Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Drunkenness   /drˈəŋkənnəs/   Listen
Drunkenness

noun
1.
A temporary state resulting from excessive consumption of alcohol.  Synonyms: inebriation, inebriety, insobriety, intoxication, tipsiness.
2.
Habitual intoxication; prolonged and excessive intake of alcoholic drinks leading to a breakdown in health and an addiction to alcohol such that abrupt deprivation leads to severe withdrawal symptoms.  Synonyms: alcohol addiction, alcoholism, inebriation.
3.
The act of drinking alcoholic beverages to excess.  Synonyms: boozing, crapulence, drink, drinking.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Drunkenness" Quotes from Famous Books



... of God are good," and lawful for us to use; but we are not to abuse them, "but to be temperate in all things," thus acting up to the rule of scripture, and setting a better example than if we wholly abstained from fermented drink. Any other rule, excepting in cases of notorious drunkenness, is, in my opinion, anti-scriptural, ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland

... provided that of the natives 'the most towardly boys in wit and the graces' should be educated and set apart to the work of converting the Indians to the Christian religion; stringent penalties were attached to idleness, gambling, and drunkenness; excess in apparel was prohibited by heavy taxation; encouragement was given to agriculture in all its known forms; while conceding 'the commission of privileges' brought over by the new Governor as their fundamental law, yet with ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... was a drunken Governor of Siouri Castle. It happened one day that he lay in a state of drunkenness in the garden; and the Cogia taking a walk in the garden with Amad, came up and found him lying drunk and insensible. The Cogia instantly stripped him of his feradje or upper coat, and putting it on his own back, walked away. On the other hand, the Governor, on getting up, saw that ...
— The Turkish Jester - or, The Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Effendi • Nasreddin Hoca

... of a fight every moment, and if one had been started there is little doubt that it would have been short and bloody, for the conduct of the rowdy portion of the travellers had enraged the decent persons, to whom the thought of drunkenness and ribaldry at such a time was abhorrent, and they were quite ready to undertake the work of pitching the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... the girl, her young eyes full of horror. From actual experience, she hardly knew what drunkenness meant; she had hitherto associated it only with the lowest class of Irish agricultural labourer, or with those dreadful white women who lived, by choice, in Chinese Camps. That there could exist a mother who drank was ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... as in Luzon. At the church festivals they perform a drama translated from the Spanish, generally of a religious character; and the expense of the entertainment is defrayed by voluntary contributions of the wealthy. The chief vices of the population are play and drunkenness; in which latter even women and young girls occasionally indulge. The marriage feasts, combining song and dance, often continue for several days and nights together, where they have a sufficient supply of food and drink. [Suitor's service.] ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... ceremoniously. All were still. Composedly, like a lieutenant before his captain, Mahi narrated how these hunted remnants of Lovain's army had, as a last cast, that night invaded the chateau, and had found, thanks to the festival, its men-at-arms in uniform and inefficient drunkenness. "My tres beau sire," Messire de Vernoil ended, "will you or nill you, Venaissin is yours this morning. My knaves have slain Philibert and his bewildered fellow-tipplers with less effort than is needed to drown ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... little by little our words produced a sobering effect, for Drink had not entire possession of him: he bade the flute-girl cease, tore off his garlands, and looked with shame at his luxurious dress. Like one waking from deep sleep, he saw himself as he was, and repented of his past life; the flush of drunkenness faded and vanished from his cheek, and was succeeded by a blush of shame; at last, not (as plaintiff would have you believe) in response to any invitation of mine, nor under any compulsion, but of ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... and the realistic conjuring up of gore-dripping tassels and bloody shirts upset her, and she desired to get away. She also saw that Dick was abnormally excited, and suspected that he had been drinking. Her delicate senses shrank from drunkenness. ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke

... 25th. And that Luke does not refer to a judgment at the end of time is certain from the manner in which he concludes, which is as follows: "And take heed lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and the cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares * * * Watch ye, therefore, and pray always that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass and to stand before the Son of man." Here ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods

... essential fact to determine whether in status where prohibition has been tried it has failed or succeeded, and another essential fact whether under similar conditions a combination of high license and local option has or has not produced less drunkenness. Both are extremely complicated and difficult facts to decide; but if clear evidence can be brought forward to establish them, reasonable-minded people would generally hold as settled the question of the policy which should be adopted. ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner

... of wine to my own palate and throat was offensive. Beer, ale, and porter disgusted me by their bitterness. Porter was peculiarly nauseous to me. I early saw the ill-effects of wine on youths, and was frightened by accounts of college drunkenness. For this reason, as well as from economy, I never became a wine-drinker, further than to drink healths by just colouring water in a glass. I have never dreamed of needing wine, though often in old time ordered by physicians to drink it. Not having then the same power to ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade

... by Sir John Nevil, who had risen from his chair, and beneath whose stare of surprise and anger Baldry, being far from actual drunkenness, moved uneasily. ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... would the entrails of an eight-day clock, explain the phenomenon I am about to relate, or decline to believe it, as they choose—she became suddenly aware that she was getting perilously near the brink of actual drunkenness. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... quite sure yet whether I loathed the man or liked him. He was the most extraordinary mixture of charity and drunkenness, lechery and self-sacrifice that I had ever come across. But he brought into the house with him a whiff of cheeriness and hope for which I could not but be grateful. He had a large brown paper parcel under ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... scum of the American population would float here, with all the lawlessness that was in California in its early days. Drinking-bars and gambling-saloons would rise like mushrooms; and where now all is beauty and peace, there would be robbery, violence, murder, drunkenness, and misery too ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... manducation[obs3], rumination; gluttony &c. 957. [eating specific foods] hippophagy[obs3], ichthyophagy[obs3]. [CAUSEDBY:appetite &c. 865]. mouth, jaws, mandible, mazard[obs3], chops. drinking &c. v.; potation, draught, libation; carousal &c. (amusement) 840; drunkenness &c. 959. food, pabulum; aliment, nourishment, nutriment; sustenance, sustentation, sustention; nurture, subsistence, provender, corn, feed, fodder, provision, ration, keep, commons, board; commissariat &c. (provision) 637; prey, forage, pasture, pasturage; fare, cheer; diet, dietary; regimen; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... fallen dynasty, Simeon Solomon, the Pre- Raphaelite painter, once the friend of Rossetti and of Swinburne, but fresh now from some low public house. Condemned to a long term of imprisonment for a criminal offence, he had sunk into drunkenness and misery. Introduced one night, however, to some man who mistook him, in the dim candle light, for another Solomon, a successful academic painter and R. A., he started to his feet in a rage with 'Sir, do you dare to mistake me for that mountebank?' Though not one had harkened ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats

... and reaction came, as come they must. Upon the Restoration, society swung to the opposite extreme. In place of the solemn-visaged, psalm-singing Roundhead, we have the gay, roistering Cavalier. Faith gives place to infidelity, sobriety to drunkenness, purity to profligacy, economy to extravagance, Bible-study, psalm-singing and exhorting to theatre-going, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... spontaneous human combustion is to be found in several cases quoted by Taylor, in which persons falling asleep, possibly near a fire, have been accidentally ignited, and becoming first stupefied by the smoke, and then suffocated, have been burned to charcoal without awaking. Drunkenness or great exhaustion may also explain certain cases. In substantiation of the possibility of Taylor's instances several prominent physiologists have remarked that persons have endured severe burns during sleep and have never ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... efficiency is great. It is again arrayed according to the rules of science and, therefore, ought to be irresistible. It is attached to us exceedingly, and always devoted to us. It is submissive, and free from the faults of drunkenness and licentiousness. Its prowess had before been tested. The soldiers are neither very old nor very young. They are neither lean nor corpulent. Of active habits, of well-developed and strong frames, they are free from disease. They are cased in mail and well-equipped with arms. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... never-heard-of hymns, The idle life to which he clung Was worthless as the songs he sung! I saw him, in my vision, filled With rapture o'er a spray of bloom The wind threw in his lonely room; And of the sweet perfume it spilled He drank to drunkenness, and flung His long hair back, and laughed and sung And clapped his hands as children do At fairy tales they listen to, While from his flying quill there dripped Such music on his manuscript That he who listens to the words May close ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... expected when I saw you that some such scheme was on foot. Swindler and spendthrift as I am, at least it is but a family failing; and I am indebted for my virtues to my father's precious example. Your lordship has, I perceive, added drunkenness to the list of your accomplishments, and, I suppose, under the influence of that gentlemanly excitement, has come to make these preposterous propositions to me. When you are sober, you will, perhaps, be wise enough to know, that, fool as I may be, ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... right, Mr. Lyman. And that reminds me that I have been forced through a change concerning Mr. Sawyer. I honor him on some grounds, you understand, but his confession of drunkenness shocked me greatly. In fact, sir, I am glad he ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read

... custom of taking madmen for demoniacs, was not so peculiar to the jews, but that it prevailed in other nations also. Hence in Herodotus king Cleomenes is said to be driven into madness, not by any daemon, but by a habit of drunkenness, which he had contracted among the Scythians, whereby he became frantic.[118] And whereas [Greek: daimonan] signifies the same thing as [Greek: daimonion echein], Xenophon uses this word for furere, to be raging mad or furious.[119] Moreover Aristophanes, intending to ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead

... People walked ten and twelve abreast through the streets. Some 30,000 strangers besieged that frontier town. A mob of 10,000 tried to fill out application blanks, tried to get something to eat and drink, some place to sleep. While the saloons were overrun, there was little drunkenness. No man could stand at the bar long enough to get drunk. If he managed to get one drink, or two at most, he was pushed aside before he could get another—to make room for someone ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... that we are trying to cure to-day is reflected in them. The wife who through an unwilling continence drives her husband to prostitution; habitual drunkenness, which prohibition may or may not have disposed of as a social problem; mothers who toil in mills and whose children must follow them to that toil, adding to the long train of evils involved in child labor; ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... the position of all four of his fellow-occupants of the cabin,—Virginia at one end of the table, Joe at the other, Pete opposite him on the other side of the stove, Harold standing in the middle of the room, babbling in his drunkenness. ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... runner of his body-guard was summoned to Conchobar, Findchad Ferbenduma ('he of the copper Horn') to wit, son of Fraech Lethan ('the Broad'), and Conchobar bade him go assemble and muster the men of Ulster. And in like manner, in the drunkenness of sleep and of his 'Pains,' Conchobar enumerated to him their quick and their dead, and ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... fact, seems quite to adopt all your opinions. He comes with a lantern to convey you home to his own habitation. There is an old legend about a saint who was to choose one of the seven mortal sins, and he chose, as he thought, the least—drunkenness; but in that state he perpetrated all the other six sins. The human nature and the devilish nature mingle. This is the sixth glass; and after that all the germs of evil thrive in us, every one of them spreading with a rapidity and vigour that cause them ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... this stimulating treatment, however, if other circumstances remain the same, will, of course, render the person as obnoxious as ever to attack, or rather more so. It is evident that at times this cure is as bad as the disease; for scarcely any state of health is more deplorably fatal than constant drunkenness.—E.] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... that great movement whose indirect influence in reforming social habits and restraining excess had at least equalled its direct power for good on its pledged adherents. Though it is still unhappily true that drunkenness slays its tens of thousands among us, and largely helps to people our workhouses, our madhouses, and our gaols, yet the fiend walks not now, as it used to do, in unfettered freedom. It is no longer a fashionable vice, excused and half approved ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... these Jewish gents, who were connections of Mr. Abednego, were insured in our office to the full amount of their loss. The calamity was attributed to the drunkenness of a scoundrelly Irish watchman, who was employed on the premises, and who upset a bottle of whisky in the warehouse of Messrs. Shadrach, and incautiously looked for the liquor with a lighted candle. The man was brought to our office by his ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the book and read the first chapter I should find. Eagerly then I returned to the place where Alypius was sitting; for there had I laid the volume of the Epistles when I arose thence. I seized, opened, and in silence read that section on which my eyes first fell:—"Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof." No further would I read; nor heeded I, for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light, as it were, of serenity infused ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... the sweet and wholesome intercourse of men. My fellow-creatures, from whom I was thus separated, began to assume idyllic virtue and beauty in my memory. My first friendship with Montgomery did not increase. His long separation from humanity, his secret vice of drunkenness, his evident sympathy with the Beast People, tainted him to me. Several times I let him go alone among them. I avoided intercourse with them in every possible way. I spent an increasing proportion of my time upon the beach, looking for some ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... never think of the duties of your profession, that you wallow in greediness and drunkenness, and let religion go where ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas

... with wild cries for a remedy for their distress. At every step in the streets one was met by intoxicated women, who tried to find oblivion of their hunger in wine, and to whom, notwithstanding their drunkenness, the consciousness of their calamity remained. These drunken women, with the gestures of madness, shouted: "Bread! give us bread! We had bread at least in the year '93! Bread! Down with the republic! Down with the Convention, ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... old woman come the day before it is likely enough that Mr. Tebrick would have sent her packing. But the voice of conscience being woken in him by his drunkenness of the night before he was heartily ashamed of his own management of the business, moreover the old woman's words that "it was a shame to let her run about like a dog," moved him exceedingly. Being in this mood the ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett

... atque aurem minimo scalpens digitulo ... et labia lingens ut ebrius et ructans." But Ambivius' potations resulted in an extremely spirited and lifelike imitation of the parasite character and he was forthwith forgiven his drunkenness. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke

... returned to intoxication and beaten thy mother again. By Allah, I will never again buy thee!'" The sharper had previously given as the reason of his transformation the fact that his mother had cursed him when he, in a fit of drunkenness, had beaten her. Clouston tells this story in his "Book of ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... how could they ever not have come to terms (with him to speak on his behalf)? Besides, they were all old friends of this woman, so that, as soon as they conveyed the proposal, she willingly accepted it. When night came To Hun Ch'ung was lying on the couch in a state of drunkenness, and at the second watch, when every one was quiet, Chia Lien at once slipped in, and they had their assignation. As soon as he gazed upon her face, he lost control over his senses, and without even one word of ordinary greeting or commonplace remark, they ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... departed after a word in the bar to Miss Julia:—"Right you are, missis! Don't you let him have another half-a-quartern." For Mr. Nixon being a penny short, her anxiety that he should observe his own rules of life had been reinforced by commercialism. She drew the line of encouraging drunkenness at integers—halves not counting as fractions, by tacit consent. They are ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... adventure, and that was of a simple and primitive character, which seemed to excite no one but myself. They say that there is no drunkenness in France. If that is so then this cabman of mine had a fit of some kind. Perhaps, though, he was only a beast. Most of the cabmen here are beasts. They beat their poor horses so unmercifully that I spend quite a good portion of my time standing up in the cab and arguing with them. ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell

... vulgarly the Grindles may put it, it is true that drunkenness is the agony of wives, the dread of mothers,—that it does destroy hopes, desolate hearths, break hearts,—that within the last two years it has added to its terrible deeds wide disasters to our arms, long sorrow to our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... influence—if such not only fail to receive that moral culture which the company of ladies, when rationally regulated, would give them, but, in default of other relaxation, are driven into habits and companionships which often end in gambling and drunkenness; must we not say that here, too, is an evil not to be passed ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... Election on the Monday following, at which time lilacs were in bloom and 'lection buns were in order; Fourth of July, when strawberries were just going out; and Commencement, a grand time of feasting, fiddling, dancing, jollity, not to mention drunkenness and fighting, on the classic green of Cambridge. This was the season of melons and peaches. That is the way our boyhood chronicles events. It was odd that the literary festival should be turned into a Donnybrook fair, but so it was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... what that something was. A reproof for his drunkenness, or for gambling away the watch, he expected more than any thing else; and his heart was heavy by ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... to me for help, and your claim, which you profess to have upon me, let me remind you that you were engaged as a soldier of fortune, and well paid for your services, though you and yours disgraced the royal army by your robberies and outrages. All you gained you wasted in riot and drunkenness, and now that you are suffering for your follies, you come and make claims ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn

... has elapsed is an obstacle. We cannot find any proof of worse things than drunkenness and brawling during the last year or two. And of the events before that time, when I know that she was untrue to me, we scarcely see how to obtain absolute proof. You must forgive me for mentioning these things to you, ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... continued Joe Digg, "that the pint of temp'rance meetin's is to stop drunkenness, an' as I'm about the only fully developed drunkard in town, I'm most likely to know what this ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... better guidance he told me some things. Prince Hasan had fallen into ways of dissipation and habits of drunkenness—most accursed of vices—in the city of Agra. It was in the hope of reclaiming him that an old friend had called Mirza Shah to the capital. But at the meeting of father and son, instead of repentance on the part ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... the realm was, of course, beer (and it is to be noted that a great access of drunkenness came into England with the importation much later of Holland gin) made from barley, hops, and water, and upon the brewing of it Harrison dwells lovingly, and devotes many pages to a description of the process, especially as "once in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... out of thoughtlessness, treats with indifference." Vol. I, pp. 2-3. See also his appeals to reason where it is a question of the attitude of the community toward legal responsibility on the part of the young, toward drunkenness, and toward the heedless production of offspring doomed to misery and disease, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... life was uneventful. I was brought up by a pious mother in a quiet, deeply religious home; every influence uplifting and good-instilling. I was taught, among other things, to regard liquor in any form with abhorrence, and that drunkenness was the sin of sins. I was surrounded with every safeguard a loving mother could devise, and it was not until after her death and my wife's that I took to drink. My father and grandfather both died drunkards. Heredity, in my case, overcame both training and environment, and ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... less strenuous with us, but the same objections to the domestic system held good at many points. In weaving, the looms occupied large part of the family living space, and overcrowding and all its evils were inevitable. Drunkenness was more common, as well as the stealing of materials by dishonest workers. Time was lost in going for material and in returning it, and only half as much was accomplished. Homes were uncared for and often ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell

... Rome, like every other city, had men of all dispositions; and, wanting a buffoon, he went into the senate-house for that which the senate-house would certainly have afforded him. He was inclined to show an usurper and a murderer, not only odious, but despicable; he, therefore, added drunkenness to his other qualities, knowing that kings love wine like other men, and that wine exerts its natural power upon kings. These are the petty cavils of petty minds; a poet overlooks the casual distinction ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... be sent to the President it had a very salutary effect in keeping the officers attentive to their duty, as no officer wanted to lose his position and salary and be a private. All trivial violations of the rules by non-commissioned officers and privates, such as insolence, drunkenness, filthy habits and disorderly conduct, could be punished by the captain with three days on bread and water-but no pay could be forfeited for any offense, for no fines were allowed in the republic. For serious offenses committed by either officer or private in time of peace, ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans

... must be a better man or perish. Personality, thus becoming a keen selective principle, is based not necessarily on overpopulation and competition, but on that self-destruction which comes from vice, disease, and drunkenness. Its degraded offspring will perish or feed the ranks of the hereditary degenerates to be properly ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... and very attentive husband, as she had believed, but an imperious and brutal master, who, no longer having any motive for concealment, showed himself to her just as he was, a man of disgraceful vices, of which drunkenness and debauchery was the least. Accordingly, serious differences were not long in springing up in this ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... people stand patiently for hours at the pit-door of a theatre. Among this audience there was one young sergeant who had shown a singularly keen interest in the lectures; he was one of the smartest and cleanest-living men in the station, and had never been charged with drunkenness in his life. At one of the lectures B.-P. was surprised to find the young soldier absent, and he was still more surprised on the following day to find that this irreproachable sergeant was up on a charge of drunkenness. "What on earth made you go ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie

... most estimable of all characters, that of firm and enduring virtue; and in fact, it is not going too far to say, that a certain propriety of external demeanour has completely taken the place of correctness of moral conduct among them. They speak almost uniformly with much abhorrence of drunkenness, and of all violations of the established forms of society; and such improprieties are very seldom to be seen among them. Many Frenchmen, as was already observed, are rough and even ferocious in their manners; and the language and behaviour ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... that novel-reading has no value except as a relaxation and amusement is born of the same dense and narrow ignorance which concludes that alcoholic drinks and wine serve no real purpose but to promote drunkenness and wife-beating; that opium promotes only luxurious debauchery, and that all the elegant, graceful and beautiful ceremonies and customs of society are invented merely to amuse and gratify the vain selfishness ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison

... the tiller as he spoke, but Dick Herring and one of his mates, seeing that he was quite unable to steer, tried to prevent him. Brock, however, had reached that stage of drunkenness in which men are apt to become particularly obstinate, and, being a powerful man, struggled violently ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne

... that moment more, perhaps, than he ever had—though not so much as he would hate him. The young wife's faith resolved the teller, however, to watch the manager instead of telling head office about his drunkenness. It was hardly likely Penton would get another chance to rob the cash; he was a coward and would be afraid to ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... in the rear of the French and English (or any other) trenches, will tell it more fully. I do not speak of crime and violence, but of willing sexual intercourse where it was never known before. These things, and the increased drunkenness and the stirring of old passions, are regarded by the clergy as amongst the most evil things of life. Do they seriously suggest that they have been brought in to secure, or are justified by, the spiritual ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe

... his fellows, gathered round him and placed him in a chair. In two hours he was dead. In his drunkenness he had forgotten a portion of the spell which protected him, and so ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham

... kinds of strong and poisonous drinks were made, and untold harm was done by their use. Drunkenness was the most fruitful source of crime and misery; it, more than any other cause, filled the jails, the almshouses and the insane asylums; it kept men in poverty and squalor; it scattered families and changed men, and sometimes women, too, into beasts. No ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... needing a very earthquake to cleanse them from the land? Had he falsified the divine message to the people in his charge? Was he turning men's hearts from the worship of God? Was his priestly office disgraced by carelessness or drunkenness ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... accomplished, Jahveh Sabaoth was to be a crown of glory to those of His children who remained faithful to Him; but Judah, far from submitting itself to His laws, betrayed Him even as Israel had done. Its prophets and priests were likewise distraught with drunkenness; they staggered under the effects of their potations, and turned to scorn the true prophet sent to proclaim to them the will of Jehovah. "Whom," they stammered between their hiccups—"whom will ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... to O'Keefe. All drunkenness gone, himself again, he was staring down at her, and in his eyes were loathing and horror unutterable. So they stood—and the ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... moralist like Lord Hervey was obliged to own in 1737, 'The present great licentiousness of the stage did call for some restraint and regulation.'[685] Such brutal pastimes as cock-fighting and bull-baiting were everywhere popular. Drunkenness was then, as now, a national vice, but it was less disreputable among the middle classes than it happily is at present.[686] What was the state of literature? Notwithstanding the improvement which such writers as Addison and Steele had effected, it was ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... insurgents outnumbered the Augustans five to one. My colleague in office, Titus Honius the Abulcian, going out to pacify the people, was slain. I and my companions fled just before daybreak yesterday. Many people have taken to the forest. The city is now a very hell of drunkenness, rapine, fire, and smoke. And this, it seems to me, is but the beginning. Those barbarians who have long been settled here, upon the Eastern Shore, and those who still keep coming, will together outnumber us, insurgents and Augustans both. It is in my mind to propose ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... may be a dangerous abuse in the excess of spirits; and at one time I am ready to believe the abuse was great. When spirits are cheap, the business of drunkenness is achieved with little time or labor; but that evil I consider to be wholly done away. Observation for the last forty years, and very particularly for the last thirty, has furnished me with ten instances of drunkenness from other causes for one from ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... promises and threats to prevail on them to desist from a purpose so unwarrantable and barbarous. In vain did he urge his authority and instructions from the Queen: the bold and headstrong sailors would hear of no restraints. Drunkenness and avarice are deaf to the voice of humanity. They pursue their violent design, and, after several unsuccessful attacks, in which many of them lost their lives, the cargo was at length ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... be remembered that early in the war an anecdote went the rounds of the press to the effect that, in reply to a complaint that Grant had been guilty of drunkenness in the campaigns in the West, Lincoln remarked that he would "like to find out what kind of liquor Grant drank," so that he might "send some of it to the other Generals." The true version of that characteristic ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... When he was more calm he thought, "He will go home with a religious testimony on his lips, he will die happy, and the man who has spent all his days in drunkenness, killed his wife, and damned his son will be preached through the gates of glory on the strength of a few words of familiar cant." There came into his mind a great contempt for the system which taught ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... his book on ancient punishments. It existed from the earliest times and was administered for a great variety of offenses, to men and women alike, for vagrancy, for theft, to the fathers and mothers of illegitimate children, for drunkenness, for insanity, even sometimes for small-pox. At one time both sexes were whipped naked, but from Queen Elizabeth's time only from the waist upward. In 1791 the whipping of female vagrants ceased by law. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... but she now saw Lebanon in a new light. It was a strange truth that if Lebanon had saved the whole town of Manitou, it would not have been the same to the people as the saving of the church. Beneath everything in Manitou— beneath its dirt and its drunkenness, its irresponsibility and the signs of primeval savagery which were part of its life, there was the tradition of religion, the almost fanatical worship of that which was their master, first and last, in spite of all—the Church. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... no effect. Lilias and Jane had to mourn over the full extent of harm done by hasty words. After the more respectable men had left the Mohun Arms on the evening of Whit-Monday, the rest gave way to unrestrained drunkenness, not so much out of reckless self- indulgence, as to defy the clergyman and the squire. They came to the front of the parsonage, yelled and groaned for some time, and ended by ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge

... two weeks were passed in continuous drunkenness. He would awaken each morning feeling, as those who have passed through the ordeal say has to be experienced in order to have the faintest idea of what it is; his lips and throat were as dry as withered leaves; his brain seemed ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... Court, and all the ladies there. Their most solemn day of acting is the Lord's Day. I think I may truly say that greater abominations were never practised among people than at this day at Charles Stewart's Court. Fornication, drunkenness, and adultery are esteemed no sins amongst them; so I persuade myself God will never prosper any of their attempts.'[*] In another letter we read that once, after a hunting expedition, Charles and a gentleman of the bedchamber were the ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond

... survivals of the nocturnal Christmas offices in Protestant countries. In German "Evangelical" churches, midnight or early morning services were common in the eighteenth century; but they were forbidden in some places because of the riot and drunkenness which accompanied them. The people seem to have regarded them as a part of their Christmas revellings rather than as sacred functions; one writer compares the congregation to a crowd of wild drunken sailors in a |99| tavern, another gives disgusting particulars of disorders in a church where the ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... language it is clept HARME, and the same book forbiddeth them to drink wine. For in that book, Mahomet cursed all those that drink wine and all them that sell it: for some men say, that he slew once an hermit in his drunkenness, that he loved full well; and therefore he cursed wine and them that drink it. But his curse be turned on to his own head, as holy writ saith, ET IN VIRTICEM IPSIUS INIQUITAS EJUS DESCENDET, that is for to say, 'His wickedness shall turn and fall in his ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown

... castle of Jarnac, and thrown contemptuously upon the ground. Several illustrious prisoners were brought to the spot and butchered in cold blood, and their corpses thrown upon that of the prince, while the soldiers passed a night of drunkenness and revelry, exulting over the remains ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... basilar region exhausts the brain, degrades the soul, and thereby impairing the fountain of life and health, introduces disease and death. Gluttony, drunkenness, sensuality, passion, and violent exertion are the processes that exhaust the soul power. Excessive and prolonged muscular exertion without rest exhausts the brain. But the normal action of the basilar ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various

... August practically the whole of Galicia was in the hands of the Germans. Russian soldiers in large numbers retreated before inferior numbers of Germans, refusing to strike a blow. Germans furnished them with immense quantities of spirits, and an orgy of drunkenness took place. The red flag was borne by debauched and drunken mobs. What a fate for the symbol of ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... limited to twelve members. It soon became so popular that applications for admission became very frequent. Six months passed rapidly away, when Keimer, who was an exceedingly immoral and worthless man, and was fast going to ruin, in some fit of drunkenness, or ungovernable irritation, entered the office, and assailed Franklin with such abuse, that he took his hat, and repaired to his lodgings, resolved ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott

... disadvantage to Burns that he had not a beautiful world to deal with. This famous dictum is a standing challenge to any critic who regards Burns as a creator of beauty. It is true that when Burns took this world at its apparent worst, when Scotch drink meant bestial drunkenness, when Scotch manners meant shameless indecency, when Scotch religion meant blasphemous defiance, he created The Jolly Beggars, which the same critic found a "splendid and puissant production." We must conclude, then, that sufficient genius can sublimate even a hideously sordid world into a ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... and not turn all water into wine. To which Joseph replied that it would be a great misfortune, for the greater part of men would be as drunk as Noah was when he planted a vineyard, and we know how Lot's daughters turned their father's drunkenness to account. Moreover, Philip, if Jesus had turned all the water into wine there would be no miracle, for a miracle is a special act performed by someone whom God has chosen as an instrument. It is as likely as not, Master, that you ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... there! I will not even hear of an engagement until that time shall arrive. How do I know how you will pass through the ordeal of a political career, or into what bad company, evil habits, riotous living, dissipation, drunkenness, bribery and corruption, embezzlements, ruin and disgrace you may not ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... and repellent name! His views on this general subject were merely those common to his communion and his environment. He took it for granted, for example, that in the large cities most of the poverty and all the drunkenness, crime, and political corruption were due to the perverse qualities of this foreign people—qualities accentuated and emphasized in every evil direction by the baleful influence of a false and idolatrous religion. It is hardly too much to say that he had never encountered ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... preference to all other situations; and if at the time of its so appearing, ships should arrive, as they are constantly doing from all parts of the world, whose crews, according to the custom of sailors, plunge instantly into drunkenness and debauchery, and present as it were, ready prepared, the very subjects the pestilence was waiting for; how easy then, for an alarmed or prejudiced board of health to point out the supposed importing vessel, and freight her with a cargo of the new pestilence from any ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... it in that character, for he paid so many visitations to it that he became so intoxicated, that he lay during the whole of the night dead drunk in the boat. Buckar Sano, however, showed by his subsequent conduct, that drunkenness was not a vice, to which he was naturally addicted, and that the strength of the spirit had crept upon him, before he was aware of the consequences that were likely to ensue. On any subsequent occasion, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... man, whose inflamed complexion and blossoming nose betrayed old habits of drunkenness, looked very much like a coachman out of place. Baseness and duplicity bloomed upon his countenance; and the brightness of his small eyes rendered still more alarming the slyly obsequious smile that was stereotyped upon his thin and ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... enormous capacity. An hour passed, and, though he drank repeatedly on his high-lonesome, he seemed little the worse for it. Drummond patiently watched and waited. He knew that with some newly distilled brandy does not take immediate effect, but that drunkenness comes on suddenly when the victim ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins

... a levee in his tent every morning, from ten to eleven. He was strict as to the morals of the camp. Drunkenness was severely punished. A soldier convicted of theft was sentenced to receive one thousand lashes, and to be drummed out of his regiment. Part of the first part of the sentence was remitted. Divine service was performed every Sunday, at the head of the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... can swear I don't remember making you any special present; why should I? That ring must be worth more than ten rix-dollars. No, no, my good fellows! That won't do at all. You must not take advantage of your master's feebleness and drunkenness. When I'm drunk, I'm perfectly ready to give away my breeches; but when I have slept off my liquor, I take back my gifts. Otherwise I should get into trouble with Nille, my old woman. But what am I saying? I am falling back into my mad notions again and don't realize ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg

... narrative commences, he had been one of Mordaunt's forlorn hope at Schellenberg, for which service he was promised a pair of colours; he lost them, however, and was almost shot (but fate did not ordain that his career should close in that way) for drunkenness and insubordination immediately after the battle; but having in some measure reinstated himself by a display of much gallantry at Blenheim, it was found advisable to send him to England for the purposes ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... lives on horseback, at least near the Spanish settlement. They occasionally come there with their wives to buy eau de cologne, and they never cease drinking until drunkenness literally deprives them of the power to move. Sometimes they assemble in droves of two or three hundred to carry off the cattle from the Spanish lands, or to attack the caravans ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... nothing, and we accused ourselves. Most of us supposed that want of discipline on the part of our troops and drunkenness had begun the disaster, and that the high wind had completed it. We viewed ourselves with feelings of disgust. The cry of horror which all Europe would not fail to set up, terrified us. Filled with consternation at so ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... the Court rose, he proceeded into Galloway, where he had not before been, in order to make himself acquainted with the persons and localities mixed up with the case of a certain Rev. Mr. M'Naught, minister of Girthon, whose trial, on charges of habitual drunkenness, singing of lewd and profane songs, dancing and toying at a penny-wedding with a "sweetie wife" (that is, an itinerant vender of gingerbread, etc.), and moreover of promoting irregular marriages as a justice of the peace, was about to take place before the General ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... West Market streets, when, by some misunderstanding of orders, the right of the regiment marched to the right, and the left to the left. With some difficulty, and a good deal of swearing, they were brought back into line and dismissed. Militia day was a day of drunkenness and fighting. No wonder that years passed without muster. Such was the military condition of the United States when the War of the Rebellion sounded the tocsin of alarm, and our generation was called upon to meet the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... collection of ill-looking faces, speaking a French less pure than the English they were about to attempt. These men were, for the most part, guards, whose merit D'Artagnan had had an opportunity of appreciating in various encounters, whom drunkenness, unlucky sword-thrusts, unexpected winnings at play, or the economical reforms of Mazarin, had forced to seek shade and solitude, those two great consolers of irritated and chafing spirits. They bore upon their countenances and in their vestments the traces ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... guide his steps, he staggers and falls as if he were epileptic; he hurts and even risks killing himself; his debility in this state exposes him to the ridicule and contempt of every person that sees him; he makes in his drunkenness, prejudicial and ruinous bargains, and injures his fortune; he makes use of opprobrious language, which creates him enemies and repentance; he fills his house with trouble and sorrow, and ends by a premature death or ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... have so much power over me that I can refuse you nothing. Show yourself, scoundrel! (after having disappeared one moment, he reappears as a valet.) Mr. Gorgibus, I am so much indebted to you. (Disappears, and reappears again as doctor.) Well, did you see that picture of drunkenness? ...
— The Flying Doctor - (Le Medecin Volant) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere

... as they expected to get when they ventured on it. If they did, they got something else along with it that took all the gilt off the gingerbread. Take the lowest kind of gross evil—sins of lust or of drunkenness. Well, no doubt the physical satisfaction desired is secured. Yes; and what about what comes after, in addition, that was not aimed at? The drunkard gets his pleasurable oblivion, his desired excitement. What about the corrugated liver, the palsied hand, the watery ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... Vices and Virtues were not symbolized by more or less chimerical creatures, but by human faces. After careful search he discovered on some of the pillars of the middle doorway the Vices embodied in small carved groups: Lust, as a woman fondling a young man; Drunkenness as a boor about to hit a bishop; Discord by a husband quarrelling with his wife, while an empty bottle and a broken ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... know of the future. Through all the earlier generations of mankind, ecstasism has been practiced, and civilized man has thus an inherited appetite for narcotics, to which the enormous propensity to drunkenness existing in all nations bears witness. When the great actor in his personation of Rip Van Winkle holds his goblet aloft and says, "Here's to your health and to your family's, and may they live long and prosper," he connects the act of drinking with a prayer, ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... power, and the shame-faced angels of their true selves, made in the image of God, withdrew into the dark; until at last, between night and morning, Tom would reel gracefully home, using all the power of his will—the best use to which it ever was put—to subdue the drunkenness of which, even in its embrace, he had the lingering honor to be ashamed, that he might face his wife with the appearance of the gentleman he was anxious she should ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... the veranda, cleverly simulating drunkenness. Furious as he was, he was cool enough to play a definite and reasonably safe game. He lost his balance ten feet from Leyden's chair, recovered himself with a damp hiccough and maudlin apology, then darted forward and sprawled among the ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... Drunkenness finds a ship adrift,—no steady wind in its sails, no thoughtful pilot directing its course,— he steps on board, takes the helm, and steers straight for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... means wholly satisfactory, and it would be unfair to deny to many of Tilak's followers a genuine desire to mitigate the evils and hardships to which their humbler fellow-creatures were exposed. Prominent amongst such evils was the growth of drunkenness, and it would have been all to his honour that Tilak hastened to take up the cause of temperance, had he not perverted it, as he perverted everything else, to the promotion of race-hatred. His primary motives may have ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... beating the wall;" "He is heading pins," etc., etc., are favorite expressions. Of course, the delicacy or waggishness with which we allude to an evil is no excuse for it, but the French have little absolute drunkenness to excuse. They are emphatically a sober people (being a good deal like intoxicated Yankees or Dutchmen, anyway), and even in their cups neither rude nor quarrelsome. Of the few French people I ever saw drunk (except peasants), all were begging pardon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... innkeeper, but the army will be injured; for what greater harm can be done to any man, than to initiate him in a habit of intemperance? and what outrages and insolencies may not be expected from men trusted with swords, and kept, from day to day, and from month to month, in habitual drunkenness by a decree of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson

... merely the spiritual form of physical heredity, which is its essential principle: moral heredity being only a sequel, and revealing in its elementary stage the same indifference to real justice, and the same blindness. Whatever the moral cause of the ancestor's drunkenness or debauch, the same punishment may be meted out in mind and body to the descendants of the drunkard or the debauchee. Intellectual blemish will almost always accompany material blemish. The soul will be attacked simultaneously with the ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck

... so justly famous for their skill in the affairs of the kitchen, that the adage says, "As many Frenchmen as many cooks:" surrounded as they are by a profusion of the most delicious wines, and seducing liqueurs offering every temptation to render drunkenness delightful, yet a tippling Frenchman ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... praise thy liberality. Speak against usury, yet forsake no pawns, So thou may'st gain three shillings in the pound. Warn thou the world from sin and vile excess, And now and then speak against drunkenness: So by this means thou shalt be termed wise, And with thy pureness blind the people's eyes. But now, my sons, discourse to me in brief How you have lived, and how you ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... of society, however, considered drunkenness as a very good joke, and even went so far as to portray it in their tomb decorations. One sees men carried home from a feast across the shoulders of three of their companions, or ignominiously hauled out of the house by their ankles and the scruff of their neck. In the tomb ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... a veil of grace and chivalry. But no veil shrouded the degrading grossness of the Court of James. James was no drunkard, but he was a hard drinker, and with the people at large his hard drinking passed for drunkenness. When the Danish king visited England actors in a masque performed at Court were seen rolling intoxicated at his feet. The suit of Lady Essex had shown great nobles and officers of state content to play panders to their kinswoman. A yet more scandalous trial was soon to show them ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... treachery, is restored to his normal state. He revives, in a manner; he recovers movement and sensibility. He is affected by the stimulus of a needle; he shifts his place, crawls, puts out his tentacles, as though nothing unusual had occurred. The general torpor, a sort of deep drunkenness, has vanished outright. The dead returns to life. What name shall we give to that form of existence which, for a time, abolishes the power of movement and the sense of pain? I can see but one that is approximately suitable: anaesthesia. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... the effect of drunkenness upon the mind and character of a man! Is it not wonderful how the tender, affectionate, and provident husband and father can become so changed into a worse than brutal insensibility to all the sacred duties of life? Is it not wonderful how the man, who would, to-day, sacrifice even life itself ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur

... then from my soul who say to her, "It makes a difference whence a man's joy is. That beggar-man joyed in drunkenness; Thou desiredst to joy in glory." What glory, Lord? That which is not in Thee. For even as his was no true joy, so was that no true glory: and it overthrew my soul more. He that very night should digest his drunkenness; but I had slept and risen again with mine, and was to sleep again, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... the morning, and we had a grand tiffin at twelve, and Mahmoud was allowed to sit on the table, and he ate sausages, pommeloe, bananas, pine-apple, chicken and curry, and then seizing a long glass of champagne, drank a good deal before it was taken from him. If drunkenness were not a loathsome human vice, it would have been most amusing to see it burlesqued by this ape. He tried to seem sober and to sit up, but could not, then staggered to a chair, trying hard to walk steadily, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... ridges. His cheekbones flamed with the whisky flush. He cashed in a double-handful of chips, stuffed the money he had won into his coat pocket, walked, with that stiff precision of gait by which a drunken man strives to hide his drunkenness, to the bar and had another drink. Frank was at his elbow. Frank was staggering, garrulous, laughing a great ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... men in war become! It is well for gentlemen to talk of the age of chivalry; but remember the starving brutes whom they lead—men nursed in poverty, entirely ignorant, made to take a pride in deeds of blood—men who can have no amusement but in drunkenness, debauch, and plunder. It is with these shocking instruments that your great warriors and kings have been doing their murderous work in the world; and while, for instance, we are at the present moment admiring the 'Great Frederick,' as we call him, and his philosophy, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and mystery and passion of those two days, so intimately wrought in with passionate memories of Mary, came back upon him now, keeping him awake till nearly dawn. He arose late and yet found only McCleary at breakfast; the other men had remained so long in the barroom that sleep and drunkenness ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... station house, and especially to that guilty man and woman who had been torn from their luxurious home and confined in this dreary prison. All that could revolt, disgust, and utterly depress human nature seemed gathered within its walls. Here were drunkenness, deadly sickness, and reckless and shameless profanity, all of the most loathsome character. And all this was excruciating torture to a man like Lord Vincent, who, if he was not refined, was at least excessively ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... sort of rude eloquence, characteristic of his mind and body. Nothing, however, but his rank, his wealth, his influences, his Whig opinions, could have rendered this profligate, revolting man endurable. Drunkenness is said to have been inherent in his constitution, and to have been inherited from the Plantagenets. He was known in his youth to have been found sleeping in the streets, intoxicated, on a block of wood; yet he is related to have been so capable of resisting the effects ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson

... intoxication. The hint of a smile lurking in the sobriety of the powerful features of his extraordinary friend only increased his doubt. Was Norman mocking him, and himself as well? If so, was it the mockery of sober sense or of drunkenness? ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... misdemeanours, grave and small, are here confined. Those who have deserted or attempted it; those who have insulted officers and those guilty of theft, fighting, drunkenness, etc. In most, as in the camps, there are traces yet of manhood and of the Divine Spark, but some are abandoned, dissolute. There are many here among the substitutes who were actors in the late ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle

... Wipe off all that is doubtful in the results, all evasions of the law, all that was due to the absence of a large number of healthy men, yet the State interference—prohibition of treating, great shortening of hours, provision of weakened beer—these undoubtedly have acted so as to reduce drunkenness. ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... The drunkenness began to return. He protested with maudlin earnestness that I was entirely mistaken,—that I was intoxicated; then asked me to swear eternal secrecy, and promised to disclose the mystery to me. I pledged myself, of course, to all. With an uneasy look in his eyes, and hands ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... have great military virtues. They are intelligent, zealous in their cause, handy with arms, willing enough to work at all military duties, and personally brave. On the other hand, they are sickly, and there has been a considerable amount of drunkenness among them. No man who has looked to the subject can, I think, doubt that a native American has a lower physical development than an Irishman, a German, or an Englishman. They become old sooner, and die at an ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... shall face the cold logic of her position.] Listen. I look back on that night as one looks back on a fit of drunkenness. ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker

... gruffly reported the hour to be half-past nine. "Very well," said Foote, "about this time of the night every gentleman in Ireland that can possibly afford it is in his third bottle of claret, and therefore in a fair way of getting drunk; and from drunkenness proceeds quarrelling, and from quarrelling, duelling, and so there's an end of the chapter." The company were much obliged to Foote for his interference, the hour being considered; though Macklin did not ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... are sufficiently startling to cause every good man and woman to seek for their removal. Many homes are ruined by it; many children robbed; many men and women reduced to drunkenness and death; even those not yet touched by it are not sure that they shall remain exempt. It threatens every child, every home, every ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm

... stranger three forlorn little fly-spotted frames; a small posting-bill, dusty with long-continued neglect, announcing that the premises were to let; and one colored print, the last of a series illustrating the horrors of drunkenness, on the fiercest temperance principles. The composition—representing an empty bottle of gin, an immensely spacious garret, a perpendicular Scripture reader, and a horizontal expiring family—appealed to public favor, under the entirely unobjectionable title of "The Hand of Death." Allan's resolution ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... only be spectators of these games from a distance; they therefore occupy the adjoining heights. For the rest, the arrangements are the same as at the Greek Easter feast. People eat, drink, and dance. No signs of beer, wine, or liqueur are to be discovered, and consequently there is no drunkenness. ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... economic conditions set the stage for it. A young girl housed in a poor tenement, ill-lighted, poorly heated, badly ventilated, fed and clothed insufficiently—see to it that she hears foul language, and witnesses drunkenness and quarrelling—then you have the condition that ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks

... every form. There was the French idea prevalent that gambling was no harm; and it was indulged to a degree certainly hurtful to many and ruinous to some. From the climate and the great prevalence of light wines, there was less drunkenness than in most southern towns; and if other vices prevailed to any great extent—they were either gracefully hidden, or so sanctioned by custom as to cause no remark, except ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... did not give the liquor to me of their own accord I would throw it overboard. About seventy flasks and bottles were handed to me, and I found and threw overboard about twenty. This at once put a stop to all drunkenness. The stokers and engineers were sullen and half mutinous, so I sent a detail of my men down to watch them and see that they did their work under the orders of the chief engineer; and we reduced them to obedience in short order. I could easily ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt

... blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great—an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... remodelled in order to provide modern comforts and conveniences that scarce a trace of their old-fashioned appearance can be found. Modern temperance legislators imagine that if they can only reduce the number of inns they will reduce drunkenness and make the English people a sober nation. This is not the place to discuss whether the destruction of inns tends to promote temperance. We may, perhaps, be permitted to doubt the truth of the legend, oft repeated on temperance platforms, ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... most absolute right to prevent all manner of evil—drunkenness, and the rest of it, if it can—only in doing so, society must not use means which would create a greater evil than it would remedy. As a man can by no possibility be doing anything but most foul ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... man, were not so well foisted and relieved with laughing, jesting, and such like divertisements, which, like second courses, serve for the promoting of digestion? And as to all those shoeing-horns of drunkenness, the keeping every one his man, the throwing high jinks, the filling of bumpers, the drinking two in a hand, the beginning of mistresses' healths; and then the roaring out of drunken catches, the calling in a fiddler, the leading ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... newspapers, of course. "Deplorable story: A clergyman fined for drunkenness." This was more than even ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... for the wretched man, who, in the insanity of drunkenness, had done this dreadful deed; but he was ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur

... have been told by an intelligent practitioner in a Western town, that the constant prescription of opiates by certain physicians in his vicinity has rendered the habitual use of that drug in all that region very prevalent; more common, I should think, than alcoholic drunkenness in the most intemperate localities of which I have known anything. A frightful endemic demoralization betrays itself in the frequency with which the haggard features and drooping shoulders of the opium-drunkards are met with in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... entertained one another, we went into the hot-house that had been heated for Trimalchio; and being now recovered of our drunkenness, were brought into another room, where Fortunata had set out a fresh entertainment. Above the lamps I observed some women's gewgaws. The tables were massy silver, the earthen ware double gilt, and a conduit running with wine; when, quoth Trimalchio, ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... strangeness of it all. Nobody was poor, everybody was well dressed, and had money to spend, from the children upwards. Liquor seemed running from morning to night, as if there were creeks of it; all the same there was very little drunkenness and quarrelling. The police kept good order, and the miners were their own police mostly, and didn't seem to want keeping right. We always expected the miners to be a disorderly, rough set of people—it was quite the other way. ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... broad-shouldered man of fifty, with a raw-looking face, swollen with drunkenness, and with a dirty ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... flesh", and of the "fruit of the Spirit", is given. But what could a mere English reader make of words such as these—'impudicity', 'ebrieties', 'comessations', 'longanimity', all which occur in that passage? while our Version for 'ebrieties' has 'drunkenness', for 'comessations' has 'revellings', and so also for 'longanimity' 'longsuffering'. Or set over against one another such phrases as these,—in the Rhemish, "the exemplars of the celestials" (Heb. ix. 23), but in ours, "the patterns of things in the heavens". Or ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... produces naturally and logically this demoralization, especially in countries under a republican government. Profanity, drunkenness, and general recklessness as to money matters were everywhere prevailing vices; and this demoralization was, in the eyes of Washington, more to be dreaded than any external dangers that had thus far caused alarm and distress. "I have," wrote he, "seen without ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord

... habitation, and crowded up into her nose, where, with a number of pimples, it stuck fast. Add to this a dirty, draggle-tailed chintz; long, matted hair, wandering into her eyes, and over her lean shoulders, which were once so snowy, and you have the picture of drunkenness ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... preached at the Brick Presbyterian Church, New York City, that the way to end the financial depression was to act as Jesus would: "We can judge only by what he did and said in the first century, an age not so different from our own, an age of unsettlement, violence, drunkenness and license. Christ would tell us not to yield to panic.... Christ would not tell us to join any political party ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd

... pleasant rooms. Grassy patches behind crumbling walls where on sunny days starving children spread their fleshless limbs and run about in the sun. Miserable wineshops where the wind whines through broken panes to chill men with ever-empty stomachs who sit about gambling and finding furious drunkenness in a sip of aguardiente. Courtyards of barracks where painters who have not a cent in the world mix with beggars and guttersnipes to cajole a little hot food out of soft-hearted soldiers at mess-time. ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... strong tumbler of spirits and water, being able, when bitten, to drink a bottle of pure brandy without being in the least affected by it. When the spirit does at last begin to take effect, and the patient shows signs of drunkenness, he is considered to be safe, the poison of the spirit having overcome the poison ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty

... Brian. Those festive nights given over to the feast of reason and the flow of soul—not to riot or drunkenness, but to the half-unconscious consumption of much brandy and soda—nights in which the atmosphere seemed charged with wit and wisdom as with mental electricity—nights in which a young man, able to talk smartly upon any given topic, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... made of these ascending Steps, is not altogether different, being frequently employ'd to raise People up to all sorts of Enthusiasms, spiritual Intoxications, mad and extravagant Action, high exalted Flights, Precipitations, and all kinds of Ecclesiastick Drunkenness and Excesses. ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe



Words linked to "Drunkenness" :   grogginess, intemperance, drinking bout, alcoholism, temporary state, soberness, sottishness, white plague, intemperateness, drug addiction, drunken



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com