"Seduction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... [Footnote: Green in his 'History of the English People' says:—Purity and fidelity to the marriage vow were sneered out of fashion; and Lord Chesterfield, in his letters to his son, instructed him in the art of seduction as part of a polite education. At the other end of the social scale lay the masses of the poor. They were ignorant and brutal to a degree which it is hard to conceive, for the vast increase of population which followed on ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... Treason, then—deep menaces, concealed under the semblance of public interest—such were Colbert's maneuvers. A detestable delight at an approaching downfall, untiring efforts to attain this object, means of seduction no less wicked than the crime itself—such were the weapons Marguerite employed. The crooked atoms of Descartes triumphed; to the man without compassion was united a woman without heart. The marquise perceived, with sorrow rather than indignation, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... it might be retorted on the southern and western slave-holding States. I detest this subornation of treason. No; if we must have them, let them fall by the valor of our arms; by fair, legitimate conquest; not become the victims of treacherous seduction. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... the heralds of the devil. The latter sometimes create illusions. Following the example of Simon the Magician, who worked wonders vying with the miracles of St. Peter, these creatures have recourse to diabolical arts for the seduction of men. Twelve years before, there had prophesied a woman, likewise from the Lorraine Marches, Catherine Suave, a native of Thons near Neufchateau, who lived as a recluse at Port de Lates, yet most certainly did the Bishop of Maguelonne know her to be a liar and a sorceress, wherefore ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... family established, the legion that had conquered the soil with the sword, subsisted on it with the plow. Presently there were priests there, aqueducts, baths, theatres and games, all the marvel of imperial elegance and vice. When the aborigine wandered that way, his seduction was swift. ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... strong.—A good drunken supper-party and a police-row; if ye haven't seen one, get it up out of Pater Priggins—or Laver might do, if the other wasn't convanient. That's Dublin, to be sure, but one university's just like another. And give us a seduction or two, and a brace of Dons carried home drunk from ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... life of a sequestered monk, nor could he object to his master's intrigues, but he nevertheless found it extremely objectionable that these should not be kept within the bounds of common prudence. Now, could Gomez Arias have limited his gallantries to the seduction of farmers' daughters, or debauching trademen's wives, Roque would most implicitly have approved of the practice, inasmuch as in this case, his master would only be asserting a sort of hereditary right attached to those of his class. But to be deceiving ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... they became fixed over my shoulder, while on his lips the words "You must come, you must come," trembled, hardly audible. I could only shake my head. At once he stepped back as if resigning. He was giving me up—and it occurred to me that if the danger of his seduction was over, there remained the danger of ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... fashionable Scale. He had lately succeeded (by the power of his eloquence) in winning over Mrs. Eliott from St. Saviour's to All Souls. He hoped also to win over Mrs. Eliott's distinguished friend. For the Canon was mortal. He had yielded to the unspiritual seduction of filling All Souls by emptying other men's churches. Lawson Hannay smiled on the parson's success, hoping (he said) to see his ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... affairs on the carpet; idiotic follies, causing bankruptcy, scandal, and suicides. Men love them; yes, they love these women because these women know how to inspire love, and because they are loving women. Yes, indeed, they know how to conquer men; they understand the seduction of a smile; they know how to attract, seize, and wrap us up in their hearts, how to enslave us with a look, and they need not be beautiful at that. They have a conquering power that we never find in ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... drawing-room, these two men, if they found themselves, one after the other, all alone with her, would conduct themselves quite differently, although they were both equally well acquainted with her. We can guess at the first glance of the eye that certain beings, naturally endowed with the power of seduction, or only more lively, more daring than we are, reach after an hour's chat with a woman who pleases them, to a degree of intimacy to which we would not attain in a year. Well, do these men, these seducers, these bold adventurers, take, when ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... is about the seduction of a young girl by the heir to an earldom, the resulting illegitimate pregnancy, and the young nobleman's struggle to decide whether to marry or to abandon the girl—certainly not the usual content ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... sister, he was nevertheless her blood kin, and without doubt he had loaded his pistol with a bullet for the man whom he believed would have it in his power to crush that beautiful sister to the earth, even to the point of literal seduction. For judged from the nihilists' standpoint again, they understood Zara to be one who would not hesitate at any sacrifice, in defense of the cause ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... conceded to them; and it must be admitted that certain stern virtues characterized those who were addicted to military achievements, resulting partly from their incessant occupation as warriors, and partly from some indefinite but splendid ideas of fame and glory. Seduction and adultery were vices of rare occurrence; the bridegroom bestowed a dowery upon the bride, consisting of flocks, a horse ready bridled and saddled, a shield, a lance, and a sword; [52] and they were often stimulated by their presence and excitement in their warlike ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... love a lady fair The easier 'tis to gain her grace, And the more surely we ensnare Her in the pitfalls which we place. Time was when cold seduction strove To swagger as the art of love, Everywhere trumpeting its feats, Not seeking love but sensual sweets. But this amusement delicate Was worthy of that old baboon, Our fathers used to dote upon; The Lovelaces are out of date, ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... stories with regard to the adjustment and settlement of claims during this period. All kinds of pressure, all kinds of seduction and all kinds of bribes were offered the adjusters. There appeared to be in the minds of many a conviction that this was the time to make a claim against the insurance companies; that everything was burned and that with the upset conditions any old claim could ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks
... occupies more than a third of the whole—but every point is made the occasion of minute decoration of the richest beauty. It was written for Faustina Mancina, a celebrated courtesan, whose empire lay till the day of her death over the papal city. The wealth of sensuality and wit that made a fatal seduction of Rome for Molza, scholar and libertine, is reflected as it were in the rich cadences and overwrought adornment of his verse. Such compositions as these had a powerful influence over the tone of idyllic poetry. I have mentioned only a few out of a considerable list. The Driadeo d'amore ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... for the foremost buffaloes to retreat or even to stop; they are pressed on by the hindmost rank, which, seeing no danger but from the hunters, goad on those before them till the whole are precipitated, and the shore is strewn with their dead bodies. Sometimes, in this perilous seduction, the Indian is himself either trodden under foot by the rapid movements of the buffaloes, or missing his footing in the cliff is urged down the precipice by the falling herd. The Indians then select as much meat as they ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... requests for leniency merely made me angry. Such crimes were, for instance, rape, or the circulation of indecent literature, or anything connected with what would now be called the "white slave" traffic, or wife murder, or gross cruelty to women and children, or seduction and abandonment, or the action of some man in getting a girl whom he had seduced to commit abortion. I am speaking in each instance of cases that actually came before me, either while I was Governor or while I was President. In an astonishing number of these cases men of high standing ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... borders of it; and the condemnation attached to them is a legal rather than a moral one. It is based, that is, not so much on the kind of happiness itself as on the circumstances under which we are at present obliged to seek it. Thus the practice of seduction may be said to be condemned sufficiently by the misery brought by it to its victims, and its victims' families. But suppose the victims are willing, and the families complacent, this ground of condemnation ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... surprised at his conduct or words, for his faux pas with my frail mother convinced me that he was capable of any act of lechery. I also felt assured that he lusted after me with all the ardor of his lascivious passions, and I well know that he waited but for an opportunity to attempt my seduction.—I hated the man, both for his adultery with my mother, and his vile intentions towards myself—and I determined to punish him for his lewdness and hypocrisy—yes, punish him through the medium of his own bad passions, ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... monks' appreciation of blue skies and open-air life; but they were fettered by the constant fight with the senses; Nature to them must needs be less a work of God for man's delight, than a dangerous means of seduction. 'They wandered through Nature with timid misgiving, and their anxious fantasy depicted forms of terror or marvellous rescues.[3] The idyllic pleasure in the simple charms of Nature, especially in the monastery garden of the Carlovingian time, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... immoral) like any other bodily function, but it may easily become immoral per accidentem, i.e., from the special circumstances under which it takes place, and whereby it acquires the character of an act of injustice or treachery, such as seduction of a friend's wife or daughter."[918] A very influential Socialist writer asks: "Is chastity a virtue, and is there such a vice as unchastity?" and he answers his question by quoting the above statement of Bax.[919] "If it be asked, Is marriage a failure? the answer ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... he was then within in the house, when the saint replied: "The soul of Foylge, for that he unjustly slew my chariot-driver, God justly judging and vindicating my cause, hath gone cut of his body, and descended into hell; but Satan, to the delusion and the seduction of mankind, hath entered into his corpse, and occupieth it as his own proper vessel." Then the saint forbade Satan that in that vessel he should longer abide, or deceive mankind with so wicked a phantom. And forthwith, at the command ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... for breach of promise, divorce, adultery, bigamy, seduction, rape; the newspaper reports every day of every year of scandals and outrages, of wife murders and paramour shootings, of abortions and infanticides, are perpetual reminders of men's incapacity to cope successfully with ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... time, he idealizes them, and often uses them as his spokesmen. Far from being crushed by fate, his vagabonds clothe themselves with a certain pride in their misery; for them, the ideal existence is the one they lead, because it is free; with numerous variations, they all exalt the irresistible seduction of vagabondage: ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... Dolly, the dairymaid, or cast the eyes of tenderness upon Molly, the blacksmith's daughter. Pen thought a Pendennis much too grand a personage to stoop so low. He was too high-minded for a vulgar intrigue, and, at the idea of an intrigue or a seduction, had he ever entertained it, his heart would have revolted as from the notion of any act of baseness or dishonour. Miss Minny Portman was too old, too large, and too fond of reading 'Rollin's Ancient History.' The Miss Boardbacks, Admiral Boardback's daughters (of St. Vincent's, or Fourth ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... yet out of their minds; the barrier days of Paris; the municipal council which in 1648, had levied war against the government; the mob-army which had fought, and terrified that government into forgiveness; were the strong memorials on which the anarchists of 1793 founded their seduction. The perpetual ridicule of the national belief was kept alive among them. The populace of the provinces, whose religion was in their rosary, were prepared for rebellion by similar means and the terrible and fated visitation ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... tale, called "The Woodman's Daughter," is a story of seduction, madness, and child-murder. These are powerful materials to work with; yet it is not every man's hand that they will suit. In the hands of common-place, they are simply revolting. In the hands of folly and affectation, their repulsiveness is aggravated by the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... make people listen to you,—that is seduction in itself. A nation that has two Chambers, a woman who lends both ears, are soon lost. Eve and her serpent are the everlasting myth of an hourly fact which began, and may ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... cleanse themselves from the foul desires associated in their minds with sex. These desires make young men impotent in the face of temptation. Under their evil dominance, even men of kind disposition will, by seduction, inflict on an innocent girl agony, misery, degradation, and premature death. They will indulge In the most degrading of all vices with prostitutes on the street. They will defile the atmosphere of social life with ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... trembling—many a strange moment in Helbeck's presence, or in the chapel, when she had seemed to feel her whole self breaking up, dissolving in the grip of a power that was at once her foe and the bearer of infinite seduction. But always the will, the self, had won the victory, had delivered a final "No!" into which had rushed the ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... captain with three days on bread and water-but no pay could be forfeited for any offense, for no fines were allowed in the republic. For serious offenses committed by either officer or private in time of peace, such as sodomy, crimes against nature, adultery, seduction, larceny, embezzlement or any other felony, the accused was sent to the district court for trial and on conviction was dismissed the service and committed to prison for the term of years provided by the law for the crime he ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans
... the Court of Appeal was once seriously disturbed by Edward Bullen reading to them the following paragraph from a pleading in an action for seduction: "The defendant denies that he is the father of the said twins, or of either of them." This he apologetically explained was due to an accident in his pupil-room, but everyone recognised ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... body fell into naturally. From long knowledge and intense thinking he could see her at will; and there she was at the end of the sofa crossing and uncrossing her lovely legs, so long from the knees, showing through the thin evening gown; he thought of their sweetness and the seduction of the foot advancing, showing an inch or two beyond the skirt of her dress. And then she drew her rings from her fingers, dropping them into her lap, and unconsciously placed ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... excursion, offering a pleasant comradeship with those of his own race in a strange land, came almost opportunely, he fancied, to break an exalted mood. He had found himself roused to the uttermost by his first impressions of Athens. Put to flight by the seduction of river and desert, it was the influence of the landscape rather than of art and history to which he was here first made sensitive. Sea, mountains and plain were informed with a beauty which purged his memory of the evil loveliness of Egypt and restored gravity and dignity to his conception ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... socialization of the sexuality therefore is the transformation and utilization of certain components of the sexual instinct for aims no longer sexual in nature. At the end of the latency period the child's sexuality reappears, frequently but not necessarily induced prematurely by seduction. In addition to the autoerotic gratifications spoken of above, the child is now capable of the choice of a love-object accompanied by erotic feelings. Because of the dependency of the child this first choice of a love-object ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... it is indeed incredible, but a fact, that on Holy Thursday, the very day after my confession, I sinned, and sinned through pride. I should have worn black when I went to be present at the court ceremony, but I could not resist the seduction of a beautiful costume. Just as I was beginning my preparations, the Princess Lubomirska entered my room, accompanied by her maids, who brought me a charming dress of white velvet, with a long train, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... laughed as he caught me in his arms. 'We're going to celebrate. Dress up in that lacy black thing—you are seduction itself ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... beauty, to be blighted By the swarm of foul destruction? Why such innocence delighted, When sin stalks to thy seduction? All the litanies e'er chaunted Shall ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... was heard till the cup was emptied, upon which Master Gammon, according to his wont, departed for bed to avoid the seduction of suppers, which he shunned as apoplectic, and Mrs. Sumfit prepared, in a desolate way, to wash the tea-things, but the farmer, saying that it could be done in the morning, went to the door and opened ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... well as cruel expedients to accomplish it. For this purpose, he endeavoured to suborn a poet who lived under his patronage. The man, whose name was Philoxenus, had lost the favour of the king, and was imprisoned by him for the seduction of one of his female singers. Having written some verses, the tyrant bethought him of establishing their reputation by getting Philoxenus to express publicly his approbation of them, and for that ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... heap of de Negro too. Slavery did de white race a whole lot a good but it wasn't lastin' good. It did de Negro good, dat will be lastin' good forever. De Negro women protected de pure white woman from enticement and seduction of de white man in slavery time. My grandpap say he never heard of a bad white woman befo' freedom. I leave it wid you if dere's any dese times? Dat was worth more to de South, my grandpap say, dis santification of de white women, than all de cotton and corn dat de ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... his fellow members as to his competence to take the parliamentary oath, and the ultimate event proved that he was right and they were wrong. Now what were the crimes of the three other members, who were completely and absolutely expelled? Captain Verney was found guilty of procuration for seduction, Mr. Hastings was found guilty of embezzlement, and Mr. De Cobain was pronounced guilty of evading justice, while charged with unnatural offences. Mr. Jabez Spencer Balfour might also have been expelled, if he had not accepted the Chiltern Hundreds. Now ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... blackguarding, the higher tone of this public press, and of society in general, from which the public press takes its tone, and which it represents in our country, but does not often inform. Even seduction is a rare offence, and a matter of general exclamation, where this extra-judicial agent ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Menalcas means Resolute. It is not difficult to fathom Spenser's meaning in regard to the relations between Menalcas and Rosalinde, and it is clear that he had a poor opinion of the moral character of the former, and plainly charges him with seduction. ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... ruling faction waged war with a zeal little tempered by humanity or by common sense. Sharp laws were passed against betting. It was enacted that adultery should be punished with death. The illicit intercourse of the sexes, even where neither violence nor seduction was imputed, where no public scandal was given, where no conjugal right was violated, was made a misdemeanour. Public amusements, from the masques which were exhibited at the mansions of the great down to the wrestling matches and grinning matches on village greens, were vigorously attacked. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... or deed, not venereal sore, discoloration, privacy of the onanist, Putridity of gluttons or rum-drinkers, peculation, cunning, betrayal, murder, seduction, prostitution, But has results beyond death as ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... in the ecclesiastical career, had been distinguished by a veritable seduction and capturing of souls, by a success which had been a perfect triumph and indeed almost a scandal. After taking the catechism classes for a year in the parish of B——, the archbishop had appointed him to other work, putting another priest in his place. The result of ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... handkerchief such as every decent woman in the Passeyr valley wears, and their arms adorned with all sorts of golden trinkets such as we see only on those of strolling players who perform in barns. But I will put an end to it; I will preserve the good and virtuous men from seduction, and will not suffer vice to dress up, and shamelessness to stalk by the side of decency. Just wait, my dear woman; I will protect your husband and all other good men from the seductive wiles of frivolous women, and issue a decree which will tell all the beautiful women how to behave. Sit down ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... a deep breath of utter joy and of consternation. The two emotions were a jumble to him. The shoes, all that mass of soft stuff behind the curtains, were exquisitely feminine. The breath of perfume had come to him straight out of a woman's soul. There were seduction and witchery to it. He saw Marette, an enrapturing vision of loveliness, floating before his eyes in that sacred and mysterious vestment of which he had stolen a half-frightened glimpse. In white—the white, cobwebby thing of laces and embroidery that had hung straight before ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... the old story!" she said. "Will you never comprehend, Dickie, that what is to you hateful in yourself, may to some one else be the last word of attraction, of seduction, even?" ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... first real interlude which has come down to us is that called De Clerico et Puella, Of the Cleric and the Maiden, which was written not later than the early fourteenth century. This is little more than a dialogue depicting the attempted seduction of a maiden by a wanton cleric. The only other surviving fourteenth-century interlude, that of Dux Maraud, is, on the other hand, the dramatization of a tragic tale of incest and murder. This is, however, somewhat exceptional, and may ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... Rethel, is betrothed to Euryanthe of Savoy, and the wedding is to take place, when one day, in the King's presence Lysiart, Count of Forest and Beaujolais, suggests that all women are accessible to seduction. He provokes Adolar so much, that he succeeds {73} in making him stake his lands and everything he possesses on his bride's fidelity. Lysiart on the other hand promises to bring a ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... the consequence of adultery, fornication, and seduction, except in very exceptional cases where the influence of the guilty one's relatives may save him. But it is certain that in these cases the fine is very heavy. I believe that it is never less than the equivalent of ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... had figured too surely on having his neighbor's cattle to show the banker to stake all on the chance of Grace being able to wheedle him into the scheme. If he couldn't get them by seduction, he meant to take them in a raid. Grace never intended to come to meet him ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... to me that I had known her a long, long time. There was something about her that was not seduction; but far, far above it. Somewhere I had seen her, had known her. She was looking and she was waiting for me. There was something about her that was super feminine. I thought it then, and I say ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... vices, and this was always a passport to his favor, whilst virtue, morality, and honor were excluded with contempt and derision. In fact, the corrupt atmosphere of his court carried its contagion throughout the empire, until the seduction of female innocence became the fashion of the day, and no man could consider himself entitled to a becoming position in society who had not distinguished himself by half a dozen criminal intrigues either with ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... villainous Swede had done to her—what he promised her, how he frightened her. She couldn't have cared for him, I know." Schomberg's vanity clung to the belief in some atrocious, extraordinary means of seduction employed by Heyst. "Look how he bewitched that poor ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... others, worthy to employ the human mind: and I thank you for it. They have been often interrupted by the business and dissipations of the world, but they were never so more grievously to me, nor less usefully to the public, than since royal seduction prevailed on me to abandon the quiet and leisure of the retreat I had chosen abroad, and to neglect the example of Rutilius, for I might have imitated him in this at least, who fled further from his country when ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... one of the dangers to which a modern artist is exposed is the seduction of his predecessors. The gropings of our muse, the distracted experiments of our architecture, often arise from the attraction of some historical school; we cannot work out our own style because we are hampered by the beauties of so many others. The result is an eclecticism, which, in spite ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... kiss. He stared up at the shadowy roof beams, feeling the hot blood leap to his face at the thought. There was an uncanny magic in the nearness of her, a lure in the droop of her tired body. And MacRae struggled against that seduction. Yet he could not deny that Betty Gower, innocently sleeping with his hand fast in hers, filled him with visions and desires which had never before focused with such intensity on any woman who had come ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... curmurring, forgetful of mice and milk, of all but love! How meekly mews the Demure, relapsing into that sweet under-song—the Purr! And how curls Tom's whiskers like those of a Pashaw! The point of his tail—and the point only is alive—insidiously turning itself, with serpent-like seduction, towards that of Tabitha, pensive as a nun. His eyes are rubies, hers emeralds—as they should be—his lightning, hers lustre—for in her sight he is the lord, and in his, she is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... and with whom she might have passed through life in simple rustic happiness, if, misled by the weakness of a tender heart, she had not listened to the passion of a gentleman in the neighbourhood, who promised her marriage. He soon abandoned her, and adding inhumanity to seduction, refused to insure a provision for the child of which she was pregnant. Margaret then determined to leave forever her native village, and retire, where her fault might be concealed, to some colony distant from that country where she had lost the only portion of a poor peasant girl—her reputation. ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... impressed, that she feared shame, more than the poverty to which it would lead. Her incessant importunities to prevail upon my father to screen her from reproach by marrying her, as he had promised in the fervour of seduction, estranged him from her so completely, that her very person became distasteful to him; and he began to hate, as well as despise me, before I ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... pay and allowances, rations and donations, which amounted to something immense. So he removed thither with sister and mother; after which the Caliph, hearing that his sister Fitnah was in beauty a very "fitnah,"[FN137] a mere seduction, demanded her in marriage of Ghanim who replied, "She is thy handmaid as I am thy slave." The Caliph thanked him and gave him an hundred thousand diners, then summoned the witnesses and the Kazi, and on one and the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the shape it came to Joseph. In this congregation, where, by the blessing of the Almighty, we are free from almost every form of wrong-doing, there is yet one temptation which has power to touch us—the temptation of unholy profit, the seduction ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... amidst debauchery the triumph of assassination, and enlivens his midnight orgies by recounting the sufferings of the massacred aristocrates: women, whose profession it is to please, assume the bonnet rouge [red cap], and affect, as a means of seduction, an intrepid and ferocious courage.—I cannot yet learn if Mons. S's sister be alive; her situation about the Queen makes it too doubtful; but endeavour to give him hope—many may have escaped ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... friend, that I ought to have put that before my account of their health and safety. They are in their duty, being proof, so far, against both threat and seduction ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... pope that he professed himself ready to die for the Roman cause, was in the habit of using language so filthy to his penitents, that it was necessary to "sequester him from hearing ladies' confessions." The nuns petitioned the visitors, on the exposure of the seduction of a sister, that he and his companion might come to them no more; and the friar was told that his abominable conduct might be the occasion that "shrift should be laid down ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... of July next; an extension of the act of 1795, for the security of the king's person, to that of the regent; the revival of an act of 1795 against corresponding societies; and a reenactment of that regarding the seduction of soldiers and sailors from their allegiance. Petitions were presented against these restrictions on public liberty, and they were opposed in every stage by the opposition; but they were carried in both houses by large majorities. Although these acts appeared ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Mademoiselle de Marignan, a rich heiress of one of the greatest families of Provence, he displayed, like a wrestler, all kinds of stratagems and daring schemes of policy in the small theater of Aix. Not only cunning, seduction, and courage, but every resource of his nature was used to succeed, and he succeeded; but he was hardly married before fresh persecutions beset him, and the stronghold of Pontarlier gaped to enclose him. A love, which his "Lettres ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... lost my virginity, and took one, thus ended my first love or lust; which will you call it? I call it love, for I was fond of the girl, and she of me. Some might call it a seduction, but thinking of it after this lapse of years, I do not. It was only the natural result of two people being thrown together, both young, full of hot blood, and eager to gratify their sexual curiosity; there ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... and drank sparingly; but he was not proof against the seduction of good company, and he had plenty of it, from William Preston to Joseph Jefferson, with such side lights as Stoddard Johnston, Boyd Winchester, Isaac Caldwell and Proctor Knott, of the Home Guard—very nearly all the celebrities of the day among ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... sultan, though anxious for war, would not spend a penny in order to wage it; and it was not easy to corrupt some of the great vassals ordered to march at their own expense against a man in whose downfall they had no special interest. Nor were the means of seduction wanting to Ali, whose wealth was enormous; but he preferred to keep it in order to carry on the war which he thought he could no longer escape. He made, therefore, a general appeal to all Albanian warriors, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... will shortly arrive, in which, by ascertaining the characters of persons now, we shall be guarded against their mischiefs then; for in proportion as the enemy despair of conquest, they will be trying the arts of seduction and the force of fear by all the mischiefs which they can inflict. But in war we may be certain of these two things, viz. that cruelty in an enemy, and motions made with more than usual parade, are always signs of weakness. He that can conquer, finds his mind too free and pleasant ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... during menstruation, there is nevertheless good reason to believe that the first coitus very frequently takes place at this point of least psychic resistance. When still a student I was struck by the occurrence of cases in which seduction took place during the menstrual flow, though at that time they seemed to me inexplicable, except as evidencing brutality on the part of the seducer. Negrier,[115] in the lying-in wards of the Hotel-Dieu at Angers, constantly found that the women from the country who came there pregnant ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... men. Moreover, she had her arts, little as men suspected it. Long ago she had read an appraisement of Madame Recamier by Sainte-Beuve: "She listens avec seduction." Gora had no intention of practising seduction in any of its forms, but she listened and she never betrayed, and her reward was that men sound and whole, and full of man's inherent and technical peculiarities, had confided in her. Altogether she was well equipped ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... essentials of the character; and that is virtue." "I am surprised," said I; "but how has he incurred so severe a censure?" "By being a professed libertine; by having but too successfully, practised the arts of seduction; by triumphing in the destruction of innocence and the peace of families." "O, why was I not informed of this before? But perhaps these are old affairs—the effects of juvenile folly—crimes of which he may have repented, and which charity ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... they have stolen into the country, and secretly endeavoured to multiply converts to their way of thinking, it became my duty to oppose a conduct so deceitful, and to put a stop to the progress of seduction. Justly as they were found to deserve the punishment to which they have been condemned, touched, nevertheless, with compassion for their imprudence, it was not without injury to my feelings that I ratified the sentence. But recollecting afterwards that they were strangers—strangers ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... by the calls of affection or friendship. When, for example, some spell was to be tried on a sick relative, and any of those who had been taught something of Christianity opposed it, they were reproached with hating the invalid, and wishing him dead. Another source of seduction to the half-informed heathen, was the use which the Angekoks made of the little knowledge of Christianity which they had obtained. These sorcerers, who are held in great veneration and dread by the people, and whose atrocities, as ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... doing, you not only prevent the undesirable secrecy, but you build normally on modesty; you lay foundations for a true sense of shame, disgust, and disgrace; and in doing so, set up one of the strong defenses against perversions and prurient allurement and seduction. ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... at Christmas? What seduction hath Yule Tide for these phantastic fellows, that it lures them from their warm fireplaces? Is it that the cool snow is grateful after the fervours of their torrid zone, where even the pyrometer would fail to record the temperature? Is it that Dickens is responsible ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... her, and in the presence of her relations expels her from his house, and pursues her with stripes through the whole village. Nor is any indulgence shown to a prostitute. Neither beauty, youth, nor riches can procure her a husband; for none there looks on vice with a smile, or calls mutual seduction the way of the world. The youths partake late of the pleasures of love, and hence pass the age of puberty unexhausted; nor are the virgins hurried into marriage; the same maturity, the same full growth is required; the sexes unite equally matched, and robust; and the ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... continue her narrative. I am convinced that nothing would more powerfully preserve youth from irregularity, or guard inexperience from seduction, than a just description of the condition into which the wanton plunges herself; and therefore hope that my letter may be a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Jersey, it was in vogue in 1816. In the state of New York this custom came under judicial cognizance in the year 1804, when the supreme court held, that although bundling was admitted to be the custom in some parts of the state, it being proven that the parents of the girl, for whose seduction the suit was brought, countenanced her practicing it, they had no right to complain, or ask satisfaction for the consequences, which, the court say, "naturally ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... revenues were easily increased by proper attention on the part of the fiscal authorities. I provided for the education of the young and the maintenance of the old; and for the general public I had games and spectacles, banquets and doles. As for rape and seduction, tyrannical violence or intimidation, I abhorred the very name of ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... it by many acts of violence, and by an exclusive devotion to personal ends, in defiance of justice and liberty. Henceforward and under the disastrous inspirations of a mad ambition, victory itself was to become a fatal seduction which by inevitable degrees draws us on to ruin. Great and terrible lesson of Divine justice on the morality of nations! Starting from the violation of the peace of Amiens, and in spite of the glory of the sun of Austerlitz, the history of the glory of the conqueror ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... secretly attracting her. The odour of the Tyrrells' house had exercised a certain seduction. Though she saw but one or two old acquaintances there, the dining-room, the drawing-room, brought the past vividly back to her. She was not so wholly alien to her mother's blood that the stage-life ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... the Christian world, the pagan type of woman, thought of as lower and wickeder than man, bore, for a long period, an aggravated form, imparted by an intense theological dogma. The theologians taught that woman—by the seduction of Adam and the introduction of original sin, which led to the crucifixion of Christ— was the guiltiest and worst of human beings, the Temptress of Man and the Murderess of God. Hear how Tertullian raged against her: "She should always be veiled, clothed in mourning ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the art of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils! Such an attachment of a small or weak toward a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... of Roldan's contumacy, the Adelantado proclaimed him and his followers traitors. That shrewd rebel, however, did not suffer his men to remain within either the seduction of promise or the terror of menace; he immediately set out on his march for his promised land of Xaragua, trusting to impair every honest principle and virtuous tie of his misguided followers by a life ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... saw that you were virtuous from vanity, not principle, and I seized the fit moment for your seduction. I observed your blind idolatry of the Madonna's picture. I bade a subordinate but crafty spirit assume a similar form, and you eagerly yielded to the blandishments ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... parvenus bursting into millionnaires; of wealth as the necessary instrument of ambition, as the arch ruler of the civilized world. Never once, be it observed, in these temptations, did Lucretia address herself to the heart; the ordinary channels of vulgar seduction were disdained by her. She would not have stooped so low as Mainwaring's love, could she have commanded or allured it; she was willing to leave to Susan the husband reft from her own passionate youth, but leave him with the brand ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to Belford.— Affects to mistake the intention of Belford's letter, and thanks him for approving his present scheme. The seduction progress is more delightful to him, he says, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... dreams that he has black, curling hair, he will deceive people through his pleasing address. He will very likely deceive the women who trust him. If a woman's hair seems black and curly, she will be threatened with seduction. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... adventures, is abruptly introduced. Lemminkainen is a profligate wanderer, with as many loves as Hercules. The fact that he is regarded as a form of the sea-god makes it strange that his most noted achievement, the seduction of the whole female population of his island, should correspond with a like feat of Krishna's. 'Sixteen thousand and one hundred,' says the Vishnu Purana, 'was the number of the maidens; and into so many forms did the son of Madhu multiply himself, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... girl at the bath. The critics had said, "It is naked, rather than nude," and the dealers objected to it on this ground, and to the Western girl it was both shocking and ugly. Before she had caught her breath he continued, in a tone that was at once a seduction and a defence: "There is nothing more beautiful in the world than the female form; it is the flower of flowers. Why should it not be painted?" And then, while still he argued for the return of the Greek's love of beauty, covering his moral ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... that they never win anything on their merits. They must exert finesse, seduction, charm, magnetism. For this reason they are always in a state of apprehension that some other woman equally feminine, but more astute and captivating, will win their man away. The result is the intense and unremitting jealousies in French society. They see in this war their ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... July 29th.—Among the many bad actions described in history, there is one which is very rare; it is the artifice of a tempter who throws the blame of his attempt at seduction upon the person who rejected it, perhaps after listening to it. But this is what Bismarck has done. You have probably not forgotten what happened in 1868, and what I wrote about it at the time, in the 'Revue des deux Mondes' of September 15th. I take pleasure ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... radical fault of the Italian opera to be its subordination of the drama to the music. In opposition to this it has been asserted that the music aids the drama by carrying on the action. Let us examine this by the light of one example, the well-known seduction scene of Zerlina in Don Giovanni. The form of music as such is determined by rhythmic repetitions of themes, varied or not. The scene is full of dramatic charm and has great capabilities. Don Giovanni begins insinuatingly: "Give me your hand, Zerlina; come away with me to my castle." ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... old horse pistol, that looked as though it had seen service in the war of Cromwell, "stop, and account to me for the seduction of my wife, or I'll shoot you as ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... eloquence; most necessary to gain your ends, or maintain opinions." As if we should have never known such words as "golden shower," "lap," "beguile," "temples of the heavens," or others in that passage, unless Terence had brought a lewd youth upon the stage, setting up Jupiter as his example of seduction. ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... made no more struggles; he surrendered himself to the charming seduction, and as his advances were respectful, but ardent and incessant, he found himself at the end of a fortnight Mrs. Woffington's ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... its attractions more boldly during the course of my frugal meal, and became so courageously intrusive during the succeeding half-hour (aided perhaps by the flavour of a few glasses of most excellent claret), that, with a sort of desperate attempt to escape from a delusive seduction, to which I felt the danger of yielding, I pushed my glass from me, threw aside my dinner, seized my hat, and rushed into the open air with the feeling of one who would fly from his own thoughts. Yet perhaps I yielded to the very feelings ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of shimmering silver,—he took out the box, and opened it. He knew it held two pellets; no more. Why not take them at once, and so break the last link of the devil's chain? He turned them into his palm, . . and paused, while the enemy within whispered words of seduction hard to be withstood. But now a second voice spoke in him also: a voice of mingled authority and pleading. Why not fling away both box and pellets, foregoing the final degradation, the final rapture, that every nerve in him clamoured for more imperatively than ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... arrival. Bonaparte expressed much displeasure against the persons sent from Europe to arrange measures for that purpose. One of them, however, M. Dolomieu, had cause to repent his mission, which occasioned him to be badly treated by the Sicilians. M. Poussielgue had done all he could in the way of seduction, but he had not completely succeeded. There was some misunderstanding, and, in consequence, some shots were interchanged. Bonaparte was very much pleased with General Baraguay d'Hilliers' services in Italy. He could not but praise his ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... consideration; attraction; loadstone; magnet, magnetism, magnetic force; allectation|, allective|; temptation, enticement, agacerie[obs3], allurement, witchery; bewitchment, bewitchery; charm; spell &c. 993; fascination, blandishment, cajolery; seduction, seducement; honeyed words, voice of the tempter, song of the Sirens forbidden fruit, golden apple. persuasibility[obs3], persuasibleness[obs3]; attractability[obs3]; impressibility, susceptibility; softness; persuasiveness, attractiveness; tantalization[obs3]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... her attention to the opera—to that tragedy of the weakness of the flesh, albeit the spirit may be willing to listen to good. Alas! that the flesh should be so full of color and charm and seduction, while the spirit is pale, colorless, and set to music in ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... The situations and the other characters—the Professor Porpora himself; Count Zustiniani, dilettante, impresario and of course gallant; his prima donna and (in the story at least) first mistress, La Corilla; her extravagances and seduction of the handsome Anzoleto; his irresolution between his still existing affection for Consuelo, who passes through all these things (and Zustiniani's siege of her) "in maiden meditation, fancy-free"—all ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Mherejaun, who by this time was in the territory of Sind, laying it waste with fire and sword, no troops scarcely being opposed to his sudden invasion. He received the ambassador with mortifying haughtiness, bidding him return to his master, and inform him that he never would forgive the seduction of his daughter, in revenge for which he had taken a solemn oath to overturn the kingdom of Sind, raze the capital, and feast his eyes with the blood of the old sultan and his son. On receipt of this ungracious reply to his proposals, the sultan and Eusuff had no alternative but to oppose so ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practise the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinions, to influence or awe public councils! Such an attachment of small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellites of the latter. Against the insidious wiles of foreign ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... after a reign of warfare against the Turk, and his own subjects, who resented the deposition of the tribal chiefs, the imposition of terrific taxes, based on the number of cattle they possessed, and occasional seduction of their wives. The Omladina knew that Michael had been visiting the West, that he had frequented the masters of science and politics in London, Paris and Berlin; but he would probably forget their precepts and in any case he was much duller than the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... boat with a bound, and grasping my hands with a thousand pardons, insisted I should not ascend the river till I had dined with him. He promised a plate of capital soup;—and where, I should like to know, is the son of France or Italy who is ready to withstand the seduction of such a provocative? Besides this, he insisted on dressing me from his scanty wardrobe; but as he declined all subsequent remuneration, I confined my bodily improvement to a clean shirt ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... gluttony is immoderation in food; and man cannot avoid this, for Gregory says (Moral. xxx, 18): "Since in eating pleasure and necessity go together, we fail to discern between the call of necessity and the seduction of pleasure," and Augustine says (Confess. x, 31): "Who is it, Lord, that does not eat a little more than necessary?" Therefore gluttony is not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... vice. There are, perhaps, particular situations, in which human virtue has always failed: at least, temptation often repeated, and long continued, has seldom been finally resisted. In a government so constituted as to leave the people exposed to perpetual seduction, by opportunities of dissolute pleasure or iniquitous gain, the multiplication of penal laws will only tend to depopulate the kingdom, and disgrace the state; to devote to the scymitar and the bow-string, those who might have ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... that the door was to be denied to all emissaries or letters from Rawdon), took Miss Crawley's carriage, and drove to her old friend Miss Pinkerton, at Minerva House, Chiswick Mall, to whom she announced the dreadful intelligence of Captain Rawdon's seduction by Miss Sharp, and from whom she got sundry strange particulars regarding the ex-governess's birth and early history. The friend of the Lexicographer had plenty of information to give. Miss Jemima was made to fetch the drawing-master's receipts and letters. This ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... serve for only two years. If the change ended there our army would be still more a militia than it is now. It would be the Prussian Landwehr. But those entitled to their discharge are to be enticed by higher pay, promotions, bounties, and retiring pensions—in short, by all means of seduction, to re-enter for long periods, for ten, or fifteen, or perhaps twenty years. It is hoped that thus a permanent regular army may be formed, with an esprit de corps of its own, unsympathising with the people, and ready to keep it down; and ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... was no seduction on her part or on mine: love simply came, and I was her lover before I had even thought that I ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... mischief as possible in my few excursions to the world of gallantry. A little deviation from the exact rule of right we men all allow ourselves in love affairs; but I was willing to keep as near it as I could. Married women are, on my principles, forbidden fruit; I abhor the seduction of innocence; I am too delicate, and (with all my modesty) too vain, to be pleased with venal beauty: what was I then to do, with a heart too active to be absolutely at rest, and which had not met with its counterpart? Widows were, I thought, fair prey, as being sufficiently experienced ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... into an immoral action, at which he will blush in his cooler moments, and which he will lament as the sad effect of a spirit unsubdued by religion; but infidelity is a calm, considerate act, which cannot plead the weakness of the heart, or the seduction of the senses. Even good men frequently fail in their duty through the infirmities of nature and the allurements of the world; but the infidel errs on a plan, on a ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... this rule, and his capricious ventures in search of married bliss would fill many pages. According to Burke, "he was lawfully married in 1352 to the lady who passed during her entire life as his mistress, Maria de Padilla; he was certainly married to Blanche of Bourbon in 1353; and his seduction, or rather his violation, of Juana de Castro was accomplished by a third profanation of the sacrament, when the Bishops of Salamanca and Avila, both accessories to the king's scandalous bigamy, pronounced the blessing of the Church upon his brutal dishonor of a noble lady." Whether Pedro was ever ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... he became acquainted with a famous singing girl called Tu, whose first name was Mei, or "Elegance." As she was the tenth of her family, she was known at the theatre as Shih-niang, "The Tenth daughter." A delicate seduction diffused from her: her body was all grace and perfume. The twin arches of her brows held the black which is blue of distant mountains, and her eyes were as deep and bright as autumn lakes. Her face had the glory of the ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... it was over, in lieu of her back, she gave him the seduction of her smile, and, later when, in his car, on the way to the walk-up, he spoke of future dinners, fresher songs, she had so far forgotten the painted mush insult, that momentarily she foresaw but one objection. She had nothing to wear ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... fame, gave in their testimony to the value of the instruments thus presented to them; an unusually moderate proportion, when it is remembered that to the common motives of which I have spoken was added the seduction of a gift for which the profane public was expected ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... is a sophism," cried Durtal, growing angry. "God has left to every man his liberty; no one is tempted beyond his power. If in certain cases, he allows the seduction to overpass our means of resistance, it is to recall us to humility, to bring us back to Him by remorse, for other causes which we know not, which it is not His business to show us. Then probably those transgressions are appreciated in a different way to those which we have practised ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... Incest with a daughter-in-law, if she was his son's full wife, was apparently punished by his being drowned. The Code is obscure here and we are not sure whether she was drowned also.(253) If the girl was not yet fully married, the case was treated as one of ordinary seduction, and the culprit ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... concealed and protected. The number and the success of elopements leave no doubt of the establishment of a regular chain of posts, accessary to, and of systematic plans, deliberately organized, for their seduction and concealment. In these escapes, the free negroes are, for the most part, undoubtedly instrumental, as they are to most of the robberies committed by slaves. While at Easton, two weeks since, the slaves of two gentlemen made their escape, being each, if not recovered, a loss of one thousand ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... impression made not only on my face but also on another part of my person, which had now become somewhat prominent. He seemed satisfied with this, and then opened the other packet, which was a series of drawings executed by a first-rate artist in the most admirable style delineating the seduction of a beautiful young boy of about fifteen by another handsome youth a few years older. Every scene in the progress was illustrated by an appropriate and admirably drawn portrait of the two characters, commencing with taking him on his knee and impressing ...
— Laura Middleton; Her Brother and her Lover • Anonymous
... would shake off the old King's evil counsellors, and show himself in his true and noble colouring. His brothers, however, laughed and chid any word about the Prince's kindness. Edward's flattery and seduction, they declared, had won the young De Clare from their cause. And in vain did their father assure them that they had lost the alliance of the house of Gloucester solely by their own over-bearing injustice—a tyranny worse than had been exercised ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... first instance. But, when he saw by the young man's startled aspect that he was prepossessed against him, and had listened probably to the damning rumors which were rife everywhere concerning him, a second motive was added, in his pride of seduction and sophistry, by which he was wont to boast, that he could bewilder the strongest minds, and work them to his will. When by the accidental disarrangement of Arvina's gown, and the discovery of his own dagger, he perceived that ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... toward their husbands and children as European women. The children are entirely naked; and the only peculiarity I observed is filing their teeth to a sharp point, like those of a shark. The men marry but one wife, as I have before observed. Concubinage is unknown; and cases of seduction or adultery very seldom arise. Even the Malays speak highly of the chastity of the Dyak women; yet they are by no means shy under the gaze of strangers, and used to bathe before us in ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... moment that Small yearned for his afternoon's solace, yet scrupled to ask for it; when the door had been made fast, and the first whiff exhaled, all his misgivings vanished, and he surrendered himself to the soft seduction. In this ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... his rival, and, as we all know, that is a resource which may prove even more effectual than a duel. As regards morality, the ladies of N. were nothing if not censorious, and would at once be fired with virtuous indignation when they heard of a case of vice or seduction. Nay, even to mere frailty they would award the lash without mercy. On the other hand, should any instance of what they called "third personism" occur among THEIR OWN circle, it was always kept dark—not a hint of what was going on being allowed to transpire, and even the wronged husband ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... whole 'tis most miserable stuff. Miss How, who is called a young lady of sense and honour, is not only extreme silly, but a more vicious character than Sally Martin, whose crimes are owing at first to seduction, and afterwards to necessity; while this virtuous damsel, without any reason, insults her mother at home and ridicules her abroad; abuses the man she marries; and is impertinent and impudent with great applause. Even that model of ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... resided. I paid them a visit, and, after a few preliminaries, mentioned, as if by accident, the name of Mervyn. They immediately recognised this name as belonging to one of their ancient neighbours. The death of the wife and sons, and the seduction of the only daughter by Colvill, with many pathetic incidents connected with the fate of ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... it increased in bitterness. Cheetham pounded Burr harder than ever, accusing him of seduction and of dancing with a buxom wench at a "nigger ball" given by one of his coloured servants at Richmond Hill. Jefferson was quoted as saying that Burr's party was not the real democracy, a statement that the American Citizen printed in capitals and kept ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... bleeding from th' oppressor's blow, Which could bestow its better part Upon the offspring of a foe! They, the mean delvers of the soil, The wielders of the felling axe,— Because we will not stoop to toil, Nor to its burdens bond our backs; Because we scorn Seduction's wiles, Her lying words and forged smiles, They, the foul slaves of lust and gold, Say that our blood and hearts are cold.(3) But ere the morrow's dawning light Has climbed yon eastern craggy height, One, whose fierce eye and haughty brow, ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... day forward had they reason to sink again, in spite of the close keeping in which she was held, with the daughters of the house for bedfellows. Their mother and the Regent's, her father's former mistress, was herself not impervious to her prisoner's lifelong power of seduction and subjugation. Her son George Douglas fell inevitably under the charm. A rumor transmitted to England went so far as to assert that she had proposed him to their common half-brother Murray as a fourth husband for herself; a later ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... William Archer Butler, and his conclusions in regard to this subject are presented in the following words: "As, on the one hand, he maintained a strict system of dualism, and avoided, without a single deviation, that seduction of pantheism to which so many abstract speculators of his own school have fallen victims; so, on the other hand, it appears to me that he did not scruple to place this principle, the opposite of the Divine intelligence, in a sphere independent of temporal ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... glorious excitement of establishing Miss Belton's connection—not to be quoted—with a cracksman at that moment being diligently inquired for by the New York police with reference to a dramatically bigger matter. You saw the plot at once as he constructed it; the pipe ash became explicable in the seduction of Miss Belton's charms. The cunning net unwove itself, delicately and deliberately, to tangle round the lady. There was in it that superiority in the art of legerdemain, of mere calm, astonishing manipulation, so applauded in regions where romance has not yet been quite trampled down ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... while his magnificent features grew dark with terrible rage—"as for you, sir, you have betrayed my confidence and abused my hospitality; I introduced you into this house, supposing you to be a man of honor and a friend. You have attempted the seduction of my sister; you have basely tried to take advantage of the weakness of an inexperienced and unsuspecting woman; but more than all this, sir—and my blood boils with fury at the thought!—you would have tarnished the ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... him. But Faustus's good angel has mercy on him. He buries him in a deep sleep, and creates in his place a phantom, with which the cheated devils try successfully the whole process of temptation and seduction. All this appears to Faustus in a dream. He awakes; the Devil discovers his error, and flies with shame and fury, and Faustus, thanking Providence for its warning, clings to truth and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... women might reduce the weaker sex to such graceless inferiority that, deprived of the deference and favour they now enjoy, they should find themselves entirely without influence. In that case they would have to begin again at the bottom and appeal to arts of seduction and to men's fondness in order to regain ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... may be used by those who wish to avail themselves of an excuse for material dissipation. Mabel Collins, in her notes to "Light on the Path," says on this subject: "Seek it by testing all experience, and remember that, when I say this, I do not say, 'Yield to the seduction of sense, in order to know it.' Before you have become an occultist, you may do this, but not afterwards. When you have chosen and entered the path, you cannot yield to these seductions without shame. ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... indefinite immensity of the universe, is a most awful subject of contemplation. He who rightly feels its mystery and grandeur is in no danger of seduction from the falsehoods of religious systems, or of deifying the principle of the universe. It is impossible to believe that the Spirit that pervades this infinite machine begat a son upon the body of a Jewish woman; or is angered at the consequences of that necessity, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... his affection wither; though the loves and ties of his youth decay and vanish. It makes him careless of the sunshine, and heedless of the storm. It deadens his ear to the song of birds, it blinds his eye to the seduction of flowers. It makes him fly from friendship and rush on hate. It compensates for all sorts of loneliness, and it produces them. It is a princely despotism; which, while it robs its slave of freedom, covers him with other gifts which ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... it must be considered that, as the vanity and proneness to seduction of the imprisoned women represented a general degradation in their sex; so do these acts a still more general and worse in the male. Where so many are weak, it is natural there should be many lost; where legislators admit that ten thousand ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... pass resolutions condemnatory of false doctrine, but it is somewhat more difficult to counteract the seduction of the principles from which heresies derive their influence. The Gnostics, the Montanists, and the Manichaeans, owed much of their strength to fallacies and superstitions with which the Christian teachers of the age were not fully prepared to grapple; ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... way in such counsel; and likewise I will not give a woman a pessary to procure abortion. But I will keep my life and my art in purity and holiness. Whatsoever house I enter, I will enter for the benefit of the sick, refraining from all voluntary wrongdoing and corruption, especially seduction of male or female, bond or free. Whatsoever things I see or hear concerning the life of men, in my attendance on the sick or even apart from my attendance, which ought not to be blabbed abroad, I will keep silence on ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... become prostitutes, and lead a life which is as joyless as it is void of honour. But under such circumstances they become a necessity to the masculine sex; so that their position is openly recognised as a special means for protecting from seduction those other women favoured by fate either to have found husbands, or who hope to find them. In London alone there are 80,000 prostitutes. Then what are these women who have come too quickly to this most terrible end but human sacrifices ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... material there cannot be any doubt, but the fictitious bushranger is far from being in any respect a mere copy of the real one. In Starlight's relations with women, for instance, there is nothing but what is manly and honourable, whereas one of Gardiner's exploits was the seduction of a settler's wife, a beautiful woman whom he induced to elope with him to a remote district in Queensland. And, further, none of the sensational incidents connected with his capture—his escape under ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... of this force is proceeding in relieving an important frontier post, and in several incidental operations against hostile tribes of savages, rendered indispensable by the subserviency into which they had been seduced by the enemy—a seduction the more cruel as it could not fail to impose a necessity of precautionary severities against those ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... was a learned man and a holy man, and should have despised such vanities, but an historic past had great seduction for him; a militant race fascinated him against his conscience, and aristocracy allured him despite all his better judgement; it seemed to him that if he had learned that he had come from a knightly gens such as this ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... way, yes! And yet perhaps Prince Bismarck has let himself be led away by the seduction of a good phrase into the use of an inexact form. The form of his judgment had to be pithy, striking, engraved within a ring. If he erred, then, no doubt, he erred deliberately. The saying was near enough the truth to serve, and perhaps he did not ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... ho, my lads!" he cried, entering with, a splurge; "let's make a night o't. I should be working for my degree to-night, but I suppose I can get it easy enough when the time comes." "What did I tell ye?" said M'Craw, nudging an elbow; and Gourlay saw the nudge. Here at last he had found the sweet seduction of a proper pose—that of a grand homme manque, of a man who would be a genius were it not for the excess of his qualities. Would he continue to appear a genius, then he must continue to display that excess which—so he wished them to believe—alone prevented his brilliant achievements. It was ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... not take part in a battle, there were incessant battles about her: the fatal woman, who is the ruin of her country, is well-known in all legend and romance, from Helen of Troy to La Cava, whose seduction by King Roderick brought the Moors into Spain.[18] In the Iliad King Priam treats Helen with delicate consideration, as is seen in the beautiful passage that describes her sitting by him on the walls of Troy, and ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... looking at him with sleep-filled eyes, smiled the sweet, meaningless smile of a half-awakened child. Her consciousness had not yet fully returned, and her glance, curiously clear and liquid, rested on his without intelligence. The woman in her was never more apparent, her seduction never more potent. Her will dormant, her bounding energies at low ebb, she looked a thing to nestle, soft and yielding, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner |
