"Sacredness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gave the war its meaning. The invasion of Belgium changed the whole face of affairs. As by a lightning flash the issue was made plain: the issue of the sacredness of law; the rule of the soldier or the rule of the citizen; the rule of fear or the rule of law. Germany stands for army rule. This was made clear when, a year ago, she passed under the yoke at Zabern. However devious her diplomacy ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... telling you," the stranger said at last, "that your case has been under consideration. When we left the Embankment my intention was to dispose of you in a doorway. But your story moves me strangely. Could I be certain that you felt the sacredness of human life—as I fear no boy can feel it—I should be tempted to ask you instead to become one ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... the idea of the work by emphasising its anecdotal and rather comic side. For without doubt the comic side is there, and Strauss has warned us in vain that he did not wish to make an amusing picture of married life, but to praise the sacredness of marriage and parenthood; but he possesses such a strong vein of humour that it cannot help getting the better of him. There is nothing really grave or religious about the music, except when he is speaking of the child; and then the rough merriment of the man ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... to them to insult his memory. Still more carefully did they avoid anything relating to him who was dead. It seemed to them that what they had lived through and experienced could not be expressed in words, and that any reference to the details of his life infringed the majesty and sacredness of the mystery that had been accomplished before ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... sea, overrunning Phocis and Locris. You were surprised at Philip's ambassador, Cleomedon, showing such diffidence yesterday in his application to us to take arms on the side of the king against the Romans. But if we, in pursuance of the same treaty and oath, the sacredness of which he inculcated on us, were to ask of him, that Philip should protect us, both from Nabis and his Lacedaemonians, and also from the Romans, he would be utterly unable to find, not only a force with which to protect us, but even an ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... one cannot remember dreams when suddenly recalled from them; though Elmira had one dream which was the reality of her life, and in which she lived most truly, but which she would always have denied, even to her own mother, to guard its sacredness. ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... earth with this immitigable stubbornness, and to flourish in spite of obstacles, and never to suffer blight beneath any sun or shade, but always to mock their enemies with the same wicked luxuriance? It is truly a mystery, and also a symbol. There is a sort of sacredness about them. Perhaps, if we could penetrate Nature's secrets, we should find that what we call weeds are more essential to the well-being of the world than the most precious fruit or grain. This may be doubted, however, for there is an unmistakable analogy between these wicked weeds and the bad ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... usually reach young maidens softly murmured amidst the confessions of first love, or revealed by tender parents with blessings and tears. Life's earliest and best romance came to her with all its bloom worn away—all its sacredness and mystery set aside. For a ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... plodded off alone, and a curious visit he had. It was not easy for him to guess at the sacredness of those traditions of gentility and superiority that the 'Misses Hepburn' held—not so much for their own sakes as in faithful loyalty to the parents many years dead, and to the family duty that imposed a certain careful exclusiveness on them in deference to the noble lineage they could reckon, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in such a violent attempt, would thenceforth be altogether regular and equitable: but it must be confessed that, in their attack on the hierarchy, they still more openly passed all bounds of moderation; as supposing, no doubt, that the sacredness of the cause would sufficiently atone for employing means the most irregular and unprecedented. This principle, which prevails so much among zealots, never displayed itself so openly as during the transactions of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... her brother's death. I dared not write to her father or mother after the way the former had behaved to me, and I shrunk from approaching Mary with a word that might suggest a desire to intrude the thoughts of myself upon the sacredness of her grief. Why should she think of me? Sorrow has ever something of a divine majesty, before which one must draw nigh with bowed ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... only said, as all men did, that the Church needed reform, but, going further, he refused obedience to papal commands.[27] In short, the reformers, finding themselves unable to purify the Roman Church according to their views, began to deny its sacredness and defy its power. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... pride of the class; his conscientiousness as a boy was that which characterized him as a man. I do not think he would have done a consciously wrong thing for his right hand. I remember being with him one Sabbath, when a letter was handed him from home, and his views of the sacredness of the Sabbath were such that he would not open it until the Sabbath was passed. I mention this, not to illustrate the earnestness of his conscience, but simply to show its authority ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... was a collar. But thenceforward no cap was a cap, and no collar was a collar, which did not exactly conform in shape and material to certain sacred caps and collars guarded by the young tailor in his back shop. None knew why these sacred caps and collars were sacred, but they were; their sacredness endured for about six months, and then suddenly—again none knew why—they fell from their estate and became lower than offal for dogs, and were supplanted on the altar. The type brought into existence by the young tailor was to be recognized ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Hari, the upholder of the universe, displayed on that occasion? What did Brahman do, O ascetic, after having seen that foremost of deities, him whose likeness had never been seen before, him who was of immeasurable energy, him who had the Equine head, and him who was Sacredness itself? O regenerate one, this doubt hath arisen in our mind about this ancient subject of knowledge. O thou of foremost intelligence, for what reason did the supreme Deity assume that form and display himself in it unto Brahman? Thou hast certainly sanctified us ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... see the note with which Mr. Kendal returned the unfortunate sketch, but one of the points on which he was sensitive, was the sacredness of his correspondence, and all that she heard was, that Ulick had answered 'not at all as Mr. Kendal had expected; he was nothing but an Irishman, after all.' But at last she obtained ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to draw tears after the event—but he cannot co-operate in the civilising process without practising the cruelty; and perhaps in their privacy the empire-makers may smile when Shaw writes of Empire with evident earnestness as "a name that every man who has ever felt the sacredness of his own native soil to him, and thus learnt to regard that feeling in other men as something holy and inviolable, spits out of his mouth with enormous contempt." When, further, in his "Representative Government" Mill tells the English people—a thing about which Shaw has ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... discussion over this issue, involving the country as well as Congress, two sorts of argumentation were heard in favor of the suit of Missouri. The genuine pro-slavery men urged the sacredness of property as such, and the special sacredness of property-right in slaves as tacitly guaranteed by the Constitution. They also made much of the third article of the Louisiana purchase treaty. This read as follows: "The inhabitants of the ceded territory ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... "Perhaps it is for those he thinks he speaks!" And the Bishop pointed to the crowd which filled the forecourt, and of which one member or another was perpetually pressing his face against the panes to learn what his sacredness, God bless him! would be wishing. "Perhaps it is for those he thinks he speaks!" he repeated in irony—for of the feeling of the crowd there ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... to approach that head even in fancy; with a general heat and a bracing of his muscles, it was borne in on Herrick that Adar's father would find in him a son to the death. And even Huish showed a little in that sacredness; by the tacit adoption of daily life they were become brothers; there was an implied bond of loyalty in their cohabitation of the ship and their passed miseries, to which Herrick must be a little true or ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... and that same man and that same multitude stood in altered relations— they were again a reverent flock, and he once more a solemn pastor; the natural play of his nation's mirthful sarcasm was absorbed in a moment in the sacredness of his office; and with a solemnity befitting the highest occasion, he placed his hands together before his breast, and raising his eyes to Heaven he poured forth his sweet voice, with a tone of the deepest devotion, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... expected, the semi-sacredness attaching to Ida, as a being something more than earthly in the circumstances of her advent, lent a rare ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... "dim yearning and vague desires," I do not sacrifice him to a lust of my own. The lust for owning and spoiling is hard to cope with. Perhaps a purer time is near, when, upborne by a sense of the dignity of romance and the sacredness of life, man will refrain from laying rough hands on his ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... himself for a time in desecrating the temple by these and other similar performances, he caused his soldiers to bring in their provisions, and allowed them to eat and drink in the temple, in a riotous manner, without any regard to the sacredness of the place, or to the feelings of the people of the town which he ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... England, therefore, the Elm has a value more nearly approaching that of sacredness than any other tree. Setting aside the pleasure derived from it as an object of visual beauty, it is intimately associated with the familiar scenes of home and the events of his early life. In my own mind it is pleasingly allied with those old dwelling-houses which were built ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... Conference of the Republic of China, in order to enhance the national dignity, to unite the national dominion, to advance the interest of society and to uphold the sacredness of humanity, hereby adopt the following constitution which shall be promulgated to the whole country, to be universally observed, and handed down unto ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... Holy Sepulchre, duly certified by the Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem, for about $7. At Bethlehem, which I visited this morning, the Latin monk who showed us the manger, the pit where 12,000 innocents were buried, and other things, had much less to say of the sacredness or authenticity of the place, than of the injustice of allowing the Greeks ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... necessary for you to explain," she broke in curtly. "I saw what you did,—and it is just because of such as you that this spot is forbidden ground. Idle curiosity, utter disregard for the sacredness of that lonely grave,—Oh, you need not attempt to deny it. You are a stranger here, but that is no excuse for your passing through that gate. I AM Miss Crown. This hill belongs to me. It was I who had that fence put up and it was I who directed the sign to be put on ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... seem rather calculated to bewilder us than to teach us any truths about the present or future state of being. . . . Supposing that the power arises from the transfusion of one spirit into another, it seems to me that the sacredness of an individual is violated by it; there would be an intruder into the holy of holies. . . . I have no faith whatever, that people are raised to the seventh heaven, or to any heaven at all, or that they gain any insight into the mysteries of life beyond death by means of this strange science. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... conditions that have made an inquiry as to some of the limits of compromise, which must always be an interesting and important subject, one of especial interest and importance to ourselves at present. Is any renovation of the sacredness of principle a possible remedy for some of these elements of national deterioration? They will not disappear until the world has grown into possession of a new doctrine. When that comes, all other good things will follow. What we have to remember is ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... enterprise and staked their future control of the government upon its success. Given for conviction and upon sufficient proofs, the President MUST step down and out of his place, the highest and most honorable and honoring in dignity and sacredness of trust in the constitution of human government, a disgraced man and a political pariah. If so cast upon insufficient proofs or from partisan considerations, the office of President of the United States would be degraded—cease to be a coordinate ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... process of trying out the reading of Epistles and Gospels and exhortations before the congregations. As passages met or failed to meet the human needs, there was call for the repeated reading of some works and no call for the rereading of others. In use some documents proved their sacredness and other documents fell aside into disuse. Before the concluding deliberate choice was this selection in use by the believers themselves; and the selection turned round the question as to whether or not the documents helped people. If each member ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... Holland. No European monarch from the time of Alfred can be compared to him in the service he rendered to his country. The memorableness of a war is to be gauged not by the number of the combatants, but by the sacredness of a cause. It was the devotion of Washington to a great cause which embalms his memory in the heart of the world. And no English king has left so hallowed a name as Alfred: it was because he was a benefactor, and infused his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... remaining in the bosoms of any one of its citizens. It was the beautiful remark of a distinguished English writer that "in the Roman senate Octavius had a party and Anthony a party, but the Commonwealth had none." Yet the senate continued to meet in the temple of liberty to talk of the sacredness and beauty of the Commonwealth and gaze at the statues of the elder Brutus and of the Curtii and Decii, and the people assembled in the forum, not, as in the days of Camillus and the Scipios, to cast their free votes for annual magistrates or pass upon the acts of the senate, but to ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... travel in a certain path and slay imps of darkness is of great value as throwing light upon primeval habits of thought, but it is of no value as evidence for or against an alleged community of civilization between different races. The same is true of the sacredness universally attached to certain numbers. Dr. Blinton's opinion that the sanctity of the number four in nearly all systems of mythology is due to a primitive worship of the cardinal points, becomes very probable when we recollect that the similar pre-eminence of seven is almost ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... after leaving the Spaniard's house, not a word passes between them. Each is occupied with his own thoughts, the sacredness of which keeps him silent; absorbed in reflections, about that tender, but painful parting, speculating on what may be before them in the ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... because the negroes only know these men as oppressors of their race, and will have no confidence in their acts. The officers of the bureau should be especially charged to impress upon the freedmen the sacredness of the family relation and the duty of parents to take care of their children, and of the aged and infirm of their race. Where a man and woman have lived together as husband and wife, the relation should be declared legitimate, and all parties, after contracting such relations, ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... matter out of my volition, out of my planning. And, oh, the wonder, and sweetness, and sacredness of it! I thought, even in the instant; and, oh, the pity that, after ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... prosperity; it abominates what is disreputable; contemplation seems to it idleness, solitude selfishness, and poverty a sort of dishonourable punishment. It is constrained and punctilious in righteousness; it regards a married and industrious life as typically godly, and there is a sacredness to it, as of a vacant Sabbath, in the unoccupied higher spaces which such an existence leaves for the soul. It is sentimental, its ritual is meagre and unctuous, it expects no miracles, it thinks optimism akin to piety, and regards profitable ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... but absolutely refused to give either them or his son up as prisoners. The first man who might lay a finger upon him was threatened with a spear through the heart, and the governor was obliged to proclaim the sacredness of his own person, and to cock both barrels of his gun, with an assurance that he would shoot poor Peerat in case of resistance. All savage strife is noisy in the extreme; even the strife of civilized men in their public ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... Hawthorne felt toward this love of his married life in a peculiar way not often so purely disclosed; there were touches of solemnity in it, something not of this world; there was that sense of what can be described only as sacredness, which he intimates and in part reveals as a thing never absent from his heart, whether with her or away from her. Love had come to him, not in his youth, but after the years of solitude had ripened both heart and imagination,—a man's love; it filled his whole nature, and with it went ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... method were many. His underestimate of the sacredness of human life was one; but that was the fault of his age. His frequent workings by intrigue was another; but that also was a vile method accepted by his age. The fair questions, then, are: did he not commit the fewest and smallest wrongs possible ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... according to its letter and spirit. [Applause.] New England believes in the home, and in the virtues that make home happy [cries of "Good!"], and New England will tolerate, so far as depends on her, no institutions and no practices in any state or territory which are inconsistent with the sacredness of the family relation. [Cries of "Good!"] New England cherishes the sentiment of nationality and believes in a general government strong enough to maintain its authority, to enforce the laws and to preserve and to ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... being obvious to all men, that if Lucullus had hearkened to Fimbria, and with his navy, which was then near at hand, had blocked up the haven, the war soon had been brought to an end, and infinite numbers of mischiefs prevented thereby. But he, whether from the sacredness of friendship between himself and Sylla, reckoning all other considerations of public or of private advantage inferior to it, or out of detestation of the wickedness of Fimbria, whom he abhorred for advancing himself by the late ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... "natural" must be intrinsically good, if not godlike. But it is quite clear that "Nature" is a vague term meaning little or nothing—it is higher or lower and natural in both forms. Those who wish to know the lengths of impudence to which belief in the sacredness of "Nature" can bring human beings might do ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... do I suppose we can at this remote plantation. We only know that there is heavy fighting at various points and great successes are claimed; but it seems very hard to get at the real truth. Our chief confidence must be in the sacredness and justness of our cause and in the prayers of so many sincere hearts to the God of justice. In giving you, my son, to our country, when you were scarcely more than a boy, you can understand why I feel that such sacrifices cannot be in vain. Now that I have watched beside you in ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... it for?" said the postmaster, in a tone which Andy considered an aggression upon the sacredness of private life: so Andy thought the coolest contempt he could throw upon the prying impertinence of the postmaster was ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... sincerity and ardent disciplined travail of judgment. He had the style of his subjects; the amplitude, the weightiness, the laboriousness, the sense, the high flight, the grandeur, proper to a man dealing with imperial themes, with the fortunes of great societies, with the sacredness of law, the freedom of nations, the justice of rulers. Burke will always be read with delight and edification, because in the midst of discussions on the local and the accidental, he scatters apophthegms that take us into the regions of lasting wisdom. In the midst of the torrent of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... had spoken, urging on the meeting the profound responsibility resting on the Reformers—the need for gentleness no less than for courage; bidding them remember the sacredness of the ground they were treading, the tenacity and depth of the roots they might be thought to ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... impressed with the sacredness and nobility of maternity, and look upon it more and more as a period of martyrdom. This attitude is in consonance with the crave for ease and luxury that ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... that the source of this veneration of the cross, like the the sacredness of the number four, of which he gives numerous illustrations, is the four cardinal points. From these points blow the four winds which bring the fertilizing rains, and thus render the earth fruitful; and hence the cross, in ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... On the other hand, compromise with the unnatural, like compromise with vice, quickly leads first to toleration and thence to interest and practice. Therefore the importance of giving children Agassiz's conception of the sacredness of the laws that govern the human body. A passion for the natural is a strong foundation for habits of health and a priceless possession for one who wishes to know morality in ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... utmost sacredness of their affection, that sister's image must be brought—it did cause Elizabeth pain in spite of all her denials—Mellen might have discovered that if he had seen her face. But the feeling passed swiftly, the face ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... more active assault upon their prerogatives, secured from a house of landlords through fear that which they denied on grounds of equity. "In view of the prevailing agitation in Ireland," said Lord Salisbury of this measure which assailed every Tory principle as to the sacredness of property, "I cannot recommend my followers to vote against the second reading of the Bill." What Fenianism had effected in 1870 the Land League secured in 1881. "I must record my firm opinion," said Mr. Gladstone ten years later, "that the Land Act of 1881 would not have become the ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... could suspicion frown upon the ties between two married women, both living in the greatest harmony with their respective husbands, especially when both became mothers and were so devoted to their offspring? This boundless friendship did glow between this calumniated pair calumniated because the sacredness and peculiarity of the sentiment which united them was too pure to be understood by the grovelling minds who made themselves their sentencers. The friend is the friend's shadow. The real sentiment of friendship, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... All sacredness and sweetness, all that was pure and brave and truthful, seemed to rest in her. And when the song ceased at his summons, and she came down to meet him,—glowing, beautiful, appealing, tender,—then all meaner spells vanished, if such had ever haunted him, ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... annual festivals, the Druids were in the habit of observing the full moon, and especially the sixth day of the moon. On the latter they sought the Mistletoe, which grew on their favorite oaks, and to which, as well as to the oak itself, they ascribed a peculiar virtue and sacredness. The discovery of it was an occasion of rejoicing and solemn worship. "They call it," says Pliny, "by a word in their language, which means 'heal- all,' and having made solemn preparation for feasting and sacrifice under the tree, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... photographer wished to make a picture of the party, this man came to the front; and when I asked the servant to send off the half-vagrant boys and girls who stood gazing at us, this man came up and said to me in a confidential tone, 'They do not understand the sacredness of the occasion, and the fineness of the conditions.' There was something regal in his audacity, but he was none the less ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... Social, and Political Instruction. Mr. Hall Caine, Miss Corelli. Fallacy of thinking that the Novel should Amuse. Abuse of the Novel as a source of mischievous and false Opinions. Case of The Woman Who Did. Sacredness of Marriage. Study of the Novel becomes an abuse if it leads to the Neglect of the Morning and Evening Newspapers. Sir Walter Besant on the Novel. None but the newest Novels ought to be read. Mr. W. D. Howells on this subject. Experience of the Lecturer as a Novelist. Gratifying ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... sacredness of human life. Teach him that man must be as precious in the sight of man as he is in the sight of God. Teach obedience to law, obedience to legally constituted authority, which alone can give protection to life and property and security to society. Teach him that the human ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... them." There is a picture in Trinity House of his vessel bringing in the Dutch ships. Later, he was Consul-General at Venice and the north of Italy, where he died, in 1834, in his gondola! He had strong religious convictions, and would never infringe the sacredness of the Sabbath-day by any "secular work." In a short biography of him, written in 1835, the weight of his religious beliefs, which made themselves felt both in Parliament and when Consul, is dwelt on at length. ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... outside India roused the ever quick sympathy of Indian women, and the attack in South Africa on the sacredness of Indian marriage drew large numbers of them out of their homes to ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... exception of the hill shrines of Japanese construction dedicated to Yoshitsune, they have no temples, and they have neither priests, sacrifices, nor worship. Apparently through all traditional time their cultus has been the rudest and most primitive form of nature-worship, the attaching of a vague sacredness to trees, rivers, rocks, and mountains, and of vague notions of power for good or evil to the sea, the forest, the fire, and the sun and moon. I cannot make out that they possess a trace of the deification of ancestors, though ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... no encouragement from the mistress of the Nation's mansion. The lessons of truth and piety, of purity and virtue, of charity and benevolence, of sincerity and self-forgetfulness, would be taught by example. A whole people could here find in illustration the sacredness of the family and ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... a certain perfume and it was death to make anything that smelt like it. It seems to me this is carrying protection too far. It always has been blasphemy to say "I do not know whether God exists or not." In all Catholic countries it is blasphemy to doubt the bible, to doubt the sacredness of the relics. It always has been blasphemy to laugh at a priest, to ask questions, to investigate the Trinity. In a world of superstition, reason is blasphemy. In a world of ignorance, facts are blasphemy. In a world of cruelty, sympathy is a crime, and in a world ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... was loaded!" replied Melville, "and that answered the purpose. I should be very reluctant to use a loaded pistol, for I have a high idea of the sacredness of human life, but I have no objection to playing upon the fears of a man ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... a sacredness undreamt of under the Old Covenant, and gave assurance, not of a continued existence after death alone, but of a resuscitation of the body. "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... III had been spoiled by his mother, his tutors, and his courtiers. Under their influence he developed high and mighty notions about the sacredness of royal authority and his duty to check the pretensions of Parliament and the ministers dependent upon it. His mother had dinned into his ears the slogan: "George, be king!" Lord Bute, his teacher and adviser, had told him that his honor required him to take ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... a little difficult to quite comprehend, even in comprehending Mrs. Browning's intense sensitiveness and the infinite sacredness of this grief, why she should have been so grieved at Miss Mitford's tender allusion to an accident that was, by its very nature, public, and which must have been reported in the newspapers of the day. Mrs. Browning was always singularly free from any morbid states, from ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... was very different. Her father was a magistrate of the right kind, who sincerely sought to do justice and protect the people in their rights. From almost daily conversation her mind had been impressed with the sacredness of the law. When she was inclined to induce her father to give a lighter sentence than he believed right he had explained how the well-being and indeed the very existence of society depended upon the righteous enforcement of the law, and how ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... impractical at that time, as it might prolong discussion indefinitely, and enforce a longer term in service than the Committee cared for. It was the earnest wish of all to disband at the first moment that they considered their state and city fit to take care of themselves, and the sacredness of the ballot-box again insured. To assure this latter fact, they had arrayed themselves against the federal government, as certainly they had against ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... the deficiency in her intellect, and then she related in general terms the object of the girl in venturing among her enemies. The effect was all that the speaker expected, her account investing the person and character of their visitor with a sacredness and respect that she well knew would prove her protection. As soon as her own purpose was attained, Hist withdrew to a distance, where, with female consideration and a sisterly tenderness she set about the preparation of a meal, to be offered ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... the antiquaries and architects of this century, Gothic architecture has been sufficiently vindicated; and perhaps some among us, in our admiration of the magnificent science of its structure, and sacredness of its expression, might desire that the term of ancient reproach should be withdrawn, and some other, of more apparent honourableness, adopted in its place. There is no chance, as there is no need, of such ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... church; but in the very act of slipping downstairs Miles' voice had arrested her, and she had drawn back into the shadow. The Betty of a year ago would have continued her course unabashed; the Betty of to-day divined with a new humility that her presence would mar the sacredness of that last Communion of mother and son, and turned back ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... dragged in the subject by the ears and insisted on arguing it out with our host, poor B—— Babu. He said the moral standard of the people of this country was low; that they had no real belief in the sacredness of life; so that they were unfit ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... Self, that a man's own soul is an Emanation of God, a part of the Divine Essence, and the purpose of man's existence to hasten a final absorption into God—this also (although destructive of the idea of individuality, the sacredness of personality, so fundamental in Christian thought) would seem to be a tremendous moral force, but it is vitiated in much the same way as is the idea of Samsara, while it is further weakened by the fact that the Hindu ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... hate Familism, which is the curse of the human race. And I hate this spiritual Fatherhood when it puts on the garb of a priest, the three-cornered hat of a Jesuit, the hood of a monk, the gaberdine of a rabbi, or the jubbah of a sheikh. The sacredness of the Individual, not of the Family or the Church, do I proclaim. For Familism, or the propensity to keep under the same roof, as a social principle, out of fear, ignorance, cowardice, or dependence, is, I repeat, the curse of the world. Your father is he who is friendly and reverential ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... of the feeling which underlies and is shaping the whole modern world—the feeling and conviction that the individual man is above all forms, laws, institutions, conventions, bibles, religions—that the divinity of kings, and the sacredness of priests of the old order, pertains to ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... tribal purity and honor. The women do not associate freely with men outside of the family, and even within it strict decorum is observed between grown brothers and sisters. Birth and marriage are guarded with a peculiar sacredness as mysterious events. Strenuous out-of-door life and the discipline of war subdue the physical appetites of the men, and self-control is regarded as a religious duty. Among the Sioux it was originally held that children should not be born into a family ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... things. And yet, you see, according to this statement the same stamp of holiness is to be put upon them all. Even the most commonplace of them comes within the scope of this Divine sanctity, and there is to be in relation to each of them this sacredness, this sanctification: 'Holiness unto the Lord', is the stamp ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... years, within which space lie the whole dramatic creations of Shakspeare, averaging nearly one for every six months. In 1611 was written the Tempest, which is supposed to have been the last of all Shakspeare's works. Even on that account, as Mr. Campbell feelingly observes, it has "a sort of sacredness;" and it is a most remarkable fact, and one calculated to make a man superstitious, that in this play the great enchanter Prospero, in whom," as if conscious, "says Mr. Campbell," that this would be his last work, the poet has been inspired to ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... never found men afraid to die, even though they were afraid before battle. As to the standards by which they live, I should say they are the sanctions of group morality. They have very lax ideas about drunkenness and sexual irregularity, but they have very strict ideas about the sacredness of social obligations within the groups to which they belong. I would mention sheer fear of public opinion as one of the great weaknesses of the men. They would rather be in the fashion than be right. And most of them have been hardened—though not ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... of pessimism one may fear that the very capacity of peaceful enjoyment is being killed, and that ceaseless grinding work destroys the power of resting. When the ordinary tourist visits places of peaceful solitariness he usually does so in crowds that rifle and ravish the sacredness of this solitude; he ruthlessly desecrates that which he does not understand; he never learns its secrets; the most commonplace of public parks would have responded fully to his needs and their gratification. But the West has long been a resort of that wiser, certainly better endowed, minority ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... critters since" he adds, with unmoved nerves. The Coroner suggests that in a matter of expediency like the present it may be well to explain the nature of an oath; and, seeing that a man may not read and write, and yet comprehend its sacredness, perhaps it would be as well to forego the letter of the law. "Six used to do for this sort of a jury, but now law must have twelve," says Mr. Moon. Numerous voices assent to this, and Mr. Moon commences what he calls "an halucidation of the nature of an oath." The jurors receive this ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... of a French sculptor, which illustrates the sacredness with which life's ideal should be cherished and guarded. He was a genius, and was at work on his masterpiece. But he was a poor man, and lived in a small garret, which was studio, workshop, and bedroom to him. He had his statue almost finished, ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... that I thought my marriage was made in heaven. I entered into a contract, and Ham has kept his part of it fairly well. He hasn't interfered with my freedom. That isn't putting it on a high plane, but there is an obligation involved. You yourself, in your law practice, are always insisting upon the sacredness of contract as the very ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the sacredness of the place; at least they went around with a more decided feeling that it was Sunday than they had ever realized ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... "a form of worship kept up from year to year in a family—the assembling of parents and children for a few sacred moments each day, though it may be a form many times, especially in the gay and thoughtless hours of life—often becomes invested with deep sacredness in times of trouble, or in those crises that rouse our deeper feelings. In sickness, in bereavement, in separation, the daily prayer at home has a sacred and healing power. Then we remember the scattered and wandering ones; and the scattered ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... impressed by the gentleness and refinement that seemed to grow up and in, the men when suffering from horrible wounds than from anything else. It seemed always to me that the sacredness of the cause for which they offered up their lives gave to them a heroism almost super-human—and the sufferings caused an almost womanly refinement among the coarsest men. I have never heard a word nor seen a look that was ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... the tears in her eyes, and held out her hand. "Philip, then," she said, "to make a little difference. Now remember what I say. It is only in the sacredness of her home that you will know what is in Elinor. One is never dull with her. She has her own opinions—her bright way of looking at things—as you know. It is, perhaps, a strange thing for a mother to say, but she ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... good-hearted soul took infinite trouble in his rough way to fulfil the pledge he had given. They were not intercepted by the military gentleman who guarded the destiny of the port, and as soon as their feet were planted on deck Ralph exclaimed, "Now we're safe." Jack has an inherent belief in the sacredness of British territory, either floating or otherwise. He is a stout upholder of British supremacy, and conformity to the laws of other nations does not appeal to him. His creed is undisguised, and has been handed down as an heirloom from the great naval hero ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... him, and he will stimulate him, in as great a degree as he can, to judge according to his conscience. Here, too, will be the place to anticipate whatever it is thought the opponent may do or say, for it makes the judges more circumspect regarding the sacredness of their oath, and by it the answer to the pleading may lose the indulgence which it is expected to receive, together with the charm of novelty in all the particulars which the accuser has already cleared up. The judges, besides, may be informed of the answer ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... centre point of Jewish religion. Christ said: 'Put it all away; do not think about the Exodus; do not think about the destroying Angel; do not think about the deliverance. Forget all the past; do this in remembrance of Me.' Take into account that the Passover had a double sacredness, as a religious festival, and also as commemorating the birthday of the nation, and then estimate what a strange sense of His own importance the Man must have had who said: 'That past is done with, and it is Me that you have to think of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... of this woman's face shines one serene sun, and it is that sun that brings out upon it its marvelous human radiance, its supreme expression: the love of the mother. Your model is the beauty of motherhood, the sacredness of motherhood, the glory of motherhood: that is to be the portrait of her that you ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... who both honour the sacredness of this spot made holy by a just man's grave—gathering to meet in ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... "Now," he continues, "if we examine the course and progress of this poetry, born thus within the very grasp and maw of this terrible science, it seems to me that we find—as to the substance of poetry—a steadily increasing confidence and joy in the mission of the poet, in the sacredness of faith and love and duty and friendship and marriage, and the sovereign fact of man's personality, while as to the form of the poetry, we find that just as science has pruned our faith (to make it more faithful), so it has pruned our poetic form and technic, cutting ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... was, became but a child in my hands. He went on the floor of the cave with a thud, and then I fastened my hands around his throat. I felt mad at the moment, and, remembering that time, I can quite understand how men, when driven to extremities, can forget the sacredness of human life. But in mastering Bill I had forgotten Sam Liddicoat, whom I had struck down before he was aware ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... to demand her presence. Happiness was waiting for her, and not one day, one hour, should the darling wait in ignorance. The dreary little flat was about to become the scene of blissful reconciliation; of a new radiance of life and hope. It was not conceivable that I could mar the sacredness of such a time by masquerading in an assumed character. As Mr Thorold was bound to know, it would simplify arrangements if he knew ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... supply the particular instance. We must reap where you sow; we must glean after you; we must follow you, as night follows day, as accomplishment follows preparation—because you arouse the sense of duty, you teach the sacredness of duty, while we give it particular direction. It's you who will make them Citizens, my dear fellow—for what you mean by a true Christian is what I mean by a true citizen—our part is to swear them in. Or, as you might say, you prepare, and we confirm. Those that won't come up to ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... halting sentences, and his fear lest William should misunderstand, had frightened, rather than impressed, the boy. But the judge was saying the things William knew his father had tried to say, and he was losing none of them. The sacredness of the body, his lordship was emphasising this, and dilating upon it: the purity of the heart and mind; respect of woman; the honour of a man; reverence to God. William afterwards wrote the words out almost as fully as though he had taken them all down at the time. Nothing ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... outside and inside, built of a crumbling red brick, with very dirty brick floors, and the idols are frightful and tawdry. We went to several which have large monasteries attached to them, with great untidy gardens, with ponds for sacred fish and sacred tortoises, and houses for sacred pigs, whose sacredness is shown by their monstrous obesity. In the garden of the Temple of Longevity, the scene of the "Willow Pattern," dirty and degraded priests, in spite of a liberal douceur to one of them, set upon us, clamoring kum-sha, attempting at the same time to shut us in, and the two gentlemen were ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... for the occasion. I considered also that as a joke it would be too poor in itself, and too unworthy a man like Booth. So I decided that it was a sincere conviction,—an idea, exaggerated perhaps to the borders of monomania, of the sacredness of all life. And I determined to treat the conviction with respect, as all sincere and religious convictions deserve ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... the subject that was nearest my heart. I re-urged all my former arguments, and placed them in more forcible lights. Wieland was still refractory. He expatiated on the perils of wealth and power, on the sacredness of conjugal and parental duties, and the happiness ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... devotion to this very Bible, should, at the last, by reason of the infidelity of Protestantism, its recognition of divorce and its indifference to a "thus saith the Lord," come forth as the defender of the Bible, the champion of the home and the guardian of the sacredness of marriage, concentrating all its thunders against the shame and indecency ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... of their 'economic robbery'? Yes; but two things must be noted. In all ages it has been held to be the right of the community to dispossess owners of certain kinds of property without committing any offence against the sacredness of property, provided full compensation was offered to the owners. In the abolition of slavery, of serfdom, of certain burdens on the land, and the like, no one has ever found anything that was reprehensible, provided the owner of the slaves or of the land was compensated to the full value ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... ordinary native priests, few enough indeed, who at that period served merely as coadjutors or administered some curacies temporarily, in a certain self-possession and gravity, like one who was conscious of his personal dignity and the sacredness of his office. A superficial examination of his appearance, if not his white hair, revealed at once that he belonged to another epoch, another generation, when the better young men were not afraid to risk their dignity by becoming ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... us, means the putting ourselves en rapport with the life of that infinite existence which surrounds and sustains all of us. Now since it is this kind of truth only that is supposed to be so sacred, it is clear that its sacredness does not depend on itself, but on its object. Truth is sacred because Nature is sacred; Nature is not sacred because truth is; and our supreme duty to truth means neither more nor less than a supreme faith in Nature. It means that there is a something in the Infinite outside ourselves that corresponds ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... in the evolution of the human race, it became of the first importance to rescue the control of the generation of offspring from mere blind brute passion, and to transfer it to the reason and to the intelligence; to impress on parents the sacredness of the parental office, the tremendous responsibility of the exercise of the creative function. And since, further, one of the most pressing problems for solution in the older countries is that of poverty, the horrible slums and dens into which are crowded and in which are ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... remembers his "David Copperfield." How Betsy Trotwood would have loved Dostoevski's hero! Dickens and Dostoevski were perhaps the biggest-hearted of all novelists, and their respect for children and harmless men is notable. The sacredness of mad folk is a holy tradition, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... three moral standards in existence in the English world. There is first the Christian standard, for which men and women are equal, which recognizes the sacredness of personality in every case, and which calls for absolute continence and chastity before marriage and absolute fidelity after it. This is the standard I am concerned to ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... set my spirit aflame. My eager fingers searched out the mysteries, The splendours, the inmost sacredness, of things, And in the vacancies discerned With spiritual sense the fullness of life; And the gates of ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... executing the commissions which had been promised him the year before in New Hampshire. In all his journeyings back and forth the road invariably led through Concord, and the pure love of the young people for each other increased as the months rolled by. I shall not profane the sacredness of this love by introducing any of the more intimate passages of their letters of this and of later years. The young girl responded readily to the religious exhortations of her fiance and became ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... teacher, a woman whom he had always rejoiced that, spite of the gay freedom with which she received so many admirers, he could still esteem. He would not do so, though his friends would have greeted such scruples with a smile of superiority. Who revered the sacredness of marriage in a city whose queen was openly living for the second time with the husband of another? Dion himself had formed many a brief connection, but for that very reason he could not place a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... These purchases will not be made every year; but only at distant intervals, as our settlements are extended: and it may be regarded as certain, that not a foot of land will ever be taken from the Indians without their own consent. The sacredness of their rights is felt by all thinking persons in America, as much as ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... wild spot, I did not feel the sacredness of ancient cultivation. It was still raw, it was no Marathon, and no Johannisberg; yet the stirring sunlight, and the growing vines, and the vats and bottles in the cavern, made a pleasant music for the mind. Here, also, earth's cream was being skimmed and garnered; and the London customers ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a closer union, a more complete brotherhood of man, an increased sacredness of the human relation. Some things point that way; some things point the other way. Brotherhood has hardly a definite meaning without a father; sacredness can hardly be predicated without anything which consecrates. We can point to an eminent ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... has lost something of its old sacredness in the general mind. There is little popular superstition to endure its former dictation. No exclusive incarnate theocracy in any particular persons is left, Leviticus and the Hebrew priesthood are gone. Church, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... party leaders to a more rigid allegiance to party policy than is expected of the rank and file; yet certainly, at those periods when substantially new measures and new doctrines come to the front, the old party names lose whatever sacredness may at other times be in them, and the political fellowships of the past may properly be reformed. Novel problems cannot always find old comrades still united in opinions. Precisely such was the case with John Quincy ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... him the sacredness of the privacy of grief and love. He freed himself from her embrace, slipped out of the cave and left her alone. She laid her cheek against the rude letters, patted them with her hand, and kissed them again and again. It was bliss to know that she had inspired this ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... Do you think you can put me off with defences and puling arguments of necessity, or policy, or the sacredness of property? No. You and I are here looking at naked truth. I will go down into your very soul and have it out by the roots, the naked truth. But I will have my answer. Are you that ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... into line. This decision gives the issue for the next campaign, and it may be that the Supreme Court has builded wiser than it knew. This is a greater question than the tariff or free trade. It is a question of freedom, of human rights, of the sacredness of humanity. ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... song. Indeed, on May 26, only five days before his death, he played it over three times in succession, and "with a degree of expression that astonished himself." As one writer puts it, the air "seemed to have acquired a certain sacredness in his eyes in an age when kings were beheaded and their ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... delegated trust from God, who alone has the right to govern. It represents constitutional government, and it has done so since Bishop Stephen Langton, at the head of the nobles of England, wrung the /Magna Charta/ from King John, and henceforth recognized the sacredness of the citizen, who has been clothed with an individuality unlike any being who lives or will live in all the ages of eternity. On its religious side it recognizes the two truths which underlie the possibility of the reunion of Christendom—the validity of all Christian Baptism in the ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... quiet lovers, never making much of one another "before folk." No whispering in corners, or stealing away down garden walks. No public show of caresses—caresses whose very sweetness must consist in their entire sacredness; at least, I should think so. No coquettish exactions, no testing of either's power over the other, in those perilous small quarrels which may be the renewal of passion, but are the death of ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... divine to give his reflections on the Word of God. With the most devout feeling of the infinite value of such an article or the great evil which might result from the complexity of its appearance, we have concluded that nothing but the most reverential feeling of the sacredness of the subject can secure us from falling into dangers not to be lightly regarded, not merely in regard to facts, but in respect also to comments and reflections; but with this caution such an article may be rendered eminently edifying ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... this occasion the contingent from the towns, and especially from Dundee, seems foremost, began to prepare for their expedition, they chose St. Giles's Church as the most convenient for the preparation of the scaling ladders, a practical evidence that sacredness had departed from the church as a building, not at all to the mind of the preachers, who probably saw no logical succession between the hammers of the destroyers pulling down the "glorious tabernacles" and those of the craftsmen occupied with secular work. ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... Master and Friend in the secret chamber and in the inner heart? Are they walking humbly and gladly with their God, much in prayer, and having the Scriptures often open? And are they considering one another, to provoke unto love and to good works? Are they remembering generally and habitually the sacredness of the duty of mutual influence and example, in personal habits, and otherwise? Are they determined each for himself to help his brethren in all things pure, and just, and lovable, and of good report, and to strengthen them to endure hardness, and not to be ashamed ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... downy bloom of happiness, which unfaithful and ignoble poets have persisted in declaring always vanished at the touch and wear of life, is delicate and fresh as ever, and must remain so if we remain unprofane. The sacredness, the loftiness, the ethereal delicacy of such a soul as my husband's will keep heaven about us. My thought does not yet compass him. December. For the world's eye I care nothing; but in the profound shelter of this home I would put on daily a velvet robe, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... many of the American Indian tribes we find, according to Mr. Dorman,[4] "a mythical tree or vine, which has a sacredness connected with it of peculiar significance, forming a connecting-link and medium of communication between the world of the living and the dead. It is generally used by the spirit as a ladder to pass ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... by us, our object being to have large farms and large crops merely. We have no festival, nor procession, nor ceremony, not excepting our cattle-shows and so-called Thanksgivings, by which the farmer expresses a sense of the sacredness of his calling, or is reminded of its sacred origin. It is the premium and the feast which tempt him. He sacrifices not to Ceres and the Terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal Plutus rather. By avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... It wasn't nice; yet she sniffed it with a quaint sense of pleasure. For was it not part of the whole wonderful, beautiful business of the making of books? To the artist the meanest materials of his art have a sacredness not to be denied or ignored. They go to forward the birth of the precious whole, and hence are redeemed, for him, from all charge of common ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... at an earlier stage of this impression, when the thought of this profanation of the sacredness of life and the sanctity of love chills the life-blood of his heart, and then rushes burning through it like the shame of a personal insult, that he first stands before us in the palace of the King. In appearance nothing is changed. He sees the same crowd, the same obsequious attitudes, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... Legislature, and the other, an address to the Judiciary Committee, to whom your petitions will be referred." These two documents will be found to suggest most of the important demands, afterward made in every State, for a change of laws relating to woman. The fallacy of "sacredness" for these restrictive laws was shown; the rights of humanity as superior to any outside authority, asserted; and justice made the basis of the proposed reformation. The right of woman to trial by a jury of her peers was claimed, followed by the suggestion that woman is capable ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and hearing from Mr. Mack of the doings and achievements of the great men whose residence at Serampore has given it a sacredness it will ever retain in the annals of Indian Missions, I felt as a young Greek would feel on being taken to Marathon and Thermopylae. I felt I was entering on a war, where there had been heroes before me, which demanded courage and endurance of a far higher order than had ever been ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... as broad as his judgment. He set Thoreau a good example in bragging, but he bragged to a better purpose. He exalted the present moment, the universal fact, the omnipotence of the moral law, the sacredness of private judgment; he pitted the man of to-day against all the saints and heroes of history; and, although he decried traveling, he was yet considerable of a traveler, and never tried to persuade himself that Concord was an epitome of the world. Emerson comes much nearer being ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... the wayside to be adopted by some passer-by, or torn in pieces by wild dogs, or chilled to death in the cold. When the wise men brought their gold and frankincense to the babe in the manger, men felt the sacredness of infancy. As the light from the babe in Correggio's "Holy Night" illumined all the surrounding figures, so the child resting in the Lord's arms for shelter and sacred benediction began to shed luster upon the home ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... this characteristically Christian virtue that he framed what old-fashioned theologians would have called a "hedge of the law."[41] In season and out of season, whether men would bear or whether they would forbear, he taught the sacredness of marriage. For the Divorce Court and all its works and ways he had nothing but detestation. He ranked it, with our gin-palaces, among the blots on our civilization. From Goethe, perhaps a curious authority on such a subject, he quotes approvingly a protest against over-facility in granting divorce, ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... their fullness of implication they open out to our vision the goal of humanity—the principle and purpose of the whole process of human evolution—the perfection of man. Given these three Christian truths—the Sacredness of Personality, the Brotherhood of Man, and the Fatherhood of God—and all that is essential in the claim of the 'Natural Rights of Man' is implicitly contained. The one thing needful is that men become alive to their privileges and go forward to ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... Master Kinch's efforts to console Charlie were not without great risk to himself, as he had on two or three occasions narrowly escaped falling into the clutches of Robberts, who well remembered Kinch's unprecedented attempt upon the sacredness of his livery; and what the result might have been had the latter fallen into his hands, we ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... done both and you have, by favor and influence and perhaps even by bribery, arranged for your easy acquittal. I am charged by the Prince of the Republic to see to it, that the majesty of the law, the sacredness of the lives of Roman noblemen, and the security of their property be publicly vindicated: I am here to undo all that Lollius Corbulo supinely allowed to be done. You shall perceive that I am wholly unlike ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... mystical value of intercourse as a spiritual sacrament of love may still exist in independence of such intention. It is nevertheless, surely, clear that a Christian man and his wife are morally precluded from coming together except with a deep sense of the sacredness of what they do and of its intimate connexion with the mysteries of life and birth, and a corresponding readiness, in the event of conception taking place, to accept the ensuing responsibility for ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... suffered intermission. I saw him a hundred times afterward, but never with any other than the same feeling. The Almighty, who raised up for our hour of need a man so peculiarly prepared for its whole dread responsibility, seems to have put a stamp of sacredness upon his instrument. The first sight of the man struck the eye with involuntary homage, and prepared ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... distance off. Unfortunately it was Sunday, and they met many country people returning from church, who were all eager to have a little business chat with Sir Alexander's factor. He got rid of most of them by slyly reminding them of the sacredness of the day, for the Prince's awkward movements and masculine stride made his disguise very apparent. 'They may call you the Pretender,' cried Kingsburgh, between annoyance and amusement, 'but I never knew anyone ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... the sacredness of his substance. He saw the seal of the Lord upon his harvest, and he offered the first-fruits in token of its rightful Owner. Men go wrong when the only name upon their field is their own. "My power, and the strength of my hand hath gotten me ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... "sacredness of property" is talked of, it should always be remembered that any such sacredness does not belong in the same degree to landed property. No man made the land. It is the original inheritance of the whole species. Its appropriation is wholly a question of general ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... Of course Shelley's mind was full of the sanctity of the moment, and indignant that "the hour for which the years did sigh" should thus be broken in upon by vulgar revelry; but while we may sympathise with his view, and admit to the full the sacredness, not to say the solemnity, of the marriage ceremony, yet it is to be hoped that it still retains a naturally mirthful side, of which such public merriment is ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... Is it not the sport and divertisement of many, to cast dirt in the faces of all they meet with; to bespatter any man with foul imputations? Doth not in every corner a Momus lurk, from the venom of whose spiteful or petulant tongue no eminency of rank, dignity of place, or sacredness of office, no innocence or integrity of life, no wisdom or circumspection in behaviour, no good-nature or benignity in dealing and carriage, can protect any person? Do not men assume to themselves a liberty of telling romances, and framing characters concerning their neighbour, as ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... wondered if she had any weapon about her. That dangling bag could easily carry a stout knife or a neat little revolver. And Maraquito, as was evident from the deaths of Maxwell and Tyke, had no idea of the sacredness of life. Caranby wished he had kept Cuthbert at hand to avert any catastrophe. He was about to ring and order his servant not to bring Miss Saxon into the room when Maraquito roused ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... future, and within whose quiet recesses she loved to sit alone and dream away the hours,—had been rudely entered, and thrown violently open to the light of day, and Ivy saw with dismay how its pictures had become ghastly and its sacredness was defiled. With bitter, though needless and useless self-reproach, she saw how she had suffered herself to be fascinated. Sorrowfully, she felt that Mrs. Simm's words were true, and a great gulf lay between her and him. She pictured him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... low tone, "that I am no monster, that I recognise the sacredness of human life. The test proposed was yours, not mine; I protested against it, and I consented at last because I saw that you would with nothing else be satisfied. But for the destruction of that ship, you will ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... were singing along the brook valley. Rollicking robins were whistling joyously in the pines. Jasper Dale's heart was filled to over-flowing with a realization of all the virgin loveliness around him; the feeling in his soul had the sacredness of a prayer. At this moment he looked up ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in her awakening find an example of this universal instinct? May we not find her first thoughts and feelings worthy of study and her example one to be followed? Do we not, in fact, find here a beautiful illustration of the proper mode of meeting the sacredness ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... away the grass, and the natural flow of intercourse between village and village has kept the track bare ever since. An American farmer would plough across any such path, and obliterate it with his hills of potatoes and Indian corn; but here it is protected by law, and still more by the sacredness that inevitably springs up, in this soil, along the well-defined footprints of centuries. Old associations are sure to be fragrant herbs in English nostrils; we pull them ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... receiving an acquittal: others were of opinion that he ought to submit himself entirely to the king's mercy [o]: but the primate, thus pushed to the utmost, had too much courage to sink under oppression: he determined to brave all his enemies, to trust to the sacredness of his character for protection, to involve his cause with that of God and religion, and to stand the utmost efforts of royal indignation. [FN [l] Hoveden, p. 495. [m] Epist. St. Thom. p. 315. [n] Fitz-Steph. p. 38. [o] Ibid. p. 39. Gervase, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... nothing to do, she remains passive till events and time make her incapable of doing, while the world glitters past in its various activity, throwing her incapacity into ever stronger relief, till her time is over and the general muddle is given a kind of sacredness, even of beauty, by ceasing. She has done nothing but live and been nothing but alive, both to such passive purpose that the ceasing is pitiful; and it is by pushing on to this end, instead of shirking it, and by marking the last tragical fact which puts a dignity upon ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... she had unswerving faith in the bogey who uttered terrific cries, and terrified the people who were brave enough to walk at night through Deadman's Glen. But she believed more fully still in Polly, in Polly's love and despair, and in the sacredness of the errand which she was now undertaking to ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... because of his veto of a bill establishing a fiscal agency for the use of the Government,—merely a National Bank disguised under another name. The Republicans of 1866 were contending for a vastly greater stake,—for the sacredness of human rights, for the secure foundation of free government. Their constancy was greater than that of the Whigs because the rights of person transcend ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... well taught the contrary lesson; and it seems as though our faith should be especially tried touching the men and the events which have wrought most influence upon the condition of humanity. And there is a kind of sacredness attached to the memory of the great and the good, which seems to bid us repulse the scepticism which would allegorize their existence into a pleasing apologue, and measure the giants of intellect by ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... sapping the national commerce and diverting to personal emolument revenues that properly belonged to the state. To an impoverished sovereign with an empty treasury this appeal was irresistible. The sacredness of the king's commission and the loss to the patentee of the property already embarked in the enterprise had no weight in the royal scales. De Monts's privilege was revoked, with the tantalizing salvo of six thousand livres in remuneration, to be collected at ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... and Strafford's official colleague. "The good and pious Prelate," he said, had been only a cipher, and "seemed to have been put at the head of that negotiation only to palliate the iniquity of it under the sacredness of his character." He was glad, therefore, that nothing could be charged upon the Bishop, and complacently observed that the course taken with regard to Dr. Robinson, who was not to be impeached, "ought to convince the world that the Church was not in danger." ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... will happen; they must in every revolution. But they will be isolated facts—exceptional features of an exceptional moment. The horrible thing about this promiscuous knifing is that it becomes a habit. The people get to look upon it as an every-day occurrence, and their sense of the sacredness of human life gets blunted. I have not been much in the Romagna, but what little I have seen of the people has given me the impression that they have got, or are getting, into ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich |
