Profanity

“ What need ye any more proof of yourselves? Sinners, look to your hands, and your outward man, and learn from them to know your hearts. These things proceed out of the heart and defile the whole man. The profanity of the most part of men's practices, cursing and swearing &c., is a bitter stream that cannot proceed from a good fountain. It is a wonder how the world satisfy themselves with a dream of faith. ”

“ Profanity is like steam in a locomotive—takes more to run you up-hill than on the level, and inasmuch as there's only a few men on the level, a violent vocabulary is a necessity and appeals to me like a certificate of good character and general capability. ”

“ I am not much given to profanity, but when I am sorely aggravated and vexed in spirit, I declare to you that it is such a relief to me, such a solace to my troubled soul, and gives me such heavenly peace, to now and then allow a word or phrase to escape my lips which can serve the no other earthly purpose, seemingly, than to render emphatic my otherwise mildly expressed ideas. ”

“ One day, when a very good friend was visiting me, I thought I would begin on my course of depravity. The first lesson would be in swearing. When an opportunity presented itself, I uttered a word that I thought was strong enough for an amateur to begin on. It stuck in my throat and nearly choked me. My friend laughed and looked both amused and ashamed. Reader, if you have lived to maturity and never indulged in profanity, you can’t imagine how awkward it will be for you to turn out your first piece of swearing. You can’t do it justice. ”

“ For after getting together words of impiety according to what first comes into his head, like a heap of sand, he begins to cast about to see whither his unintelligible profanity tends, growing up as it does spontaneously from what he has said, without any rational sequence. ”

“ The Prehistoric is not religious. It isn't, you know, Miss Osborne, profane. Now, while I am no bigot, there is one thing I hate, and that is profanity. If a man believes a certain thing, let him respect it, and not try to lower it or make fun of it. If a man doesn't believe a certain thing, he should let it alone.' 'What is this place you are going to?' asked Miss Gordon, with animation. ”

“ We have been so far from endeavouring to extirpate profaneness, another evil engaged against in the covenant, and condemned in the Word of God. Deut. xxix. 19; Job xxi. 14; Jer. xxiii. 15; Ezek. xxii. 26; Hos. iv. 1-3; Heb. vii. 15.
"That profanity hath been much winked at, and profane persons much countenanced, and many times employed, till iniquity and ungodliness have gone over the land as a flood; and profanity, beginning at the court, hath spread itself through every rank and quality in the land: so that immoralities and sins against every precept of both tables are greatly abounding." ”

“ Another form of vulgarity is profanity. The habit of swearing is not a mark of manliness. It is the sign of a dull, coarse, unrefined nature, a lack of verbal initiative. Sometimes, perhaps, profanity seems picturesque and effective. ”

“ To dream of profanity, denotes that you will cultivate those traits which render you coarse and unfeeling toward your fellow man.
To dream that others use profanity, is a sign that you will be injured in some way, and probably insulted also. ”

“ There is an amusing story told of a clergyman, who, upon one of his trips through the West, observed that almost every man he met and spoke with used profanity. Finally he found one man who talked to him for twenty minutes without using an oath. ”

“ Thus, in one case, words that contain no evident insult to God may be used with all the vehemence of profanity, to which guilt is certainly attached; in another, the most unholy language may be employed in ignorance of its meaning, with no evil intent, the only danger of malice being from habit, passion or scandal. ”

“ I shall not make use of slang or vulgarity upon any occasion or under any circumstances, and shall never use profanity except in discussing house rent and taxes. ”

“ It is today one of the saddest things in life to note how common profanity is in the ordinary speech of men and of boys, mannish boys who imitate the men about them. It is positively disheartening to hear it on the streets, in the streetcars, in the trains. ”

“ He devoted himself to the study of profanity in all its various branches, until now he can swear more men, and do a bigger "so-help-me-God" business than any other go-as-you-please affidavit man in Colorado. ”

“ If one reeks with foul language, its patrons will become imbued with the habit of profanity; but if its atmosphere be genial and genteel, its patrons will maintain, or else adopt, the amenities of more graceful intercourse. ”

“ How much did you ever make by swearing? What, in all the round of a lifetime of profanity, did you ever gain by the habit?
Reflect, also, upon the fact that it arouses God's indignation. The Bible reiterates, in paragraph after paragraph, and chapter after chapter, the fact that all swearers and blasphemers are accursed now, and are to be forever miserable. There is no iniquity that has been so often visited with the immediate curse of God. ”

“ Being a religious man and opposed to all kinds of profanity, and knowing the practice of teamsters, almost without an exception, was to use profane and vulgar language, and to travel upon the Sabbath day, another difficulty presented itself to my mind which had to be overcome. ”

“ Never allow yourself to contract the habit of swearing. Many men—and, because of their pernicious example, many boys too—habitually garnish their conversation with oaths, profanity, and obscenity of the vilest description. ”

“ PROFANITY is not a specific sin. Under this general head come all blasphemy, false, rash, unjust and unnecessary oaths, rash and violated vows, and cursing:—called profanity, because in each case the name of God is profaned, that is to say, is made less holy, by its application to unworthy objects and in unbecoming circumstances; profanity, because it has to do with the Holy Name, and not profanation, which looks to sacred things. ”

“ What must the heart of that man be made of, who can pass through the midst of such displays of divine beauty, and pollute the very atmosphere as he passes with profanity! This is what hundreds are daily doing. Almost all the hands on board of the steamboats, down even to the little boys, utter an oath almost every other word. Profane swearing is one of the crying sins of this western world. Oaths the most horrid are awfully common among [Pg 78] all sorts of people. ”

“ When your own child comes in from the street, and has learned to swear from the bad boys congregated there, it is a very different thing to you from what it was when you heard the profanity of those boys as you passed them. ”

“ Yet while keeping themselves generally within safe bounds, it must be confessed that many of the people have a sort of sneaking admiration—lurking secretly and seldom expressed in words—for a good well-balanced curse, so long as it does not shock by its profanity. ”

“ If one is puzzled, as was Augustine, over the words “above all things,” on the ground that profanity is not worse than adultery and murder, we may take it either as a kind of hyperbole (as did Augustine) or as a sort of elative superlative (not literally before all but only very important) , as limited to the forms of impatience in the preceding context, like 1 Peter 4:8, where the same idiom occurs (Mayor) . But if the strict interpretation be insisted on, one has only to 185 consider what the sin of profanity really is. It is a blasphemous use of the name of the Most High God. ”

“ In carrying on a conversation after newcomers enter the room, briefly recapitulate what has gone before, that the thread of the story may be complete for them. Look at those with whom you are talking, but never stare.
Profanity is the last and most inexcusable sin committed against good manners and propriety. The man who will deliberately use profane language in the drawing-room, or before women and children, or aged men, should be considered without the pale of good society. ”

“ It is, in fact, for its consequences—for the grave dangers, both to speaker and to hearer, which it involves—rather than for what it is in itself, that I mourn over this clerical habit of profanity in social talk. To the believing hearer it brings the danger of loss of reverence for holy things, by the mere act of listening to, and enjoying, such jests ”

“ Every conception of the mind, every impulse of the blood, is expressed in the narrow and base vocabulary of profanity. So that the first thing an oath indicates is that he who uses it has limited intellectual resources, otherwise he would not employ so commonplace a method of expressing himself. ”

“ He possessed that quality in his profanity of not offending by it. ”

“ But now that he has stripped his falsehood of every mask that could disguise it, and publishes his profanity aloud in categorical terms, I think it superfluous to undergo useless labour in bringing logical modes of confutation to bear upon those who make no secret of their impiety. ”

“ Sometimes he indulges to such an extent in his sin, that the main substance of his speech is swearing. It is more than an adjunct or concomitant of his conversation; it is the body and soul of it. Sometimes you may hear him, with an air of self-complacency, give utterance to his profanity, as though he regarded it an ornament of rhetoric, giving spice and condiment to his thoughts. There are occasions when he considers his talk only reliable in its truthfulness as this evil accompanies it. He would not be a man in his own judgment if he [Pg 72] did not swear. ”

“ Profanity Shows Mental Deficiency [Louisville Herald]
The habitual user of profane and indecent language was mercilessly flayed by Bishop Charles E. Woodcock, of the Episcopal Church, at the Board of Trade noon-day Lenten service yesterday, where in the course of his sermon the Bishop pronounced the profane man to be intellectually deficient, corrupt, morally and wholly unchristian.
"No gentleman will use profane language; it is only the low-born and vulgar-minded person who will do so," declared the Bishop. "No man who believes in God and in God's commandments can be profane." ”

“ There are many men who, when at peace, are most fastidious of speech, but when aroused into the violence of passion, blaze with imprecation. The Oriental's wife spoken of would not have liked her husband to be profane under ordinary circumstances, but now that the camels are gone, and the sheep are gone, and the property is gone, and the boils have come, she says: "Why don't you swear? Curse God and die!" Others, all the year round, have not the froth of profanity wiped from their lips, but try to expend all the fury of a twelvemonth in one red-hot paragraph of five minutes. ”

“ In the same way the common use of profanity among ignorant people probably arises mainly from a feeling that the ordinary words with which they are familiar are colorless and do not express their thoughts with sufficient emphasis. ”

“ "Hold, Sir, I say! None of your profanity before me. If I do evil to anyone on such occasions, it is because he will have it so; therefore, the evil is not of my doing. ”

“ It is calculated that at least 90 per cent. of those who have fallen into the lamentable habit of using strong expressions have been driven thereto, in the first place, by the voice of the midnight cat; and a pious divine has gone so far as to admit that at least mental profanity is absolutely universal, even among the best of men, under these circumstances. Even ladies of irreproachable morals and conduct have admitted the use of mental bad language, under the irritation caused by hours of sleeplessness through the infliction of a concert on the tiles. ”

“ See the effects of this widespread profanity in the increasing perjury. If men in ordinary conversation so commonly use the name of God, is it wonderful that in the jury-box, and in the alderman's office, and in the custom-house so many swear falsely? Notice the way an oath is administered. They toss the Bible at a man, and in the most trivial way say: "So help you God—kiss the book." I suppose enough lies are every day told in the custom-house to sink it. Smuggling, although it be done against positive oath, is in some circles considered a grand joke ”

“ Are we all strictly righteous and obedient. No, for there are many, even in this community, who take the name of God in vain. How often have I heard the President of this Church speak against profanity in the strongest terms ”

“ There is no vice which has so little excuse for existence as the vice of Profanity, commonly called swearing or cursing. Every other vice we can think of has some appearance of reason in it. Thieving is done because of the temptation to gratify some desire. In the case of the young thief, who is just learning the evil practice, this desire completely overcomes him. The enjoyment which he thinks he will get from the coveted thing forms an overwhelming temptation. Lying is generally resorted to by the young in order to get them out of scrapes, or to avoid immediate punishment ”

“ What can a wife and her children think of an intemperate husband and father? We can be sober in language, and shun cursing and swearing—the most useless, unmeaning, and brutal of vulgarities. Nothing can be so silly and unmeaning—not to say shocking, repulsive, and sinful—as the oaths so common in the mouths of vulgar swearers. They are profanation without purpose—impiety without provocation—blasphemy without excuse. ”

“ The common swearer is confined to no rank or age in society. I have heard the youth who was barely in his teens indulge in this sin, as though it had been a part of his parental or day-school education. I have heard the young gentleman, so-called, recently returned from the walks of a University, pollute his lips and character with this shameful vice. I have heard the man who laid claim to wealth, to intelligence, to respectability, and to honour, pour forth his swearing words. ”