Terry Eagleton

The role of the intellectual, so it is said, is to speak truth to power. Noam Chomsky has dismissed this pious tag on two grounds. For one thing, power knows the truth already; it is just busy trying to conceal it. For another, it is not those in power who need the truth, but those they oppress.

English Critic

Saint Teresa of Avila

O my God, what must a soul be like when it is in this state! It longs to be all one tongue with which to praise the Lord. It utters a thousand pious follies, in a continuous endeavor to please Him who thus possesses it.

Spanish Saint

Martin Chemnitz

I am calling attention just to the main points of these tremendously important matters, which can be understood better by pious meditation than explained by human language.

German Theologian

Debra Granik

In the U.K., working-class lives are depicted with the characters' humour, but in the U.S., people with difficulties are often depicted with pious or simply dreary lives.

American Director

Michel Faber

The privileged Victorians who did most to improve the lives of the poor were not ashamed of their pious intent: they were superiors seeking to help inferiors.

Dutch Writer

Henri Frederic Amiel

In every loving woman there is a priestess of the past - a pious guardian of some affection, of which the object has disappeared.

Swiss Philosopher

Vikrant Massey

All my characters are quite relatable, as they are flawed, true, and honest. All of us are flawed; nobody is pure and pious.

Indian Actor

C. S. Lewis

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

British Writer

Madhur Bhandarkar

My inherent belief is that motherhood is pious, and I am humbled by it.

Indian Director

Akhil Sharma

Indian Author

When used sincerely, 'pious' has a positive tone, showing approval of someone's devoutness.

Positive Connotation

'Pious' often implies that someone's behavior genuinely reflects their deep religious or spiritual convictions.

Genuine Spirituality

'Pious' captures an element of respectfulness, especially during religious ceremonies or practices.

Ceremonious Respect

'Pious' can suggest that someone is showing off their religion or morals insincerely.

Negative Impression

The definition points towards someone pretending to be devout, without true heartfelt belief.

False Devotion

Using 'pious' this way cues the listener to be skeptical of the sincerity of the speaker.

Hypocrisy Alert

 just as scheming as her unexpected guest– and rattles the reader’s presumptions about who has the upper hand. For O’Connor, no subject was off limits. Though she was a devout Catholic, she wasn’t afraid to explore the possibility of pious thought and unpious behavior co-existing in the same person.

Why should you read...

 The Puritans came here for religious reasons, or so they said, but they also came here because they wanted to make a lot of money. They were pious people, but they were also really aggressive capitalists, and they were accused of extreme forms of profit-making tendencies,

The way we think about...

 While ordinary folks have grown more pious on a personal level -- I saw a lot more headscarves on a recent visit than I would have a decade ago -- the country's politics have moved in the opposite direction. Indonesia is now a pretty decent democracy.

The risky politics of...

 Now, hang on. Do you folks want the future that's politically right or left? Do you want the pious society with strict moral rules, or do you an hedonistic free-for-all, more like Burning Man 24/7? Do you want beautiful beaches, forests and lakes,

How to get empowered,...

 is very elegant. Don't believe him. It's a pious hope, I wish it were true, but I think the other day he admitted to me it's really an ugly universe. It's stupidly constructed, it's got way too many arbitrary coupling constants and mass ratios

Why does the universe...

 deserters and the occasion when the sternly pious Stonewall Jackson became hopelessly intoxicated or highlights that's a highlight in it in and of itself being somebody quite familiar with the jungle one cannot look at human

James Robertson: The...

 where you have a dictatorship suppressing its own people, including the Islamic pious, and they're reacting in reactionary ways. There was one country, though, which was able to escape or stay away from that vicious cycle.

Mustafa Akyol: Faith...

 as to insist that a life lost could be a soul found but what are we were to reclaim Seoul from the lost-and-found business if we were to free it of pious modifiers such as blessed and immortal because it

The real meaning of soul...

 Greenpeace activists who are now interfering in how we run the country bottom of the radio pious Pio Stefan Ella was one of a new breed of settlers shaping the Amazon people that

Environment vs...

 that might make it easy to cry foul, to put down the whole story as a pious fable. Quite the contrary. In his own reported words, he was convinced at first