Word: pious
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...partisans hark back to the Hasidim (pious ones) who flourished in 18th century Poland. But unlike other modern Hasidic sects-which are devoted to a kind of cheerful mysticism and have no objections to Israel-Teitelbaum's followers are fanatically opposed to most aspects of modern life, including military service, voting, movies and TV, mixed gatherings of men and women. They live in self-imposed ghettos, speak only Yiddish since they consider Hebrew sacred and reserved for prayers. Their opposition to Israel rests on two beliefs: 1) only the Messiah can establish a Jewish state, and any human attempt...
Most friends disgust us with friendship and most pious creatures with piety...
...France of 1908 -such a well-tended garden that it was almost a crime for a child to pick a flower -the De Beauvoirs tried to maintain rather than seek status. A soso lawyer. Papa was worldly, intelligent and a gifted amateur actor. Convent-bred Mama was pious, temperamentally capricious, and terribly afraid of making a social gaffe. When the couple engaged in loud-voiced wrangles, little Simone was bitterly disillusioned; parents were not gods, but common clay. At eight, the embryo novelist wrote a woefully sentimental saga about The Misfortunes of Marguerite...
Simone was more pious than her mother when she entered parochial school; she received Holy Communion three times a week and tried to practice self-mortification by scrubbing herself raw with pumice. But the day came when her longtime father-confessor charged her with arrogance and disobedience. Simone got flaming mad: "His priest's robe was only a disguise; it covered an old busybody who fed on gossip. With burning face I left the confessional, determined never to set foot in it again...
According to the poll, he himself will likely tell you that, on the whole, his loss of all traditional religious faith did not substantially alter his ethical principles, nor does he feel at all obliged by his convictions to persuade the pious to abandon their beliefs. Incredibly enough, well over a third of those who either flatly reject all belief in God or else hold that there are no adequate grounds for deciding the question, nevertheless think that "on the whole, the Church stands for the best in human life," though it suffers from certain minor human shortcomings...