All 5 Uses
pious
in
John Adams, by McCullough
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- "In wisdom, piety, benevolence and charity in proportion to his education and sphere of life, I have never known his superior," Adams would write long afterward, by which time he had come to know the most prominent men of the age on two sides of the Atlantic.†
Subsection 1.1.2
- His mother, though a pious woman, thought him unsuited for the life, for all that Deacon John wished it for him.†
Subsection 1.1.2
- In his early life he was an officer of the militia, afterwards a deacon of the church, and a selectman of the town; almost all the business of the town being managed by him in that department for twenty years together; a man of strict piety and great integrity; much esteemed and beloved wherever he was known, which was not far, his sphere of life being not extensive.†
Subsection 1.1.2
- In this city may that piety and virtue, that wisdom and magnanimity, that constancy and self-government, which adorned the great character whose name it bears, be forever held in veneration!†
Subsection 3.10.5 *
- This stone and several others [it read] have been placed in this yard by a great, great, grandson from a veneration of the piety, humility, simplicity, prudence, frugality, industry and perseverance of his ancestors in hopes of recommending an affirmation of their virtues to their posterity.†
Subsection 3.12.5
Definitions:
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(1)
(pious as in: a good, pious woman) religious or highly moral
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(2)
(pious as in: a pious hypocrite) self-righteous (acting as though one is, or believing one is highly moral when it is not true)
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(3)
(pious as in: cling to the pious hope) (describing a hope or wish as) sincere, but highly unlikely
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(4)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) Much more rarely, piety can refer to devotion or faithfulness as Proust used it in the book, Swann's Way:
"...but when, as had befallen me, such an anguish possesses one's soul before Love has yet entered into one's life, then it must drift, awaiting Love's coming, vague and free, without precise attachment, at the disposal of one sentiment to-day, of another to-morrow, of filial piety or affection for a comrade."