"Blasphemy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scarce stem the current." This piece of luck saved the pirates, for it gave them time to make sail, and to clear the bar before the Spaniards entered the river. As they dropped down the stream, they hove the clutter from the decks. Many a Pretty Polly there quenched her blasphemy in water, and many a lump of beef went to the mud to gorge the alligators. The litter was all overboard, and the men stripped to fight the guns, by the time the tide had swept them over the bar. At this moment they ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... teach them even so To those who live that life, which is a race To death: and when thou writ'st them, keep in mind Not to conceal how thou hast seen the plant, That twice hath now been spoil'd. This whoso robs, This whoso plucks, with blasphemy of deed Sins against God, who for his use alone Creating hallow'd it. For taste of this, In pain and in desire, five thousand years And upward, the first soul did yearn for him, Who punish'd in himself the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... his drunken comrades have swilled off, should have been a matter of profit to one in my line, and I must set them down a dead loss. I cannot, for my heart, conceive the pleasure of noise, and nonsense, and drunken freaks, and drunken quarrels, and smut, and blasphemy, and so forth, when a man loses money instead of gaining by it. And yet many a fair estate is lost in upholding such a useless course, and that greatly contributes to the decay of publicans; for who the devil do you think would pay for drink at the Black Bear, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Congregationalism was the established religion. The Congregational church was supported by taxes, and the minister, once chosen, kept his place for life or during good behaviour. He could not be got rid of unless formally investigated and dismissed by an ecclesiastical council. Laws against blasphemy, which were virtually laws against heresy, were in force in these three states. In Massachusetts, Catholic priests were liable to imprisonment for life. Any one who should dare to speculate too freely about the nature of Christ, or the philosophy of the plan of salvation, or to express ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Despise the mouth that is the herald of my victories! 'Twere rank blasphemy. Prophesy triumph, Esther, and Alroy ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... prize be delivered, and a great deal more to that effect: so, then, he passes to the other legacy, of exactly the same sum, to the hospital, usually called and styled ——, in the city of London, and says, 'And whereas we are assured by the Holy Scriptures, which, in these days of blasphemy and sedition, it becomes every true Briton and member of the Established Church to support, that "charity doth cover a multitude of sins," so I do give and devise,' etc., 'to be forever termed in the deeds,' etc., 'of the said hospital, "The Vavasour Charity;" and always provided that on ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... comprehended the warning. As he had looked at the stars he had thought of the coming of the most wonderful Child who had ever visited this earth. Perhaps then, too——He tried to snap off his thought, half confusedly accusing himself of some sort of blasphemy. At the top of the staircase he turned and looked ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... From Prussian Kings' autocracy: The world shall see all the battles cease, With dawn of universal peace. Each German worker has to pay One-fourth of what he earns per day To keep two million marching feet And please a Kaiser's mad conceit. Oh God! we're punished bitterly For Kaiser Wilhelm's blasphemy; Three million of our sons are slain, Let sacrifice ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... humour of the Germans often amuses me. I think it was Palmerston who described Germany as "that land of damned Professors." They are all so desperately in earnest, and their "Kultur" is so serious, that jokes and fun seem like blasphemy. My penury has again been relieved by Mr. S——'s kind loan of L1. Lady M—— came in to tell me that the American Vice-Consul had telegraphed to Mr. W—— the good news that we are all to go on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday next. I have heard this story so often that I am utterly sceptical. ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... including belles lettres, is immorality, and people who idealize peasants, unpractical fools. Also the Roman Catholic Church, embarrassed by recruits of your type and born scoffers like Belloc, who cling to the Church because its desecration would take all the salt out of blasphemy, will quietly put you on the unofficial index. The Irish will not support an English journal because it occasionally waves a Green flag far better than they can wave it themselves. And the number of Jews who will buy you just to see what you say about them is not large ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... cried, "that's blasphemy. For Heaven's sake, man, hold something sacred. If you don't respect the press, what do you respect? Not my most cherished feelings, at any rate, or you wouldn't talk in that flippant manner. If you speak kindly of my daily ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... we may not take up the third sword, which is Mahomet's sword, or like unto it; that is, to propagate religion by wars, or by sanguinary persecutions to force consciences; except it be in cases of overt scandal, blasphemy, or intermixture of practice against the state; much less to nourish seditions; to authorize conspiracies and rebellions; to put the sword into the people's hands; and the like; tending to the subversion of all ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... cried, with a camp oath, whose blasphemy was happily unintelligible to her listener. "Fear! You think I fear you!—the darling of the army, who saved the squadron at Zaraila, who has seen a thousand days of bloodshed, who has killed as many men with her own hand as any Lascar among them all—fear ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... was writhing under the words. The woman of whom these things were said was the woman whom he loved. It was blasphemy to think of her in such case, subjected to the degradation of these processes. Yet, every word had in it the piercing, horrible sting of truth. His face whitened. He raised a ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... real way, and I am sure will some time join the monks and will be a great faster and sayer of prayers, and the devil knows how, in what monstrous fashion, a real religious ecstasy will entwine in his soul with blasphemy, with scoffing at sacred things, with some repulsive passion or other, with sadism or something ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... and her feelings of affection were equally unmitigated. In the case of Albert her passion for superlatives reached its height. To have conceived of him as anything short of perfect—perfect in virtue, in wisdom, in beauty, in all the glories and graces of man—would have been an unthinkable blasphemy: perfect he was, and perfect he must be shown to have been. And so, Sir Arthur, Sir Theodore, and the General painted him. In the circumstances, and under such supervision, to have done anything else would have required talents considerably more distinguished than any that ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... temperament of their peasant-brethren. And not one of them but had felt, to some degree, the same, deep, passionless, revulsive anger that was working in him, and turning him from the old, secret habits of spiritual meditation and high thought, into passions of blasphemy and atheism which burned ever deeper into ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... phrase, describes him as "a tall, lank, empty-bowelled, tobacco- spurting Southerner, with eyes like burning black balls, who could talk a company of listeners into an insane asylum quicker than any man in California, and whose blasphemy could not be equalled, either in quantity or quality, by the most profane of any age or nation." In this crisis Colonel Gift's sympathies may be guessed. He watched the scene below him with a sardonic eye. As the armed columns wheeled into place and stood at attention, he ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... blinded. Having always been a thoroughly selfish man, his privation drove him nearly to madness. He had always used the world; now for the first time he had been used by it. His viciousness broke out in blasphemy; he hated both God and man. He made no distinction between people in the mass and the people who tried to help him. His whole desire was to inflict as much pain as he himself suffered. When his sister came to visit him, he employed every ingenuity ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... other priests to his assistance, Vincent set to work at once to visit the convicts in the Paris prisons; but the men were so brutalized that it was difficult to know how to win them. The first advances were met with cursing and blasphemy, but Vincent was not to be discouraged. With his own gentle charity he performed the lowest offices for these poor wretches to whom his heart went out with such an ardent pity; he cleansed them from the vermin which infested them and dressed their neglected ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... instead there lowered overhead in this furious tempest of wrath a monstrous God with a stony Face and a stonier Heart, who was eternally either her torment or salvation; and Isabel thought, and trembled at the blasphemy, that if God were such as this, the one would be no less agony than the other. Was this man bearing false witness, not only against his neighbour, but far more awfully, against his God? But it was too convincing; it was built ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... provided, set in contrast to the flimsy and false ones, on which these men built their truculent confidence; 'I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone.' And then, after the exhibition of the great mercy which has been evoked by the very blasphemy of the rulers, and not till then, does He reiterate the threatenings of judgment, against which this foundation is laid, that men may escape; God first declares the refuge, and then ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... house in Holland Street, Kensington, eagerly ambitious to make his way in the world and to obtain, it had dawned on him that there was something strange, unhappy, and not as it was wont to be with that, to him, most beautiful and beloved of women. The mere suspicion was as a blasphemy against which his young loyalty revolted. For Dominic, with the inherent pieties of his Latin and Celtic blood, had none of that contemptuous superiority in regard of his near relations so common to male creatures of the Protestant persuasion and Anglo-Saxon race. He ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... dealt about so lavishly by the Supreme Governor? Why should our notions of right towards each other, and to all sentient beings within our influence, differ so widely from what appears to be His notion and rule, if every thing were to end here? Would it not be blasphemy to say that, upon the supposition of the thinking principle being destroyed by death, however inferior we may be to the great Cause and Ruler of things, we have more of love in our nature than He has? The thought is monstrous; and yet how to get rid of it, except upon the supposition ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... necessary to know and to teach that when holy men, still having and feeling original sin, also daily repenting of and striving with it, happen to fall into manifest sins, as David into adultery, murder, and blasphemy, that then faith and the Holy Ghost has departed from them [they cast out faith and the Holy Ghost]. For the Holy Ghost does not permit sin to have dominion, to gain the upper hand so as to be accomplished, but ...
— The Smalcald Articles • Martin Luther
... Africa, with his light and careless nature, than to try to enslave a people who did not resist, but who sought a refuge from their persecutors in the grave rather than continue in slavery. I shall not harrow the feelings of my readers with the mass of treachery, avarice, blasphemy, and horrible cruelties with which the conquerors rewarded the noble people who entertained them so courteously. To me the conquest of Mexico, Central America, and Peru appears one of the darkest pages in modern history. ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... "No, sirs. It ain't blasphemy. But I know you can't give me a notion that won't make him out to be a sort of man, pretty much like yourselves—two eyes, a nose, mouth, and beard perhaps. Now my wife says there's points about a woman that you don't reckon into your notion; and my dog says there's more in a tail ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and since the devils that bore testimony to the Son of God. But when they said that he should from his table sing forth wickedness, evidently doth it appear that he who never stood on the truth, but who from the beginning was a liar and the father of lies, did in his blasphemy utter ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... enter into the state of their interiors, and are heard speaking and seen acting, they appear foolish; for from their evil lusts they burst forth into all sorts of abominations, into contempt of others, ridicule and blasphemy, hatred and revenge; they plot intrigues, some with a cunning and malice that can scarcely be believed to be possible in any man. For they are then in a state of freedom to act in harmony with the thoughts of their will, since they are separated from the outward conditions ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... forwardness, and strictness urged, than the weighty matters of the law of God, and the refusing whereof is far more inhibited, menaced, espied, delated, aggravated, censured, and punished, than idolatry, Popery, blasphemy, swearing, profanation of the Sabbath, murder, adultery, &c. Both preachers and people have been, and are, fined, confined, imprisoned, banished, censured, and punished so severely, that he may well say of them that which our divines say ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... effect that he take vengeance for it even on thess that crucifies him afresh. The mother he brought on the stage as the embleme of mercy, crying imperiously, jure matris, I inhibite your justice, I explode your rigor, I discharge your severity. Let mercy alone triumph. Surely if this be not blasphemy I know not whats blasphemie. To make Christ only Justice fights diamettrally[129] wt the Aposle John, If any man hath sinned he has a Advocat with the father. Christ the righteous, he sayes, is not Christ minding his father continualy ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... singer of eld, 'They may bear her from my presence, but they can never untie the knot which unites my heart to her; for that heart, so tender and so constant, God alone divides with my lady, and the portion which God possesses He holds but as a part of her domain, and as her vassal.'" "This is blasphemy," Prince Edward now retorted, "and for such observations alone you merit death. Will you always talk and talk and talk? I perceive that the devil is far more subtle than you, messire, and leads you, like a pig with a ring in his nose, toward gross iniquity. Messire, I tell ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... which falls upon all ears present with the effect of rank blasphemy, Biterolf rises in wrath. "Out, out, to fight against us all. Who could be silent hearing you? If your arrogance will vouchsafe to listen, hear, slanderer, me too! When high love inspires me, it steels my weapons with courage; to save it from ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... the outlaws was the cue for absurd activity on the part of the train crew. A whirlwind of heated blasphemy set in, which might well have scorched the wooden sides of the car. They cursed everybody and everything, but most of all they cursed the bucolic agent ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... aflame with fury, "there drops not, I say, that which thou namest, but only sweet perfumes and pearly dew. Neither is she cross-eyed nor hunch-backed, but straight and slender as a peak of Guadarrama. But ye shall pay for the monstrous blasphemy which ye have spoken against the angelic beauty of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Penn (though we did not always follow him to all, that Saturday afternoon), to many other places in London: to the Tower, where he was imprisoned on the droll charge of "blasphemy," within stone's throw of All Hallow's Barking, where he was christened; to Grace Church Street, where he was arrested for preaching; to Lincoln's Inn, where he had chambers in his worldlier days; to Tower Street, where he went to school; to the Fleet, where he once lived within the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... more than he could bear, and he reached a hand to Maren's shoulder, a tentative hand, hesitating, as if it felt its touch blasphemy. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... calm, imperative word, 'I will; be thou clean!' He accepts the leper's ascription of power; He claims to work the miracle by His own will, and therein He is either guilty of what comes very near arrogant blasphemy, or He is rightly claiming for Himself a divine prerogative. If His word can tell as a force on material things, what is the conclusion? He who 'spake and it was ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... the assumption of "divine right," to ignore the Parliament which had created him. Of the civil war which followed in the reign of Charles I, and of the triumph of English freedom, it is unnecessary to write here. The blasphemy of a man's divine right to rule his fellow-men was ended. Modern England began with the charge of Cromwell's brigade of Puritans ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Paine's reputation in America, where the name of "Tom Paine" became a stench in the nostrils of the godly and a synonym for atheism and blasphemy. His book was denounced from a hundred pulpits, and copies of it were carefully locked away from the sight of "the young," whose religious beliefs it might undermine. It was, in effect, a crude and popular statement of the deistic argument against Christianity. ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... portent of all time. Here the Black Country is painted in all its inspissated gloom by a master-hand—sardonic, salubrious, superb.... We approach this work on all-fours. Any other attitude on the part of a reviewer would be sheer blasphemy." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... we've no said grace?" remarked the lantern-jawed fellow, as we sat to table; and then, raising his hands in impudent mockery, he began to utter some blasphemy, but Black turned upon him as with the growl of ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... violent destroyer? Doth not knowledge of law, whose end is to even and right all things, being abused, grow the crooked fosterer of horrible injuries? Doth not (to go to the highest) God's word, abused, breed heresy? and His name abused, become blasphemy? Truly a needle cannot do much hurt, and as truly (with leave of ladies be it spoken) it cannot do much good. With a sword thou mayest kill thy father, and with a sword thou mayest defend thy prince and country. ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... so strongly on everything that the war has brought into question for the Anglo-Saxon peoples that humorous detachment or any other thinness or tepidity of mind on the subject affects me as vulgar impiety, not to say as rank blasphemy; our whole race tension became for me a sublimely conscious thing from the moment Germany flung at us all her explanation of her pounce upon Belgium for massacre and ravage in the form of the most insolent, 'Because I choose to, damn you all!' ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... I thought Kabaira Bay one of the loveliest places in the Pacific, and said so to the man I had been sent to relieve. He quite concurred in my opinion of the beauties of the scenery, but said that he was very glad to get away. Then, being a cheerful man, though given to unnecessary blasphemy, like most South Sea Island traders, he took me out to the rich garden at the back of the station and showed me the grave of his predecessor, who had died of fever a year before. Further on, but outside the enclosing fence, were some more ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... is a deity who is all-wise, all-powerful, infinite, holy, the personification of all the highest virtues. To accuse this Deity of the slightest moral flaw would be blasphemy. Now, without going so far down as the lowest savages, let us see what conception such barbarians as the Polynesians have of their gods. The moral habits of some of them are indicated by their names—"The Rioter," "The Adulterer," "Ndauthina," who steals ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... of mechanical maneuvers, of petty tyrannies, of barren, burdensome hours in the exercise-ground, of convoy duty in the burning sun-glare, and under the heat of harness; and the weary night fell with the din and uproar, and the villainous blasphemy and befouled merriment of the riotous barracks, that denied even the peace and oblivion of sleep. They were years of infinite wretchedness oftentimes, only relieved by the loyalty and devotion of the man who had followed him into his exile. But, however wretched, they ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... brisk footsteps came mounting up the path. We pricked our ears at this, for the tread seemed lighter and firmer than was usual with our country neighbours. And presently, sure enough, two town gentlemen, with cigars and kid gloves, came debauching past the house. They looked in that place like a blasphemy. ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his coffee, and the place had sunk into fathomless silence. It was only half after eight! He stuck his head out of the window. Soft flakes touched and soothed his feverish head. "Damn money!" he whispered suddenly, then stood back in the room, startled, staring his blasphemy in the face. He'd go out in the snow, and get rid ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... would not believe it, for such a belief would bring the world in ruins about his feet. Such a belief would people his soul with phantoms of despair and of wickedness. Could he not cry out against God in blasphemy, if God took his friend from him? The tears rushed into his eyes, as he sat waiting there in the night. As before a drowning man, scenes of the last five years flashed before him, painted in vital colours,—scenes of his life with Valentine,—then scenes of all that might have been ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... you," exclaimed the captain, "to bait a poor innocent lad with horrid blasphemy and profanity. I tell you every one of you ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that this is terrible," she heard him say; "I feel that this is blasphemy. That we should try to tamper with the greatest force, the greatest and the most sacred and secret-force, that—that moves in the world, is to me horrible. I cannot bear to listen; it seems to make everything so small!" She saw him sit down, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and the strong reaction against it, gave us a new light on their genuine femininity. This was given me with great clearness by both Ellador and Somel. The feeling was the same—sick revulsion and horror, such as would be felt at some climactic blasphemy. ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... defections of her members and office-bearers, during the persecuting period: and that unfaithfulness in the exercise of church discipline is still copied after. How few, guilty of the most gross scandals, are censured, such as notorious drunkenness, blasphemy, cursing, swearing, sabbath-breaking, uncleanness, especially among the rich, who are capable to give pecuniary mulcts to free them from church censure? (Thus, in conformity to the prelatical and anti-christian example, setting to sale the censures of the church, and ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... said, I am; and ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest rent his clothes, and saith, What need we any further witnesses? ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye? And they all condemned him to be guilty of death. And some began to spit on him, and to cover his face, and to buffet him, and to say unto him, Prophesy: and the servants did strike him with the palms of their hands. And as Peter was beneath in the ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... "Collar him!" and moving forward with extraordinary promptitude wrapped the best tablecloth about Uncle Jim's arms and head. Mr. Polly grasped his purpose instantly, the man in checks was scarcely slower, and in another moment Uncle Jim was no more than a bundle of smothered blasphemy and a ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... though Christians have done some parts of the papal blasphemy, the papal asses have not yet proved that they did it gladly. Still less does it prove that they even did the right thing. All Christians can err and sin, but God has taught them to pray in the Lord's Prayer for the forgiveness of sins. God could very ...
— An Open Letter on Translating • Gary Mann
... he roared at me, scowling down into my very face. And from his coarse mouth there rolled a volume of blasphemy such as I never had heard. The curses had a peculiar effect of sticking on my mind, until they ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... brought up in ignorance and vice—a swarming, seething mass whom nobody owns—without seeing the need of free discussion of the philosophical principles that underlie these tangled social problems. The trials of Foote and Ramsey, too, for blasphemy, seemed unworthy a great nation in the nineteenth century. Think of well-educated men of good moral standing, thrown into prison in solitary confinement for speaking lightly of the Hebrew idea of Jehovah and the New Testament account of the birth of Jesus! Our Protestant clergy never ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... of the Catholic Religion so called! How long must these wretched Monks go on doing their lazy thrice-deleterious torpid blasphemy; and a King, not histrionic but real, merely signify that he laughs at them and it? Meseems a heavier whip than that of satire might be in place here, your Majesty? The lighter whip is easier;—Ah yes, undoubtedly! cry many men. But horrible accounts are running ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... said that were rank blasphemy; but I thought his way of casting up again th' events God had pleased to send, were worse blasphemy. Howe'er, I said nought more angry, for th' little babby's sake, as were th' child o' his dead son, as well as o' ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Philip had him arrested and imprisoned as a French subject, on a charge of treason, heresy, and blasphemy, and sent his chancellor, Peter Flotte, and William de Nogaret, to the Pope, to demand the prelate's degradation and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." In John 10, verse 30, He declares, "I and my Father are one"; in verse 36, same chapter, He denies that it was blasphemy to call Himself the Son of God. In the presence of death He refused to deny ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... growl of amazed fury from the Magpie: then his step down the room; and, as he reached the safe, a torrent of unbridled blasphemy—and then, in a sort of staggered gasp, as he leaned suddenly forward examining the knob ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the great central pandemonium of every diabolical affection. Such is the statement of Jesus Christ himself, "From within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness; all these things come from within, and defile ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... Cortez.—It is blasphemy to say that any folly could come from the Fountain of Wisdom. Whatever is inconsistent with the great laws of Nature and with the necessary state of human society cannot possibly have been inspired by God. Self-defence is as necessary to nations as to men. And shall particulars ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... village with so noble a tree in its centre', his eyes fell upon an enormous black snake, which had coiled round one of its branches immediately over his head, and seemed as if resolved at once to pounce down and punish him for his blasphemy. He gave his pipe to his attendant, mounted his horse, from which the saddle had not yet been taken, and never pulled rein till he got home. Nothing could ever induce him to visit this village again, though he was afterwards employed ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... time stiffly, his head in the air, not condescending to speak. She had uttered blasphemy. He would find his parents, he vowed to himself, if only to spite Jane. Presently his ear caught a little sniff, and looking down, saw her dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. His heart softened at once. "Never mind," said he. "You didn't ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... bones; but the ship was very full, and space limited. In an ill-considered moment they settled down partly under a seat, where passengers had sat in the palmy days of peace, and partly in an open gangway. It proved an evil spot. Each changing guard trod on them, and retreated with awful blasphemy echoing in their ears. Then it chose to thunder, and rain fell in torrents. Not only from the skies, but also from the deck above it came in fountains, until the troopers were wretched in the extreme. There was no refuge whence to flee. ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... he, in the last moments of the sufferer, was little more than a passive but shocked witness of remorse, suspended over the abyss of eternity in hopeless dread. We shall not enter into the details of the revolting scene, but simply add that curses, blasphemy, tremulous cries for mercy, agonized entreaties to be advised, and sullen defiance, were all strangely and fearfully blended. In the midst of one of these revolting paroxysms, Spike breathed his last. A ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... precipitately with the guide, and in a sort of frenzy peered far into the awful chasm. Words of blasphemy were on his lips as he began to realize to what end his persecution had driven the fair young creature he had sworn to win. As for Brand, he rejoiced in his fate. Could it have been ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... took advantage of his absence to make counter accusations against him. Two worthies beings, named Cherbonneau and Bugrau, agreed to become informers, and were brought before the ecclesiastical magistrate at Poitiers. They accused Grandier of having corrupted women and girls, of indulging in blasphemy and profanity, of neglecting to read his breviary daily, and of turning God's sanctuary into a place of debauchery and prostitution. The information was taken down, and Louis Chauvet, the civil lieutenant, and the archpriest of Saint-Marcel and the Loudenois, were appointed to investigate the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... at this blasphemy, then having once more scanned that silver pathway on the waters, but without avail for the great fish or drifting tree or whatever he had seen, was gone, prayed after his fashion at night, to Pachacamac, Spirit of the Universe, or to the Sun his servant, god of the ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... merely lights set in the sky to light the world of men by ... which latter, the old man maintained, was the truth, solemnly asserting that the Bible said so, and that all other belief was infidelity and blasphemy. So it was that, each evening, despite the herculean labour of the day, we drew together and debated on ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... it was impossible he should recover, but that death must ensue in a very few hours. And it was dreadful to sit there by his side, listening to his moans, liberally interspersed with curses of the leopard, of me, and not infrequently of mankind in general, and to reflect that that flood of blasphemy was issuing from the lips of a man hovering on the brink of eternity! At length I could endure it no longer, and I said to him, rather sharply, I ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... modesty will sure attone for every thing, when the world shall know it is so great, I am even to this day insensible of those two shining graces, in the play (which some part of the town is pleased to compliment me with) blasphemy and bawdy. For my part I cannot find them out; if there were any obscene expressions upon the stage, here they are in print; for I have dealt fairly, I have not sunk a syllable, that could be ranged ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... Not poetry only, but all good things and all good feelings,—religion, reverence, courtesy,—sane contentment, rational ambition,—the right sort of humility, the right sort of pride,—they all go down before it: whilst, in the ignorance which it disseminates, blasphemy, covetousness, bumptiousness, bad taste (and bad art and bad literature, to gratify it), every form of wrong-headedness and wrong-heartedness flourish like the seven plagues of Egypt. But it was all inevitable from the day that ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... blasphemy after these eight years of maternal devotion! But the poor bruised heart was not conscious of its delirium. I thought that some months passed at a distance and in silence would heal the wound, and make his friendship again calm and his memory equitable. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... awaiting trial, execution or transportation, were girls of twelve to senile, helpless creatures of eighty. All were thrust together. Hardened criminals, besotted prostitutes, maidservants accused of stealing thimbles, married women suspected of blasphemy, pure-hearted, brave-natured girls who had run away from brutal parents or more brutal husbands, insane persons—all were herded together. All the keepers were men. Patroling the walls were armed guards, who were ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... Elston, Bedfordshire, in 1628. The son of a tinker, his childhood and early manhood were idle and vicious. A sudden and sharp rebuke from a woman not much better than himself, for his blasphemy, set him to thinking, and he soon became a changed man. In 1653 he joined the Baptists, and soon, without preparation, began to preach. For this he was thrown into jail, where he remained for more than twelve years. It was during ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the preparations were being made; but when Spotted Dog brought down the end of the rope he had rove through the block at the end of the gaff, and stood grinning anticipatively before Dolores, Rufe's tongue came loose, and he burst into a torrent of futile, raving blasphemy. ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... quiet as possible when he was sober, when he was drunk he was a terror, so the police said, and his resources of vituperation were cyclopedic. He possessed in this particular department an eloquence which was incredible. His blasphemy was vast, illimitable, infinite. He told me once that he could not explain it; that when he was sober he abhorred profanity, and never uttered an oath; when he was in liquor his brain took this turn, and distilled blasphemy ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... anybody; and that its great natural purpose so completely transcends the personal interests of any individual or even of any ten generations of individuals that it should be held to be an act of prostitution and even a sort of blasphemy to attempt to turn it to account by exacting a personal return for its gratification, whether by process of law or not. By all means let it be the subject of contracts with society as to its consequences; but to make marriage ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... a poem "Liudmila" in imitation of it. The principal outlines of these three poems are as follows: A maiden loses her lover in the wars; she murmurs at Providence and is vainly reproved for such blasphemy by her mother. Providence at length loses patience and sends her lover's spirit, to all appearances as if in the flesh, who induces the unfortunate maiden to elope. Instead of riding to a church or bridal chamber the unpleasant ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... father, "but relic or no relic, there are many who, while they fully recognise the value of the Sunchild's teaching, dislike these cock and bull stories as blasphemy against God's most blessed gift of reason. There are many in Bridgeford who hate this ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... own hearts. Surely he must say something also. He must tell her how he had dreamed of this instant, how her white shade had visited and soothed his dismal hours—and the rest. As he thought what he should say, love's phrase-book turned to a grim and fearful blasphemy in his own inner ears. But she expected it, of course, and he must speak, when he would have given the life he had to save her from himself and to save himself from the last fall, below which there could ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... sent a police force to protect the heretic funerals and to arrest any priest who disturbed them. There is freedom of speech and printing. The humorous journals are full of blasphemous caricatures that would be impossible out of a Catholic country, for superstition and blasphemy always run in couples. It was the Duke de Guise, commanding the pope's army at Civitella, who cried in his rage at a rain which favored Alva, "God has turned Spaniard;" like Quashee, who burns his fetish when the weather is foul. The liberal Spanish ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... shout was hushed on lake and fell, The Monk resumed his muttered spell: Dismal and low its accents came, The while he scathed the Cross with flame; And the few words that reached the air, Although the holiest name was there, Had more of blasphemy than prayer. But when he shook above the crowd Its kindled points, he spoke aloud:— 'Woe to the wretch who fails to rear At this dread sign the ready spear! For, as the flames this symbol sear, His ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... Son of God, was God himself. The Semite holds that God is so far exalted above all creation, so great and eternal in comparison with the littleness of the world and of man, that God incarnate is not merely a blasphemy but an unmeaning and absurd phrase. Such a dogma was therefore energetically repudiated, and the Semitic race submitted to persecution and dispersal rather than accept it. This is the real reason ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... come into this county and do what he has done and get out again? We know all about him. He sneaked in here and gave out he was here to turn the niggers white—that he was some kind of a new-fangled Jesus sent especially to niggers, which is blasphemy in itself—and he's got 'em stirred up. They're boilin' and festerin' with notions of equality till we're lucky if we don't have to lynch a dozen of 'em, like they did in Atlanta last summer, to get 'em back into their places ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... any selves. You cannot fancy a more sceptical world than that in which men doubt if there is a world. It might certainly have reached its bankruptcy more quickly and cleanly if it had not been feebly hampered by the application of indefensible laws of blasphemy or by the absurd pretence that modern England is Christian. But it would have reached the bankruptcy anyhow. Militant atheists are still unjustly persecuted; but rather because they are an old minority than because ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... pointing, and firing a cannon at any one or number of men is the cause of their death. The powder, cannon, and ball only do what the men appoint them to do. Reader, is not this shocking? Does not thy blood chill at reading all this blasphemy? I am sure mine does at writing. I know, great care is taken to hide their monstrous visage; but as it is there, I am determined to drag it out ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... perfect depolarizations. But I tell you this: the faith of our Christian community is not robust enough to bear the turning of our most sacred language into its depolarized equivalents. You have only to look back to Dr. Channing's famous Baltimore discourse and remember the shrieks of blasphemy with which it was greeted, to satisfy yourself on this point. Time, time only, can gradually wean us from our Epeolatry, or word-worship, by spiritualizing our ideas of the thing signified. Man is an idolater or symbol-worshipper ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... more in charity with all men, for assuredly I never knew her otherwise. But, if the words may be used, as I think they may be understood, without irreverence, or any meaning that would be akin to blasphemy, she seemed to me to be more in charity with her Creator. The ways of God to man had become more justified to her; and her outlook as to the futurity of the world was a more hopeful one. Of course optimism had with her ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... sergeant came to a Christian soldier, and with words of scorn and blasphemy asserted his own independence of any power above him. Said he: 'My heart is my own. I am independent of everything and everybody, your God included.' The reply was a soldier's reply, straight and to the point: 'Jack, some ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... had deluged the streets of Jerusalem with blood, he had plundered and polluted the Temple, offered the unclean beast upon God's holy altar, and set up the image of Jupiter Olympus in the place dedicated to the worship of the Lord of Sabaoth. It was a time of rebuke and blasphemy, of fiery persecution against the one pure faith; and if some shrank back from the trial, other Hebrews showed that the spirit of Shadrach and his brethren still lived amongst ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... us. I scarcely ever met with a better companion; he has inexhaustible spirits, infinite wit and humour, and a great deal of knowledge; but a thorough profligate in principle as in practice, his life stained with every vice, and his conversation full of blasphemy and indecency. These morals he glories in—for shame is a weakness he has long since surmounted.' The following anecdote in Boswelliana (p. 274) is not given in the Life of Johnson:—'Johnson had a sovereign ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... blackguard sailors and hirelings of the English squadron set loose to hunt down the refugees. The shouting became a roar. Then in burst Eli Kirke's front door. The house was suddenly filled with swearings enough to cram his blasphemy box to the brim. There was a trampling of feet on the stairs, followed by the crashing of overturned furniture, and the rabble had rushed up with neither let nor hindrance and ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... lasting happiness for actions which Fenelon would have been the first to pronounce splendid sins. The same may be said of Mr. Southey's Mahommedan and Hindoo heroes and heroines. In Thalaba, to speak in derogation of the Arabian impostor is blasphemy; to drink wine is a crime; to perform ablutions and to pay honor to the holy cities are works of merit. In the Curse of Kehama, Kailyal is commended for her devotion to the statue of Mariataly, the goddess of the poor. But certainly no person will ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... time M.P. for Aylesbury, enjoyed the privilege of Parliament. A jury awarded Wilkes heavy damages against the Government for false imprisonment, and the result of the trial made Wilkes a popular hero. Then, in 1764, the Government brought a new charge of blasphemy and libel, and Wilkes, expelled from the House of Commons, and condemned by the King's Bench, fled to France, and was promptly declared an outlaw. He returned, however, a year or two later, and while in prison was elected M.P. for Middlesex. The ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... to "the chief Nobility and Estates," whom Knox addresses. "I would your Honours should note for the first, that no idolater can be exempted from punishment by God's Law. The second is, that the punishment of such crimes as are idolatry, blasphemy, and others, that touch the Majesty of God, doth not appertain to kings and chief rulers only" (as he had argued that they do, in 1554), "but also to the whole body of that people, and to every member of the same, according ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... certain token of death when life is in blossom—physical suffering, or the malady of too early thought preying upon a soul as yet in bud? Perhaps a mother knows. For my own part, I know of nothing more dreadful to see than an old man's thoughts on a child's forehead; even blasphemy from girlish lips is ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... a dispensation of Providence, and ascribe it entirely to the blight of the potatoes. But potatoes failed in like manner all over Europe, yet there was no famine save in Ireland. The British account of the matter, then, is first a fraud; second, a blasphemy. The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... squadrons; no field, but is fertilized by the blood of the dead; and everywhere man slays, the vulture gorges, and the wolf howls in the ear of the dying soldier. No city is not tortured by shot and shell; and no people fail to enact the horrid blasphemy of thanking a God of Love for victories and carnage. Te Deums are still sung for the Eve of St. Bartholomew and the Sicilian Vespers. Man's ingenuity is racked, and all his inventive powers are tasked, to fabricate the infernal enginery ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... that a lay-brother was afflicted with heavy sickness by reason of the sun's great heat; and Satan strove with him for his undoing, so that the poor soul foamed at the mouth and roared out blasphemy; yea, verily, and must be held with cords also, lest he do himself or his fellows some grievous hurt. But when the Prior laid his hand between the man's troubled eyes sweet sleep came upon him, and his madness ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... proof of the inferiority of Boston that if you passed down Washington Street, half a dozen men in the crowd would know you were Holmes, or Lowell, or Longfellow, or Wendell Phillips; but in Broadway no one would know who you were, or care to the measure of his smallest blasphemy. I have since heard this more than once urged as a signal advantage of New York for the aesthetic inhabitant, but I am not sure, yet, that it is so. The unrecognized celebrity probably has his mind quite as much upon himself as if some one pointed him out, and otherwise I cannot ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... no need,' she said, 'for more than one of us to behold such monstrous evil. 'Tis a society of fiends, Lucy, a training-school for all vice, and the keeper is worthy of it. I think it is not less than acted blasphemy to throw good men into it; as well send them alive into hell. The Lord look upon it, ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... connected with political plots, could not but subject them to ridicule, abuse, and actual persecution. They habitually violated numerous laws on the statute-book, ranging from those requiring good order to those forbidding what was construed as blasphemy. They were, therefore, beaten and stoned by the mob; abused, fined, and imprisoned by the magistrates; ridiculed and prosecuted by the clergy; subjected to starvation, exposure, and other hardships by sheriffs and jailers. [Footnote: ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... her face so hard against her hands that patches of red came upon her cheeks. And afterwards it seemed to her as if her first real, passionate prayer in Beni-Mora had been almost like a command to God. Was not such a fierce prayer perhaps a blasphemy? ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... Leonard Dober; and, to put the matter beyond all doubt, they inscribed on their minutes the resolution: "That the office of General Elder be abolished, and be transferred to the Saviour."97 At first sight that resolution savours both of blasphemy and of pride; and Ritschl, the great theologian, declares that the Brethren put themselves on a pedestal above all other Churches. For that judgment Moravian writers have largely been to blame. It has been asserted again and again that on that famous ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... white, friend," said Adam, good-naturedly. "Blasphemy, or hypocrisy either, is sufficient to sink ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... Lord's resurrection. That Roman centurion who had been at Calvary reviewed for Quintus the fateful happenings. With pomp reminding of a Roman triumph the Christ had entered David's city; after four days Iscariot had betrayed him with a kiss; for blasphemy Pilatus, the procurator, had sentenced him to the cross; they had put on him a scarlet robe in mockery; they had hung him between two robbers on the hill of Golgotha; a brutal soldier now at Scopus had won by lot his seamless robe, and ...
— An Easter Disciple • Arthur Benton Sanford
... followers in their preaching to ascribe any such rank to him. The authority which he actually claimed for his words and deeds was that of the Holy Spirit of God; and those who maintained that he cast out demons by the power of Satan were, he said, guilty of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. It is probable that the gospel tradition is trustworthy which associates his baptism at the hands of John the Baptist with his first consciousness ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... of Ulf—where the God-Egg struck Flora. It is buried in the pit, but the Silent Death has protected it from blasphemy—and besides Man Alexander never learned about it. We feared that he would destroy it as he ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... That was entirely within the limitations of stage art. Seth Low was Mayor of Brooklyn, and Mr. Grace was Mayor of New York—a Protestant and a Catholic—and yet they were of one opinion on this proposed blasphemy. ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... be so,' answered the priest, 'unless it's a sign of a lottery office, or a caution against blasphemy up and down the pavement. Those are the only signs we have in the country, except the government salt and cigar shops.' ... He took a snuff-box from a pocket in his sleeve, and with a bow offered a pinch ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... seem, however, to have been such as the world thinks venial. His keen sensibility and his powerful imagination made his internal conflicts singularly terrible. He fancied that he was under sentence of reprobation, that he had committed blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, that he had sold Christ, that he was actually possessed by a demon. Sometimes loud voices from heaven cried out to warn him. Sometimes fiends whispered impious suggestions in his ear. He saw visions of distant mountain tops, on which ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... be crucified for their blasphemy,' said Pansa, with vehemence; 'they deny Venus and Jove! Nazarene is but another name for atheist. Let ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... the operations of God, then we fall into a more absurd blasphemy, since we condemn God for not being able, on account of the want of matter, to finish His own works. The resourcelessness of human nature has deceived these reasoners. Each of our crafts is exercised upon some special matter—the art of the smith upon iron, that of the carpenter ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... a considering brother mortal with sorrow and despair, as this innate tendency of the common crowd in regard to its Great Men, whensoever, or almost whensoever, the Heavens do, at long intervals, vouchsafe us, as their all-including blessing, anything of such! Practical "BLASPHEMY," is it not, if you reflect? Strangely possible that sin, even now. And ought to be religiously abhorred by every soul that has the least piety or nobleness. Act not the mutinous flunky, my friend; though there be great wages going in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... sensible; and if sensible, then created; and if created, made by a cause, and the cause is the ineffable father of all things, who had before him an eternal archetype. For to imagine that the archetype was created would be blasphemy, seeing that the world is the noblest of creations, and God is the best of causes. And the world being thus created according to the eternal pattern is the copy of something; and we may assume that words are akin to the matter of which they speak. What is spoken of ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... more than two centuries since, on the 14th February, 1633, the astronomer, cited before the Inquisition, arrived at Rome, to answer the charge of heresy and blasphemy; while, a few months ago, in the brief but glorious day-burst of Roman liberty, that very Inquisition was invaded by an exultant populace, and among its archives, full memorials of martyred worth and of heroic endurance, most ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... misery, at which I seemed ambitious to arrive. During six hours, I sat in a state of absolute stupor; and echoed the uproar and blasphemy that surrounded me with deep but unconscious groans. I do not know that I so much as moved, till the company was entirely dispersed, and I was awakened from my torpor by the groom porter. I then languidly returned to my lodging, exhausted and unable longer ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... of misrule sent Seized on Lionel and bore His chained limbs to a dreary tower, For he, they said, from his mind had bent Against their gods keen blasphemy. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... have lived in the west of England who have not heard of the colliers of Kingswood, famous for neither regarding God nor man. The scene is changed. Kingswood does not now, as a year ago, resound with cursing and blasphemy. Peace and love reign there since the preaching of the Gospel in the spring. Great numbers of the people are gentle, mild, and easy to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... face actually twitched and blanched at the blasphemy. "Your Majesty is joking," he said, as though he wanted to be reassured ...
— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper
... the kind, vile rabble," said Don Quixote, burning with rage, "nothing of the kind, I say, only ambergris and civet in cotton; nor is she one-eyed or humpbacked, but straighter than a Guadarrama spindle: but ye must pay for the blasphemy ye have uttered against beauty like that ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Grand Duke Peter, had been the boor, the vulgar proletarian. The look in her eyes had shamed him as the look in his own eyes had shamed her. She had known what his wooing meant, and it hadn't been what she wanted. The mention of love on lips that kissed as his had done was blasphemy. ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... up—upon him and his pots and his pipes, and the tavern-chorus which he and his friends are singing. Such a man as Charles should have had an Ostade or Mieris to paint him. Your Knellers and Le Bruns only deal in clumsy and impossible allegories: and it hath always seemed to me blasphemy to claim Olympus for such a wine-drabbled ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... time, the great stronghold of intellectual conservatism, traditional belief, has been assailed by facts which would have been indicted as blasphemy but a few generations ago. Those new tables of the law, placed in the hands of the geologist by the same living God who spoke from Sinai to the Israelites of old, have remodelled the beliefs of half the civilized world. The solemn scepticism of ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... his voice, mad with rage, was heard above the rest, shouting frenziedly a curse which was a horribly grotesque blasphemy upon the name of God. Men who had used that oath in their insane anger had been known to commit suicide ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... which I have thought may have proved a difficulty and cost the University delay, I will touch but a moment upon that, and pass on. The University decided that it was blasphemy for Joan to say that her saints spoke French and not English, and were on the French side in political sympathies. I think that the thing which troubled the doctors of theology was this: they had decided that the three Voices were Satan and two other devils; but they had also decided ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the stage picking up its dainty fruit, and showed itself to be an ape. Occasions of vain-glory, ambition, pleasure, &c., are the devil's baits and prove who are Christians, and who hypocrites and dissemblers under so great a name, whose lives are an injury and blasphemy against Christ and his holy religion. His book On Perfection teaches, that that life is most perfect which resembles nearest the life of Christ in humility and charity, and in dying to all passions and to the love of creatures ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... In a recent meeting at the Egyptian Hall, a celebrated Irish Barrister is reported to have said, that 'blasphemy was the only trade that prospered.' The assertion, like many others in the same speech, was certainly a bold one, and one which the gentleman would have found some difficulty in establishing. If, however, the learned gentleman had substituted the word law for blasphemy, he would have ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... to himself and his successors. He was stern with blasphemers, whose lips he caused to be branded with a hot iron. "I have heard him say," writes Joinville, "with his own mouth, that he would he were marked with a red-hot iron himself if thereby he could banish all oaths and blasphemy from his kingdom. Full twenty-two years have I been in his company, and never have I heard him swear or blaspheme God or His holy Mother or any Saint, howsoever angry he may have been: and when he would affirm anything, he would say, 'Verily it is so, or verily ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... of words respecting the decrees of Providence to the caprices of James and his beslobbered minion the Duke of Buckingham, is somewhat nearer to blasphemy than even the euphuism of ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... attended church, anxious that he might not by his example dash in humble minds the belief which tended to make them good and happy, though it was a belief which he could not share. My present nolion is, that laws ought to punish coarse and abusive blasphemy. They may let thoughtful and philosophic scepticism alone. It will hardly reach, it will never distress, the masses. But if a blackguard goes up to a parsonage door, and bellows out blasphemous remarks about ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... years a new cult had begun to grow around the person of Chunder Sen, like those around a thousand others well known in the history of India. He became to some of his followers not only a great religious teacher, but also something of an incarnation on his own account, so that it seemed to them blasphemy for any living being to aspire to speak from the pulpit of ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... minutes before the words would have seemed blasphemy to him, now they sounded like an ordinary commonplace. He put the glass to his lips and emptied it ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... one minute in which to establish the fruitlessness of spurs, whip and blasphemy in this emergency, and then, descending to his own legs, he climbed over the fence into the road and ran as fast as boots and tops would let him towards the point whence the cry of the hounds was coming, ever more and more faintly. In a moment or ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... grew more and more identified with patriotism under the eyes of a king who whispered, and scribbled, and looked at picture-books during mass, who never confessed, and cursed God in wild frenzies of blasphemy. Great peoples formed themselves on both sides of the sea round a sovereign who bent the whole force of his mind to hold together an Empire which the growth of nationality must inevitably destroy. There is throughout a tragic grandeur in the irony of Henry's ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... subscription was taken up, and $1,200 was contributed. This sum was supplemented by a sufficient amount to complete the structure, from the treasury of St. Croix county. It was perched on the top of one of the high bluffs in that town, and much private and judicial blasphemy has been expended by exhausted litigants and judges in climbing to its lofty pinnacle. I held a term in it ten years after ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... blasphemy to hope that Heaven More perfectly will give those nameless joys Which throb within the pulses of the blood And sweeten all that bitterness which Earth Infuses in the heaven-born soul. O thou 5 Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path Which this lone ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... was called, the declaration, that the preservation of Christianity is one of the great and leading ends of government. This is declared in the charter of the State. Then the laws of Pennsylvania, the statutes against blasphemy, the violation of the Lord's day, and others to the same effect, proceed on this great, broad principle, that the preservation of Christianity is one of the main ends of government. This is the general public policy of Pennsylvania. On this head we have the case of ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... to the reproduction of the species, is the most hateful blasphemy which modern manners have taught us to utter. Nature, in raising us above the beasts by the divine gift of thought, had rendered us very sensitive to bodily sensations, emotional sentiment, cravings of appetite and passions. This double nature of ours makes of man ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... why mere blasphemy by itself should be an excuse for tyranny and treason; or how the mere isolated fact of a man not believing in God should be a reason ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... echoed Jernam; "an angel, you mean! I did not know there were such women in the world; and to think that such a woman should be here, in this place, in the midst of all this tobacco-smoke, and noise, and blasphemy! It seems hard, ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... whereby we may injure or approach too closely to our neighbor. For to bear false witness is nothing else than a work of the tongue. Now, whatever is done with the tongue against a fellow-man God would have prohibited, whether it be false preachers with their doctrine and blasphemy, false judges and witnesses with their verdict, or outside of court by lying and evil-speaking. Here belongs particularly the detestable, shameful vice of speaking behind a person's back and slandering, to which the devil spurs us on and of which there would be much to be said. For it is a ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... could not deny 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 ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... frighten my palfry. I wheeled round, rode up to the window, and asked him what he meant. He grinned, and said some foolery, which produced him an immediate slap in the face, to his utter discomfiture. Much blasphemy ensued, and some menace, which I stopped by dismounting and opening the carriage door, and intimating an intention of mending the road with his immediate remains, if he did not hold his ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... thrusting to left and right, irresistibly clearing the corner. There was no question of making arrests; it was the night of Bank-holiday, and the capacity of police-cells is limited. Enough that the fight perforce came to an end. Amid frenzied blasphemy Bob and Jack went their several ways; so ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... her eyes from him to Long Oliver, who leant against the staircase wall with his arms crossed and a veiled amusement in his face. With a slightly heightened colour, but no flutter of the voice, she repeated her blasphemy; and then, pulling a shilling from her worn purse, tendered it to Geake. This, of course, meant "Mind your own business"; but he ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this year was different, Lin made a step toward them. There were hours and spots where he could readily have descended upon them at that, played the role of clinking affluence, waved thanks aside with competent blasphemy, and tossing off some infamous whiskey, cantered away in the full self-conscious strut of the frontier. But here was not the moment; the abashed cow-puncher could make no such parade in this place. The people brushed by him back and forth, busy upon their errands, ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister |
