"Profligate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have been a scene of dissolute idleness into a hive of orderly industry. Newly-admitted prisoners were sometimes refractory, but her persistent gentleness eventually won their respect and co-operation. Men old in years and crime, pert London pickpockets, depraved boys and dissolute sailors, profligate women, smugglers, poachers, and the promiscuous horde of criminals which usually fill the gaol of a seaport and county town, all submitted to the benign influence of this good woman; and under her eyes they might be seen, for the first time in their lives, striving ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... asked the king. "Because he is a poor man, the son of small laboring folks, who are still tillers of the ground in our country." "Ah!" said Charles; "is there nothing more? Assuredly, fair brother, we should prize more highly the poor man of wisdom than the profligate ass;" and he maintained in the office him whom he ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... friend, sir, must at least strip his proposals of their fine gilding. I will satisfy Mr. Mowbray of St. Ronan's of his false pretences, both to rank and fortune; and I rather think he will protect his sister against the claim of a needy profligate, though he might be dazzled with the alliance ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... middy, as with the sorrow or suffering of the roughest tar on board. He was a sincere Christian too, and, what was more, was not ashamed of his Christianity. He exhibited his principles in his practice—in the daily duties of life,—till he taught the most profane and profligate to respect him, if not to adopt them. I wish there were more Basil Vernons in the service. Thank Heaven! there are some shining lights to lighten us in our darkness—leaven, which gradually, though slowly, may, by God's providence, leaven ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... Remember that China is reduced to the expedient of throwing its children into the water, according to the accounts of travelers. Now this production of two children is really the whole of marriage. The superfluous pleasures of marriage are not only profligate, but involve an immense loss to the man, as I will now demonstrate. Compare then with this poverty of result, and shortness of duration, the daily and perpetual urgency of other needs of our existence. Nature reminds us every hour of our real needs; and, on the other hand, refuses absolutely ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... Carhais, in the county of Cornwall, by whom he had two sons and three daughters. John, the eldest, and the father of the poet, was born in 1751, educated at Westminster School, and afterwards placed in the Guards, where his conduct became so irregular and profligate that his father, the admiral, though a good-natured man, discarded him long before his death. In 1778 he acquired extraordinary eclat by the seduction of the Marchioness of Caermarthen, under circumstances which have few parallels in the licentiousness of fashionable life. The meanness with which ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... Massachusetts was not punished as might have been expected. Clarendon's power was gone, and he was an exile. A board of trade, projected in 1668, never assumed the administration of colonial affairs, and had not vitality enough to last more than three or four years. Profligate libertines gained the confidence of the king's mistresses, and secured places in the royal cabinet. While Charles II. was dallying with women and robbing the theatres of actresses; while the licentious Buckingham, who had succeeded ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... Hercules on the plains of Thessaly, the Poet means the Armies of Brutus, and Cassius, defeated by Augustus, almost in the same place, at the Battle of Philippi. He concludes also that by Hylaeus is meant Mark Antony, who assumed the name of Bacchus, and ruined himself by his profligate passion for Cleopatra. Another Commentator observes, that as the Giants, and Lapithae, are said to have made the Palace of Saturn shake, so also did Brutus, and Cassius, and afterwards Mark Antony, make all Italy tremble, and that it is Rome itself that Horace would have to ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... matter of course, and fashionably proper for a minister representing the moneyless and homeless saint of Jerusalem, to spend in various ways ten or twenty times the average income of an American citizen. But has any man a right to indulge in needless and therefore profligate expenditure for himself, while misery unrelieved surrounds him?[14] Could he, if he had an occasional throb of the sentiment of brotherhood, the divine love enforced by Jesus? Suffering, intense suffering of mind and body, is ever ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... interpreter to beware of indulging his vain fancy by attempting to trace analogies in detail, where none are intended by the Holy Spirit. The true church of Christ is compared to a virtuous and fruitful woman, (ch. xii. 5;) and the apostate church is symbolized by a fruitful but profligate woman, (ch. xvii. 5.) Then both are also represented by two cities, which are equally contrasted. As the women differ in their outward adornment, (chs. xix. 8, xvii. 4,) so do the cities in the quality of population, commerce and employment, (ch. xviii. ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... sides we show are the sides seen by the world. There were people who could truly believe that Peter was a ward boss; a frequenter of saloons; a drunkard; a liar; a swearer; a murderer, in intention, if not in act; a profligate; and a compromiser of many of his own strongest principles. Yet there were people who could, say other things ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... and scrutinizing gaze; and then, shaking his head sternly, as if dissatisfied with the result of his observation, "This is no time of night, sirrah smith," he said, "for thee, or such as thou, to be abroad. Thy daily work done, thou shouldst be at home with thy wife and children, not seeking profligate adventures, or breeding foul sedition in the streets. Go home! go home! for shame on thee! thou art ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... principles may be more relaxed on some points than ours, but I doubt much whether a Frenchman would not be as much disgusted in England as an Englishman could possibly be in France; we call them a profligate race and condemn them in toto—something like Hudibras' ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... "You old profligate," cried Lisbeth, "you have not even asked me how your children are? What are you going to do for Adeline? I, at any rate, will ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... recompense, of service, or of gratitude. It is only in one way that I am able to heighten the gratification which must flow from reflection on your conduct:—by showing that the being whose life you have prolonged, though uneducated, ignorant, and poor, is not profligate and worthless, and will not dedicate that life which your bounty has given, to ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... makes it quite clear, if any evidence of that were necessary, that Anne had her brother in mind in writing the book. 'I could not be understood to suppose,' she says, 'that the proceedings of the unhappy scapegrace, with his few profligate companions I have here introduced, are a specimen of the common practices of society: the case is an extreme one, as I trusted none would fail to perceive; but I knew that such characters do exist, and if I have warned one rash ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... cause he has adopted, and to leave the effects of those arguments to the judgment of others. However useful this practice may be for the promotion of public justice, it is not without danger to the individual whose practice it becomes. It is apt to produce a profligate indifference to truth in higher occasions of life, where truth cannot for a moment be trifled with, much less callously trampled on, much less suddenly and totally yielded up to the basest of human motives. It is astonishing what unworthy and inadequate notions men are ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... it strongly. His mother, too, turned round and blamed him for it. Only the Sitt Hilda still was kind, comforting him in secret, till his love leapt up. And then came outer darkness. Iskender was a profligate, ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... retiring is foremost to glory in early depravity; he whose hand was ever ready to relieve the poor, while his heart sympathized in their sorrows, becomes the wanton spoiler and marauder for the sake of a bold vaunt; he who shrunk from the approach of profligate misleaders, now volunteers to harden new comers in the ways of sin. The youth who with noiseless step trod the courts of the Lord's house, and bent with lowly reverence in prayer, and listened with ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... Scott, the representative of Pickle in Scott's generation, was a Highlander, and Pickle was not only a traitor, a profligate, an oppressor of his tenantry, and a liar, but (according to Jacobite gossip which reached 'King James') a forger of the King's name! Moreover he was, in all probability, one fountain of that reproach, true or false, which still clings to the name ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... an aged peer. She was as pure and noble as she was fair and lovely. She was sought in marriage by many attractive suitors; but in vain, for she would not bestow her hand where she could not bestow her heart. Among the most persevering of these suitors was a profligate fortune-hunter, who, as the near relative of her late husband, had ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... dous, paints and pomades, moneylenders' circulars, belladonna and cantharides. But most astounding of all were the contents of the widows' prie-Dieu. In this devotional article of furniture were stored all the inmost secrets of her profligate career. Affectionate letters from the elderly gentleman on whom she had imposed a supposititious child lay side by side with a black-edged card, on which was written the last message of a young lover who had killed himself on her account. "Jeanne, in the flush of my youth I die because of you, ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... at this riot. This is the sum of all my miseries, If he, even he, a sober, hopeful lad, May be seduc'd into debaucheries. —But where shall I inquire for him? I warrant They have decoy'd him into some vile brothel. That profligate persuaded him, I'm sure. —But here comes Syrus; he can tell me all. And yet this slave is of the gang; and if He once perceives that I'm inquiring for him, He'll never tell me any thing; a rogue! I'll not ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... these points, insisting that Burr was a man of extreme and irregular ambition, selfish to a degree which even excluded social affection, and decidedly profligate. He admitted that he was far more artful than wise, far more dexterous than able, but held that artfulness and dexterity were objections rather than recommendations, while he thought a systematic statesman should have a theory. "No general principles," he said, "will work ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Oude, who now disturb the peace of the country; and I give a brief sketch of his history, as a specimen of the sufferings inflicted on the people by the wild licence which such landholders enjoy under the weak, profligate, ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... main, he called old-fashioned. I believed a laborer who was thrifty, efficient and industrious did not need a union to help him, arguing the union only helped the inefficient, lazy and profligate. ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... added to this injury, that of seducing their daughters, was wont to commit, to a carrier in the neighbourhood, the care of his illegitimate children, shortly after they were born. His emissary regularly carried them away, but they were never again heard of. The unjust and cruel gains of the profligate laird were dissipated by his extravagance, and the ruins of his house seem to bear witness to the truth of the rhythmical prophecies denounced against it, and still current among the peasantry. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... you persecute me?" said the old man, turning to his grandson. "Why do you bring your profligate companions here? I am poor. You have chosen your own path, follow it. Leave Nell and me to toil ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... sometimes redeem at low rates; and in other places have them for nothing. They are kept at perpetual labour, and are always chained, but with this difference, that their own natives are treated much worse than others; they are considered as more profligate than the rest, and since they could not be restrained by the advantages of so excellent an education, are judged worthy of harder usage. Another sort of slaves are the poor of the neighbouring countries, who offer of their ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... on him, for a moment, in speechless surprise; she looked back again at the bed. "Are you going to leave me by myself?" she asked wonderingly. Not the faintest suggestion of immodesty—nothing that the most profligate man living could have interpreted impurely—showed itself in her look or manner, as ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... private duties. Nor shall the faults of a few make impression upon me to the disadvantage of the order; for I am afraid a very censorious temper, in this respect, is too generally the indication of an uncharitable and perhaps a profligate heart, levelling characters, in order to cover some inward pride, or secret enormities, which they are ashamed to avow, and will not be ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... the result, for it seems that Miss Blandy's affection for this profligate man—almost double her age—was violent. As might be expected, Captain Cranstoun not only worked upon her feelings, but imposed on her credulity. He sent her from Scotland a pretended love powder, which he enjoined ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... thoughtless but affectionate and manly heart he bade the dark shadow of his spirit fall. "And, think not," he cried, "that you, Algernon Hurdlestone, shall triumph in my despair. That woman shall be mine, yet. Mine, though her brow has been polluted by your lips, and your profligate love has contaminated her for ever in my eyes. But I will bind you both with a chain, which shall render you my slaves for ever." Then, rising from the ground, he left the spot which had witnessed the only tender emotion he had ever felt, with ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... himself with plunder, the Pope being attended by the whole College of Cardinals with all their luxurious equipage. For it could not be supposed that he was withheld by any promptings of goodness or scruples of conscience; because in the breast of a profligate living in incest with his sister, and who to obtain the princedom had put his nephews and kinsmen to death, no virtuous impulse could prevail. So that the only inference to be drawn was, that men know not how to be splendidly wicked or wholly good, and shrink ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... weak, the profligate, the daring. There is old age, watching the play, with its voice like a baby's cry; and the paper whereon it keeps tremulous tally swimming upon eyes of ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... conveying to Sir Thomas Charleys my conviction,—my well-grounded conviction,—as to the gentleman's conduct. What I said to him I will say aloud to the whole county. It is notorious that the Vicar of Bullhampton is in the habit of visiting a profligate young woman in a low part of the city. That I say is disgraceful to him, to his cloth, and to the parish, and I shall give my opinion to the bishop to that effect. Who are you, sir, that you should question my words?" And again the Marquis ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... powerfully upon the thought and feeling of his contemporaries, he was himself, after all, but a sort of quintessence of them, and gave them back only an intensified, individual extract of themselves. The selfish vanity and profligate vice which he combined with his extraordinary intellectual gifts were as peculiar to himself as his great mental endowments; and though fools may have followed the fashion of his follies, the heart of all Europe was not stirred by a fashion of which he set the example, but by a passion ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... this girl}. This sorrow {still} remains for unhappy me, should {AEschinus} be able to seduce him, even him, who promises so fair, to a course of debauchery. Where am I to inquire for him? I doubt he has been carried off to some bad house; that profligate has persuaded him, I'm quite sure. But look— I see Syrus coming {this way}, I shall now know from him where he is. But, i'faith, he is one of the gang; if he perceives that I am looking for him, the rascal will never tell me. I'll not let him ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... John Underhill, whose unctuous piety and profligate life have an important place in Winthrop and other New England historians. With Captain John Mason he had the leading part in the crushing of the Pequots in 1637. Banished from Massachusetts and restored, this amusing reprobate had gone to the Dutch, "having good ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... three felt sure of catching him. And first, among the small folk under their protection, they stirred up two good souls to declare that they could no longer keep as vicar a profligate, a wizard, a devil, a freethinker, who bent one knee in church instead of two, who scoffed at rules and granted dispensations contrary to the rights of the Bishop. A shrewd accusation, which turned against him his natural ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... as in other parts of his early letters, that sort of display and boast of rakishness which is but too common a folly at this period of life, when the young aspirant to manhood persuades himself that to be profligate is to be manly. Unluckily, this boyish desire of being thought worse than he really was, remained with Lord Byron, as did some other feelings and foibles of his boyhood, long after the period when, with ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... all. Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order. One of the first symptoms they discover of a selfish and mischievous ambition is a profligate disregard of a dignity which they partake with others. To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ, as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... particular, which were founded upon the ruins of the Roman empire, the administration of justice appears for a long time to have been extremely corrupt; far from being quite equal and impartial, even under the best monarchs, and altogether profligate under the worst. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... her heart in order that she might give herself to him. She had married him for position and fortune; and now by his follies, by his extravagance, and by that greed of gold which is inevitable in the spendthrift and profligate, he had gone near to cheat her out of both name and fortune. Yet she so commanded herself as to receive him with a friendly air when he arrived at the Dolphin, on a dull grey autumn afternoon, after she had waited for him ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... opportunity. Divide wisely and equitably between the few who are most nearly of your own blood, and the many who in kinship are only a little farther removed. If you regard only those reared under your own roof, your cherished estate will soon be scattered, perhaps wasted by profligate heirs in riotous living, to their own ruin, and you and your fortune will quickly be forgotten. Give a share—pay a tithe to your more distant and more numerous kindred—to the general public, and you will be gratefully remembered, and mankind ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... aspect under which he will treat them. Obviously in many cases there are noble themes of art for whose appreciation no particular delicacy of moral or religious taste is required. There is no reason why such a subject as the Laocoon should make a different impression on a saint and on a profligate. It appeals to the tragic sense, which may be as highly developed in one as in the other. But if the Annunciation be the theme, we can well understand how differently it will impress a man of lively and cultured faith, a contemplative and mystic, with an appreciative and ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... that period of time mankind were more profligate than usual, or whether there was a more than ordinary demand for men in his majesty's colonies, cannot by us be determined. Mr. Carew was not, as is most commonly the case, deserted by his friends in adversity, for ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... the sap of life in their members. In France not even the judiciary, usually the last to part from its ancient roots, was sound and quick. 'The administration of justice,' says Arthur Young, 'was partial, venal, infamous. The conduct of the parliament was profligate and atrocious. The bigotry, ignorance, false principles, and tyranny of these bodies were generally conspicuous.'[7] We know what the court was, we know what the noblesse was, and this is what the third great leading order in the realm was. We repeat, then, that the historic doctrine could ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... to serve their lusts? To call him the Moses, the Man of God, the Joshua, the Saviour of Israel; and after all this, to treat the Thing his son with addresses no lesse then blasphemous, whose Father (as themselves confess to be the most infamous Hypocrite and profligate Atheist of all the Usurpers that ever any age produc'd) had made them his Vassalls, and would have intaild them so ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... piece of gossip believe it implicitly; it does not appear to me either amusing, or credible, or creditable to the man who retailed it. The Florentine society of the early years of this century was, if we may trust the keen observation of Stendhal, almost as naively and openly profligate as that of a South Sea Island village; and such a society, which could talk of the things and in the way which it did, which could permit certain poetical compositions (found highly characteristic by Stendhal) to be publicly performed before the ladies and gentlemen celebrated therein, such ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... on their lots, often situated many miles in the backwoods, and in distant and unsettled townships, presenting great obstacles to the poor emigrant, which it requires more energy and courage to encounter than is possessed by a vast number of them. Others, of idle and profligate habits, spend the money they received, and sell the land, for which they gave away their pensions, after which they remain miserable squatters on the ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... Middle Ages, there existed as a rule only a holy, but indifferent and utterly unlyrical, love for the women, the equals of their husbands, wooed usually of the family and solemnly given in marriage without much consultation of their wishes; and a highly passionate and singing, but completely profligate and debasing, desire for mercenary though cultivated creatures like the Delias and Cynthlas of Tibullus and Propertius, or highborn women, descended, like Catullus' Lesbia, in brazen dishonour to their level, women towards whom there could not possibly ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... observation, that those who receive a large legacy and have been brought up in idleness, become prodigal in their expenditure, and squander their fortune by dissipation more rapidly than their parents amassed it by industry and frugality; and then, ignorant and helpless and profligate, they eke out a wretched existence in abject poverty, resorting to illegitimate means for a living, until the last fruits of their improper training may be seen in the state's prison or ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... children as did this unlettered Gipsy. After having promised that the morals of the child should be watched over, she was confided to his care. And the author has known a Gipsy parent correct with stripes a grown daughter, for mentioning what a profligate person had talked about. ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... plunged into debts and obligations—it requires both courage and virtuous determination to meet and discharge them. It requires a terrible effort to free one's self from evil companions, whose interest it is, that you should still remain as profligate as themselves. But I was resolved; and, thanks to the counsels of my Mary, I succeeded ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... confuse the situation, there occurred at this time the contest of John Wilkes, backed by the London mob, against the Grafton Ministry. This demagogue, able {45} and profligate, had already come into conflict with the Grenville Ministry in 1765, and had been driven into exile. Now, in 1768, he returned and was repeatedly elected to the Commons, and as often unseated by the vindictive ministerial majority. Riots and bloodshed accompanied the ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... saves twice as much as he ought, receiving where he ought not and not spending where he ought, will be at least twice as rich as he who makes money where he ought, and spends where he ought. On the other hand, an utterly bad man is generally profligate and poor, while he who acquires honestly, and spends what he acquires on noble objects, can hardly be very rich. A very rich man is therefore not a good man, and therefore not a happy one. But the object of ...
— Laws • Plato
... was increased by the timely publication of a Hymn to the Pillory, in which Defoe boldly declared the iniquity of his sentence, and pointed out to the Government more proper objects of their severity. Atheists ought to stand there, he said, profligate beaux, swindling stock-jobbers, fanatic Jacobites, and the commanders who had brought the English fleet into disgrace. As for him, his only fault lay in his not being understood; but he was perhaps justly punished for being such a fool as to trust ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... crimes and frauds. The conflict between the Mormons and the Missourians resulted in the migration of the former to Nauvoo in Illinois, where a community was organized in which Smith exercised supreme power. In 1843 Smith, who was as profligate as he was knavish, professed to receive a revelation sanctioning polygamy. His bad conduct, and that of his adherents, brought on a conflict with the civil authorities. Smith, with his brother, was killed in the jail ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the work of devastation in Duke Street and Warwick Street at night, were, in the mass, the same. Allowing for the chance accessions of which any crowd is morally sure in a town where there must always be a large number of idle and profligate persons, one and the same mob was at both places. Yet they spread themselves in various directions when they dispersed in the afternoon, made no appointment for reassembling, had no definite purpose or design, and indeed, for anything they knew, were ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Egbert had opportunities of displaying his natural and acquired talents. Brithric, King of Wessex, had married Eadburga, natural daughter of Offa, King of Mercia, a profligate woman, equally infamous for cruelty and for incontinence. Having great influence over her husband, she often instigated him to destroy such of the nobility as were obnoxious to her; and where this expedient failed, she scrupled not being herself active in traitorous attempts against ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... 1621, was succeeded by his son Philip IV. As in the reign of his father worthless favorites ruled, while a profligate king squandered the money of the people in lavish entertainments and luxuries. Much has been written about the visit of Charles, Prince of Wales (afterward Charles I.), accompanied by the Duke of Buckingham, at his court; whither the young Prince had ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... Very few men of profligate lives escape these diseases. They are alarmingly prevalent among the 'fast' youths of our cities. And some forms of them are incurable by any effort of skill. Even the approach of such men ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... where spread abroad with all alacrity of triumph, and had induced many of the inhabitants of the country, who had fled before the fury of the Wolf of Plinlimmon, to return to their desolate habitations. Numbers also of the loose and profligate characters which abound in a country subject to the frequent changes of war, had flocked thither in quest of spoil, or to gratify a spirit of restless curiosity. The Jew and the Lombard, despising danger where there was a chance of ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... said of one of the most gifted women who ever trod American soil,— she being of English birth,—that, before she obtained the divorce which separated her from her profligate husband, she once went for counsel to the wife of her pastor. She unrolled before her the long catalogue of merciless outrages to which she had been subject, endangering finally her health, her life, and that of her children born and to be born. When she turned at last for advice to her confessor, ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... a most profligate and abandoned life, whose praying mother followed him like a shadow into and out of his drinking saloons and gambling houses, at last absented himself from home, whenever he was in port. Her burden, ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... distinguished the name of Pandaenus joined with his own; and having heard the particulars of the story, had no difficulty in understanding that Milza was directed to apply to them for assistance. He readily promised to intercede with his profligate kinsman, and immediately sent messengers in search ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... guileful betrayer! Hadst thou not seemed beyond the possibility of forgiveness, I might have been induced to think of taking a wretched chance with a man so profligate. But it would be criminal to bind my soul in covenant to a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... hostile; and while the one was detained in Italy by insurrection against his authority, the other was plunged in luxury and dissipation, enjoying the first delights of a lawless passion, at the Egyptian capital. The nations of the East were, moreover, alienated by the recent exactions of the profligate Triumvir, who, to reward his parasites and favorites, had laid upon them a burden that they were scarcely able to bear. Further, the Parthians enjoyed at this time the advantage of having a Roman officer of good position in ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... time when the stage was so profligate that the Puritans were justified in tabooing it altogether. But that is not now the case. There are many theatres where plays are given that are not only pure in tone, but exert a refining and educating influence on all who hear them. And as for operas, there is hardly ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... very particular to do, he strolled in the direction of her lodging, and saw Gibbie go into the house. Having seen him in, he was next seized with the desire to see him out again; having lain in wait for him as a beneficent brownie, he must now watch him as a profligate baronet forsooth! To haunt the low street until he should issue was a dreary prospect—in the east wind of a March night, which some giant up above seemed sowing with great handfuls of rain-seed; but having made up his mind, he stood his ground. For two hours he ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... Osborne. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had said, that he did not wish to see the State become a great money lender; in reply to which Mr. Osborne expressed the opinion, that it would be much better for the State to become a great money lender than to continue a profligate spendthrift—dissipating the funds of the country on the highways of Ireland. "Had not," he asked, "the policy of the State always been to become a great money lender? Since the Union L18,000,000 of money had been lent to England and Scotland, of which L6,000,000 had been repaid, whilst ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... workwomen there (erased, and replaced by: "To the shoemaker, Anna Loder, in Vienna"),........200 Should she presume to make any written claims, I declare them to be null and void, having already paid for her and her profligate husband, Joseph Lungmayer, more than ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... and irresponsible officers were in command. It was then learned that a great part of the time the Emperor was either drunk or doped, that the Empress was hysterical and on the verge of a mental breakdown, and that they were assisted by senile Sturmer, mentally unbalanced Protopopov, and profligate Rasputin, none of whom could read a compass nor lay out a course and steered the ship as they willed. All the passengers, first, second, and third class, grand dukes, intelligentsia, and laborers saw the danger and shouted warning but the officers neither saw nor heard. In order to save themselves ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... whose possibly suspicious readiness to attack the vices of others with a view to diverting attention from his own was signally exemplified in the well-known fact that, even while putting on a feint of respect and tenderness for his memory, he had exposed the profligate haunts and habits of Christopher Marlowe under the transparent pseudonym of Christopher Sly. To the first of these plays attention had long since been drawn by a person of whom it was only necessary to say that he had devoted a long life to the study and illustration ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... lively picture of the gayest and most profligate periods of the history of the English Court. The writer, Sir Ralph Esher, is an adventurer in the Court of our Second Charles, where he is introduced by luckily securing a feather that escapes from the hat of one of the ladies of the Court on horseback. The work opens ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... examination. But the moment I entered Halle, the university town, all my resolutions came to nothing.—Being now more than ever my own master, and without any control as long as I did not fight a duel, molest the people in the streets, &c., I renewed my profligate life afresh, though now a student of divinity. When my money was spent, I pawned my watch and a part of my linen and clothes, or borrowed in other ways. Yet in the midst of it all I had a desire to renounce this wretched life, for I had no enjoyment ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... charity are not simply the offspring of deceased parents, but such other children, also, as have been left unprovided for, by the desertion of those whose duty it was to foster them, or from the circumstance of their being found to be worthless and profligate characters, or by their having betrayed a carelessness and indifference as to the moral improvement of their children; where such a disposition displayed itself, the offspring were taken from them, and their subsequent ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... the three reprobates, as I justly call them, though they were much civilized by their new settlement compared to what they were before, and were not so quarrelsome, having not the same opportunity, yet one of the certain companions of a profligate mind never left them, and that was their idleness. It is true, they planted corn and made fences; but Solomon's words were never better verified than in them: "I went by the vineyard of the slothful, and it was overgrown ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... vicious and profligate manners are now as much noted for their piety and good order. Drunkards, profane swearers, liars, quarrelsome persons, etc., are remarkably reformed.... A number of families who had lived apparently without the fear of God, in folly ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... him the profligate nobles and the criminals who had nothing to lose and every thing to gain by revolution, Catiline plotted to murder the consuls and seize the government; but his attempt was foiled, and he waited for a more favorable opportunity. Two years later he was defeated by Cicero as candidate for the ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... to whose standard they flocked was, for all his sweet and taking manners, but a profligate at best; he had no true religion in his heart—nothing but a desire, indeed, for his own aggrandisement, whatever he might say to the unhappy maid that handed a Bible to him at Taunton. But of this the people were ignorant, and so it came to pass that they ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... with great ardour in a new poem, called by him, the Progress of a Divine; in which he conducts a profligate priest, by all the gradations of wickedness, from a poor curacy in the country to the highest preferments of the church; and describes, with that humour which was natural to him, and that knowledge which was extended to all the diversities of human life, his behaviour in every station; and insinuates, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... in me, and allow me to withdraw her from a scene which her wild grief so unpleasantly interrupted; for I thought that were I then and there to announce myself as her brother, she might not believe me—she might suspect some treachery or snare in a city so notoriously profligate as Florence. But the subsequent explanations which took place between us cleared up ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... the danger of its example. Nor have I the confidence to petition for impunity; but humbly hope, that publick security may be established, without the spectacle of a clergyman dragged through the streets, to a death of infamy, amidst the derision of the profligate and profane; and that justice may be satisfied with irrevocable exile, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... suggestions which stimulated discussions; it was she, oftenest, who kept in view the fact that a good many women in the past had been entrusted with power and had not always used it amiably, who brought up the wicked queens, the profligate mistresses of kings. These ladies were easily disposed of between the two, and the public crimes of Bloody Mary, the private misdemeanours of Faustina, wife of the pure Marcus Aurelius, were very satisfactorily classified. If the influence of women in the past accounted for every ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... rather wise. For those who are little thought of by the wise, seem to hit the taste of the vulgar."[17] And I have myself noticed that those who practise to speak acceptably and to the gratification of the masses promiscuously, for the most part become also profligate and lovers of pleasure in their lives. Naturally enough. For if in giving pleasure to others they neglect the noble, they would be hardly likely to put the lofty and sound above a life of luxury and pleasure, and to prefer moderation to ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Quakers, many of the charges made against them, as connected with the Ranters. He was a man of great talent—fearless, devoted, and pious. He became extensively useful; and like thousands of most excellent men, was sacrificed at the shrine of that fanatical church over which the profligate and debauched Charles the Second was the supreme head. He died in the prime of life, receiving the crown of martyrdom, when his happy spirit ascended from Newgate in 1662: aged ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... him for submitting to such treatment, and imprisoned him for trying to run away from it. He came at last out of purgatory; and Europe felt him to her farthest bounds. This bookish, philosophizing, verse-making cynic and profligate was soon to approve himself the first warrior of his time, and one of the first ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... named William Carmichael, formerly a bailie of Edinburgh, was one of Sharp's favourites, and one of his numerous commissioners for suppressing conventicles in Fife. He was a licentious profligate, greedy of money, and capable of undertaking any job, however vile. This man's enormities were at last so unbearable that he became an object of general detestation, and his excessive exactions had ruined so many respectable ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... G.F. has entered upon a pretty minute account of this strange society, and does his best to palliate the enormities of which, there seems no reason to doubt, its really profligate members are almost habitually guilty. That gentleman is certainly liberal in his views of the natives in general, and on the whole appears disposed to give more credit to human nature than, perhaps, it will be found on the closest inspection to deserve. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... it. Governors nowadays get so dreadfully conceited and dictatorial—they know best—and they will have this—and they won't have that. It's no joke to be a son, I can tell you.—'Latchkey, sir! only let me hear of your daring to introduce that profligate modern invention into my house, and I'll cut you off with ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... equalled this author. But he could not shape out the image of a perfect gentleman, or of that winning gaiety of soul, which may indeed be exemplified, but can never be defined, and never be resisted. His profligate is a man without taste; and his coquettes are insolent and profoundly revolting. He has no resemblance of the art, so conspicuous in Fletcher and Farquhar, of presenting to the reader or spectator an hilarity, bubbling and spreading forth from a perennial spring, which we love as surely as we ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... gave him the command of the fleet, and made him, next to his brother, the most powerful and important personage in the realm. He had, besides, as has already been stated, the custody and care of Elizabeth, who lived in his house; though, as he was a profligate and unprincipled man, this position for the princess, now fast growing up to womanhood, was considered by many persons as of doubtful propriety. Still, she was at present only fourteen years old. There was another young lady likewise in his family, a niece of King Henry, and, ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... be a piker, Bill," he said, with the air of a profligate young millionaire escapading in the columns of the press. "You can't go to parties and things ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... courtiers and favorites staked fortunes at the gaming tables, outran each other in devising costly dresses, contrived novel equipages and unique dwellings. In his superb Court he found all the elements required to satisfy his pride, and glorify his reign. The Sun King was the most profligate host in all history. Determined to outdo the fabulous luxury of the feasts of Lucullus in early Roman times, and to outshine the storied splendor of Oriental princes, he entertained his Court and guests with lavish liberality, ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... century, says that "soon after the wedding day the newly-married wife sets herself about spinning her winding sheet, and a husband that shall sell or pawn it is esteemed among all men one of the most profligate." And Dr. Jamieson says—"When a woman of the lower class in Scotland, however poor, or whether married or single, commences housekeeping, her first care, after what is absolutely necessary for the time, is to provide ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... rivals. It was in vain that poor Lady Lyndon pleaded her entire innocence and vowed she had never encouraged me. 'Never encouraged him!' screamed out the old fury; 'didn't you encourage the wretch at Spa, during Sir Charles's own life? Didn't you marry a dependant of yours to one of this profligate's bankrupt cousins? When he set off for England, didn't you follow him like a mad woman the very next day? Didn't he take lodgings at your very door almost—and do you call this no encouragement? For shame, madam, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... up and ennobling human destiny in the future, and he should therefore 'speak them in words hard as rocks,' regardless of the contumely heaped upon him by little minds for having thus spoken them. What if the ridicule, the denunciations of the unthinking, the sensual, the profligate, the unreflecting fools of the world be poured upon him? What of that? To-day, may be one of darkness and storm. The cloud and the storm will pass away, and the brightness and glory of the sunlight will be all over the earth to-morrow. Let him 'speak ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... tact and mildness, however, Mary won the respect of the nobles and the admiration of the people, until a series of marital troubles and blunders—her marriage with a worthless cousin, Henry Darnley, and then her scandalous marriage with Darnley's profligate murderer, the earl of Bothwell—alienated her people from her and drove her into exile. She abdicated the throne of Scotland in favor of her infant son, James VI, who was reared a Protestant and subsequently became ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... offices, one man being often in receipt of the salaries of several offices, though performing the duties of none—the fact that Ministers have maintained majorities by unblushing bribery in elections—that hardly one man in two hundred is an elector—the profligate arts of corruption by which every able man is bought by the Court—the disgraceful censorship of the press and the drama—the enormous appropriations for the civil list, wrung out by grinding taxes from the toil and sweat of millions—the absurd assumption, yet the monstrous power, over the press ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... hands of persons of understanding and integrity, that will suffer no man to be falsely accused or defamed; nor the lives of any to be put in jeopardy, by the malicious conspiracies of great or small, or the perjuries of any profligate wretches. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... devout, seated before the tent of the preacher, in the sunny hours of June, listening to his eloquence, or partaking of the mystic bread and wine; but in these our latter days, when discipline is relaxed, along with the sedate and the pious come swarms of the idle and the profligate, whom no eloquence can edify and no solemn rite affect. On these, and such as these, the poet has poured his satire; and since this desirable reprehension the Holy Fairs, east as well as west, have become more decorous, if ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... age, in a nation marked for its degeneracy; nursed and reared in a church, as profligate as the world in which it was embedded; persecuted at every step of her career; groping as she did in spiritual desolation and ignorance, nevertheless, she arose to the highest pinnacle of pre-eminence ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... my daily visits to Hanaruro, that the Wahuaners had lost the simplicity and innocence of character which formerly distinguished them. The profligate habits of the settlers of all nations among them, and of the numerous foreign sailors with whom they constantly associate, have most prejudicially affected their morals. Fraud, theft, and burglary, never heard ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... renounced the worship of the living God, "the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity," it was only a little time till she descended to degrading idolatry, by the worship of the Goddess of Reason, in the person of a profligate woman. And this in the representative assembly of the nation, and by its highest civil and legislative authorities! Says the historian: "One of the ceremonies of this insane time stands unrivaled for absurdity combined with impiety. The doors of the Convention were thrown ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... did ever hate your sanctimonious Banbury-men); but he has a Proper Sense of what is due to the Honour and Figure of his family, and refrains from soiling his hands with bales of dice and worse implements among the profligate crew to be met with, not alone at Newmarket, or at the "Dog and Duck," or "Hockley Hole," but in Pall-Mall, and in the very ante-chambers of St. James's, no cater-cousin of the Groom-Porter he. He rides his hackney, as a gentleman should, nor have I prohibited ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... supper—a cold fowl and a bottle of Burgundy—a profligate supper, fit for such abandoned characters; and over it you shall tell me how the world looked to you when ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... profligate finds his courtship so gravely repressed by an admonition of his duty, he very naturally desires the girl not to take upon her the office ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... field of work, where the streets were full of misery and the slum life rampant. A few short blocks away was another world—a world of palaces. Jim had never before seen massed misery; he had never before seen profligate luxury, and the shock of contrast brought to him the sudden, overwhelming thought: "These people don't want preaching, they want fair play. This is not a religious question, it is an economic question." And in a flash: "The religious ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... apply his mind to great things, he must first perfect his character by simplicity's stern law; he must care naught for the haughty frown of the fierce tyrant that lords it in his palace, nor seek client-like for invitations to the board of the profligate, nor deliver himself over to the company of debauchees and drown the fire of his understanding in wine, nor sit in the theatre the hired applauder of the mouthing actor. But whether the citadel of panoplied Minerva allure him with its smile, or the land where ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... children, and forcing their inclinations in marriage; and in the second part, we see a fine example of the pernicious effects of a young lady's reposing confidence or engaging in correspondence with a man of profligate and debauched principles. I do not at present recollect any composition which, view'd in this light, can be compared with the Iliad and Clarissa. The morals of the first are of the utmost importance in public life, and those of the last in private life. If the little states and republicks of Greece, ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... better test of the popular opinion of a man than the character assigned to him on the stage; and till the close of the sixteenth century Sir John Oldcastle remained the profligate buffoon of English comedy. Whether in life he bore the character so assigned to him, I am unable to say. The popularity of Henry V., and the splendour of his French wars served no doubt to colour all who had opposed him with a blacker shade than they deserved: ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude |
