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Sacrilege   /sˈækrələdʒ/   Listen
Sacrilege

noun
1.
Blasphemous behavior; the act of depriving something of its sacred character.  Synonyms: blasphemy, desecration, profanation.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Sacrilege" Quotes from Famous Books



... Henry Sacrament, the Its mercenary use Presbyterian objection to prostituting the service of our falsification of the Sacrilege Sancroft, Archbishop Satan, his depths St. Patrick's, liberty of, petition of to Swift St. Paul, on obedience on mutual service his opinion of philosophy St. Peter, on obedience Schism, its danger and spiritual evil Schoolmen, the Scotch, the characteristics of Scott, Sir W., his opinion ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... thunder of "Sacrilege! Sacrilege!" rose to Heaven, and men were gathering. In front the crowd which skirmished about the inn was less dense, and, ignorant of the thing that had happened in the narrow street, made ready way for him, the boldest recoiling before the look on his face. ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... in their regard to the level of Religion, and was confounded with God. The attacks made on it appeared to them a sacrilege; almost a species of cannibalism. In spite of the most humane legislation that ever existed, the spectre of '93 reappeared, and the chopper of the guillotine vibrated in every syllable of the word "Republic," which did not prevent ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... bad state. There had been a great disturbance at Julius Caesar's house. Every year there was a festival in honor of Cybele, the Bona Dea, or Good Goddess, to which none but women were admitted, and where it was sacrilege for a man to be seen. In the midst of this feast in Caesar's house, a slave girl told his mother Aurelia that there was a man among the ladies. Aurelia shut the doors, took a torch and ran through the house, ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... i' th' very Form on't, Had I been conscious I'd been near the Temple, Where this bright Relick of the glorious Martyr Had been enshrin'd, 't had spoil'd my soft Devotion. —'Tis Sacrilege to dally where it is; A rude, a saucy Treason to approach it With an unbended Knee: for Heav'ns sake, Madam, Let us not be profane in our Delights, Either withdraw, or hide ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... to her every day, Girard often made her come to the Jesuits' Church. There, before the altar, before the cross, he surrendered himself to a passion all the fiercer for such a sacrilege. Had she no scruples? did she still deceive herself? It seems as if, in the midst of an elation still unfeigned and earnest, her conscience was already dazed and darkened. Under cover of her bleeding wounds, those cruel favours of her heavenly ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... that ought to make any man happy, with a mother like you. And now—a new happiness came to me, the other day, that I meant to speak of yesterday and couldn't after getting so angry with father. It seemed like sacrilege to speak of it then, and, besides, there was another feeling ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... chuse but tell them, that all other Crimes put together could not equalize theirs: For they were guilty of Murder, in not suffering those to be born which should proceed from them; of Impiety, in causing the Names and Honours of their Ancestors to cease; and of Sacrilege, in destroying their Kind, which proceeded from the immortal Gods, and Human Nature, the principal thing consecrated to 'em: Therefore in this Respect they dissolved the Government, in disobeying its Laws; betrayed their Country, by making it barren and waste; nay and demolished their ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... god. Should the new King-God fail, as his father had done, to accomplish the duties of the rainmaker, then, as no precedent had ever been known for the failure of two kings in succession, an enemy might accuse Bakahenzie of having committed some sacrilege which had displeased the Unmentionable One. Politics and religion are often inseparable. Therefore, as soon as Zalu Zako had witnessed the ascent of his father into the dangerous zone of the gods, was he bidden as the victim apparent, ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... is hard not to believe the reason alleged to be merely popular, and the money intended for some private purse. The order however was obeyed; the two churches were stripped, and the lead was shipped to be sold in Holland. I hope every reader will rejoice that this cargo of sacrilege was lost ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... international good-will. A century hence these shattered churches will be pointed out to visitors as the work of the modern Vandals, and lovers of art and beauty throughout the world will execrate the nation which permitted the sacrilege. They have destroyed glass and paintings and sculptures that were a joy to the whole world, they have undone the work of saints and heroes and masters, and they have gained no corresponding military advantage. In every ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... were sacrilege to thus befoul The mighty soul whose penetration deep Hath by selection brought this galaxy Of excellence to lead this groping state In paths which lead to ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... N. impiety; sin &c. 945; irreverence; profaneness &c. adj.; profanity, profanation; blasphemy, desecration, sacrilege; scoffing &c.v. [feigned piety] hypocrisy &c. (falsehood) 544; pietism, cant, pious fraud; lip devotion, lip service, lip reverence; misdevotion[obs3], formalism, austerity; sanctimony, sanctimoniousness &c. adj; pharisaism, precisianism[obs3]; sabbatism[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... Whatever the English pirate's faults, he deserves credit for treating the Indians with an honor that puts later navigators to shame. When he saw them gashing bodies in sacrifice, his superstition took fire with fear of Divine displeasure for the sacrilege; and the man who did not scruple to treat black slaves picked up among the Spaniards baser than he would have treated dogs, now fell "to prayers," as the old chronicle says, reading the Bible aloud, and setting his crew to singing psalms, ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... comparatively modern; but the people generally know nothing of its history, and they regard it as an inheritance from the most ancient times. It comes to them as the gifts of gods and sages, which it would be sacrilege to reject. There is much in the religion itself to bind the people to it. Its numerous ceremonies, sustained by the largest promises, give the assurance of a great reward. In discharging their religious duties they have often to endure toil, undergo privation, and make sacrifices; but the more ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... gentleness made her so happy; he called her "Star"! He said he didn't love anyone else! He said he didn't mind because they had no children.... Oh, how dreadful for her to have had those shameful fears—and out in "their meadow," too! It was sacrilege.... Aloud, she said she could be ready by the first of the week; "And you'll stay with me? Can't you take two ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... that inferences drawn from probable facts eclipse the stupendous falsehood of Ananias and Sapphira! Then the same family strain inevitably crops out, in the loosely-woven web of defensive presumptive evidence—whose pedigree we trace to the same parentage. God forbid that I should commit the sacrilege of arrogating His divine attribute—infallibility—for any human authority, however exalted; or claim it for any amount of proof, presumptive or positive. 'It is because humanity even when most cautious and discriminating is so mournfully fallible and prone to error, that in judging ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... under the distressing circumstances of the case, there would be no sacrilege in placing in the church, for the night, the pieces of furniture and utensils which had been saved from the several houses. There was no other place of safety for them, and they ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... the part of a betrothed spouse to take thought. My vows were renewed of my own free will and it were sacrilege to try to recall them for the ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... seized and brought on shore by the corsairs of the Lipari islands in Sicily; when Timasitheus, the prince of these islands, on learning the nature of the offering, its destination, and by whom sent, though himself of Lipari, behaved as a Roman might, showing his people what sacrilege it would be to intercept such a gift, and speaking to such purpose that by general consent the envoys were suffered to proceed upon their voyage, taking all their possessions with them. With reference to which incident the historian observes: ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... barred by strange inconsistencies. The man who praises the works of the Creator as all wise not infrequently treats His arrangement for carrying on the race as if it were unfit to be spoken of in polite society. Nowhere does the modern God-fearing man come nearer to sacrilege than in his attitude toward the divine ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell

... spoke truth or not, yet their sacrilege did not remain unpunished; for attempting to return homeward toward the sea by way of the Nile, they were set upon while weighed down with wine and sleep, by the country people, and to a man miserably destroyed. But the pious folk, restoring the holy gold ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... love with her upon the spot. It was not in the heart of man to resist her...that dainty, alluring bit of womanhood. She was all in white, with flowers in her hair, and, for a moment, I could have murdered Frank or any other man who dared to commit the sacrilege ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... The Jews could sin in a way no other contemporary race could sin, for theirs was a sin against light; and Catholics can sin with a depth and intensity with which Protestants cannot sin. There will be more blasphemy, more hatred of God, more of diabolical rebellion, more of awful sacrilege, more of vile hypocrisy in a Catholic country than anywhere else, because there is in it more of sin against light. Surely, this is just what Scripture says, "Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida!" ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... fate had placed in his keeping for a moment. In the moonlight he watched her, and as he gazed upon her graceful figure and small head and slender, bending arms, it seemed to him that she had come down from an altar to suffer in life, and that it had been almost sacrilege to lay his hands upon her shoulders and keep her from doing her own will. He almost wondered how he had found courage to be so rough and commanding. He was gentle of heart, though it was his trade to make sharp speeches, ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford

... of personal tenderness for the old trees on his place at Kennett. He said that friends were telling him to cut this tree and cut that. To him this would have been almost a sacrilege. The trees seemed to depend on him for protection, and they should have it. Writing from this country home which he had built, he says, "The birds know me already, and I have learned to imitate the partridge and rain-dove, so that I can lure them ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... complete them from top to bottom. This labour seemed to them to surpass the most excessive corvee which a just ruler had a right to impose upon his subjects, and the reputation of Kheops and Khephren suffered much in consequence. They were accused of sacrilege, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... Binan. Everybody in his neighborhood knew that the estate had been purchased with money left in Mexico by pious Spaniards who wanted to see Christianity spread in the Philippines, and it seemed to them sacrilege that the government should take such property ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig

... will the love of gain suggest to these gold-worshippers? The whole earth should enter into a protest against such an act of sacrilege—such a shameless desecration of one of the noblest works ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... "but for the whole host of the Greeks," that is, of the other philosophers, amongst which are Democritus, Plato, Stilpo, Empedocles, Parmenides, and Melissus, who have been basely traduced and reviled by him, it were not only a shame to be silent, but even a sacrilege in the least point to forbear or recede from freedom of speech in their behalf, who have advanced philosophy to that honor and ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... and commonly preached, that the old ancient Jews (of whom we make no doubt but they were the worshippers of the only and true God) did worship either a sow, or an ass, in God's stead, and that all the same religion was nothing else but a sacrilege, and a plain contempt of all godliness. We know also that the Son of God, our Saviour Jesu Christ, when He taught the truth, was counted a juggler and an enchanter, a Samaritan, Beelzebub, a deceiver of the people, a drunkard, and a glutton. Again, who wotteth not what ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel

... for want of thine. Shall the dull market landlord, with his rout Of sneaking tenants, dirtily swill out This harmless liquor shall they knock and beat For sack, only to talk of rye and wheat? Oh, let not such preposterous tippling be; In our metropolis, may I ne'er see Such tavern sacrilege, nor lend a line To weep the rapes and tragedy of wine! Here lives that chemic quick-fire, which betrays Fresh spirits to the blood, and warms our lays; I have reserved, 'gainst thy approach, a cup, That, were thy muse stark ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... Saturn, the door closed of the place where the treasure was deposited, ordered it to be forced. L. Metellus, tribune of the people, made strong opposition, conjuring Caesar not to bring on the Republic the penalty of such sacrilege: but "the Republic has nothing to fear," said Caesar; "I have released it from its oaths by subjugating Gaul. There are no more Gauls." He caused the door to be forced, and the treasure was abstracted and distributed to the troops, Gallic ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... repeated the imprecation. He repeated it because it shocked him. It struck at what he held to be most sacred. It profaned his holy of holies, and left it bare to sacrilege. It gave him a fierce, perverted joy to feel that she whom he would have loved to shield with everything that was most tender was now exposed to his cursing. It was rifling his own sanctuary and trampling its ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King

... at such a moment seemed sacrilege to her, for her up-bringing had been good. Her mother had once fainted in the church, but though the family's distress was great, they neither bore her out, nor signed to the kirk-officer to bring water. They propped her up in the pew in a respectful ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... be still, Olive Halleck?" Miss Kingsbury was now a large, blonde mass of suffering, "Oh, dear, dear! What shall I do? It was sacrilege—yes, it was nothing less than sacrilege—to go on as I did. And I meant so well! I did so admire, and respect, and revere her!" Olive burst out laughing. "You wicked girl!" whimpered Clara. "Should ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... is a sacred thing and one that it is a sacrilege to break. Never make a promise lightly. But just remember, laddie, that I'd far rather you didn't smoke for a few years yet. But should you feel you must why come ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... the young plants declare these "greens" are as good as spinach. What sacrilege to reduce crisp, glossy, beautiful leaves like these to a slimy mess in a pot! The tender buds, often used in white sauce as a substitute for capers, probably do not give it the same piquancy where piquancy ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... mulberry-tree, and, as Dr. Johnson told me, did it to vex his neighbours. His lady, I have reason to believe, on the same authority, participated in the guilt of what the enthusiasts for our immortal bard deem almost a species of sacrilege. ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... words standing for those simple ideas, be represented to the mind of one who understands those words, though that complex combination of simple ideas were never offered to his mind by the real existence of things. Thus a man may come to have the idea of SACRILEGE or MURDER, by enumerating to him the simple ideas which these words stand for; without ever ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke

... to rank and family? Will you tell me THAT doctrine can be held by men of birth and legal education? No, sir; if a trifle stolen in the street is termed mere pickery, but is elevated into sacrilege if the crime be committed in a church, so, according to the just gradations of society, the guilt of an injury is enhanced by the rank of the person to whom it is ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... of the magnifying glass he could see her bright, unconscious face, the merry profile of her cheek and chin. . . . "The idea of that girl working in a second-hand bookstore!" he exclaimed. "It's positive sacrilege! Old ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... out, "it's wrong; it's not worth it nothing could be. I'd be willing to go a long way, but a Prussian officer! It's, it's sacrilege. And ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... remembered his brother's saying that in their deceased father's medicine-sack were three magic arrows. Off he started, his anxiety to kill the swan overcoming all scruples. At any other time, he would have deemed it sacrilege to open his father's medicine-sack; but now he hastily seized the three arrows and ran back, leaving the other contents of the sack scattered over the lodge. The swan was still there. He shot the first arrow with great precision, and came very near to it. The second came still closer; as he took ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... answered, how Senor Izaaks had taken the stone and given him money for it. A military court was ordered to try him, but it was puzzled to know what to do with him. If the fellow were a common thief he deserved more than prison: he merited the gallows and a quicklime burial, for he had added sacrilege to robbery. But if he were a thief, why did he confess so freely, and even glory in his sin? Then, too, if it were the wish of the Virgin that he should receive this gift, by what right did any civic or military body interfere, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... the ruin of France," continued the Jesuit, "comes from two roots which must be torn up; the one is the extreme ignorance and scandalous life of the ecclesiastics, the other is the tyranny and the abominable life of the nobility, who with sacrilege and insatiable avarice have entered upon the property of the Church. This nobility is divided into three factions. The first, and not the least, is heretic; the second and the most pernicious is politic or ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... You will not fall into sin again; it is our prayers that enable men to overcome their passions. Were it not for our prayers, God would have long ago destroyed the world. Think of the times of persecution and sacrilege, when prayer only survived in ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... they're the inhabitants of the place, who've hurriedly changed into birds just while we are here, but will change back into little, trim old ladies and old gentlemen," whispered Nell; for it seemed sacrilege to break the silence. ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... When, suddenly, his ear A far off murmur caught, Low, deep, impending, as of trooping winds, Up from his father's grave, That ever still some fearful echoes gave, Such as had lately warned him in his dream, Of all that he had lost—of all he still might save! Well knew he of the sacrilege that made That sacred vault, where thrice two hundred kings Were in their royal pomp and purple laid, Refuge for meanest things;— Well knew he of the horrid midnight rite, And the foul orgies, and the ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... quiet of the pinking day this inroad of commercialism struck Steve suddenly both as slaughter and sacrilege; among the stalwart standing patriarchs and their bowed brethren he sat his horse staring frowningly at the little ugly clutter of ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... we read it until moonlight and morning met, and the breakfast-bell ringing out into the soft air from the old gable, found us at the end of the fourth volume. Dear old times! when it would have been deemed little less than sacrilege to crush a respectable romance into a shilling volume, and our mammas considered only a five-volume story curtailed of ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various

... misdeeds which man is prone to commit, were punished by a money-bote only. Murder, larceny, arson, rape—all offences against the person were commuted for a definite price. There were a few exceptions, such as parricide, which was followed by loss of inheritance; sacrilege and the murder of a master by a slave, which were punished with death. It is a natural inference that, as the royal treasury was enriched by these imposts, the sovereign would hardly attempt to check the annual harvest of iniquity by which his revenue was increased. Still, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... of theology and priest, by name Nicholas the Bird-Catcher, comes to confess her in prison. He abuses the sacrament to the point of hiding behind a piece of serge two priests who transcribed Joan of Arc's confession. Thus did the judges use sacrilege in order to be murderers. And an unfortunate idiot, who had had enough courage to render very great services to the king and the country, was condemned to be burned by forty-four French priests who immolated ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... and awed by his good fortune he wondered how much more he might save before he was forced to leave his employment; and to have touched a penny of his savings would have seemed to him a sin near to sacrilege. Yet he did not hesitate for a single moment to send Henrietta Brown, whose address he had been able to obtain through the bank books, a diamond brooch which had cost twenty pounds. He omitted to say whence it had come, and for days he lived in a warm wonderment, satisfied in the ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... fled far, far away, that they might be happy. But a sudden terror took possession of him. What! lay hands upon that little spotless soul, kill all belief in it, fill it with the ruins which worked such havoc in his own soul? It all at once occurred to him that this would be odious sacrilege. He would afterwards become horrified with himself, he would look upon himself as her murderer were he some day to realise that he was unable to give her a happiness equal to that which she would have lost. Perhaps, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... (animal) zibelo. Sabot ligna sxuo. Sabre hakglavo, sabro. Sacerdotal pastra. Sack sako. Sack (pillage) rabadi. Sackcloth sxtofego. Sacrament sakramento. Sacred sankta. Sacredness sankteco. Sacrifice oferi. Sacrilege malpiajxo. Sad malgxoja. Sadden malgxojigi. Saddle selo. Sadness malgxojeco. Safe (money) monkesto. Safe sendangxera. Safety sendangxereco. Saffron safrano. Sagacious sagaca. Sagacity sagaceco. Sage sagxa. Sage ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... near the gate of St. Romanus, four towers had been levelled with the ground. For the payment of his feeble and mutinous troops, Constantine was compelled to despoil the churches with the promise of a fourfold restitution; and his sacrilege offered a new reproach to the enemies of the union. A spirit of discord impaired the remnant of the Christian strength; the Genoese and Venetian auxiliaries asserted the preeminence of their respective service; and Justiniani and the great duke, whose ambition was not extinguished ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... those which have been in her family for generations! What sacrilege!" cried the countess, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... infamous; that authorized Marseillaise, a sacrilege. Men are ferocious and conceited brutes; we are in the HALF AS MUCH of Pascal; when will come the MORE ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... to the singing of Professor Bliss and Miss Nellie Brown, it seems as though we are all in the third heaven at once, and that it is almost sacrilege to ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... villain! Know that it is sacrilege for a common mortal to embrace one who has been kissed by his most illustrious Highness the Heir-presumptive ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... household, and was welcomed as a guest by Florence. He attended mass in the Cathedral which was to be the scene of the assassination, since Lorenzo and his brother were certain to attend it. Two priests offered to perform the deed of sacrilege from which the original assassin recoiled. They hated Lorenzo for his treatment of Volterra, and drove him behind the gates of the new sacristy. Giuliano was slain at the very altar, his body being pierced with no less than nineteen wounds, but Lorenzo escaped to mourn the fate of the ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... sacrilege to dive into a man's feelings and secrets like this," he said, ruefully. "It is! My only consolation is that I did ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan

... little all?—the fruit of those privations that have made me so unhappy! are you mad, Joseph?" cried the old woman, visibly torn between her dogged faith in the coming trey, and the sacrilege of accepting such ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... the series (next to one of Benjamin Franklin)—a life and portrait of Mahomet. Both are said to have been unexceptionable according to European ideas, but the whole Mussulman population (145,000 in number) considered their faith insulted and outraged by the publication, holding it sacrilege and idolatry to imagine and print any likeness whatever of so ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... was not for him to commit the sacrilege of reading what that girl who had been his mother had written thirty years ago to the man she loved—the man who had proved false ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... The Recalcitrants Starlings on the Roof The Moon looks in The Sweet Hussy The Telegram The Moth-signal Seen by the Waits The Two Soldiers The Death of Regret In the Days of Crinoline The Roman Gravemounds The Workbox The Sacrilege The Abbey Mason The Jubilee of a Magazine The Satin Shoes Exeunt Omnes A Poet Postscript ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy

... each mark. A widow may not wear any of these ornaments; she is always impure, being perpetually haunted by the ghost of her dead husband, and they could thus be of no advantage to her; while, on the other hand, her wearing them would probably be considered a kind of sacrilege or pollution ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... nymphs, the sylphs, the fairies of ancient legend, all her kinsfolk gathering about her bed, deploring her condition, regarding her as lost to them—were such a thing to happen I should certainly kneel there in spirit with them. And feeling just as Balzac did about Massimilla Doni, that it was a sacrilege that Doris should be "expecting" or even married, I wrote, omitting, however, to tell her why I had suddenly resolved to break silence; I sent her a little note, only a few words, that I was sorry not to have heard of her for so long a time; but though we had been estranged she ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... move them," I protested. "It would be too great a sacrilege." The best way to get Peter properly started is never to agree ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... play—that dreadful play! That was Olga's doing. I was there, Philidor, at Rood's Knoll. I saw it all. Listened in terror to every word of the dreadful sacrilege. It was sacrilege!—to see my love and yours pictured the dreadful thing that that love was. I got out somehow. They were talking of me—lightly. I heard them; as they talked of—of other women who do not know right from wrong—as they would have talked of that ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... thou, slanderer! rouge makes thee sick? And China Bloom at best is sorry food? And Rowland's Kalydor, if laid on thick, Poisons the thirsty wretch that bores for blood? Go! 'twas a just reward that met thy crime; But shun the sacrilege another time. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... with a stamp of her little feet she had shaken the pleats from her skirt—adding when they had all kissed her hand in turn—"Yes—I am going down to be dairy-maid at Peggy Coston's," at which the bald-headed old fellows, with their hands upraised in protest at so great a sacrilege, bowed to the ground, their fingers on their ruffled shirt-fronts, and the younger ones lifted their furry hats and kept them in the air until she had crossed the gang-plank and Todd and Mammy Henny, and Ben who had come to help, lost their several breaths getting the impatient dogs and ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... that there is blood on that floor. That man will step in it. I cannot lend myself to such sacrilege. It is wrong. Let the lady ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... remain only external marriage, to which idolatry, and not the church, corresponds; therefore marriage with one wife we call sacrimony; but if it should have place with more than one among us, we should call it sacrilege." As he said this, we were introduced into an ante-chamber, where there were several devices on the walls, and little images as it were of molten silver; and I inquired, "What are these?" They said, "They are pictures and ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... veneration, and to abolish the rights affirmed by a justice purely secular; they said: "Rome has conquered through her politics and her gods; any change in theology and public opinion would be folly and sacrilege. Rome, merciful toward conquered nations, though binding them in chains, spared their lives; slaves are the most fertile source of her wealth; freedom of the nations would be the negation of her rights and the ruin of her finances. Rome, in fact, enveloped in the pleasures and gorged with ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... power in a state were in the hands of the Shogun. The Mikado was venerated, but this first servant in the land was feared, the one dwelling in a seclusion so sacred that to look upon him was almost a sacrilege, the other with armies and castles and wealth and the pomp and circumstance which attend the real sovereign. History again repeats itself as we see this Maire du Palais obscuring more and more the titular sovereign, the Mikado, until like ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... with Catherine, for to her, religion was a living answer to her deepest needs and feelings, and to doubt that answer was nothing less than sacrilege," said Kate, with a bright red ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... tendency to think of Jesus as different from other men in the human element of his personality. Our adoration of him as our divine Lord makes it seem almost sacrilege to place his humanity in the ordinary rank with that of other men. It seems to us that life could not have meant the same to him that it means to us. It is difficult for us to conceive of him as learning in childhood as ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... lost treasure by open force, the three guardian priests followed and watched it in disguise. The generations succeeded each other; the warrior who had committed the sacrilege perished miserably; the Moonstone passed (carrying its curse with it) from one lawless Mohammedan hand to another; and still, through all chances and changes, the successors of the three guardian priests kept their watch, waiting ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... worshipper the form of a hero and a saint, but ending preferably in renunciation—if voluntary and wholly unnecessary so much the nobler and better. To think of love in connection with an ordinary, average man was something very like sacrilege, and poor Honour fairly shuddered when Mrs Jardine, who bore her a grudge for unsettling Mr Jardine's mind with the new views she had brought from home, broke to her the horrible fact that she had made two ordinary young men fall in love with her. It was of a piece with the disturbing discovery ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... were on the surface of the story, and the character of their music could not be misconceived. Wilhelm Meister himself, in his character of a strolling player, had only to sacrifice his habit of reflection to be a dashing tenor. The temptation was certainly strong; the sacrilege was committed, and the verbal skeleton constructed out of things which were dearest in German literature, was tricked out with piquant music and ear-tickling roulades by the man who was not awed even by Shakespeare. Think of "Le ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... the consecrated vessels belonging to St. Peter. If you presume to touch them, your conscience must answer for the sacrilege. For me, I dare not keep what I am ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... assailed. She was beset. There swept over him the swift instinct for action which was a part of life in that comer of the world. In a flash his weapon leaped from its scabbard, and an unwavering, shining silver point covered the figure of this little, dark man, now obviously guilty of sacrilege unspeakable. ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... touch in that marvellously devised crime. To plan that evil deed was great, to execute it was easy enough. He had several hours' leisure in which to do it. Then at night it was simplicity itself to slip the document under the dead man's pillow. Sacrilege causes no shudder to such natures as Murray Brooks. The rest of ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy

... sayest thou—slanderer!—rouge makes thee sick? And China bloom at best is sorry food? And Rowland's Kalydor, if laid on thick, Poisons the thirsty wretch that bores for blood? Go! 'twas a just reward that met thy crime— But shun the sacrilege another time. ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... ran as follows: "Ignorant of the import of what you were undertaking, you made a vow of conjugal fidelity to a man who on his part, by entering the married state without faith in the religious significance of marriage, committed an act of sacrilege. That marriage lacked the dual significance it should have had. Yet in spite of this your vow was binding. You swerved from it. What did you commit by so acting? A venial, or a mortal, sin? A venial ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... form, and constructed of stone. It was customary to engrave upon it the name or distinguishing symbol of the divinity to whom it was dedicated; and it was held so sacred that if any malefactor fled to it his life was safe from his pursuers, and it was considered one of the greatest acts of sacrilege to force him from ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... of the deadly sin—the treachery, the perjury, the sacrilege; oh! and the dreadful degradation of such ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... haunted his soul. The clouds had risen at her coming, and he beheld a new-created world. What she was, he could not fancy, but he adored her. Her age, he durst not estimate; fearing to find her older than himself, and thinking sacrilege to couple that fair favour with the thought of mortal changes. As for her character, beauty, to the young, is always good. So the poor lad lingered late upon the terrace, stealing timid glances at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... poetry. Was the "Divine Comedy" too clear-cut and trenchant for Walter Pater? It is strange how Dante has been left to second-rate interpreters! His illustrators, too! O these sentimentalists, with their Beatrices crossing the Ponte Vecchio, and their sad youths looking on! All this is an insult—a sacrilege—to the proudest, most aristocratic spirit who ever dwelt on earth! Why did not Aubrey Beardsley stop that beautiful boy on the threshold? He who was the model of his "Ave atque vale!" might have well served for Casella, singing among the cold ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... the murderers entered, but the singing of that service was never completed. The fear of sacrilege induced the knights to try to drag the defenceless Archbishop out of the Cathedral, but he struggled with such vigour, flinging one of the men down on the stone floor, that they gave up the attempt and killed him with three or four sword strokes, the last of which, as he lay prone, ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home

... searching question, and while he swung the ax he argued it aloud. What was marriage without love? No marriage, he shouted, as his ax delved into the side of a tree. Love alone can blend two lives, and without love marriage is sacrilege. No, he would not think of Magarth's offer, he would cast it behind him, and go on as he was doing. Then peace came to him, and he dwelt on the communings with his sister, and the pledge he had given her on parting. For the first time that day he began ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar

... their gates en route to the Holy Land. As a consequence, the language of ordinary address and intercourse amongst natives in the Orient was simple and less discolored by what may be called pious profanity. Their discourse was often dull and prolix, but never a composite of sacrilege and exaggeration. Only in their writings were they pedantic. From this the reader can anticipate somewhat of the meeting between Sergius and Lael. It is to be borne in mind additionally that they were both young; she a child in years; he a child in lack of worldly experience. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... as possible. Look quickly for the traces that might show you a man hidden here, let your glance fall on every side; look well to the right and to the left. If we seize some impious fellow, woe to him! He will know how we punish the outrage, the crime, the sacrilege. The criminal will then acknowledge at last that gods exist; his fate will teach all men that the deities must be revered, that justice must be observed and that they must submit to the sacred laws. If not, then woe to them! Heaven itself will punish sacrilege; ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... here recounted are not imaginary. Not very long ago the sacrilege which Unorna attempted was actually committed at night in a Catholic church in London, under circumstances that clearly proved the intention of some person or persons to defile the consecrated wafers. A case of hypnotic suggestion to the committal of a crime in a convent occurred ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... heaven here, And what you do aver To others courtship may appear, 'Tis sacrilege to her. She is a public deity; And were 't not very odd She should dispose herself to ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... name was bandied about in courts of law. It is through Church interpretation of woman's position that the suit of his putative daughter, the Countess Lambertina, for his property, was decided against her on the ground that she was "a sacrilegious child." The person who commits sacrilege steals sacred things. "Sacrilegious" means violating sacred things. "A sacrilegious child" is a child who "violated sacred things" by coming into existence. Her father was holy; he did not violate holy things when he violated ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... as a lovely woman, and a woman-genius. The true artist cannot forswear his vocation; Heaven does not permit it; the attempt makes him too unhappy, nor will he form ties with those who can consent to such sacrilege. Adelaide Kemble loved art, but was ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... should have been born two or three hundred years ago, when her narrowness would have been more natural, is shocked, almost indignant; and though she is good enough to say she does not accuse me of "intentional sacrilege," still, addressing a prayer to God from a theatre is nothing less in her eyes than profanation. "For," says she, "you know we must only seek God in ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris

... as a god, and down to our day have given him so much honour that, in conferring the royal power, one of his race has been always preferred to any one else. And also in intestine quarrels, such as are common in that nation, every one avoids as sacrilege wounding any descendant of Arsaces, whether in arms or ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... power of Mother Church," cried Sir Oliver, "but this runs hard on sacrilege! For the king's good pleasure, or the lord of the manor—well! But that every run-the-hedge in a green jerkin should fasten papers to the chancel door—nay, it runs hard on sacrilege, hard; and men have burned for matters ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to the side of Cleopatra, and, now that none were left to see, I sat down on the bed and laid her head upon my knee, as once before it had been laid in that night of sacrilege beneath the shadow of the everlasting pyramid. Then I kissed her chill brow and went from the House of Death—avenged, but ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... are interred; though why they should be placed at the bottom of a well, is a mystery which I cannot fathom. One of the officers of the church told me that at one time he and another kept watch in the church during the night, one of the chapels having shortly before been broken open and a sacrilege committed. At the dead of night, finding the time hang heavy on their hands, they took a crowbar and removed the slab and looked down into the abyss below; it was dark as the grave; whereupon they affixed a weight to the end of a long rope and lowered it ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... to have me in the house, she must have felt that it was like sheltering a pariah. Her sister once heard some rumor or suggestion, connecting my name with that of a pious young lady, and looked upon it as a sort of sacrilege. Under these circumstances I came at last to the conclusion that, being under a ban, I would at least enjoy my liberty, either by living my own life as a bachelor, or else by marrying purely and simply ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... mother more than a brave-hearted weakling. The frost lay all about it under the hedge, but its rough leaves kept it just warm enough, and hardly. Now, I should never have pulled the little darling; it would have seemed a kind of small sacrilege committed on the church of nature, seeing she had but this one; only with my sickly cub at home, I felt justified in ravening like a beast of prey. I even went so far in my greed as to dig up the ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald

... where was she? I was sufficiently intimate with the arrangements of the house to know which was Nell's room, and my next dash was thither. The door of the room was wide-open, but I paused in the opening when I reached it, with the feeling strong upon me that I should commit something very like sacrilege by entering. A single glance, however, sufficed to reveal that the shrine of innocent girlhood had already been violated, for it, too, like Mr Lestrange's, had been turned topsy-turvy by the savages. But Nell—where was she? Instinctively I scanned ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... and "tell," but refuse to return the amatory correspondence, unless under substantial pecuniary inducements. This is the return she gets for what may be termed her privateering experiences, and there are numbers of creatures, whom it were sacrilege to call men, who make a regular business of becoming acquainted with married women for this special purpose. Instances are on record where a certain stipulated sum of money has been paid for years to a professional black-mailer, who held letters written to him ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... read in the little room where my uncle had been accustomed to sit. I felt it as a sacrilege to his memory to choose that spot for such an office, but I said nothing. Gerald and my mother, the lawyer (a neighbouring attorney, named Oswald), and myself were the only persons present. Mr. Oswald hemmed thrice, and broke the seal. After a preliminary, strongly ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... after paying fifty dollars for what he had witnessed, he, the next day, implored the presence of George Washington, offering fifty dollars more for a "spiritual" sight of the "Father of our Country." This request smote upon the ear of the photographer like an invitation to commit sacrilege. His reverence for the memory of Washington was not to be disturbed by the tempting offer of so many greenbacks. He could not allow the features of that great man to be used in connection with an imposture perpetrated upon so deluded a fanatic as Colorado Jewett. In short, the "conditions" were ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... services in the little chapel, they would think that Christianity was dead, and they would fall back to their former condition. I took the sin upon myself, and I said mass for them, knowing that it was no mass, and praying that God would forgive me, and that it might not be a sacrilege. I did not fall ill. I lived amongst them, and received their confessions and administered all the sacraments when they were required, for the space of a year and a half, during which I sent many appeals for help. But in my letters I did not explain what I was doing, for I intended to go ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... freethinkers. If their words offend their audience so far as to cause a disturbance, they should be prosecuted for a breach of public order, [1] not because their words are blasphemous. A man who robs or injures a church, or even an episcopal palace, is not prosecuted for sacrilege, but for larceny or malicious damage or something ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury

... laughter struck my ears. Could there indeed be mirth anywhere—nay, so near at hand—while such woe dwelt in the house I had left? The merriment seemed a violence, a sacrilege, an insult. I looked angrily at the place whence the noise proceeded. 'Twas from the parlour of the King's Arms tavern—for, in my doleful ponderings, my feet had carried me, scarce consciously, so far from Queen Street. I peered in through the lighted ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... what sacrilege his lips had done, But said, 'He will awake, I know him well, He will awake at evening when the sun Hangs his red shield on Corinth's citadel; This sleep is but a cruel treachery To make me love him more, and in ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde

... over him, and he appears to have been as completely infatuated by her. Of course, in that land, the idea of a woman of her sect, of her standing, having anything to do with a Frank was looked upon as something appalling, something akin to sacrilege; and when they found that her father had got wind of it and that the fellow's life would not be safe if he remained within reach another day, they flew to the coast together, shipped for England, and were married immediately ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... deserts, And such a searching canvass of their claims, That none shall bait the ballot. I'll spread my choice Upon the main and general of those Who, moved of holy impulse, pulpit-born, Protested 'twere a sacrilege to burn God's gracious images, designed to rot, And bellowed for the right of way for each Distempered carrion through the water pipes. With such a sturdy, boisterous exclaim They did discharge themselves ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce



Words linked to "Sacrilege" :   irreverence, violation, desecration, sacrilegious, profanation



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