"Profligacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... must he have read, with all the cardinal virtues arrayed as the evil destinies of humanity, and every wickedness paraded as that natural expansion of the heart which alone raises man above the condition of the brute! I ask, if proficiency must imply profligacy, would you not rather find a man break down in his verbs than in his virtue? Would you not prefer a little inaccuracy in his declensions to a total forgetfulness of the decalogue? And, lastly of all, what man of real eminence could have masqueraded—for ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... she cried, but did not tell whether she meant his profligacy in purchasing or his wantonness in destroying. "And now, pray enlighten me. Are you swinging him just for fun ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... accompanied by musicians playing on bagpipes, and by innumerable spectators attracted by curiosity, to which were added anxious parents and relations, who came to look after those among the misguided multitude who belonged to their respective families. Imposture and profligacy played their part in this city also, but the morbid delusion itself seems to have predominated. On this account religion could only bring provisional aid, and therefore the town council benevolently took an interest in the afflicted. They divided them into separate parties, to each of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... power afforded her of proving the genuine tenderness of her heart, by munificent and judicious works of charity and benevolence; and exerting her authority, if possible, still more beneficially by protecting virtue, discountenancing vice, and purifying a court whose shameless profligacy had for many generations been the scandal of Christendom. It is probable, indeed, that much of her early levity was prompted by a desire to drive from her mind disappointments and mortifications of which few suspected the existence, but which were only the ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... am sorry to say, our principal pastimes; and I fell so readily into their ways, that though only a young lad of seventeen, I was the master of them all in daring wickedness; though there were some among them who, I promise you, were far advanced in the science of every kind of profligacy. I should have been under the provost-marshal's hands, for a dead certainty, had I continued much longer in the army: but an accident occurred which took me out of the English service in rather a ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... something which, compared with the excesses of Etherege and Wycherley, might be called decency. Yet there still lingered in the public mind a pernicious notion that there was some connection between genius and profligacy, between the domestic virtues and the sullen formality of the Puritans. That error it is the glory of Addison to have dispelled. He taught the nation that the faith and the morality of Hale and Tillotson might be found in company with wit more sparkling than ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... consciences of oriental princes in such matters, quite as little, perhaps, had the two other counts in his London impeachment. One imputed savage cruelty to him; the other, with a Johnny-rawness that we find it difficult to comprehend, profligacy and dissoluteness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... run a course of despicable, commonplace profligacy. Accept that as the first reason ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... ashamed of his conduct towards her, and hath spoken to me many times with sincere remorse for that, as with fond love for her many amiable qualities. He owned to having treated her very ill; and that at this time his life was one of profligacy, gambling, and poverty. She became with child of you; was cursed by her own parents at that discovery; though she never upbraided, except by her involuntary tears, and the misery depicted on her countenance, the author of ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... men, more especially that of Curran, we must probe to the bottom the corruptions and baseness of that society, which deserves to be branded as among the most base and the most corrupt that history has hitherto described. The temptations which England employed, the horrible corruption and profligacy she fostered, must be fully known, if we desire to do justice to the men who came out undefiled ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... been keeping that fellow in his profligacy, and you 're keeping him now. Why, you 're all but a beggar! . . . Comes to my house, talks of his birth, carries off my daughter, makes her mad, lets her child grow up to lay hold of her money, and then grips him fast and pecks him, fleeces him! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and who were collected to witness (a spectacle proper to the times) the burning of the lovely Rebecca at a stake for a sorceress, because she was a Jewess, beautiful and innocent, and the consequent victim of insane bigotry and unbridled profligacy. And it is at this moment (when the heart is kindled and bursting with indignation at the revolting abuses of self-constituted power) that Sir Walter stops the press to have a sneer at the people, and to put a spoke (as he thinks) ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... tuned to music. As for religion, the corruptions of the papacy, and the corresponding degradation of the monasteries and of the priesthood generally, had brought it down from a region of sublime and self-abnegating faith, to a commodity for raising money, and a cloak to hide profligacy. Martin Luther was still in the womb of the future; and so were Shakespeare, Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, and Oliver Cromwell. Pessimists were declaring, according to their invariable custom, that ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... common between them. All celibates are not chaste; celibacy is not necessarily chastity, by a large majority. Unless something other than selfishness suggests this choice of life, the word is apt to be a misnomer for profligacy. And one who takes the vow of celibacy does not break it by sinning against the Sixth Commandment; he is true to it until he weds. The religious vow is ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... extravagance. He spent thousands of dollars daily, he literally cast money to the winds. His notoriety spread to the furthermost limits of the country; the daily papers, the weeklies, the monthlies printed exaggerated accounts of his profligacy. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... obsequious servility, must be humoured and satisfied. Whenever such a usurpation occurs, all the maxims upon which the welfare and freedom of a community normally rest are annihilated, and the reign of profligacy and of tyranny inevitably supervenes: a regime born in party passion must live ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... of the Inquisition, and to comment on them dramatically enough to make his readers feel about them what men who witnessed them felt, he would be accused of a 'morbid love of horrors.' If any one, in order to show how the French Revolution of 1793 was really God's judgment on the profligacy of the ancien regirne, were to paint that profligacy as the men of the ancien regime unblushingly painted it themselves, respectability would have a right to demand, 'How dare you, sir, drag such disgusting facts from their merited oblivion?' Those, again, ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... well to note that all the tales as to the dissipation and profligacy of Mark Antony in his early days come from the "Philippics" of Cicero, who made the mistake of executing Lentulus, the step-father of Mark Antony, and then felt called upon forever after to condemn the entire family. "Philippics" are always a form ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... was afterwards turned into a proverb. On this, he founded the city of Crotona, and another colony founded the city of Sybaris on the spot which he had preferred; a place which afterwards became infamous for its voluptuousness and profligacy. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... those days were very reprehensible. Though Boaz was high-born and a man of substance, yet he slept on the threshing-floor, so that his presence might act as a check upon profligacy. In the midst of his sleep, Boaz was startled to find some one next to him. At first he thought it was a demon. Ruth calmed his disquietude (58) with these words: "Thou art the head of the court, thy ancestors were princes, thou art thyself ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... person in seedy raiment, whilst to matters of much higher importance they are shamelessly indifferent. Not so Lavengro; he will do anything that he deems convenient, or which strikes his fancy, provided it does not outrage decency, or is unallied to profligacy; is not ashamed to speak to a beggar in rags, and will associate with anybody, provided he can gratify a laudable curiosity. He has no abstract love for what is low, or what the world calls low. He sees that many things which ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... a tone of bitter irony; 'have you not had enough yet? Have you not squandered every penny I had from my father in your profligacy and evil companions? What more do ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... establish a daily newspaper and take upon himself the editorial charge of it. For such an undertaking, his large experience in business, his resolute spirit, his sound judgment, his keen insight into character, his lofty scorn and detestation of meanness, profligacy, peculation and fraud, eminently fitted him. The paper, the Evening Bulletin, was first issued on the eighth day of October, 1855. From that day to the day of his death, he devoted all his faculties most faithfully and conscientiously ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb
... only by names and in classes. I should be loth, indeed, to say that 'whatever is, is right'; but almost every actual choice inclines to it, with some sort of imperfect, unconscious bias. This is the reason, besides the ends of secrecy, of the invention of slang terms for different acts of profligacy committed by thieves, pickpockets, etc. The common names suggest associations of disgust in the minds of others, which those who live by them do not willingly recognise, and which they wish to sink in a technical phraseology. So there is a story of a fellow who, as he was ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the local Legislature, for several successive years previous to 1834, to ameliorate the system of slavery, seconded by the labors of clergymen and missionaries, teachers and catechists, to improve the character of the slaves, failed to arrest the current of vice and profligacy. What few reformations were effected were very partial, leaving the more enormous immoralities as shameless and defiant as ever, up to the very day of abolition; demonstrating the utter impotence of all attempts to purify the streams while ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... woman by the name of Lady Morgan, who was the author of several novels and books of travel. Although her record in intelligence and morals is good, John Croker, who regularly reviewed her books, accuses her works of licentiousness, profligacy, irreverence, blasphemy, libertinism, disloyalty and atheism. There are twenty-six pages of this in one review only, and any paragraph would be worth the quoting for its ferocity. After this attack it was Macaulay who said he hated ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... had I ever heard it described so as to form any adequate conception of it, till I found myself plunged into it.... Industry, man's crown of honor elsewhere, is here his badge of utter degradation; and so comes all by which I am here surrounded,—pride, profligacy, idleness, cruelty, cowardice, ignorance, squalor, dirt, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... hoped to see the day when his dream would be found a true prophecy, and the commonwealth purged of all such rogues and vagabonds. But it could not be expected that the vulgar would be honest and conscientious, while the great were distinguished by profligacy and corruption. The squire was disposed to make a practical reply to this insinuation, when Mr. Ferret prudently withdrew himself from the scene of altercation. The good woman of the house persuaded his antagonist ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... London physicians, has increased mightily of late; and so has the reading of Shelley. It is not surprising. Byron's Corsairs and Laras have been, on the whole, impossible during the thirty years' peace! and piracy and profligacy are at all times, and especially nowadays, expensive amusements, and often require a good private fortune—rare among poets. They have, therefore, been wisely abandoned as ideals, except among a few young persons, who used to wear turn-down collars, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Oliverian usurpation afflicted the state, while in the department of morals, piety was brought into such contempt by the extravagance of fanatics, and the detected cheats of hypocrites, that atheism and profaneness grew popular, as being more open and candid in their avowed profligacy. The oppressive, or as his admirers call it, the vigorous government of Cromwell humbled the proud spirit of Englishmen, who had often revolted at the excessive stretches of prerogative under their legitimate kings; and this new habit of submission, added to a deep ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... origin was no introduction of novel heresies. It was a revolt of the laity of Europe against the profligacy and avarice of the clergy. The popes and cardinals pretended to be the representatives of Heaven. When called to account for abuse of their powers, they had behaved precisely as mere corrupt human kings and aristocracies behave. They had intrigued; they had excommunicated; ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... state of the Roman Empire when the early Caesars were on the throne, and when it was undisputed mistress of the world. You pass down the line of the Emperors with their strange alternations of greatness and profligacy, descending occasionally to criminal lunacy. When the Empire went rotten it began at the top, and it took centuries to corrupt the man behind the spear. Neither did a religion of peace affect him much, for, in spite of ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... polluted with vices, that are common to men, and which had given themselves up entirely to unclean desires, and had become so blinded by them as to have habituated themselves to all manner of debauchery and profligacy, or to have laid detestable schemes for the ruin of their country, took a road wide of that which led to the assembly of the Gods: but they who had preserved themselves upright and chaste, and free from the slightest contagion of the body, and had always kept themselves as far as ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... persons of the kingdom without choice of rank or mind & with whom the subjects of conversation are only horses, drinking matches, bawdy houses, and in terms the most vulgar. The young nobility, who begin by associating with him, soon leave him disgusted with the insupportable profligacy of his society; and Mr. Fox, who has been supposed his favorite, and not over nice in the choice of his company, would never keep his ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... to bribe the officers of justice to let him escape, he will inevitably be hanged and the people will never more behold their unhappy friend Pulcinello. The showman now implores the commiseration of the audience, and now reproaches Pulcinello with his profligacy and nefarious pranks which have brought him to an untimely end. Pulcinello sobs, cries, promises to reform and to attend mass regularly in future. What Neapolitan heart can resist such an appeal? The grani are collected. Pulcinello gives money to the puppet representing the executioner; down ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... inferior and subject people. Sir George Bonham failed to establish any direct communication with Tien Wang, who had by this retired into private life, and while it was given out that he was preparing sacred books he was really abandoning himself to the pursuit of profligacy. There is nothing to cause surprise in the fact that the apathy of Tien Wang led to attempts to supersede him in his authority. The Eastern King in particular posed as the delegate of Heaven. He declared that he had interviews ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... keen shame and sorrow. He who could have wished that himself were accursed from Christ for his brethren, his kinsmen according to the flesh, must have had a profound pity for these wretched victims of profligacy, who were looking in their ignorance for salvation to a brutal mortal worse than themselves,—"the son of perdition, sitting in the temple of God, showing that he was God." And to this feeling of indignation and sorrow, because of the wickedness of the place, must have been added ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... not be understood, my dear Marquis, to speak of consequences, which may be produced in the revolution of ages, by corruption of morals, profligacy of manners and listlessness for the preservation of the natural and unalienable rights of mankind, nor of the successful usurpations, that may be established at such an unpropitious juncture upon the ruins ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... the people falls short of this high standard, blame is attached to the missionary, instead of credit for that which he has effected. They forget, or will not remember, that human sacrifices, and the power of an idolatrous priesthood — a system of profligacy unparalleled in any other part of the world — infanticide a consequence of that system — bloody wars, where the conquerors spared neither women nor children — that all these have been abolished; and that dishonesty, ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... which they have to learn is, that freedom does not mean license and discord—does not mean every one doing that which is right in the sight of his own eyes. From that springs self-will, division, quarrels, revolt, civil war, weakness, profligacy, and ruin to the whole people. Without order, discipline, obedience to law, there can be no true and lasting freedom; and, therefore, order must be kept at all risks, the law obeyed, ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... to found his New Jerusalem in Ohio, where, however, the natives objected with such definiteness to his way of salvation that he and one of his followers were tarred and feathered in Hiram, O. Missouri was chosen as the next place of refuge, but here, too, Smith's profligacy aroused the hostility of the Missourians, which was increased by propaganda among the Mormons for a "war of extermination against the Gentiles." In Illinois, whither many of the "Saints" now removed, ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... dare say that your home is not objectionable, taken by itself. But I am not blind to the seductions of the great city. You too forget," she added, with a touch of complacency, "that I am not inexperienced or without knowledge of the profligacy ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... this subject, we imputed much of the present profligacy to the notorious want of care in parents in the education of youth, who, as my friend informs me, with very little school-learning, and not at all instructed (ne minime quidem imbuti) in any principles of religion, virtue, and morality, are brought to the great ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... these terrible woes a sign that something was nigh, which he called the Kingdom of God. If he told us, with a solemn asseveration, that this generation should not pass away till all had happened. If he went on to warn us against profligacy, frivolity, worldliness, lest that day should come upon us unaware. If he bade us keep awake always, that we might be found worthy to escape all that was coming, and to stand before Him, The Son of Man. If he used throughout his address the second person, speaking to us, but never ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... cause, however noble, however "good," however elevated.* Such, we can solemnly assure the reader, would bring its reward in many ways—perhaps in another life, perhaps in this world, but it would tend to shorten the existence it is desired to preserve, as surely as self-indulgence and profligacy. That is why very few of the truly great men of the world (of course, the unprincipled adventurers who have applied great powers to bad uses are out of the question)—the martyrs, the heroes, the founders of religions, the liberators of nations, the leaders of reforms—ever ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... the close of the war had returned to the city. Petronius had for him a certain weakness bordering on attachment, for Marcus was beautiful and athletic, a young man who knew how to preserve a certain aesthetic measure in his profligacy; ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Procter (Barry Cornwall), 1787-1874 (Edinburgh Review, January, 1820, vol. 33, pp. 144-155), compares Diego de Montilla, a poem in ottava rima, with Don Juan, favourably and unfavourably: "There is no profligacy and no horror ... no mocking of virtue and honour, and no strong mixtures of buffoonery and grandeur." But it may fairly match with Byron and his Italian models "as to the better qualities of elegance, delicacy, and tenderness." See, too, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... with the parabolani, a sort of organised guild of district visitors.... And in their company he saw that afternoon the dark side of that world, whereof the harbour-panorama had been the bright one. In squalid misery, filth, profligacy, ignorance, ferocity, discontent, neglected in body, house, and soul, by the civil authorities, proving their existence only in aimless and sanguinary riots, there they starved and rotted, heap on heap, the masses of the old Greek ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... ordinary to their highnesses of Lorraine. Mademoiselle de Ranfaing was a very virtuous person, through whose agency God established a kind of order of nuns of the Refuge, the principal object of which is to withdraw from profligacy the girls or women who have fallen into libertinism. M. Pichard's work was approved by doctors of theology, and authorized by M. de Porcelets, Bishop of Toul, and in an assembly of learned men whom he sent for to examine the ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... would come to rest amidst the blind alleys of the new ecclesiasticism. The bastard, whilom poor student and monk, become the familiar of bishops and princes, at home in all grades of society, could not fail to be aware of the gravity of the social position, of the dangers imminent from the profligacy and indifference of the ruling classes, no less than from the anarchical tendencies of the people who groaned under their oppression. The wanderer who had lived in Germany, in France, in England, in Italy, and who counted many of the best and most influential men in ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... an intimate ally of De Méré, and amidst all his dissoluteness, made pretensions to scientific knowledge and attainments as a writer. Desbarreaux was a companion of both, but of a still lower grade—a man of open profligacy, and a despiser of the rites of the Church. Along with Miton and other boon companions, he is spoken of as betaking himself to St Cloud for carnival during the Holy Week. {66} The truth would seem to be ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... stinking rakehell seeking but to put himself right again in the eyes of a town that was nauseated with him and his excesses? The self-seeking toad that makes virtue his profession—the virtue of others—and profligacy his recreation!" He smote fist into palm. "There's a way to ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... and so forth is only possible to a wretchedly narrow and jealous nature; and neither history nor contemporary society shews us a single amiable and respectable character capable of it. This has always been recognized in cultivated society: that is why poor people accuse cultivated society of profligacy, poor people being often so ignorant and uncultivated that they have nothing to offer each other but the sex relationship, and cannot conceive why men and women should associate for any ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... closely imitate all the worst tricks of the trade and of the craft in England. Our literature, before long, will be like some of those premature and aspiring whipsters, who become old men before they are young ones, and fancy they prove their manhood by their profligacy and their diseases." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... vices which in real life harden the heart and coarsen the taste. We do not find in his pages those moral monsters in which the finest sensibilities, the richest gifts, the noblest sentiments are linked to heartless profligacy, or not less heartless misanthropy. He never palters with right; he enters into no truce with wrong; he admits of no compromise on such points. How admirable in its moral aspect is the character of Leatherstocking! he is ignorant, and of very moderate intellectual range ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... queens. People residing in remote places heard only of the gorgeous licence in which the great and powerful lived. They knew them only during their visits to their ancestral homes as worn-out debauchees from the great city, who brought the profligacy of the purlieus of the Louvre into the peaceful cottages of the peasantry on their estates. It was, indeed, so much the fashion to be wicked, that a gentleman was hindered from the practice of his Christian or social duties by the fear of ridicule. The life of man, therefore, ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... been born from my head, Clitipho, just as they say Minerva was from Jove's, none the more on that account would I suffer myself to be disgraced by your profligacy.[103] ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... which he had listened intently, re-perused, throughout, this record of the stone; and finding that the general purport consisted of nought else than a treatise on love, and likewise of an accurate transcription of facts, without the least taint of profligacy injurious to the times, he thereupon copied the contents, from beginning to end, to the intent of charging the world to hand them down as ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... progress in Greek. By a subterfuge of his mother's he was proclaimed emperor in the place of Britannicus, the real heir to the throne. In the early part of his reign public affairs were wisely conducted, but the private life of Nero was given up to vice and profligacy. His love for Poppaea led him into the crime of matricide, for she, wishing to share the imperial throne, and knowing it was impossible while his mother, Agrippina, lived, induced him to authorize her assassination. Strange that Seneca and Burrhus should ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... doctor. I cannot go to the root of the moral disease of Rehoboth. If it were drink, or profligacy, or greed, I might; but self-righteousness beat Jesus, and no ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... circumstances. The life of a country seigneur is but a poor preparation for existence in this court, where, although there is no longer the open licentiousness that prevailed in the king's younger days, there is yet, I believe, an equal amount of profligacy, though it has been sternly discountenanced since Madame Maintenon obtained an absolute, and I may say a well-used, influence over ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... first cruise, its natural deformity became so apparent as to cause the rest of the officers to look with fear and astonishment upon one, in whom the gifts of extraordinary talents seemed to have been lavished, only to become blended with cunning, artfulness and licentious profligacy, whose disposition was mean and avaricious, and whose temper, though not violent, was cruel, ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... to Deaker himself to say, that, although a staunch political Protestant and infidel, he never countenanced violence against those who differed from him in creed. Deaker's creed was a very peculiar one, and partook of the comic profligacy which marked his whole life. He believed, for instance, that Protestantism was necessary, but could not for the life of him understand the nature or tendency of religion. As he himself said, the three ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... reports of her fickle lover's mode of life. His devotion to one lady, the more respectable form of infidelity which must inevitably have canceled their contract of love, was not indeed true, and probably the story had been fabricated because the mere general accusation of profligacy might easily have been turned into an appeal to her mercy, as the result of reckless despondency and of his utter separation from her; and a woman in her circumstances might not have been hard to find ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... habits of the people of the Connexion in those days. I never met with anything in any society, that I recollect, more at variance with the principles of Christian temperance, and more likely to lead both preachers and people into drunkenness and profligacy, than the habits and customs of many of the members of the New Connexion in the Chester circuit. In the first place they were all users of intoxicating drinks, and all those that were in tolerable circumstances regularly kept ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... Players will to some appear too harshly written, their profligacy exaggerated, and their distresses magnified; but though the respectability of a part of these people may give us a more favourable view of the whole body; though some actors be sober, and some managers prudent; still there is vice and misery left more than sufficient to justify my ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... the law gives the children to the father; no matter what his character or condition. At this very time we can point you to noble, virtuous, well-educated mothers in this State, who have abandoned their husbands for their profligacy and confirmed drunkenness. All these have been robbed of their children, who are in the custody of the husband, under the care of his relatives, whilst the mothers are permitted to see them but at stated intervals. But, said one of these mothers, with a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... short time before her husband arrived, but he, when he came, manifested no interest in rejoining her. Instead of that, he connected himself with a number of wicked associates, both male and female, whom he had known before he went to the Holy Land, and lived a life of open profligacy with them, leaving Berengaria to pine in neglect, alone and forsaken. She was almost heart-broken to be thus abandoned, and several of the principal ecclesiastics of the kingdom remonstrated very strongly with Richard for this wicked conduct. ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... s. of the 1st Duke, who was in 1628 assassinated by Felton. His life was full of adventure and change of fortune. The Restoration gave him back his already twice lost estates, which he again squandered by a life of wild extravagance and profligacy at Court. He was a member of the "Cabal" and intrigued against Clarendon. He wrote pamphlets, lampoons, and plays, but his chief contribution to literature was The Rehearsal, a comedy, in which he ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... a low tone with the priest. From him he learned more of the evil name of this man whom they followed. His house at Shalford was a den of profligacy and vice. No woman could cross that threshold and depart unstained. In some strange fashion, inexplicable and yet common, the man, with all his evil soul and his twisted body, had yet some strange fascination for women, some mastery over them which compelled them to his ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this, and more, the gods have sent, And I am heartily content. Oh son of Maia, that I may These bounties keep is all I pray. If ne'er by craft or base design I've swelled what little store is mine, Nor mean, it ever shall be wrecked By profligacy or neglect; If never from my lips a word Shall drop of wishes so absurd As,—'Had I but that little nook Next to my land, that spoils its look! Or—'Would some lucky chance unfold A crock to me of hidden gold, As to the man whom Hercules Enriched and settled at his ease, Who,—with, the treasure ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... His writings, though they did not draw the regards of the million with such irresistible and congenial attraction as those of Aristophanes, had the power in some measure to rescue comedy from the unbridled licentiousness and profligacy which, for fifty years before, had rendered it a public nuisance. The multitude, however, he could not, during his lifetime reclaim; for a miserable cotemporary of his, named Philemon, a coarse writer of broad farce, who ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... enervating influence of the terem—he was not cast in that dull mould which turned out so many idiots in the royal family. He "roamed at large, and wandered in the streets with his comrades." The streets of Moscow at that period were, according to M. Zabieline, the worst school of profligacy and debauchery that can be imagined; but they were, on the whole, less bad for Peter than the palace. He met there something besides mere jesters: he encountered new elements which had as yet no place in the terem, but contained the germ of the regeneration ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... temperament did not occasionally precipitate him; but he seems to have had nothing base or malignant in his composition; and that he was as capable of acts of extraordinary generosity and disinterestedness as of excesses of brutal fury or profligacy. Of the courage and strength of will proper to his race, he had his full share, with more than his share of their strength of thew and sinew; and his intellectual powers, both natural and acquired, were also of a high order. He was renowned in his own ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... great want, but unconscious of the only way to satisfy it. For Kate Evans had a mind and heart which kept her from descending into the paths of open sin. Many young women there were around her, neglecters, like herself, of God, his house, and his day, who had plunged into the depths of open profligacy; but with such she had neither intercourse nor sympathy, for she shrunk instinctively from everything that was low and coarse. Yet she walked in darkness; an abiding shadow rested on her spirit. She had gained admiration and won esteem, but she wanted peace. Her heart ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... atmosphere of pure oxygen. Do we work as hard for God as the world does for itself? Look at the energy beneath us: how evil in every form is active; how lies and half-truths propagate themselves quick as the blight on a rose-tree; how profligacy, and crime, and all the devil's angels are busy on his errands. If we are sitting drowsy by our camp-fires, the enemy is on the alert. You can hear the tramp of their legions and the rumble of their artillery through the night as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Villiers, duke of). There were two dukes of this name, father and son, both notorious for their profligacy and political unscrupulousness. The first (1592-1628) was the favorite of James I., nicknamed "Steenie" by that monarch from his personal beauty, "Steenie" being a pet corruption of Stephen, whose face at martyrdom was "as the face of an angel." He was assassinated by Fenton. Sir Walter Scott ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Committee of that School, that "in the district embraced by their Society, the consequences of ignorance were evident to the most superficial observer. Parents and children, appeared alike regardless of morality and virtue; the former indulging in profligacy, and the latter ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... maintain the high reputation which he had acquired. This was "The Life of Richard Savage," a man of whom it is difficult to speak impartially without wondering that he was for some time the intimate companion of Johnson; for his character was marked by profligacy, insolence, and ingratitude; yet, as he undoubtedly had a warm and vigorous, though unregulated mind, had seen life in all its varieties, and been much in the company of the statesmen and wits of his time, he could communicate to Johnson an ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... VERRES.—Terrible as was the state of society in Italy, still worse was the condition of affairs outside the peninsula. At first the rule of the Roman governors in the provinces, though severe, was honest and prudent. But during the period of profligacy and corruption upon which we have now entered, the administration of these foreign possessions was shamefully dishonest and incredibly cruel and rapacious. The prosecution of Verres, the propraetor of Sicily, exposed the scandalous ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... which urged him into the most vicious pleasures and the most extravagant excesses. The craft of the king was satisfied by the device of placing about the person of the Infant one devoted to himself; nor did his conscience, pious as he was, revolt at the profligacy which his favourite was said to participate, and, perhaps, to encourage; since the less popular the prince, the ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... vice, ruin, and early death. I have known many tradesmen whom it has made bankrupt. I have known Sunday scholars whom it has led to prison-teachers, and even superintendents, whom it has dragged down to profligacy. I have known ministers of high academic honours, of splendid eloquence, nay, of vast usefulness, whom it has fascinated, and hurried over the precipice of public infamy with their eyes open, and gazing with ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... they had not, further than you were on the Viceroy's staff; but is not that ample warranty for profligacy? Besides, the real intention was not to assail you, but the people here who admitted you.' Thus talking, he led Walpole to own that he had no acquaintanceship with the Kearneys, that a mere passing curiosity to see the interesting house had provoked ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... by one of Oliver's acts in 1654; but with the return of Charles and his profligacy, the sport again flourished in England. Pepys often alludes to it ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Knighthood of Malta—without fear, but (though, perhaps, the best of its class) not without reproach, has no place here. Its ethnology belongs to the different countries which it dignified by its valour, or dishonoured by its profligacy. ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... fettered the baronage. A fresh source of revenue was found in the Church. The same principles of feudal dependence were applied to its lands as to those of the nobles; and during the vacancy of a see or abbey its profits, like those of a minor, were swept into the royal hoard. William's profligacy and extravagance soon tempted him to abuse this resource, and so steadily did he refuse to appoint successors to prelates whom death removed that at the close of his reign one archbishoprick, four bishopricks, and eleven abbeys were found to ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... manner of man, he wondered, was he? A coward, piling profligacy on poltroonery? Or a hero, claiming exemption from moral law? What was done could not be undone; but it could be righted. He drew off from the little finger of his left hand that iron ring which, after a twinge of rheumatism, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... Latimer, was never so full of ill; charity was waxen cold in it. "Oh, London, London," cries this earnest old man, "repent! repent! for I think God more displeased with London, than he ever was with the city of Nebo."[9] Such was the profligacy of its youth, that he marvels the earth gaped not to swallow it up. There were many that denied the immortality of the soul, and the existence of a heaven or a hell.[10] Manly sports and pastimes had been exchanged for the gaming-table. Divorces, even amongst the inferior ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... against the equally great one of promoting the unnecessary accumulation of public revenue. No political maxim is better established than that which tells us that an improvident expenditure of money is the parent of profligacy, and that no people can hope to perpetuate their liberties who long acquiesce in a policy which taxes them for objects not necessary to the legitimate and real wants of their Government. Flattering as is the condition of our country at the present period, because ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... of the gods might have been quoted in vindication of every species of transgression; and had the Gentiles but followed the example of their own heavenly hierarchy, they might have felt themselves warranted in pursuing a course either of the most diabolical oppression, or of the most abominable profligacy. [9:2] ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... returned his wife. 'But I will not allow it. I will not submit to be ruined by the extravagance and profligacy of any man. I call Mr Nickleby to witness the course I intend to ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... Roannes, the Boy dismissed him at once as unworthy of further consideration. He was brilliantly, even artificially polished—glaringly ultra-fashionable, ostentatiously polite and suave. In the lines of his bestial face he bore the records of a lifetime's profligacy and the black tales of habitual self-indulgence. Paul hated him instinctively and wondered how a man of Ledoux's unmistakable refinement could tolerate ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... it has marks of individuality; it means something. In a few years it reverts to type. Political parties grown old are all equally bad. They begin as radical and end as conservative. That which began in virtue is undone through profligacy. Among successful religions there is no choice—they all have a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... the only striking character in the play which bears his name. The narrow fanatical republican virtue of Verrina, the mild and venerable wisdom of the old Doria, the unbridled profligacy of his Nephew, even the cold, contented, irreclaimable perversity of the cutthroat Moor, all dwell in our recollections: but what, next to Fiesco, chiefly attracts us, is the character of Leonora his wife. Leonora is of kindred to Amelia in the Robbers, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... from undoubted Raffaelles to jewelled toys. It was said that Lord Montfort saw no one; he certainly did not court or receive his own countrymen, and this perhaps gave rise to, or at least caused to be exaggerated, the tales that were rife of his profusion, and even his profligacy. But it was not true that he was entirely isolated. He lived much with the old families of France in their haughty faubourg, and was highly considered by them. It was truly a circle for which he was adapted. Lord ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... which, though they eventually degenerated into seditious agitation, had their rise in a feeling of opposition to Romish abuses and usurpations. This feeling was increased by the fearful state of profligacy into which Rome, and indeed all Italy, was plunged during the fifteenth century, which effectually destroyed the character formerly enjoyed by the Roman Church, whilst it could not but affect the spiritual health of the other Churches over which Rome exercised ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... house to her brother Callias, instead of the dwelling of her husband," rejoined Anaxagoras: "by his advice she refused to return; and she yesterday appealed to the archons for a divorce from Alcibiades, on the plea of his notorious profligacy. Alcibiades, hearing of this, rushed into the assembly, with his usual boldness, seized his wife in his arms, carried her through the crowd, and locked her up in her own apartment. No man ventured to interfere with this lawful ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... Southern planter does; and there begins and ends the difference. Industry, man's crown of honour elsewhere, is here his badge of utter degradation; and so comes all by which I am here surrounded—pride, profligacy, idleness, cruelty, cowardice, ignorance, squalor, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... claim as artists. Sallust made Thucydides his model, but fell below him in genius and elevated sentiment. He was born a plebeian, and rose to distinction by his talents, but was ejected from the Senate for his profligacy. Afterwards he made a great fortune as praetor and governor of Numidia, and lived in magnificence on the Quirinal—one of the most profligate of the literary men of antiquity. We possess but a small portion of his works, but the fragments which have come down to us show peculiar merit. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... them from top to bottom. This labour seemed to them to surpass the most excessive corvee which a just ruler had a right to impose upon his subjects, and the reputation of Kheops and Khephren suffered much in consequence. They were accused of sacrilege, of cruelty, and profligacy. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Club, a boon companion of Bolingbroke, and, as Swift says, "not an old man, but an old rake." From various sources we gather that he was a high liver, and not very nice in his ways of high living. In spite, however, of his undoubted profligacy, he must have been a man of good nature and a kindly heart, since he received affectionate record from Gay, Pope, and Swift. Mr. Walter Sichel quotes from "an unfinished sketch of a larger poem," by Lady ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... claim the jus primae noctis.[149-2] The pretended phallic worship of the Natchez and of Culhuacan, cited by the Abbe Brasseur, rests on no good authority, and if true, is like that of the Huastecas of Panuco, nothing but an unrestrained and boundless profligacy which it were an absurdity to call a religion.[149-3] That which Mr. Stephens attempts to show existed once in Yucatan,[149-4] rests entirely by his own statement on a fancied resemblance of no value whatever, and the arguments of Lafitau to the same effect are quite insufficient. ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... extraordinary loveliness. They could not, however, agree together. She left him, and established herself at Pavia. Rich with her father's wealth and still of most seductive beauty, she now abandoned herself to a life of profligacy. Three among her lovers must be named: Ardizzino Valperga, Count of Masino; Roberto Sanseverino, of the princely Naples family; and Don Pietro di Cardona, a Sicilian. With each of the two first she quarrelled, and separately besought each to murder the other. They ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... one time even a Leveller. He was a commissioner of the High Court of Justice and a regicide. At the Restoration he was imprisoned for life and died at Chepstow Castle, 1681, aged seventy-eight. He was notorious for profligacy and shamelessness, and kept a very seraglio of mistresses. [[The date "1681" is in ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... the conduct of his elder brother Galeazzo he had the worst possible example. Once in possession of supreme power, the new duke gave himself up to the most unbridled course of vice and cruelty. The profligacy of his life, and the horrible tortures which he inflicted on the hapless victims of his jealousy and anger, caused Milanese chroniclers to describe him as another Nero. He was commonly believed to have poisoned both his ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... such folly and such profligacy? The fact is, I really believe he has got ... or that she made him believe it, and therefore compelled him to marry her. There is nothing but this sort of gossip stirring in town. The debates are ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... said Gerbert, "endeavour to subvert the foundations of the Faith, and, by a course of profligacy and licentiousness, render the Holy See ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... frequent occurrence than is usually supposed. Among such romances, those cases, perhaps, form an unusual proportion in which young, innocent, and high-minded persons have made a sudden discovery of some great profligacy or deep unworthiness in the person to whom they had surrendered their entire affections. That shock, more than any other, is capable of blighting, in one hour, the whole after existence, and sometimes of at once overthrowing the balance ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... purlieus which shroud in mystery the source of the Cromwell Road. After four lean days your gluttonous instincts led you precipitately to withdraw to Paris, from whence, knowing your unshakable belief in the vilest forms of profligacy, I appreciate that lack of means must ere long ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... told me of an atrocity in the laws of his country, of which until then I was ignorant. It seems that any younger brother, next heir, might claim the estate by turning Protestant, or drive the incumbent to the same act. I was rejoiced to hear that there was hardly an instance of such profligacy known.[26] To what baseness will not the struggle for ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Lucinda, shorn and penitent, was led forth from the scene of her recent profligacy. It was her final exit from a world which for a little space she had loved not ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... the only objections to it. Its tendency, wherever it has been introduced in the history of our world, has been evil, and only evil. France, at the commencement of her revolution in 1789, was an infidel nation. The profligacy of the Catholic priesthood, and the demoralizing example of the Regent, Duke of Orleans, and the infidel publications of Voltaire and his associates, had produced a contempt for religion through every rank of society. ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... better of their mistake, and how were he the worse if they knew him for whom he is? 'Tis an unhappy family—a curse haunts it. Young in years, old in vice, the wretched nobleman who lies in the vault, by the coffin of that old aunt, scarcely better than himself, whose guineas supplied his early profligacy—alas! he ruined his ill-fated, beautiful cousin, and she died heart-broken, and her little child, both there—in that melancholy ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu |
