color, or magnitude. And who in his sound senses ever sought for form, or color, or size, in wisdom, in respect of its being wisdom? And who that is capable of entertaining reverential thoughts or feelings regarding God can suppose or believe that God the Father ever existed, even for a moment of time, without having generated this Wisdom? For in that case he must say either that God was unable ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... welfare of all mankind in the world! And you, worthy imperial consort, must, on no account, be mindful of me Cheng and my wife, decrepid as we are in years. What I would solicit more than anything is that you should be more careful of yourself, and that you should be diligent and reverential in your service to His Majesty, with the intent that you may not prove ungrateful of his affectionate regard ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... the same course of proceeding was had, expressive of the reverential relation in which the people acknowledged that they stood ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... that—her young nature reacting—as they all walked up the street together, while the sun shone down smilingly upon the world in Sunday best, and the flowers were gay in the door-yards, and Miss Milliken's shop was reverential with the green shutters before the windows that had been gorgeous yesterday with bright ribbons and fresh fashions; and there was something thankful in her feeling of the pleasantness that was about her, ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... chief methods of education in vogue; that is to say, the Lacedaemonian as contrasted with that of the rest of Hellas, and I leave it to the judgment of him whom it may concern, which of the two has produced the finer type of men. And by finer I mean the better disciplined, the more modest and reverential, and, in matters where self-restraint is a virtue, the ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon

... infallible proofs: more especially the look he gave me when he went away. It was not an impudent look—I exonerate him from that—it was a look of reverential, tender adoration. Ha, ha! he's not quite such a stupid ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte

... love songs illustrate the various phases of his temperament which we have been discussing. The first two are to Mary Campbell, and exhibit Burns in his most reverential attitude toward women: ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... reformation of Savonarola, more reverential than Luther's, which followed about five-and-twenty years later, respected the thing while attacking the man, and had as its aim the altering of teaching that was human, not faith that was of God. He ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... reverential nature, with the soldierly respect for constituted authority which is often the characteristic of strong natures; and he was absolutely unswerving in his principles —the courage and tenacity which distinguished him through life, never deserting him in political emergencies. He was patriotic ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... interest in the model, all is written upon the canvas. Above all, he tells us most plainly what he thought about his model—whether he was moved by love or contempt; whether his moods were critical or reverential. And what the canvas under consideration tells most plainly is that Mr. Whistler never forgot his own personality in that of the ancient philosopher. He came into the room as chirpy and anecdotal as usual, in no way discountenanced or put about by the presence of his venerable and illustrious sitter. ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... published The Seraphim and Other Poems. The Seraphim was a reverential description of two angels watching the Crucifixion. Though the critics saw much that was strikingly original, they condemned the frequent obscurity of meaning and irregularity of rhyme. The next year, The Romaunt of the Page and other ballads appeared, ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... Southern child, nor the opposite. Their whole life mystery is different. Instead of consummating all things within themselves, as the dark little Southern infants do, the Northern Jesus-children reach out delicate little hands of wondering innocence towards delicate, flower-reverential mothers. Compare a Botticelli Madonna, with all her wounded and abnegating sensuality, with a Hans Memling Madonna, whose soul is pure and only reverential. Beyond me is the mystery and the glory, says the Northern mother: let me have no self, let me only seek that ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... affords an amusing instance of this reverential attitude. The play, as is generally known, was based upon a slightly earlier and utterly un-Shakespearean production entitled The Troublesome Raigne of King John. The only character Shakespeare added to those he found ready to his hand was that of James Gurney, who enters with Lady Falconbridge ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... examined each prisoner, and sent him off to the place of the wicked to receive punishment proportionate to his transgressions. He was especially severe upon those who, puffed up with wealth and authority, were expecting an almost reverential treatment; he could not away with their ephemeral presumption and superciliousness, their failure to realize the mortality of themselves and their fortunes. Stripped of all that made them glorious, of wealth and birth and power, there they stood naked and downcast, reconstructing ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... fairies, only I could not exactly tell which of the three I admired most. Countess Diodora's philosophical intellect impressed me as much as Countess Cenni's unruly activity; and Countess Flamma's pensive silence affected me none the less, and I looked at her with the reverential awe of the priest before ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... prosperity is called, and of the restoration of the son of him who is strangely enough termed a martyr. To all these eventful and unwonted chances in the fortunes of kings, Mark Heathcote listened with deep and reverential submission to the will of him, in whose eyes crowns and sceptres are merely the more costly baubles of the world. Like most of his contemporaries, who had sought shelter in the western continent, his political opinions, if not absolutely republican, had a leaning to liberty ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... authority, one should, doubtless, first sprout petticoats; and, meanwhile, one must rest content with asking the intelligent women of our acquaintance—whether man inspires them with anything like the feelings of reverential adoration, the sense of a being holy and supernal, with which woman undoubtedly inspires man. He is, of course, their god, but a god of the Greek pattern, with no little of the familiarising alloy of earth in his composition. He is strong, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... remained for confidence? I did not know any. We were both of us of a reserved nature, not apt to enter into our religious feelings, for instance. There are many people who think reticence on such subjects a sign of the most reverential way of contemplating them. Of this I am far from being sure; but, at all events, it was the practice most congenial to ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... Moyocoyatzin, is the third person singular of yocoya, to do, to make, with the reverential termination tzin. Sahagun says this title was given him because he could do what he pleased, on earth or in heaven, and no one could prevent him. (Historia de Nueva Espana, Lib. III. cap. II.) It seems to me that it would rather refer to his ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... girl realized, was, though somewhat impersonal, wholly genuine. The tone of chivalrous respect rang true, and she could comprehend the half-instinctive straining after an ideal by one whose belief in her sex was, if slightly crude, almost reverential. It touched her, though she knew that to benefit him it could only be offered to one woman, and she was ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... Duke of Omnium. The one was a moral, good man, a good husband, a good father, and a good friend. The other,—did not bear quite so high a reputation. But men and women thought but little of the Duke of St. Bungay, while the other duke was regarded with an almost reverential awe. I think the secret lay in the simple fact that the Duke of Omnium had not been common in the eyes of the people. He had contrived to envelope himself in something of the ancient mystery of wealth and ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... open his heart to religious instruction, hitherto merely endured as a portion of the general infliction of the penalty, a supposed engine for dealing with the superstitious, but entirely beneath his attention. The sight of the educated face had at first attracted him, but when he observed the reverential manner in chapel, he thought it mere acting the ''umble prisoner,' till he observed how unobtrusive, unconscious, and retiring was every token of devotion, and watched the eyes, brightened or softened ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and professions, cry, "Away with this fellow;" while they demand in His stead some Barabbas "hero" of their own to worship. There is often manifested an opposition to Christianity which assumes the aspect of personal hatred. We do not at all allude in these pages to the sincere, reverential man, who doubts, questions, argues, opposes, sifts, denies, rejects, while endeavouring, with an honest mind, to discover and believe the truth, whatever that may be; nor to the sadness of spirit of one who wishes "the glad tidings" to ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... Full of gloom as they still are, they soothe by their delicious tenderness, by their naive and mournful grace. The martial rhythm grows more feeble; the march of the stately train, no longer rustling in its pride of state, is hushed in reverential silence, in solemn thought, as if its course wound on through graves, whose sad swells extinguish smiles and humiliate pride. Love alone survives, as the mourners wander among the mounds of earth so freshly heaped that the grass has not yet grown ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... is the majesty of truth! The dissipated and sin-loving journeyman, long since made familiar with vice, could not listen unmoved as the boy uttered the scriptural denunciation in the solemn and reverential manner he had been taught was proper, it was long since Jem Taylor had heard any word from that holy book, and now, awed by the dignity of the truth, that great principle of Christian life and conduct, he ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers

... was too often employed in burning temples and destroying their artistic treasures. The painter then painted as his fancy led him, and if he treated of religious subjects did not invariably do so in a reverential spirit. From time to time new schools of painting arose, culminating, in the eighteenth century, in the Shijo school, which made a feature of painting animals, birds, fishes, flowers, &c., from nature, instead of adhering to the conventional style which ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... characteristics. They are condensed definitions. And so the Old Testament uses the expression, the 'Name' of God, as equivalent to 'that which God is manifested to be.' Hence, in later days—and there are some tendencies thither even in Scripture—in Jewish literature 'the Name' came to be a reverential synonym for God Himself. And there are traces that this peculiar usage with regard to the divine Name was beginning to shape itself in the Church with reference to the name of Jesus, even at that period in which my text was spoken. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... under the influence of frontier life, instances are rare in which women are not treated with all the honor and respect due them. Indeed, I have sometimes thought that the general sentiment concerning woman is more refined and reverential among the bronzed pioneers at the outposts than under the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... that vapid and colourless nonentity, the "person of condition." Mrs. Bennet, although apparently more contradictory and less intelligible, is nevertheless true to her past history and present environments; while her husband, the sergeant, with his concealed and reverential love for his beautiful foster-sister, has had a long line of descendants in the modern novel. It is upon Amelia, however, that the author has lavished all his pains, and there is no more touching portrait in the whole of ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... said the king, continuing an address, to which his chiefs seemed to listen with reverential attention, "our best hope of speedily gaining the city is rather in the dissensions of the Moors than our own sacred arms. The walls are strong, the population still numerous; and under Muza Ben Abil Gazan, the tactics of the hostile army ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... festivals in the East. The bride was careful to preserve the decorum expected of her, by speaking no word, nor losing the sad, resigned expression of her countenance. She ascended to the divan, bowed to each of us with a low, reverential inclination, and seated herself on the cushions. The music and dances lasted some time, accompanied by the zughareet, or cry of the women, which was repeated with double force when we rose to take leave. The whole company waited on us to the street door, and ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... well as the thoughtful and deferential way she looked after the old man. The best on the table was for him and he had to be served first. She treated him sometimes as a child, but more often as a superior being. He noted the look of reverential respect in her eyes as she turned them upon him, ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody

... all human affections, this, the first that takes root in the infant's heart, is the last to die out under the blighting influence of vice, the deadening blows of time. "My Mother" is spoken by the world-hardened citizen with a gentler inflection,—a reverential cadence, as if the inner man stood with uncovered head before ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... waves of peace. I stepped softly past the old men and women who knelt upon the pavements, and gazed longingly upon their simpler spiritual plane; I drew back reluctantly from the only garden where the Cross is planted in visible, reverential substance. For the year ensuing this life in Rome, I entertained the family with dramatic imitations of religious chants, grumbling out at sundown the low, ominous echoings of the priests, answered by the treble, rapid and trustful, of the little choristers, gladly picturing to myself as I did ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... weather, and built without much regard to beauty; but it is in temples for the worship of God, that architecture lays claim to dignity. It was the result of devotional feelings; nor is there a single instance of supreme excellence in art being reached, which was not sacred, and connected with reverential tendencies. In the erection and decoration of sacred buildings there was a profound sentiment that they were to be the sanctuaries of God, and genius was stimulated by pious emotions. In India, in Egypt, in Greece, in Italy, the various temples all originated in ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... The mighty arches of the dome, the spread of the great transepts, the grace of the decorations, were in themselves inspiring; nor was even the sombre shade of the mourning dressing, softened by splashes of purple here and there, out of keeping with the event, typifying, as it did, our reverential regard for the memory of a great Constitutional Ruler, the mightiest Sovereign of the people the world ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... that general style and bearing for which Foreign Affairs are so remarkable, the mind must be carefully divested of divers incompatible qualities—such as self-respect, the sense of shame, the reverential instinct, and that of conscience, as certain feelings are termed. It must also be relieved of any inconvenient weight of knowledge under which it may labour; though these directions are perhaps needless, as those who have any inclination to form themselves after the pattern of Foreign ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... age, of old age gently dealt with and protected. The light is unobtrusive yet luminous—morning sunshine. The picture is utterly simple; the more so for its touch of incompleteness. The masses are broad, artless. It is tender, reverential, a sweet and solemn glorification of old age, and of the old age ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... works, and his voluminous dimensions, filled me with too much diffidence and respect to admit of any freedom of approach. One listened to him, as he held forth of an evening when surrounded by his family, with reverential silence. He had a strong Scotch accent; and, if a wee bit prosy at times, it was sententious and polished prose that he talked; he talked invariably like a book. His family were devoted to him; and I felt that no one who knew him could ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... Wagram, and he was inclined to disapprove of the conduct of Miollis as too precipitate. It was now, however, impossible to recede; the Pope was ordered to be conveyed across the Alps to Grenoble. But his reception there was more reverential than Napoleon had anticipated, and he was soon ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... and Zarathustra rejoiced at his words and their refined reverential style. "Who art thou?" asked he, and gave him his hand, "there is much to clear up and elucidate between us, but already methinketh ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... freedom of ideas, that he would have vainly looked for among the members of his own profession. In truth, he was startled, if not shocked, to find this attribute in the physician. Mr. Dimmesdale was a true priest, a true religionist, with the reverential sentiment largely developed, and an order of mind that impelled itself powerfully along the track of a creed, and wore its passage continually deeper with the lapse of time. In no state of society would he have been what is called a man of liberal ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... upon our hearts as upon her own. Her sorrows ask not words but tears; and her madness has precisely the same effect that would be produced by the spectacle of real insanity, if brought before us: we feel inclined to turn away, and veil our eyes in reverential pity and ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... impression that the very pretty girl who ministered to the literary needs of his partner, combined the qualities of a maiden aunt with the virtues of a grandmother, and that Bones experienced no other emotion than one of reverential wonder, tinctured with ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... small gloved hand held out to him. He knew that Ruth idealized him far beyond his worth—he could read it in her gaze, which was all but reverential. He said to himself, as he turned away, that a man never had so many motives to be true to the girl he was to marry. To bring the first shade of distrust into this little sister's tender eyes would be punishment enough for any disloyalty, no matter ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond

... one's own; and the man who is most free from poor partisanship in regard to his own family, will feel the most individual tenderness for the lovely human creatures whom God has given into his own especial care and responsibility. Show me the man who is tender, reverential, gracious towards the children of other men, and I will show you the man who will love and tend his own best, to whose heart his own will flee for their first refuge after God, when they catch sight of ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald

... Bush!" And again: "Such are, in brief, the bases of what Newman Weeks, Sarah Horton, Deborah Butler, and the associated brethren, proclaimed in Rolt's Hall as the new covenant!" If he was summing up an account of the teaching of Plato or St. Paul, Mr. Hepworth Dixon could not be more earnestly reverential. But the question is, have personages like Judge Edmonds, and Newman Weeks, and Elderess Polly, and Elderess Antoinette, and the rest of Mr. Hepworth Dixon's heroes and heroines, anything of the weight and significance ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold

... words he looked up. There was something so mournful, and at the same time so reverential, in his glance, that Rebecca all of a sudden felt as if she had been unkind to him. She was accustomed to reach things down from the upper shelf, but when she again stretched out her hands for the basin of milk, she let her arms drop, and ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... best days and the religion of Christ. Lockhart was never so charming as in these discussions. It was evident that the subject filled his whole mind, for the views which he enunciated were large, and broad, and most reverential—free at once from the bigoted dogmatism which passes current in certain circles for religion ... and from the loose, unmeaning jargon which is too often accepted as ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... moods. Mr. Williams was a man in the middle forties, and seemed colorless and unschooled in comparison with Douglas. He shared Douglas' political opinions, looked upon him with a certain awe; while Mrs. Williams and the children kept a reverential silence. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... powdered beef; and while Angela sipped her chocolate out of the porcelain cup which Hyacinth had bought for her at the Middle Exchange, where curiosities from China and the last inventions from Paris were always to be had before they were seen anywhere else. Nothing could be more reverential than the young man's bearing to his host, while his quiet friendliness set Angela at her ease, and made her think that he had abandoned his suit, and henceforward aspired only to such a tranquil friendship as they had enjoyed at Chilton ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... certain occasion I was passing a Roman Catholic church in New York: seeing the doors open and throngs of people pressing in, I stepped inside to see what I could see. I had not well got inside when I beheld Fitzgreene Halleck standing uncovered, with reverential attitude, among the crowd of unshorn and unwashed worshippers. I remained till I saw him leave. In doing so he made a courteous bow, as is the polite custom of the humblest of these people ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... him here, had the great privilege of staying with him from time to time at Down, and I find it difficult to record the strangely mixed feeling of reverential admiration and extreme personal attachment and affection with which I came to regard him. I have never known or heard of a man who combined with such exceptional intellectual power so much cheeriness and love of humor, and such ideal kindness, courtesy, and modesty. Owing to the fact that my ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... one who had lived six years on her swelling bosom, combine with his love 'of the old sea some reverential fear,' as Wordsworth has it. This compound feeling is highly effective in his marine fictions, so instinct is it with the reality of personal experience. Mr Griswold tells us that Cooper informed him as follows of the origin of The Pilot: 'Talking with the late Charles Wilkes of New York, a man ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers

... thoughtful young man,—not given to talking, and silent in the society of women, with that kind of reverential bashfulness which sometimes shows a pure, unworldly nature. How Katy came to fancy him everybody wondered,—for he never talked to her, never so much as picked up her glove when it fell, never asked her to ride or sail; in short, everybody said ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... fall down before, prostrate oneself, kiss the hem of one's garment; worship &c. 990. keep one's distance, make room, observe due decorum, stand upon ceremony. command respect, inspire respect; awe, inspire awe, impose, overawe, dazzle. Adj. respecting &c.v.; respectful, deferential, decorous, reverential, obsequious, ceremonious, bareheaded, cap in hand, on one's knees; prostrate &c. (servile) 886. respected &c.v.; in high esteem, in high estimation; time-honored, venerable, emeritus. Adv. in deference to; with all respect, with ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... Being, that is in the clouds and air, 165 That is in the green leaves among the groves, Maintains a deep and reverential care For the unoffending creatures [28] ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... to erect an altar for their idol, but Aaron tried to prevent this by saying to the people: "It will be more reverential to your god if I build the altar in person," for he hoped that Moses might appear in the meantime. His expectation, however, was disappointed, for on the morning of the following day, when Aaron had at length ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... inevitably becomes associated in their thoughts with that frame of society under which they suffer it, will naturally have a far stronger effect on their opinion of that system than all that had ever rendered them acquiescent or reverential toward it. That it brings no relief, or promise of relief, is a circumstance preponderating in the estimate, against all that can be said of its ancient establishment, its theoretical excellences, or the blessings in which it may be pretended to have once abounded, ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... remarkable in his courtship. His ways with Amy had less of easy familiarity than in the time of their brother-and-sister-like intimacy, so that a stranger might have imagined her wooed, not won. It was as if he hardly dared to believe that she could really be his own, and treated her with a sort of reverential love and gentleness, while she looked up to him with ever-increasing honour. She was better able to understand him now than in her more childish days last summer; and she did not merely see, as before, that she was looking at the upper surface of a mystery. ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... characters; and they used them well. This worshipping with a people who used to us an unknown tongue was at first rather novel; but it attracted and charmed us at once. We were forcibly struck with the reverential manner in which they conducted their devotions. No levity or indifference marred the solemnity of their religious services. They listened very attentively while one of their number read to them from the sacred Word, and gave the ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young

... interpreted, and thus it was again placed practically under lock and key. It is an interesting fact that a young Zulu chief, a pupil of Bishop Colenso of South Africa, first aroused the Anglo-Saxon world to the careful, fearless, and therefore truly reverential study of its Old Testament. With this new impetus, the task of the Reformers was again taken up, and in the same open, earnest spirit. For two generations it has commanded the consecrated energies of the most thorough scholars of Christendom. Those of England, Scotland, Ireland, ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent

... universe) and an earnest protest against many things which are still part of the established constitution of society, resulted not from the intellect, but from strength, a noble and elevated feeling, and co-existent with a highly reverential nature. In general spiritual characteristics, as well as in temperament and organization, I have often compared her, as she was at that time, to Shelley: but in thought and intellect, Shelley, so far as his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... the nation responded in muffled beats to the dull booming of the cannon of Meade and Lee at Gettysburg, an episode occurred, with Lincoln as the central figure, which reveals perhaps more poignantly than any other in his whole career the depths of feeling in that tender and reverential soul. On Sunday evening, July 4,—the fourth day of that terrible battle, with nothing definite yet known of the result,—the President drove out in a carriage, in company with two daughters of Secretary Stanton, to the line of defenses near Arlington. ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... 24:63. This is a time well suited to draw the soul out into deep, intimate communion with God. Learn to admire the wondrous works of the Creator. Meditate upon them. The setting of the sun, the starry heavens, the fleecy floating clouds, the silent hills, all will serve to fill your soul with reverential fear before God's majestic presence, and all within you be awed to solemn stillness at his footfall. Then you can say with the Psalmist, "O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day." ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... come out to a low, long-backed sloping garden-seat at the window. She was very little and slight, a mere doll in proportion to her great husband, who could lift her as easily and tenderly as a baby, paying her a sort of reverential deference and fond admiration that rendered them a beautiful sight, in such full, redoubled measure was his fondness repaid by the little, clever, fairy-looking woman, with her playful manner, high spirits, keen ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... conversation with his youngest son and namesake Duncan junior, he had somehow got upon this subject, not by any means in a reverential, but in an argumentative, controversial spirit, and had expressed the opinion that as man knew nothing whatever about God, and had no means of finding out anything about Him, there was no need to trouble one's ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... up—up—up—in the darkness, nearer and nearer the altar, with its winking red light, and genuflected before one of the very first pews. Susan followed her into it with a sigh of satisfaction; she liked to see and hear, and all the pews were open to-night. They knelt for awhile, then sat back, silent, reverential, but not praying, and interested in ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... the man, however, was most reverential and decorous, and, as he opened and began to read from the elegant prayer-book which he carried in his hands, a breathless hush again settled upon every person ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... may the highest heavens ring With rapture's sweetest lays! Be ours to add our feeble sigh To the full chorus of the sky, In reverential praise! ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)

... the blood-royal. Him, then, have I taken and him I desire, nor will I ever have any other than he, however it may seem to my father or to other folk. Thus, the principal occasion of my coming is done away; but it pleased me to make an end of my journey, at once that I might visit the holy and reverential places, whereof this city is full, and your Holiness and that through you I might make manifest, in your presence and consequently in that of the rest of mankind, the marriage contracted between Alessandro and myself in the presence ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... under the cloudy columns, and near the brilliant rainbows, with the ceaseless roar of the cataract, with the perpetual flow, as if pouring forth from the hand of the Almighty, their souls should be filled with reverential awe. It inspired wonder in the native mind throughout the interior. Among the first questions asked by Sebituane of Mr. Oswell and Dr. Livingstone, in 1851, was, "Have you any smoke soundings in your country," and "what ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... choicest flowers?" the gardener cried "The Master did," a well known voice replied. "'Tis well they are all his" the gardener said, And meekly bowed his reverential head. ...
— Quaint Epitaphs • Various

... edgeing away, against his family. But a vision of the earldom coming to him, stirred reverential objections, composed of all which his unstained family could protest in religion, to repudiate an alliance with a stained house, and the guilty of a condonation of immorality. Who would have imagined Mr. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... garnishment; nevertheless, so much mendacity proved beyond me and I spared him and my own conscience. This puffed-uppedness of his was to be observed only in his expression of manner, for during the consumption of food it was his worthy custom to practise a ceremonious, nay, a reverential, hush, and he never offered (or approved) conversation until he had prepared the salad. That accomplished, however, and the water bubbling in the coffee machine, he readily favoured me with a discourse on the decline in glory of ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... heats for us, and of the sweet and joyous welcome that awaits us there? And even when we make them not, of set purpose, the subject of our thoughts, is there not enough of grandeur in the objects of a believer's hope to pervade his spirit at all times with a calm and reverential joy? Do not think all this strange, fanatical, impossible. If it do seem so, it can only be because your heart is in the earthly, but not in the higher and holier hopes. No, my friends! the strange ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... service to her? She gazed rather a long while at him without answering, and, in spite of the shadow in which he was standing, she saw, or fancied she saw, both the expression of his face and his eyes. It was again that expression of reverential ecstasy which had so worked upon her the day before. More than once she had told herself during the past few days, and again only a few moments before, that Vronsky was for her only one of the hundreds of young men, forever exactly the ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... a man, and "pop" at once. "I'll tell you what, Captain," said he;—he had taken to calling Ralph Captain, as a goodly familiar name, feeling, no doubt, that Mister was cold between father-in-law and son-in-law, and not quite daring to drop all reverential title;—"if you're a little hard up, as I know you are, you can have three or four hundred if you want it." Ralph did want it sorely. "I know how you stand with old Moggs," said Neefit, "and I'll see you all right there." Neefit was very urgent. ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... to the release of Robert's arm, and the impatient gesture of dismissal that followed, by a reverential salutation, ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... of her interpretation of her duties to God and mankind. Grandma's Sunday began at six o'clock Saturday evening; by that hour her house was swept and garnished, and her lamps trimmed, every preparation made for a quiet, reverential observance of the Sabbath Day. There was no cooking on Sunday. At noon Mrs. Deacon Ranney and other old ladies used to come from church with grandma to eat luncheon and discuss the sermon and suggest deeds of piety for the ensuing week. I remember Mrs. Deacon Ranney and ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... freedom, they were loyal followers of their leaders in battle: accustomed by the severity of their winters to the greatest hardships, and hardened by lives of war into cruelty, they were tender, almost reverential in their attitude toward women. "They had no use for laws," said Tacitus ...
— A Comparative Study of the Negro Problem - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 4 • Charles C. Cook

... finished there was a reverential silence. President Arthur, who seemed to have been deeply impressed, made no movement to go. The immense audience was motionless. It was the most impressive moment of the day. At length there was a faint ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... met her own had an anxious, tender, almost reverential, expression. This slim fair girl had suddenly become a very wonderful being to Lisle, and he touched her hand with delicate respect and looked strangely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... love the stately, gentle lady who was Ronald's mother. She could not resist her sweet, gracious dignity and winning manners. So, when Lady Earle, before seeing her granddaughters, went to Dora's room, wishing for a long consultation with her, Dora received her with gentle, reverential affection. ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme

... elements into submission to the spiritual. Deeds of lofty self-abnegation, rarely if ever known to modern days, were then common. Stern virtue, as virtue was then understood, was largely prevalent. The habits of life were devout, reverential, careful of sanctities, solemn and austere. Individuals and community lived in the constant remembrance of being strictly accountable for the manner and actions of their lives. A moral and religious atmosphere pervaded society, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... brilliant mythology of fairies and genii which extends the bounds of the world, and carries us into the realms of marvels and prodigies. It is from them that European nations have derived that intoxication of love, that tenderness and delicacy of sentiment, and that reverential awe of women, by turns slaves and divinities, which have operated so powerfully on their chivalrous feelings. We trace their effects in all the literature of the south, which owes to this cause its mental character. Many of these tales had separately found their way into the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... constant an attendant in church as Washington. And his behavior in the house of God was ever so deeply reverential that it produced the happiest effect on my congregation, and greatly assisted me in my pulpit labors. No company ever withheld him from church. I have often been at Mount Vernon on Sabbath morning, when his breakfast table was filled with guests; but to ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... wuz all carried away with the seen as the guide pinted out the different places. Robert Strong and Dorothy didn't seem to want to talk much, but their faces wuz writ over with characters of rapt and reverential emotion. ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... painted, wrapped in odorous balsams, placed in a wicker basket, and kept suspended from the door of their dwelling (Gumilla Hist. del Orinoco I., pp. 199, 202, 204). When the quantity of these heirlooms became burdensome they were removed to some inaccessible cavern and stowed away with reverential care. ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... months were an unspeakable joy and privilege to me. His love for the Word was delightful, and his holy, reverential life and constant communings with GOD made fellowship with him satisfying to the deep cravings of my heart. His accounts of revival work and of persecutions in Canada, and Dublin, and in Southern China were most instructive, as well as interesting; for with true spiritual insight he often pointed ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor

... through her legitimate course, but her antiquated and erratic windings. I have, indeed, been shown in Naples a little volume, blazoned with the arms of the Visconti, and ascribed to the nobleman I refer to, which treats of alchemy in a spirit half-mocking and half-reverential. ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... been handed to the chief he received it with a grasp of almost reverential affection, while Lumley extracted from his funds the requisite number of quills ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne

... made their own, and more remarkably in their recent adoption of the Western civilization. Let us examine what relation this bears to the conservative and the progressive spirit of the people. Mr. Herbert Spencer attributes two motives to imitation, either reverential or competitive.[9] It is with the latter that we are concerned. This, coming as it does from a desire of an imitator to assert his equality with the one imitated, implies the recognition of superiority of the latter, and the acknowledgment of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... in the distant North of Scotland; his people were suspicious of the Stuarts because the kings of that ill-fated line were intoxicated with the idea of divine right, and were ever clutching at absolute power; nor had the MacKays any overwhelming and reverential love for bishops, because they considered them to be the instruments of royal tyranny and the oppressors of the kirk. MacKay has found a place between Collier and Venner, and as he sits leaning back against a saddle and to all appearance half ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... Illinois. They prospered there, and built a temple which made some pretensions to architectural grace and achieved some celebrity in a section of country where a brick court-house with a tin dome and a cupola on it was contemplated with reverential awe. But the Mormons were badgered and harried again by their neighbors. All the proclamations Joseph Smith could issue denouncing polygamy and repudiating it as utterly anti-Mormon were of no avail; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... and less scrupulous towards him under the influence of her affection, and he became more and more reverential under the influence of his, and they looked the situation in the face together, their condition seemed intolerable in its hopelessness. That she could ever ask to be allowed to marry him, or could hold her tongue and quietly renounce him, was equally beyond conception. ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy

... of them all, the one who put the whole lot into the shade, was without doubt Klitzing. The courage with which the weakly clerk performed his duties filled him with an almost reverential admiration, and the honest fellow was ready to stand by the poor, harassed lad ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein



Words linked to "Reverential" :   reverent, reverence



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