"Ribaldry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Frischlinus, for example, one of the commentators upon Aristophanes, though he justly allows his taste to be less pure than that of Menander, has yet undertaken his defence against the outrageous censure of the ancient critick. In the first place, he condemns, without mercy, his ribaldry and obscenity. But this part, so worthy of contempt, and written only for the lower people, according to the remark of Boivin, bad as it is, after all, is not the chief part which is left of Aristophanes. I will not say, with Frischlinus, that Plutarch seems in this to contradict himself, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... accordingly gave way, forming a lane in their midst through which our friends passed in fear and trembling, exposed for a minute or so to the coarsest ribaldry which the ruffianly band could summon to their lips on the spur of the moment. It was not until they had all been passed safely into the two whale-boats, and Dickinson's little band had drawn themselves ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... ministered. Infuriated mobs hunted them like bloodhounds; and the cloisters of convent and monastery, which had hitherto been disturbed only by footsteps gliding quietly from cell to chapel, or the hum of voices mingling in devotion, now echoed the tread of armed ruffians and resounded with ribaldry and imprecations. An old man, who was for a time my teacher, told me many a tale of those days. He had narrowly escaped, once, by concealing himself under the floor of his room. He said that he felt the pressure, as his pursuers repeatedly passed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... well-established fact that immodesty of expression, the recollection derived, it may often be, accidentally and unwillingly from oral sources during the previous life, is one of the numerous phases of insanity; and not only are the song-fragments chanted by Ophelia, but even the ribaldry addressed to her by Hamlet, in the play-scene, vindicated, there being little doubt that Shakespeare intended the simulated madness of the latter through his intellectual supremacy to be equally true to nature, the manners of his age permitting the delineation in a form which is now repulsive ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... in one work, are considered as the classical stock-pieces of the Chinese stage; but like ourselves, they complain that a depraved taste prevails for modern productions very inferior to those of ancient date. It is certainly true, that every sort of ribaldry and obscenity are encouraged on the Chinese stage at the present day. A set of players of a superior kind travel occasionally from Nankin to Canton; at the latter of which cities, it seems, they meet with considerable encouragement from the Hong merchants, and other wealthy inhabitants. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... stock on his farm may be the meanest trash in existence, and it creates no remark. On the contrary, one who at any extra cost has supplied himself with stock of the choicer kinds, let their superiority be ever so apparent, has often been the subject of ribaldry, by his unthinking associates. And such, we are sorry to say, is still the case in too many sections of our country. But, on the whole, both our public spirit, and our intelligence, is increasing, in ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... least defect of the English comedies is their offensiveness. I may sum up the whole in one word by saying, that after all we know of the licentiousness of manners under Charles II., we are still lost in astonishment at the audacious ribaldry of Wycherley and Congreve. Decency is not merely violated in the grossest manner in single speeches, and frequently in the whole plot; but in the character of the rake, the fashionable debauchee, a moral scepticism ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... 'The ribaldry of this miserable man is despicably disgusting,' said Pott, pretending to address Bob Sawyer, and scowling upon Slurk. Here, Mr. Slurk laughed very heartily, and folding up the paper so as to get at a fresh column conveniently, said, that ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... footsteps, and laughter. Next door to our room was one where a man sold gin, under the name of tape; and here, from morning till night, the people kept up a horrible revelry;—and sang—sad songs some of them: but my dear little girl was, thank God! unable to understand the most part of their ribaldry. She never used to go out till nightfall; and all day she sat working at a little store of caps and dresses for the expected stranger—and not, she says to this day, unhappy. But the confinement sickened her, who had been used to happy country air, and she grew ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shoulder which had missed its thrust was cut clear into the bone, a groove four inches long, and in the selfsame fraction of a second the catlike Bill, from two lengths distant, darted his red tongue in and out at Jan in cold ribaldry. ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... member of the writing brotherhood, it was natural that his reviews should not pass without severe criticisms. He often complained of the insults, ribaldry, Billingsgate, and Bear-garden language to which he was exposed; and some of his biographers have taken these lamentations seriously, and expressed their regret that so good a man should have been so much persecuted. But as he deliberately provoked ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... intervened again almost harshly on the laughter of the court, with the remark that a man was being tried for his life; that ribaldry was out of place; and that, unless the course pursued by the counsel was to discredit the reliability of the character of the witness, the examination was in excess ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that the convention of the Restoration needed new blood. A justification of its choice of material has been attempted: there is no inconsistency in affirming that the tendency to use it with a mere monotony of ribaldry was emphatic. Of this tendency the most notable and useful illustration is Wycherley, because in point of wit and dramatic skill he dwarfed his colleagues. As Mr. Swinburne has said, the art of Congreve is ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... surplice, from the wondering parishioners, though the companions of his jovial hours have long ceased to feel the slightest compunctions arising from inward respect, when they laugh at his heinously red nose, or chorus in his ribaldry. The islanders of the South Sea are not singular then, in mentally disjoining ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... semblance of manners or proper reserve. He differed, indeed, markedly from the others, not only in his behaviour, which was at least conformable, but in his appearance of alacrity and cheerful health. Seeing that I suffered as much from the ribaldry of my fellow-guests as from my bodily pains, he came and sat by my side, and encouraged me with the assurance that it was far better to wait for the brother-in-charge to awake in the course of nature than to disturb him out of his sleep. ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... shamefully slandered with stories, as if Phidias were in the habit of receiving, for Pericles's use, freeborn women that came to see the works. The comic writers of the town, when they had got hold of this story, made much of it, and bespattered him with all the ribaldry they could invent, charging him falsely with the wife of Menippus, one who was his friend and served as lieutenant under him in the wars; and with the birds kept by Pyrilampes, an acquaintance of Pericles, who, they ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... advanced that day twenty-seven miles, to the garrison house of John Woodcock, within the limits of the present town of Attleborough. Woodcock kept a sort of tavern at what was called the Ten Mile River, which tavern he was enjoined by the court to "keep in good order, that no unruliness or ribaldry be permitted there." He was a man of some consequence, energetic, reckless, and not very scrupulous in regard to the rights of the Indians. An Indian owed him some money. As Woodcock could not collect the debt, he paid himself by going into the Indian's house and taking his child and some goods. ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... between the many tresses! She had upon her snow-white brow a ruby circlet, less fertile in rays of fire than her black eyes, still moist with tears from her hearty laugh. She even threw her slipper at a statue gilded like a shrine, twisting herself about from very ribaldry and allowed her bare foot, smaller than a swan's bill, to be seen. This evening she was in a good humour, otherwise she would have had the little shaven-crop put out by the window without more ado ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... every amenity, every dignity, every sweet usage of that quiet life of mutual admiration in which perfect Shakespearian appreciation is expected to arise, that man is Frank Harris. Here is one who is extraordinarily qualified, by a range of sympathy and understanding that extends from the ribaldry of a buccaneer to the shyest tendernesses of the most sensitive poetry, to be all things to all men, yet whose proud humor it is to be to every man, provided the man is eminent and pretentious, the champion of his enemies. To the Archbishop he is ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... must be tolerated for their age. It cannot be denied that some of them try our patience, in the epitaphs even more perhaps than in the carvings, and "merely mock whom they were meant to honour." Two out of a vast number may be selected as painful evidences of a departed century's tombstone ribaldry. The first, from a village near Bath, is a deplorable mixture of piety and profanity, sentiment ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... but to the Knight's great surprise, as he gave the good-night to two or three young fellows a little before our landing, one of them, instead of returning the civility, asked us, what queer old put[190] we had in the boat? with a great deal of the like Thames ribaldry. Sir Roger seemed a little shocked at first, but at length assuming a face of magistracy, told us, "That if he were a Middlesex justice, he would make such vagrants know that her Majesty's subjects were no more to be abused ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... to Caesar. But Cicero's love for his wife, his brother, his son, his nephew, especially for his daughter, was unbounded. All offences on their part he could forgive, till there came his wife's supposed dishonesty, which was not to be forgiven. The ribaldry of Dio Cassius has polluted the story of his regard for Tullia; but in truth we know nothing sweeter in the records of great men, nothing which touches us more, than the profundity of his grief. His readiness to forgive his brother and to forgive his nephew, his anxiety ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... surpriz'd with the most high and delicious Repast;— Nothing can be more pregnant with Mirth, than the Opposition continually working between the grave Solemnity and Dignity of Quixote, and the arch Ribaldry and Meanness of Sancho; And the Contrast can never be sufficiently admir'd, between the excellent fine Sense of the ONE, and the dangerous common Sense of ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... dramatists thus:— Congreve—Genius 15, Judgment 16, Learning 14, Versification 14; Vanbrugh—14, 15,14,10; Farquhar—15, 15, 10, io. Unlike Goldsmith, unhappily, Farquhar's moral tone is not high; sensuality is confounded with love, ribaldry mistaken for wit The best that can be said of him that he contrasts favourably with his contemporary dramatists; Virtue is not always uninteresting in his pages. He is free from their heartlessness, malignity, and cruelty. The plot of The Beaux-Stratagem ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... feast flares with lights, and round the table, emptying their flaming bowls of drink, and exchanging the wildest jests and ribaldry, sit men and women, waited on by rascally valets and attendants as dissolute as their mistresses—perhaps the very worst company in the world. There doesn't seem to be a pretence of morals. At the head of the table sits Mirabel or Belmour (dressed in the French fashion and waited ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as fishify, jackalent, parma-city, jiggumbob, conjobble, foutra, etc., are legitimate English words! Alas, had a native of the United States introduced such vulgar words and offensive ribaldry into a similar work, what columns of abuse would have issued from the Johnsonian presses against the wretch who could thus sully his book and corrupt the language!" He criticises the accuracy with which Johnson has discriminated the different senses of the same word, and words nearly ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... ruse on the part of an officer of the Commune, one of the better class. They were two days without food, and were then driven into Paris like a flock of sheep, their black-and-white dress exposing them to all the insults and ribaldry of the excited multitude; for the Versaillais were in Paris, and hope, among those who knew the situation, was drawing to an end. That night the Dominicans were confined in a prison on the Avenue d'Italie, where a ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... a note in his voice she had not heard before, some hint of leering ribaldry in the thick laugh that for the first time stirred unease in her heart. She did not know that the desperate, wild-animal fear in him, so overpowering that everything else had been pushed to the background, ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... eagerly on the watch to fasten a charge of heresy on the other. Besides, if ever a poor fanatic thrust, himself into the fire, it was Michael Servetus. He was a rabid enthusiast, and did every thing he could in the way of insult and ribaldry to provoke the feeling of the Christian church. He called the Trinity triceps monstrum et Cerberum quendam tripartitum, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... one word, is the best, for the variety and the most excellent continuance of the plot to the very end, that ever I saw, or think ever shall, and all possible, not only to be done in the time, but in most other respects very admittable, and without one word of ribaldry; and the house, by its frequent plaudits, did show their sufficient approbation. So home; with much ado in an hour getting a coach home, and, after writing letters at my office, I went home to supper and to bed, now resolving to set up my rest as to plays till Easter, if not Whitsuntide ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Buddhism. Their revival meetings make Bedlam seem silent, and reduce to gentle murmurs the camp-meeting excesses with which we are familiar in our own country. They are the most sectarian of all sects. Their vocabulary of Billingsgate and the ribaldry employed by them even against their Buddhist brethren, cast into the shade those of Christian sectarians in their fiercest controversies. "A thousand years in the lowest of the hells is the atonement prescribed by the Nichirenites for ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... out of the way, and men and women started back, scowling and muttering; when a blockade of wagons and push-carts forced them to stop, the children gathered about and jeered, and a group of hoodlums loafing by a saloon flung ribaldry at them; but Oliver never turned his eyes from ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... They adopted the dialect of the common people, and were more or less popular in their character. More details will be given when we examine them in their completer form. All such parts of these early scenic entertainments as were not mere conversation or ribaldry, were probably composed in ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... they continued.[683] Amator, Bishop of Auxerre, tried to stop the worship of a large pear-tree standing in the centre of the town and on which the semi-Christian inhabitants hung animals' heads with much ribaldry. At last S. Germanus destroyed it, but at the risk of his life. S. Martin of Tours was allowed to destroy a temple, but the people would not permit him to attack a much venerated pine-tree which ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... peculiarity,—there was little underbrush, little of the luxuriance of vines and creepers, which is so striking in an African forest. Parasitic life, luxurious idleness, seemed impossible here; the atmosphere was too sacred, too solemn, for the fantastic ribaldry of scarlet runners, of flaunting yellow streamers. The lofty boughs interlaced in arches overhead, and the vast dim aisles opened far down in the tender gloom of the wood and faded slowly away in the distance. And every little spray of leaves that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... this buck was led seemed surprising; for the animal had not only his natural ferocity to offer against the skill of his antagonists, but he possessed strength and all the madness born of the human sounds to which he had been unaccustomed,—the loud ribaldry, and laughter of men and women, the whistle, and shrill cries of boys and frighted infants. Submitting to my ignorance, I must say that I had never seen any large animal killed, and did not know how the operation was performed; and with a feeling of the most horrible ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... the feathers and ornaments had long since disappeared; but there were a few—probably new coiners—in somewhat better attire. All these wore debtors. Recklessness and effrontery were displayed in their countenances, and their discourse was full of ribaldry and profanity. At one side of this ward there was a large kitchen, where eating and drinking were constantly going forward at little tables, as at a tavern or cookshop, and where commons were served ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... too common) at demoralizing the public sentiment. Under a wretched mask of stupid drollery, slavery, war, the social glass, and, in short, all the valuable and time-honoured institutions justly dear to our common humanity and especially to republicans, are made the butt of coarse and senseless ribaldry by this low-minded scribbler. It is time that the respectable and religious portion of our community should be aroused to the alarming inroads of foreign Jacobinism, sansculottism, and infidelity. It is a fearful proof of the ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... hanging down, red at the top, and thick, to set the boys a laughing; nor yet jeered the bald-headed, nor danced the cordax; nor does the old man who speaks the verses beat the person near him with his staff, keeping out of sight wretched ribaldry; nor has she rushed in with torches, nor does she shout iou, iou; but has come relying on herself and her verses. And I, although so excellent a poet, do not give myself airs, nor do I seek to deceive you by twice and thrice ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... and his "Fatal Dowry" is preserved in Rowe's plagiarism from it, in the "Fair Penitent." But the low moral tone of the time is indicated in all these works, in which heroic sentiments, rising often even to religious rapture, are mingled with scenes of the grossest ribaldry. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... can hear, Louis," said Miss Aline; "but our maid is afraid, and her father's house and her uncle's are both as full of soldiers and ribaldry as ever in the times of the Covenant. So where should she come if not to me? It was more wisely done than I could have expected from that 'fechtin' ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... "foolish and noisy talk. Islandic, bulldur, stultorum balbuties." Dr. Ogilvie, however, has queried its derivation from the "Spanish balda, a trifle, or baldonar, to insult with abusive language; Welsh, baldorz, to prattle. Mean, senseless prate; a jargon of words; ribaldry; anything ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... rapsodio. Rhetoric parolarto, retoriko. Rhetorical elokventa, retorika. Rheumatic reuxmatisma. Rheumatism reuxmatismo. Rhinoceros rinocero. Rhomb rombo. Rhombus rombo. Rhubarb rabarbo. Rhyme rimi. Rhythm ritmo. Rib ripo. Ribald malcxasta, dibocxa. Ribaldry dibocxo—ajxo. Ribbon rubando. Rice rizo. Rich, to grow ricxigxi. Rich ricxa. Riches ricxeco. Rid malembarasi, liberigi. Riddle (sieve) kribrilo. Riddle enigmo, logogrifo. Ride rajdi. Ridge supro, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... wishes. Gradually the new servant rose into favour. He was at length made Earl of Albemarle and Master of the Robes. But his elevation, though it furnished the Jacobites with a fresh topic for calumny and ribaldry, was not so offensive to the nation as the elevation of Portland had been. Portland's manners were thought dry and haughty; but envy was disarmed by the blandness of Albemarle's temper and by the affability ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... second invitation to proceed upon his favourite topic. He was soon launched, and as the little room filled, his pale and sunken cheeks grew red with excitement, his tongue was unloosed, and he poured out a continuous stream of blasphemous ribaldry such as would have shocked the ears of a revolutionist of the year '89 or of a petroleuse of the nineteenth century. It seemed as though the spring once opened would never dry. His eyes flashed, his fingers writhed convulsively ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... another. "You can't read a warrant!" "You let Dondon cheat you!" "You tried to cheat Nincan!" "You want to build a watch-house!" "You have an old ewe at home now, that you did not come honestly by!" "You denied your own hand!"—with other ribaldry still more gross and indecent. But the most singular part of the scene was a number of little boys, dressed in black and white, who all wore badges of the parties to which they belonged, and were provided ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... the corrupt and vile rotten-borough of Devizes, took a part in these un-Englishman-like, partial, cowardly, and disgraceful proceedings. Every expectant underling, every dirty, petty-fogging scoundrel showed his teeth, opened his vulgar mouth, and sent forth the most nauseous and disgusting ribaldry. A time-serving, place-hunting, fawning address to the Prince Regent was moved by some person. It was stuffed with all sorts of falsehoods, and was supported by John Benett, of Pyt-House, in an address to the people, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... a neighboring duck-pond, do not move their stony breasts. On the contrary, they decidedly relish that sort of thing, and greet with positive hilarity the efforts of some sympathizing rooster to cheer her. Fie, upon such natures! If they must have an outlet for their ribaldry, let them take PUNCHINELLO'S advice and select such instances as that recently furnished in Sacramento, where a hen took charge of a nest of kittens, and resolutely maintained it against the parent cat. Here the case was different. The hen had become a trespasser. She had no business with ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... ever consider'd, that Abuse from such Scriblers, who write for a Livelihood, can no more be thought an Affront, than a Barber's taking you by the Nose; 'tis his Trade, and the Wretch would starve if you stopt him. What harm did all their Ribaldry do me? I neither eat, nor drunk, nor slept the worse for it. I don't suppose, that the scape Goat, which the Jews loaded with Curses, and drove into the Wilderness, either died by their Maledictions, or grew a whit the leaner ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... notoriety that the Tory party, whose death-knell was soon to be tolled, constantly poured on the great Irish Tribune the most scurrilous abuse. One of the mock titles with which they honored him was that of "King of the Beggars." Such pitiful ribaldry awakened the highest powers of the Roman orator. "Poor, miserable, and most pitiful fatuity which, while intending to mock, actually did him honor. For, what sovereignty is more beautiful than that whose tribute is not wrung from unwilling fear, but that is a voluntary, love-inspired ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... emblems and disgusting epigrams, so that this haunt of learning presents the aspect of the lowest brothel; and the professor's chair has become a more intolerable seat than the pillory, owing to the missiles flung at him and the ribaldry with which he is assailed. The manners and conversation of the students must have been disgusting beyond measure, to judge by a letter of complaint from a father detailing the contamination to which his son was exposed in the Roman class-rooms, and the immunity ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... now, and see this demi-god of the Genoese—amid the shameless circles of debauchery and lust! hear the vile jests and wanton ribaldry with which he entertains his base companions! That is Fiesco! Ah, damsels, not only has Genoa lost its hero, but I have ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... by several good people of every persuasion; and that[121] and the violent raging of the infection, I suppose, was the occasion that they had abated much of their rudeness for some time before, and were only roused by the spirit of ribaldry and atheism at the clamor which was made when the gentleman was first brought in there, and perhaps were agitated by the same devil when I took upon me to reprove them; though I did it at first with ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... the Archbishop of Paris has been sacked, and every object in it demolished. —— told me that the ribaldry and coarse jests of the mob on this occasion were disgusting beyond measure; and that they ceased not to utter the most obscene falsehoods, while they wreaked their vengeance on the property of this venerable prelate, against ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... [Fol. 59b.]] [Sidenote: He is ruined by covetousness, perjury, murder, theft, and strife.] For couetyse, & colwarde & croked dede[gh], For mon-sworne, & men-scla[gh]t, & to much drynk, For efte, & for repy{n}g, vn-onk may mon haue; [Sidenote: For robbery and ribaldry, for preventing marriages, and supporting the wicked, for treason, treachery, and tyranny, man may lose eternal bliss.] For roborrye, & riboudrye & resou{n}e[gh] vntrwe, 184 & dysheriete & depryue dowrie of wydoe[gh], For marry{n}g of maryage[gh] ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... persevered in visiting the church, or whether the seeds of a new and better growth of things began already to take root within him, I cannot take upon me to decide. To my relief and comfort, the solemn argument was never again profaned by ribaldry and unbecoming mirth; and, to my unfeigned delight, the teacher and the pupil were without one let or hinderance to their perfect sympathy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... into the world's magnificent chronologies,—snapping up unconsidered trifles of anecdote,—tasting some long-interred bon-mot and relishing some disentombed scandal,—pausing over the symphonic prose of Milton, only to run, the next moment, to the Silenian ribaldry of Tom Brown the younger,—and so keeping up a Saturnalia, in which goat-footed sylvans mix with the maidens of Diana, and the party-colored jester shakes his truncheon in the face of Plato. Only in this wild and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... we have for our childhood is not wholly justifiable: so much a man may lay down without fear of public ribaldry; for although we shake our heads over the change, we are not unconscious of the manifold advantages of our new state. What we lose in generous impulse, we more than gain in the habit of generously watching others; and the capacity to enjoy Shakespeare may balance a lost aptitude for playing ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the first hearing of an indecorous or profane sentiment, and continued for some time to be excited at repetitions of the same, should at length be so effectually laid asleep, that the impudent language of ribaldry can awaken it no more, it is clear, that a victory will have been gained over his moral feelings: and if he should remember (and what is to hinder him, when the occurrences of the stage are marked with strong action, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... anguish, I was driven ashore amid the desolation of this sand. This comrade of yours found me scarce alive, ministered to my sore need, protected me through the hours of the night, stood but now between me and your ribaldry, counting his life but little beside the reputation of a woman. He may not wear the latest Paris fashions, Monsieur, but he ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... by scarcely a cloud, rolls the sun in glory. Though fair be the earth, it has come to be tainted and marred by him who was meant to be its crowning glory. Behind me on this island are crowded vile and wicked men, the murmur of whose ribaldry riseth continually like the smoke and fumes of a lower world. Oh! Father of Mercies, forgive the hard heartlessness and blindness and scarlet sins of my fellows, ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... without the exhibition of any bias. But he is writing letters, reading newspapers, cutting jokes, attending only by fits and starts; then, when something smites his ear, out he breaks, and with a mixture of sarcasm and ribaldry and insolence he argues and battles the point, whatever ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... these things; nay, all these were abominable to him. 1. For good books, they might lie in his master's house till they rotted from him, he would not regard to look into them; but contrariwise, would get all the bad and abominable books that he could, as beastly romances, and books full of ribaldry, even such as immediately tended to set all fleshly lusts on fire.[24] True, he durst not be known to have any of these to his master; therefore would he never let them be seen by him, but would keep them in close places, and peruse them at such times ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... while sharing his longing to debauch and betray, are free from his other weaknesses, e.g., his timidity, his lack of resourcefulness, his conscience. As I have said, they are not. The vast majority of those who appear in the public haunts of sin are there, not to engage in overt acts of ribaldry, but merely to tremble agreeably upon the edge of the abyss. They are the same skittish experimentalists, precisely, who throng the midway at a world's fair, and go to smutty shows, and take in sex magazines, and read the sort of books that our vice crusading friend reads. They ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... it," says I, "and a sacrilegious sight it is. God never made you that way, Mack Lonsbury. Why do you scarify His works with this presumptuous kind of ribaldry?" ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... excuses are accepted. Then follow the Consolations of Intercourse. Conducted with "shattering candour" (as one has said who is in spirit a member of this Club, though not yet, alas, inducted), the meetings may sometimes resolve themselves into a ribaldry, sometimes into a truthful pursuit of Beauty, sometimes into a mere logomachy. But in these symposiums, unmarred by the crude claim of duty, the Club does with single-minded resolve pursue the only lasting satisfaction allowed to humanity, to ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... boatmen who professionally propelled the keels and flats of the Ohio, they were a class unto themselves—"half horse, half alligator," a contemporary styled them. Rough fellows, much given to fighting, and drunkenness, and ribaldry, with a genius for coarse drollery and stinging repartee. The river towns suffered sadly at the hands of this lawless, dissolute element. Each boat carried from thirty to forty boatmen, and a number of such boats frequently traveled ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... Of ribaldry that smelleth sweet, To Dagon and to Ashtoreth; Of bloody stripes from head to feet, He will endure unto the death, Being blind, ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... "an unclean being"; servants left his house in horror; "Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart were let loose upon him"; and one of the favourite amusements of the period among men of petty wit and no convictions was the devising of light ribaldry ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... beneath derisive skies, The victims bare, bewildered heads arise: Tales of the passing of the spirit, graced With humour blinding as the doom it faced: Stark tales of ribaldry that broke aside To tears, by laughter swallowed ere they dried: Tales to which neither grace nor gain accrue, But only (Allah be exalted!) true, And only, as the Seraph showed that night, Delighting to the limits ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... Is ribboned o'er with shade and shine, And webbed with wire and choked with heat; Where smokes with fouler smokes entwine; And where, at evening, darkling lanes Fume with a sickly ribaldry— Above the squalors and the pains, A ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... requesting visitors "not to feed or annoy the animals" are posted on the compartments. In the case of the elephant, though, it might be as well also to caution persons against making jokes about his trunk—a low kind of ribaldry in which every carpet-bagger, who never had one, seems to think himself ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... Rheingold, a disreputable drinking cellar, and disappeared from my sight down its steps. A great shout greeted him, and the rattle of tankards on a table, as he joined what was evidently his coterie. Standing outside, I heard song and ribaldry within. The heir-presumptive to the throne of the Empire was too obviously a drunken brawler; a friend and comrade of the lowest scum ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... passages—best described in stage language as "gag"—which they think will be acceptable to their audience. And whether or not this be actually the case with the Indian bards, we are expressly told that it is so with the Arab story-teller, and that it accounts for much of the ribaldry and filth which have become embedded in the immortal "Nights." A viol having only one string accompanies the passages in verse with which the stories are interlarded; and a similar instrument seems to be used for the like purpose among the orthodox Guslars of ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... at least draped scantily by the mantle of convention, but in a great mining-camp they stand naked and without concealment. Here there were rows upon rows of crib-like houses clustered over tortuous, ill-lighted lanes, like blow-flies swarming to an unclean feast. From within came the noise of ribaldry and debauch. Shrill laughter mingled with coarse, maudlin songs, till the clinging night reeked with abominable revelry. The girl saw painted creatures of every nationality leaning from windows or beckoning from doorways, while drunken men collided with her, barred her course, challenged ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... fierce ribaldry and ghastly mirth, the voice of the dying woman penetrated, speaking more slowly, more distinctly, more terribly ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... Marion Reedy, "1601 is to Twain's whole works what the 'Droll Stories' are to Balzac's. It is better than the privately circulated ribaldry and vulgarity of Eugene Field; is, indeed, an essay in a sort of primordial humor such as we find in Rabelais, or in the plays of some of the lesser stars that drew their light from Shakespeare's urn. It is humor or fun such as one expects, let us say, from ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... a moment imagine Joan herself appearing in the England of to-day on much the same mission. It is not difficult to picture the contempt, the derision, the ribaldry, with which she would be greeted. In nearly every point her reception would be the same as it was, except that fewer people would believe in her inspiration. We have only to read her trial, or even the account given in Henry ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... us pass the jest along the trenches Where, in cold blood, we waited in the trenches, You touched its ribaldry and made it fine. You stood beside us in our pain and weakness. We're glad to think You understand our weakness. Somehow it seems to ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... so precocious and so pure an affection was beyond the conception of our comrades (though not of the ancients since they figured the love of the boy Cupid for Psyche), I protected Ottavio from their ribaldry, declaring that I would punish with my sword any who made a jest of a devotion which might have drawn tears ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... the age of Charles II. to that of Aristophanes—'which called its own grossness polite.' How bitterly he decries the stale poems of the time as 'a heap of senseless ribaldry;' how truly he shows that licentiousness weakens as well as depraves the judgment. 'When Satyrs are brought to court,' he observes, 'no wonder the Graces would not trust ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... dragged me along. I obeyed, for I was insensible, soul-less; and even when the return of thought came, it was all confusion. Was this Oxford? Were these its manners? Were such its inhabitants? Oaths twenty in a breath, unmeaning vulgar oaths; ribaldry, such as till that hour I had ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... head up—no crouching over the handle-bars like the Saturday afternoon shopmen! Wind in your hair, the broad blue Cotswold slopes about you, every ounce of leg-drive straining on the pedals—three minutes of it intoxicates you. You crawl up-wind roaring the most glorious nonsense, ribaldry, and exultation into the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... kindness to Maga, we warn her, that, though the nature of this work precludes us from devoting space to the exposure, there may come a time when the public shall be themselves able to distinguish ribaldry from reasoning, and may require some better and higher qualifications in their critics of art, than the experience of a school-boy, and the capacities ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... sat, with my head buried in my hands on the sordid table of our berth. I ate not, I spoke not. The ribaldry of my coarse associates moved me not; their boisterous and vulgar mirth aroused me not. They thought me, owing to my arrest, and my anticipations of its consequences, torpid with fear. They were deceived. I was never more alive. My existence was—if I may so speak—glowing and fiery ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Events and Incidents; the most exaggerated Thoughts; the most verbose and bombast Expression; the most pompous Rhymes, and thundering Versification. In Comedy, nothing was so sure to please, as mean buffoonry, vile ribaldry, and unmannerly jests of fools and clowns. Yet even in these our Author's Wit buoys up, and is born above his subject: his Genius in those low parts is like some Prince of a Romance in the disguise of a Shepherd or Peasant; a certain Greatness and Spirit now and then break out, ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... imprisoned. His boys, well taught in all manner of farm-work, send him, from his home in the country, hampers of fresh fruits, to relieve the tedium of Newgate. Discharged at length, and continuing his ribaldry in the columns of the "Register," he flies before an Act of Parliament, and takes new refuge in America. He is now upon Long Island, earnest as in his youth in agricultural pursuits. The late Dr. Francis of New York used to speak of his visits to him, and of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... dead child, with having killed it by administering a quack medicine instead of attending to the physician's prescriptions; a charge which he acknowledged and repeated in print. He published three successive papers in "The European Magazine" for 1788, assailing her with the coarsest ribaldry. "I have just read for the first time," writes Miss Seward in June, 1788, "the base, ungentleman-like, unmanly abuse of Mrs. Piozzi by that Italian assassin, Baretti. The whole literary world should unite in publicly reprobating such venomed and foul-mouthed railing." He ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Sherlock's 'Tryal of the Witnesses' gave both the impulse and the form. Annet, like Woolston, was prosecuted for blasphemy and profanity; and if the secular arm should ever be appealed to in such matters, which is doubtful, he deserved it by the coarse ribaldry of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Santander; who, relishing the jest, joined in the "ha! ha!" till the old convent rang with their coarse ribaldry. ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... all this to Coupeau just as if her plan of life was well settled. Meanwhile, Coupeau never forgot his desire to possess her. He made a jest of everything she said, turning it into ribaldry and asking some very direct questions about Lantier. But he proceeded so gaily and which such a smile that she never thought of ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... England—some of them much too scandalous to be repeated. She regarded the Duke of York as a big baby, not out of his leading-strings, and the Prince of Wales as an idle sensualist, with just enough of brains to be guided by any laughing, well-bred individual who would listen to stale jokes and impudent ribaldry. Of Queen Charlotte she used to speak with the utmost disrespect, attributing to her a love of domination and a hatred of every one who would not bow down before any idol that she chose to set up; ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... on this, my brothers, you all know why. Let us pass from it, remembering that till the nineteenth century this story provoked only devotion not ribaldry, and it is only with the coming in of the grosser type of western thought that you have these ideas put into the Bhagavad-Purana. I would to God that the Rishis had taken away the Shrimad Bhagavata from a race that is unworthy to have it; that as They have already ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... not the same; for it is very much worse. It is decidedly fiercer and more unreasonable than it was eleven years ago. I judge by its public meetings; I judge by its journals; I judge by its pulpits, pulpits which every week resound with ribaldry and slander such as would disgrace the hustings. A change has come over the spirit of a part, I hope not the larger part, of the Tory body. It was once the glory of the Tories that, through all changes of fortune, they were animated by ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... front under repair supplied a scantling. Plooie was hustled upon it. He fell off. They jammed him back again. He clung, wide-eyed, white-faced, and silent. The mob, for it was that now, bore him with jeers and jokes and ribaldry along the ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming of them, and of them only. Some of his persons are vicious, and some virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learned. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is different: the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook are several men, and distinguished from each other, as much as the mincing lady prioress, and the broad-speaking gap-toothed wife of ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Steingerd, "an ill will is plain to hear. I shall tell Thorvald of this ribaldry: no man would sit ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... tree. He saw all its branches shining with water, drops glistening along a thousand stray twigs. Then the voices of the labourers returning over the hills broke in upon his ears. He heard their shouts, the snatches of their songs, their noise, all the ribaldry of ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... to know that, and he wanted me to know also that the knowledge had come to me from my bishop. I should have thought evil of any one who had sent me the vile ribaldry. But coming from him, it fills me ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... teach us modesty swarmed in too. They dragged a sheep into the lecture-room, lighted pipes, produced bottles, drank, smoked, and abused us ladies to our faces, and interrupted the lecturer at intervals with their howls and ribaldry: that was intended to show the professor he should not be listened to any more if he admitted the female students. The affair got wind, and other students, not connected with medicine, came pouring in, with no worse ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... equal it to Italy itself; and Epist. 26. Lib. 6. commends the English Nobility for their great Application to all useful Learning, and entertaining themselves at Table with learned Discourses, when the Table-Talk of Churchmen was nothing but Ribaldry and Profaneness. In Epist. 10. Lib. 5, which he addresses to Andrelinus, he invites him to come into England, recommending it as worth his While, were it upon no other Account, than to see the charming Beauties with which this Island abounded; and in a very ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... are a lady; she is only a common woman. Things would be insults to you which she only laughs at. I cannot allow you to expose yourself to the brutal ribaldry of the ruffians below. If a father had his daughter here, he would lock her up, as I do you, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... the subject of ribaldry. On the whole we must have been a strange looking pair. Feeling rather small under the scrutiny (not bethinking us that within a very few months we would be putting on similar airs of superiority towards weary tramps ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... these females occasioned scenes, more subjects of regret than of wonder. Thus, on the arrival of the Strathfieldsay (1834), the fair emigrants, 286, most of good character, were indiscreetly landed at high noon: 2,000 persons awaited them on the beach. Their feelings were outraged with ribaldry and insult: they were astounded at their reception, and many wept. The ladies of the colony protected and advanced them; and some, whose want drove them from their native country, remember the day with gratitude when they first pressed the soil of Tasmania. 1,280 females were brought to ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... stinking tenement, or on some fire-escape. The city, in fine, was relaxing from its toil; and, as the workers for the most part knew no other way, nor could afford any, they were trying to snatch some brief moment of respite from the Hell of their slavery, by recourse to rough ribaldry and alcohol. ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... wings of an angel nor flutter with the flaps of a moth: for there is as substantial a difference between light-heartedness and levity as between the crackling pyrotechnics that disturb the darkness of the night and the natural sunlight which enlivens the day. Indecency and ribaldry bring down a man to the level of the beast, divesting him of all his rational superiority and soul-dignity. What appears equally contemptible with the man who stoops to make grimaces, to utter expressions, to tell tales, in one word, to act the fool for the amusement of others, while he is suffering ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... manifests such bitterness, and at the same time such a specious mode of argument, as his attack on the doctrine of redemption and substitutional atonement.(637) The work, in its satire and its blasphemous ribaldry, is a fit parallel to those of Voltaire. Every line is fresh from the writer's mind, and written with an acrimony which accounts for much of its influence. The religion which Paine substituted for Christianity was the belief in one God as revealed by science, in immortality ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... upon the wide skepticism of the Greeks as to the infernal world, at the close of his essay on the maxim, "Live concealed." The portentous growth of irreverent unbelief, the immense change of feeling from awe to ribaldry, is made obvious by a glance from the known gravity of Hesiod's "Descent of Theseus and Pirithous into Hades," to Lucian's "Kataplous," which represents the cobbler Mycillus leaping from the banks of the Styx, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... defined lechery—The occupation of folk destitute of all other occupation. For this cause the Sicyonian sculptor Canachus,[225] being desirous to give us to understand that slowth drowsiness, negligence, and laziness, were the prime guardians and governesses of ribaldry, made the statue of Venus, not standing, as other stone-cutters had used ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... die in infancy. We need no further proof of the urgent need for conscientious inquiry, call it by what name you please. The science of common sense is all-sufficient. The seemingly intelligent individual who can only find material for ribaldry in this connection is a more serious buffoon than he imagines. It is apparent that our methods are wrong. Any constructive effort to correct them is commendable. When it is stated that 20 per cent. of the American women are unable to bear children, and that 25 per cent. of all the others are unwilling ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... pretty merchants and their dealers, that I knew not where to run first." On the other hand, we find complaints that young fops hindered business by lolling on the counter an hour longer than was necessary, and annoyed the young women who served them with ingenious ribaldry.] ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... smile. She shrinks from the riot and ribaldry that encompass her. She is but a young bride whom the bridegroom has betrayed, and she would fain be alone in the bitterness of her anguish and her humiliation. Why have they come, these creatures who are stamping and reeling round her, these flushed women ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm |
