"Licentious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... returned she, "put in competition the languid addresses of a libertine, with the animated affection of a sober man, and judge which has the dominion? Oh! in my calendar of love, a solemn Lord Chief Justice, or a devout archbishop, ranks before a licentious king." ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... was right. The false Demetrius was none other than his own nephew, Grishka Otrepiev, who had once been a monk, but, unfrocked, had embraced the Roman heresy, and had abandoned himself to licentious ways. You realize now why Smirnoy had been chosen by Basmanov for this ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... and complaint against it. To a sovereign, on the contrary, who feels himself supported, not only by the natural aristocracy of the country, but by a well regulated standing army, the rudest, the most groundless, and the most licentious remonstrances, can give little disturbance. He can safely pardon or neglect them, and his consciousness of his own superiority naturally disposes him to do so. That degree of liberty which approaches to licentiousness, can ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... Alkibiades began to gain credit in Athens as a public speaker, less licentious than Kleon, and like the soil of Egypt described ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... "I shall never cross the threshold of that church. And I've worshiped there for fifty years. Hum—ha! I should like to know whose money has gone more liberal for that meeting house than mine! But not another cent—no, sir! not one—if that licentious young scamp ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... their own, he enjoined that they should labor with their hands for several hours daily. And to me it seemed as if out of Palestine there could be no spot of greater significance and sacredness to any Christian than this, where in a sanguinary and licentious age a young man suddenly broke all the bonds of self, and taught in his own person humility, renunciation and brotherly love as they had hardly been taught since his Master's death. The sternness of his personal self-denial is only equaled by his sweetness toward all living things: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... Instinctively I knew, too, that without the Catholic Church the Christian world would fall to the level of Rome at its worst, and that every enemy of Christ turned his face against her priests. I knew that every real atheist, every licentious man, most revolutionists, every anarchist, hated a priest. It annoyed me to think that they didn't hate me, the representative, as I thought, of a purer religion. But they did not hate me at all. They ignored the sacredness of my calling, ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... wit-combats of the Mermaid, he disported himself in a pamphlet-war on bishops and divorce. But he found health and exercise for his faculties there; and the moral (for all things have a moral) is this: that when, in a mood of self-indulgence, we can write habitually with the gust, the licentious force, the flow, and the careless wealthy insolence of the Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus, we need not then repine or be ill-content if we find that we can rise only occasionally ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... Watts, who strings his silver lyre To sacred odes, and heav'n's all-ruling fire; Who scorns th' applause of the licentious stage, And mounts yon sparkling worlds with hallow'd rage, Compels my thoughts to wing the heav'nly road, And wafts my soul, exulting, to my God; No fabled Nine harmonious bard! inspire Thy raptur'd breast with such seraphic fire; But prompting Angels ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... up. The forest of romance was now losing its leaves, and the stories were expanding in the sunlight. The most celebrated collection was Boccaccio's, written in delightful Italian prose, a many-sided work, edifying and licentious at the same time, a work audacious in every way, even from a literary point of view. Boccaccio knows it, and justifies his doings. To those who reproach him with having busied himself with "trifles," neglecting "the Muses of Parnassus," he replies: Who knows whether I have neglected ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... in his cups, now at the servants who ministered to him, now at the guards standing at attention, I passed on later to play the part of narrator, and I delighted his foul and prurient mind with the story of Andreuccio da Perugia and another of the more licentious tales of Messer Giovanni Boccacci. I crimson now with shame at the manner in which I set myself to pander to his mood that with my wit I might defend my life and limbs, and preserve them for the service of my Holy Flower of the Quince in the ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... hesitations he had decided on this step, and it seemed to him clear that no one would suit him so well as Mrs. Byril. By marrying an old mistress, he would save himself from all the boredom of a honeymoon. And sitting in the drawing-room, in the various pauses between numerous licentious stories, they discussed their ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... that small as it is, he has not lived up to it; that he too has "come short"; that he too, knowing God in the dimmest, faintest degree, has yet not glorified him as God in the slightest, faintest manner. The Bible sends the ungodly and licentious pagan to hell, upon the same principle that it sends the ungodly and licentious nominal Christian. It is the principle enunciated by our Lord Christ, the judge of quick and dead, when he says, "He who knew his master's will [clearly], and did ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... The blunt, licentious Saxon words and sentences in the first text of Shakspere, have been ruthlessly expurgated by his editorial commentators, adding, no doubt, to the beauty and decency of the plays, but sadly ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... songs of Spenser and Milton. In one eclogue the poet mourns over the ruin and desolation of Rome, as a mother deserted of her children; another is a dialogue between two shepherds, in which St. Peter, under the pastoral disguise of Pamphilus, upbraids the licentious Clement VI with the ignoble servitude in which he is content to abide; a third shows us Clement wantoning with the shameless mistress of a line of pontifical shepherds, a figure allegorical of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... her female dependants, friends, and servants, were plundered of the effects they carried with them, and which were reserved to them in the capitulation of their fortress, and in their persons were otherwise rudely and inhumanly dealt with by the licentious followers of the camp: for which outrages, represented to the said Hastings with great concern by the commanding officer, Major Popham, he, the said Hastings, did afterwards recommend ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... brethren from the doctrine of the synagogue; and they would gladly have extinguished the dangerous heresy in the blood of its adherents. But the decrees of Heaven had already disarmed their malice; and though they might sometimes exert the licentious privilege of sedition, they no longer possessed the administration of criminal justice; nor did they find it easy to infuse into the calm breast of a Roman magistrate the rancor of their own zeal and prejudice. The provincial governors declared themselves ready to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... important social fact. There were even some of his bitter enemies: members of the old aristocratic anti-Medicean party—determined to try and get the reins once more tight in the hands of certain chief families; or else licentious young men, who detested him as the killjoy of Florence. For the sermons in the Duomo had already become political incidents, attracting the ears of curiosity and malice, as well as of faith. The men of ideas, like young Niccolo Macchiavelli, went to observe and write reports to friends away ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... position, he was one of those darlings of Nature, so affluent and blest in gifts of person, mind, and outward show, that it is only at the distance of posterity we ask why men of his own age admired the false, the licentious, and the cruel, where those contemporaries, over-dazzled, saw but the heroic and the joyous, the young, the beautiful,—the affable to friend, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The difficulty of deciding definitely is intensified by the fact of the Manichaeans being split into a number of sects, and statements true of some might be untrue of others. So we find St. Augustine, who had been a Manichaean, declaring that if all did not practise licentious rites, one sect (the Catharists) did, believing that they could only mortify the flesh by the exercise of bad instincts, since the flesh proceeded from demons. St. Augustine himself confesses to have taken part in various phallic ceremonies before his conversion. ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... feel their inseparable union; that notwithstanding all the devices which have been used to sway them from their interest and duty, they are now as ready to maintain the authority of the laws against licentious invasions as they were to defend their rights against usurpation. It has been a spectacle displaying to the highest advantage the value of republican government to behold the most and the least wealthy of our citizens ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... neighbourhood and among his flock, 'holy Mr. Gifford';[143] a title infinitely superior to all the honours of nobility, or of royalty. He was a miracle of mercy and grace, for a very few years before he had borne the character of an impure and licentious man—an open enemy to the saints of God. His pastoral letter, left upon record in the church-book, written when drawing near the end of his pilgrimage, is most admirable; it contains an allusion ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... which centres in the sacristy of San Lorenzo, as the tradition of the Creation centres in the Sistine Chapel. It has been said that all the great Florentines were preoccupied with death. Outre-tombe! Outre-tombe!—is the burden of their thoughts, from Dante to Savonarola. Even the gay and licentious Boccaccio gives a keener edge to his stories by putting them in the mouths of a party of people who had taken refuge from the danger of death by plague, in a country-house. It was to this inherited sentiment, this practical decision ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... provided only I do not imitate the tribunes, nor allow myself to be declared consul, contrary to the decree of the senate. But as for you, Gaius Claudius, I recommend that you, as well as myself, restrain the Roman people from this licentious spirit, and that you be persuaded of this, as far as I am concerned, that I shall take it in such a spirit, that I shall not consider that my attainment of office has been obstructed by you, but that the glory of ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... life? Has a man ever been known to die by halves? Before you came here, you had made up your mind to kill yourself, but all at once a mystery fills your mind, and you think no more about death. You child! Does not any one day of your life afford mysteries more absorbing? Listen to me. I saw the licentious days of Regency. I was like you, then, in poverty; I have begged my bread; but for all that, I am now a centenarian with a couple of years to spare, and a millionaire to boot. Misery was the making of me, ignorance ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... by myself in my indescribable form as Brahma. As I have created the deities and the Asuras and the great Rishis so I have placed the Brahmanas in their respective situations and have to punish them occasionally. In consequence of his licentious assault on Ahalya, Indra was cursed by Gautama, her husband, through which Indra got a green beard on his face. Through that curse of Kausika Indra lost, also, his own testicles, which loss was afterwards (through the kindness of the other deities) ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... immaculately neat in his attire, with a clean-shaven, serious, rather sallow face, which was inclined to be chubby as to the cheeks. He wore double-sighted pince-nez, and no mortal had ever seen him without them. His favourite writer was Miss Jane Austen, and he deplored the licentious tendency of so much modern literature; frequently, and with flushed countenance, denouncing certain books as an "outrage." He was considered a very well-read man. He disliked anything that was "not quite nice," and detested a strong light, whether it were thrown upon life or ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... himself for the licentious life of his empress Julia, from the fatality attending those of her name. This strange prejudice of lucky and unlucky names prevailed in modern Europe. The successor of Adrian VI. (as Guicciardini tells us) wished to preserve his own name on the papal throne; but he gave up ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... natural and inevitable result is an overwhelming impulse toward illicit satisfaction in self-abuse or sexual immorality. Society in self-defense and the interest of its youth must wage war upon this mercenary exploiting of the sex impulse. Licentious thinking is the great foe of continence; the saying of Jesus may be paraphrased thus with physiological correctness: "He that looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath already committed the sexual ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... a considerable number of boys were collected in front of the cathedral, and there divided into bands, which traversed the whole town, making a house-to-house visitation, claiming all profane books, licentious paintings, lutes, harps, cards and dice, cosmetics and perfumes—in a word, all the hundreds of products of a corrupt society and civilisation, by the aid of which Satan at times makes victorious war on God. The inhabitants of Florence obeyed, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... for untrammeled nature were hard pills for Mockwooders to swallow. Here was a man who, while he kept one on the alert, was to be deplored; who homesteaded squirrels, gave rabbits their own licentious ways, was whimsically tolerant of lichens, mushrooms, and vagabond vines. This was also the man who, when his gardener's wife gave birth to a deaf and dumb baby, encouraged his own wife to make a pet of the unfortunate youngster, and when he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... in the case of Micaiah, he hates, he sends not for him! The complaisant chaplain, who almost never disturbed the family with the worship of God; who along with the children or others took off his cheerful glass; sung his wanton song; attended the licentious ball, or play-house; connived at, or swore a profane oath; took a hand at cards; or ridiculed the mysteries, the experiences, the circumspect professor of the Christian faith, is almost certain to have the presentation: perhaps he covenanted for it as part of ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... the labourer's toil; Their rolls showed French and German name; And merry England's exiles came, To share, with ill-concealed disdain, Of Scotland's pay the scanty gain. All brave in arms, well trained to wield The heavy halberd, brand, and shield; In camps licentious, wild, and bold; In pillage fierce and uncontrolled; And now, by holytide and feast, From rules of ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... hear me a word, hear me a word, your cares are nothing; they are like my cap, soon put on, and as soon put off. What? your son is old enough to govern himself; let him run his course, it's the only way to make him a staid man: if he were an unthrift, a ruffian, a drunkard, or a licentious liver, then you had reason: you had reason to take care: but being none of these, God's passion, an I had twice so many cares as you have, I'd drown them all in a cup of sack: come, come, I muse your parcel of a soldier ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... with both hands broadcast, where he will, errors, heresies, and blasphemies, without any authority on earth to restrain the scattering of this seed of universal desolation. And this system, which would substitute for domestic sentiment and Divine belief the unlimited and licentious action of human intellect and human will, is called progress. What is it but a ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... Perpetua had to slacken her speed in order that he might keep pace with her. But there were no signs of pursuit from the house of Lycabetta. The terror of the plague was so great that Robert's mantle was an unquestionable defence. The most licentious youth in Syracuse would not go near the loveliest woman if he had the least reason to believe that she had been but lightly touched by a plague-spotted garment. Limping and running, their shadows streaming behind them on the white path that threaded the cypresses, they reached the golden ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... problems become more difficult, every year it is more manifest that we need to have more knowledge and to get it soon, in order to escape, on the one hand, from the cruelty and waste of irresponsible competition and the licentious use of wealth, and, on the other, from the tyranny and the spiritual death of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... virtue-loving despot? She remembered how he had tarried four whole weeks at Dresden when he had paid a visit to Augustus the Strong some years before. And this in spite of his disapproval of the reigning favourite, the Countess Orzelska, and the many lesser stars of that licentious court. Good Heavens! would he stay four weeks at Ludwigsburg? She smiled; even in her despair there was something humorous in her being which no sadness could dull, and she found her own dismay at the honoured guest's possible procrastination a ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... princely structure has amounted to uncounted millions. But we must not forget that these millions were wrested from the toiling multitude, who dwelt in mud hovels, and ate the coarsest food, that their proud and licentious rulers might be "clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day." Such was the home to which the beautiful Maria Antoinette, the bride of fifteen, was introduced; and in the midst of temptations to which such voluptuousness exposed her, she entered upon her dark and gloomy career. ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... become a nun. They separate at Tarbes, and the scene of the story is laid in the region of the Pyrenees, in Tarbes Auch, Nerac, the Landes, and finishes with the return to Paris. Rose, after an entertainment which is a veritable orgy, is handed over by her mother to a licentious young man. He is ashamed of himself, and, instead of leading Rose astray, he takes her to the Convent of the Augustines, where she finds Sister Blanche once more. Sister Blanche has not yet pronounced her vows, ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... rectilinear way: Admonishing loftier reaches, the rich adventurous shoots, Pushes of tentative curves, embryonic upwreathings in air; Not always the sprouts of Earth's root-Laws preserving her brutes; Oft but our primitive hungers licentious ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... our standing armies in India succeeded were much the same in character as those licentious bodies to which the standing armies of the different nations of Europe succeeded; and the result has been, and will, I hope, continue to be the same, highly beneficial to the great ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... crimson and glowing from the noontide heat, but at the high-priest's last words the blood left her face, she turned ashy-pale, and a chill shiver ran through her trembling limbs. Her father's child—her bright, innocent Irene—basely stolen for Euergetes, that licentious tyrant of whose wild deeds Serapion had told her only last evening, when he painted the dangers that would threaten her and Irene if they should quit the shelter of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... disclosures made, about 150 years after, by certain females in Damascus, far remote from either Lyons or Rome. These make precisely the same statement—that they had once been Christians, that they were privy to criminal acts among them, and that these Christians, in their very churches, committed licentious deeds. The Romans would never have so relentlessly persecuted the Christians had they not been guilty of some such atrocities as were laid to their charge. There are on record abundant proofs that the Romans, from the earliest account ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... disposed to have been one of that number: and from this restraint she was called out to be a great queen, and to a free conversation in a court that was to be upon the matter new formed, and reduced from the manners of a licentious age to the old rules and limits which had been observed in better times; to which regular and decent conformity the present disposition of men or women was not enough inclined to submit, nor the king ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... birth or quality of this saint: he seems to have been a Frenchman, and is on this account honored in the new Paris Missal and Breviary. He is thought to have passed his youth in the army, and to have given into a licentious manner of living, too common among persons of that profession. The first accounts we have of him represent him as a holy penitent, filled with the greatest sentiments of compunction and fervor, and making a pilgrimage to the tombs of the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... certain Curteis and a certain Pickersgill, it treats Lady Morgan (then only Sydney Owenson) and "Rosa Matilda" even more roughly and asks (as has been asked about a hundred years later and was asked about a hundred years before), "Is it not amazing that the [two] most licentious writers of romance are women?" And it starts with a burlesque account of a certain Margaret Marsham who exclaims, "What then? to add to my earthly miseries am I to be called Peggy? My name is Margaritta!" "I am sure ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... to reform the conduct of the clergy and to maintain the purity of the Church, but failed. He made the republic of Florence a model Christian commonwealth. Debauchery was suppressed, gambling was prohibited, the licentious factions of the times were there publicly destroyed. He arraigned Rome for her sins. The Roman party turned against him and accused him of heresy, the punishment of which was death. He declared his ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... in 1566, and had been succeeded by his son, Selim; this prince, bred in the Seraglio, was weak and licentious, given to that strong drink forbidden by the Prophet to an extent which caused him to be nicknamed by the Spaniards as "el ebrio," or ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... the city, and the busy turmoil of the streets had ceased; the laborer had repaired to his family, the wealthy had gone to their suburban villas, and licentious youth had sought the amusements over which darkness draws its veil. Politicians, newsmongers, and travellers made the cafe salons ring with their animated discussions. The policy of the Prime Minister, the probabilities of war, the royal sports of Versailles, ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... other disorders of the time, it was no unfrequent custom for the younger or more dissolute of the nobles, in small and armed companies, to parade the streets at night, seeking occasion for a licentious gallantry among the cowering citizens, or a skirmish at arms with some rival stragglers of their own order. Such a band had Irene and her ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... for you; she is young, beautiful, clever, modest, and virtuous. In fact many an actress who takes like her the role of the ingenuous young girl is in reality all that she personates, though a frivolous and frequently licentious public will not ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... that seeming marble heart, Now mask'd in silence, or withheld by pride, Was not unskilful in the spoiler's art, And spread its snares licentious far and wide." CHILDE HAROLD, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... almost fiercely. "There are no words which truly describe this one emotion which rules the world. I know what YOU mean, of course; you mean evil words, licentious words, and yet it has nothing whatever to do with these. You cannot call such an exalted state of the nerves and sensations ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... against him. Portland, with good natural abilities and great expertness in business, was no scholar. He had probably never read an English book; but he had a general notion, unhappily but too well founded, that the wits and poets who congregated at Will's were a most profane and licentious set; and, being himself a man of orthodox opinions and regular life, he was not disposed to give his confidence to one whom he supposed to be a ribald scoffer. Prior, with much address, and perhaps with the help of a little hypocrisy, completely ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... though now the Jew must leave. The city of Granada was not yet surrendered, and the Queen and King held all soldiery that they might at Santa Fe, built as it were in a night before Granada walls. Yet there seemed at large bands enough, licentious and loud, the scum of soldiery. Ere I reached the village that I now saw before me I had met two such bands, I wondered, and then ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... composers of the nineteenth century were of one mind touching the greatness of "Don Giovanni." Beethoven was horrified by its licentious libretto, but tradition says that he kept before him on his writing-table a transcript of the music for the trombones in the second finale of the opera. Shortly after Mme. Viardot-Garcia came into possession ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... gates of a park, where two policemen were posted to regulate the traffic. Beyond was a single line of cherry-trees in full bloom, a single wave of pinkish spray, a hanging curtain of vapourous beauty, the subject of a thousand poems, of a thousand allusions, licentious, delicate and trite,—the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... destroy Both slavery and licentious joy; Foe to all sorts of planters{6}, he Will suffer neither ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell
... noble Renaissance architecture of Angelico and Perugino, and all that was learned from them in the north, while the introduction of the rose, as a primal element of decoration, only takes place when the luxury of English decorated Gothic, the result of that licentious spirit in the lords which brought on the Wars of the Roses, indicates the approach of destruction to the feudal, artistic, and moral power ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... figures by Annibale Caracci, though he was often sufficiently licentious in his finished works, drawn with all the peculiarities of ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... herself the guardian of the honour of the former, and of the virtue of the latter; therefore, as long as she lived, her court was renowned for purity and politeness, noble and refined gallantry, and was never allowed to degenerate into imprudent amusements or licentious and culpable intrigues. ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... author of a large quantity of poetry, embracing the descriptive, in which his reading made him largely a borrower; the lyrical in which he excelled; the satirical, in which he was personal and licentious; and the Jacobitical, in which he issued forth treason of the most pestilential character. He has disfigured his verses by incessant appeals to the Muses, and repeated references to the heathen mythology; but his melody is in the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... service for better pay and treatment under the French flag, even on the burning plains of Africa. Perhaps some of them were drafted into that “foreign legion” which rivalled the Zouaves in the Crimea,—âmes perdus, the most reckless before the enemy, the most licentious in the camp. These were merry fellows, launching witty shafts against Austrians, Pope, and Cardinals,—maladetti tutti, and good-humoured gibes at their comrade, who, standing in an embrasure, bent his back with ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... which meant the upholding of the monarchy, Catherine was a true woman; kind to her suite, faithful to her friends. She had none of the weaknesses of her sex; she lived chaste amid the debauchery of the most licentious court in Europe. The losses to art caused by the destructive Calvinists she replaced by erecting noble buildings and beautifying Paris. But she had the sense of royalty developed to the utmost; she defended it to the extreme. In France ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... darkest hour through which a human soul can pass, whatever else is doubtful, this at least is certain. If there be no God and no future state, yet even then, it is better to be generous than selfish, better to be chaste than licentious, better to be true than false, better to be brave than to be a coward. Blessed beyond all earthly blessedness is the man who, in the tempestuous darkness of the soul, has dared to hold fast to these venerable landmarks. Thrice blessed is he, who, when all is drear and cheerless ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... do it unless you promise faithfully never to tell you had it of me. I have got a character to lose, and I would not have it known—not for the world, that James Walker had sold such loose—licentious—" ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... thought that he might make his own; and, like Milton, he loves to pay the tribute of a passing allusion to some brother poet, whose character he valued, or whose talent his ready sympathy understood. In an age when licentious writing, at least in youth, was the rule and required no apology, Virgil's early poems are conspicuous by its almost total absence; while the Georgics and Aeneid maintain a standard of lofty purity to which nothing in Latin, and few works in any literature, approach. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... others. They are obstinate in their ideas, because they are inflated with vanity, and because they could not consistently deviate from a method of thinking of which they pretend God is the author. We often see them unbridled and licentious in their manners, because it is impossible that idleness, effeminacy, and luxury should not corrupt the heart. We sometimes see them austere and rigid in their conduct in order to impose on the people and accomplish their ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... must have been higher than believers in progress will be pleased to allow." How then, it may be asked, are we to explain the passionate language in which he expresses his self-abhorrence, which would hardly seem exaggerated in the mouth of the most profligate and licentious? We are confident that Bunyan meant what he said. So intensely honest a nature could not allow his words to go beyond his convictions. When he speaks of "letting loose the reins to his lusts," and sinning "with the greatest delight and ease," we know that however exaggerated they ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... the volumes of authority from American and English writers, they would tire the reader. The above are for the present quite sufficient to establish the fact, that the press in the United States is licentious to the highest possible degree, and defies control; my object is to point out the effect of this despotism upon society, and to show how injurious it is in every way to the ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... harmonize our native tongue, that their successors should have taken so much pains to involve it into pristine barbarity. These misguided innovators have not been content with restoring antiquated words and phrases, but have indulged themselves in the most licentious transpositions and the harshest constructions; vainly imagining that, the more their writings are unlike prose, the more they resemble poetry. They have adopted a language of their own, and call upon mankind for admiration. All those who do not understand them are silent; and those who make ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... gentle and kind, that it inspired affection in all who approached her; but there was also a profound and awful purity in her aspect and in her demeanour, which effectually checked the utterance of a free or licentious word in her presence. Faithful to her early habits of piety, she continued every Wednesday her visits to Santa Maria Nuova; and after confessing to Don Antonio, she went to communion with such fervent devotion, that those who saw her at the ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... generally by women, and, as was most natural, certain actresses soon sprang into popular favor and vied with each other for the plaudits of the multitude. In theory the stage was frowned at by the Church, the plays were very often coarse and licentious in character, and the moral influence of this source of popular amusement was decidedly bad; but the tinsel queens of that age, as in the present time, were invested with a glamour which had an all-compelling charm, and noble protectors were never wanting. Among the ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... religious views which he professed, to his open partisanship of the foreigner, and to his enormous wealth.... We have seen what immense revenues the family of Annas must have derived from the Temple booths, and how nefarious and unpopular was the traffic. The names of those bold, licentious, unscrupulous, degenerate sons of Aaron were spoken with whispered curses. Without referring to Christ's interference with that Temple-traffic, which, if His authority had prevailed, would of course have ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... age he wrote, and he was regarded as one of the great reformers of the vices of his time. We may therefore conclude, that, although repugnant to our taste and feelings, they were the means of effecting much good in a gross and licentious age. ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Cause" (Vol. vi., passim).—Mrs. Behn, who gained some notoriety for her licentious writings even in Charles II.'s days, was the author of a play called The Roundheads, or the Good Old Cause: London, 1682. In the Epilogue she puts into the mouth of the Puritans the following lines respecting ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... "Lord, Madam! 'tis so unpolite to cry!— For shame, my dear! d'ye credit all this stuff?— I vow—well, this is innocent enough?" At Athens long ago, the Ladies—(married) 225 Dreamt not they misbehav'd tho' they miscarried, When a wild poet with licentious rage Turn'd fifty furies loose ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... for the Church of God. Terrible wars among the tribes, provoking all the old ferocities, still were liable to arise, and the whaling crews, among whom might be found some of the most unscrupulous, licentious, and violent of mankind, continued to take advantage of there being no regular jurisdiction to commit outrages, which spread corruption or provoked retaliation, and for this there was no remedy but annexation to the ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... masquerade[590]. What says your synod to such innovations? I am not studiously scrupulous, nor do I think a masquerade either evil in itself, or very likely to be the occasion of evil; yet as the world thinks it a very licentious relaxation of manners, I would not have been one of the first masquers in a country where no masquerade had ever ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... transported by demons. Women perched on sticks, or riding on goats, naked, with dishevelled hair, arrived in thousands; they passed like meteors, and their descent was more rapid than that of the eagle or hawk, when striking his prey. Over this meeting Satan presided; indecent dances and licentious songs went on, and an altar was raised, where Satan, with his head downward, his feet turned up, and his back to the altar, celebrated ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... even the licentious good-for- nothing Abbe. Down he dropped upon his knees, hiding his eyes, and sobbing out: 'Sancta Margarita, spare me, spare me! I vow thee a silver image. I vow to lead a changed life. I was drawn into it, holy Lady Saint. They ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to which there were two such parties as a brutal, sensual, degraded ruffian, on one side in character of accuser, and on the other as defendant, a meek angel of a woman, timid and fainting from the horrors of her situation, and under the licentious gaze of the crowd—yet, at the same time, bold in conscious innocence, and in the very teeth of the suspicions which beset her, winning the good opinion, as well as the good wishes of all who saw ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... ancestors as she was descended from, to fight for hir kingdome and riches; but as one of the meaner sort, rather to defend hir lost libertie, and to reuenge hir selfe of the enimie, for their crueltie shewed in scourging hir like a vagabond, and shamefull deflouring of hir daughters: for the licentious lust of the Romans was so farre spred and increased, that they spared neither the bodies of old nor yoong, but were readie most shamefullie to abuse them, hauing whipped hir naked being an aged woman, and forced hir daughters to satisfie their ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (4 of 8) - The Fovrth Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed
... you; Isis, not matronly and stern as the mother of Horus, nor as the Isis of the licentious orgies; but (as Philip Aylwin says) "Isis, the maiden, gazing around her, ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... as she again entered the kirk—yet not fearing to lift them up to heaven during the prayer. Her sadness inspired a general pity—she was excluded from no house she had heart to visit—no coarse comment, no ribald jest accompanied the notice people took of her baby—no licentious rustic presumed on her frailty; for the pale, melancholy face of the nursing mother, weeping as she sung the lullaby, forbade all such approach—and an universal sentiment of indignation drove from the parish the heartless and unprincipled ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... unequivocally states that the Guru is the same as the deity[626] and there can be little doubt that even now the Maharajas are adored by their followers, especially by the women, as representatives of Krishna in his character of the lover of the Gopis and that the worship is often licentious.[627] Many Hindus denounce the sect and in 1862 one of the Maharajas brought an action for libel in the supreme court of Bombay on account of the serious charges of immorality brought against him in the native ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... him a farcical incident of Rabelaisian quality, he threw himself back in his chair in a fit of laughter, and slipping on the polished floor, was thrown with great force on his head and killed almost instantaneously. This was indeed the violent and sudden death of the strong, licentious man; poetic justice could have devised no more fitting end to such ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... resisting it, Falls, and returns, and shivers where it lights. Such humours stirr'd them up; but this war's seed Was even the same that wrecks all great dominions. 160 When Fortune made us lords of all, wealth flow'd, And then we grew licentious and rude; The soldiers' prey and rapine brought in riot; Men took delight in jewels, houses, plate, And scorn'd old sparing diet, and ware robes Too light for women; Poverty, who hatch'd Rome's greatest wits,[593] was ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... dressmaker respectively,[59] she was on terms of intimacy with Barras so close as to be considered suspicious, while her daily intercourse was with those who had brought her husband to a terrible end. In a luxurious and licentious society, she was a successful intriguer in matters both of politics and of pleasure; versed in the arts of coquetry and dress, she became for the needy and ambitious a successful intermediary with those in power. Preferring, as she rather ostentatiously ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... following remarks of his own:—(Letters to his Daughter.) "It did not escape the observation of our Saviour that the rejection of any evil thoughts was the best defence against vice: for when a debauched person fills his imagination with impure pictures, the licentious ideas which he recalls fail not to stimulate his desires with a degree of violence which he cannot resist. This will be followed by gratification, unless some external obstacle should prevent him from the commission of a sin which he had ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... detail, without which no sound judgment can be formed of any disputed point, especially when it has been carried so far as to end in personal resentment. When contests and dissensions shall be found to have gone that length, it will be obvious to every reader, why a licentious crew should hearken to any factious leader, rather than to the solidity of their captain's advice, who made it evident to every unprejudiced understanding, that their fairest chance for safety and a better fortune, was to proceed with the long-boat till they should make prize of some vessel ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... pleasantry is pointed by a malicious footnote, to the effect that people who might be surprised that a serious man like Valere should have written works of this licentious and frivolous kind, will conceive that in a moment of leisure a philosopher should write Les Bijoux Indiscrets, for instance, and the next day follow it by a treatise on ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... might have been seen hanging on the gooseberry-bushes in more peaceful times, was now a ghastly heap of smoking ruins: cottage, bushes, pinafores, children lay mangled together, destroyed by the licentious soldiery of an infuriate monarch! Far be it from me to excuse the disobedience of Athelstane and Rowena to their sovereign; but surely, surely this cruelty ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had resisted the right of a neighboring people to choose their own rulers, which had held in imprisonment the first genius of the century, which had opposed the abolition of the test act, which had sustained the most licentious and most obstinate sovereign of modern times, now yielded to the more enlightened views of such statesmen as Russell and Lansdowne, Brougham and Grey. Several causes operated to bring about this auspicious change. George the Fourth, whose partiality for the Tories ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... sure of this prize of their obscene revels, and wishing to take it alive, consulted a moment on a plan of attack. I understood not their words, but from their coarse laugh, and the licentious looks which they threw upon the Gallic women, there could be no doubt as to the fate which awaited them. I lay there, broken, pinned fast; breathless, full of despair, horror, and impotent rage I lay there, seeing a few steps ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... enamored of the classic past; in the rococo architecture and sculpture of a later time, we have the idle swagger, the unmeaning splendor, the lawless luxury, of an age corrupted by its own opulence, and proud of its licentious slavery. Had anything come of the aesthetic sensation immediately following the war, and the spirit of martial pride with which it was so largely mixed, we should probably have had a much greater standing-army in bronze and marble than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... attentive and malicious observers to point them out. For many years after the Restoration, they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, when the press and the stage were most licentious. They were not men of letters; they were, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... while the intelligence of the latter revealed to him, in detail, the baleful effects of the institution upon all who came within its area. It was at war with social order; it contracted the sublime ideas of national unity; it made men sectional, licentious, profligate, cruel,—and selfishness paled the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... doubt, that the prior's motive for secluding her in the Ursuline convent was a licentious passion for your bride. In that convent every art was employed to corrupt her heart, but every art was employed in vain. She endeavoured to escape; she was watched and closely confined. Your return was expected daily— Josepha threatened her tyrants with disclosure of this atrocious secret— ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... warm medicinal spring near Viterbo, the waters of which, as Landino and Vellutelli affirm, passed by a place of ill fame. Venturi, with less probability, conjectures that Dante would imply, that it was the scene of much licentious merriment among those who frequented ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... all remarkable for simplicity and truth, except one. He was greatly licentious; and his licentiousness, at the age of eighty-five, had nearly carried him off. Yet such was the mildness of his temper, and so correct was he in regard to exercise, rest, rising, eating, drinking, etc., that he lived on, to the great age of one hundred and fifteen years, and then died, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... innocent gallant pawn his revelling suit to make his punk a supper. An honest decayed commander cannot skelder, cheat, nor be seen in a bawdy-house, but he shall be straight in one of their wormwood comedies. They are grown licentious, the rogues; libertines, flat libertines. They forget they are in the statute, the rascals; they are blazon'd there; there they are trick'd, they and their pedigrees; they need no ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... Germany,—the two other divisions of the Christian army taking a different route. On reaching Hungary, Carloman, who then ruled that country, showed some signs of objection to the passage of so formidable a body,—remembering the licentious excesses that had been committed by the rabble which followed Peter the Hermit. Here Godfrey's wisdom was admirably displayed. By his firm measures of restraint on the impetuosity of his troops he first proved that they were under the influence of strict ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... might be also urged in turn. As the system of exchanging wives was formerly common among the Alaskan Eskimo, and as they distribute their favors at will, it is rather remarkable that the married women are not included, as in the licentious feasts recorded of the Greenlanders.[16] From talks with some of the older Eskimo I am led to regard this as a relic of an ancient custom similar to those which have been observed among many nations of antiquity, in which a woman is open to violation at certain feasts. This privilege ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... time, was becoming unpopular. Buckingham was filling it with licentious gallants and with ladies of a type to match them. At Whitehall, there was a constant round of dissipation and libertinism. Besides the very free and easy balls, masques and banquets, there were what were called "quaint conceits" of more than doubtful decency, and there was much ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... of me as a minister not heedless of the welfare and unalienable rights of a black man fallen among a family of thieves. I went to the court house. Outside it was belted with chains. In despotic Europe I had seen no such spectacle, save once when the dull tyrant who oppressed Bavaria with his licentious flesh, in 1844 put his capital in a brief state of siege and chained the streets. The official servant of the kidnapper, club in hand, a policeman of this city, goaded to his task by Mayor Bigelow and Marshal Tukey,—men congenitally mingled in such appropriate work,—bade ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... daily sacrifice. With him perished his daughter, her blood mingling with her father's. The priests and the Levites threw themselves into the flames with their harps and trumpets, and, to escape the violence feared from the licentious Chaldeans, (29) the virgins who wove the curtains for the sanctuary followed their example. Still more horrible was the carnage caused among the people by Nebuzaradan, spurred on as he was by the ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... him away. He had triumphed over a fond, confiding woman; but he had been trained among the dissolute spirits of the Regency too thoroughly to feel more than a passing regret for a woman whom, probably, he loved better than any other of the victims of his licentious life. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... El-Khalasah, also called El-Khulusah, El-Khulsah, or Zu'l-Khalasah, consult the art. "Midian," Smith's "Dict. of the Bible," by E. S. Poole, vol. ii. p. 356. For the Khalasah of the Negeb, "where Venus was worshipped with all the licentious pomp of the Pagan ritual," see Professor Palmer's "Desert of the Exodus," p. 385. The text, however, alludes to a ruin called El-Khulasah, one march from El-Muwaylah to the east ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... its existence, where so many persons of first-rate genius have found it; it does not depend on rendering obscure the light it sheds, nor in giving to the public Lives of Saints accompanied by a dry, bitter, and licentious criticism, calculated to throw doubt on all that is extraordinary in them, and thereby to give scandal. The learned Jesuits, the continuators of Bollandus, show, by the precision of their researches, that they are sincere lovers of truth, but we do not see that they endeavor to diminish the ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... shaken off. Libertines, who are libertines in defiance of talents, of superior lights, of conviction, hardly ever reform but by miracle, or by incapacity. Well do I know mine own sex. Well am I able to judge of the probability of the reformation of a licentious young man, who has not been fastened upon by sickness, by affliction, by calamity: who has a prosperous run of fortune before him: his spirits high: his will uncontroulable: the company he keeps, perhaps such as himself, confirming ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... for your first letter. Your second calls me to a subject of greater seriousness and magnitude. My Rinaldo makes hasty strides indeed! Scarcely embarked in licentious and libertine principles, he seems to look forward to the last consummation of the debauchee. Seduction, my dear lord, is an action that will yield in horror to no crime that ever sprang up in ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... prejudices then prevalent, and, with such auxiliaries to its intrinsic merit, was universally and liberally applauded. It was on the side of charity against the intrigues of interest; and of regular learning against licentious usurpation of medical authority, and was therefore naturally favoured by those who read and ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... the theater leads one into bad company. As a class, the performers are licentious. How can one be in their company, be moved to laughter and to tears and not be contaminated by them? One who has studied the theater tells us that the "fruits of the Spirit and the fruits of the stage exhibit ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... Jesuits, for, as you have observed, I am a Protestant: but I am ready to assert that there are no people in the world better qualified, upon the whole, to be intrusted with the education of youth. Their moral system and discipline are truly admirable. Their pupils, in after life, are seldom vicious and licentious characters, and are in general men of learning, science, and possessed of every elegant accomplishment. I execrate the conduct of the liberals of Madrid in murdering last year the helpless fathers, by whose care and instruction two of the finest ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... undeniable monuments of your pride, your insatiate extortion, your measureless extravagance and luxury. They say to the people, Behold the proofs of the outrages which your fathers, for countless ages, have endured. They lived in mud hovels that their licentious kings might riot haughtily in the apartments, canopied with gold, of Versailles, the Tuileries, and St. Cloud—the Palaces of France. The mind of the political economist lingers painfully upon them. They are gorgeous as specimens of art. They are sacred as memorials of ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... A brutal and licentious soldiery are not responsible at such moments. They may carry sack and rapine to ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... much to him and no more. The dearest of his recollections attached to premature death; the next to chronic failure. Rightly or wrongly (and we know enough about heredity now to expect any guess as to its working in a particular case to be wrong) he attributed the best that he had inherited to a licentious connection and a nameless progenitor. Quite early he must have been intensely ambitious, and discovered in himself intellectual power; but from his twelfth year to his twenty-first there was hardly a soul to comprehend ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... destroy, that it might not be thought that he performed his exploits of necessity. Besides, he said, a brave man need only punish wicked men when they came in his way, but that in the case of wild beasts he must himself seek them out and attack them. Some say that Phaia was a murderous and licentious woman who carried on brigandage at Krommyon, and was called a sow from her life and habits, and that Theseus put her ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... has supreme control. His power is the most despotic known to mankind. Here, by the way, is the constitutionally vulnerable point of Mormonism. If fear of establishing a bad precedent hinder the United States at any time from breaking up that nest of all disloyalty, because of its licentious marriage-institutions, Utah is still open to grave punishment, and the Administration inflicting it would have duty as well as vested right upon its side, on the ground that it stands pledged to secure to each of the nation's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... youth,—but should I ever succeed to the family estate and honours, she hoped, she prayed, that my present course of life might be altered; that I should part from my unworthy associates; that I should discontinue all connexion with the horrid theatre and its licentious frequenters; that I should turn to that quarter where only peace was to be had; and to those sacred duties which she feared—she very much feared that I had neglected. She filled her exhortation with Scripture language, which I do not care to imitate. When I took my leave ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... reprehending "the wits of our times" for "quibbling and drolling upon the Bible," says immediately after:—"This author's innocent abuse of Scripture is so far from countenancing, that it rather shames and condemns that licentious and abominable practice. Nor can we admit of the most useful allusions without that harmless (nay helpful and advantageous) [Greek: katachresis], or abuse here practised: wherein the words are indeed used to another, but yet to a Holy end and purpose, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... Moore, who had just published his "Odes and Epistles" but had not yet begun his Irish melodies, is a man who "with some brilliancy of fancy, and some show of classical erudition ... may boast, if the boast can please him, of being the most licentious of modern versifiers, and the most poetical of those who, in our times, have devoted their talents to the propagation of immorality. We regard his book, indeed, as a public nuisance.... He sits down to ransact the impure places of his memory for inflammatory images ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... foil the wiles of Comus, had remembered not only Homer's description of the root Moly "that Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave,"{16:A} but also Ascham's remarks thereupon: "The true medicine against the enchantments of Circe, the vanity of licentious pleasure, the enticements of all sin, is, in Homer, the herb Moly, with the black root and white flower, sour at first, but sweet in the end; which Hesiod termeth the study of Virtue, hard and irksome in ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... stability of human institutions, such as the lawyers, men of science, doctors, statesmen, painters, and the like, were just those who were most likely to be misled by their own fancied accomplishments, and to be made unduly suspicious by their licentious desire for greater present return, which was at the root of nine-tenths of the opposition; by their vanity, which would prompt them to affect superiority to the prejudices of the vulgar; and by the stings of their own conscience, which was constantly ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... ashamed of the part he had taken in the transaction, restored him to liberty and allowed him to return to his own monastery at St. Denis. Here once more his rationalistic, critical spirit brought him into trouble with the bigoted, licentious monks. Having maintained, on the authority of Beda, that Dionysius, the patron saint of the monastery, was bishop of Corinth and not of Athens, he raised such a storm that he was forced to flee, and took refuge ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... dramatist is but incidentally playing with Montaigne's idea, proceeding to put some gibes at it in the mouths of Gonzalo's rascally comrades; and it follows that Gonzalo's further phrase, "to excel the golden age," proceeds from Montaigne's previous words: "exceed all the pictures wherewith licentious poesy hath proudly embellished the golden age." The play was in all probability written in or before 1610. It remains to show that on his first reading of Florio's Montaigne, in 1603-4, Shakspere was more deeply and widely influenced, though the specific proofs are in the ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... upon the Gospel as teaching such doctrine, and make it an object of scandal to the heathen and worldly people, whereby they are misled and become enemies to the faith and to the Word of God without cause, being the harder to convert since they regard Christians as licentious knaves. And the responsibility for this must be placed at the door of those who have given offense in ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... deplorable than in India, and, in consequence, nowhere than in the dances of that country is manifested a more simple unconsciousness or frank disregard of decency. As by nature, and according to the light that is in him, the Hindu is indolent and licentious, so, in accurately matching degree, are the dancing girls innocent of morality, and uninfected with shame. It would be difficult, more keenly to insult a respectable Hindu woman than to accuse her of having danced, while the man who should affect the society of the females justly ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... one defers too much to the spirit of antiquity, the other panders to the spirit of the age, goes to the very edge of extreme and licentious speculation, and breaks his neck over it. Grossness and levity are the playthings of his pen. It is a ludicrous circumstance that he should have dedicated his Cain to the worthy Baronet! Did the latter ever acknowledge the obligation? We are not nice, not very nice; ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... love-locks;' but we do certainly look with a mixture of contempt and pity on the self-imposed trammels of affectation in style and manner which bound many of the poets of that period. The wits of Charles II. were more disgustingly licentious; but their very carelessness saved them from the conceits of their predecessors; and, while lowering the tone of morality, they raised unwittingly the standard of taste. Some of the songs of Lovelace, however, such as 'To Althea, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Liberals of good means regarded him as a martyr in the cause of freedom, one who would never bow the knee to Baal, and who had dared the first Napoleon when his very word was law. But Foscolo's friends without doubt became tired of his extravagance and his licentious habits, and fell away from him. Disease at last found him out; he died of dropsy at Turnham Green, near Hammersmith, in 1827, when only in the fiftieth year of his age, and was buried in Chiswick churchyard; but in June 1871 his body was exhumed and conveyed to Florence, where he was buried ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... because under any mode of suppressing war, virtually it will exist. Banish war as now administered, and it will revolve upon us in a worse shape, that is, in a shape of predatory and ruffian war, more and more licentious, as it enjoys no privilege or sufferance, by the supposition, under the national laws. Will the causes of war die away because war is forbidden? Certainly not; and the only result of the prohibition would be to throw back the exercise of war from national into private and mercenary hands; ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the name, the patriots applied it to their forces both by land and by sea. Letters of marque were first issued by Louis of Nassau, brother of William of Orange, and in 1569 there were 18 ships engaged, increased in the next year to 84. The bloody and licentious De la Marek, who wore his hair and beard unshorn till he had avenged the execution of his relative, Egmont, was a typical leader of still more wild and reckless crews. It was no uncommon practice to go over the rail of a merchant ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... not much above mediocrity, had been improved by travel as well as study. Himself and one younger brother had been early left masters of their fate and their several portions. The younger, Geoffrey, testified a roving and dissipated turn. Bold, licentious, extravagant, unprincipled,—his career soon outstripped the slender fortunes of a cadet in the family of a country squire. He was early thrown into difficulties, but, by some means or other they never seemed to overwhelm him; an unexpected turn—a lucky adventure—presented itself ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of strong, bristly hair, and the hair inclined to curl, signifies one lustful, licentious, and fit for copulation. Thighs with but little hair, and those soft and slender, show the person to be reasonably chaste, and one that has no great desire to coition, and who ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... Greeks we hear of the Ionian and Milesian tales, but they have now perished, and, from every account we hear of them, appear to have been loose and indelicate." Similarly, the classical dictionaries define "Milesiae fabulae" to be "licentious themes," "stories of an amatory or mirthful nature," or "ludicrous and indecent plays." M. Deriege seems indeed to confound them with the "Moeurs du Temps" illustrated with artistic gouaches, when he says, "une de ces fables milesiennes, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... selected to assist them, and for two hours they were thus employed, during which time Soto stood upon his own deck directing the operations; for the vessels were within a hundred yards of each other. The scene which took place in the cabin exhibited a licentious brutality. The sick officer, Mr. Gibson, was dragged from his berth; the clothes of the other passengers stripped from their backs, and the whole of the cabin passengers driven on deck, except the females, whom they locked up in the round-house ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... other hand, in all parts of the world, have steadily refused to enter into any marriage relations with their barbarous neighbors, or to recognize as belonging to their community any half-breeds springing from licentious and illicit connection with them. Here, too, the results are almost entirely uniform. The extinction of such barbarous tribes brought within the sphere of their competition has been rapid and almost if not absolutely invariable; while the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... them to his worst enemy. Such were not all: there were writers on either side, whose opposition was discriminating, and who enlightened the understanding without debasing the taste. The press was the more licentious, because nothing else was free; but it raised a barrier against official corruption. Men of integrity were annoyed, but rarely injured. It intimidated the corrupt, and protected the oppressed. Considered ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... witnessed, perhaps with out comprehending it, much disunion at home. Lady Walpole. beautiful and accomplished, could not succeed in riveting her husband to his conjugal duties. Gross licentiousness was the order of the day, and Sir Robert was among the most licentious; he left his lovely wife to the perilous attentions of all the young courtiers who fancied that by courting the Premier's wife they could secure Walpole's good offices. Sir Robert, according to Pope, was ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... through the air, and as he flew, he cut her in pieces. The middle portion of her body fell to the earth on this hill, and consecrated forever this spot near Gauhati. In the temple and grove of this hill the goddess is worshiped by such rites as will please one of low and licentious tastes. In fact, the rites of this temple are said to be the most obscene of any in the British possessions. There are reputed to be a thousand "virgins," who subsist in and upon the temple. The extent to which they are virgins may be judged by the number ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... it?" said the other constable. "What is this?" taking up the book from the table. "A book of plays! profane and wicked stage plays, in Salem village! You had better hold your peace, goodwife; or you may go to prison yourself for harboring such licentious devices of Satan in ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... draw a sword for the common defence. At this period, the Counts of Flanders, of Holland, and other Netherland sovereigns, issued decrees, forbidding clerical institutions from acquiring property, by devise, gift, purchase, or any other mode. The downfall of the rapacious and licentious knights-templar in the provinces and throughout Europe, was another severe blow administered at the same time. The attacks upon Church abuses redoubled in boldness, as its authority declined. Towards the end of the fourteenth century, the doctrines of Wicklif had made great ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... military blood that flowed in his veins, and he did not fear death; but life in the open air, absence from his wife, the state of excitement produced by the war, and this eagerness for pleasure common to all those who risk their lives, had suddenly awakened his licentious temperament. When his service allowed him to do so, he would go into Paris and spend twenty-four hours there, profiting by it to have a champagne dinner at Brebant's or Voisin's, in company with some beautiful girl, and to eat the luxurious ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... succor against the Turks, entertained hopes, and those but feeble ones, of obtaining such a moderate supply, as, acting under his command, might enable him to repulse the enemy: but he was extremely astonished to see his dominions overwhelmed, on a sudden, by such an inundation of licentious barbarians, who, though they pretended friendship, despised his subjects as unwarlike, and detested them as heretical. By all the arts of policy, in which he excelled, he endeavored to divert the torrent; but while he employed ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... his difficulties in a sea of rich conceits; and he turns round on the pivot of his convenience, with every occasion and at a moment's warning. His natural repugnance to every unpleasant thought or circumstance, of itself makes light of objections, and provokes the most extravagant and licentious answers in his own justification. His indifference to truth puts no check upon his invention, and the more improbable and unexpected his contrivances are, the more happily does he seem to be delivered of them, the anticipation of their effect acting as a stimulus ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... who, after the short intervening regency of Mar, succeeded to the supreme authority, contrived, by force or artifice, to render the party of the king every where superior. Even on the middle borders, he had the address to engage in his cause the powerful, though savage and licentious, clans of Rutherford and Turnbull, as well as the citizens of Jedburgh. He was thus enabled to counterpoise his powerful opponents, Buccleuch and Fairnihirst, in their own country; and, after an unsuccessful attempt to surprise Jedburgh even these ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... Secularists thought as I did with regard to virtue. I thought their object was to advance the temporal interests of mankind, and never dreamt but that they regarded virtue as the greatest of those interests. And when I found first one and then another to be dishonest, drunken, licentious, I was disposed to regard them as exceptions to the general rule. To the last; nay, for some time after my entire separation from the party, I supposed the profligate, unprincipled, abandoned ones to be the few, and ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... was his attack upon the whole property of the province of Connaught, which he would have effected, if he had not been bought off by a sum greater than he hoped to gain by his iniquity, besides the luxury of confiscation. The Irish, during the reign of James I., suffered under the DOUBLE evils of a licentious soldiery and a ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... have, and how lawfully you may exercise it over the petulant scribblers of this age. As Lord Chamberlain, I know, you are absolute by your office in all that belongs to the decency and good manners of the stage. You can banish from thence scurrility and profaneness, and restrain the licentious insolence of poets and their actors in all things that shock the public quiet, or the reputation of private persons, under the notion of humour. But I mean not the authority which is annexed to your office, I speak of that only which ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... other than Milton's late antagonist Bishop Hall. In Hall's Cases of Conscience (not published till 1649) he thus describes the impression which Milton's Divorce pamphlet had made upon him when he first read it in its anonymous form: "I have heard too much of, and once saw, a licentious pamphlet, thrown abroad in these lawless times in the defence and encouragement of Divorces (not to be sued out; that solemnity needed not; but) to be arbitrarily given by the disliking husband to the displeasing ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... question whether if Handel, say, could have heard an overture of Wagner's he would have thought it an advance in beauty or not—whether it would have seemed to him like the realisation of some incredible dream, a heavenly music, or whether he would have thought it licentious, and even shapeless. Of course, one knows that there is going to be development in art, but the imagination is unable to forecast it, except in so far as it can forecast a possibility of an increased perfection of technique. ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... government without discussion: discussion abounded there, only, by reason of the bad form of the government, it was never sure with ease and certainty to affect political action. The despotism 'tempered by epigram,' was a government which permitted argument of licentious freedom within changing limits, and which was ruled by that argument spasmodically and practically, though ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot |
