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Profane Quotes

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Profane Quotes

“That many good men have believed this strange fable [Christianity], and lived very good lives under that belief (for credulity is not a crime) is what I have no doubt of. In the first place, they were educated to believe it, and they would have believed anything else in the same manner. There are also many who have been so enthusiastically enraptured by what they conceived to be the infinite love of God to man, in making a sacrifice of himself, that the vehemence of the idea has forbidden and deterred them from examining into the absurdity and profaneness of the story.”

BeliefChristianitySacrificeEducatedStoryAbsurdityIndoctrinationCredulityBrainwashingProfaneFableLove Of GodVehemenceExamineEnrapture
Book:The age of reason
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“This decorum and etiquette, the whole self-stylization of the upper class, demand among other things that one does not allow oneself to be portrayed as one really is, but according to how one must appear to conform with certain hallowed conventions, remote from reality and the present time. Etiquette is the highest law not merely for the ordinary mortal, but also for the king, and in the imagination of this society even the gods accept the forms of courtly ceremonial.”

ArtSacredEtiquetteProfaneUpper ClassAncient EgyptClasses
Book:The Social History of Art, Volume 1: From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages
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“I was once reproved by a minister who was driving a poor beast to some meeting-house horse-sheds among the hills of New Hampshire, because I was bending my steps to a mountain-top on the Sabbath, instead of a church, when I would have gone farther than he to hear a true word spoken on that or any day. He declared that I was 'breaking the Lord's fourth commandment,' and proceeded to enumerate, in a sepulchral tone, the disasters which had befallen him whenever he had done any ordinary work on the Sabbath. He really thought that a god was on the watch to trip up those men who followed any secular work on this day, and did not see that it was the evil conscience of the workers that did it. The country is full of this superstition, so that when one enters a village, the church, not only really but from association, is the ugliest looking building in it, because it is the one in which human nature stoops the lowest and is most disgraced. Certainly, such temples as these shall erelong cease to deform the landscape. There are few things more disheartening and disgusting than when you are walking the streets of a strange village on the Sabbath, to hear a preacher shouting like a boatswain in a gale of wind, and thus harshly profaning the quiet atmosphere of the day.”

CountryHumorTruthAmericaChurchSecularSuperstitionSabbathProfaneProfanityNew HampshireMinisterThe LordA GodFourth Commandment
Book:A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
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“I have always thought that clarity is a form of courtesy that the philosopher owes; moreover, this discipline of ours considers it more truly a matter of honor today than ever before to be open to all minds ... This is different from the individual sciences which increasingly [interpose] between the treasure of their discoveries and the curiosity of the profane the tremendous dragon of their closed terminology.”

MindDifferentMatterTodayFormIndividualDisciplineHonorDiscoveryCuriosityPhilosopherTreasureClarityDragonsCourtesyProfaneTerminology
Author:Jose Ortega y Gasset
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“The epoch of doubt and transition during which the Greeks passed from the dim fancies of mythology to the fierce light of science was the age of Pericles, and the endeavour to substitute certain truth for the prescriptions of impaired authorities, which was then beginning to absorb the energies of the Greek intellect, is the grandest movement in the profane annals of mankind, for to it we owe, even after the immeasurable progress accomplished by Christianity, much of our philosophy and far the better part of the political knowledge we possess.”

PhilosophyLightAgePoliticalCertainEnergyChristianityDoubtProgressMankindMovementAuthorityIntellectMythologyGreekFancyAccomplishedSubstitutesTransitionFiercePrescriptionsEndeavourEpochProfane
Book:The History of Freedom: Great Event
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“Euripides seems to have felt that the dignified perfection of Sophocles could be challenged only by novelty and irresponsibility. The religious conditions of the Dionysian festival kept him within certain bounds. But within the imposed limits Euripides was as profane as he dared to be, making melodrama of the divine realities which his predecessors accepted religiously, using the stage merely as a convenience for popularizing his own eccentric values.”

RealitySeemsCertainValuesFeltReligiousConditionsStageDivineLimitsPerfectionBoundsAcceptedFestivalsNoveltyConvenienceEccentricPredecessorsProfaneMelodramaIrresponsibility
Author:Laura Riding
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“Ireland still remains the Holy Isle whose aspirations must on no account be mixed with the profane class-struggles of the rest of the sinful world ... the Irish peasant must not on any account know that the Socialist workers are his sole allies in Europe.”

KnowsWorldStillsClassStruggleHolyEuropeAccountsRemainsWorkersAspirationAlliesIrelandSoleSocialistPeasantsClass StruggleProfaneIsleSinful World
Book:Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: selected correspondence, 1846-1895: with explanatory notes
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“Nothing is so convenient as a decisive argument ... which must at least silence the most arrogant bigotry and superstition, and free us from their impertinent solicitations. I flatter myself, that I have discovered an argument ... which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures. For so long, I presume, will the accounts of miracles and prodigies be found in all history, sacred and profane.”

IfsWorldKindLongFoundSilenceWiseAtheismArgumentAccountsMiracleSacredEndurePositive AtheismChecksAll KindsDelusionBigotryArrogantSuperstitionsEverlastingConvenientSuperstitiousProfaneProdigiesMost ArrogantSolicitation
Book:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature
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“A nap is not to be confused with sleeping. We sleep to recharge our bodies. We nap to care for our souls. When we nap, we are resting our eyes while our imaginations soar. Getting ready for the next round. Sorting, sifting, separating the profound from the profane, the possible from the improbable. Rehearsing our acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, our surprise on receiving the MacArthur genius award. This requires a prone position. If we're lucky, we might drift off, but we won't drift far. Just far enough to ransom our creativity from chaos.”

IfsSoulEnoughBodyMightEyeCareNextImaginationSleepCreativityPositionAcceptanceReadyGeniusLuckySpeechSurpriseProfoundChaosRoundsConfusedPrizeAwardsReceivingSoarNobelNapsImprobableNobel PrizeSeparatingProfaneRehearsingRansomSortingSiftingAcceptance SpeechMacarthur
Author:Sarah Ban Breathnach
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“I've been described as a tough and noisy woman, a prize fighter, a man-hater, you name it. They call me Battling Bella, Mother Courage, and a Jewish mother with more complaints than Portnoy. There are those who say I'm impatient, impetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash, and overbearing. Whether I'm any of those things, or all of them, you can decide for yourself. But whatever I am -- and this ought to be made very clear -- I am a very serious woman.”

MenMadeMotherPoliticsNamesClearSeriousOughtToughFighterPrizeCall MeRudeComplaintsImpatientNoisyProfaneAssertivenessOverbearingBrashImpetuousMan HaterJewish Mother
Book:Bella!: Ms. Abzug Goes to Washington
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“Before We end our pilgrimage, 'tis fit that we Should leave corruption, and foul sin, behind us, But with wash'd feet and hands, the heathens dar' not Enter their profane temples; and for me To hope my passage to eternity Can be made easy, till I have shook off The burthen of my sins in free confession, Aided with sorrow, and repentance for them, Is against reason.”

ShouldMadeEndsReasonHandsEasySinBehindsFeetFitSorrowEternityCorruptionTemplesRepentancePassagesConfessionFoulPilgrimageProfaneHeathen
Book:The Dramatic Works of Massinger and Ford
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“This world is filled with many vulgar and dishonorable things that will claw and tear at your Christian purity if you allow them to. Don't let them! Seek instead the things of God. He will purify you and free you from your slavery to profane and inconsequential things.”

IfsWorldChristianThis WorldTearsSlaveryFilledPurityVulgarClawsProfaneInconsequentialDishonorable
Book:A Year with the Bible: Scriptural Wisdom for Daily Living
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“The philosopher, who with calm suspicion examines the dreams and omens, the miracles and prodigies, of profane or even of ecclesiastical history, will probably conclude that, if the eyes of the spectators have sometimes been deceived by fraud, the understanding of the readers has much more frequently been insulted by fiction.”

IfsSometimesDreamEyeUnderstandingFictionHistoryReaderMiracleCalmPhilosopherFraudSuspicionDeceivedSpectatorsRoman EmpireInsultedProfaneOmenProdigies
Book:History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire V2: the History Focus
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“There are countries in which public establishments are considered by the government as its own personal affair, so that it admits persons to them only according to its pleasure, just as a proprietor refuses at his pleasure admission into his house; they are a sort of administrative sanctuaries, into which no profane person can penetrate. These establishments, on the contrary, in the United States, are considered as belonging to all. The prisons are open to everyone who chooses to inspect them ad every visiter may inform himself of the order which regulates the interior.”

MayPersonsCountryStatesGovernmentOrderHousePleasureUnitedUnited StatesPrisonAffairRefuseContraryBelongingAdsEstablishmentInteriorsPenetrateSanctuaryAdmissionProfaneAdministrative
Author:Gustave de Beaumont
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“... your spiritual teachers caution you against enquiry--tell you not to read certain books; not to listen to certain people; to beware of profane learning; to submit your reason, and to receive their doctrines for truths. Such advice renders them suspicious counsellors.”

PeopleBookReasonSpiritualCertainReligionTeacherAdviceDoctrineCensorshipSubmitCautionSuspiciousYou AgainClergyProfaneEnquirySpiritual TeachersCounsellors
Book:Course of popular lectures; with 3 addresses on various public occasions, and a reply to the charges against the French reformers of 1789
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“The possible truths, hazily perceived in the world of abstraction, like those inferred from observation and experiment in the world of matter, are forced upon the profane multitudes, too busy to think for themselves, under the form of Divine revelation and scientific authority. But the same question stands open from the days of Socrates and Pilate down to our own age of wholesale negation: is there such a thing as absolute truth in the hands of any one party or man?”

ThinkingMenWorldMatterHandsAgeSpiritualFormPartyDivineAuthorityAbsolutesBusyExperimentsObservationRevelationsMultitudesAbstractionToo BusyAbsolute TruthProfaneNegationWholesaleDivine Revelation
Author:H. P. Blavatsky
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“Both magic and religion are based strictly on mythological tradition, and they also both exist in the atmosphere of the miraculous, in a constant revelation of their wonder-working power. They both are surrounded by taboos and observances which mark off their acts from those of the profane world.”

WorldReligionWonderMagicTraditionMarkConstantAtmosphereRevelationsMiraculousTabooProfaneObservance
Book:Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays
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“To contact the cosmic giggle, to have the flow of casuistry begin to give off synchronistic ripples, whitecaps in the billows of the coincidental ether, if you will. To achieve that, a precondition is a kind of unconsciousness, a kind of drifting, a certain taking-your-eye-off-the-ball, a certain assumptions that things are simpler than they are, almost always precedes what Mircea Eliade called ‘the rupture of plane’ that indicates that there is an archetypal world, an archetypal power behind profane appearances.”

IfsWorldGivingKindEyeCertainBehindsAchieveFlowBallsAppearanceContactPlanesAssumptionCosmicDriftingRippleProfaneUnconsciousnessGiggleRupture
Author:Terence McKenna
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“The practice of hinting by single letters those expletives with which profane and violent persons are wont to garnish their discourse, strikes me as a proceeding which, however, well meant, is weak and futile. I cannot tell what good it does - what feeling it spares - what horror it conceals.”

WellsPersonsDoeFeelingsPracticeHorrorLettersWeakStrikesViolentSparesDiscourseProceedingSwearingProfaneExpletives
Book:Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey: In Two Volumes
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