What is more absurd and more impious than to attribute the name of Lucifer to the devil, that is, to personified evil. The intellectual Lucifer is the spirit of intelligence and love; it is the paraclete, it is the Holy Spirit, while the physical Lucifer is the great agent of universal magnetism.
— Eliphas Levi
Jaw-dropping Impious quotations
A man of ordinary talent will always be ordinary, whether he travels or not;
but a man of superior talent (which I cannot deny myself to be without being impious) will go to pieces if he remains forever in the same place.
If there is a God that has special plans for humans, then He has taken very great pains to hide His concern for us. To me it would seem impolite if not impious to bother such a God with our prayers.
The gates of monarchs Are arched so high that giants may jet through And keep their impious turbans on without Good morrow to the sun.
Are you not moved to tears and bitter compassion, when you behold the only Son of God seized by the most impious, dragged away, mocked, scourged, buffeted, spit upon, crowned with thorns, hung upon the infamous cross between two thieves, finally in such a horrible and execrable manner suffering death, for your salvation and that of the world?
The Pythagoreans degrade impious men into brutes and, if one is to believe Empedocles, even into plants.
Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods.
Everything is destroyed by its own particular vice: the destructive power resides within. Rust destroys iron, moths destroy clothes, the worm eats away the wood; but greatest of all evils is envy, impious habitant of corrupt souls, which ever was, is, and shall be a consuming disease.
The impious man, who sells his country's freedom Makes all the guilt of tyranny his own. His are her slaughters, her oppressions his; Just heav'n! reserve your choicest plagues for him, And blast the venal wretch.
All who contribute to the overthrow of religion, or to the ruin of kingdoms and commonwealths, all who are foes to letters and to the arts which confer honour and benefit on the human race (among whom I reckon the impious, the cruel, the ignorant, the indolent, the base and the worthless), are held in infamy and detestation.
Anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic.
The veneration, wherewith Men are imbued for what they call Nature, has been a discouraging impediment to the Empire of Man over the inferior Creatures of God. For many have not only look'd upon it, as an impossible thing to compass, but as something impious to attempt.
Of all faults the greatest is the excess of impious terror, dishonoring divine grace. He who despairs wants love, wants faith; for faith, hope, and love are three torches which blend their light together, nor does the one shine without the other.
To persevere In obstinate condolement is a course Of impious stubbornness: 'tis unmanly grief.
What does not wasting time change! The age of our parents, worse than that of our grandsires, has brought us forth more impious still, and we shall produce a more vicious progeny.
But all the other frenzies of passions-impious both toward the bodies and toward the sexes-beyond the laws of nature, we banish not only from the threshold, but from all shelter of the Church, because they are not sins, but monstrosities.
When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God.
Restrain yourself... and gloat in silence. I'll have no jubilation here. It is an impious thing to exult over the slain.
The balance between faith and reason is for the determination of each individual, and of the people as a whole, not of unauthorized government officials uttering impious humbug as they arbitrarily try to define that balance.
Away with tears and fears and troubles! United in wedlock with the eternal Godhead Itself, our nature ascends into the Heaven of Heavens. So it would be impious to call ourselves 'miserable.' On the contrary, Man is a creature whom the Angels-were they capable of envy-would envy. Let us lift up our hearts!
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.
Therefore the elect shall go forth... to see the torments of the impious, seeing which they will not be grieved, but will be satiated with joy at the sight of the unutterable calamity of the impious.
For the impious act begets more after it, like to the parent stock.
All the more vile is the stupidity of those persons who open heaven to all the impious and unbelieving without the grace of Him whom Scripture commonly teaches to be the only door whereby we enter into salvation.
'T is impious in a good man to be sad.
Satan--the impersonation of that mixture of the bestial, the malignant, the impious, and the hopeless, which constitute the fiend--the enemy of all that is human and divine.
When obedience is so impious, revolt is a necessity.
I have done many impious things--no great ruler can do otherwise.
I have put the good of the Empire before all human considerations. To keep the Empire free from factions I have had to commit many crimes.
Life is legal tender, and individual character stamps its value.
We are from a thousand mints, and all genuine. Despite our infinitely diverse appraisements, we make change for one another. So many ideals planted are worth the great gold of Socrates; so many impious laws broken are worth John Brown.
Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and tortures unto death, and religiosu wars, that since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but from this impious thing called religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man?
Religious questions have often led to wicked and impious actions.
Many are called impious, not for having a worse, but a different religion from their neighbors; and many atheistical, not for the denying of God, but for thinking somewhat peculiarly concerning him.
I always thought it was both impious and unnatural that such immanity and bloody strife should reign among professors of one faith.
When it began, Christianity was regarded as a system entirely beyond the range and scope of human reason; it was impious to question; it was impious to examine; it was impious to discriminate. On the other hand, it was visibly instinct with the supernatural. Miracles of every order and degree of magnitude were flashing forth incessantly from all its parts.
I can have little patience with those who oppose .
.. the theory of evolution or what are called "mechanistic" explanations of the phenomena of life because of certain moral consequences which at first seem to follow from these theories, and still less with those who regard it as irrelevant or impious to ask certain questions at all. By refusing to face the facts , the conservative only weakens his own position.