"Debauch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... passes into that of the drunken debauch, where the chief men of Samaria sprawl, 'smitten down' by wine, and with the innocent flowers on their hot temples drooping in the fumes of the feast. But bright and sunny as the valley is, glittering in the light as the city sits on her hill, careless and confident as the revellers ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... title. She is young, wise, fair; In these to nature she's immediate heir; And these breed honour: that is honour's scorn Which challenges itself as honour's born, And is not like the sire: honours thrive When rather from our acts we them derive Than our fore-goers: the mere word's a slave, Debauch'd on every tomb; on every grave A lying trophy; and as oft is dumb Where dust and damn'd oblivion is the tomb Of honour'd bones indeed. What should be said? If thou canst like this creature as a maid, I can create the rest: virtue and she ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... stay here? Why shouldn't every wife and mother be here in the fire zone? You soldiers die—it is very easy to die—and leave us to suffer. You destroy and leave us to build up. You go on a debauch of killing and come home to the women to nurse you. Why make us suffer the consequences without sharing ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... picked out a black-bearded Finn as the leader of the sailors in their debauch. The liquor seemed to have unchained in him a spirit of revolt that bordered on insolence. He stood with his bowed legs apart, mittened hands on hips, staring at Lund ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... youthful and the good-looking were carried off by brigands. At night they were halted outside villages, and the gendarmes and villagers took what they chose. Many died from hunger and heat-stroke: others were left by the wayside. When they came to the banks of the river Kara-Su there was a debauch of horror. Women and girls and little children were raped and mutilated, and the children who still survived were thrown into the river. Those who could swim were shot. Thereafter the movements ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... But she's a Fop, my Lady Fancy, and ever was so, an idle conceited she Fop; and has Vanity and Tongue enough to debauch any Nation under civil Government: but, Patience, thou art a Virtue, and Affliction will come.—Ah, I'm very sick, alas, I have not long to dwell amongst the Wicked, Oh, oh.—Roger, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practised in the tricks and delusions of oratory. Wilson sat down victorious. The house submerged him in tides of approving applause; friends swarmed to him and shook him by the hand and congratulated him, and Billson was shouted down and not allowed to say a word. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... two minutes the steady seesaw snoring resumed. I took the opportunity to empty half the contents of a whisky bottle into the spittoon, and after lighting a pipe proceeded to clink a tumbler at steady intervals as evidence of debauch well under way. ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... And he's as certain ne'er to be betrayed. Through all the world they spread his vast command, And death's eternal empire is maintained. They rule so politicly and so well, As if they were Lords Justices of hell; Duly divided to debauch mankind, And plant infernal dictates in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... which declares that it is impossible to do business without managing the city council, is on exactly the same moral level with the man who cannot retain political power unless he has a saloon, a large acquaintance with the semi-criminal class, and questionable money with which to debauch his constituents. Both sets of men assume that the only appeal possible is along the line of self-interest. They frankly acknowledge money getting as their own motive power, and they believe in the cupidity of all the men whom they encounter. No attempt in ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... than the English; undoubtedly French fire-water was of excellent flavor. But the traders whom Dongan sent to Michilimackinac proved beyond cavil that English goods were cheap; and so long as a beaver skin was the price of a debauch on French brandy, whereas a mink skin was sufficient to attain the same exaltation by means of English rum, the French control of the fur trade rested on a precarious basis. The chief obstacle to ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... both hands, 'and draw up all his strength and sweetness in one ball.' ('Draw all his strength and all his sweetness up into one ball'? I cannot remember Marvell's words.) So the critics have been saying to me; but I was never capable of—and surely never guilty of—such a debauch of production. At this rate his works will soon fill the habitable globe, and surely he was armed for better conflicts than these succinct sketches and flying leaves of verse? I look on, I admire, I rejoice for myself; but in a kind of ambition we all have for our tongue and literature I am wounded. ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... Many shacks and camps, at first mistaken for the white men's houses, were found to be occupied by natives. They were a drunken, rascally rabble, spending their gains from the sale of fish and oil in a debauch that would last as long as their money ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... manifestation. Indeed the danger of the Greek world was just this, and it perished at last of the same disease which we already notice at Troy. It fell to a worship of the sensuous in life and art, and so lost its soul in a grand debauch. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... thought to find at least some trace of the opium debauch through which I had gained the clue to his strange and contradictory acts—some mark of the evil passions that had written their story upon his face at the meeting in the passage. But the face before me was a mask that showed no sign of the experiences through which he had passed. For ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... attempting to suppress all vice by law. There is a strangely modern ring in his remarks upon this subject, in the 73d section of the Legacy: "Virtuous men have said, both in poetry and in classic works, that houses of debauch, for women of pleasure and for street-walkers, are the worm-eaten spots of cities and towns. But these are necessary evils, and if they be forcibly abolished, men of unrighteous principles will become like ravelled thread, and there will be no end to daily punishments ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... see in this my King's debauch A picture of myself from early days, And be ashamed for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... unfortunate agriculturist. The hot sun is burning on—better weather for haymaking could not be—but there is not a rood of grass cut for them to work on. After a while the mowers come back, thoroughly tired and exhausted with their debauch, and go on feebly to work. There is hope again. But our climate is notoriously changeable. A fortnight of warm, close heat is pretty sure to breed a thunderstorm. Accordingly, just as the scythes begin to ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... "that this be not a mere idle rumour that is alarming you. However, I will make due enquiries; for we ought not to disregard anything." Phillidas, who was present, expressed his approval of this, and carrying Archias back again plied him with liquor, prolonging his debauch by holding out the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... resisting of Authority, when instead of Damnation, it was coming forth to the Help of the Lord against the Mighty? But this is but one Mischief of the Pulpit; this is only putting a Kingdom in Civil Broils, intestine Wars, and unnatural Murthers. But when Men of debauch'd Principles shall become the Teachers of the Nation, what may we not expect from their ...
— A Letter to A.H. Esq.; Concerning the Stage (1698) and The - Occasional Paper No. IX (1698) • Anonymous
... of those dissipated men who awake from the heavy sleep after a debauch, with dry mouth and weary head, he felt as if he had just been aroused from a singular and terrible dream. Like the drunkard, who, when he is sobered, tries to recall the foolish things he may have done under the guidance of King Alcohol, Daniel conjured ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... consists in fits of anticipation; since, the extra liberty or license of a debauch must be repaid by the iron fetters of headache, and the heavy hand of ennui on the following day: even the purblind puppy of fashion will tell you, if you make free with your constitution, you must suffer for it; and this by a species of slavery. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... such a picture. It seems not credible that respectable married people, with umbrellas, should find appetite for a bit of supper within quite a long distance of a fiery mountain; ordinary life begins to smell of high-handed debauch when it is carried on so close to a catastrophe; and even cheese and salad, it seems, could hardly be relished in such circumstances without something like a defiance of the Creator. It should be a place for nobody but hermits dwelling ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... these young men, fearing that, if my brother did not join them in this festivity, it might be attended with some bad consequence, especially as the day was likely to produce scenes of revelry and debauch; she, therefore, prevailed on the King to permit her to dine on the wedding-day at St. Maur, and take my brother and me with her. This was the day before Shrove Tuesday; and we returned in the evening, the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... there any need of mentioning that he served as master of the horse an entire year, something which had never before been done? Or that during this period also he was drunk and abusive and in the assemblies would frequently vomit the remains of yesterday's debauch on the rostra itself, in the midst of his harangues? Or that he went about Italy at the head of pimps and prostitutes and buffoons, women as well as men, in company with the lictors bearing festoons of laurel? Or that he alone of mankind dared to buy the property of Pompey, having no ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... debauch, n. debauchery, dissipation, abandon, drunkenness saturnalia, orgies, bacchanals, lechery; rape. Antonyms: temperance, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... honest Dr. Harrison, "is far from being in itself evil; it abounds with benevolence, and charity, and pity, coveting praise and honor, and shunning shame and disgrace. Bad education, bad habits, and bad customs debauch our nature, and drive it headlong into vice." And the author's tale is an exemplification of this text. Poor Booth's habits and customs are bad indeed, but who can deny the benevolence, and charity, and pity, of this simple and kindly ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... if applied to Paradise. His oration, in short, was of a piece with the amiable bombast that the college students and Fairhaven at large were accustomed to applaud at every Finals—the sort of linguistic debauch that John Charteris himself remembered to have applauded as an undergraduate more years ago than ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... and it would be necessary to refer to the most shameful epochs of Roman history to find any emperor whose life was as scandalous as his own; his cabinet was found after his death to be filled with valuable stuffs, rings, fans, trinkets, and even a quantity of rouge. These traces of debauch made the empress blush when she visited them with the new emperor. "My son," said she, "you have before you the sad proof of your father's disorderly life, and of my long afflictions: remember ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... my brother and offer him her favours, but he held off from her. One day she began to tempt him as usual and he played with her and made her sit on his lap, when behold, in came the Badawi who, seeing this, cried out, "Woe to thee, O accursed villain, wouldest thou debauch my wife for me?" Then he took out a knife and cut off my brother's yard, after which he bound him on the back of a camel and, carrying him to a mountain, left him there. He was at last found by some who recognised him and gave him meat and drink and acquainted ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... power of distinct articulation; the limbs become enfeebled and unsteady; the mind is deranged, being either worked up into fury, or reduced to ridiculous puerility, and if the stimulus be pushed farther than this, absolute insensibility ensues. Such is a brief view of the physical progress of a debauch; and it is needless to point out the effect of all this mischief upon the frame which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... well as business to these traffickers to drug, to make drunken, to deceive, to ensnare or to debauch by force the innocent, the confiding, the thoughtless, the weak. Whether for the ancient temple of Venus at Corinth or for the dens of shame in the white slave market of Chicago or Paris, beautiful victims who will earn much money ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... amid the whirl and roar of winter-life in Washington, when one has no time to read, write, or think, and scarcely time to eat, drink, and sleep, when the days fly by like hours, and the brain reels under the excitement of the protracted debauch, life becomes an intolerable bore. Yet the place has an intense fascination for those who suffer most acutely from the tedium vitae to which every one is more or less a prey; and men and women who have lived in Washington ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... flag. That was the bread and wine which represented the body and blood of the Saviour of mankind; adding, that a man who would use an appeal to the flag in aid of the subjugation of an unwilling people, would be capable of using the sacramental wine for a debauch. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the plays and interludes[61] which, after the manner of the French court,[62] had been set up and began to increase among us, were forbid to act;[63] the gaming tables, public dancing rooms, and music houses, which multiplied and began to debauch the manners of the people, were shut up and suppressed; and the jack puddings,[64] merry-andrews,[64] puppet shows, ropedancers, and such like doings, which had bewitched the common people, shut their shops, finding indeed no ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... keg of brandy, and they paid Smith the compliment, when he refused to drink, of making him one of the guards set over the drinkers to keep them from killing one another. He helped bring them safely through their debauch, but nothing could prevent their spending all they had got for their beaver skins in more and more brandy. Then they went back sick and sorry ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... undone—to go for nothing. Just as a drunkard in his pledge made reformation, which has done its work for a period, feels a sudden maddening desire to indulge his passion for drink, and plunges into a debauch,—the last maddening degradation before his final triumph,—so Jasmine felt now the restrictions and self-control of the past few months fall away from her. She emerged from it all the same woman who had flung her married life, her man, and her old world to the winds on the day that Krool ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... confusion that prevailed around,—sugar kettles upset, pots, pans, wearing apparel, blankets, and other articles, scattered about in every direction;—what could it mean? I awoke the chief, and the mystery was solved. He appeared to be just recovering from the effects of the night's debauch,—the Iroquois were in the camp. Mine host "grinned horribly a ghastly smile" as he placed himself, rather unsteadily, in a sitting posture in his bed, and in a hoarse tremulous voice bade me welcome, at the same time rousing his better-half, ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... heads. Dropping all work, they both proceeded to have "a good time," going on a drunken orgie, which lasted just as long as the money held out. When they came to their senses they were worse off than before. Weakened by prolonged debauch, they were in no mood for digging, and to complicate matters some one had jumped their claim during their absence. Even their tools had disappeared. Without resource or credit, they could not procure others. Yet work they must to ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... nerves smashed by his spell of debauch, played a score of parts. First he was aggressive, asserting his rights as a man and the ship's master, and demanding the key of the door. Then he was warlike, till his frenzied attack earned him such a hiding that he was glad enough to crawl back on to the ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... his departure, an adventure which, though frivolous, might enable him to give Mary's friends in France a melancholy idea of her situation. This nobleman, with the earl of Bothwell and some other young courtiers, had been engaged, after a debauch, to pay a visit to a woman called Alison Craig, who was known to be liberal of her favors; and because they were denied admittance, they broke the windows, thrust open the door, and committed some disorders in searching for the damsel. It happened that the assembly ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... mother of all mothers and babies, and the Son the Son of Man and the Savior of his brothers: one whose chief utterance on the subject of the conventional family was an invitation to all of us to leave our families and follow him, and to leave the dead to bury the dead, and not debauch ourselves at that gloomy festival the family funeral, with its sequel of hideous mourning and grief which ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... ruled off a few corners for romance. The Miss Schlegels—or, to speak more accurately, his interview with them—were to fill such a corner, nor was it by any means the first time that he had talked intimately to strangers. The habit was analogous to a debauch, an outlet, though the worst of outlets, for instincts that would not be denied. Terrifying him, it would beat down his suspicions and prudence until he was confiding secrets to people whom he had scarcely seen. It brought him ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... he called it. Playing checkers in the back room of the Gray Mule! I suppose it did seem to him a little immoral and nearer to a prolonged debauch than standing over six ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... owing to a drunken debauch, for which I have no satisfactory or suitable explanation to make, I was the unfortunate occasion of an outrage upon your feelings and those of your daughter and friends, for which I wish most humbly to apologize. I cannot tell ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... because an act of violence infers no principle; it infers nothing but a momentary impulse of a bad mind, proceeding, without law or justice, to the execution of its object. For at the same time that it pays no regard to law, it does not debauch it, it does not wrest it to its purposes: the law disregarded still exists; and hope still exists in the sufferer, that, when law shall be resorted to, violence will cease, and wrongs will be redressed. But whenever the law itself is debauched, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... the strugglings of a man striving to throw off the benumbing effects of an opium debauch—the effort to be at one again with the present. The effort was no more than half successful when I stepped into a late-closing hardware store and bought a weapon—a repeating rifle with its appropriate ammunition. Barrett had said something ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... was first seen on Garden Street, coming home after a night of debauch. He had drunk hard. Asked where he got the liquor, he maundered out something about a saloon; but none of the places which he usually frequents had seen him that night. I have tried them all and some that weren't in his books. It was ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... because I thought he was harshly treated; but the rogue was no sooner safe under my protection than he began to lie, pilfer, and steal like the devil. When I first set him up in a warm house he had hardly put up his sign when he began to debauch my best customers from me. *Then it was his constant practice to rob my fish-ponds, not only to feed his family, but to trade with the fishmongers. I connived at the fellow till he began to tell me that ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... France. That great country exhibited, to the eye of Europe, the aspect of the most extravagant license, and the most rapid decay. There lay the great voluptuary, under the general gaze; like one of its feudal lords dying of his own debauch—lying helpless from infirmity, surrounded with useless pomp, and in the sight of luxuries which he could taste no more—until death came, and he was swept away from his place ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... positions and were too heavy with sleep to seek easier ones. Clitheroe saw at the head of the table the Commodore, stretched back in his easy chair; he was fast asleep; there was no doubt about that. His guests one and all were dozing. The drowsy stupor that follows a debauch pervaded the whole company. I venture the assurance that not one person present could have been aroused in season to save himself or herself had the ship at that moment struck a ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... woman whom he had had a glimpse of—these people were like himself, of his own order—he would never weary of them. The class he had voluntarily chosen, the people with whom poverty had compelled him to consort, they affected him now as the memory of a debauch affects a ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... of the supplies gave the regular finish to the annual revel. A grand outbreak of wild debauch ensued among the mountaineers; drinking, dancing, swaggering, gambling, quarrelling, and fighting. Alcohol, which, from its portable qualities, containing the greatest quantity of fiery spirit in the smallest compass, is the only liquor carried across the ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... alas! shall have A cold lodging in the grave; When swift Death shall overtake us, We shall sleep and none can wake us. Drink we then the juice o' the vine Make our breasts Lyaeus' shrine; Bacchus, our debauch beholding, By thy image I am moulding, Whilst my brains I do replenish With this draught of unmixed Rhenish; By thy full-branched ivy twine; By this sparkling glass of wine; By thy Thyrsus so renowned: By the healths with which th' art crowned; ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... for nearly a year. By the end of this time he had made his way to St. Petersburg, and our Minister in that capital, the late Mr. Henry Middleton, of South Carolina, was ummoned one morning to save him from penalties incurred in a drunken debauch. Through Mr. Middleton's kindness he was set at liberty and enabled to return to ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... reading. And conversation, such as was indulged under the Hawley-Crowles roof, was confined to insipid society happenings, with frequent sprinklings of racy items anent divorce, scandal, murder, or the debauch of manhood. From this she drew more and more aloof and became ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... of the plateau and in the depth of the rainy and bitter air, on the ghastly morrow of this debauch of slaughter, there is a head planted in the ground, a wet and bloodless head, with ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... the other, the seven fell from their chairs to the floor, where they sprawled unconscious. When they awoke they left quietly and without trouble of any kind. They seemed a strangely subdued and chastened band; probably they were wretchedly ill after their debauch on the adulterated whisky ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... passions, and improve, for his advantage, those moments of frailty from which no woman is exempted. In short, this consummate politician taught his agent to poison the young lady's mind with insidious conversation, tending to inspire her with the love of guilty pleasure, to debauch her sentiments, and confound her ideas of dignity and virtue. After all, the task is not difficult to lead the unpractised heart astray, by dint of those opportunities her seducer possessed. The seeds of insinuation seasonably sown upon the warm luxuriant soil of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... is just the case. I saw a parcel of people caballing together to ruin property, corrupt the laws, invade the Government, debauch the people, and in short, enslave and embroil the nation, and I cried 'Fire!' or rather I cried 'Water!' for the fire was begun already. I see all the nation running into confusions and directly flying in the face of one another, and cried out 'Peace!' ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... about that it allows such things to go on? Take the conditions there at the college where my poor boy was ruined. At the very gates of the building these women are waiting for the lads! Ought they to be permitted to debauch young boys only fifteen years old? Haven't we got police enough to prevent a thing like that? Tell ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... she is by now? May be in Venice, may be in Rome, may be in the attics of this inn." I gave him twenty guineas, and he disappeared again for ten days. At the end of that time he returned once more, horribly dishevelled, dirty and extended. He looked to be just out and about again after a ruinous debauch. He talked in hollow whispers, he trembled in the limbs, he started and turned pale at a shadow, or the sound of a mouse in the wainscot. He said he had been to Ancona, Gubbio, Rimini, Ravenna, Chioggia, Venice, Udine, Trieste. He demanded money—fifty guineas; ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... kitchen-dance is harmless enough. But the Lost Nation folks use it as an excuse for a debauch. They gather in some sizable shack, set the stove out into the yard, soak themselves in aromatic spirits of deviltry and dance from ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... "by all means. Probably the people, after their debauch, will sleep soundly, and we may get some ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... was left alive in the town of Mansoul, because, as I said, his words did shake the whole town; they were like the rattling thunder, and also like thunder-claps. Since therefore the giant could not make him wholly his own, what doth he do but studies all that he could to debauch the old gentleman; and by debauchery to stupefy his mind, and more harden his heart in ways of vanity. And as he attempted, so he accomplished his design; he debauched the man, and by little and little so drew him into sin and wickedness, that at last he was not only ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and a penchant for forcible figures and phrases, I appreciated, as no other listener, I dare say, the peculiar vividness and strength and absolute blasphemy of his metaphors. The cause of it all, as near as I could make out, was that the man, who was mate, had gone on a debauch before leaving San Francisco, and then had the poor taste to die at the beginning of the voyage and leave ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... ale or linger to gaze upon a sympathetic face; but he refused to pamper such feelings, still more to simulate them; he refused to allow himself to become the creature of literary or poetic ecstasy; he refused to indulge in the fashionable debauch of dilettante melancholy. His life was in many ways the reverse of normal, but he insisted in writing about it quite naturally, "as if there were nothing in it." It is perfectly true, then; Borrow is dry. What ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... habits of the Bar as well as the Bench in Scotland at this period many stories are told. The Second Lord President Dundas once refused to listen to counsel who obviously showed signs of having come into Court fresh from a tavern debauch. The check given by the President appeared to effect some sobering of the counsel's faculties and he immediately addressed his lordship upon the dignity of the Faculty of Advocates, winding up a long harangue with: "It is our duty and our privilege to speak, my lord, and it ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... been a clergyman), but he assuredly hit the right nail on the head when he epitomised his typical wise man as knowing "the ways and farings of many men." What culture is comparable to this? What a lie, what a sickly debilitating debauch did not Ernest's school and university career now seem to him, in comparison with his life in prison and as a tailor in Blackfriars. I have heard him say he would have gone through all he had suffered if it were only for the deeper insight ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... sincerely attentive to the words of the All-wise, conceived a distaste for the world's glitter and was dissatisfied with the pleasures of royalty, even as one avoids a drunken elephant, or returns to right reason after a debauch. Then all the heretical teachers, seeing that the king was well affected to Buddha, besought the king, with one voice, to call on Buddha to exhibit his miraculous gifts. Then the king addressed the lord of the world: "I pray you, grant ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... natural boys in spite of their parentage, and I liked them even while I gloried in their cuts, bruises, and dirt. At that time I was wearing a necktie and had my shoes polished but, even so, I yearned to join with them in their debauch of sand, mud, and general indifference to convention. They are fine, upstanding young chaps now, and of course their mother thinks that her scolding, nagging, and baiting made them so. They know better, but are too kind and considerate to reveal the truth ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... determined to defy all such hypocritical interpretation, and tears off his turban and throws it at the head of the meddling dervis, and throws his glass after the turban. But the love or the wine of Hafiz is not to be confounded with vulgar debauch. It is the spirit in which the song is written that imports, and not the topics. Hafiz praises wine, roses, maidens, boys, birds, mornings, and music, to give vent to his immense hilarity and sympathy ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... twenty-eight years of age, and of middle stature, was attacked, after a debauch, with pain in the region of the heart, which subsided, but returned a year after on a similar occasion. He then became affected with palpitations of the heart for six months, great difficulty of breathing, ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren
... one man, however, who glared evilly at her from the curb. She recognized him in spite of his discolored face, the result of a long, uninterrupted debauch. It was Bolles. As he caught her eye he smiled evilly and ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... may go to bed together, without shame or scandal, or any fear of being called to account for so doing by the churchwardens. The plot and fable of your Pamela may indeed be easily enough discovered. They consist in Mr. B.'s attempts to debauch his beautiful waiting-maid; in her resistance, and their happy nuptials. If we look for a moral, we shall find the only one that can be extracted out of it to be very ridiculous, useless, and impertinent; it appears to be this, that when a young gentleman of fortune ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... away his cloak. This defence per Baccho was completely successful. An argument founded on the similarity between the conduct of the Syndic and the accused, could not but triumph, otherwise the little debauch of the former would have been condemned in the person of the latter. This trial, which terminated so whimsically, nevertheless proves that the best and the gravest institutions may become objects of ridicule when suddenly introduced into ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... clearing was going forward with madness which increased second by second. It had been a general debauch at first, with the whole thousand of the apes bellowing and squirming. Now a change was becoming apparent. Red eyes which had caught the glare of ultimate madness, focused upon the caciques, the Duca, and the great king, all ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... back forever into ugliness and commonness that he had always had when he came home. The moment he turned into Cordelia Street he felt the waters close above his head. After each of these orgies of living, he experienced all the physical depression which follows a debauch; the loathing of respectable beds, of common food, of a house permeated by kitchen odours; a shuddering repulsion for the flavourless, colourless mass of every-day existence; a morbid desire for cool things and ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... women in the world will refuse to admit that shopping can arouse them from any kind of deadness that the sex is heir to, but a few frank ones, like myself, for instance, will say such to be the case. For three weeks I gave myself up to a perfect debauch of clothes, and ended off each day's spree by dancing myself into a state of exhaustion. Everybody in Hayesville wanted to give Bess and me parties, and most of them did, that is, as many as we could get in at the rate of three a day between dressmakers and milliners and other clothing engagements. ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... giant, to benefit posterity; his only present recompense the possession of a rude independence, and the consciousness of increasing wealth, to add to which his energies are unceasingly devoted; his relaxation, meantime, an occasional frolic or debauch, which he grapples with, as his father did with fortune and the forest, closely and constantly, only pausing for breath through sheer exhaustion, or prostration rather. His person is square, and better knit together ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... who at least had knelt before him and brought rum and many other presents. A slow, burning, sullen wrath was kindled in the King's heart as the three men drew near. His people, half-mad with excitement and debauch, needed only a cry from him to have closed like magic round these insolent intruders. His thick lips were parted, his breath came hot and fierce whilst he hesitated. But away outside the clearing ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... couple of eggs; then, having wound up some allotted portion of work, Ardworth would indulge what he called a self-saturnalia,—would stride off with old college friends to an inn in one of the suburbs, and spend, as he said triumphantly, "a day of blessed debauch!" Innocent enough, for the most part, the debauch was, consisting in cracking jests, stringing puns, a fish dinner, perhaps, and an extra bottle or two of fiery port. Sometimes this jollity, which was always loud and uproarious, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... its moral duties. Little by little, the mass of the middle- classes and the gentry imbibed nobler views of human life, and have discovered, that of all the powers which make a nation immoral the State is the most influential. One day of licensed debauch undoes the work of the Clergy on fifty-two Sundays. No wonder that in the past the State collectively has been our worst corrupter: but to open this whole question space does not here allow. A long struggle has gone on, to implore public ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... did not seem to his companion to be at all disturbed by the discovery of the men. "They are more likely to be sailors from some intending blockade-runner at anchor off the point, who have come on shore to make a night of it; and they appear to have made considerable progress in the debauch." ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... his spasmodic debauch, repeating, as well as memory permitted, all his absurdities of speech and action. Defiant self-justification was now far to seek. On the other hand, he perceived very clearly how easy it would be for him to lapse ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... the year you came to the factory. Your first increase of pay. Do you remember? We dined at Douix's that day. And then the Cafe des Aveugles in the evening, eh? What a debauch!" ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Siva has taken definite shape, attributes and epithets are lavished on it in profusion. He is the great ascetic, for asceticism in India means power, and Siva is the personification of the powers of nature. He may alternate strangely between austerities and wild debauch, but the sentimentality of some Krishnaite sects is alien to him. He is a magician, the lord of troops of spirits, and thus draws into his circle all the old animistic worship. But he is also identified with Time (Mahakala) ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... nay, without a sense of worship. How could he or another find God so? The mood of prayer is the mood of finding God. Who seeks Him must seek with thought aflame with love. Caliban's reasoning ambles like a drunkard staggering home from late debauch. His grossness shames us. And yet were he only Caliban, and if he were all alone, we could forget his maudlin speech—but he is more. He is a voice of our own era. His babblings are not more crude and irreverential ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... experience, and are almost obstinately unwilling to learn in any other way. Experience is a costly school, but it teaches nothing false. A nation which attends experience could never be hurried into disaster, as the Germans were hurried by a debauch of political and military theory, subtly appealing to the national vanity. To insure themselves against so foolish a fate the British are willing to pay a heavy price. They have an instinctive dislike, which often seems to be unreasonable in its strength, for all that is novel and showy. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... its nature, the disobedience was not active but passive; he did not positively injure his master's property; he simply failed to turn it to profitable account. The terror of this servant was too lively to admit of his enjoying a debauch purchased by the treasure which had been placed under his charge. Fear is a powerful motive in certain directions and for certain effects; it makes itself felt in the heart, and leaves its mark on the life of a man. Like frost it has power to arrest the stream of energy, and fix it cold, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... coming along with his Benedicte, his sextoness, he who jobs the things of the Church, saying the White Mass of mornings, the Black at night? "Satan," says Lancre, "persuades him to make love to his daughters in the spirit, to debauch his fair penitents." Innocent magistrate! He pretends to be unaware that for a century back the Devil had been working away at the Church livings, like one who knew his business! He had made himself father-confessor; ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... found Thomas Snelling in his house at Bethnal Green, but unhappily he was not in a condition to remember anything. The very prospect of beer which my expected coming had opened to him had proved too much, and he had begun too early on his expected debauch. I learned, however, from his wife, who seemed a decent, poor soul, that he was only the assistant of Smollet, who of the two mates was the responsible person. So off I drove to Walworth, and found Mr. Joseph Smollet at home and in his shirtsleeves, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... bottom. For it is on this point that we discover behind the phantoms of the corrupt dramatists who are restrained by the censorship from debauching the stage, the reality of the corrupt managers and theatre proprietors who actually do debauch it without let or hindrance from the censorship. The whole case for giving control over theatres to local authorities rests on ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... had sat somewhile with his face in his hands: now he rose mechanically, shaking and stumbling like a drunkard after a debauch. But as he rose, his face was altered, and his voice rang out over ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... is to rescue the Publick from a vulgar Error, which Thousands of knowing and well-meaning People, and your self, I see, among the Rest, have been led into by a common Report, concerning The Fable of the Bees, as if it was a wicked Book, wrote for the Encouragement of Vice, and to debauch the Nation. I beg of you not to imagine, that I intend to blame you, or any other candid Man like your self, for having rashly given Credit to such a Report without further Examination. The Fable of the Bees has been presented by a ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... Joe staggered out of the pub and fell in the gutter, the ambulance did its duty, and trundled Joe to his abiding place, but the real fun occurred when Joe was gathered in during the third stage of his debauch. He passed through the oratorical stage, then the maudlin or sentimental stage, from which he emerged into the fighting stage, when he was usually ejected into the street, where he forthwith began to make Rome ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... o'clock on the next morning. The keeper had told me of a certain upper reach of quiet water where, during the Mayfly carnival a fortnight before, Mr. Francis Francis had astonished the natives. As a rule the fishing is not good until the trout have got well over their Mayfly debauch, but I determined to work hard, nevertheless, if haply I might experience that traditional exception by which the rule is proven. The fish in this part, which was in truth practically a millhead, seemed to be feeding close to the bank. The first cast secured something—but ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... it, somewhat shamelessly, all the time, however, keeping an acute eye on the zealous amateur. If, for instance, Liosha had picked a bushel of nectarines and had established herself with Susan, in the corner of the fruit garden, for a debauch, which would have had, for consequence, a child's funeral, Barbara, by some magic of motherhood, sprang from the earth in front of them with her funny little smile and her "Only one—and a very ripe one—for Susan, dear Liosha." And in these matters Liosha was as much overawed by Barbara ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... of cordial water in my closet, which will help to strengthen nature, and to carry off a debauch: I do not invite you thither; but the house will be safe a-bed, and scandal will ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... to shut our eyes to a good many disagreeable things in business, Mr. Gordon," he said, genially didactic. "Our problem in this day and generation is so to draw the line of distinction that these necessary concessions to human frailty will not debauch us; may be made without prejudice to that high sense of personal honor and integrity which must be the corner-stone of any successful business career. This state of affairs which you describe is deplorable—most ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... its brightness in a gloomy vault, like the roof of a vast cathedral fallen into decay, its ancient timbers blackened with the smoke and grime of half a century. On Saturdays the great market, silent and deserted for six nights in the week, was a debauch of sound and colour and smell. Strange, pungent odours assailed the nostrils; the ear was surprised with the sharp, broken cries of dealers, the cackle of poultry, and the murmur of innumerable voices; the stalls, ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... first week in December it became necessary to relieve the guard every hour instead of every two hours; but even then frozen ears and fingers and toes were common casualties. Discipline relaxed, and the soldiers began to solace themselves by debauch. Drunkenness became so frequent that Murray cancelled the tavern licenses; and any man convicted of that offence received twenty lashes every morning until he divulged the name of the liquor-seller. Theft and pillage were strenuously dealt with, one man expiating his ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... he woke from his long debauch of hate and jealousy and despair; for the first time since that night in the garden, he faced his fate with a clear mind. Death had set his seal forever to a testimony which he had been able neither to refuse nor to accept; in abject sorrow and shame he thanked God that he had been ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... But if he had lost that sum to Jansen,(700) or to any of the honourable men at White's, he would think his honour engaged to pay it. There is nothing, sure, so whimsical as modern honour! You may debauch a woman upon a promise of marriage, and not marry her; you may ruin your tailor's or your baker's family by not paying them; you may make Mr. Mann maintain you for eighteen months, as a public minister, out ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... religion, making them moral and thoughtful. It is also, we are assured with equal confidence, turning them to despair and moral disaster. It will be followed by (1) a period of moral renascence, and (2) a debauch. It is going to make the workers (1) more and (2) less obedient and industrious. It is (1) inuring men to war and (2) filling them with a passionate resolve never to suffer war again. And so on. I propose now to ask what is really happening in this matter? How is human opinion changing? I ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... smell out the cussed nigger in the mawnin' ef he's been around," he assured himself before beginning his nightly debauch. "What's mo', Miss Baron ain't so high en mighty now she knows I'm comin' to be the rale boss on the place. She didn't even squeak w'en I gin my warnin' ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... into one, and here Foo Sen plied his trade. And Foo Sen was cosmopolitan in his wares! Here, one, hard pressed, might find refuge from the law; here a pipe and pill were at one's command; here one might hide his stolen goods, or hatch his projected crime, or gamble, or debauch at will—it was the entree only that was hard to obtain at ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... who crowded their gay capital. And when their general found it necessary to demand their aid on the ramparts, he could only secure their attendance by ordering the taverns and cookshops to be removed to the place of duty. Not yet so far sunk in sloth and debauch, the Byzantines were nevertheless hosts eminently dangerous to the austerer manners of their Greek visitors. The people, the women, the delicious wine, the balm of the subduing climate served to tempt the senses and relax ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... to say: "I am no longer a child; if I have Faith, if I admit Catholicism, I cannot conceive it as lukewarm and unfixed, warmed up again and again in the saucepan of a false zeal. I will have no compromise or truce, no alternations of debauch and communions, no stages of licentiousness and piety, no, all or nothing; to change from top to bottom, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... dazzled with uncouth shapes and startling colours, his throat parched with dust, elbowed, crushed, mauled, hustled by the crowd, he was intoxicated with this debauch of diversions. ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... feet. There was a queer singing in his ears. The feast seemed to have turned to a sickly debauch. All that pinnacle of success seemed to have fallen away. The faces of his guests, even, as they looked at him, seemed to his conscience to be expressing one thing, and one thing only—that same horrible conviction which was deadening his own senses. He and the others—could it be ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... The Puritan debauch is the logical culmination of the anti-Paganism and backworldism launched two hundred centuries back. The Christian ethic, to the bewildered chagrin of its advocates, has triumphed. Not a triumph this time that offers itself as a cloak for Jesuitism, colonization, or empire ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... in the presence of Alice. It was wonderful to him what a difference in his feelings, his behavior, his ideas, her simple presence exerted. As he looked at her he thought of last night's debauch—the bar-room—the baseness and vileness of it all. He thought of his many amours. He saw the purity and grandeur of her in this contrast—all her queenliness and beauty and simplicity. He even thought of Maggie and said ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... of a week his health began to give way, and, like a man after a violent debauch, he thought of returning to a more normal existence. He had left the manuscript of his unfortunate play in the North. Had they destroyed it? The involuntary fear of the writer for his child made him smile. ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... trying to smoke!" said he as he gazed at the remnants of my debauch. "It is a silly thing to do, and waste of money as well. I long ago promised myself never to smoke. But come along; we ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... in August. c. 42. The utmost debauch of the emperor himself, in his favorite wine of Rhaetia, never exceeded a sextarius, (an English pint.) Id. c. 77. Torrentius ad loc. and Arbuthnot's Tables, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... and brings success to manhood, and prepares for enduring and honored old age. Venereal excesses, on the contrary, undermine the vigor of the constitution, bring on a host of bodily infirmities, exhaust the system before the proper time, debauch and degrade the mind and will, and prepare their victims for an early grave or ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... to see that the laws are complied with and that the safeguards for the public are rigidly maintained. An especially odious feature in the United-States Bank was the favoritism shown in its loans, by which it constantly tended to debauch the public service. Political friends of the institution were too often accommodated on easy terms, and legitimate banking was thus rendered impossible. No such abuse is practicable under the present system. Indeed there is such an entire absence of it that the opponents ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... say by less. Some say by none at all. We are for the more instead of the less. There is whiskey and whiskey. Now our idea would be to send an unlimited supply of the more deadly variety of that exhilarating fluid, (highly camphened,) to the convivial Piegans. After an extensive debauch upon this potent tipple, very few Piegans would be likely to take the field, either this summer or any other. They would be Dead Reds, every rascal ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... don't know what we're to do with you, Ruggles," began the stricken woman, and so done out she plainly was that I at once felt the warmest sympathy for her as she continued: "First you lead poor Cousin Egbert into a drunken debauch——" ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... freshened up when he had some new surface to put on an object. He meant that the order came to his chaos, and the influx of life began to cleanse away the litter of burned tissue and the debris of debauch. One cannot keep on thinking evil thoughts while he makes a floor or a gun or a field clean. The thing is well known in naval and military service where bodies of men are kept in order by continual polishing of brasses and decks and accoutrements. ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... support. But he could never get up with it. The friend of Paoli, the friend of Johnson, was, unhappily, given to drink. The gay spirits and lively health of youth supported him for a while; but, even in these early days, he was too often troubled with that depression of spirit which follows on a debauch. But, as time passed on, and the habit grew stronger upon him, his health began to give way, and his cheerfulness of mind to desert him. He lived but four years after the publication ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... then were beginning to counsel together on the prospects and probabilities of their gloomy future; but their conversation was suddenly cut short by the abrupt entrance of the wretched husband and father, who, on his way from the hotel where he had spent the day in sleeping off his debauch in concealment, having received an intimation of what was going on among his creditors, had hurried home, with a confidence and self-possession which he could not summon when he started; for, out of this movement among his creditors, which he still would not believe was any thing more ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson |
