"Pestilent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... turned out, had been doctored by the head of the Press Bureau, caused great anger in some quarters. But for my part I rather welcomed it. Anything that would help to bring home to the public what they were up against was to the good. Whoever first made use of that pestilent phrase "business as usual," whether it was a Cabinet Minister, or a Fleet Street scribe, or some gag-merchant on the music-hall stage, had much to ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... of education really sound, and knowledge really available;—for these, as the right of my countrymen, I have contended always. But of late years there has been danger that what ought to be an important truth may be perverted into a pestilent fallacy. Whether for rich or for poor, disappointment must ever await the endeavour to give knowledge without labour, and experience without trial. Cheap literature and popular treatises do not in themselves suffice to fit the nerves of man for the strife below, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... afforded by the violent outcry which was raised against them on all sides. This outcry was not confined to any one class or party either in the political or religious world. We may not be surprised to find Warburton mildly suggesting that 'he would hunt down that pestilent herd of libertine scribblers with which the island is overrun, as good King Edgar did his wolves,'[186] or Berkeley, that 'if ever man deserved to be denied the common benefits of bread and water, it was the author of a Discourse ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... confined to a few disappointed Nullifiers and a few uncompromising Abolitionists, and we can recollect the time when Calhoun and Garrison were both classed by practical statesmen of the South and North in one category of pestilent "abstractionists." Negro Slavery was considered simply as a fact; and general irritation among most politicians of all sections was sure to follow any attempt to explore the principles on which the fact reposed. That these principles had the mischievous vitality which events have proved them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... Guzman's orders," answered the other, "are that he is to be kept in this cabin until we have finally disposed of these three pestilent English ships; and when that is done, and we have captured them, he is to be locked up in the fore hold, with the other prisoners we shall take—if the rascals do not in this case fight to the death, as they often do. Then when we return to Cadiz ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... is little that goads us with fiercer despair (Those who buy, you perpend, stock, debenture or share, Such as speculate mainly; investors are rare—) Than this growl ill-conditioned of pestilent Bear! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... faith and none— Till, betwixt ancient trash and new, 'Twixt Cant and Blasphemy—the two Rank ills with which this age is curst— We can no more tell which is worst, Than erst could Egypt, when so rich In various plagues, determine which She thought most pestilent and vile, Her frogs, like Benbow and Carlisle, Croaking their native mud-notes loud, Or her fat locusts, like a cloud Of pluralists, obesely lowering, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... he is a pestilent Roundhead and Puritan," said Whitaker, "is no bad neighbour. What has ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... made. Moreover, laymen cannot read the Bible even if it be translated, and the clergy can understand it quite as well in Latin as in Swedish. We fear that if this translation be published while the Lutheran heresy is raging, the heresy will become more pestilent, and, new error springing up, the Church will be accused of fostering it." This letter was dated on the 9th of August. Clearly Brask's share of the translation would not be ready by September 10. The fact was, Brask had no notion of furthering the scheme. ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... encountered popular obloquy and social outlawry at the Capital. Their position was offensive, because it rebuked the ruling influences of the times, and summoned the real manhood of the country to its rescue. They were treated as pestilent fanatics because they bravely held up the ideal of the Republic, and sought to make it real. But they pressed forward along the path of their aspirations. They found a solace for their social ostracism in delightful ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... have had much plenty food," the mother said: "out upon the moors, this bad, bad night, and for leagues possibly to travel. My son and my husband are much too good. You bad dog, why did you come, pestilent? But you shall have food also. Insie, provide him. While I make to eat ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... whereof I spake, and in the bottome thereof he found many bones of dead men, deceiued by the deuill after that sort in time past. Thus deliuered he his father from present death, and all other from so pestilent ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... Around him a numerous offspring he rear'd. Then the master grew sensible what he had done, And fain he would have his new guest to be gone; But now 'twas too late to bid him turn out, A well rooted possession already was got. The old trees decay'd, and in their room grew A stubborn, pestilent, poisonous crew. The master, who first the young brood had admitted, They stung like ingrates, and left him unpitied. No help from manuring or planting was found, The ill weeds had eat out the heart of the ground. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... feminine imagination can coin in sickliest indolence,—ball-room amours, combats of curled knights, pilgrimages of disguised girl-pages, romantic pieties, charities in costume,—a mass of disguised sensualism and feverish vanity—impotent, pestilent, prurient, scented with a venomous elixir, and rouged with a deadly dust of outward good; and all this done, as such things only can be done, in a boundless ignorance of all natural veracity; the faces falsely drawn—the lights falsely cast—the forms effaced ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... and hideous, flesh-coloured worms wriggled and writhed amid the sickly reeds. Swarms of buzzing, piping insects rose up at every step and formed a dense cloud around our heads, settling on our hands and faces and inoculating us with their filthy venom. Never had I ventured into so pestilent ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... do not disagree, like doctors, about the precise nature of the illness, while agreeing about the nature of health. On the contrary, we all agree that England is unhealthy, but half of us would not look at her in what the other half would call blooming health. Public abuses are so prominent and pestilent that they sweep all generous people into a sort of fictitious unanimity. We forget that, while we agree about the abuses of things, we should differ very much about the uses of them. Mr. Cadbury and I would agree about the bad public house. It would be precisely in front of the good public-house ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... showing how easy it would be, laying aside the suicidal folly of competition, by means of fraternal co-operation, to make the actual world as blessed as that he had dreamed of. At first they derided him, but, seeing his earnestness, grew angry, and denounced him as a pestilent fellow, an anarchist, an enemy of society, and drove him from them. Then it was that, in an agony of weeping, he awoke, this time awaking really, not falsely, and found himself in his bed in Dr. Leete's house, with the morning sun of the twentieth century shining in his eyes. ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... and vinegar which she thought suitable for the case; and the Earl was never weary in depicting the same statesmen as seditious, pestilent, self-seeking, mischief-making traitors. These secret, informal negotiations, had been carried on during most of the year 1587. It was the "comptroller's peace;", as Walsingham contemptuously designated the attempted treaty; for it will be recollected that Sir James Croft, a personage ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... arose in the morning well, to the great satisfaction of my people. By-and-by the old woman came in, chopfallen, and said to me, 'O my son, do not ask how I have fared with her! When I opened the subject to her, she said to me, "An thou leave not this talk, pestilent hag that thou art, I will assuredly use thee as thou deserves!" But needs must I have at her again.' When I heard this, it added sickness to my sickness: but after some days, the old woman came again and said to me, 'O my son, I must have of thee ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... suppose her pestilent father thought it was the nearest way to a coronet. I don't know why men should marry at all. They always get into trouble ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... with pestilent books particularly against this doctrine of the Trinity; it is fit to inform you, that the authors of them proceed wholly upon a mistake: They would shew how impossible it is that three can be one, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... God in their own tongue; "for why," said he, "are we to be the dross of the nations?" However, the rulers of the Church grew more and more alarmed at the circulation of the book. At length Archbishop Arundel, a zealous but not very learned prelate, complained to the Pope of "that pestilent wretch, John Wycliffe, the son of the old Serpent, the forerunner of Antichrist, who had completed his iniquity by inventing a new translation of the Scriptures"; and, shortly after, the Convocation of Canterbury forbade ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the civilized world, and has lighted the torches of civilization for centuries. He who would study the artes humaniores must turn of necessity to two fountain heads; and he finds them in the trampled marketplaces of two noisy, turbulent, unreasonable, pestilent little democratic cities,—Athens and Florence. Extinguish the architecture and the sculpture, the poetry and the philosophy of Attica; obliterate from the sum of civilization the names of Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Machiavelli,—of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... afforded by the oak, we are told that the change of its leaves from their usual colour gave more than once "fatal premonition" of coming misfortunes during the great civil wars; and Bacon mentions a tradition that "if the oak-apple, broken, be full of worms, it is a sign of a pestilent year." In olden times the decay of the bay-tree was considered an omen of disaster, and it is stated that, previous to the death of Nero, though the winter was very mild, all these trees withered to the roots, and that a great pestilence in Padua was preceded by the same phenomenon. ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... that are knowne alike, which are not wholsome To those which would not know them, and yet must Perforce be their acquaintance. These exactions (Whereof my Soueraigne would haue note) they are Most pestilent to th' hearing, and to beare 'em, The Backe is Sacrifice to th' load; They say They are deuis'd by you, or else you suffer Too hard ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... is done in the world with very little interest or design. He that assumes the character of a critick, and justifies his claim by perpetual censure, imagines that he is hurting none but the author, and him he considers as a pestilent animal, whom every other being has a right to persecute; little does he think how many harmless men he involves in his own guilt, by teaching them to be noxious without malignity, and to repeat objections which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... loaned Charles large sums for his expedition against Tunis, and entertained him at their house on his return. In this case the emperor was not offended by the odor of cinnamon, since it was modified by a different and more agreeable perfume. The bankers, grateful to Charles for breaking up a pestilent nest of Barbary pirates, threw the receipts for the money they had loaned him into the fire, turning their gold into ashes in his behalf. This was a grateful sacrifice to the emperor, whose war-like enterprises consumed more money ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... The chain goes as far back as those days? It must, of course—of course it must. I've got to ride round with this pestilent ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... London, and cruelly executed as a traitor. The fate of this noble-hearted patriot is a fatal blot upon his conqueror's memory, but it should not be forgotten that Edward was profoundly convinced of the legality of his own claims over Scotland, and that Wallace to him was merely a pestilent rebel, who had earned his doom by treason to his lord and by the cruelties he had inflicted upon Englishmen. The same year the king prepared a new constitution for the conquered kingdom, divided it into sheriffdoms like the English counties, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... fashionably made. Yes, a little French fashion-plate—a doll, powdered, perhaps, and painted, laced up, and perfumed and clothed in dainty raiment, to come and make discord in her father's home! It was intolerable. Why did not Brooke leave this pestilent creature in her own abode, with the insolent, aristocratic friends who had done their best already to ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... selfishness. For a time they may not have known what they were doing. Land was falling in and they bought it up; domains belonging to the State were so unworked as to be falling into the condition of rank jungle and pestilent morass. They cleared and improved this land with a view to their own profit and the profit of the State. Free labour was unattainable or, when attained, embarrassing. They therefore bought their labour in the cheapest market, this ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... 'Yes, my lord, we know him; his name is Atheism; he has been a very pestilent fellow for many years in ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... home of a certain Englishman, called in the chronicle "the pestilent Morton," who set up a May-pole in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Sir Richard was a pestilent innovator, it is certain. Before his time the Hall had been a fine block of the mellowest red brick; but Sir Richard had travelled in Italy and become infected with the Italian taste, and, having more money than his predecessors, he determined to leave an Italian palace ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... for King Charles! Pym and his snarls 20 To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles! Hold by the right, you double your might; So, onward to Nottingham, deg. fresh for the ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... expressed the deepest regret that he did not burn Luther at Worms. He was constantly urging Philip to use greater severity in dealing with his heretical subjects, and could scarcely restrain himself from leaving his retreat, in order to engage personally in the work of extirpating the pestilent doctrines, which he ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... side of this apartment into the two bedrooms above. A door beside the stairway opened into a tiny scullery, from which light was pretty thoroughly excluded by the high, black wall which dripped and frowned no more than three feet away from its window. I have little doubt that this scullery was a pestilent place. At the time it appealed to my romantic sense ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... liberty, and his property. The first section of the Constitutional amendment which includes these invaluable provisions is in fact a new charter of liberty to the citizens of the United States; is the utter destruction of the pestilent heresy of State-rights, which constantly menaced the prosperity and even the existence of the Republic; and is the formal bestowment of Nationality upon the wise Federal system which was the outgrowth of our successful Revolution against ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Sir, nor you no King Elect, but must e'en remain as you were ever, Sir, a most seditious pestilent old Knave; one that deludes the Rabble with your Politicks, then leaves 'em to be hang'd, as they deserve, for silly ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... had a pretty good idea of diphtheria. He speaks of it in connection with other throat manifestations under the heading of "crusty and pestilent ulcers of the tonsils." He divides the anginas generally into four kinds. The first consists of inflammation of the fauces with the classic symptoms, the second presents no inflammation of the mouth nor of the fauces, but is complicated ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... Love glad the garden of life, Though nurtur'd 'mid weeds dropping pestilent dew, Till Time crops the leaves with unmerciful knife, Or prunes them for ever, in Love's ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... is a college play, entitled "The Return from Parnassus," dating 1601-02. In it a much-quoted passage makes Burbage, as a character, declare: "Why here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down; aye and Ben Jonson, too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow; he brought up Horace, giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit." Was Shakespeare then concerned in this war of the stages? And what could have been the nature of this "purge"? Among several suggestions, ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... if it went by wishing, there should never an one of them all have above twenty a year—a good stipend, a good stipend, Master Recorder. I in the meantime, howsoever I hate them all deadly, yet I am fain to give them good words. O, they are pestilent fellows, they speak nothing but bodkins, and piss vinegar. Well, do what I can in outward kindness to them, yet they do nothing but bewray my house: as there was one that made a couple of knavish verses on my country chimney, now in the time of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... to clear the air. These explosions were periodic, inevitable, wholesome. The Britannia Loan, &c, &c, &c, had run its pestilent course; exciting avarice, perturbing quiet industry with the passion of the gamester, inflating vulgar ambition, now at length scattering wreck and ruin. This is how mankind progresses. Harvey Rolfe felt glad that no theological or ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... preservation of its traditions and institutions unchanged. Wherever that belief prevails, novel opinions are felt to be dangerous as well as annoying, and any one who asks inconvenient questions about the why and the wherefore of accepted principles is considered a pestilent person.[1] ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... that they were too indiscriminate. They were in reality founded on a false principle. They took for granted that there was something radically corrupt and wicked in the body and in the physical system. According to this mode of viewing things, the body was a loathsome and pestilent prison, in which the soul was locked up and enslaved, and the eyes, the ears, the taste, the smell, were all so many corrupt traitors in conspiracy to poison her. Physical beauty of every sort was a snare, a Circean enchantment, to be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... when he noticed the blanching of the elder man's brown face and the unutterable loathing of horror that spoke out of every feature. 'We've got to put our shoulder to the wheel, and leave no stone unturned to find Alick, and carry him out of this pestilent hole.' ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... Doom," cried his servant, "for my wife has gone away with that pestilent king, and he has got the double of ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... removed from our midst as a trouble and a stumbling-block. The delusion could not be traced in any of the component parts of the Southern Constitution. In that instrument we solemnly discarded the pestilent heresy of fancy politicians, that all men of all races were equal, and we have made African inequality, and subordination, the chief corner-stone of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... scene,—the prologue to the drama about to be played. The year 1805 was one of threatening peril to England. Napoleon was then in the ambitious youth of his power, full of dreams of universal empire, his mind set on an invasion of the pestilent little island across the channel which should rival the "Invincible Armada" in power and far surpass it ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... virtues have nothing to do with present conditions, and the ardent leveller of class-distinctions counts as his enemy any one who seeks to give the poor a truer knowledge of how far their earnings may be made to go toward securing better food or less pestilent homes. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... a constant stream of strange vagabonds drifted along the road: minstrels who wandered from fair to fair, a foul and pestilent crew; jugglers and acrobats, quack doctors and tooth-drawers, students and beggars, free workmen in search of better wages, and escaped bondsmen who would welcome any wages at all. Such was the throng which set the old road smoking in a haze of ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... whom it is directed. They have the results of Papal influence before their eyes. While Belfast as a whole is clean, open, airy, with splendid streets and magnificent buildings, the Catholic portions of the city are as much like the pestilent dens of Tuam and Tipperary as the authorities will permit. The uninstructed stranger can pick out the Home Rule streets. In Belfast as elsewhere, sweetness, light, and loyalty are inseparably conjoined, while evil smells and dinginess ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... of that name was Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to death as a criminal, under the procurator, Pontius Pilate. But this pestilent superstition, checked for a while, broke out afresh, and spread not only over Judea, where the evil originated, but also in Rome, where all that is evil on the earth finds its way, and is practiced. At first, those only were apprehended who confessed themselves of ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... of the crookedness and perverseness of man's spirit since his departure from God. Self love and pride were the first poison that the malice of Satan dropped into man's nature, and this is so strong and pestilent, that it has spread through the whole of mankind, and the whole in every man. Every one is infected, and all in every one. What are all the disordered affections in men but so many streams from this fountain? And from these do men's affections ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... woods and forrests about without restraint, king William seizing the most part of the same forests into his owne hands, appointed a punishment to be executed vpon all such offendors; namelie, to haue their eies put out. And to bring the greater number of men in danger of those his penall lawes (a pestilent policie of a spitefull mind, and sauoring altogither of his French slauerie) he deuised meanes how to bred, nourish, and increase the multitude of dere, and also to make roome for them in that part of the realme ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (1 of 12) - William the Conqueror • Raphael Holinshed
... Lord, said Justice Chester, he is a pestilent fellow, there is not such a fellow ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... with the Romans. The Jesuits, however, were even less popular than he, and certainly received a much larger share of abuse. For the Romans love faction more than party, and understand it better; so that popular opinion is too frequently represented by a transitory frenzy, violent and pestilent while it lasts, utterly insignificant when it has ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... other boys saw Hook in the water striking wildly for the ship; no elation on his pestilent face now, only white fear, for the crocodile was in dogged pursuit of him. On ordinary occasions the boys would have swum alongside cheering; but now they were uneasy, for they had lost both Peter and Wendy, and were scouring the lagoon for them, calling them by name. They ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... the Dane, we take no pleasure in the life that weighs so wearily upon us, and deem "this goodly frame, the earth, a sterile promonotory; this most excellent canopy, the air, this brave, overhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors." ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... understand. But why should she be sacrificed? Were there no nurses in the country to be hired, but that she must go and remain there for a month at the bedside of a pestilent fever? There is ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... with your paupers, your charities, your reforms, your pestilent morals! You behold before you a man whose life-conflict is done, whose soul is at peace; a man whose heart is dead to sorrow, dead to suffering, dead to remorse; a man WITHOUT A CONSCIENCE! In my joy I spare ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... knowledge of history should make her revise her ideas of revelation; and our progress in psychology and moral philosophy should suggest to her to re-state her theology of the Incarnation. Every one can see that there is a grain of truth in this kind of talk. But it is, on the whole, a pestilent and dangerous heresy. If the formulas of modern science contradict the science of Catholic dogma, it is the former that must be altered, not the latter. If modern metaphysics are incompatible with the metaphysical ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... is that thing which resembleth the earth in roundness, whose resting-place and whose spine are hidden from men's eyes; little of price and estimation; narrow of chest and shackled as to throat though it be nor runaway slave nor pestilent thief; thrust through and through, though not in fray, and wounded, though not in fight: time eateth its vigour and water wasteth it away; now it is beaten without blemish, and then made to serve without stint; united after separation; submissive, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... body-color will tend to teach you all this, more than any other method, and above all it will prevent you from falling into the pestilent habit of sponging to get texture; a trick which has nearly ruined our modern water-color school of art. There are sometimes places in which a skillful artist will roughen his paper a little to get ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... trow. You stole Orestes from my gripe, and placed His life with fosterers; but you shall pay Full penalty.' So harsh is her exclaim. And he at hand, the husband she extols, Hounds on the cry, that prince of cowardice, From head to foot one mass of pestilent harm. Tongue-doughty champion of this women's-war. I, for Orestes ever languishing To end this, am undone. For evermore Intending, still delaying, he wears out All hope, both here and yonder. How, then, friends, Can I be moderate, or feel the touch Of holy resignation? Evil ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... one would rid me of this pestilent Morvan, who constantly afflicts the Frankish land and slays my doughtiest warriors," he said, on hearing of a fresh exploit on the part of ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... sense of freedom, almost of licence. Nothing that had been his father's was now his own, or his mother's, except the land and house on which they were. All the great business John Grier had built up was gone into the hands of the usurper, a young, bold, pestilent, powerful, vigorous man. It seemed suddenly horrible that the timber-yards and the woods and the offices, and the buildings of John Grier's commercial business were not under his own direction, or that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... approve the man; and I humbled myself before his lordship, waiting patiently for any directions which he in his discretion might think proper to bestow on me. But there arose up between us that very pestilent woman, his wife,—to his dismay, seemingly, as much as to mine,—and she would let there be place for no speech but her own. If there be aught clear to me in ecclesiastical matters, it is this,—that no authority can be delegated to a female. The special laws of this and of some ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as being ashamed of our high calling. Then shall we be rid of the rank and pestilent truth that is rotting the land; then shall we be great and good and beautiful, and worthy dwellers in a world where even benign Nature habitually lies, except when she promises execrable weather. Then—But am I but a new and feeble ...
— On the Decay of the Art of Lying • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... of mind Mr. Eagles's letter is. Such letters always bring me to think of Harriet Martineau's pestilent plan of doing to destruction half of the intellectual life of the world, by suppressing every mental breath breathed through the post office. She was not in a state of clairvoyance when she said such a thing. I have not heard from her, but you observed what the 'Critic' ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... to dirt his fingers with him,' 'Bunyan can no more disgrace him than a rude creature can eclipse the moon by barking at her; or make palaces contemptible by lifting up their legs against them,' 'a most black-mouthed calumniator,' 'infamous in Bedford for a pestilent schismatic,' and with a heart full of venom he called upon his majesty not to let such a firebrand, impudent, malicious schismatic to enjoy toleration, or go unpunished, lest he should subvert all government. Bunyan had then suffered nearly twelve years' incarceration ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity—an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn—a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of emendation has been duly performed. The censor must submit not only the body of a book, to scrupulous analysis; but he must also investigate the notes, summaries, marginal remarks, indexes, prefaces, and dedicatory epistles, lest haply pestilent opinions lurk there in ambush. He must keep a sharp lookout for heretical propositions, and arguments savoring of heresy; insinuations against the established order of the sacraments, ceremonies, usages and ritual of the Roman Church; new turns of phrase insidiously employed ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... as profess Christ Jesus have to do with the Turks and Saracens. He had to do with the seed of Abraham, whereof there were three sorts. The ten tribes were all degenerated from the true worshipping of God, and corrupted with idolatry, as this day are our pestilent papists in all realms and nations; there rested only the tribe of Judah at Jerusalem, where the form of true religion was observed, the law taught, and the ordinances of God outwardly kept. But yet there were in that body, I mean, in the body of the ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox
... the anaconda kills its prey by its pestilent breath, is wholly fabulous. Waterton altogether denies the existence of any odour in the snake's breath. It is possible, however, that some species may produce a horrible stench, from a substance secreted in certain glands ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Ha! the 'pestilent heretic' helped thee to it, I reckon!" replied the guest laughing. "Ay, Robin, this is he thou knewest of old time. We will fight out our duello another time, lad. I am rare glad to see ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... too tired or bored to go on asking questions, but an orthodoxy rather that is honest enough to revise on the evidence earlier judgments as too cocksure and hasty. Sir Isaac Harman was a tea-shop magnate, and a very pestilent and primitive cad who caught his wife young and poor and battered her into reluctant surrender by a stormy wooing, whose very sincerity and abandonment were but a frantic expression of his dominating egotism and acquisitiveness. Wooing and winning, thinks this simple ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... Changeling, to The Virgin Martyr, to The Broken Heart. We must content ourselves with Gorboduc and Cornelia, with Cleopatra and Philotas, at the very best with Sejanus and The Silent Woman. Again Sidney commits himself in this same piece to the pestilent heresy of prose-poetry, saying that verse is "only an ornament of poetry;" nor is there any doubt that Milton, whether he meant it or not, fixed a deserved stigma on the Arcadia by calling it a "vain and amatorious poem." It is a poem in prose, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... comminatory elevation gathered together from all parts of the island all the poisonous creatures into one place; then compelled he them all unto a very high promontory, which then was called Cruachan-ailge, but now Cruachan-Phadruig; and by the power of his word he drove the whole pestilent swarm from the precipice of the mountain headlong into the ocean. O eminent sign! O illustrious miracle! even from the beginning of the world unheard, but now experienced by tribes, by peoples, and by tongues, known unto ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... invention he would not be able to raise the necessary fees for a patent, or to get any one to help him thereto. The manufacturer "makes what his customers call for." Why should he spend his money and spoil his plant to introduce improvements? So things go, until some pestilent Yankees flood the markets with better articles at a lower price; and British consumers suddenly discover that they want something that the native manufacturer cannot make. The need was there; but invention did not follow. How happened it that the ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... clouded, his eye was stern, With a look of mingled sorrow and wrath; "Woe's me!" he murmured: "at every turn The pestilent Quakers are in my path! Some we have scourged, and banished some, Some hanged, more doomed, and still they come, Fast as the tide of yon bay sets in, Sowing ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... discovered that the best way to flatter him was to try to deceive him. In 1604, there was in Oxford a certain Richard Haydock, a Bachelor of Physic. This Haydock practised his profession during the day like other mortals, but varied from the kindly race of men by a pestilent habit of preaching all night. It was Haydock's contention that he preached unconsciously in his sleep, when he would give out a text with the greatest gravity, and declare such sacred matters as were revealed to him in slumber, "his preaching coming ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... is cried up, forsooth, that goodly sentence of Plato's, "Happy is that commonwealth where a philosopher is prince, or whose prince is addicted to philosophy." When yet if you consult historians, you'll find no princes more pestilent to the commonwealth than where the empire has fallen to some smatterer in philosophy or one given to letters. To the truth of which I think the Catoes give sufficient credit; of whom the one was ever disturbing the peace of the commonwealth with his hair-brained accusations; the other, ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... year in the villages of Atures and Maypures, around the two Great Cataracts of the Orinoco, render these spots highly dangerous to European travellers. They are caused by violent heats, in combination with the excessive humidity of the air, bad nutriment, and, if we may believe the natives, the pestilent exhalations rising from the bare rocks of the Raudales. These fevers of the Orinoco appeared to us to resemble those which prevail every year between New Barcelona, La Guayra, and Porto Cabello, in the vicinity of the sea; and which ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... christlichen Adel" (Werke, x. 574, June 1520). His proposition, Haereticos comburi esse contra voluntatem spiritus, was one of those condemned by Leo X. as pestilent, scandalous, and ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... all the arts of French rhetoric, but effects nothing. 'To let the Austrians come in for the finishing stroke,—-Excellence, it will be to let them gain, in History, a glory which is of your earning. Daun and Austria, not Soltikof and Russia, will be said to have extinguished this pestilent King; whom History will have to remember!' [Choiseul's Letter (not DUC de Choiseul, but COMTE, now Minister at Vienna) to Montalembert, "Vienna, 16th August;" and Montalembert's Answer, "Lieberhausen [means ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... universally successful, the whole fabric of a nation would collapse, because no one thus educated would acquiesce in the performance of humble work. It is commonly said that education ought to make men dissatisfied, and teach them to desire to improve their position. It is a pestilent heresy. It ought to teach them to be satisfied with simple conditions, and to improve themselves rather than their position—the end of it ought to be to produce content. Suppose, for an instant—it sounds a fantastic hypothesis—that a man born in the country, in the labouring class, were fond ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "Thus this pestilent nest of warfare and infidelity, the city of Ronda," says the worthy Fray Antonio Agapida, "was converted to the true faith by the thunder of our artillery—an example which was soon followed by Cazarabonela, Marbella, and other towns in these parts, insomuch ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... tic been lately? I had one fiery night when this same dragon "tic" held me for some hours with pestilent violence. It still comes at intervals with abated fury. Owing to this and broken sleep, I am looking singularly charming, one of my true London looks—starved out and worn down. Write soon, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... required to be reminded of the great fundamental doctrine of the worthlessness of all human efforts and motives. Some of them were altogether too much pleased with the success of the Temperance Society and the Association for the Relief of the Poor. There was a pestilent heresy about, concerning the satisfaction to be derived from a good conscience, as if, anybody ever did anything which was not to be ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... beyond it, being what superstitious fools call a witch, but I, a prophetess or a seer. These things come to you with your blood, I suppose, seeing that your mother was of a gypsy tribe and your father a high-bred Spanish gentleman, very learned and clever, though a pestilent heretic, for which cause he fled for ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... misfortunes of the colony were far from being at an end. The principal causes of disaster had not yet been removed. Before many weeks had passed the "sickly season" came on, bringing the usual accompaniment of suffering and death. "Not less than 150 of them died of pestilent diseases, of callentures and feavors, within a few months after" Lord De la Warr's arrival.[82] So universal was the sickness among the newcomers that all the work had to be done by the old settlers, "who by use weare growen practique in a ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... another. I know your affection for that pestilent Grecian. I have watched you, seen your actions, and heard you sigh his ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... a member of the Assembly for the city of Kingston, where not long since he was imprisoned, and tried for his life. He is also alderman of the city, and one of its local magistrates. He is now inspector of the same prison in which he was formerly immured as a pestilent fellow, and a mover ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... present condition, is very interesting. Some hints, not altogether useless, may be collected from it. In England, our churches are charnel houses. The pews of the congregation are raised upon foundations of putrefaction. For six days and nights the temple of devotion is filled with the pestilent vapours of the dead, and on the seventh they are absorbed by the living. Surely it is high time to subdue prejudices, which endanger health without promoting piety. The scotch never bury in their churches, and ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... there is none for the wicked; and nought For the souls that with teeming corruption are fraught. The world would be small, were its oceans all land, To harbour and feed such a pestilent band. ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... Valparaiso, Lima, Panama, and San Bias, were thriving and increasing in population and wealth. England, through her colonies, was at that time driving a lucrative trade with all of them; but the demon of change was abroad, blown thither by the pestilent breath of European liberalism. What a vineyard for Abbe Sieyes to have laboured in! Every Capitania would have become a purchaser of one of his cut and dried constitutions. Indeed he could not have turned them out of hand fast enough. The enlightened few, in ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... plainly hinted at, if not tacitly admitted, by Augustine when he exhorts his Christian brethren not to celebrate that solemn day like the heathen on account of the sun, but on account of him who made the sun. In like manner Leo the Great rebuked the pestilent belief that Christmas was solemnised because of the birth of the new sun, as it was called, and not because ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... rich, and thou hast much cool store of wine. But the town thirsts, and every beat of our blood Hastens us on to maniac agony. The Assyrians have our wells, and half the tanks Are dry, and the pools shoal with baking mud: The water left to us is pestilent. And therefore have we asked the governors For death: and ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... then, and in the shadow of the hedge old Pleasant, the waggon-horse, having Clem on his back, stood tethered, released from his work, contentedly cropping the rank grass between the clusters of meadow-sweet, and whisking his tail to brush off the flies. The horse-flies had been pestilent all day, and Myra was weaving a frontlet of green hazel twigs to slip under Pleasant's headstall, when she happened to turn and caught sight of her grandmother standing by the upper gate, leaning on her ivory-headed staff, and shading her eyes against the level sun. No one ever knew how the old ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... particular class, which are also your own, there is even a show of public virtue. He who is a captious, impracticable, dissatisfied member of his little club or coterie is immediately set down as a bad member of the community in general, as no friend to regularity and order, as 'a pestilent fellow,' and one who is incapable of sympathy, attachment, or cordial co-operation in any department or undertaking. Thus the most refractory novice in such matters becomes weaned from his obligations to the larger society, which ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... besides great bunches of half-ripened bananas. Live chickens were kept under the bed in one of these rooms. The fruit which is ripened in these places is sold daily in every section of the city, and people who live with healthful surroundings, far away from this pestilent hole, are risking the health of themselves and their children, unwittingly, by purchasing fruit that cannot help but have absorbed something of the poison from the atmosphere of these filthy, crowded quarters. The Board ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... more than now, Avoided pinching cold and scorching heat? These changes in the Heavens, though slow, produced Like change on sea and land; sideral blast, Vapour, and mist, and exhalation hot, Corrupt and pestilent: Now from the north Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore, Bursting their brazen dungeon, armed with ice, And snow, and hail, and stormy gust and flaw, Boreas, and Caecias, and Argestes loud, And Thrascias, rend the woods, and seas upturn; With ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... city. He came down from the Highlands, where he has been going to and fro, two days since. I have a warrant out against him, and the constables are on the lookout. I hope to have him in jail before tonight. These pestilent rogues are a curse to the land, though I cannot think the clans would be fools enough to rise again, even though Charles Stuart ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... much more under the influence of their own admirable rhetoric than they knew. Huxley, especially, was much more a literary than a scientific man. It is amusing to note that when Huxley was charged with being rhetorical, he expressed his horror of "plastering the fair face of truth with that pestilent cosmetic, rhetoric," which is itself about as well-plastered a piece of rhetoric as Ruskin himself could have managed. The difference that the period had developed can best be seen if we consider this: that while neither was of a spiritual sort, Macaulay took it for granted that ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... it was of no use to work on his farm; it was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country; everything about it went wrong, and would go wrong, in spite of him. His fences were continually falling to pieces; his cow would either go astray or get among the cabbages; weeds were sure to grow ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... flattery run all upon stale musty topics, without the smallest tincture of anything new, not only to the torment and nauseating of the Christian reader, but, if not suddenly prevented, to the universal spreading of that pestilent disease the lethargy in this island, whereas there is very little satire which has not something in it untouched before. The defects of the former are usually imputed to the want of invention among those who are dealers in that kind; but I think with ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... coloured irregular surging crowds, moving in quite another way to the khaki-clad figures on their left:—one moment pouring over the debatable ground like a torrent, anon twisted and turning and flying like multitudes of dead leaves before the pestilent breath of the howitzers. No living man has ever seen so strange a vision as this: in its disarray; in its rushing to and fro; in the martial ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... and virtue if their defenders were barred from the use of this weapon, since it is that especially whereby the patrons of error and vice do maintain and propagate them. They being destitute of good reason, do usually recommend their absurd and pestilent notions by a pleasantness of conceit and expression, bewitching the fancies of shallow hearers, and inveigling heedless persons to a liking of them; and if, for reclaiming such people, the folly of those seducers may in like manner be displayed ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... alight but at one of the gates of the daughters of Belial, at the rear of the City of Destruction, where I noticed that the three gateways of Destruction contracted into one at the back, and opened upon the same place—a murky, vaporous, pestilent place, full of noisome mists, and terrible lowering clouds. "Prithee, good sir," asked I, "what place be this?" "The chambers of Death," replied Sleep. And no sooner had I asked than I could hear some ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... vat I was doing," interrupted Le Breton recklessly. "I vas on my vay to ze soute aux poudres to blow you and all ze people to ze devil to keep company wiz your inqueezatif first leftenant. And I would have done eet, too, but for zat pestilent midshipman, who have ze gripe of ze devil himself. Peste! you Eengleesh, you are like ze bouledogue, ven you take hold you ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... his invective, must somehow—though I was not aware of it at the time—have mimicked my gestures and imitated the very tones and accent of my voice so closely as to deceive even some of my English companions: or how else to account for the fact of their calling me a noisy brawler and a pestilent nuisance? me, the ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... have no great acquaintance with this man, nor do I desire to have further knowledge of him; however, this I know, that he is a very pestilent fellow, from some discourse that, the other day, I had with him in this town; for then, talking with him, I heard him say, that our religion was naught, and such by which a man could by no means please God. ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... justice, I had got through time imperceptibly by their pestilent help; and I was startled to see, by my watch, how late it was. I had just resolved to leave a line fixing an appointment for the morrow, and so depart, when I heard Vivian's knock,—a knock that had great character ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... too true that half the Gobelins are destroyed, and that 67 of the "Freres de la Doctrine Chretienne" have been shot by their fellow-Christians of the Commune. A friend of mine saw Madame Milliere in a prisoners' gang, and we have authentic intelligence to-day that her husband, one of the most pestilent of the apostles of Fraternity and wholesale ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... I left Dewsdale for that excursion to the love-feasts at Kemberton and Kesfield, Broppindean and Dawnfold, from which I returned but two short weeks before my poor Matthew's demise. I called to remembrance that discourse about approaching death which in my poor human judgment I did esteem a pestilent error of mind, but which I do now recognise as a spiritual premonition; and I set myself earnestly to look for that letter which Matthew told me he would leave in the tulip-leaf bureau. But though I did search with great care and pains, my trouble was wasted, inasmuch as there was no ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the stifling room, Where all the week we're pent; Of the alley fill'd with wretched life, And odors pestilent: And long once more to see the fields, And the grazing sheep and beeves; To hear the lark amid the clouds, And the wind among the leaves; And all the sounds that glad the air On green hills far away:— The sounds that ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... is the nurse of abuse, infecting us with many pestilent desires, with a syren sweetness, drawing the mind to the serpent's tail of sinful fancies; and herein, especially, comedies give the largest field to ear, as Chaucer saith; how, both in other nations and ours, before poets did soften us, we were full of courage, given to martial ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... succeeding in the above quarter. "The duke," said he, "says that your request cannot be granted; and the other day, when I myself mentioned it in the council, began to talk of the decision of Trent, and spoke of yourself as a plaguy pestilent fellow; whereupon I answered him with some acrimony, and there ensued a bit of a function between us, at which Isturitz laughed heartily. By the by," continued he, "what need have you of a regular permission, which it does not appear that any one has authority to ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... rest, squirming no longer; and with the wail on his lips, the catch in the throat, he went down in the embrace of a deadlier enemy than the Bulwan horror, to which he made reference in one of the last lines he was destined to write in this world. He fell ill in that pestilent town, as all the world knows. His constitution was strong enough; he had not lived a life of unpropitious preparation for a serious illness; but his heart was a danger. Typhoid is fatal to any heart-weakness, particularly in convalescence; and he ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... with fish and carried back to the camp. On returning, we again launched the canoes and started off again—to meet with some disappointment, for although the gatala still bit freely and several eels were also taken, some scores of the small, pestilent, lagoon sharks were swimming about and played havoc with our lines. These torments are from two to four feet in length, and their mouths, which are quite out of proportion to their insignificant size, are set with rows of teeth of razor-like keenness. The moment a baited hook was seen ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... office, viz., some great sin.-Christ, as Advocate, pleads a bad cause.-A good cause will plead for itself.-A bad man may have a good cause, and a good man may have a bad cause.-Christ, the righteous, pleading a bad cause, is a mystery.-The best saints are most sensible of their sins.-A pestilent passage of a preacher ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... quite shocking." [What would he have said now!] "How disheartening it is, that in affairs spiritual or temporal mankind will not begin at the beginning, but will begin with assumptions. Could one believe without actual experience of the fact, that it would be assumed by hundreds of thousands of pestilent boobies, pandered to by politicians, that the Established Church in Ireland has stood between the kingdom and Popery, when as a crying grievance it has been ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... is ther sent ouer to be prynted the booke that Frythe made last against the blessed sacrament answering to my letter, wherewyth I confuted the pestilent treatice that he hadde made agaynst it before. And the brethen looked for it nowe at thys Bartlemewe tide last passed, and yet looke euery day, except it be come all redy, and secretly runne among them. But in the meane whyle, ther is come ouer ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... My Lord, if you take not some Course with this pestilent Fellow, to stop his Mouth, we shall not be able to do any thing ...
— The Tryal of William Penn and William Mead • various
... room with such nauseous effluvia as rendered it hardly supportable. Thus the squnck, or stonck, of Ray's Synop. Ouadr. is an innocuous and sweet animal; but, when pressed hard by dogs and men, it can eject such a pestilent and fetid smell and excrement, that ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... fiend of the marshes, was, we can clearly see, for the poet of Beowulf a figure profoundly and generally accepted as not only true but real; what, indeed, can be more real for poetry than a devouring fiend which lives in pestilent fens? And the reason why epic poetry so imperiously demands reality of subject is clear; it is because such poetry has symbolically to re-create the actual fact and the actual particulars of human existence in terms of a general significance—the reader must feel that life itself has submitted ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... important to know how numerous those pestilent Danes were, and how they were fortified, KING ALFRED, being a good musician, disguised himself as a glee-man or minstrel, and went, with his harp, to the Danish camp. He played and sang in the very tent of GUTHRUM the Danish ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... only of the opulent and powerful, not only of the mercantile and middle classes of life, but even of honest labourers and manufacturers, of every sober and industrious man, to resist the licentious principles of such pestilent members, shall I call them, or outcasts of society. Men better informed and wiser than myself thought that the constitution was in great danger. Whether in fact the danger was great or small, it is not necessary now to inquire; it may be more useful to declare that, in my humble opinion, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... His friends and his brothers, the companions of his innocent childhood, the associates of his boyish days, his fellow-adventurers in manhood's prime—all, all had perished. Some had been ruthlessly hunted down by a skilled body of German assassins; others had died under the cruel attacks of the pestilent Frenchman. The Cholera Bacillus, the king of them all, was the first to fall; typhoid and typhus, small-pox and measles, fits of convulsions or of sneezing, coughs and catarrhs, had all been deprived of Bacilli and slain. The Wart Bacillus had fought hard ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... 'that the measure had anticipated his resignation. His baggage is seized at his quarters, and at Tully-Veolan, and is found to contain a stock of pestilent jacobitical pamphlets, enough to poison a whole country, besides the unprinted lucubrations of his worthy ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... must not judge me by that rule. Carolinians, sir, always appreciate intelligent strangers, for they always exert a healthy influence, and never meddle with our institutions; so you see it wouldn't do to follow the pestilent notions of petty scribblers, lest we ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... the Vicarage, and when Lord Trowbridge remembered that he owned two thousand and two acres within the parish,—as Mr. Puddleham had told him,—he began to think that the chapel had better be built elsewhere. The Vicar was a pestilent man to whom punishment was due, but the punishment should be made to attach itself to the man, rather than to the man's office. So was working the Marquis's mind, till the Marquis came upon that horrid passage ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... side, however, played his part badly. He rose indeed to greet Atherstone—whom he barely knew, and was accustomed to regard as a pestilent agitator—with the indifferent good breeding that all young Englishmen of the classes have at command; he was ready to talk of the view and the weather, and to discuss various local topics. But it was increasingly evident that he felt himself on false ground; lured there, moreover, ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by sacrificing our interest in Slavery we appease the spirit that controls that pressure, cause it to be withdrawn, and rid the Country of the pestilent agitation of the Slavery question? We are forbidden so to think, for that spirit would not be satisfied with the liberation of 100,000 Slaves, and cease its agitation while 3,000,000 remain in bondage. Can it mean that by abandoning Slavery in our States we are removing the pressure from you ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... If the explorer be unable to quit the spot before night, whether in summer or winter, his death is certain. In the earlier times some bold and adventurous men did indeed succeed in getting a few jewels, but since then the marsh has become more dangerous, and its pestilent character, indeed, increases year by year, as the stagnant water penetrates deeper. So that now for very many years no such attempts ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... coming home, I am decidedly opposed to it. First, because the chance of your being taken ill is just as great as the chance of your being able to render us any help. To exchange the salubrious air of Brattleboro' for the pestilent atmosphere of this place with your system rendered sensitive by water-cure treatment would be extremely dangerous. It is a source of constant gratitude to me that neither you nor father are exposed to ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... a pestilent correspondent I am likely to become; but then you shall be as quiet at Newstead as you please, and I won't disturb your ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... calamity; that many seeming goods are withheld, because they are evils in disguise; and many seeming ills allowed, because they are masqueraded blessings; and demonstrating, as in this strange tale, that the unrighteous Mammon is a cruel master, a foul tempter, a pestilent destroyer of all peace, and a teeming source of both ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... handkerchief, instead of blowing it up with a match and train, is rarely successful; and, after three or four other and much guiltier victims than Lenny had been incarcerated in the stocks, the parish of Hazeldean was ripe for any enormity. Pestilent jacobinical tracts, conceived and composed in the sinks of manufacturing towns—found their way into the popular beer-house—heaven knows how, though the Tinker was suspected of being the disseminator by all but Stirn, who still, in a whisper, accused the Papishers. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... cried. "'Tis our Tess and Dot—and Sammy Pinkney, the little scamp! It must be either his bulldog or old Tom Jonah those pestilent men have caught." ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill |
