"Wickedness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them all, but she was held back by the vagueness of her relations to Martin. Were they engaged? Did he even love her? He had only kissed her. He had said nothing. No, she must wait, but with this definite sense of her wickedness weighing upon her—not wickedness to herself, for that she cared nothing, but wickedness to them—she tried, on this day, to be a pattern member of the household, going softly everywhere that she was told, closing doors behind her, being punctual and careful. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... to spend his time in pleasure; and he made his Zanana extend a mile. For weeks he would remain without seeing the face of a male creature. There was probably no sincere friend to raise a warning; and the doom deepened and the hand wrote upon the wall unheeded. The country was overrun with wickedness and wasted with misery. The disgrace of the unsuccessful Saadat returning from Ajmir, was enhanced by his vainly attempting to strike a blow at the Empress and her favourite. They called in the Turkish element against him, and contrived to alienate his countryman, ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... la longue." Reuss, a teacher of opposite tendency and greater name, is equally consoling: "Les destinees de l'homme s'accomplissent ici-bas; la justice de Dieu s'exerce et se manifeste sur cette terre." In the infancy of exact observation Massillon could safely preach that wickedness ends in ignominy: "Dieu aura son tour." The indecisive Providentialism of Bossuet's countrymen is shared ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... was sheer wickedness to see a chance of making money, and letting it slide, but I don't go so far as that. Everyone has a right to be miserable in his own way, ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... more to those ancient heresies of the Gnostics and the Manichaeans which saw the God of the World as altogether evil, which sought only to escape by the utmost abstinences and evasions and perversions from the black wickedness of being. For a while his soul sank down into the uncongenial darknesses of these creeds of despair. "I who have loved life," he murmured, and could have believed for a time that he wished he ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... the kings and kingdoms, and youths and maidens and the cities of men. They saw the old men heavy in their chairs and heard the children singing in the fields. They saw far wars and warriors and walled towns, wisdom and wickedness, and the pomp of kings, and the people of all the lands ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... the devil (in "Faust")—that while wishing evil he often did good—will always be true. This gives a faithful representation of the deplorable want of adaptation which exists between the good and evil effects of our actions on the one hand, and the goodness or wickedness of our motives on the other hand. The inverse is also true, for good intentions often have evil results. We must, therefore, carefully distinguish between the ethical motives of the good and bad effects of ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... the fact only exhibits a common phase of human nature, and thus affords but another proof of the inherent selfishness of the animal man. Wickedness, my child, ever begets wickedness!" Mr Meldrum then lapsed again ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... been said, that our poet drew the characters of life as he found them, but bad as his characters are, they exhibit only a vulgar wickedness. Unable to portray a Clytaemnestra, he revels in the continual paltriness of a Menelaus or Ulysses. As if he took a delight in the black side of humanity, he loves to show the strength of false reasoning, of sophistry antagonistic to truth, and of ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... came to buy or sell at the market of the town." "Let me give as example," says Guibert of Nogent, "a single fact, which, had it taken place amongst the Barbarians or the Scythians, would assuredly have been considered the height of wickedness, in the judgment even of those who recognize no law. On Saturday the inhabitants of the country places used to leave their fields, and come from all sides to Laon to get provisions at the market. The townsfolk used then to go round the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... entered the cabin under the escort of the steward, he felt like a ruined man—one who, by his own folly and wickedness, had sacrificed all his hopes in this world. Mr. Watson and the consul spoke to him with the utmost plainness, the latter informing him that, if he declined to return home in the yacht, he should procure his arrest ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... modesty and discretion that had not failed to prepossess me; indeed, the longer I considered the King's saying, the greater was the surprise I felt at this DENOUEMENT; which left me in doubt whether my dullness exceeded my negligence or the young man's parts surpassed his wickedness. ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... intellectual, moral, industrial, social and political nature will lead us, I think, to see that much of the white man's education is to be regretted and repudiated; much of it is to be approved and appropriated. All training given in avarice, hatred, prejudice, passion, sensuality, sin and wickedness, growing out of self-conceit and vanity, must assuredly be repudiated. But all things embraced in their education that make for the good, the true, the beautiful, the just and the elevation of mankind should be embraced, seized upon, masticated, digested and assimilated—transmuted into the elements ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... a great throb of relief thrilled through her as she heard the doctor utter this Napoleonic lie—only to be followed the next instant by an overwhelming sense of her own wickedness in thus conniving with fraud. Abysses of iniquity seemed to yawn at her feet, and she gazed with horror into their black depths. How could she ever again hold up ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... extinguished, or goes out itself; that arson was a deep crime, and, if the perpetrators were not apprehended and punished, "who can say he is safe, or where will it end?" The learned judge then went on to deliver a moral lecture against the wickedness of selling "penny drams" to Negroes, without the consent of their masters. In conclusion, he charged the grand jury to present "all ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... man, in Wisdom iv, concludes on this wise: "He pleased God, and was taken away, and was beloved of Him: so that living among sinners he was translated. Yea, speedily was he taken away, lest that wickedness should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul. For the bewitching of naughtiness doth obscure things that are honest; and the wandering of concupiscence doth undermine the simple mind (O how constantly ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... face on the Danish girl's breast. "Oh, Randalin, would he do such a deed?" she gasped. "The while that he seemed so kind and gentle with us! Would he do such horrid wickedness?" ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... cried Rose, flinging herself into the chair again—then with a little flash of half irresolute wickedness—'and we are free! Oh, I hope ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... him swearing like a mule-driver. He displayed a fluency that overwhelmed her. She took him to task, explaining the wickedness of profanity as well as its vulgarity. She asked where he had learned all those dreadful words. Bartholomew announced that Cavert, one of his playmates, ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... Churches, nor creeds, nor rituals, nor respectabilities. Without it we are not friends of Christ, nor co-workers with God. Without it we deepen the channels of human woe, and prop the strong-holds of wickedness. Without it, whatever we may not be, we are Allies of the Tempter. The Saviour says to each of us to-day, placed amidst these antagonistic forces of Life—"He that is not ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... against the wall of the house. The plan of the devil's palace consisted of one large banqueting apartment and several withdrawing-rooms. Their food was homely enough, being broth made of coleworts and bacon, with bread and butter, and milk and cheese. The same acts of wickedness and profligacy were committed at Blockula which are usually supposed to take place upon the devil's Sabbath elsewhere; but there was this particular, that the witches had sons and daughters by the fiends, who were married together, and produced an ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... of the Jews and Moors, she stands alone. Ferdinand was always disposed to put his religion behind his interest, and was urged by his wife into measures of which he disapproved; sometimes, indeed, she ordered or permitted persecutions of which he was altogether ignorant. Beside the wickedness of these things, their impolicy was not less conspicuous. The oppression of the Moors, and the expulsion of both Moors and Jews, destroyed the mechanical and commercial industry of Spain; the overthrow ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... whole conspiracy of popular insinuation or private malevolence." In other words, you can more quickly destroy a man's friendship by one word of sarcasm than by any amount of intrigue. Does not this read very much like sheer wickedness? Certainly it does; but the author would have told you that you must fight the wicked with their own weapons. In the "Havamal" you will not find anything quite so openly wicked as that; but we must suppose that the Norsemen knew the secret, though they might not have put it into ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... in God's eyes also. Sin and corruption would bubble up out of my heart as naturally as water bubbles up out of a fountain. I thought now that every one had a better heart than I had. I could have changed heart with anybody. I thought none but the devil himself could equalise me for inward wickedness and pollution of mind. I fell, therefore, at the sight of my own vileness, deeply into despair, for I concluded that this condition in which I was in could not stand with a life of grace. Sure, thought I, I am forsaken ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... The Asas bound him firmly to the sharp rocks, with his face turned upwards toward the dripping roof; for they said that nevermore, until the last dread twilight, should he be free to vex the world with his wickedness. Skade, the giant daughter of Old Winter, took a hideous snake, and hung it up above Loki, so that its venom would drop into his upturned face. But Sigyn, the loving wife of the suffering wretch, left her home in the pleasant halls ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... told by Christ himself, to show that His Father in heaven gladly receives all sinners returning to Him. When God says, 'He so loved the world,' He means the people in the world, and we know that the world lies in wickedness. Oh, trust God, for He is loving and merciful, and without doubt or fear ...
— The Trapper's Son • W.H.G. Kingston
... the presence or absence of the common virtues and the common decencies in public life. The revelation of corruption in politics, in business, and here and there in the public service, is a testimony not of unwonted wickedness in high places, but of unwonted sensitiveness in public opinion, and so far as it goes it is a most hopeful sign; but it does not yet ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... Westward, I first went a little further Eastward, once more entered the Golden Horn, and once more mounted the scorched Seraglio steps. Here what the wickedness of man had spared, the wickedness of Nature had destroyed, and the few houses which I had left standing round the upper part of Pera I now saw low as the rest; also the house near the Suleimanieh, where we had lived our first days, to which I went as to a home, I found without a pillar standing; ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... father and mother, what sort of creatures must the womenkind be, do you think, to give way to such wickedness? Why, this it is that makes every one be thought of alike: And, alack-a-day! what a world we live in! for it is grown more a wonder that the men are resisted, than that the women comply. This, I suppose, makes me such a sauce-box, and bold-face, ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... office under the Crown) was vituperated, and sundry provincial persons wrote confidentially to the Queen. Arthur Constant's backsliding cheered many by convincing them that others were as bad as themselves; and well-to-do tradesmen saw in Mortlake's wickedness the pernicious effects of Socialism. A dozen new theories were afloat. Constant had committed suicide by Esoteric Buddhism, as witness his devotion to Mme. Blavatsky, or he had been murdered by his Mahatma or victimised by ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... less at the swift and fair creations of God when he grew weary of vacancy, than I at this spirit of an angel in the mortal paradise of a decaying body." To most Englishmen of his day, Byron, like Shelley, appeared as a monster of impious wickedness. Unlike Shelley, he attained thereby the vogue of the forbidden. His earliest poems achieved what the French call a succes de scandal. His satire, "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," brought to the youthful poet a notoriety amounting to fame. After the ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... clear that the railway is essentially a monopoly, not, be it noted, because of any especial wickedness of its managers or owners, but because competition is impossible as regards the greater part of its business, and because wherever competition is possible, its effect, as the managers well know, would be to annihilate all profits from the ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... a villain. But it was only once; and your Lordship was so rough to me! I am not saying but what I was a villain. Think of what I did for myself by that one piece of wickedness! Master of hounds! member of the club! And the horse would have run in my name and won the Leger! And everybody knew as your Lordship and me was together in him!" Then he burst out into a paroxysm ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... told, or as they are influenced by the stories they hear. So, when the leading conspirators were ready to bring about the rebellion, being in possession of the State governments, holding official positions, by misrepresentation, cunning, and wickedness, they were able to delude the ignorant poor men, and induce them to vote to secede from ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... freely commented. The daintiness of the linen, the gleam of silver, the perfection of the service, and the soft glow of candles under silk shades, filled their simple country souls with awe. It suggested unconjectured expense with a tang of wickedness as well. Off in an alcove, screened by palms, an orchestra played with considerate softness. Mr. Smith smiled a large, expansive smile and leaned back in his chair. The moment was perfect. His apprehensions were over for the time. Maria was with him, she was his, and he was giving her all this. ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... that they may be natural bodies and yet supernatural portents, and ends by saying, "I conceive it very safe to suppose that some very considerable thing, either in the way of judgment or mercy, may ensue, according as the cry of persevering wickedness or of penitential prayer is more or less loud at ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... was raised for the market. We started him to Governor Morton, of Indiana, as a specimen of the men made chattels, and for which the South was fighting. He was captured on his way North. This is wickedness, "naked, but not ashamed." ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... also his Dialogue of the Common Laws of England, in Works (ed. of London, 1750), 626: "But I desire not to discourse of that subject; for, though without doubt there is some great Wickedness signified by those Crimes, yet have I ever found myself too dull to conceive the nature of them, or how the Devil hath power to do many things which Witches have been accused of." See also his chapter on Daemonology in ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... the kingdom of the house of Israel to cease. And it shall come to pass at that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel."* Like his predecessor, he, too, inveighed against the perversity and unfaithfulness of his people. The abandoned wickedness of Gomer, his wife, had brought him to despair. In the bitterness of his heart, he demands of Jahveh why He should have seen fit to visit such humiliation on His servant, and persuades himself that the faithlessness of which he is a victim is but a feeble ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... possess himself of Milan. He was in every respect a remarkable man for that time,—fearless, abstemious, continent, avaricious, hardy, and unspeakably ambitious and cruel. He survived and suppressed innumerable conspiracies, escaping even the thrust of the assassin whom the fame of his enormous wickedness had caused the Old Man of the Mountain to send against him. As lord of Padua he was more incredibly severe and bloody in his rule than as lord of the other cities, for the Paduans had been latest free, and conspired most frequently against him. He extirpated whole families on suspicion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... do anything with Larsen's gusto, so when some great act of wickedness was done with gusto how could it be us? Here comes Larsen! He'll shoulder all the guilt, but he won't feel guilty because he's the first man in Eden, the child who never grew up, the laughing boy, Hercules ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long
... them, so that the army left, as it moved along, a very broad extent of country trampled down, impoverished, desolate, and full of lamentation and woe. The whole march was perhaps the most gigantic crime against the rights and the happiness of man that human wickedness has ever ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... by Bishop Percy and others, to Sir Walter Raleigh, and sometimes with the fanciful addition, that he wrote it the night before his execution. The piece, however, was extant many years before the world was disgraced by that deed of wickedness. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... to the wrongs of his country, for he never mingled in such discussions, omitted no opportunity of proving her sympathy by declaiming with an animation and vehemence, as becoming as anything so like scolding well could be, against the cruelty and wickedness of the oppressors of that most ...
— Country Lodgings • Mary Russell Mitford
... spark which may be fanned into a flame—which, perchance, may illumine the whole soul; and but for the subsequent strange events, little Inez Hawthorne might have proved, in the most literal sense, a heaven-sent messenger upon that craft, which carried so much wickedness in the forecastle. ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... that was why the Hun spared Noyon. But if he spared Noyon, he spared little else.[2] Every village between here and the present front line has been levelled; every fruit-tree cut down. The wilful wickedness and pettiness of the crime stir one's heart to pity and his soul to white-hot anger. The people who did this must make payment in more than money; to settle such a debt blood is required. American soldiers who came to Europe to do a job and with no decided detestation of ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... not to humble herself to him and to supplicate him till his heart relented towards her and he said, "Repent from mischief and abide with me, and naught shall betide thee save what shall pleasure thee: but, an thou work any wickedness, I will slay thee nor fear any one. And fancy not that thou canst complain of me to the High Court and that Abu Tabak will come down on me from the Citadel; for I am become Sultan and the folk dread me: but I fear none ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Forrester. Mr Frampton made no attempt to gloss over the wickedness of that unhappy act of passion. But he showed how fully he made allowances for the poor blundering offender, and how he, at least, saw more to pity than to upbraid ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... preserved, as has been said, like flies in amber, are now quite unknown. But, although we have to read it with notes, to get the point of its allusions, it is easy to {184} see what execution it must have done at the time, and it is impossible to withhold admiration from the wit, the wickedness, the triumphant mischief of the thing. The sketch of Addison—who had offended Pope by praising a rival translation of Homer—as "Atticus," is as brilliant as any thing of the kind in Dryden. Pope's very malignity made his sting sharper ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... or any more potent beverage that came to hand; and when his first scruples of conscience were overcome, he would need no more persuading, he would often grow desperate, and be as great a blackguard as any of them could desire—but only to lament his own unutterable wickedness and degradation the more when the ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... only find sunshine and free air to expand in. I always told you that not having enough of sunshine was what ailed the world. Make people happy, and there will not be half the quarreling, or a tenth part of the wickedness there ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... himself meekly out of the room, went down to the harbour, and bearing in mind what he had heard of the extreme wickedness of Plymouth, held tightly on to his money; he had been especially warned against the women who lure the unwary seaman into dark dens and rob him of money and life. But no adventure befell him, thanks chiefly to the swiftness ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... murderer Wainewright (mentioned on a former page as having been seen by us together in Newgate), who was among the convicts there under sentence of transportation, and who had contrived somehow to put the expression of his own wickedness into the portrait of a nice kind-hearted girl. Major Power knew nothing of the man's previous history at this time, and had employed him on the painting out of a sort of charity. As soon as the truth went back, Wainewright was excluded from houses ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... hev heered of ther other stranger from some source or other," mused Hump. "Hit hain't none of my business nohow—onless—" the man's voice leaped and cracked with a belligerent violence—"onless hit's some of Old Burrell Thornton's feisty kin, done come back ter tek up his wickedness an' plaguery whar ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... alarm by this unheard-of wickedness; the streets were filled with men and women in despair; the air was rent with shrieks and cries, and the priests prayed to Javeh to guard his own temple from the stain. The king's mind, however, was not to be changed; the refusal of the priests ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... wickedness were not wanting to convey the intelligence very quickly to Dupont's ear, that Mrs. and Miss Greville had departed from the Rue Royale, under the protection of an English gentleman, who had stationed two ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... you understand me! My wickedness and consequent twinges of conscience have been my chief sources ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... some time it appeared so to do, till it came to the touchstone of experience; and then it was found that there was a defalcation from these monstrous raised revenues which were to cancel in the minds of the Directors the wickedness of so atrocious, flagitious, and horrid an act of treachery. At the end of five years what do you think was the failure? No less than 2,050,000l. Then a new source of corruption was opened,—that is, how to deal with the balances: for every ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... can act with irresistible vigour and complete success, at one and the same moment, both in India and in China. In their minds, may the splendour of our recent victories efface the recollection of our previous bloody and disgraceful defeats! And if we cannot make them forget the wickedness—the folly—the madness which originally dictated our invasion of Affghanistan, at least we have shown them how calmly and magnanimously we can obey the dictates of justice and of prudence, in the very moment of, fierce ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... on the other hand, who saw them at Malacca about 1660, says: "They are a people of great ingenuity, very subtle in all their dealings; very malicious, great deceivers, seldom speaking the truth; prepared to do all manner of wickedness, and ready to sacrifice ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... 1. Wickedness is often made a substitute for wit. 2. Alfred was a brave, pious, and patriotic prince. 3. The throne of Philip trembles while Demosthenes speaks. 4. That the whole is equal to the sum of its parts ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... in the manner of Picasso. She had the firmest conviction that to strike against employment, however ill-paid or badly conditioned, was a disgraceful combination of folly, ingratitude and general wickedness, and she had an equally strong persuasion that the treatment of the employees of the International Bread and Cake Stores was such as no reasonably spirited person ought to stand. She blamed her sister extremely and sympathized ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... philosophy of human action, Metternich linked together every form of national aspiration and unrest as something presumptuous and wanton. He understood nothing of the debt that mankind owes to the spirit of freedom. He was just as ready to dogmatise upon the wickedness of the English Reform Bill as he was to trace the hand of Capodistrias in every tumult in Servia or the Morea: and even if there had been no fear of Russian aggression in the background, he would instinctively have condemned the Greek revolt when he saw that the light-headed ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... day. I was so happy that my father suspected something. And he got it out of me and said I couldn't go. He said that the things that would be pictured would be the wickedness of the world. That I was not ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... children, his antagonism to war and his admiration for what is great in war which was ever struggling with that antagonism, his patriotic feeling for the triumphs of the Napoleonic era, to him the heroic age of French history, his exaggerated belief in the wickedness of kings and the innocence of poor people, the exaltation of pity into the greatest of all virtues—these and many other characteristic traits find ample illustration in his legend of the centuries. It is ever Hugo that is speaking to us, ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... bottle. I took my pencil and wrote this message to go inside,—"Behold, I have decreed a judgment upon the Earth; for it shall rain pickle bottles and biscuit tins for the period of forty days, because of the wickedness of the world, unless she repent!" And I pictured to myself the perplexity of the poor devil who should see this message ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... [par. 7.] Clarendon, on the commission sent to England when the King was tried:—The Marquess of Argyle had had too deep a share in that wickedness [the delivery of the King], to endure the shock of a new dispute, and inquisition upon that subject; and therefore gave not the least opposition to their passion [of the Scots].—Swift. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... possible exception of President Washington, whose political opponents did not hesitate to rob the vocabulary of vulgarity and wickedness whenever they desired to vilify the Chief Magistrate, Lincoln was the most and "best" abused man who ever held office in the United States. During the first half of his initial term there was no epithet which ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... came unto the prophet Jonas the son of Amithai saying: rise and get thee to Ninevehh that great city and preach unto them, how that their wickedness is come up ...
— The Story Of The Prophet Jonas • Anonymous
... in consequence, and plunged into the effort of his life. He painted the character of Isom Chase in horrible guise; he pointed out his narrowness, his wickedness, his cruelty, his quickness to lift his hand. He wept and he sobbed, and splashed tears all ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... be seen by the following quotations, from the works of a British officer, General Napier, who was an eye-witness of what he describes. It must be remembered that Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajos, and San Sebastian were friendly towns, only the garrisons being hostile. "Now commenced that wild and desperate wickedness which tarnished the lustre of the soldiers' heroism. All, indeed, were not alike, for hundreds risked and many lost their lives in striving to stop the violence; but the madness generally prevailed, and as the worst men were ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... against her quietly, and in the darkness of night; but now, in open day, they dared launch against her their terrible accusations, and represent her imprudence as a crime, her errors as shameful and premeditated wickedness. No one believed in the queen's innocency in this necklace transaction; and whereas Cardinal de Rohan had been made a martyr, whereas Parliament had declared him innocent, the queen consequently must be the guilty one, to whose cupidity the cardinal and the unfortunate Madame ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... his peace about the abuses of Rome; left Providence, and God on high, to deal with them! A modest quiet man; not prompt he to attack irreverently persons in authority. His clear task, as I say, was to do his own duty; to walk wisely in this world of confused wickedness, and save his own soul alive. But the Roman Highpriesthood did come athwart him: afar off at Wittenberg he, Luther, could not get lived in honesty for it; he remonstrated, resisted, came to extremity; was struck-at, struck again, and so it came to wager of battle between them! This is ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... period, at least since the Reformation, which has had the real facts of sin so nakedly and fearfully laid before it. The authors of the process call it Realism. But it is not the sum of the Real, nor anything like it. Those studies of sin and wickedness, which our moral microscopes have laid bare, are but puddles in a Universe, and the Universe is not only Law and Order, but is pervaded by the character of its Maker. God's mercy still reaches to the heavens, ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... in upon me through these fantastic lies, I had passed into that mood when the grotesque wickedness of Fate's awards can draw from the victim no loud lamentations—when there are no frantic blows aimed at the sufferer's own poor eyeballs till the beard—like the self-mutilated Theban king's—is bedewed with a dark hail-shower of blood. More terrible because more inhuman ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... good odour in Heaven, you were better to ask. What is any great town but a sink of wickedness? And when did ill men hold ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... "I come to thee on an urgent errand. Thou knowest, perhaps, that Andrew hath angered his father beyond everything. Instead of heeding the admonition to come out from the world and have no part in its wickedness, he hath all winter been a go-between, encouraging rebellion by carrying supplies to ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... now proceed to the later Mahometan conquerors of Hindostan: for it is fit that I should show your Lordships the wickedness of pretending that the people of India have no laws or rights. A great proportion of the people are Mahometans; and Mahometans are so far from having no laws or rights, that, when you name a Mahometan, you name a man governed by law and entitled to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... later he had reached our table, was bending low over Mrs. Kidder's hand, smiling with engaging wickedness at Beechy, and sending a dark look of melancholy yearning to catch ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... were aghast at the wickedness of this deed. They would not believe it. It would have been tyrannical and cruel to have obliged the settlers, who were not interested in a quarrel between the king of England and his people, to enlist, and be shot down in war. They would have complained ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... no reason to be ashamed of their leaders, though they might have questioned their wisdom. Now, wickedness in the political sense connotes the revolt against the organized authority of the State—political foolishness, the utter impossibility of realizing a practical aim. Naturally, therefore, the law was officially bound to look upon them as a species of ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... the first circumstances that opened my eyes to the cruelty and wickedness of slavery, and the heartlessness of my old master, was the refusal of the latter to interpose his authority, to protect and shield a young woman, who had been most cruelly abused and beaten by his overseer in Tuckahoe. ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... his left hand i' the hair o' the wicked, Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma, Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment, Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle, Let the wretch go festering through Florence)— Dante, who loved well because he hated, Hated wickedness that hinders loving, Dante standing, studying his angel,— In there broke the folk of his Inferno. Says he—"Certain people of importance" (Such he gave his daily dreadful line to) "Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet." Says the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... chords in the human heart, which will lie dormant through years of depravity and wickedness, but which will vibrate at last to some slight circumstance apparently trivial in itself, but connected by some undefined and indistinct association, with past days that can never be recalled, and with bitter recollections from which the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Indians of the seacoast. There lived Dabao, [29] who had become as it were a petty king, without other right than that of his great strength, or other jurisdiction than that of his great cunning. His wickedness was much bruited about, and he made use of subtle deceits by which he committed almost innumerable murders. He was often pursued by Spanish soldiers, but he knew quite well how to elude them by his cunning. For on ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... to be loosened, and the brazen {beaked} ships to be impelled with the oars. Scylla, when she beheld the launched ships sailing on the main, and {saw} that the prince did not give her the {expected} reward of her wickedness, having spent {all} her entreaties, fell into a violent rage, and holding up her hands, with her hair dishevelled, in her frenzy ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... neighbourhood,—and she soon heard of his coming,—she was gratified by feeling that her convictions had been correct. When the sad tidings as to poor Kate reached her ears, she had "known that it would be so." That such a girl should be made Countess of Scroope in reward for her wickedness would be to her an event horrible, almost contrary to Divine Providence,—a testimony that the Evil One was being allowed peculiar power at the moment, and would no doubt have been used in her own circles to show ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... does a girl like Bet Granger know of the ways of the world? She has been up and down in the slums, you say, all her life; but there's some as evil can't touch, and she's one of them. Dent, he's full of wickedness, and he knows wicked ways here and wicked ways in other places—so how could a gel like Bet be a match for him? She's brave as a lion. But I can't sleep o' nights thinking how he'll deceive her. He'll let her think as I'm free, and she'll ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... by Herod's gaze. The voice of Jochanaan (John the Baptist), who is imprisoned in a cistern hard by, is heard. Salome bids Narraboth, a young Assyrian, bring him forth. Dragged from his living tomb, Jochanaan denounces the wickedness of Herodias, but Salome has no ears for his curses. Fascinated by the strange beauty of the prophet, she pours forth her passion in wild accents. Jochanaan repulses her and retreats once more to his cistern. Herod ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... our wants and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections; the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing; but government ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... concerned! The Captain almost thought that the earth and skies should be brought together, and the clouds clap with thunder, and the mountains be riven in twain at the very mention of his father's wickedness. But then sins committed against oneself are so much more sinful ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... was thoughtful, but still he said no word of the tale he knew, until I feared that it would never be heard. But when the third glass of that terrific wine had burned its way down his gullet, and vindicated the wickedness of the gnomes, his reticence withered like a leaf in the fire, and he bellowed ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... an old joke in fourth-rate comic papers. just as a man shows he has a weak voice by straining it to shout, so they show the hopelessly unsensational nature of their minds when they really try to be sensational. With the whole world full of big and dubious institutions, with the whole wickedness of civilization staring them in the face, their idea of being bold and bright is to attack the War Office. They might as well start a campaign against the weather, or form a secret society in order to make jokes about mothers-in-law. Nor is it only from the point of view of ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the monarch went to the donkey's house and told him of the Prince's wickedness, asking how he could best ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... good and the bad alike. He depends, therefore, upon 'external' sanctions, sanctions, that is, which work mainly upon the fears of physical pain; and even if his punishments affect the wicked alone, they clearly cannot reach the wicked as wicked, nor in proportion to their wickedness. That is quite enough to show why in positive law motives are noticed indirectly or not at all. It shows also that the analogy between the positive and the moral law is treacherous. The exclusion of motive justifiable in law may take all meaning out of ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... cowards who killed themselves—suicide wicked— No, no! That wasn't the thought he was trying to lay hold of. What was it he was trying to think? Suicide wicked— God, how this cough hurt him. What was it— Suicide? No! He violently pushed away the thought of suicide and its wickedness, and at last shouted, within himself: "Oh, that's what I was thinking! I must play to Mother again! Where is she? She needs me. She's 'way off somewhere; she's helpless; she's calling for me—my ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... If he has sometimes been applauded upon the stages where he has been placed, he is also exposed to the hooting and hisses of the suffering multitude; while the Minister pockets undisturbed all the entrance-money, and conceals his wickedness and art under the cloak of Joseph; which protects him besides against the anger and fury of Napoleon. No negotiation of any consequence is undertaken, no diplomatic arrangements are under consideration, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the manikins of Herr Hippe was not alone the artistic truth with which the limbs and the features were gifted; but on the countenance of each little puppet the carver's art had wrought an expression of wickedness that was appalling. Every tiny face had its special stamp of ferocity. The lips were thin and brimful of malice; the small black bead-like eyes glittered with the fire of a universal hate. There was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... scoundrel than is Sir John Macdonald. He was more courageous, if possible more unscrupulous, and more crafty, and he had himself, as he thought, impregnably entrenched. Yet in a few short months he was in a prison cell deserted and despised by all who had lived upon his wickedness—and there ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... live, this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief, and have with equal wisdom provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the Government in the short ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... they have peeped into the girl's mind. She liked being alone, being still. There had been considerable strain to keeping up a reputation as a school terror. It had meant being constantly on the alert for an opportunity to misbehave; it meant thinking up plots, living up to an exacting standard of wickedness. The reaction had come with these idle days and she ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... from the divisions of the law, concerning which we must speak hereafter; and we then ought to argue as to what is usually done in similar cases, and to consider whether, in this instance, out of wickedness, one course is really adopted and another pretended; or whether the tribunal has been appointed and the action allowed to proceed through folly or necessity, because it could not be done in any other ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... God accompanied the labours of the apostles. It was at Jerusalem, the city whose million voices had just before demanded the death of their Lord, and imprecated his blood upon their own heads, that the first and greatest effusion of the Holy Spirit took place. There was spiritual wickedness in high places. There iniquity was strongly intrenched. The strong arm of the civil as well as ecclesiastical power was its defence; and human calculation could look for no visits of mercy. Still the Savior's command, to begin at Jerusalem, was ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2. No. 6., Nov. 1827 - Or Original Monthly Sermons from Living Ministers • William Patton
... they had their germ, and so was forced to fling them forth upon the night, to pollute and put fear into the atmosphere, and that people should breathe-in somewhat of horror from an unknown source, and be affected with nightmare, and dreams in which they were startled at their own wickedness. ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dans le mauvis ton. You would say—'he is vulgar in the right way.' I feel sure he never deceived women. They may have been foolish but they must have been frail before they met him! He can be ridiculous in five languages, but he cannot be sincere in one of them. As for his wickedness, one must have more than bad intentions; one must have the circumstances. I have nothing to fear from M. de Castrillon. He ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... matter how low down you are; no matter what your disposition has been; you may be low in your thoughts, words, and actions; you may be selfish; your heart may be overflowing with corruption and wickedness; yet Jesus will have compassion upon you. He will speak comforting words to you; not treat you coldly or spurn you, as perhaps those of earth would, but will speak tender words, and words of love and affection and kindness. Just come at once. He is a faithful ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... no longer called upon to read passages from the Holy Scriptures. Solemn looks and serious conversation were voted a bore. They laughed at their former fears; a reaction had taken place, and the struggle now seemed to be who should surpass his fellows in wickedness. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... fascinate their prey, and pure wickedness seems to inherit the power of fascination granted to the serpent. It stupefies and bewilders the simple heart, which sees it without understanding it, which touches it without being able to believe in it, and which sinks engulfed in the problem of it, like Empedocles in Etna. Non possum ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... before us, though it does run up into, and can scarce be treated as entirely distinct from all others, yet it needs not be so much mixed or blended with them as it often is. Every faculty and power may be used as the instrument of premeditated vice and wickedness, merely as the most proper and effectual means of executing such designs. But if a man, from deep malice and desire of revenge, should meditate a falsehood with a settled design to ruin his neighbour's reputation, and should with great coolness ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... bowed gravely, and in a frightened sort of way, in acknowledgment of the courteous greeting of the two young men. It was clear they had expected to find Jim alone, and over a quiet cup of cocoa to reduce him to a sense of his wickedness. It put them out of their reckoning, quite, to find that, if they were to open fire at once, it would have to be in the presence of these two gentlemanly and rather imposing strangers. However, they were too full of their mission to delay, and so ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... that element of sexual horror which repels many sensitive people from even trying to realise what has happened in this war, are evidences—one must insist again—of a national mind and quality, with which civilised Europe and civilised America can make no truce. And what folly lies behind the wickedness! Let me recall to American readers some of the phrases in the report of your former Minister in Belgium—Mr. Brand Whitlock—on the Belgian deportations, the "slave hunts" that Germany has carried out in Belgium and "which have torn from nearly every humble home in the land, a husband, ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to the book, but to Davenport: the book was not called, 'man of sin,' but Davenport. The words, 'man of sin' had a peculiar meaning. They were designed in the Scriptures to express condemnation, and horror, and wickedness. They were not synonymous with 'sinful man,' though even these words might be considered words of reviling, had they been used in the same circumstances. The contempt affected by his brother Tippit was so much powder and shot thrown away. Nobody believed he really felt ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... are a wicked man, papa. But I love you all one for that. It tis so dull when everybody is good like mamma; and she makes me dreadfully good too; but now you are come back, there will be a little, little wickedness again, it is to be hoped. Aren't you glad you are not dead, and are come ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... your drinking, In your clothing, in your talk, You can glorify the Father, Or in wickedness can walk. For your little body, Lizzie, God has said, 'Keep holy, pure,' {321} Tis His 'temple' He has lent you, ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... elegies, they should put their hand to the work and enter the Lord's vineyard as simple laborers. My task is far from being accomplished here, monsieur. It is not enough to reform the people, whom I found in a frightful condition of impiety and wickedness; I wish to die in the midst of ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... forbid you to listen to your father's abominable wickedness. And you, Adolphus, ought to know better than to go about saying that wrong things are true. What does it matter whether they are true if they ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... a tight cord bound his hands, and journeyed back to the place from which he had come, even to the little bay where his love had been wont to sing. And ever did his Soul tempt him by the way, but he made it no answer, nor would he do any of the wickedness that it sought to make him to do, so great was the power of the love ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... bursting out into an ode on the expedition of the Greeks against Troy, describes at great length the figures wrought on the shield which Achilles received from Thetis, and concludes with expressing a wish that Clytemnestra may be punished for her wickedness. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... felt in the home and in the business offices. It was an influence that poisoned all the foundations of public and private virtue in Brooklyn and New York. The conditions of municipal immorality and wickedness were the worst at this time that ever confronted the pulpits of the City of Churches, as ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... and three weeks after she too came to the Saviour, and even begged, as a favor, to have the care of the rooms of the teachers her father had reviled. Since then, the priest has written no less than three letters, as he says, to be sure that so great wickedness was really pardoned, it seemed ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... anything which wore the appearance of courting public favor, or seemed like a desire for office. His private life was exemplary, kind, and indulgent to his children and servants, and full of charity; severe upon nothing but the assumptions of folly, and the wickedness of purpose in the dishonest heart. In every relation of life he discharged its duties conscientiously, and was the enemy only of the vicious and wicked. He continued to reside upon his plantation in Lawrence County with his slaves, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... the thing she told with labouring breath The Sailor knew too well. That wickedness His hand had wrought; and when, in the hour of death, 615 He saw his Wife's lips move his name to bless With her last words, unable to suppress His anguish, with his heart he ceased to strive; And, weeping loud in this extreme distress, He cried—"Do pity me! That thou shouldst ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... himself; by assassination, when, as is more common, he has become intolerable to the world. Evil, however, as history shows him, it must still be said that his career does not exhibit the consistent depravity and systematic wickedness which characterize some of the Roman Emperors of maturer years; and even the giddy ferocities of the youthful Nero can be contemplated with less horror than the Satanic depth of malignity which morosely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... surroundings. Morel's theories concerning degeneration and the resulting theories of Lombroso concerning criminals have undoubtedly brought light into this chaos, wherein opinion as to human goodness and wickedness was divided. Forms of "degeneration" are chiefly rooted in the nervous system, and all the abnormal personalities produced thereby "deviate" from the ordinary type. They have a different intelligence and different ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... love of virtues. He knew how the innocent hunger for love and pity, and, knowing well what these things were, he could speak as one who came as their messenger. Loathingly and yet giving homage to his workmanship, she recalled that later scence by which he had added a grace note to his melody of wickedness and made so sweet a song of it that her will had ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... man and experienced in vice and wickedness he is never found in opposing the works of iniquity he takes delight in the downfall of his neighbors he never rejoices in the prosperity of his fellow-creatures he is always ready to assist in destroying the peace ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... wife, Behold, my master knoweth not what is with me in the house, and he hath put all that he hath into my hand; there is none greater in this house than I; neither hath he kept back any thing from me but thee, because thou art his wife: how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God? And it came to pass, as she spake to Joseph day by day, that he hearkened not unto her, to lie by her, or to be with her. And it came to pass about this time, that he went into the house to do his work; and there was none of the men of the house ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... keenly observed by Maggie, and cut her to the quick. Tom, it appeared, was supposed capable of turning his father out of doors, and of making the future in some way tragic by his wickedness. This was not to be borne; and Maggie jumped up from her stool, forgetting all about her heavy book, which fell with a bang within the fender, and going up between her father's knees, said, in a ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... their vices are none or very few; the men are not drunkards, nor are the women harlots; but the Gypsy of Spain is a cheat in the market-place, a brigand and murderer on the high-road, and a drunkard in the wine-shop, and his wife is a harlot and thief on all times and occasions. The excessive wickedness of these outcasts may perhaps be attributed to their having abandoned their wandering life and become inmates of the towns, where to the original bad traits of their character they have super-added the evil and vicious ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... will not hate me because I had a daughter," returned Katharina, shaking her head sadly, "but because my wickedness destroyed her." ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... overwhelming. He was positively identified by Sister 'Manda Patterson, the hotel cook, who had watched the whole performance from the hotel corridor for the sole, single, solitary, and only purpose, she averred, of seeing how far human wickedness could be carried by a professing Christian. The whole thing had been shocking and offensive to her, and only a stern sense of duty had sustained her in looking on, that she might be qualified to bear witness against the offender. She had recognized his face, his clothes, ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... can you talk about only ignorance? Don't you know that it is the worst thing in the world, next to wickedness?—and which does the most mischief heaven only knows. If people can say, 'Oh! I did not know, I did not mean any harm,' they think it is all right. I suppose Martha Mulwash did not mean to kill that baby when she dosed it with Dalby and soothing syrups; but she did kill ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... in England has increased seven hundred per cent, in Ireland about eight hundred per cent, and in Scotland above three thousand six hundred per cent;[1] it is difficult to say what is destined to be the ultimate fate of a country in which the progress of wickedness is so much more rapid than the increase of the numbers of the people. Nor is the alarming nature of the prospect diminished by the reflection, that this astonishing increase in human depravity has taken place during a period of unexampled prosperity and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... the city when under the dominion of the Persian kings, is sufficient to explain the cause of her speedy decay and ultimate ruin. The account of the Greek historian fully tallies with the denunciation of the Hebrew prophets against the sin and wickedness of Babylon. Her inhabitants had gradually lost their warlike character. When the Persian broke into their city they were reveling in debauchery and lust; and when the Macedonian conqueror appeared at their gates, they received with indifference ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... and the Medici name never stood so low as during his period of power. Himself illegitimate, he was the father of an illegitimate son, Alessandro, for whose advancement he toiled much as Alexander VI had toiled for that of Caesar Borgia. He had not the black, bold wickedness of Alexander VI, but as Pope Clement VII, which he became in 1523, he was little less admirable. He was cunning, ambitious, and tyrannical, and during his pontificate he contrived not only to make many powerful enemies and to see both Rome and Florence under ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... opposition to Cyril Lucar and the Calvinists, that Susanna and Bel (with some other apocryphal books) were genuine elements of Divine Scripture, and denounced Cyril Lucar's conduct in styling them Apocrypha as ignorance or wickedness (Bleek, II. 343; Loisy, O.T. p. 243). The present Eastern Church reckons them, with the Song of the Three, canonical, as Bishop Nectarius expressly states (Greek Manuals of Church Doctrine, publ. by Eng. Ch. Assoc., Lond., 1901, p. 19). Also Bar-Hebræus (†1286), the Monophysite, comments ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... p. 1062. Wesley wrote on Jan. 2, 1761:—'Of all the seats of woe on this side hell, few, I suppose, exceed or even equal Newgate. If any region of horror could exceed it a few years ago, Newgate in Bristol did; so great was the filth, the stench, the misery, and wickedness which shocked all who had a spark of humanity left.' He described a great change for the better which had lately been made in the London Newgate. Perhaps it was due to Akerman. ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... soon. Circumstances have hurried me. I felt that I must have this settled. That—that episode of last week alone would have determined me. Things like that must not recur. I must have the right to advise, to—to protect you. You are so young. You do not know the world, its wickedness, its incredible vileness." His face was white with intense inward passion. "With me you will be safe. My God! to think of you at the mercy of that man—of any man! It stirs a madness of hate in me. Hate is a sin, I know, but God will understand—it is born ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... however—something of silk and fawn-skin—and with this enveloping the baby John Fairmeadow swung in a roar with it to the bar—and held it aloft in all that seething wickedness—pure symbol of the blessed Christmas festival. And there was a sensation, of course—a sensation beginning in vociferous ejaculations, but presently failing to a buzz of conjecture. There were questions to follow: to which ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... the words and they entered his soul like a two-edged sword. All the fun of the incident was gone, and all the cruelty, the unkindness, the wickedness, loomed large and larger. With his intense nature, subject to the most violent reactions, the effect was profound. It seemed to him, as he stood there, that a veil dissolved before his eyes and that he saw himself and his life for the ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... that the abnormal growth of cities is a sure token of the moral depravity which has taken hold of the people. This, however, is not true. There is as much iniquity in proportion in small communities as in large ones, and not unfrequently wickedness and viciousness are attributed to actions which, after all, are neither wicked nor vicious, but merely strange to one who is not accustomed to them. The tide of inter-migration, which swells the population ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... nature exacted a severe retaliation for the undue suppression of its weaknesses. There are in the works of Bradford and Winthrop, as well as in the records of the colonies, evidence which shows that the streams of wickedness in New England were "dammed" and not dried up. At intervals the impure waters broke over the obstacles in their way, till the record of crime caused the good Bradford "to fear and tremble at the consideration of ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... privilege; for Peter Port, even on a Sabbath morning, was, to a boy whose life was spent within the shadow of the Autelets, so to speak, a great and bustling city, full of people and houses and mysteries, and of course of wickedness, all of ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... said Fion. 'We will do our best. If you will leave this chamber to us we will watch over your child and see that it comes to no harm. And, if it be possible to capture the witch, depend upon it we shall do so. Too long she has worked her wickedness ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... that the Italian Opera was open. I had no wish to be a witness of the shameful and sinful dancing which goes on (I am told) at the opera; but I did feel my principles shaken when I thought of the wonderful singers and the entrancing music. And this, when I knew what an atmosphere of wickedness people breathe who enter a theater! I reflect with horror on what might have happened if I had remained a little longer ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... drags rudely from her canopied bed, while another scrapes upon a violin;—a Peddler;—a Ploughman, of whose four-horse team Death is the driver;—Gamblers, Drunkards, and Robbers, all interrupted in their wickedness by Death;—a Wagoner, whose wagon, horse, and load have been tumbled in a ruinous heap by a pair of skeletons;—a Blind Beggar, who stumbles over a stony path after Death, who is his deceitful leader, and who turns back with a look of malicious glee ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... days was mild in comparison to the panicky feeling which prevailed during every Indian outbreak. The experience of many years had taught the people of Arizona what to expect at such a time and the utter diabolical wickedness of the Apaches when out on the warpath. During the early eighties many such raids occurred which were accompanied by all the usual horrors of brutality and outrage of ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... troops seized the gates and avenues of the cities, and placing guards in all the passages, entered with sword in hand, crying, "Die, or be catholics!" In short, they practised every wickedness and horror they could devise, to force them ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... rural I cannot imagine. But he is anxious to learn, and a fairly wide field is in front of him. I caught him after our breakfast on Sunday calmly throwing everything left over onto the dust-heap. I pointed out to him the wickedness of wasting nourishing food, and impressed upon him that the proper place for victuals was inside us. He never answers. He stands stock still, with his mouth as wide open as it will go—which is saying a good deal—and one trusts that one's ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... makes so much noise just now in Germany. Every human being must sometime decide for himself whether life is worth living. Suppose that in looking at the world and seeing how full it is of misery, of old age, of wickedness and {101} pain, and how unsafe is his own future, he yields to the pessimistic conclusion, cultivates disgust and dread, ceases striving, and finally commits suicide. He thus adds to the mass M of mundane phenomena, independent of his subjectivity, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James |
