"Irreverence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her neighbour as herself, or profess to; but she went to church regularly and made all the responses, pleasing the clergy, and deriving some solace herself from the occupation—at least she always said the services were soothing. She was genuinely shocked by a sign of irreverence, and would sing the most jingling nonsense as a hymn with perfect gravity and without perceiving that there was any flaw in it. In these matters she showed no originality at all. She would repeat "my duty towards my neighbour is to love him ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... treatment of semi-sacred subjects, and it is impossible to convey an accurate idea of the spirit prevailing at this hamlet of sanctuary without attuning oneself somewhat to the more pagan character of the place. Of irreverence, in the sense of a desire to laugh at things that are of high and serious import, there is not a trace, but at the same time there is a certain unbending of the bow at Montrigone which is not ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... he declined to be introduced to the Abbe Le Blanc, "on account of the irreverence with which he had treated Shakespeare." There can, indeed, be no doubt that the Abbe, although he wrote amusing letters, was a very prejudiced person, and his evidence and opinions touching the English stage must be received with caution. So far as can be ascertained, especially by study ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... but an abundant opportunity and a sense of capacity. The world was not a mystery, but a place of entertainment and a sphere of action. Of this the sophists were faithful witnesses. In their love of novelty, irreverence, impressionism, elegance of speech, and above all in their praise of individual efficiency, they preached and pandered to their age. Their public, though it loved to abuse them, was the greatest sophist of them ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... into conversation. We spoke a good deal to-day on the subject of religion, the difference between Christianity and Mahometanism, and, above all, the absurdity of their repeating the Koran, like so many parrots, without understanding one word of what they say; and the irreverence of addressing God in words they do not understand, so that their hearts can take no part in their prayers. They agreed that it would be better to learn God's law, instead of trusting merely to their hadjis, who are often as ignorant ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... it must be the half-way house," said Redgrave, with what was, perhaps, under the circumstances, a pardonable irreverence. "Still, after all, we don't know what the inhabitants may be like, so I think we'd better close the doors, and drop on the top of that mountain-spur running out between the two rivers into the bay. Do you notice how curious the water looks after ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... these chimeras is contempt of authority, and an irreverence for any superiority but what is founded upon merit; and their notions of merit are very peculiar, for it is among them no great proof of merit to be wealthy and powerful, to wear a garter or a star, to command a regiment or a senate, to have the ear of the minister or of the king, or to possess ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... his surprise that the twelve judges had not long since decided this state of things to be unconstitutional, and overturned the American government by mandamus. His disgust increased, accordingly, as Captain Truck's irreverence manifested itself in stronger terms, and there was great danger that the harmony, which had hitherto prevailed between the parties, would be ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... as much power of provoking noise as the first of imposing silence, traversed in its turn the Piazza of St. Peter's: this was the dinner procession. The people received it with the usual bursts of laughter, without suspecting, for all their irreverence, that this procession, more efficacious than the former, had just settled the election ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... as to have taken no more than two impressions. Rory was her guide, philosopher, and crony. He was her overwhelming ideal of power, wisdom, and goodness; he was her help in ages past, her hope for years to come (no irreverence intended here; quite the reverse, for if true family life existed, we should better apprehend the meaning of "Our Father, who art in heaven"); he was her Ancient of Days; her shield, and ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... chair, directly facing the servants' seats, and smiled a dazzling greeting to each in turn. They sat down in their usual positions, heads bent, hands folded on the middle of their clean white aprons; feet tucked carefully out of sight; there was no outward sign of irreverence or inattention in their demeanour, but Miss Briskett felt, that every single woman of them was absorbed—utterly, consumedly absorbed—in casting sly glances at that distracting white vision in the easy chair; at the dully glowing hair, the ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... irreverence, however, has been a byword throughout all the ages; civilisation and education have done little to check it, possibly because the romantic spirit which forbids such crimes is born, not made. King Arthur's bones were dug up in the twelfth century. 'Mummie is become Merchandise, Mizraim cures ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... so few, so very few, where the throng is thick and the battle fierce. It saddens me to see good fellows trampling one another down, growing hard and ungenerous. And then the vulgarity, the irreverence: they are almost identical, I think. One grows very sick and sorry at times amidst the cruelty and the baseness that threaten to destroy one's courage and one's hope. I know that human nature has in it a germ of nobility ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Ruskin's illness his cousin, Mrs. Arthur Severn, has become more and more indispensable to him: she sits at the head of the table and calls him "the coz." An eminent visitor was once put greatly out of countenance by this apparent irreverence. After obvious embarrassment, light dawned upon him towards the close of the meal. "Oh!" said he, "it's 'the coz' you call Mr. Ruskin. I thought you were saying' ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... unparalleled pains, while the prologue tells us that his sufferings were not fruits of his sin, but trials of his righteousness. He was horrified at Job's words, which seemed to him full of rebellion and irreverence; and he made no allowance for the wild cries of an agonised heart when he solemnly warned the sufferer against 'despising' God's chastening. A more sympathetic ear would have detected the accent ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... respecting these matters:' and then they would produce their books and read paragraphs, making such comments that every person was scandalized; they cared nothing about the Pope, and even spoke with irreverence of the bones of Saint James. However, the matter was soon bruited about, and a commission was dispatched from our see to collect the books and burn them. This was effected, and the skippers were ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... land. To call that severe Dantescan head, which it would seem impossible that accident should have formed, so defined and expressive is its outline, like the Sphynx, a mystery in the desert—to call it the Old Man of the Mountain, is irreverence, desecration! I and this exquisite little lake, lapped amid the foldings and windings of the mountains, whose 'million unseen spirits' may do the bidding of that heroic old Prospero who presides over it—to call this gem of the forest a 'Punch-bowl,' is a sorry travesty. I paid my homage to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... special conditions," but of an antecedent and primitive law of development suited to the new exigencies, and emanating from the Creator. This, he contends, does not lower our estimate of the Divine character; and, in proof, cites Dr. DODDRIDGE, who cannot be suspected of irreverence. "When we assert," says the pious and amiable author, "a perpetual Divine agency, we readily acknowledge that matters are so contrived as not to need a Divine interposition in a different manner from that in which it had been constantly exerted. And it must ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... of him on this Sabbath morning struck dismay to Jock's orthodox soul, clinging tenaciously to its ancient traditions. Lawyer Ed, too, seemed to have donned the spirit of irreverence with the bonnet, and was conducting himself as no elder of the kirk should have behaved even ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... the cliffs gave more than a single glance at "Israel's Tabernacle," as, without the least irreverence, he had named his boat. But, using the same ports as the smugglers, he was often brought into close relations with them. They asked him for information which was freely given, as from one friend to another. They trusted him, for though often interrogated by the supervisor and ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... imprisonment,—that it had commanded a political resistance and nothing more, and that the severity and odium of the precautionary measures used were occasioned by the zealous responsibility of the national guard, more than to the irreverence of the Assembly. La Fayette guarded, in the person of the king, the dynasty, its proper head, and the constitution—a hostage against the republic and royalty at the same time. Maire du palais, he intimidated by the presence of a weak and degraded monarch, the discouraged royalists ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... For perhaps we may say after Plato, and without irreverence, that the pattern of perfect cricket is laid up somewhere in the skies, and out of man's reach. But between it and ordinary cricket we may set up a copy of perfection, as close as man can make it, and, by little and little, closer every year. ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "Such irreverence shall not be!" exclaimed Ranulph, seizing Luke with one hand, and snatching at the cereclothes with the other. ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... have been studying those Scriptures, now, for the last thirty years, to my certain knowledge. How far ye got, Bildad? As if long habituated to such profane talk from his old shipmate, Bildad, without noticing his present irreverence, quietly looked up, and seeing me, glanced again inquiringly towards Peleg. He says he's our man, Bildad, said Peleg, he wants to ship. Dost thee? said Bildad, in a hollow tone, and turning round to me. I dost, said I unconsciously, he was so intense a Quaker. What ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... good opportunity. And then they sang the O salutaris Hostia divinely— so divinely that I thought if the Lord really had been there He would certainly have made them sing it again—and I could not pray any more after that. You call this rank irreverence, do you not? I do. And I wish I had not thought it. Yet it was one of those involuntary tricks of the mind for which I cannot believe that we are to be held responsible. Theologians would say it was a temptation of the ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... instances in which parents are convinced that the church does not furnish a normal and healthy atmosphere for the child's spiritual life? There are churches where the Sunday school is simply a training school in insubordination, confusion, and irreverence, or where religion is so taught as to cultivate superstition and to lead eventually either to a painful intellectual reconstruction or to a barren denial of all faith. There are churches of one type so devoted to the entertainment ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... most fame as curative are those of long duration, not dangerous, yet not at all, or very slightly, benefited by ordinary medicines. In such cases, of course, there is not room for the display of an imaginary agency:—"For," as Crabbe says,—and I hope your medical readers will pardon the irreverence— ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... validate the ethical lesson of 'The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg'. Anyone may pay the tribute of irresistible explosions of laughter to the horse-play of 'Roughing It', the colossal extravagance of 'The Innocents Abroad', the irreverence and iconoclasm of that Yankee intruder into the hallowed confines of Camelot. All may rejoice in the spontaneity and refreshment of truth; spiritually co-operate in forthright condemnation of fraud, peculation, and sham; and breathe gladly the fresh and bracing air of sincerity, sanity, ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... Let Irreverence stay her ribald tongue before these illustrious writings, and Indecency vomit her own nastiness elsewhere than on ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... Dercardius approached, and with rude and importunate speech, nay, even with clamor, wearying the ears of the saint, afflicting his mind, and stopping his mouth, demanded of him food. The which the saint not having at hand, blushed, and took unkindly the irreverence that prevented him from preaching. But a certain man named Nessan, who beheld how the just man's spirit was vexed, offered unto him a ram, which the saint bade him give to the bold importuner. This receiving, Dercardius ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... now), and that she had a sense of fair play that was proof against her zeal as an Irish Church-woman. It is true that she mentioned what she regarded as the disaster of Larry's religion in her prayers, but she did so without heat, leaving the matter, without irreverence, to the common sense of Larry's Creator, who, she felt must surely recognise the disadvantages of the position ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... It may not be a European change. Society may not be cast into the furnace, as it has been by those struggles, wars, and revolutions, which were essential to the working of the iron temperament of Europe. But Providence, if we may so speak without irreverence, evidently delights in the variety, multitude, and novelty of its highest expedients. If no two great portions of the physical world are like in form, climate, product, and even in the colouring of their skies, why are we to insist on uniformity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... father's funeral. Unhappily, I must begin my reign by disobeying my father's commands. I cannot allow this simple and modest funeral to take place. The world would not understand it, and would accuse me of irreverence. No, he must be interred with all the honors due to a king. That is my desire; see that it ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... rein and faced the Squire with a solemnity presently yielding to his natural desire to grin at any form of joke, and his belief that when the Squire indulged such flagrant irreverence as this he must be joking. Yet he answered evasively: "You hearn't he says now he hain't ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... that it isn't any worse. He might have made it so," replied Reuben, shocked by his neighbour's irreverence, yet too modest ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... veneration, reverence, deference, homage; probity, integrity, magnanimity, uprightness, chastity, decency, virtue, modesty; eminence, distinction, fame; glory, excellency, pride. Antonyms: dishonor, disesteem, irreverence, improbity, disrepute, reproach. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... was still on him as he stumbled over the resounding steps. But, twenty feet from the door, the spirit of irreverence overtook him. Then, at the thought of the waiting Butsey, he began to pipe forth voluminously the martial strains of Sherman's March to the Sea, kicking ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... was an engraving which had adorned the nursery in my youth, and had been a never-failing source of curiosity to me. It was Gustave Dore's "Christian Martyrs," and I had once been deprived of pudding at the nursery dinner, because I had remarked (with irreverence wholly unintentional) that one of the lions seemed ill, and anxious to "climb up the wall and get away from the nasty martyrs." Thus it is that children are misunderstood by their elders! and now, as I gazed at the same picture on the monastery wall, I felt again all the old, impotent rebellion ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... a swiftness in which there was no intentional irreverence. Then she jumped into bed and began ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... sacred subjects, and abound in turns of broad humour which render them not a little startling from our nicer point of view. But they never are coarse, and their simplicity saves them from being irreverent; nor is there, I am sure, the least thought of irreverence on the part of those by whom they are sung. I noticed, though, that these lively numbers were the ones which most hit the fancy of the men; while the women as plainly showed their liking for those of a finer spirit in which the dominant qualities ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... remember that I once promised you my aid in securing what, to you, is the dearest object of your existence. I have thought, I have pondered, I have given the matter deep and, I may add without irreverence, prayerful consideration, knowing that the life's happiness of my closest friend depended on my judgment and wisdom and intelligence to secure for him the opportunity to crown his life's work by the acquisition of the brightest jewel in ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... back, whereat the Boers concealed in the kopjes opened a brisk fire at long range on the naked figures, but did not hit anyone nor prevent them all from bringing the punt safely to our side: a dashing exploit, of which their regiment—the 'Cockyolibirds,' as the army, with its customary irreverence, calls us on account of the cock's feather cockades we wear in our ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... stand on the opposite side of the street, and beheld a male figure in the dusk, that went up to the house and then stood back scanning the windows. Wounded by his audacious irreverence toward the walls behind which his beloved was sheltered, Wilfrid crossed and stared at the intruder. It proved to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... from sympathy with the persons in the tales she read. Any remotest suggestion of its existence in her relation to Godfrey she would have resented as the most offensive impertinence—an accusation of impossible irreverence. ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... morning, but as I had other views on the matter I laughed heartily at the paragraph. The sheet was printed at night, after the king had placed his initials to the copy. In the morning several persons came to condole with me, but I received their sympathy with great irreverence. I merely laughed at Count Clary, who said I would surely submit to the operation; and just as he uttered the words the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and to the best of our judgment a successful one. The verses are easy, and, though rather in the ballad style, are free from any palpable irreverence. The plates are after the works of masters, and in the style, both of drawing and colouring, remind one of the severe and simple effect ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... best member that we have; we should come with the feeling—"I was glad when they said unto me we will go into the House of the Lord;" "I love the place, O Lord, wherein Thine honour dwells." All slovenliness in the performance of the service, all irreverence, or signs of inattention, and indifference, are tokens of a want of thankfulness. We should get this thought fixed in our minds when we enter Church,—I have come here to-day mainly to thank God for His great goodness to me, and to all men. I have come also to ask for certain things, ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... entitled, 'An Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question', which would be interesting as a literary curiosity were it not in spirit and tendency so unspeakably wicked as to excite in every rightminded reader a feeling of amazement and disgust. With a hard, brutal audacity, a blasphemous irreverence, and a sneering mockery which would do honor to the devil of Faust, it takes issue with the moral sense of mankind and the precepts of Christianity. Having ascertained that the exports of sugar and spices from the West Indies have diminished ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... thirst of change; but into the rarest hour of achieved ideal to which hope promised her supreme satisfaction, the same wayward longing will often find a way; as in a sacred place amid the purest and most exquisite meditations of the soul, there will suddenly flit inexplicable shadows of irreverence, with echoes of incongruous ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... monologue of Mammy's, with my back to her. A sudden exclamation of the name of the Lord made me start around and endanger my nose. I was not startled at the irreverence of the expression, however, as sacred names were familiar interjections of Mammy's, as of ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... efficacious. But as that could not endure, at last the archbishop grew tired and laid aside the most holy sacrament. They returned it to the convent of St. Francis, whence it had been taken, with the same irreverence. The archbishop divested himself of the stole and cope, whereupon the infantry took him outside the city, and embarked him in a champan which was prepared at a port called St. Dominic. With an escort of an adjutant ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... Christian and Catholic and a deeply religious man such plays as the Auto da Alma, the Barcas, the Sumario, the Auto da Cananea are sufficient proof. He had much of the Erasmian spirit but nothing in common with the Reformation. His irreverence is wholly external, it was abuses not doctrine that he attacked, the ministers of the Church and not the Church itself. He may have been in the secret of King Jo[a]o's somewhat stormy negotiations with the Holy See and he took the national and regalist view: in the Auto ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... tirelessly about the sick room, damping cloths, filling the ice-bag, infiltering drops of nourishment, was: "God is good!" and these words, far from breathing a pious resignation, voiced a confidence so bold that it bordered on irreverence. Their real meaning was: Richard has still ever so much work to do in the world, curing sick people and saving their lives. God must know this, and cannot now mean to be so foolish as to WASTE him, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... the portraits, which they regarded with insular irreverence (what were French knights and dames to them?), then without awe spread the contents of their wallets on the board, and feasted ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... of the so-called civilised world is spreading a deep distrust, a deep irreverence of every man towards his neighbour, and a practical unbelief in every man whom you do see, atones for itself by a theoretic belief in an ideal human nature which you do not see. Such a temper of mind, unless it be checked by that which alone can check ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... easy to see that both of the pivotal moral ideals, i.e., loyalty and filial piety, would support this unquestioning habit of mind, for to ask questions as to authority is the beginning both of disloyalty to the master and of irreverence ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... and said she didn't think the wit meant any irreverence. It was only another way of saying, Paris is a heavenly place ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... information, Armstrong lacked conventional morals, and was the possessor of objectionable peculiarities. He never won either the confidence or the respect of Madison. He not only did harsh things in a harsh way, but he had a caustic tongue, and a tone of irreverence whenever he estimated the capacity of a Virginia statesman. On the other hand, Tompkins had gentleness, and that refined courtesy, amounting almost to tenderness, which seemed so necessary in successfully ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... marked from the hall, for the front door stood wide open, and a fresh cool breeze came floating into the mansion, to flirt with the high and mighty curtains upon the landing, jostle the stately palms, and ruffle up the pompous atmosphere with gay irreverence. The air itself would have told you the hour. The intermittent knocks of a retreating postman declared the ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... "I mean no irreverence," he resumed; "but you know, dear Sergius, it is with laughter as with tears, we cannot always control it.... Anthony resolved to be a Saint, but was troubled by visions of beautiful women. To escape them, he followed some children ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... not involve that flippant irreverence for the past that so often is associated with it. It offers no encouragement to the chase after vagaries in which so many moderns indulge, as though all that is old were belated and all that is novel were true. The idea of progress has led more than one ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... two bad consequences. People are apt to speak of the Lord Jesus—or at least to admire preachers who speak of him—as if he belonged to them, and not they to him; and, therefore, to speak of him with an irreverence and a familiarity which they dared not use, if they really believed that this same Jesus, whose name they take in vain, is none other than the Living God himself, their Creator, by whom every blade of grass grows beneath their feet, every planet and ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... might trace the divine agency on its way. But to touch, to handle it, with these fleshly hands:—well! for Monseigneur, that was by no means to believe because the thing was "incredible, or absurd." He had smiled, not certainly from irreverence, nor (a prelate for half his life) in conscious incredulity, but only in mute surprise, at an administration of divine graces—this administration in which he was a high priest—in itself, to his quite honest thinking, so unfitting, so improbable. And was it that ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... as she thought of the irrepressibly merry youth. But her pleasure was not as unmixed as it would have been three days before. Henceforth, any jest to be quite enjoyed must be free from taint of irreverence toward holy things. She had "begun to know God," and the knowledge gave a sensitiveness to the honor of His name and the things ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... ignoble things; The strife for triumph more than truth; The hardening of the heart, that brings Irreverence ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... written by the earl of Essex, just before his execution, to another nobleman, a passage somewhat resembling this, with which, I believe every reader will be pleased, though it is so serious and solemn that it can scarcely be inserted without irreverence. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... whether he would not like to be paid the divine honors now going begging from one big seller to another; for the decay of author-worship must be as much from the indifference of the authors as from the irreverence of the readers. If such a low-selling author did not seem to regard it as rather invidious, then pay him the divine honors; it might be a wholesome and stimulating example; but perhaps we should afterward have the demigod on our hands. Something might be safelier done by writing, ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... us—and passed forth between the tall stone gate-posts, as uncertain as the wandering Arabs where our tent might next be pitched. Providence took me by the hand, and—an oddity of dispensation which, I trust, there is no irreverence in smiling at—has led me, as the newspapers announce, while I am writing from the Old Manse, into a custom-house.[76] As a story-teller I have often contrived strange vicissitudes for my imaginary personages, but ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... that a child is naturally alien to respect, basing this opinion on the very numerous examples of irreverence which he offers us. Respect is for the child a fundamental need. His moral being feeds on it. The child aspires confusedly to revere and admire something. But when advantage is not taken of this aspiration, it gets corrupted or lost. By our lack of cohesion and mutual deference, ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... Blyth, and by all intimate friends, into "Madonna." One or two extremely strict and extremely foolish people objected to any such familiar application of this name, as being open, in certain directions, to an imputation of irreverence. Mr. Blyth was not generally very quick at an answer; but, on this occasion, he had three answers ready before the objections were quite ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... have not alternated. When I have made giggle with Clara under the influence of the starry sky, did you suppose me giggling with Lyra or the Pleiades! I should dread to see the statue descend; it seemed irreverence even to gaze. The lofty serenity keeps me aloof. I like to believe in a creature too bright and good for human nature's daily food. Our profane squinting through telescopes at the Lady Moon reveals nothing but worn-out ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he walked in front of the Chapter in his pluvial, carrying a silver stick nearly as tall as himself, making the tiles of the pavement re-echo with its blows. During High Mass and the choir in the evening he walked about the naves to check any irreverence on the part of the congregation or any inattention on that of the staff. At eight o'clock at night in the winter, and at nine in summer, he locked the door of the staircase leading to the upper cloister, putting the key in his pocket, and so all the people in ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fist—at her, she thought! So she mentioned the fact quietly to Robina, who promised to investigate the matter. It turned out that poor Bildy had so thoroughly assimilated her instructions as to the requisite behavior in church that he had been silently reproving what he thought irreverence. He had seen a crofter whom he knew very well dozing during the sermon, and had "wagged his ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... of New England is still, happily for itself, tinctured in all its language, habits, modes of feeling and thought, by a strict Scriptural training—"Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh." Look below the surface and you will see that there is no irreverence whatever beneath Hosea Biglow's daring use of Scripture; only that "perfect love which casteth out fear;" that the very purpose of the whole book is to set up Christ's Gospel as the standard by which alone all men are to be judged ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... so precious, so inspiring, is treated with such utter irreverence and contempt in the calculations of us mortals as this same air of heaven. A sermon on oxygen, if one had a preacher who understood the subject, might do more to repress sin than the most orthodox discourse to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... no sign of reawakening courage in his followers; rather, indeed, of growing terror at the irreverence ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with a morsel half-way to his mouth, glared at him several seconds, and then resumed his eating; not like a horse now, but like a bad dog gnawing an old bone. He glanced again angrily at the embodiment of irreverence opposite. Mr. Tarbox smiled. Claude let slip, not intending it, an audible growl, with his eyes in the plate. Mr. Tarbox's smile increased to a noiseless laugh, and grew and grew until it took hopeless possession of him. His nerves relaxed, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented: of whom the world was not worthy" (xi. 37, 38). A few years of this sufficed to pull down the whole fabric of religion which Hezekiah had so painfully and patiently raised. For it is so easy to destroy; so easy for folly and irreverence to pull down what wisdom and goodness have taken years in building; so easy for a vicious and irreligious son to bring shame and ruin upon the house which a godly father and mother have spent a lifetime in rearing ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... conquerors of Europe, and, farther still, rises the wizard pomp of Eman and Tara—the palace of the Irish Pentarchy. And are we the people to whom the English (whose fathers were painted savages when Tyre and Sidon traded with this land) can address reproaches for our rudeness and irreverence? So ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... years he even became cynical and rugged and vulgar, in which we may of course trace the influence of his tavern associates. It is to his credit that he did not sink into Byronic misanthropy and bitter self-lacerating scorn, or even into Heine's irreverence ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... friend had got an inkling Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible, (Whene'er 'twas the thought first struck him, How death, at unawares, might duck him Deeper than the grave, and quench The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench) Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence, As to hug the book of books to pieces: And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance, Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases, Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see equipt yours,— So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures. And ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... described in general terms. It has been said of that class of American humorists of which Artemus Ward is a representative that their peculiarity consists in extravagance, surprise, audacity and irreverence. But all these qualities have characterized other schools of humor. There is the same element of surprise in De Quincey's {568} anticlimax, "Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other which, perhaps, at the time he thought ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... make of such a proverb as the following: "If I had known that my father was going to die, I would have traded him off for a cucumber"? Our English cousins, with their characteristic adherence to facts as literally stated, would very likely cite it as a shocking illustration of the filial irreverence and ingratitude of Caucasian children; but an American, more accustomed to the rough humor of grotesque statement, would see at once that it was not to be "taken for cash," and would understand and appreciate its force when he found its meaning to be that it is better to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... atheistic. Among his latest words were, "I die worshipping God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, but detesting superstition." Despite the admiration of the people, the powers of the state could not forget that the man so enthusiastically received was the great apostle of mockery and irreverence. The government gave its last kick to the dead lion by ordering the papers not to comment on his death. The church laid an interdict on his burial in consecrated ground,—an hour or two too late, as it proved. His body, minus the heart, was transferred in 1791 to the Pantheon, and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... to treat these problems of the New Testament with becoming reverence; but is it not true to say that the day when it becomes easy to any man to do so will be the day when he ought to stop dealing with them? The real irreverence, the only irreverence, is the glib confidence of the ignorant or the cynical concealment of one who knows but dare not tell. What idea of the New Testament does the average boy who leaves, say in the fifth form, carry away with him from his public school? He may know that certain ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... and earth by a priori theories, and cosmogonies invented in the cloister; and dared, poor, simple, ignorant mortals, to fancy that they could comprehend and gauge the ways of Him Whom the heaven and the heaven of heavens could not contain. This, this is irreverence: but it is neither irreverence nor want of faith, if a man, awed by the mystery which encompasses him from the cradle to the grave, shall lay his hand upon his mouth, with Job, and obey the voice which ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... loud, that I might be impressed by the sound as well as by the knowledge o' th' fact—"for," saith I, a-hammering away on a shoe for Joe Pebbles's brown nag King Edward (though I had often reasoned with Joe on account o' th' name, first because o' its irreverence, second on account o' th' horse not being that kind o' a horse, as 'twas a mare)—"for," saith I, as I made th' shoe, saith I, "'tis sure a great wickedness to steal a lass's sweetheart away from her!" saith I. And so 'twas; but, for all I could do, I could ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... their compassion for Alice, and she did not in the least resent it. She was willing that people should like Alice for any reason they chose, if they did not go too far. With her little flutter of futile deceits, her irreverence for every form of human worth and her trust in a providence which had seldom failed her, she smiled at the cult of Alice's friends, as she did at the girl's seriousness, which also she felt herself able to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... this scene from the similar scene in Job is its irreverence. Indeed one might almost call it flippancy, and few would deny that at times this flippancy is painful to them. The only excuse that I can find for it is that, rightly or wrongly, Goethe meant us to be pained. I believe that here Mephistopheles represents especially ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... and veneration from the rites and solemn devotions in which they were used: they were a sort of attributes with which it was a matter of religion to salute them on all occasions, and which it was an irreverence to omit. As for the epithets of great men, Mons. Boileau is of opinion, that they were in the nature of surnames, and repeated as such; for the Greeks having no names derived from their fathers, were obliged to add some other distinction of each person; either naming ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... treachery, and treachery is cowardice of the most despicable kind. Life has to be lived. It might as well be lived earnestly. Life is better lived when it is held earnestly. Personally I detest all flippancy and cynicism, all cheapening of serious subjects by lack of reverence. Irreverence portends defects of character and poverty of intellect. All serious subjects are sacred subjects, and to treat them with levity or insincerity is to prove yourself a ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... kneeling by the bedside of the dying murderer, to pray some comfort into his passing soul. But his "gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it," while through Helen ran a cold shudder of disgust at the familiarity and irreverence of the ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... you driving at?" I asked in a passion. I put my hat on my head (he never offered a seat to anybody), and as he seemed for the moment struck dumb by my irreverence, I turned my back on him and marched out. His vocal arrangements blared after me a few threats of coming down on the ship for the demurrage of the lighters, and all the other expenses consequent upon the ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... of his apostolic zeal, piety, and gentleness—that would tend to quiet the disturbances which would arise from any such act of violence, and to favor absolution from the censures which would necessarily be incurred by persons who should commit such acts of irreverence. All this was laid away and kept with great secrecy until the following year, in which occurred ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... when he was in Europe before. We were told, at the hotel in Nottingham, that no visitors were allowed inside Newstead Abbey, so that when we ordered a carriage to drive there the hotel people shrugged their shoulders at what they regarded as our American irreverence. The rain was coming down in torrents when we started, the Doctor more than ever determined to overthrow British custom in his quiet, positive way. Through slush and mud, under dripping trees, across country landscapes veiled in the tender mist of clouds, we finally arrived at the ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... without influence in England. There was a growing inclination to think and speak of minor questions as being debatable; an increasing suspicion on one side that the spread of knowledge and of discussion tended to heresy and to irreverence—on the other, that they tended to edification. In theory the leading ecclesiastics agreed that an authorised translation of the Bible would be good, but half of them were afraid that it would lead to novel and dangerous ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... has anger on our soul? A. Anger begets in our souls impatience, hatred, irreverence, and too often ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 3 (of 4) • Anonymous
... "excellent well," in its restricted constitutional form; she has all the venerable, splendid accessories—and I hope "Albert the Good" may have founded a long race of good kings; but it would not do for us;—a race cradled in revolution, and nurtured on irreverence and unbelief, as regards the divine right of kings and the law of primogeniture. To us it seems, though a primitive, an unnatural institution. We find no analogies for it, even in the wildest venture of the New World. It is true the buffalo herd has ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... by his idea of her Catholic propensities; and now what he deemed her disproportionate and misapplied veneration for the sublime edifice stung him into irreverence. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 men. Everything has two ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... steal in colossal ways and then surrender a small part of it in charitable, religious and educational donations; he at once ceases being a thief and straightway becomes a noble benefactor. Vanderbilt now shed his life-long irreverence, and gave to Deems, a minister of the Presbyterian Church, as a gift, the Church of the Strangers on Mercer street, and he donated $1,000,000 for the founding of the Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tenn. The press, the church and the educational ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... that this reading and expounding of the Scriptures by the ignorant and unlearned led almost invariably to those other sins of blasphemy and irreverence which curdled the very blood in his veins. Again and again had his heart burned within him to go forth amongst the people himself; to take upon himself and put in practice the office of evangelist, which he knew to be a God-appointed ministry, and yet which was so seldom worthily fulfilled, and ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... from complete collapse by remembering that it was not irreverence, but simply spiritual ignorance on the part of Anne that was responsible for this extraordinary petition. She tucked the child up in bed, mentally vowing that she should be taught a prayer the very next day, and was leaving the room with ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... him I want, in virtues, study, and birth. With respect to children and conduct, this other resembles the intelligent Sarmin. Do thou bring the individual I have in view. He should be worshipped with respect (instead of being dragged hither with irreverence).' The messenger having come to the place, did the very reverse of what he had been bidden to do. Attacking that person, he brought him who had been forbidden by Yama to be brought. Possessed of great energy, Yama rose up at the sight of the Brahmana and worshipped him duly. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Challis. He was her husband's landlord, of course, and his was a hallowed name, to be spoken with decency and respect. I am afraid I shocked Mrs. Berridge at the outset by my casual "Who's this man Challis?" She certainly atoned by her own manner for my irreverence; she very obviously tried to impress me. I professed submission, but was not intimidated, rather ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... senseless form he held on his breast. And if he tried to follow on by that clue which Armine had left him, whirlwinds of dismay seemed to sweep away all hope and trust, while he thought of wilfulness, recklessness, defiance, irreverence, and all the yet darker shades of a self- indulgent ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lot be still to lead The life of innocence and fly Irreverence in word or deed, To follow still those laws ordained on high Whose birthplace is the bright ethereal sky No mortal birth they own, Olympus their progenitor alone: Ne'er shall they slumber in oblivion cold, The god in them is strong and grows ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... the last stanza of the epitaph, its meaning is certainly involved in some degree of obscurity, though it is, I think, hardly to be charged with irreverence, according to the opinion of your correspondent "S.W." (No. 10. p. 150.). By the words trembling hope, there can be no doubt, that Petrarch's similar expression, paventosa speme, quoted in Mason's note, was embodied by the English poet. In the omitted version, mentioned ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... never been more than superficially parted. There can be little doubt that the four months which he spent in Geneva in 1754 marked a very critical time in the formation of some of the most memorable of his opinions. He came from Paris full of inarticulate and smouldering resentment against the irreverence and denial of the materialistic circle which used to meet at the house of D'Holbach. What sort of opinions he found prevailing among the most enlightened of the Genevese pastors we know from an abundance of sources. D'Alembert had three or four years later than this to suffer ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... subjective roaming through any highway or byway of life or letters that happened to take the author's fancy at the moment of writing. Some one has said of that book that in its abrupt swingings from laughter to tears, from irreverence to awe, from the ridiculous to the sublime, one finds the spirits of Dostoyevski ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... enthusiasm—and knew it. If the crowd had been composed of Americans, we should have anticipated an unhappy time for Smith; but good, loyal Canadians, by the limitations of temperament, could get no further than a spirit of manifest irreverence. ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... type of child found by Mr. Trollope on Western steamboats; and we agree with him that beef-steaks, with pickles, produce a bad type of child; and it is unnecessary to confess to Mr. Trollope what he already knows, that pertness and irreverence to parents are the great faults of American youth. No doubt the pickles have much to do ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... is another reason for this repeatedly uttered curse. God cannot forget such great irreverence toward parents, nor does he suffer it to go unpunished. He requires that parents and rulers be regarded with reverence. He requires that elders be honored, commanding that one shall rise up before a hoary head (Lev 19, 32). And, speaking of ministers of the Word, he says, "He that despiseth ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... lines of beauty, no strains of music, no tones of kindness, no gestures of gentleness and grace, no delicate attentions, no ladies' presence, no social circle, no books, no home, no church;—Good God! what a heathenish barbarism of coarse instincts, and irreverence, and insulting equalities, and all manner of gracelessnesses, to bring the dangerous impressionability of fine childhood to! The boy was nervous, sensitive, of a spirit quick to take alarms or hurts,—physically unprepared to wrestle with arduous toil, privation, and exposure,—most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... had sent forth a portion of His own nature to dwell in these forms of frail mortality and imperfection, and no darkness, no sorrow, nor erring of ours could reach to Him; might we not think,—God knows, I said, that I would be guilty of no irreverence or presumption,-but might we not think that with infinite consideration and pity he looks down upon us struggling with our load; upon our weakness and trouble, upon our ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... without lifting her head, gazed, with eyes raised from the wool-work, motionless at the posturing figure of her sister. It was sacrilege that she was witnessing, a prodigious irreverence. She was conscious of an expectation that punishment would instantly fall on this daring, impious child. But she, who never felt these mad, amazing impulses, could nevertheless only ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... on William Blake, who was a forceful protestor against the old theology, Mr. Brooke passes on to Burns and Cowper. Of the exquisite satire of Holy Willie's Prayer, despite its "irreverence and immorality," which are after all but matters of opinion, Mr. Brooke says that it "weakened the worst doctrines of Calvinism far more than ten thousand liberal sermons have done." Cowper weakened Calvinism too, though he did so unintentionally. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... stories, the good ones, were written for men and women, and, being true, pleased also children; now, people set about writing for children and miss them and the others too,—with that detestable irreverence and plain mocking all the time at the very wonder they profess to want to excite. All obvious bending down to the lower capacity, determining not to be the great complete man one is, by half; any patronizing minute to be spent in the nursery over the books and work and healthful ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... alarmed her. She was thankful for the high pew which sheltered him from the gaze of the congregation; and presently when they stood up to sing a hymn, she was glad that Brian remained seated, albeit their was irreverence in ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... truly wise man, as Dominic told himself with a somewhat mournful smile, learns to leave such time-wise fools as Sir Abel Barking to Almighty God for chastisement, because—if it can be said without irreverence—the Almighty alone has wit enough to deal with them. And, for his comfort on lower levels, he reminded himself that though the house of Barking might show him scant gratitude, and attribute its financial resurrection to its own inherent virtue, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... her nephew, Ned Hinkley, were also a somewhat pleasant study, after a fashion of his own. Sitting in a corner, he amused himself by drawing forth his "puppies," and taking occasional aim at a candle or flowerpot; and sometimes, with some irreverence, at the curved and rather extravagant proboscis of his worthy uncle, which, cocked up in air, was indeed something of a tempting object of sight to a person so satisfied of his skill in shooting as the ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... painful superstitions, and to spread the peace of a cheerful faith and the wholesome light of truth. The theories in theological systems being but philosophy, why should they not be freely subjected to philosophical criticism? I have endeavored, without virulence, arrogance, or irreverence towards any thing sacred, to investigate the various doctrines pertaining to the great subject treated in these pages. Many persons, of course, will find statements from which they dissent, sentiments disagreeable to them. But, where thought and discussion ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... seemed the metropolis of the district; it flamed with gin-palaces; a multitude were sauntering in the mild though tainted air; bargaining, blaspheming, drinking, wrangling: and varying their business and their potations, their fierce strife and their impious irreverence, with flashes of rich humour, gleams of native wit, and racy phrases of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... returning to the grave of Lazarus, 'that we may die with Him.' 'He is going to His death, that I am sure of, and I am going to be beside Him even in His death.' A constitutional pessimist! The only other notice that we have of him is that he broke in—with apparent irreverence which was not real,—with a brusque contradiction of Christ's saying that they knew the way, and they knew His goal. 'Lord! we know not whither Thou goest'—there spoke pained love fronting the black prospect of eternal separation,—'and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... irreverence meant. Come in by, to the library yon. There's pictures to see, an' books a plenty. Leave the master be, like a gentleman now, as you was born, till he eats his meal in peace. A body can bear trouble better on a full stummick nor ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... Moses that the Red Sea divided, and that the water sprang from the rock. The staff of Elisha and the spear of Joshua may also be cited in this connection, and other examples in Holy Writ may occur to the reader. They are mentioned here in no spirit of irreverence, but merely as evidence that the magic virtue of the rod was a fixed belief in the minds ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... was like meat and drink to him. You meet men more or less like Jeremy Ross in any of earth's wild places, although you rarely meet his equal for audacity, irreverence and riotous good-fellowship. He isn't the only Australian by a long shot who upholds Australia by fist and boast and astounding gallantry, yet stays away from home. You couldn't fix Jeremy with concrete; he'd find some means of bursting ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... transgression, because some sudden calamity, surprising him, has caused this habitual transgression to be also a final one? Could the man have had any reason even dimly to foresee his own sudden death, there would have been a new feature in his act of intemperance—a feature of presumption and irreverence, as in one that by possibility felt himself drawing near to the presence of God. But this is no part of the case supposed. And the only new element in the man's act is not any element of extra immorality, but simply of ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... finishes it, beyond the scope of mortal ears, in a celestial choir. The painter—as Allston did—leaves half his conception on the canvas to sadden us with its imperfect beauty, and goes to picture forth the whole, if it be no irreverence to say so, in the hues of heaven. But rather such incomplete designs of this life will be perfected nowhere. This so frequent abortion of man's dearest projects must be taken as a proof that the deeds of earth, however etherealized by piety or genius, are ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... letter I had ever had from Martin, and it melted me like wax over a candle. I have it still, and though Martin is such a great man now, I am tempted to copy it out just as it was written with all its appearance of irreverence (none, I am sure, was intended), and even its bad spelling, for without that it would not be Martin—my boy who ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... arrived at a certain ripeness in intellect any one grand and spiritual passage serves him as a starting post towards all the "two-and-thirty Palaces." How happy is such a voyage of conception, what delicious diligent Indolence!... Nor will this sparing touch of noble Books be any irreverence to their Writers—for perhaps the honors paid by Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the Benefit done by great Works to the Spirit and pulse of good by their ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... profile—the beautifully shaped eyes, classic mouth, and exquisite line of neck and shoulder, the very idea of touching those lips with a kiss given in mere lightness, seemed fraught with impertinence and irreverence. If ever he kissed Mary, he thought,—and then all the powers of his mind galloped off like wild horses let loose on a sun-baked ranch—if ever he kissed Mary! What a dream!—what a boldness unprecedented! But again—if ever he kissed her, it must be with the kiss ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... acknowledge this announcement in some way, speech, or bow, or something, because before my immobility he made a slight movement in his chair which smacked of impatience. "I am afraid, Senor, that you are affected by the spirit of scoffing and irreverence which pervades this unhappy country of France in which both you and I are strangers, I believe. Are you a ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... firmament, are visible the ever-varying features of the enrapturing spirit of Beauty. All this great realm of dazzling and bewildering beauty was made by God. What shall we say then, is he not a lover of Beauty? Is it irreverence thus to speak? No; but rather reverence. What reverent soul does not love to look at God in his works? Go out in the still morning, when the golden gates of day are turning slowly back to let the morning king come in with a great crown of rosy light streaking ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... holy"; and Ecclus. 10:2: "As the judge of the people is himself, so also are his ministers." Consequently, there can be no doubt that the wicked sin by exercising the ministry of God and the Church, by conferring the sacraments. And since this sin pertains to irreverence towards God and the contamination of holy things, as far as the man who sins is concerned, although holy things in themselves cannot be contaminated; it follows that such a sin is mortal in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... their contempt for the almighty dollar. [Footnote: This phrase, used for the first time in this sketch, has since passed into current circulation, and by some has been questioned as savoring I fear, however, my prayer is of irreverence. The author, therefore, owes it to his orthodoxy to declare that no irreverence was intended even to the dollar itself; which he is aware is daily becoming more and more an object of worship.] I fear, however, my prayer is doomed to be of no avail. In a little while the steamboat ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... in which these words were said divested them of any irreverence. Sara merely smiled, as she told Bertha some of their aims and practices; and when Mrs. Pierce returned, she was astonished to see her patient sitting up in bed, with almost a flush on her cheeks, and a ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... remember, seek to understand, and humbly resolve to practise what is taught? Or, do we go to public worship with reluctant and hesitating steps, compelled alone by the force of habit, education, example, or terror? When arrived, do we enter with irreverence, assume a careless and familiar attitude, give the rein to our wandering thoughts, resign our bodies or our consciences to unhallowed slumber, or watch with frequent glances the slowly revolving hour ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... may be also placed here to behold with what reverence or irreverence those that come hither to worship do behave themselves. Hence Solomon cautions those that come to God's house to worship, that they take heed to their feet, because of the angels. Paul also says, Women must take heed that they behave themselves in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... disrespect, disesteem, disestimation^; disparagement &c (dispraise) 932, (detraction) 934. irreverence; slight, neglect, spretae injuria formae [Lat.] [Vergil], superciliousness &c (contempt) 930. vilipendency^, vilification, contumely, affront, dishonor, insult, indignity, outrage, discourtesy &c 895; practical joking; scurrility, scoffing, sibilance, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... fierce hurt challenge in his eyes for irreverence and incredulity and even perhaps good-natured jeers, but Garry, sensing something big and unfamiliar, held out his hand. Kenny wrung ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... whether the showman or the priests are to blame for my irreverence, or whether it is the fault of the system itself. The argument in favor of the adoration of images is that they make impressions on the senses which aid devotion; but, if the impressions made on my senses are to be considered, the whole tendency is to debase the immortal ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... the only person who observed the "irreverence" of Martius. A priest of Jupiter, coming out of the Temple, saw the whole thing and made his own comments. He knew Aurelius Lucanus, the Advocate, slightly, but not the ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... British did, in all their expectations and in every movement of their efforts, manifest a common ignorance—originating in the same source. And, for what more especially belongs to ourselves at this time, we may affirm—that the same presumptuous irreverence of the principles of justice, and blank insensibility to the affections of human nature, which determined the conduct of our government in those two wars against liberty, have continued to accompany its exertions in the present struggle for liberty,—and have rendered them fruitless. The British ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... quaint conceit of the little woman, which lost its irreverence towards God in its reverence for His handiwork. "Now mother Tonks," said I, "I leave this lady in your charge for a time while I go into the town to see Master Dobson. I may be away some time, and you'll get us some supper. Anything you have ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... ship pitched and rolled with the moving sea. It was a failure, but the theory was sound and looked practicable. At any rate, it is a parable of what may be in our lives. If I might venture, without seeming irreverence, to modernise and so to illustrate this command of our Lord's, I would say, that He here bids us do for our life's voyage across a stormy sea, exactly what the 'Bessemer' ship was an attempt to do in its region—so ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of its beauty and glory, and that many species of trees would soon become extinct? Who would not give back the luscious pear and peach to their native acritude, rather than subject the highest forms of vegetable life to such irreverence? And, upon reflection, we shall say that such cruelty to inanimate life can be justified only as we justify the naturalist who dexterously and suddenly extracts a vital organ from a reptile, that he may observe the effect upon ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... which these persons temporarily and phenomenally obeyed. Since, then, the sensuous manifestation has now become merely symbolic, and is no longer an indispensable investiture of the idea, it may be altered at will in Christian art without irreverence. The utmost capacity of the artist is now exerted, not in enforcing or refining a generalised type, but in discovering some new facial expression which shall reveal psychological quality in a particular being. Doing so, he inevitably insists upon the face; ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... evening service was about to begin: and the defiant looks of the elect as they pushed past him one by one, had impelled him to assert his rights as a Christian, and push in too. The stupid ranting irreverence of the pastor, and the snuffling satisfaction of the flock, were soon, however, too much for him, and in a very short time he was again—where we find him—out in the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... on The Ring of the Niblungs, Wagner's chief work. I offer it to those enthusiastic admirers of Wagner who are unable to follow his ideas, and do not in the least understand the dilemma of Wotan, though they are filled with indignation at the irreverence of the Philistines who frankly avow that they find the remarks of the god too often tedious and nonsensical. Now to be devoted to Wagner merely as a dog is devoted to his master, sharing a few elementary ideas, appetites and emotions with him, and, for the rest, reverencing ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... these people," he said to me, soon after his adventure with the "boys." "Such a compound of devotion and irreverence, meanness and generosity, cunning and child-like openness, was never seen. When I give Holy Communion with you, sir, on Sunday morning, my heart melts at the seraphic tenderness with which they approach the altar. That striking of the breast, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... at all," Fran responded mildly. "No, I'm not making fun of education when I find fault with your school, any more than I show irreverence to my mother's God when I question what some people call 'religion'. I want to find the connection—looks like it's lost—the connection between life and—everything else. It's the connection to life that makes facts of any value to me; and it's only in its ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... Every man considers himself not only as good and as great as any other man, but a little better and a little greater. No being but God is revered, and He, I fear, not overmuch. What we call "Young America" is made up of about equal parts of irreverence, conceit, and that popular moral quality familiarly known ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... paternal Government, and the religious admonitions of a true priesthood. The greatest danger with which Society is threatened in modern times, arises from the lack of these essential concomitants of any high civilization. The degradation, squalor, ignorance, and brutality of the lowest classes; the irreverence, disrespect, dishonesty, and moral blindness of the middle orders; and the apathy, heartlessness, unscrupulousness, selfishness, cupidity, and irreligion of the upper stratum of Society, are alike due to the absence of a rightly organized State, which should ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... which we have long been accustomed, and to compare these, sometimes to their disadvantage, with ideal conditions. As a matter of fact, however, it may in all fairness be asked, does disorder or irreverence characterize Presbyterian worship in general, or indeed to any noticeable extent? Whatever lovers of another system, within our own Church, may say, it cannot be denied that the impression in the minds of men of all denominations (an impression that has not gained ...
— Presbyterian Worship - Its Spirit, Method and History • Robert Johnston
... "medicine dance." This, to us, was almost what "playing church" is among white children, but our people seemed to think it an act of irreverence to imitate these dances, therefore performances of this kind were always enjoyed in secret. We used to observe all the important ceremonies and it required something of an actor to reproduce the ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... his "cousin" as though he had been shot, and, turning round, regarded the two young ladies for some minutes in silence, while Mrs. Russell sat rigid with horror at this shocking irreverence. But in the royal eye, as it rested on Katie, there was a merry twinkle, until at length the contagion seized upon "His Majesty" himself, and he too burst forth into peals of laughter. After this even Mrs. Russell joined in, and so it happened ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... secret, but I have all the trouble in the world to get it into her head that authors are the most villainous of matches (in respect of fortune, be it understood). Really Laurentia is quite romantic. How she would hate me if she knew with what irreverence I allude to her ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... of a gorgeous spectacle, the joy of making a Sunday of a weekday, dominated every other feeling. As the procession passed along the boulevards, the spectators on the balconies almost applauded; here, in the populous quarters, irreverence manifested itself even more frankly. Coarse chaff, vulgar comments on the dead man and his doings, with which all Paris was familiar, laughter called forth by the broad-brimmed hats of the rabbis and the solemn "mugs" of the council of wise men, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... a very considerable length, he followed them out, and seated himself among them, saying, "My children, the shepherd must be with his flock." This action, which covered them with confusion, prevented their being guilty of that irreverence any more. As he was one day going to church, he was accosted on the way by a woman who demanded justice against her son-in-law that had injured her. The woman being ordered by some standers-by to wait the patriarch's return from church, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler |
