Word Finder - worldly

definition

Concerned with human or earthly matters, physical as opposed to spiritual.

synonyms

• material
• mundane
• sublunar

definition

Concerned with secular rather than sacred matters.

synonyms

• lay
• profane

definition

Sophisticated, especially because of surfeit; versed in the ways of the world.

synonyms

• sophisticated
• street-smart

definition

In a worldly manner.

Worldly conversation at a moment when his soul is already prepared...

Approaching the abbey he resolved to do as his favourite hero Amadis de Gaul did - keep a vigil all night before the Lady altar and then lay aside his worldly armour to put on that of Christ.

Brother Urusov came and we talked about worldly vanities.

At the same time that the Neo-Platonists, like Ficino and Pico de la Mirandola, and the pantheists, whose God was little more than a reverential conception of the universe at large, and the purely worldly humanists, like Celtes and Bebel, were widely diverging each by his own particular path from the ecclesiastical Weltanschauung of the middle ages, Ulrich von Hutten was busy attacking the Curia in his witty Dialogues, in the name of German patriotism.

There was also the boundless abuse and arbitrary exercise of the right of ecclesiastical patronage (provisions, reservations); and further the ever-increasing traffic in dispensations, the abuse of spiritual punishments for worldly ends, and so forth.

The last two categories, which do not become prominent anywhere in Europe until the 12th century, had, like all gilds, a religious tinge, but their aims were primarily worldly, and their functions were mainly of an economic character.

Prince Andrew always became specially keen when he had to guide a young man and help him to worldly success.

All, however much or little preoccupied with worldly business, must fear God, from whom come good things and evil, life, death, poverty and riches.

Motives of self-interest may have lurked in them - otherworldly motives of buying salvation for a little price, or worldly motives of achieving riches and acquiring lands.

Leaving his mule to the abbey, and giving away his worldly clothes to a beggar, he kept his watch in the church during the night of the 24th-25th of March, and placed on the Lady altar his sword and dagger.

The secularization of the church was carried to a pitch never before dreamed of, and it was clear to all Italy that he regarded the papacy as an instrument of worldly schemes with no thought of its religious aspect.

As regards Vincent he himself tells us that only after long and sad experience of worldly turmoil did he betake himself to the haven of a religious life.

The priests in the time of the law of grace shall claim no ownership of worldly possessions.

His death was an overwhelming grief to Chesterfield, and the discovery that he had long been married to a lady of humble origin must have been galling in the extreme to his father after his careful instruction in worldly wisdom.

Ram Das himself, finding his eldest son Prithi Chand worldly and disobedient, and his second unfitted by his too retiring disposition for the duties of guru, appointed his third son, Arjan, to succeed him.

Greek philosophy, and the interpretation of the Koran; that he was much addicted to worldly pleasures, especially to excessive wine drinking.

They shared the worldly spirit in its various forms, particularly the desire for wealth and the luxuries it affords, and for a place in " good society " - which meant a pagan atmosphere.

Thus they were divided in soul between spiritual goods and worldly pleasures, and were apt to doubt whether the rewards promised by God to the life of " simplicity " (all Christ meant by the childlike spirit, including generosity in giving and forgiving) and self-restraint, were real or not.

From those early days when a fond mother wrote of him as having been " truly converted to God," down to the verge of ninety years, he lived in the habitual contemplation of the unseen world, and regulated his private and public action by reference to a code higher than that of mere prudence or worldly wisdom.

From that time he gave up all worldly learning and laboured solely to expound spiritual things.

It was natural that warning voices should then be raised in the Church against secular tendencies, that the wellknown counsels about the imitation of Christ should be held up in their literal strictness before worldly Christians.

His previous life had been rather worldly, and not wholly free from spot; but as pope he gave no occasion of offence.

If Luther, who above all others had the religious issue ever before him, attacks the Church as a source of worldly disorder, it is not surprising that his contemporary Ulrich von Hutten should take a purely secular view of the issues involved.

Gradually there came to be facing each other a great political Christendom, whose rulers were statesmen, with aims and policy of a worldly type, and a religious Christendom, full of the ideas of separation from the world by self-sacrifice and of participation in the benefits of Christ's work by an ascetic imitation.

With her the least worldly of men would occupy a most brilliant position in society.

The strongholds of these heretical opinions were the great towns, the centres of civilization, because there the growing sentiment of municipal independence, and the rise of a burgher class through commerce, created a spirit of criticism which was dissatisfied with the worldly lives of the clergy and their undue influence in affairs.

To the ordinary men it seemed to be a reforming agency, insisting on a high moral standard, and upholding the words of Scripture against the traditions of an overgrown and worldly church.

They are distinguished as daivika ("divine") or laukika (" worldly").

During the last three decades of the 15th century the Roman Curia, and the College of Cardinals in particular, became increasingly worldly.

The inscriptions, which contain altogether about five thousand words, are entirely of religious import, and their references to worldly affairs are incidental.

It has sometimes been supposed that Pascal, from 1651 or earlier to the famous accident of 1654, lived a dissipated, extravagant, worldly, luxurious (though admittedly not vicious) life with his friend the duc de Roannez and others.

The nation now plucked bitter fruit from the seed planted by Otto the Great in assuming the imperial crown and by a long line of kings and emperors in lavishing worldly power upon tile church.

It may be so to worldly eyes, but in the time of danger to Islam the Moslem turns away from the things of this world and thirsts only for the service of his Faith, even though he looks in the face of death To establish confidence in the minds of the Egyptian public that the authorities could maintain order and tranquillity, it was determined to increase permanently the strength of the British garrison.

The Five Hindrances are (1) Hankering after worldly advantages, (2) The corruption arising out of the wish to injure, (3) Torpor of mind, (4) Fretfulness and worry, (5) Wavering of mind.'" When these five hindrances have been cut away from within him, he looks upon himself as freed from debt, rid of disease, out of jail, a free man and secure.

And they went out to make a compact with the followers of the worldly Herod to kill Him, and so to stave off a religious revolution which might easily have been followed by political trouble.

On the one hand he turned his weapons against the rationalistic school, who reduced religion to the modicum compatible with an ordinary worldly mind.

But Goethe - more worldly wise than on former occasions - felt instinctively that the gay, social world in which Lili moved was not really congenial to him.

Again poetic justice is effected on the unfortunate hero who has chosen his own personal advancement in preference to his duty to the woman he loves; more pointedly than in Gotz is the moral enforced by Clavigo's worldly friend Carlos, that the ground of Clavigo's tragic end lies not so much in the defiance of a moral law as in the hero's vacillation and want of character.

Thenceforth the worldly power of the Caliphate was a mere shadow.

Now, in cases of danger being threatened to their own ascendancy by such practices, the gods as a rule proceed to employ the usually successful expedient of despatching some lovely nymph to lure the saintly men back to worldly pleasures.

The generally recognized principal Avatars do not, however, by any means constitute the only occasions of a direct intercession of the deity in worldly affairs, but - in the same way as to this day the eclipses of the sun and moon are ascribed by the ordinary Hindu to these luminaries being temporarily swallowed by the dragon Rahu (or Graha, " the seizer") - so any uncommon occurrence would be apt to be set down as a special manifestation of divine power; and any man credited with exceptional merit or achievement, or even remarkable for some strange incident connected with his life or death, might ultimately come to be looked upon as a veritable incarnation of the deity, capable of influencing the destinies of man, and might become an object of local adoration or superstitious awe and propitiatory rites to multitudes of people.

Of a cold and worldly temperament, devoid of passion, blameless in his conduct as the father of a family, faithful as the servant of his papal patrons, severe in the administration of the provinces committed to his charge, and indisputably able in his conduct of affairs, he was at the same time, and in spite of these qualities, a man whose moral nature inspires a sentiment of liveliest repugnance.

A succession of worldly pontiffs brought the church into flagrant discord with the principles of Christianity.

Such a life was specially recommended for one who has lived the life of a householder, and, having begotten sons according to the sacred law and offered sacrifices, desires in his old age to abandon worldly objects and direct his mind to final liberation.

Renunciation of the state of wedlock was anyhow imposed on the faithful during the lengthy, often lifelong, terms of penance imposed upon them for sins committed; and later, when monkery took the place, in a church become worldly, partly of the primitive baptism and partly of that rigorous penance which was the rebaptism and medicine of the lapsed, celibacy and virginity were held essential thereto, no less than renunciation of property and money-making.

The influence of dissent also acted along with the rapidly rising religious fervour of the age in quickening in the church that sense of a divine mission, and of the right and power to carry out that mission without obstruction from any worldly authority, which belongs to the essential consciousness of the Christian church.

Few men, it is probable, have been more atrociously calumniated; but, when every specific statement to h s prejudice has been rejected, he still appears on a general review of his actions worldly, crafty and unscrupulous.

They repudiated the use of force, advocated a scriptural communism of goods, and asserted that Christians must always exercise love and patience towards each other and so be independent of worldly tribunals.

His brethren made him oeconomiae prefectus, but he was too "simple in worldly affairs" and too absent-minded for the post, and so they deposed him and made him sub-prior once more.

He is also wrongly described as a relative of Archbishop Abbot, from whom he acknowledges very gratefully, in the first of his epistles dedicatory of A Hand of Fellowship to Helpe Keepe out Sinne and Antichrist (1623, 4to), that he had "received all" his "worldly maintenance," as well as "best earthly countenance" and "fatherly incouragements."