"Badness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his own. He must select the beginning that seems best adapted to his story. As an inspiration to reporters who are trying to write human interest stories, a few beginnings clipped from daily papers are given here. Some are good and some are bad; the goodness or badness in each case depends upon individual taste. They can hardly be classified in more than a general way for originality is opposed to all classifications. They ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... their actions, by that they were both found sinners; the Publican an open outside one, and the Pharisee a filthy inside one. This is evident, because the best of them was rejected, and the worst of them was received to mercy. Mercy standeth not at the Publican's badness, nor is it enamoured with the Pharisee's goodness: It suffereth not the law to take place on both, though it findeth them both in sin, but graciously embraceth the most unworthy, and leaveth the best to shift for himself. And good reason that both should be dealt with after this ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... seem rather to deserve a flogging than a refutation, is true; and therefore it is that his performance is, in the highest degree, interesting and valuable to a judicious reader. It is good by reason of its exceeding badness. It is the most extraordinary instance that exists of the art of making much show with little substance. There is no difficulty, says the steward of Moliere's miser, in giving a fine dinner with plenty of money: the really great cook is he who can set out a banquet with no money at ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a person, certainly," replied the baronet, who, in consequence of the badness of the road and the darkness of the night, was obliged to walk his horse with caution. "By the way," said he, "did you not hear ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... kill his woman if she ain't honest with him," so the story began; "if he finds out she's ben trickin' of him, playin' him off fer another man. That was yer mother, gel; she was a bad woman." There followed a coarse and vivid description of her badness and the manner of it. "That kinder thing no man can let pass by in his wife. I found her"—again the rude details of his discovery—"an' I found him, an' I let him go fer the white-livered coward he was, but her I killed. I shot her ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... me by his insolence." To aggravate is to augment the disagreeableness of something already disagreeable, or the badness of something bad. But a person cannot be aggravated, even if disagreeable or bad. Women are singularly prone to misuse ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... food is the best for the body; and if the physician and the cook had to enter into a competition in which children were the judges, or men who had no more sense than children, as to which of them best understands the goodness or badness of food, the physician would be starved to death. A flattery I deem this to be and of an ignoble sort, Polus, for to you I am now addressing myself, because it aims at pleasure without any thought of the best. An art ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... but there is much difference between me and this Dante. He fled from country because he had one bad tongue which he shook at his betters. I fly because benefice gone, and head going; not on account of the badness of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... seven kine, fatfleshed and well favoured; and they fed in the reed-grass: and, behold, seven other kine came up after them, poor and very ill favoured and leanfleshed, such as I never saw in all the land of Egypt for badness: and the lean and ill favoured kine did eat up the first seven fat kine: and when they had eaten them up, it could not be known that they had eaten them; but they were still ill favoured, as at the beginning. So I awoke. And I saw in my dream, and, ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... can take it, and whatever other article the yachtsman leaves loose on an unguarded deck, he never omits to hide or lock up the mop, for a mop is winged like an umbrella, it strays, but seldom returns. The usual protection of mops is their extreme badness, and it is on this account, no doubt, that you never can find a good mop to buy. The Rob Roy's mop was the only bad article on board, and I left it out loose in perfect confidence. Often and often it had evidently been turned over, but on examination it was ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... mixed. I do not believe that the good people of the world are all bunched up in one corner and the bad ones in another. Christ's parable of the wheat and the tares explains that to my satisfaction. There is goodness in all men, and sermons even in stones. But goodness and badness is apt to run in streaks. Man, to use the language of another, is a queer combination of cheek and perversity, insolence, pride, impudence, vanity, jealousy, hate, scorn, baseness, insanity, honor, truth, wisdom, ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... falsities, vague ambiguities, and the froth-dialect usual in Parliaments in these times, it may be considered one of the worst schools ever devised by man; and, I think, may almost challenge the OEil-de-Boeuf to match it in badness. ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... tough, taken from old, often diseased, cattle, or such as have died a natural death, and not fresh even then, often half decayed. The sellers are usually small hucksters who buy up inferior goods, and can sell them cheaply by reason of their badness. The poorest workers are forced to use still another device to get together the things they need with their few pence. As nothing can be sold on Sunday, and all shops must be closed at twelve o'clock ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... that they FEEL good or bad; there can be no dispute about it. This is the bottom fact of ethics. Different experiences have different intrinsic worth as they pass. There is a chiaroscuro of consciousness, a light and shade of immediate goodness and badness over all our variegated moments. The good moments are their own excuse for being, a part of the brightness and worth of life. They need nothing ulterior to justify them. The bad moments feel bad, and that is the end of it; they are bad-feeling ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... see how coolly the others took it, but I supposed that they were used to losing fish from the badness of their tackle, and besides, there was evidently a big one on Mr Ebony's line to take ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... when we parted: "I have had much talk with people in England; with you I have had a real conversation." We understood each other and wondered how it was that men so often misunderstood one another. I told him that it was the badness of our language, he thought it was the badness of our tempers. Perhaps we were both right. With him again good-by was good-by for life, and at such moments one wonders indeed how kindred souls became separated, and one feels startled and repelled at the thought that, such as they were ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... came after him, with all the speed they could muster, making sure from the badness of the road that he must stick fast ere long, and so be at their mercy. And this was Jeremy's chiefest fear, for the ground being soft and thoroughly rotten, after so much frost and snow, the poor horse ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... generally infested with robbers, we used our best endeavours to reach the town before the night should have entirely closed in. We did not succeed, however, and before we had proceeded half the distance, pitchy darkness overtook us. Throughout the journey we had been considerably delayed by the badness of our horses, especially that of my attendant, which appeared to pay no regard to whip or spur; his rider also was no horseman, it being thirty years, as he at length confessed to me, since he last mounted in a saddle. Horses soon become aware of the powers of their riders, and the brute ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Lord said to me, What art thou seeing, Jeremiah? And I said, Figs, the good figs very good, and the bad very bad, which for their(487) badness cannot be eaten. 4. And the Word of the Lord came unto me, [5] saying, Thus saith the Lord, ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... and horses and men. One thing the Dean will not, cannot tolerate—weakness in one who should be strong. Even bad men he admires, if they are strong—not for their badness, but for their strength. Mistaken men he loves in spite of their mistakes—if only they be not weaklings. There is no place anywhere in the Dean's philosophy of life for a weakling. I heard him tell a man once—nor shall I ever forget it—"You had better die like a man, sir, ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... of Elinor? Are we so utterly separated that even in visions I may not behold her face? What have I done, that God refuses me all joy? I don't know of being so bad. But I suppose this not knowing is the very badness itself. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... its consequences. This is, I say, a taking of the indication for the thing indicated. An act is bad in itself and by itself, as being a violation of the rational nature of the doer (c. vi., s. i.), and being bad, it breeds bad consequences. But the badness of the act is moral; the badness of the consequences, physical. There is an evident intrinsic irrationality, and thereby moral evil, in such sins as intemperance, peevishness, and vanity. But let us take an instance of an act, apparently harmless in ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... is the main Confederate army advancing to attack ours, but the badness of the roads operates against the offense. We shall reach General Thomas with the word that they are coming long ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and only about one-tenth for smelling; so that by far the greater part of the nose is built on breathing lines. But the smelling part of it, though small, is very important, because it now has to decide, not merely upon the goodness or badness of the food, but also upon the purity or foulness of the air we breathe. The nostrils lie, as you can see, side by side, separated from each other by a thin, straight plate of gristle and bone known as the septum. This should be perfectly straight and flat; but very often ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... at the outskirts of the town of Skull, established many years before there were any other buildings in the vicinity. The Spanish fathers had built it for the Indians, and it remained a sanctuary, in spite of the roughness and badness of the new ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... social morality it would be almost impossible to define the position of the proletariate, tillers of the soil, and artisans, at this epoch. These classes vary in their goodness and their badness, in their drawbacks and advantages, from age to age far less than those who mold the character of marked historical periods by culture. They enjoy indeed a greater or a smaller immunity from pressing miseries. They are ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... safety, and was exhibited in the square where the large station of the London and North-Western Railway now stands. Sir Humphrey Davy took great interest in it, and, in writing to a friend, said: "I shall hope soon to see English roads the haunts of Captain Trevethick's dragons." The badness of roads, however, prevented its coming into ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... God's goodness in forgiving freely for Christ's sake our sins, impels us to forgive from the heart those that have trespassed against us. The power is all from above; yet, though we by our goodness do not set the beneficent machinery in motion, we may by our badness cause it all to stand still. It is not our forgiveness accorded to an evil-doer that procures forgiveness to ourselves from God; the opposite is the truth: yet our refusal of forgiveness to a brother ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... charm for him. That night when the election failed and Col. Dick scored him for not doing his best, he parted company with the Colonel and the Monte Carlo. More and more strongly two passions ruled his life. One was love for Jane Reed; the love of a man conscious of his own utter badness for that holy life he secretly envies and outwardly scorns. The other was hatred for Job Malden, who, ever since he came upon the stage in the long ago, had stood between Daniel ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... heard people complain of the coldness an' hardness of the world; by 'the world,' always meanin' the folks that live in it, I suppose. To my way of thinkin' there's a deal more kindness in the world than there is selfishness an' badness, an' the people on that steamer proved me right in one case anyway. They made up a purse among 'em an' give a share to each of us that had been picked out of the sea, as you might say. So, when we landed, ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... discarded, it was discovered that Locke suffered far more than Hobbes by the change so made. For Hobbes cared nothing for the contract so long as strong government could be shown to be implicit in the natural badness of men, while Locke assumed their goodness and made his contract essential to their opportunity for moral expression. Nor did he, like Rousseau, seize upon the organic nature of the State. To him ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... America, and an English one which was declared on all hands a mere imitation of Hussey's. Neither the original nor the copy, however, appear to have operated to the satisfaction of the assembly, perhaps owing to the badness of the weather and its effects on the draggled, unripe grain. With McCormick's a very different result was obtained. This machine is so well known in our Wheat-growing districts that I need only remark that it is the same lately ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... that," she said. "I began to believe that I was not his lawful wife, or he would not behave to me as he did. But I daren't ask, I was so afraid of him. And I felt as if I could not leave him, even if I was not his wife. That's where the badness of me came out, you see, Miss Lettice. I would have stayed with him to the end of my days, wife or no wife, if he had wanted me. But he tired of ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... men sometimes run into the other extreme that some of them become our bitterest enemies, not merely after receiving benefits from us, but because they have received them. I cannot deny that some do this out of sheer badness of nature; but more do so because lapse of time destroys their remembrance, for time gradually effaces what they felt vividly at the moment. I remember having had an argument with you about this class ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... absolutely in error, and his much-quoted words are folly. It is not a question of goodness, or badness, or fitness, on part of the man who has the ambition to rule, but it is very much a question of his courage, his craft or his cunning in compelling others to do ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... badness, n. depravity, improbity, unscrupulousness, iniquity, immorality, turpitude, knavishness, villainy, peccancy, baseness, profligacy, venality, licentiousness, obliquity, pravity, degeneracy, viciousness, wantonness, criminality, libertinism, malevolence, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... as I have already stated, at this time in very delicate health; and upon this occasion the exhaustion of fatigue, and the dreary badness of the weather, combined to depress her spirits. Lady D—— had not been left long to herself, when the door communicating with the passage was abruptly opened, and her sister Mary entered in a state of ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... an impartial trial, a discovery is made of the badness of our condition, should we not be alarmed to look about us, and to labour by all means for an outgate? Considering, (1.) How doleful and lamentable this condition is. (2.) How sad and dreadful the consequences of it are. (3.) How happy a thing it is to be ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... came of it; devastating and prolonged war came of it, Mr. Gould. However, here we possess the advantage of having only one South American Government hanging around for plunder out of the deal. It is an advantage; but then there are degrees of badness, and that ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... something very bad in human nature, or more people would try the experiment of giving. Those who do try it become enamored of it, and get their chief pleasure in life out of it; and so evident is this that there is some basis for the idea that it is ignorance rather than badness which keeps so many people from being generous. Of course it may become a sort of dissipation, or more than that, a devastation, as many men who have what are called "good wives" have reason to know, in the gradual disappearance of their wardrobe if they chance to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... conduct had been, he underwent no hasty condemnation. The defection was discussed in all its bearings, but it seemed sadly clear at last that this uncle must possess some innate badness of character and fondness for low company. We who from daily experience knew Miss Smedley like a book—were we not only too well aware that she had neither accomplishments nor charms, no characteristic, in fact, but an ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... there are such passages in his works. Shakspeare must not suffer from the badness of our memories.' Johnson, diverted by this enthusiastick jealousy, went on with greater ardour: 'No, Sir; Congreve has nature;' (smiling on the tragick eagerness of Garrick;) but composing himself, he added, 'Sir, this is not ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... crossing each other in an intraceable and interminable network; intraceable to the human eye, but what a sight it must be to the eye that sees all! All these people, so many hundreds of thousands, acting and reacting upon one another's happiness, prosperity, goodness, and badness. Now at such a place as Seaforth people are left a good deal to their individuality, and are comparatively independent of one another; but here I feel what a pressure and bondage men's lives draw round each other. It makes me catch my breath. You will not care about this, however, nor be ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... year elapsed after their marriage before Parker began to complain of the badness of the times, and to sit thoughtful and sometimes gloomy during the evenings he spent at home. This grieved Rachel very much, and caused her to exercise the greatest possible prudence and economy in order that the household expenses might be as little burdensome ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... virtues of their preceptors. This reversal of the natural order of things, O good Brahmana, is seen everywhere in this world. What is thy opinion as to the virtuousness or otherwise of this state of things? There is much that can be said of the goodness or badness of our actions. But whoever is addicted to his own proper occupation ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... copy-book virtues, and the heroes as bloodless as their brave and loyal prototypes in "Ivanhoe" and "Waverley." Instead of individualizing his dramatis personae this feeble successor of Ingemann and Walter Scott gave them a certificate of character, vouching for their goodness or badness, and trusting the reader to take his word for it in either case. Like many another popular novelist, he varnished them with the particular tint of excellence or depravity that might suit his purpose, stuffed their heads with bran and their bellies with sawdust, but troubled ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the terror of losing him. His meals might have been a special miracle, so awed and radiant was Susan's face when she had him in her arms. His goodness, when he was good, seemed to her no more remarkable than his badness, when he was bad. Susan ran to him after the briefest absences with icy fear at her heart. He had loosened a pin—gotten it into his mouth, he had wedged his darling little head in between ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... head. It was the work of a good many minutes and several persons to get the jam off him again, and this interesting work took people's minds off the carpet, and nothing more was said just then about its badness as a bargain and about what mother hoped for ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... all the rubbish that time shoots into the wallet of oblivion, contemporary criticism runs about the least chance of being rescued from the forgetfulness into which it has been thrust. This is a result entirely independent of its goodness or badness. If the criticism is both destructive and just, the very death of the subject against which it is directed causes it to perish in the ruin it has brought about. If it is unjust, it is certain to be speedily forgotten, unless he who suffers from it takes the pains to perpetuate its ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... way or counterscarp, which was accordingly assaulted with great fury; but the assailants met with such a warm reception from the besieged, that they were repulsed with the loss of twelve hundred men either killed on the spot or mortally wounded. This disappointment, concurring with the badness of the weather, which became rainy and unwholesome, induced the king to renounce his undertaking. The heavy baggage and cannon being sent away, the army decamped and marched towards Clonmel. William having constituted the lord ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... badness of quality ... especially malice, ill-will, spite, malevolence, artfulness, cunning, craft."—Riddle ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... at Strum's. I lived over at Jenkins. Grandma Kizzy done my cooking. Master's girl cooked us biscuits. Master Jenkins loose his hat, his stick, his specks, and call us to find 'em. He could see. He called us to keep us outer badness. We had a big business of throwing at things. He threatened to whoop us. We slacked up on it. I never heard them say but I believe from what I seen it was agreed to divide the children. Pa would take me over to see mama every Sunday morning. We leave soon as I could get ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... really good for their honey harvest; wherefore the owner should take care to provide the light stocks with a sufficient quantity of food, which they have not been able to secure by their own industry, either through the badness of the bee-pasturage, the inclemency of the seasons, the weakness of the colony, or the spoil made by their enemies; and sometimes by the ill-judged management of their owners, in robbing the bees beyond the bounds ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn
... being an honest man, and having for many years been Sir Reginald Castleton's adviser, he was universally looked up to and trusted by all classes, except by these litigants who were conscious of the badness of ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... this," said George, as he stopped beside his own gate, "you believe our case—the badness of trade, the disappearance of profits, pressure of contracts, and all the rest of it—and you still refuse on your part to bear the smallest fraction of the burden? You will claim all you can get in good times—you will ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... vacant upon Account of the badness of the Tobacco, which gives Room for Dissenters, especially Quakers, as in Nansemond County; but this might be remedied, either by making the Payments of equal Value in the other Commodities produced there, or else by a standing Order, which Governor Spotswood proposed, ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... into this world, to hazard A new chance of condemnation, When 'twas once in grace and happy. This is surely true. If, likewise, It had been in hell, 'tis adverse To strict justice, since it were not Just that that which by its badness Once had earned such punishment, Should again be given the chances Of regaining grace. It must, I presume, be taken as granted That God's justice and His mercy Cannot possibly be parted. Where, I ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... and the effective presentation of events [which characterized 'The Maternity of Harriot Wicken'].... In the story we see so artistic a description of the play of character, the various phases of human goodness and badness are so well drawn out, that the book deserves high praise.... The description of the life of Folly Corner, and the men and women seen there, is not surpassed by any work of any contemporary novelist. The book is a notable ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... him that shall never leave losing until he has lost his soul? I have heard of some who would throw away a farm, a good estate, upon the trundling of one single bowl;31 but what is this to the casting away of the soul? Nothing can for badness be compared to sin; it is the vile thing, it cannot have a worse name than its own; it is worse than the vilest men, than the vilest of beasts; yea, sin is worse than the devil himself, for it is sin, and sin only, that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... difficulty, in consequence of the badness of the road; and having occupied five hours in travelling only twelve miles, Mr. Weld arrived at Skenesborough. This is a little town, which stands near the southern extremity of Lake Champlain. It consisted, at this time, of only twelve houses, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... no such very wicked people as we have now. There would, of course, be congenitally good and bad dispositions, but a bad disposition would not grow worse and worse as it does now, and without this progressive badness the depths ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... as they are—no," said Claudius. "But if you begin with an idea that things, as they are, are not very good, you will very soon be judging them by your own inherent standard of badness, and you will produce a bad ideal as I produce a good one, farther still from the truth, and extremely depressing ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... to gain the honour of sitting to eat at the table of Don Alvar Fanez and his companions, by strenuously behaving himself in all feats of arms; and thus the honour of the Cid was advanced. This Martin Pelaez, thinking that none had seen his badness, washed his hands in turn with the other knights, and would have taken his place ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... I must record here, because of the lasting impression made upon my religious life. Our family, like all others of peasant rank in the land, were plunged into deep distress, and felt the pinch severely, through the failure of the potato, the badness of other crops, and the ransom-price of food. Our father had gone off with work to Hawick, and would return next evening with money and supplies; but meantime the meal barrel ran low, and our dear mother, too proud ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... they will thrive here, and will be a great addition to the fruits they already have. Upon our first arrival we sowed of all sorts of English garden seeds and grain, but not a single thing came up except mustard sallad; but this I know was not owing either to the Soil or Climate, but to the badness of the seeds, which were spoil'd by ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... do something before you can get your purchase on him. That something may be something good or something bad. A bad reaction is better than no reaction at all; for, if bad, you can couple it with consequences which awake him to its badness. But imagine a child so lifeless as to react in no way to the teacher's first appeals, and how can you possibly take the ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... numerous causes for criticism. Unconsciously and boy-like, he did things which were often misconstrued as downright badness, whereas the boy had not the slightest intention of doing anything wrong. He was simply natural, while many of his critical elders were most unnatural. They had their own hide-bound rules of what was proper, so they found it impossible ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... What if this natural affection, like many other virtues, is obscured by badness, as a wilderness chokes a garden? Are we to say that man does not love himself by nature, because many cut their throats or throw themselves down precipices? Did not Oedipus put out his eyes? And did not Hegesias by his speeches make, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... of. Good people are always more or less interested in and attracted by the wicked, while the wicked are not generally the least interested in nor attracted by the good. Stephen was drawn towards this reckless daughter of the saloons partly through the sense of her general badness, it formed unconsciously a sort of charm for him, whereas his goodness did not act at all in the same way upon her. To her eyes it was his one ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... beginning of his Royal and Noble Authors, has mottoed his book with the Cardinal's address to Ariosto, "Dove diavolo, Messer Ludovico, avete pigliato tante coglionerie?"[271] Walter Scott says you could hardly pick out, on any principle of selection—except badness itself, he means of course—the same number of plebeian authors whose works are so bad. But his implied satire on aristocratic writing forgets two points. First, during a large period of our history, when persons of rank condescended to write, they veiled themselves under "a person of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... that from the Badness of the Pegs, arise several Inconveniences; The first I have named, viz. the Loss of Labour. The 2d. is, the Loss of Time; for I have known some so extreme long in Tuning their Lutes and Viols, by reason only of Bad Pegs, that They have wearied ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... institutions can not be sufficiently estimated while we confine our attention to the legitimate sphere of governmental functions; for, though the goodness of a government is necessarily circumscribed within that sphere, its badness unhappily is not. Every kind and degree of evil of which mankind are susceptible may be inflicted on them by their government, and none of the good which social existence is capable of can be any further realized than as the ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... never knew what this quarrel had been about; Dr. Lavendar, speculating upon it as he and Goliath went squashing through the mud that April afternoon, wondered which was to blame. "Pot and kettle, probably," he decided. "Samuel's goodness is very irritating sometimes, and Benjamin's badness is— well, it's not as distressing as it should be. But what a forlorn old critter he is! And this Mrs. Richie is lonely too—a widow, with no children, poor woman! I must call next week. Goliath wouldn't like to turn round now and climb the hill ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... was neither wiser nor duller, stronger nor weaker than his school companions pleased Frau Schimmel, for as she loved to say: "Those people over whom one exclaims when one meets them, either because of their exceptional goodness or badness, are destined to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... thus:—The assay master puts a small quantity of the silver upon trial in the fire, and then, taking it out again, he, with his exact scales that will turn with the weight of the hundredth part of a grain, computes and reports the goodness or badness of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... declares himself and proceeds upon hostile operations: and such additional strength soon arrived to corroborate her suspicion; for not long after, the husband and wife being at dinner, the master said to his maid, Da mihi aliquid potum: upon which the poor girl smiled, perhaps at the badness of the Latin, and, when her mistress cast her eyes on her, blushed, possibly with a consciousness of having laughed at her master. Mrs Partridge, upon this, immediately fell into a fury, and discharged the trencher on which she was eating, at the head ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... taking the wall, another yields it, and it is never a dispute[633].' He was very severe on a lady, whose name was mentioned. He said, he would have sent her to St. Kilda. That she was as bad as negative badness could be, and stood in the way of what was good: that insipid beauty would not go a great way; and that such a woman might be cut out of a cabbage, if ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... following year it was published by Mr. Valpy, along with some shorter poems, of which Miss Barrett subsequently wrote that 'a few of the fugitive poems may be worth a little, perhaps; but they have not so much goodness as to overcome the badness of the blasphemy of Aeschylus.' The volume, which was published anonymously, received two sentences of contemptuous notice from the 'Athenaeum,' in which the reviewer advised 'those who adventure in the hazardous lists of poetic translation to touch anyone rather than Aeschylus, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... for the press. He had business relations with the elder Bentham, and the younger Bentham was to some extent his collaborator in a pamphlet[223] which defended the conduct of ministers to the American colonies. Bentham observes that he was prejudiced against the Americans by the badness of their arguments, and thought from the first, as he continued to think, that the Declaration of Independence was a hodge-podge of confusion and absurdity, in which the thing to be proved is all along ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... shortcoming; but, as a matter of fact, no more frightful misfortune could threaten us than a general spread of fanaticism. What people call goodness has to be kept in check just as carefully as what they call badness; for the human constitution will not stand very much of either without serious psychological mischief, ending in insanity or crime. The fact that the insanity may be privileged, as Savonarola's was up to the point ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... sharpened, as to evil; he sees it where others do not.—MOZLEY, Essays, i. 308. All satirists, of course, work in the direction of Christian doctrine, by the support they give to the doctrine of original sin, making a sort of meanness and badness a law of society.—MOZLEY, Letters, 333. Les critiques, meme malveillants, sont plus pres de la verite derniere que les admirateurs.—NISARD, Lit. fr., Conclusion. Les hommes superieurs doivent necessairement passer pour mechants. ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... Rev. A. Brandram, 28th November 1837. The comment on the badness of the London edition had reference to the translation, which Borrow had condemned with great vigour; he subsequently admitted that he had been too sweeping ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... For our better light in this question I will premit these considerations, 1. When we measure the goodness or the badness of a human action, we must not only measure it by the object and the end, but by all the circumstances which accompany it. Fed. Morellus,(1185) upon those words of Seneca, Refert quid, cui, quando, quare, ubi, &c., ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... should be worth something. I am firmly convinced that if the Government could have provided all despatch riders with Blackburnes, the percentage—at all times small—of messages undelivered owing to mechanical breakdowns or the badness of the roads would have been reduced to zero. I have no interest in the Blackburne Company beyond a sincere admiration of ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... looking at Voyt, "They're shown often, no doubt, as paying for their badness. But are they shown ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... revenue collectors over all the subdivisions of his two districts, Rajah Rughbur Sing, in 1846, demanded from Hurdut Sahae an increase of five thousand rupees upon the assessment of the preceding year. The Rajah pleaded the badness of preceding seasons, and consequent poverty of his tenants and cultivators; but at last he consented to pay the increase, and on solemn pledges of personal security he collected all his tenants, to take upon themselves the responsibility of making ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... puzzle to know what he's at; I could pity him, if it were madness: I never yet knew him to play a tune through, And it gives me more anger than sadness To hear his horn stutter and stammer to utter Its various abortions of badness. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... metre since Chaucer at least can be scanned, within the proper limits, according to the strictest rules of classical prosody: and while all good English metre comes out scatheless from the application of those rules, nothing exhibits the badness of bad English metre so well as that application. It is, alongside of their great merits, the distinguishing fault of Wyatt eminently, of Surrey to a less degree, and of all the new school up to Spenser more or less, that they neglect the quantity test too freely; it is the merit of Sackville ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... man—but he was no better than his colleagues. This weakness of classification has run all through the series, and it is my real quarrel with it. I do not understand the principle of selection. I did not understand the Dean's test of goodness, nor do I understand Mr. Seccombe's or Mr. Vincent's test of badness. What do we mean by a good man or a bad one, a good woman or a bad one? Most people, like the young man in the song, are 'not very good, nor yet very bad.' We move about the pastures of life in huge herds, and all do the same things, at the same times, and for the same reasons. ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... in his sins? If an animal is diseased can it be saved from dying without curing the disease? If a tree be decayed, can it be saved from dying without curing the decay? If a man be bad and sinful, can he be saved from eternal death without curing his badness and sinfulness? How can a man be saved from his sins but by becoming sinless? As well ask, Can a man be saved from his sins without being saved from his sins? But if you wish really to be saved from your sins, and taken out of them, ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... annoyed with her, but glad to have discovered the badness of her heart. In spite of my longing to see my daughter I determined not to take any steps to meet her till the ensuing Sunday, when I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... The badness of the roads and the rude forms of wheel-carriages added to the expense of travelling. A canon of Salisbury Cathedral may now travel to London at a cost which is scarcely felt by his prebendal income: but in the days of Peter of Blois the whole proceeds of a stall were inadequate ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... elementary or any other grade of education by a uniform syllabus is to be deprecated. It is also because a uniform syllabus is, in the nature of things, a bad syllabus, and because the degree of its badness varies directly with the area of the sphere of educational activity that comes under its control. It is easy for us of the Twentieth Century to laugh at the syllabuses which the Department issued, without misgiving, year after year, in the latter half of the Nineteenth. We were ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... one of those things we rarely find perfectly made; bad, it is the ne plus ultra of badness; good, it is delicious. Those who have tried to have it good, and failed, I beg to try the following method of making it: Take an ounce and a half of butter and a scant tablespoonful of flour, mix both with a spoon into a paste; when smooth add half a pint of warm milk, a small teaspoonful of ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... danger of failing him as he passes his fir plantation. Other people, and unfortunately by far the greater number of those who get married must be classed among the "other people," will inevitably go through a quarter or half an hour of greater or less badness as the case may be. Taking numbers into account, I should think more mental suffering had been undergone in the streets leading from St George's, Hanover Square, than in the condemned cells of Newgate. There is no ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... luckless and vulgar expedient of endeavouring to face out the thing by an air of prodigious confidence and assumption:—and has had the usual fortune of such undertakers, by becoming only more conspicuously ridiculous. The badness of his official productions indeed is something really wonderful,—though not more so than the amazing self-complacency and self-praise with which they are given to the world. With the finest themes in the world for that sort of writing, they are the dullest, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... former favors, intended not to receive him, till a thought immediately suggested itself to me how I might convert him to my advantage, I pretended to recollect him; and, blaming the shortness of my memory and badness of my eyes, I sprung forward and embraced him ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... days to make it, yet, for want of iron, it not only wore out soon, but made my work the harder, and made it be performed much worse. However, this I bore with, and was content to work it out with patience, and bear with the badness of the performance. When the corn was sown, I had no harrow, but was forced to go over it myself, and drag a great heavy bough of a tree over it, to scratch it, as it may be called, rather than rake or harrow it. When it was growing, and grown, I have observed already ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... natural as is the curiosity regarding the manner in which they lived. "Did he die game?" is one of the questions asked by bad men among themselves. "Did he die with his boots on?" is another. The last was the test of actual or, as it were, of professional badness. One who admitted himself bad was willing to die with his boots on. Honest men were not, and more than one early Western man fatally shot had his friends take off his boots before he died, so that he might not go with the stain of desperadoism ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... be very nice to do that always—just to take men as they are, and not to have to think about their badness. It would be very nice not to have so many questions, but to think they were all comfortably answered, so that one could sit there on an old Spanish leather chair, with the curtains drawn and keeping out the cold, the darkness, all the big, terrible, cruel world—sit there and listen ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... was rather vexed that she had not been first noticed by the gentleman, and began to make heavy complaints of the badness of the road, but no one paid much attention to her. Elizabeth however gave her arm to Lucy, who never could ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... intention on his part to make her reparation, any more than he had made it to others who had gone before her. She had become painfully aware of the fact that the man for whom she had chosen to sacrifice herself was bad, but she had not learned all his badness yet. ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... ticket. The more romantic and strictly correct course to adopt is to start out without a dollar, and to beat one's way across the continent, so as to be thoroughly entitled to recognition on the prairie. Many a young man who has commenced the pilgrimage towards glorified badness, has had the fever knocked out of him before advancing 100 miles, but others have succeeded in getting through, and have arrived in Texas, Wyoming or Montana, as the case may have been, thoroughly convinced of their own ability to hold their own in ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... her sister could manage to pay their way and provide what Madge would want. The hours were long, the duties irksome and wearisome, and, worst of all, the conditions under which they were performed, were not only as bad as they could be, but their badness was of a kind to which Clara had never been accustomed, so that she felt every particle of it in its full force. The windows of the shop were, of course, full of books, and the walls were lined with them. In the middle of the shop also was a range of shelves, and ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... I rode her she went up so straight that I slipped back in my saddle, and some of the enlisted men ran out to my assistance. I let her have her own way and came back to the tent, and jumping down, declared to Faye that I would never ride her again. She is very cute in her badness, and having once discovered that I didn't like a rearing horse, she has proceeded to rear whenever she wanted her own way. I have enjoyed riding her because she is so graceful and dainty, but I have been ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... Thracians, or moderate potations like the Persians? 'Give us arms, and we send all these nations flying before us.' My good friend, be modest; victories and defeats often arise from unknown causes, and afford no proof of the goodness or badness of institutions. The stronger overcomes the weaker, as the Athenians have overcome the Ceans, or the Syracusans the Locrians, who are, perhaps, the best governed state in that part of the world. People are apt to praise or censure practices without enquiring into ...
— Laws • Plato
... temperament and the circumstances of his early life disposed him to melancholy; so that he readily came under the spell of Haller, Thomson, and the other poets who extolled nature and the simple life as a refuge from the badness of civilization. His best known production is the fragment called Spring (1749), in which fine passages of personal feeling are interwoven with detailed descriptions that are sometimes a little tedious. The text follows Muncker's edition ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... and one Downes, a gentleman, were both committed, the one to the town prison at Norwich, the other to the county prison there, for obstinate papistry; and seven more gentlemen of worship were committed to several houses in Norwich as prisoners....for badness of belief. This Rookwood is a papist of kind, newly crept out of his late wardship. Her majesty, by some means I know not, was lodged at his house, Euston, far unmeet for her highness, but fitter for the black ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... around the apartment. After taking a heavy draught of the water, he became quite collected. I rose, and we entered the larger part of the cottage, where the mother and daughter were busy preparing breakfast. After the usual salutations, and an apology for the badness of our lodging, I inquired how far we were from Largs, and was informed it was about three miles from where we were. Feeling myself much indisposed, and threatened with a severe cold, I resolved to return home as direct as I could, not choosing to run the risk of any more such ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... chiefly with cedar-wood and mahogany from the wreck of a Honduras-built ship; and in one island, after the wreck of a ship laden with wine, the inhabitants have been known to take claret to their barley-meal porridge. On complaining to one of the pilots of the badness of his boat's sails, he replied to the author with some degree of pleasantry, 'Had it been His will that you camena' here wi' your lights, we might a' had better sails to our boats, and more o' other things.' It may further be mentioned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... imaginative man recognises at once a portion of himself in his fellow, and speaks to that. To hurt you is to hurt himself. Much of the rudeness we encounter in life cannot be properly set down to cruelty or badness of heart. The unimaginative man is callous, and although he hurts easily, he cannot be easily hurt in return. The imaginative man is sensitive, and merciful to others, out of the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... believe that much might be done in this country by industrious settlers and agriculturists. There is abundance of land, and three-fourths of it certainly lies uncultivated. By thinning the woods and draining the land, the badness of the climate would be lessened. It is already, even without cultivation, very fruitful; and how much this might be increased by a proper and rational mode of treatment. Rich grass grows everywhere, mixed with ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... his favorite Macaronic poem, which, as he had published two volumes of Macaronea, was praise indeed. His theory was, that as Macaronics were the ultra-extravagance of poetry, he who wrote most recklessly in them did best; in fact, that they should excel in first-rate BADNESS; and from this point of view it is possible that Breitmann's Latin lyric is not devoid of merit, since assuredly nobody ever wrote a worse. The late LORD LYTTON, or "Bulwer," was also kind enough to take an interest in these Ballads, which was to me as gratifying as it was amazing. It was one ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... result? The capture of Jerusalem and turning of the Turkish left flank; a loss of prestige and a military disaster from which they never recovered. We had taken part in most difficult and arduous fighting in most difficult and arduous country; difficult because of the badness of the maps, which made it almost impossible to locate one's position or maintain touch, and arduous as only those who know that rocky precipitous country can realise. For artillery it was practically impossible, and though they did wonders in bringing guns up over the roughest of roadless hills, ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie |
