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Literary notes about impious (AI summary)

The term "impious" has been deployed across literary works to denote actions or attitudes that flagrantly violate sacred norms and divine authority. In classical texts, authors use it to condemn irreverence toward the gods, as seen when Homer's warriors and sacrilegious deeds are labeled impious to underscore moral decay and hubris ([1], [2], [3]). Philosophical and theological writings, from Augustine’s rebuke of both individuals and entire hostilities ([4], [5], [6]) to Dante’s invocation of divine justice in impious circles ([7], [8]), illustrate how the term underscores a transgression of heavenly order. Meanwhile, its deployment by figures such as Wollstonecraft and Rousseau ([9], [10]) expands the critique to include intellectual and social realms, highlighting acts that defy reason or natural duty. The label, whether applied to characters, political breaches ([11], [12]), or even cultural practices deemed sacrilegious ([13], [14]), consistently serves as a powerful instrument to mark the boundary between the sacred and the profane.
  1. The ties of faith, the sworn alliance, broke, Our impious battles the just gods provoke.
    — from The Iliad by Homer
  2. Then she: "This insult from no god I found, An impious mortal gave the daring wound!
    — from The Iliad by Homer
  3. what a crime my impious heart design'd!
    — from The Iliad by Homer
  4. For had so impious a man, with so great and so impious a host, entered the city, whom would he have spared?
    — from The City of God, Volume I by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine
  5. For had so impious a man, with so great and so impious a host, entered the city, whom would he have spared?
    — from The City of God, Volume I by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine
  6. For so rash and impious had I been, that what I ought by enquiring to have learned, I had pronounced on, condemning.
    — from The Confessions of St. Augustine by Bishop of Hippo Saint Augustine
  7. ‘O mighty Virtue, [352] at whose will am I Wheeled through these impious circles,’ then I said, ‘Speak, and in full my longing satisfy.
    — from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri
  8. As the embodiment of superhuman impious strength and pride they stand for warders of the utmost reach of Hell.
    — from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri
  9. It is not impious thus to scan the attributes of the Almighty: in fact, who can avoid it that exercises his faculties?
    — from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
  10. As if you were the first impious person who had been led astray through his reason corrupted by sin.
    — from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  11. But it is impious to strive against the authority of the senate.
    — from The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 by Livy
  12. And turning to the statue of Jupiter, "Hear thou, Jupiter," says he, "hear these impious proposals; hear ye them, Justice and Equity.
    — from The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 by Livy
  13. In ancient Greece, for example, certain things were done at a temple, and people were agreed that it would be impious not to do them.
    — from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park
  14. The City of Satan, whatever its artifices in art, war, or philosophy, was essentially corrupt and impious.
    — from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana

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