"Libertine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contempt, when he is seen the constant associate of a man whose name has become synonymous with vice, a dissolute and fearless assassin of private character, of domestic comfort, and of social happiness; when he is known to be the bosom friend and supporter of the profligate and abandoned libertine, who, from the vulgar debauches of night, hastens again to the invasion of private property. Who, through the robbery of the public revenue, and the violation of private seals, hurries down the precipice of deep and ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... receive her own commands to the same purpose, and be countenanced, or disfavoured, according as they obey? Might not the Queen lay her injunctions on the Bishops, and other great men of undoubted piety, to make diligent enquiry, to give her notice, if any person about her should happen to be of libertine principles or morals? Might not all those who enter upon any office in her Majesty's family, be obliged to take an oath parallel with that against simony, which is administered to the clergy? 'Tis not to be doubted, but that if these, or the like proceedings, were ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... part, my dear," said Mr. Ayrton. "I think that he's a bit of a fool to run his head into a hornet's nest because he has come to the conclusion that Abraham's code of morality was a trifle shaky, and that Samson was a shameless libertine. Great Heavens! has the man got no notion of ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... high, lank, but graceful as a panther, and the pink of politeness, was, beneath his varnish, one of the wildest young men in London—gambler, horse-racer, libertine, what not?—but in society charming, and his manners singularly elegant and winning. He never obtruded his vices in good company; in fact, you might dine with him all your life and not detect him. The young serpent was torpid in wine; ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Thackeray, but a party politician in those days could scarcely be a faithful chronicler. He could see what he wished to see, but found it necessary to shut his eyes when the prospect became unpleasant. George was a heartless libertine, but Addison observes with great satisfaction that the women most eminent for virtue and good sense are in his interest. 'It would be no small misfortune,' he says, 'to a sovereign, though he had all the male part of the nation on his side, if he did not find ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... no weakness for Laurent in the mocking and libertine sense that one gives to this word in love. It was by an act of her will, after nights of sorrowful meditation, that she said to him—"I wish what thou wishest, because we have come to that point where the fault ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... herself becomingly never hears the tempter's tone or knows aught of any love but that of her rightful lord. Pure womanhood is a wondrous shield, more potent far than swords. If she has been approached by lawless libertine, he bids her, for the honor of his house, to set a seal upon her lips, instead of bruiting her shame abroad as women are wont to do whose vanity outruns ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... libertine Soulis," returned Murray, "he can only make them prisoners; and even that injury shall be of short duration. I will soon join the brave Wallace; and then, my sweet cousin, liberty, and ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... terrible old man, he stepped straight into the study without knocking, and stood stupidly waiting for the voice that he knew would come. A thought of dignity never occurred to him. Had he been a mere libertine he would have brazened it out, and would have tried at flippancy. But he was not a libertine; he was simply an inexperienced young man who was suffering remorse at ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... in her resolution to lay hold of the public at all risks. Her performances at times approached offense against maidenly reticence and delicacy. When she played Zerlina, in 'Don Giovanni,' such virtue as there was between the two seemed absolutely on the side of the libertine hero—so much invitation was thrown into the peasant girl's rusticity." Here was a capital subject for the methods dear to the heart of Ullmann. In London the Piccolomini had been proclaimed to be of a noble Roman family, the niece of a ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... rather have expressed differently" for which reporters are responsible are of course legion. I forbear to enlarge on such familiar instances as "the shattered libertine of debate," applied to Mr. Bernal Osborne, and "the roaring loom of the Times" when Mr. Lowell had spoken of the "roaring loom of time." I content myself with two which occurred in my own immediate circle. A clerical uncle of mine took the Pledge ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... shocked at my easy-going indifference. This holds especially true of politics. This is a matter upon which I feel easier in my mind than upon any other, and yet a great many people look upon me as being very lax. I cannot get out of my head the idea that perhaps the libertine is right after all and practises the true philosophy of life. This has led me to express too much admiration for such men as Sainte-Beuve and Theophile Gautier. Their affectation of immorality prevented ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... most apt for such "killing" is precisely he who appraises most shrewdly the thing he kills. As the cool practised libertine is oftenest attracted by the immature girl, so the ardent inexperienced man of any age will be drawn to the older woman; and the psychology of this matter of everyday experience is closely akin to the paradox in artistic creation of which I ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... watry Eye, And, as our captive Spirits ebb and flow, Smile at the Tempests you have rais'd below: The Face of Guilt a Flush of Vertue wears, And sudden burst the involuntary Tears: Honour's sworn Foe, the Libertine with Shame, Descends to curse the sordid lawless Flame; The tender Maid here learns Man's various Wiles, Rash Youth, hence dread the Wanton's venal Smiles— Sure 'twas by brutal Force of envious Man, ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... there, Commandant of Artillery, a brave officer, but a bad man; Varin, a proud, arrogant libertine, Commissary of Montreal, who outdid Bigot in rapine and Cadet in coarseness; De Breard, Comptroller of the Marine, a worthy associate of Penisault, whose pinched features and cunning leer were in keeping with his important office of chief manager of the Friponne. Perrault, D'Estebe, Morin, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the world to console and edify it, without mingling in its joys and passions—but a clergy such as intrigue, cupidity, and ambition had made it; that is to say, the court abbes, rivalling the Roman priests, indolent, libertine, elegant, impudent, kings of fashion, autocrats of the salon, kissing the hands of those ladies of whom they boasted themselves the paramours, giving their hands to kiss to the women of the people whom they honored ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... a conquering temperament—a kiss-snatching, door-bursting type of libertine. In the very act of straying from the path of virtue he remained a respectable merchant. It would have been perhaps better for Flora if he had been a mere brute. But he set about his sinister enterprise ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... effort to abandon all coquetry and cease "to count as a woman." At the same time a cruel melancholia possesses her; she feels she has become old without having profited by her youth. Not that she descends to the coarse and libertine regrets of "grand'mere" in Beranger's song, "Ah! que je regrette!" Elsie Lindtner declares more than once that if she had to start life over again she would be just as irreproachable. But the nearer she gets to the crisis, the more painfully and lucidly ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... aspirations, strong emotions, and capricious will," produces arguments "wide in range, of profound significance and infinite ingenuity," to defend and justify immoral intercourse with a gipsy trull. The poem consists of the speculations of a libertine, who coerces into his service truth and sophistry, and "a superabounding wealth of thought and imagery," and with no further purpose on the poet's part than the dramatic delineation of character. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau is spoken of in a similar manner as the justification, ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... village—were sacrificed to glut its greed of death. Into the fiery arms of Moloch parents laid the children of their love. Human sacrifices were unquestionably a recognized form of worship during this period, at least in times of deep distress.[41] The libertine longings of nature, the free fecundities of mother-earth, imaged to the grosser people the Power working round about them and within their very bodies; and men and women gave free rein to their appetites and passions, in honor of divinities like ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... course, you must take all this with reserve. D'Aubigne, being artist and man of science, has a vivid imagination. But he understands Carville, and appreciates the difference between him and the average libertine. With Carville it is always a grande affaire. For the time, as D'Aubigne quaintly puts it, his love is like a red, red rose. And I relate my adventures to you because you have roused my interest in your neighbours and it is only fair ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... following, are the only conditions that can save you from the penitentiary, as an embezzler, a receiver of stolen goods, a robber of county records, a defamer of innocent men, an accomplice in helping an Indian to steal a white girl, and a libertine. ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... brings chiefly to our recollection that the author of Don Quixote lost his hand in the action; and in the trivial page before us, we dare not call our hero by the name of "Don Juan," (by which he is known in Spanish history,) lest he be mistaken for the popular libertine! And thus, the last of the knights has been stripped of his name by the hero of the "Festin de Pierre," and of his honours by Cervantes, as by Philip II. of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... which it was surrounded. The owners of Rushbrooke Grange had never occupied a prominent position in the county, and their estates had grown smaller with each succeeding generation. There was no conspicuous author of their decay, no outstanding gamester or libertine from whose ownership the family's ruin could be dated. There was indeed nothing of interest in their annals except an attack upon the Grange by a party of armed burglars in the disorderly times at the beginning of the ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... certain extent I am convinced it is true. And it may be so, and women be no more to blame in the matter than the other sex. To-day, in the fashionable society of our great cities, how much does it injure a wealthy young man's prospects for matrimony, if it is a well-known fact that he is a libertine? And how long can such a state of things continue without dragging down the women who marry such men? If a lady cares not if her lover is a libertine, she cannot possess much of genuine virtue. The fashionable men of Paris keep mistresses—so do those of all ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... for a time to become perilously formidable. His mother may well have believed herself justified in representing to Hojo Tokimasa that such a man would make a much better Minamoto shogun than the half-witted libertine, Yoriiye, or the untried boy, Sanetomo. It has been inferred that her pleading was in Tokimasa's ears when he sent a band of assassins to murder Yoriiye in the Shuzen-ji monastery. However that may be, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... regarding the personal character of Goethe refuses to credit him with any moral worth accordant with his bodily and mental gifts. It figures him a libertine,—heartless, loveless, bad. I do not envy the mental condition of those who can rest in the belief that a really great poet can be a bad man. Be assured that the fruits of genius have never grown, and will never grow, in such a soil. Of all ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... morality were not conventional; his affection and enthusiasm for people burnt fiercely and waned, yet when he sinned, he sinned through a genuine passion. But Byron, according to Leigh Hunt, was a cold-blooded libertine, and had no conception of what love meant, except as a merely animal desire, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... reproaches!... that this 'Exciter of Desire' (bravo! Messieurs of the 'Post'!), this 'Adonis in Loveliness,' was a corpulent man of fifty!—in short, this 'delightful, blissful, wise, pleasureable, honourable, virtuous, true', and 'immortal' prince was a violator of his word, a libertine over head and ears in disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers and demireps, a man who has just closed half a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his country or ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Amabel's had been: each must tell the other everything; a common bond of suffering was between them and a common bond of love, though love so differing. "I knew, of course, that he was often unfaithful to me; he is a libertine; but I was the centre; he always came back to me.—I saw the end approaching about five years ago. I fought—oh how warily—so that he shouldn't dream I was afraid;—it is fatal for a woman to let a man know she is afraid,—the ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... must be integrated and assimilated. Asceticism defeats its own purpose because it develops the obsession of licentious and obscene thoughts, the victim alternating between temporary victory over "sin" and the remorse of defeat. But the seeker of purely physical pleasure, the libertine or the average sensualist, is no less a pathological case, living as one-sided and unbalanced a life as the ascetic, for his conduct is likewise based on ignorance and lack of understanding. In seeking pleasure without the exercise ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... at home. There is a certain waste and carelessness in the air of every thing, and the whole appears but a covered indigence, a magnificent poverty. That neatness and chearfulness, which attends the table of him who lives within compass, is wanting, and exchanged for a libertine way of ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... these two young men another mistake, which the common retailers of character committed. Henry was said to be wholly negligent, while William was reputed to be extremely attentive to the other sex. William, indeed, was gallant, was amorous, and indulged his inclination to the libertine society of women; but Henry it was who loved them. He admired them at a reverential distance, and felt so tender an affection for the virtuous female, that it shocked him to behold, much more to associate with, the depraved ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... determination which were necessary to make him a leader of thought. He laboured at it all his life, and his mental qualifications enabled him to keep pace with the public desires in all their branches. The age was frivolous, and he excelled in fugitive pieces; it was libertine, and he had obscene verses at command; the esprits forts had a leaning to incredulity, and he put himself at the head of the movement, and made use of it to turn into ridicule all that men had been most accustomed to revere. Gifted with extraordinary powers of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... not remember the old cynic's testimony (in the "New Republic") to the piquancy lent by Christianity to many a sin, otherwise pointless. If the moralist distinguishes between actions that are evil because they are forbidden, and those that are forbidden because they are evil, the libertine has a counter-distinction between those that are forbidden because they are pleasant, and those that are pleasant because they are forbidden. St. Paul himself is explicit enough as to this ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... austere and cruel principles of a bloody religion, will sometimes be, by a fortunate inconsistency, humane, tolerant, moderate; in this case the principles of his religion do not agree with the mildness of his disposition. A libertine, a debauchee, a hypocrite, an adulterer, or a thief will often show us that he has the clearest ideas of morals. Why do they not practice them? It is because neither their temperament, their interests, nor their habits agree with their sublime ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... desire to know what you mean," replied the cardinal; "but I wish to please you, and see nothing out of the way in giving you what you demand with respect to so infamous a creature—the more so as you tell me this d'Artagnan is a libertine, a duelist, ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wishes of the Church, and the author of the Novels too frequently reforms the jurisprudence of the Code and Pandects. In the most rigorous laws, a wife was condemned to support a gamester, a drunkard, or a libertine, unless he were guilty of homicide, poison, or sacrilege, in which cases the marriage, as it should seem, might have been dissolved by the hand ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... makes it into what an indignant Brahman writer recently called "a huge sham." To the ordinary Hindu, all of life's values are measured in the coin of external rites. Let one be an atheist if he please, or even a libertine or a murderer, and his status in Hinduism is not impaired. But let him eat beef, even unwittingly, or let him ignorantly drink water which has been touched by a man of lower caste than himself, and his doom is irrevocably sealed! Through this whole system the Hindu conscience ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... too, furnishes several puzzles of the same kind. That an English-speaking Protestant married couple in easy circumstances and of fair education, and belonging to a religious circle, should not only be aware that their pastor was a libertine and should be keeping it a secret for him, but should make his adulteries the subject of conversation with him in the family circle, is hardly capable of explanation by reference to any known and acknowledged tendency of our society. But perhaps the most striking ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... their cordons of the legion of honour, who at their whim have people beaten on the soles of their feet. The so-called justice of bespectacled Cadis, traitors to the koran and to the law, who sell their judgements as did Esau his birthright for a plate of cous-cous. Drunken and libertine headmen, former batmen to General Yussif someone or other, who guzzle champagne in the company of harlots, and indulge in feasts of roast mutton, while before their tents the whole tribe is starving and disputes with the dogs the leavings of the ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... been eminently handsome in his youth, tall, slender, with yellow hair falling in ringlets down his shoulders. He is likewise said to have been a great libertine. The following story is ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... sunshine in the heart of me, My blood sings in the breeze; The mountains are a part of me, I'm fellow to the trees. My golden youth I'm squandering, Sun-libertine am I; A-wandering, a-wandering, Until the day ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... Emily had thoughtlessly given, produced the most opposite effects on the minds of he sisters. With Adelaide it increased his consequence and enhanced his value. It would be no vulgar conquest to fix and reform one who was notorious for his inconstancy and libertine principles; and from that moment she resolved to use all the influence of her charms to captivate and secure the heart of her cousin. In Mary's well-regulated mind other feelings arose. Although she was not one of the outrageous virtuous, who storm ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... guilty of enticing away from me the crown prince, and making the future ruler of my country an obscurer, a necromancer, and at the same time a libertine! I was obliged to overlook his youthful preference for Wilhelmine Enke, and wink at this amour, for I know that crown prince is human, and his affections are to be consulted. If he cannot love the wife which diplomacy chooses for him, then he must be permitted the chosen one of his ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... much as any man; but he desired to receive it only on his own terms. He profoundly appeals to writers endowed with "the artistic conscience" as "the martyr of literary style." In morals something of a libertine, in matters of art he exhibited the intolerance of weakness in others and the remorseless self-examination and self-torment commonly attributed to the Puritan. His friend Maxime Du Camp, who tried to bring him out and teach him the arts of popularity, he rebuffed with deliberate ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... Most mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin; For thou thyself hast been a libertine, As sensual as the brutish sting itself; And all the embossed sores and headed evils That thou with license of free foot hast caught Wouldst thou disgorge ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... then with the previous 'good order, discretion, and sobriety.' But no little licence was permitted, and the tales of it commonly excite small surprise. As told of Ralegh, and yet more of Elizabeth Throckmorton, the story startles still. No evidence exists upon which he can justly be pronounced a libertine. How she, refined, faithful, heroic, should have been led astray, is hardly intelligible. She must have now been several years over twenty, probably twenty-eight or twenty-nine, and in her long after-life she bore herself as entitled to all social respect. She was allowed it ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... houses at Hong Kong did not wish the libertine to be disturbed in his depredations. The Chinese merchants were able to see this fact if those officials were not ready to admit it even to themselves. They knew how to throw a stone that would secure their own glass houses. Hence they said in their ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... youthful wife, for Margaret herself), it is not to be denied that the various parts are kept up with much decision and spirit. Of the men, indeed, Hircan is the only one who has a very decided character, and is represented as fond of his wife, Parlamente, but a decided libertine and of a somewhat rough and ruthless general character—points which have made the interpreters sure that he must be Henry d'Albret. The others, except that Geburon is, as had been said, older than his ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... fond (said my aunt) of sketches of the society which has passed away. I wish I could describe to you Sir Philip Forester, the "chartered libertine" of Scottish good company, about the end of the last century. I never saw him indeed; but my mother's traditions were full of his wit, gallantry and dissipation. This gay knight flourished about the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... recovery of my books, I had recourse to the advice of my landlord, Mons. B—. He is a handsome young fellow, about twenty-five years of age, and keeps house with two maiden sisters, who are professed devotees. The brother is a little libertine, good natured and obliging; but a true Frenchman in vanity, which is undoubtedly the ruling passion of this volatile people. He has an inconsiderable place under the government, in consequence of which he is permitted to wear a sword, a privilege which ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... name without spot or stain; yes, he could have witnessed and borne all this, and the blessed memory of her virtues would have consoled him in his bereavement and his sorrow. But to reflect that she was trampled down into guilt and infamy by the foot of the licentious libertine, was an event that cried for blood; and blood he had, for he murdered the seducer, and that with an insatiable rapacity of revenge that was terrible. He literally battered the head of his victim out of all shape, and left him a dead and worthless mass of inanimate matter. The ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... humanity are sad media through which to receive truth—often so opaque that no truth can reach the mind at all. It is impossible for a man whose affections are bestialized, whose practices are libertine, and whose imaginations are all impure, to receive the truth that there are such things as purity and virtue, and that there are men and women around him who are virtuous and pure. There is no truth ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... the interpretation of his motives, on his coming back to Paris he kept his word. Conjugal relations were not renewed. His family were indignant at the treatment Josephine was receiving at the hands of this pompous libertine, and he assures her that of "the two, she is not the one ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... 'blackener.' This also has fallen out of use; which is a pity, seeing that the race which it designates is so far from being extinct. Full too of instruction and warning is our present employment of 'libertine.' A 'libertine,' in earlier use, was a speculative free-thinker in matters of religion and in the theory of morals. But as by a process which is seldom missed free-thinking does and will end in free-acting, he who has cast off one yoke also casting off the ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... "It was that libertine brother-in-law of mine, the Duke of Gandia," he said. "Had he persisted, I should have bidden you look to your daughter. As it is, no doubt he has other things to think of. He is preparing for his journey to Naples, to accompany his brother ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... and continued to load his gun. Corentin looked at Marthe with indifference, while his companion seemed charmed by her; but the young man noticed the signs of her inward distress, which escaped the old libertine, who had, however, noticed and feared the gun. The natures of the two men were disclosed in ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... code of laws established. The veil which concealed Russia from the rest of Europe was rent. An army of three hundred thousand men was enlisted, Siberia was discovered, the printing press introduced, and civilization commenced. But the czar was, nevertheless, a brutal tyrant and an abandoned libertine, who massacred his son, executed his nobles, and ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... have seen, may have the depth and ideality which nature breathes in all her oracles. His experience, for that reason, though disastrous is interesting and has some human pathos; it is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig. True, the libertine is pursued, like the animals, by unforeseen tortures, decay, and abandonment, and he is vowed to a total death; but in these respects the worldly man has hardly an ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... very feebly to release herself; but that libertine masker held her firmly; that is, as firmly as possible, for he was not ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... a stonemason; chiefly in the gravestone, tomb, and monument way, and wholly of their colour from head to foot. No man is better known in Cloisterham. He is the chartered libertine of the place. Fame trumpets him a wonderful workman—which, for aught that anybody knows, he may be (as he never works); and a wonderful sot—which everybody knows he is. With the Cathedral crypt he is better acquainted ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... Wybrow, who knew that it would be ridiculous to dream of his marrying Caterina, must have been a reckless libertine to win her affections in this manner! Not at all. He was a young man of calm passions, who was rarely led into any conduct of which he could not give a plausible account to himself; and the tiny fragile ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... corrupt a city, Catiline, as it was very easy to do, kept about him, like a body-guard, crowds of the unprincipled and desperate. For all those shameless, libertine, and profligate characters who had dissipated their patrimonies by gaming, luxury, and sensuality; all who had contracted heavy debts, to purchase immunity for their crimes or offenses; all assassins or sacrilegious persons from every quarter, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... sought for nothing which the eye cannot see or the hand handle. To him a kingdom of truth and a king of truth were objects of fairyland or castles in the air. "What is truth?" he asked; but, as he asked, he turned on his heel, and did not wait for an answer. He asked only as a libertine might ask, What is virtue? or a tyrant, ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... the effect of this good lesson keep, As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother, Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven Whilst, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,[70] Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks not ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... Jesero, the lake of Ovid. In this retirement, and the Euxine Pontus, he passed the remainder of his life, a melancholy period of seven years. Notwithstanding the lascivious writings of Ovid, it does not appear that he was in his conduct a libertine. He was three times married: his first wife, who was of mean extraction, and (185) whom he had married when he was very young, he divorced; the second he dismissed on account of her immodest behaviour; and the third appears to ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... Whom the world called thy husband, was in truth Unworthy of thee.-A dull plodding wretch! With whose ignoble nature thy free spirit Held no communion.—'T was well done, fair creature! T' assert the independence of a mind Created-generated I would say— Free as "that chartered libertine, the air." Joy to thy chosen partner! blest exchange! Work of mysterious sympathy I that drew Your kindred souls by * * * * * * * * * * There fled the noblest spirit—The most pure, Most sublimated essence that ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... What, for a Counter, would I do, but good? Du.Sen. Most mischeeuous foule sin, in chiding sin: For thou thy selfe hast bene a Libertine, As sensuall as the brutish sting it selfe, And all th' imbossed sores, and headed euils, That thou with license of free foot hast caught, Would'st thou ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Fox's salutation, as he stooped to pat Shrap, the chartered libertine of the Capella. "Dash it all, it is cold! Makes a fellow wish he were a sheep-dog. Here, Shrap, off you go and get your whiskers trimmed. I can see ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... of satisfaction as, looking above and beneath and all about him, he saw that they were folded in an almost impenetrable net of foliage, through which nothing could steal into their sanctuary, save "the chartered libertine, the air," and a few stray beams of the setting sun, filtering through the multitudinous leaves, from which they caught a green ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... Confidence. This happens when a Man is ashamed to act up to his Reason, and would not upon any Consideration be surprized in the Practice of those Duties, for the Performance of which he was sent into the World. Many an impudent Libertine would blush to be caught in a serious Discourse, and would scarce be able to show his Head, after having disclosed a religious Thought. Decency of Behaviour, all outward Show of Virtue, and Abhorrence of Vice, are carefully avoided by this Set of Shame-faced ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... however noble the music as music (think of Gluck, of Mozart, of Beethoven!), it is for the most part fettered to a little accidental comedy or tragedy, in which two lovers are jealous, or someone is wrongly imprisoned, or a libertine seduces a few women. Here music is like a god speaking the language of savages, and lowering his supreme intellect to the level of their speech. The melodious voice remains, but the divine meaning has gone out of the words. Only ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... proverbial of iniquity exist no longer at Florence. His memory was persecuted, as his life had been, for an attachment to liberty incompatible with the new system of despotism, which succeeded the fall of the free governments of Italy. He was put to the torture for being a "libertine," that is, for wishing to restore the republic of Florence; and such are the undying efforts of those who are interested in the perversion, not only of the nature of actions, but the meaning of words, that what was ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... wife an object of public pity, and we can easily understand his injustice to the latter when he tells us himself that he had never loved with passion. His death was of a piece with his life. Having been a public frequenter of brothels and the associate of the loosest company, he died like the libertine. He was ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... without further explanation, "I am a man of the world, and I know the utmost capabilities of human wickedness. I don't believe you are a real libertine. But I know Grey Town. Many a dog has been hanged here because of his bad name. You ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... to lay aside her veil, even for that solemn occasion. The young barbarian had refused to pay the welcome of her beauty to his people. Great was the disappointment. Lamia declared that Nyssia dared not uncover her face for fear of showing her double pupil. The young libertine remained convinced that Theano of Colophon was more beautiful than the queen of Sardes; and Gyges sighed when he beheld Nyssia, after having made her elephant kneel down, descend upon the inclined heads of Damascus slaves as upon a living ladder, to the threshold of the royal dwelling, where the ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... and fighting with a large mouser of the neighborhood, that I had seen for several afternoons previous, walking leisurely along the garden wall, as if absorbed in deep meditation, and forming some libertine resolve. In fine, they each seemed saturate with the spirit of the Gnome king, Umbriel, in ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... pony was Thomas, called "Tad," a constant companion of his father's little leisure, now dead. An elder boy, Robert, has lived to be welcomed as Ambassador in this country, and was at this time a student at Harvard. Willie, a clever and lovably mischievous child, "the chartered libertine of the White House" for a little while, had died at the age of twelve in the early days of 1862, when his father was getting so impatient to stir McClellan into action. These and a son who had long before died in infancy were the only children of ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... in the system of secular ethics that should oblige me to forego my favorite indulgences, or that can impress me with the conviction that I ought to do so? True I may suffer, and suffer much, as the drunkard and the libertine do, in the way of natural consequence, and it may be prudent to be temperate in the indulgence of my sensual appetites; there may even be a sense of inward degradation, and a politic regard to the opinions of my ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... not practically certain that what I have done for twenty years I shall repeat to-day? What are the chances for a man who has been lazy and indolent all his life starting in to-morrow morning to be industrious; or a spendthrift, frugal; a libertine, virtuous; a profane, foul-mouthed ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... and best of all flatterers. The defect is, that they flatter only in print or in writing, but not by word of mouth; they will give things under their hand which they make a conscience of speaking. Besides, they are too libertine to haunt antechambers, too poor to bribe porters and footmen, and too proud to cringe to second-hand favourites in ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... such occasions?—No; thank God there is no occasion, I pay every man his own;—I have no fornication to answer to my conscience;—no faithless vows or promises to make up;—I have debauched no man's wife or child; thank God, I am not as other men, adulterers, unjust, or even as this libertine, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... of the principal characters in the "Pantagruel" of Rabelais, an exceedingly crafty knave, a libertine, and a coward. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the drama, and a great victory they will have, who shall discover to the world this wonderful secret, that I have not observed the unities of place and time; but are they better kept in the farce of the "Libertine destroyed?"[15] It was our common business here to draw the parallel of the times, and not to make an exact tragedy. For this once we were resolved to err with honest Shakespeare; neither can "Catiline" or "Sejanus," (written ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... typical great lady of her time); one of the foremost of Elizabeth's privateering courtiers; one of the chief victims of her caprice and parsimony; a magnificent noble, but a great spendthrift, something of a libertine, never unkindly but hardly ever wise. This remarkable deathbed letter (the giving of which depended on the kindness of Dr. G. C. Williamson of Hampstead, author of the Life and Voyages of G. Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, Cambridge University Press, 1920, in which it appeared, ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... governor, a libertine of the lowest class of the people, half monk and half soldier, who had carved his way through the world by murder, rapine, and abject submission to his superiors, soon began to stretch an iron hand over the town's-people. The Montereyans ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... ago, when our woman's rights movement commenced, by the laws of the State of New York, and all the States, the father had the sole custody and control of the children. No matter if he were a brutal, drunken libertine, he had the legal right, without the mother's consent, to apprentice her sons to rumsellers, or her daughters to brothel keepers. He could even will away an unborn child, to some other person than the mother. And in many of the States the law still prevails, and legal mothers are ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of the Statue—well known to the modern stage under the name of "Don Juan," was the next vehicle of Moliere's satire. The story, borrowed from the Spanish, is well known. In giving the sentiments of the libertine Spaniard, the author of "Tartuffe" could not suppress his resentment against the party, by whose interest with the king that piece had been excluded from the stage, or at least its representation suspended. "The profession of a hypocrite," says Don Juan, "has ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Lovelace to Belford.—Rejoices in the stupidity of the Harlowes. Exults in his capacity for mischief. The condescensions to which he intends to bring the lady. Libertine observations to the disadvantage of women; which may serve as ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... has, I may tell you, feasted too often as one of four with your rascally husband not to know what your high merits are! Many a time has he blamed himself when half tipsy as he has expatiated on your perfections. Oh, I know you well!—A libertine might hesitate between you and a girl of ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... give it the form: these, acting on his temperament, make him either reasonable, or irrational—enlightened, or stupid—a fanatic, or a hero—an enthusiast for the public good, or an unbridled criminal—a wise man, smitten with the advantages of virtue, or a libertine, plunged into every kind of vice. All the varieties of the moral man, depend on the diversity of his ideas; which are themselves arranged and combined in his brain by the intervention of his senses. His temperament is ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... forgotten all about me, so that now you find I am somewhat of a novelty. It is not your wife you are seeking now, but a woman with whom you have formerly had a rupture, and with whom you now desire to make up. To speak the truth you are simply playing the game of a libertine. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... muse) till, with some difficulty, he had obtained leave from the same ascendant quarter. Who, indeed, is there that, without some previous clue to his transformations, could have been at all prepared to recognise the coarse libertine of Venice in that romantic and passionate lover who, but a few months after, stood weeping before the fountain in the garden at Bologna? or, who could have expected to find in the close calculator of sequins and baiocchi, that generous champion of Liberty whose whole fortune, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the highest offices, and, as a matter of fact, the ministers are frequently tradesmen. None the worse for that, of course; but it was amusingly illustrated in the Assembly the other day, when one of the members—a "chartered libertine," in regard to speech, and they do speak very plainly—boasted that he was a member of a club to which none of the ministers could belong. "They are decent people," he said, "but not professional men, and the membership ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... an object of reverence; albeit I have to confess that she would touch me rather more potently, if she had a little more of loveliness and a little less of awfulness. And it is remarkable that even Lucio, light-minded libertine as he is, whose familiar sin it is to jest with maids, "tongue far from heart," cannot approach her, but that his levity is at once awed into soberness, and he regards her as one "to be talk'd with in sincerity, as ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... libertine, cold, selfish, and unfeeling. He was eminently successful too in his diabolical enterprise, although there was nothing prepossessing in his person or in his manners; but he had the reputation of being irresistible, and of course he was so; for, whatever may be the reason, it is a most lamentable ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... very common in the annals of popular superstition. It is, for example, currently believed in Ettrick Forest, that a libertine, who had destroyed fifty-six inhabited houses, in order to throw the possessions of the cottagers into his estate, and who added to this injury, that of seducing their daughters, was wont to commit, to a carrier in the neighbourhood, the care of his illegitimate children, shortly after they ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... it has been perpetuated up to our own day. Briefly, then, the Toledot Yeshu relates with the most indecent details that Miriam, a hairdresser of Bethlehem,[86] affianced to a young man named Jochanan, was seduced by a libertine, Joseph Panther or Pandira, and gave birth to a son whom she named Johosuah or Jeschu. According to the Talmudic authors of the Sota and the Sanhedrim, Jeschu was taken during his boyhood to Egypt, where he was initiated into the secret doctrines of the priests, and on his ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... Miot de Melito, "Mems.," vol. 1., ch. xv. Lucien settled in the Papal States, where he, the quondam Jacobin and proven libertine, later on received from the Pope the title ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the personal character of Epicurus, opinions have been divided both in ancient and modern times. By some the garden has been called a "sty." Epicurus has been branded as a libertine, and the name "Epicurean" has, in almost all languages, become the synonym of sensualism. Diogenes Laertius repels all the imputations which are cast upon the moral character of his favorite author, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Remember I would not have come to you if I had not had evidence. You take exception to Lans and his ways of life, I have been informed that you have even called him a—a—libertine!" ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... Heavenly Twins" makes her perish. In both instances it is the pious ignorance of clerical parents which precipitates the tragedy. Ragni's deliverance is, however, only an apparent one. Society, which without indignation had witnessed her sale to the corrupt old libertine, is frightfully shocked by her marriage to Dr. Kallem, and manifests its disapproval with an emphasis which takes no account of ameliorating circumstances. The sanguinary ingenuity in the constant slights and stabs to which she is exposed makes her life a martyrdom ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... instructress had rather rendered him callous than humble. His devotion, which was quite real, kept him from no sin he had a mind to. His talk showed good-humour, gaiety, even wit enough; but there was a levity in his acts and words that he had brought from among those libertine devotees with whom he had been bred, and that shocked the simplicity and purity of the English lady, whose guest he was. Esmond spoke his mind to Beatrix pretty freely about the prince, getting her brother to ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Let the libertine of our world go to the world of Scum where he belongs, or rise to the dignity of man whose ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... marriage vows are inadequate; puerile; and futile; when we find the "pearl of great price;" why spiritual mates cannot be parted; why bonds and vows must give place to mutual agreement; does spiritual union come with love of God? what is the "bliss of Nirvana?" why the libertine is a pauper in the realm of love; when we imbibe the "nectar of gods;" why the "holy of Holies" cannot be defiled; when the divine office of sex is prostituted; why all sex relations may not be eternal yet moral; the mistaken ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... as frenzied as you were a moment ago; and she would not listen to reason. If you dared to hint outside in the world, that you believed her guilty, there are some of her old friends who would feel like doing to you what you want to do to that libertine in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... get a name which may have a fashionable sound, and a claim upon the prevailing taste of the times, and which may remind one of the battles of some ambitious general, or of the adventures of some love-sick swain, or of the tragic deeds of some fashionable libertine! ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... light, how unaffected with the sense of its own crimes, is the heart that could dictate to the pen this libertine froth?' ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... accordance with the convention, Li Chia had to question Sun in his turn. They exchanged such words as are customary between educated men. Finally the libertine said: ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... which her cousin (swayed by the representations of her brother) pleads in behalf of Solmes, and the family-views; and sets before her, in strong and just lights, the character of a libertine. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... world—to do some good: and the task of reclaiming a bad man is extremely seductive to good women. Dear to their tender bosoms as old china is a bad man they are mending! Lord Mountfalcon had none of the arts of a libertine: his gold, his title, and his person had hitherto preserved him from having long to sigh in vain, or sigh at all, possibly: the Hon. Peter did his villanies for him. No alarm was given to Lucy's pure instinct, as might have been the case had my lord been over-adept. It was nice in her martyrdom ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Miss Grandison, Miss Temple would abjure him; as the lover of Miss Temple, under any circumstances, Mr. Temple would reject him. In what light would he appear to Henrietta were he to dare to reveal the truth? Would she not look upon him as the unresisting libertine of the hour, engaging in levity her heart as he had already trifled with another's? For that absorbing and overwhelming passion, pure, primitive, and profound, to which she now responded with an enthusiasm as fresh, as ardent, and as immaculate, ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... even the crimes of the City, and I say that some of them find root in the customs of the respectable and the fashionable. Profligacy, which we shrink from in its open profession, and which appears abominable in its avowed haunts, finds encouragement wherever the libertine receives the smile of beauty, and the guilt of the meanest sort of a man is excused on account of an agreeable manner. Thus the poison of the snake, and the blight of his venom on many a reputation and many a womanly heart, is all forgotten in the drawing-room, because of the fascination ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... greatest libertine is sometimes the most devout; in the study of wisdom, the most indulgent in pleasures sometimes become the most austere. For my own part, I view Epicurus from a different standpoint in youth and health, ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... next? Scandal. Nothing comes more into view than scandal. In a vast city, thousands of young men gain their livelihood laboriously, and devote themselves to the good of their families: no one speaks of them. A libertine loses other men's money at play, and blows out his brains: all the city knows it. Honest women live in retirement; the king's mistresses form the subject of general conversation. Crime and baseness hide themselves; but up to the limits of what the world calls infamy, evil delights in ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... mischievous authors of this abominable conspiracy is the man Brotteaux, once known as des Ilettes, receiver of imposts under the tyrant. This person, who was remarkable, even in the days of tyranny, for his libertine behaviour, is a sure proof how dissoluteness and immorality are the greatest enemies of the liberty and happiness of peoples; as a fact, after misappropriating the public revenues and wasting in debauchery a noticeable part of the people's patrimony, the ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... thought of ending them abruptly and leaving Venice. His acquaintance with Ortensia would always be a beautiful recollection in his life, he thought, and one in which there could be no element of remorse or bitterness. He was not a libertine. Few great artists have ever been that; for in every great painter, or sculptor, or musician there is a poet, and true poetry is the refutation of vulgar materialism. In all the nobler arts the second-rate men have invariably been the sensualists; but the masters, even in their love ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... continue in this folly," she cried, "to fret for that shallow idler, whose love is lighter than thistledown, whose element is the ruelle of one of those libertine French duchesses he is ever talking about. To rebel against the noblest gentleman in England! Oh, sister, you must know him better than I do; and yet I, who am nothing to him, am wretched when I see him ill-used. Indeed, Hyacinth, you are ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... to Wilde's Salome that of Brahms' German Requiem, yet whatever of beauty there may be in the shapes will divert the attention from the meanness or vileness of the non-aesthetic suggestion. We do not remember the mercenary and libertine allegory embodied in Correggio's Danae, or else we reinterpret that sorry piece of mythology in terms of cosmic occurrences, of the Earth's wealth increased by the fecundating sky. Similarly it is a common ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... Parks, as most, had come to think that the man was innately a libertine, awaiting but the right one to strike the hidden flint and set the tinder aglow—the tinder that would burn, and consume, and destroy. He had known of men like that—of men who went the even pathway of their lives until there crossed it another who tore them from ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... islands looked as we passed between them, with a fair wind and studding sails set alow and aloft. Their tropical charms seemed more glowing, the water bluer, the palm trees statelier, the vegetation more libertine than ever. On the south the land rises gradually from the shore to a range of lofty mountains. Immediately behind Honolulu - the capital - a valley with a road winding up it leads to the north side of the island. This ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... thirty years a libertine; twenty years a repentant. Son, grandson, great-grandson, all gone, as though to leave not one of that once haughty breed. For France no hope at all; and for the house of Bourbon, all the hope there might be in ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... he does," answered Mrs. Arnold, "many a worse, I can assure you. He is very fond of his lady indeed, and gives up more to her than one would think. He is a little stern, they say, but very just and upright; and no libertine fellow, like his brother who was drowned—which I am sure was a providence, for if he was so bad when he was young, what would he have ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... him as such. In truth however he was, by the acknowledgment of those who neither loved nor esteemed him, a man distinguished by fine parts, and in parliamentary eloquence inferior to scarcely any orator of his time. His moral character was entitled to no respect. He was a libertine without that openness of heart and hand which sometimes makes libertinism amiable, and a haughty aristocrat without that elevation of sentiment which sometimes makes aristocratical haughtiness respectable. The satirists of the age nicknamed him Lord Allpride. Yet was his pride ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... from the street, and watch your shadow— happy if only I could think that you were well and happy, my sweet little bird! Yet how are things in reality? Not only have evil folk brought you to ruin, but there comes also an old rascal of a libertine to insult you! Just because he struts about in a frockcoat, and can ogle you through a gold-mounted lorgnette, the brute thinks that everything will fall into his hands—that you are bound to listen ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... strict or lax, according to the temper of the penitent. The first object was to drive no person out of the pale of the Church. Since there were bad people, it was better that they should be bad Catholics than bad Protestants. If a person was so unfortunate as to be a bravo, a libertine, or a gambler, that was no reason for ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... no less necessary sometimes to deposit one's money with a usurer than to borrow from him. Now it seems altogether unlawful to deposit one's money with a usurer, even as it would be unlawful to deposit one's sword with a madman, a maiden with a libertine, or food with a glutton. Neither therefore is it lawful to borrow ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... extraordinary Reception this Rough Draught met with." Indeed, it has in it, despite some "satire," a number of motifs which would recommend it to the audience. Railton, the antimatrimonialist and libertine of the piece, is given the wittiest lines, but his attempt to seduce Tremilia, a grave Quaker-clad beauty, is frowned on by everyone, including the author; and when the rake attempts to force the lady, Freeman, a man of sense, intervenes with sword drawn ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... luxurious rites of the women glittered Their libertine show, their drumming tapped out crowds, The Sabazian Mysteries summoned their mob, Adonis been wept to death on the terraces, As I could hear the last day in the Assembly? For Demostratus—let bad luck befoul him— Was roaring, "We ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... shone the stainless radiance that had dazzled her young eyes. That was all that mattered. It was easy to convert the outer man to convention. It was the simplest thing in the world to make the chartered libertine of talk accept the Index Expurgatorius of subjects mete for discussion: to regulate the innate vagabond by the clock: to bring the pantheistic pagan of wide spiritual sympathies (for Paragot was by no means an irreligious man) into ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... pageant of an evening, startles us in the same way as the alarming indications of profligacy in a son or ward in real life should startle a parent or guardian. We have no such middle emotions as dramatic interests left. We see a stage libertine playing his loose pranks of two hours' duration, and of no after consequence, with the severe eyes which inspect real vices with their bearings upon two worlds. We are spectators to a plot or intrigue (not reducible in life to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... fears were not unfounded. Lord Alphingham loved Caroline, but the love of a libertine is not true affection, and such a character for the last fourteen years of his life he had been; nine years of that time he had lived on the Continent, gay, and courted, in whatever country he resided, winning many a youthful heart to bid ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... wull not. I acknowledge nae king ower my conscience but the King o' Kings. As for that perjured libertine on the throne, for whom there's muckle need to pray, I tell ye plainly that I consider the freedom and welfare o' Scotland stands higher than the supposed rights o' king and lords. Ye misca' us rebels! If ye ken the history o' yer ain country—whilk I misdoot—ye ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... and possibly it is the philosophy of the unconscious at work in her. Try and make her believe that love is only a simple physical need, like the need of food or clothes; that it doesn't mean the end of the world if wives and husbands are unsatisfactory; that a man may be a profligate and a libertine, and yet a man of honour and a genius; and that, on the other hand, one may abstain from the pleasures of love and at the same time be a stupid, vicious animal! The civilised man of to-day, even among the lower classes —for instance, the French workman—spends ten sous on dinner, ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Nevertheless, he arrived at last in the dark, cheerless little private office that looked out upon a yard, and found Camusot seated gravely there; this was not Coralie's infatuated adorer, not the easy-natured, indolent, incredulous libertine whom he had known hitherto as Camusot, but a heavy father of a family, a merchant grown old in shrewd expedients of business and respectable virtues, wearing a magistrate's mask of judicial prudery; this Camusot was the cool, business-like head of the firm surrounded by clerks, green ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... and pleasant in the very carelessness of his air. It seemed to suggest, of his comely face and well-knit figure, that they might be greatly better if he chose: and that, once roused and made earnest (but he never had been earnest yet), he could be full of fire and purpose. 'A dangerous sort of libertine,' thought the shrewd lawyer, 'to seem to catch the spark he wants, from a ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... Waste and Carelessness in the Air of every thing, and the whole appears but a covered Indigence, a magnificent Poverty. That Neatness and Chearfulness, which attends the Table of him who lives within Compass, is wanting, and exchanged for a Libertine Way of Service ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Grandison, in a manner so worthy of himself, has proposed with a family who have thought themselves under obligation to him ever since he delivered the darling of it from the lawless attempts of a savage libertine. I know to whom I write; and will own that it has been my wish in a most particular manner. As to the young lady, I say nothing of her, yet how shall I forbear? Oh, sir, believe me, she will dignify your choice. Her duty and her inclination ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... spur to marriage. But when men have at hand a remedy, more agreeable to their corrupt will, marriage is almost expulsed. And therefore there are with you seen infinite men that marry not, but choose rather a libertine and impure single life, than to be yoked in marriage; and many that do marry, marry late, when the prime and strength of their years is past. And when they do marry, what is marriage to them but a very bargain; wherein is sought alliance, or portion, or reputation, with ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... Francis I. as valet de chambre, and accompanied his master to the battle of Pavia, where he was wounded and made prisoner. Pursued by the Catholics as a heretic, and afterwards by the Genevan Calvinists as a libertine, he was protected as long as was possible by the King and by his sister. He died at Turin, a refugee to ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... training had been of late years, yet her childhood had been spent in the stormy north, amid an English-speaking people. She had seen much that disgusted and saddened her here amongst the French of Canada. She despised the aged libertine who still sat upon the French throne with all the scorn and disgust of an ardent nature ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... vaunted beauties, and that I had been cruelly disappointed in not having seen the shadow of a woman. At this frank avowal the Emperor, who had expected it in advance, laughed heartily, and took his revenge on my ears, calling me a libertine: "You do not know then, Monsieur le Drole, that your good friends the Greeks have adopted the customs of those Turks whom they detest so cordially, and like them seclude their wives and daughters in order that they may never appear before bad ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... man, cool, insolently polite, and plentifully endowed with the judgmatical daring that is the necessary equipment of a society libertine—counseled patience, toleration, even silent recognition of Anstruther's undoubted claims ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... well marked in these lines: he was an excellent poet, but of abandoned morals, and of the most impious principles; a complete libertine and an avowed atheist. He lost his life in a riotous fray; for, detecting his servant with his mistress, he rushed into the room with a dagger in order to stab him, but the man warded off the blow by seizing Marlowe's wrist, and turned the dagger into his own head: he languished some time of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... helpless intoxication, had invested himself in the domestic's livery, and had driven off with the lady in the darkness after the performance to the outskirts of the town. What happened exactly, the McMurrays did not know; but there was the devil to pay in Vienna. And yet this inconsequent libertine did the following before my own eyes. We were walking down Piccadilly together one afternoon in the hard winter of 1894. It was a black frost, agonizingly cold. A shivering wretch held out matches for sale. His hideous red toes protruded through his boots. "My God, my God!" cried Pasquale, ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... paltriest charge they could have trumped up against Burns. Nor is there, when we look at his literary work, any falling off in his powers as a poet. He sang as sweetly, as purely, as magically as ever he did; and this man, who has been branded as a blasphemer and a libertine, had nobly set himself to purify the polluted stream of Scottish Song. He was still continuing his contributions to Johnson's Museum, and now he had also begun to write for ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... people can never believe one can do an act of pure conscience. But here comes the Neapolitan.—Note the libertine, Gelsomina, and thou wilt feel for him ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... married, but that I was obliged to be true to my conscience. That when I married I expected to lay the foundation of a new home, and that I would never trust my future happiness in the hands of a libertine, or lay its foundations over the reeling brain of a drunkard, and I determined that I would never marry a man for whose vices I must blush, and whose crimes I must condone; that while I might bend to grief I would not bow to shame; that if I brought him character and virtue, he should give me ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... years of womanhood, Eliza had given her affections to one who sought her love under the guise of a "gentleman of fortune." He proved to be what such characters usually are—a libertine, whose only motive in seeking to win her confidence and young affections was to gratify his hellish passions in the ruin of virtue and a good name. Under the most solemn assurances of deep, abiding, unalterable love for her, and the most solemn promises of marriage at an early day, which if ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... a fashionable coat; an idle reader, for a new novel; a versifier, for a rhyme to some stubborn word; a painter, for Titian's secret of coloring; a prince, for a cottage; a republican, for a kingdom and a palace; a libertine, for his neighbor's wife; a man of palate, for green peas; and a poor man, for a crust of bread. The ambitious desires of public men, elsewhere so craftily concealed, were here expressed openly and boldly, side by side with the unselfish wishes of the philanthropist ...
— The Intelligence Office (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... must tell you what I think of my new position. It strikes me very oddly that good and wise men at Cambridge and Boston should think of raising me into an object of criticism. I have always been—from my very incapacity of methodical writing—a 'chartered libertine,' free to worship and free to rail,—lucky when I could make myself understood, but never esteemed near enough to the institutions and mind of society to deserve the notice of the masters of literature and religion. I have appreciated fully the advantages of my position, for I well know ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... rescued righteous Lot who was troubled greatly by the libertine course of the wicked. Was it not a great aggravation that they not only rushed publicly and shamelessly into whoredom and adultery, but into such sins as may not be mentioned,—insomuch that they did not even spare the angels who came ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther |
