"Immoral" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we sorrow to think, to misuse the Divine gift of artistic inspiration. The poet may devote his genius to animalism, like Byron, or to teach immoral license, like Swinburne; the painter may crowd his canvas with degrading ideas and vulgar representations, and the artificer may be ingenious in the production of forms of ugliness and degrading grotesqueness. Such desecration of great endowments is ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... followed him into the laundry for the rest; then Hayes came in with a quart bottle of champagne, shut the door and struck a light. Then he opened the bottle of fizz and poured it out into a deep, enamelled starching-dish, and Billy MacLaggan drank thereof, and then raised his head, with his immoral-looking beard hanging in a sodden point like a wet deck-swab, and asked for more. That is, he asked as well as any Christian and civilised goat could ask, by standing up on his hind legs like a circus-horse and making strange, unearthly ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... flapping of canvas, creaking of poles, and all is silent. Of course it is not real, and every one may go. The circus has no annals, knows no gossip, presents no problems; it is without morals and therefore not immoral. It is the one joyous amusement that is not above, but quite outside the pale of criticism and discussion. Therefore, why should not the preacher ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... China with its prolific women, at Russia with its magnificent birth-rate before the War of nearly 50, at Roumania with its birth-rate of 42, at Chile and Jamaica with nearly 40. No nonsense about birth-control there! No shirking by women of the sacred duties of perpetual maternity! No immoral notions about claims to happiness and desires for culture. And then he turns from, those great centres of prosperity and civilisation to Australia, to New Zealand, and his voice is choked and tears fill his eyes as he sees the goal of ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... sure, you don't look well," cried a jolly youth, against whom Bertha had frequently warned him; "but a glass of sherry will soon restore you. It would be highly immoral to leave you in this condition without ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... he may possibly not have time, at the urgent moment, to work it out; his heroism is inspired by the universal praise or blame that reward self-devotion or punish shrinking from it, and thus render acts moral or immoral by the habitual association of ideas. The martyr or patriot does not, indeed, stop to calculate; he does not feel the subtle egoism that is hidden in the desire for applause; he believes himself to be acting with the perfect ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... much greater abundance than they had. But there were other things which made them great, but which among us have no existence; such as industry at home, equitable government abroad, and minds impartial in council, uninfluenced by any immoral or improper feeling. Instead of such virtues, we have luxury and avarice; public distress, and private superfluity; we extol wealth, and yield to indolence; no distinction is made between good men and bad; and ambition usurps the honors due to virtue. Nor is this wonderful; since ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... waited upon much become selfish. They soon become grafters, expecting and taking everything and giving nothing. This is immoral, for life is a matter of compensation, and consists in giving as well as in taking. Children should be taught consideration for others, and should not be allowed to order the servants around; not that it harms the servants, but it has a bad ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... and did often bewail the different and distinguishing appellations that are among the godly, saying he did believe a time would come when they should be all buried." The only persons he scrupled to hold communion with were those whose lives were openly immoral. "Divisions about non-essentials," he said, "were to churches what wars were to countries. Those who talked most about religion cared least for it; and controversies about doubtful things and things of little moment, ate up all zeal for things which were practical and indisputable." His ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... forms of amusement. A state senator is one of the largest stockholders in Coney Island resorts of bad character. An ex-governor of the State controls a popular excursion boat, on which staterooms are rented by the hour, for immoral purposes no one can possibly doubt. The women of the committee submitted the findings of their investigators to the managers of these amusement places and to the directors of the steamboat lines, and in many instances reforms have been promised. The point is that ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... and butter, no scandalous cheese, no abominable beef bone, no wretched rabbit, no prodigal potatoes, above all, No immoral ale! ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... merely pleased by our surroundings. It would be hard to say which of these modes of satisfaction is the more effective, but the latter is surely the more constant. Conduct is three parts of life, they say; but I think they put it high. There is a vast deal in life and letters both which is not immoral, but simply non-moral; which either does not regard the human will at all, or deals with it in obvious and healthy relations; where the interest turns, not upon what a man shall choose to do, but on how he manages to do it; not on the passionate ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... while the Chhatris expect the widow to marry her deceased husband's brother, the Bhamtis do not permit this. Among both subdivisions a price is paid for the widow to her parents. Divorce is only permitted for immoral conduct on the part of the wife. A divorced woman may remarry after giving a feast to the caste panchayat or committee, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... considered as one pregnant with mischief. I consider this a mere jargon, and although I would never recommend this book (because it is so grossly indecent) I should never apprehend the smallest danger to the most inexperienced mind or the warmest passions from its immoral tendency. The principle upon which books of this description are considered pernicious is the notion that they represent vice in such glowing and attractive colours as to make us lose sight of its deformity and fill our imagination ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... acquainted with the Cardinal de Rohan before the period of her marriage. A worse selection in itself, or one more disagreeable to Maria Theresa, than that which sent to her, in quality, of ambassador, a man so frivolous and so immoral as Prince Louis de Rohan, could not have been made. He possessed but superficial knowledge upon any subject, and was totally ignorant of diplomatic affairs. His reputation had gone before him to Vienna, and his mission opened under the most unfavourable ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... opportunity of a small part; the gratification of ambition. There is no more immorality than in other trades, but there is an amount of humiliating and degrading philandering, a mauling sensuality which is more degrading than any violent abduction. To be immoral a certain amount of courage is required; but the curse of modern theatrical conditions is this corrupt debauchery. Many girls have come to me explaining their difficulties, and many in asking my advice ended up with the persistent cry ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... families to go home, and let us lock up the Hundred and Fifty safe from the Yellows, till we bring them to the poll. But I am afraid," continued Levy, "that the rascals are not to be relied upon unless I actually pay them beforehand; and that would be disreputable, immoral,—and, what is more, it would upset the election. Besides, if they are paid beforehand, query, is it quite sure ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the following findings. Nearly all of the family were lazy, ignorant, and coarse. Four hundred were physically diseased by their own fault. Two hundred were criminals; seven of them murderers. Fifty of the women were notoriously immoral. Three hundred of the children died from inherited weakness or neglect. More than three hundred members of the family were chronic paupers. It is estimated that they cost the State a thousand dollars apiece ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... answered, with her beautiful smile and a characteristic undulation of the neck, "your husband, although he is clever to an extent which I consider positively immoral, is only a man, and he does not understand. Men do what they like; women, what they can. There may be moral free will for women, although I've ceased to be sure of that even; but socially no such thing exists. Do we wear the dreadful ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... unparalleled success of the "Beggars' Opera," Gay gained only L400 by it, although by "Polly," the second part, (where Gay transports his characters to the colonies,) which the Lord Chamberlain suppressed, on account of its supposed immoral tendency, and which the author published in self-defence, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... in the Psalms and in Solomon's Proverbs, while there are others who become only the purer from closer knowledge of the filthy side of life. Political and social writers, lawyers, and doctors who are initiated into all the mysteries of human sinfulness are not reputed to be immoral; realistic writers are often more moral than archimandrites. And, finally, no literature can outdo real life in its cynicism, a wineglassful won't make a man drunk when he has already ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... so friendly. I should have died, I think, without her, what with my seasickness and homesickness, and brooding over my terrible fall. I know it is immoral to say so, but I did not want to live any longer, truly I didn't. I even asked to be taken. I am sorry now that I prayed ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... commenced in 1724 and died in 1734; which reduced the artists again to seek some new seminary; for the public of that day were so little acquainted with the use of such schools, that they were even suspected of being held for immoral purposes. ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... I did a good deal of thinking last night, after I had got to bed. You see, I tried to work things out, and—and—it is all very wonderful, you know. I wasn't a bad chap in the old days, by no means a pattern young man, but on the whole I went straight,—I wasn't immoral, but I had no religion,—I never thought about it. I had a good house-master when I went to school, and under him I imbibed a sort of code of honour. It didn't amount to very much, and yet it did, ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... immoral, for morals are the best traditions and ways of each race, and here the eating of enemies was authorized by every teaching of priest and leader, by time-honored custom and ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... robbery at Slough, though you do not mean to be his accomplice, have you a moral right to walk arm in arm with him to Hounslow, and, by thus giving him your countenance, prevent his being taken up? The history of all the world tells us, that immoral means will ever intercept ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... biblical God, Jahweh, or Jehovah, I shall try to show from the Bible itself that He was not all-wise, nor all-powerful, nor omnipresent; that He was not merciful nor just; but that, on the contrary, He was fickle, jealous, dishonourable, immoral, vindictive, barbarous, and cruel. ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... which the Allies landed at Salonica. Their action has been pronounced immoral and perfidious by some English and even by some French critics; and as it was attended with ill success, it brought double shame upon the contrivers.[18] Certainly, it will not bear investigation from the standpoint of political tact: it was the first of the many ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... puritanistic prig, who had sharp eyes and a gossip's tongue. This was the time, too, when such words as blanket were not spoken by young ladies if men were about; for it is a bedroom word and therefore immoral. Bell objected from the bottom of his silly soul that Lady Macbeth should soil her mouth with it. "Blanket of the dark," he says, "is an expression greatly below our author. Curtain is evidently better." "Was the hope drunk wherein you dressed yourself?" Whereat Bell again complains ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... "Every place is immoral," he said. "Of course you do find spicy bits in Paris. Go to one of the students' balls, for instance. That's lively, if you like, when the cocottes begin to let themselves loose. You know ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... unhappy. If the Romans scourged by the hands of children the schoolmaster who would have betrayed them, how greatly more deserving of flagellation, from the same quarter, are those hundreds of pedagogues who deliver up the intellects of youth to such immoral revellers and mad murderers! They would punish a thirsty child for purloining a bunch of grapes from a vineyard, and the same men on the same day would insist on his reverence for the subverter of Tyre, the plunderer of Babylon, and the incendiary of Persepolis. And are these men ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... local magistrates, who would not, like the authorities of Canton, have had some knowledge of European habits and feelings. The mere malum prohibitum would, as usual, have produced the mala in se. The unlawful traffic would inevitably have led to a crowd of acts, not only unlawful, but immoral. The smuggler would, by the almost irresistible force of circumstances, have been turned into a pirate. We know that, even at Canton, where the smugglers stand in some awe of the authority of the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... district; and certainly, in the way they use it, many would be disposed to grant a dispensation to the young peasant, which they would withhold from the young peer. It is, however, sadly abused among them, to Sabbath-breakings, revellings, and the most immoral scenes, where they are congregated and kept together under its influence; and the same scene enacted a year afterwards would have awoke in my mind very different feelings from those with which I regarded this first spectacle ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... you of the immoral conduct of the son? Of his mistreatment of his mother, and his elopement with ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... (1) Turkish claim is immoral or unjust and how can I, a lover of truth and justice, support it? (2) Even if the claim be just in theory, the Turk is hopelessly incapable, weak and cruel. He does not ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... it is there for use, or it is nothing: If you combine it with sharp trading, or with ordinary city ambitions to glaze over municipal corruptions or private intemperance, or successful frauds, or immoral politics, or unjust wars, or the cheating of Indians, or the robbing of frontier natives, it is hypocrisy and the truth is not in you, and no love of religious music, or dreams of Swedenborg, or praise of John Wesley ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... repel her adora- 363:9 tion? No! He regarded her compassionately. Nor was this all. Knowing what those around him were saying in their hearts, especially his host, 363:12 - that they were wondering why, being a prophet, the exalted guest did not at once detect the woman's immoral status and bid her depart, - knowing this, Jesus rebuked 363:15 them with a short story or parable. He described two debtors, one for a large sum and one for a smaller, who were released from their obligations ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... the King against the "afflictive chastisement" threatened by her superior. For the credit of the convent, she was spared the public shame; but the superior, to whom she was consigned, doubtless punished her in a quiet way. The immoral tendency of such a practice became more and more manifest. Fear and shame led to woeful entreaties ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... career. His principal literary works are his "Confessions," in which he declares that he conceals nothing concerning himself; the "Social Contract," an anti-monarchic work, which many believe incited the French Revolution; "Heloise," a novel over-strained in sentiment and immoral in its teachings, but "full of pathos and knowledge of the human heart"; and "Emile," his greatest work, which contains his educational theories. The "Emile"[123] was an epoch-making book, which excited great interest throughout ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... excessively immoral. They purchased their flowers, out and out, from the florists and made handsome profits, amounting to as much as two and three dollars a night when the weather was fine; but their habits and immoralities became so patent ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... wrong may be near neighbours, yet the line that separates them is of an awful sacredness. If Robespierre passed for a hypocrite by reason of his scruple, Danton seemed a desperado by his airs of 'immoral thoughtlessness.' But the world forgives much to a royal size, and Danton was one of the men who strike deep notes. He had that largeness of motive, fulness of nature, and capaciousness of mind, which will always redeem a ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... intimation I gave him that I looked upon his plans as illegal and immoral, if not absolutely criminal, he attempted to prove to me in a plausible argument that bankers have a right to look out for themselves, ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... greatest of them, Facino Cane, the house of Visconti inherited, together with his widow, a long list of cities, and 400,000 golden florins, not to speak of the soldiers of her first husband whom Beatrice di Tenda brought with her. From henceforth that thoroughly immoral relation between the governments and their Condottieri, which is characteristic of the fifteenth century, became more and more common. An old story—one of those which are true and not true, everywhere and nowhere—describes it as follows: The citizens ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... in many ways similar to that which the 'wise Walpole' tried to avert in 1739, was hardly less impolitic than immoral. It alienated Holland, it sanctioned French aggression on Flanders (xii. 7), it ended by giving Mazarin and Lewis XIV that supremacy in Western Europe for which England had to pay in the wars of William III and Anne; whilst, as soon ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... take up a career. He's capable of one, you know, that will improve and enlarge him still more. He won't then," little Bilham continued to remark, "be my pleasant well-rubbed old-fashioned volume at all. But of course I'm beastly immoral. I'm afraid it would be a funny world altogether—a world with things the way I like them. I ought, I dare say, to go home and go into business myself. Only I'd simply rather die—simply. And I've not the least difficulty in making up my mind not to, and in knowing exactly ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... Harriet's suicide followed in December; and in the same winter the Westbrooks began to prepare their case for the Chancery suit, which ended in the permanent removal of Harriet's children from his custody, on the grounds that his immoral conduct and opinions unfitted him to be their guardian. His health, too, seems to have been bad, though it is hard to know precisely how bad. He was liable to hallucinations of all kinds; the line between imagination and reality, which ordinary people draw quite definitely, ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... anxiety, my business, or rather our business, requires an enormous help—it is such a boon to be too weary at night-time to think! But no amount of work, of care, can quite shut out the light of other days. It is no doubt wrong, immoral, unworthy of a reformed outcast, but if my real heart's desire could be fulfilled, I would live over again those few months of exquisite happiness, and die before waking to the terrible reality of my insignificance in the sight ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... rest was left contingent on the value of my professional exertions; in other and more expressive words, on the baseness of my nature, the cupidity of my motives, the poverty of my family, the general moral (or rather immoral) resemblance between myself and—HEEP. Need I say, that it soon became necessary for me to solicit from—HEEP—pecuniary advances towards the support of Mrs. Micawber, and our blighted but rising family? ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... young man, the Deacon said, much given to the reading of pious books. Up late at night after he came, reading Scott's Commentary. Appeared to be as fond of serious works as other young folks were of their novels and romances and other immoral publications. He, the Deacon, thought of having a few religious friends to meet the young gentleman, if he felt so disposed; and should like to have him, Mr. Bradshaw, come in and take a part in the exercises.—Mr. Bradshaw was unfortunately engaged. ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... drew herself up (figuratively). "Speak for yourself. It may be that I am too old to accept new ideas, but this one certainly seems to me downright immoral and indecent. This is not intended to reflect on you personally, Mary, and of course you were more or less demoralized by your close contact with the war. I mean the idea—the thing—itself. We may call in doctors and surgeons when we ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... renders "American girlhood" synonymous with flippant pertness. Moulded by two women who were imbued with the spirit of Richter's admonition: "Girls like the priestesses of old, should be educated only in sacred places, and never hear, much less see, what is rude, immoral or violent"; the pate tendre of Leo's character showed ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... are given of the evidence on either side, it is impossible to judge. The court at any rate decided that there was no proof of the prisoner having been drunk, and that the evidence of his father having struck him was of a suspicious character, "while," they add, "it would be absurd and immoral to maintain, that a father, whose right and duty it is to correct his children (and indeed on this occasion correction was abundantly deserved by the insolent demeanour of Luigi) could be considered to provoke his son by a slight personal chastisement." The son, by the way, was ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... Sorrel," said the president, with mock gravity, "I consider the whole affair, however ridiculous, most immoral and reprehensible. What, shall a crack-shot make a target of an elder? Never! Let us seek more appropriate butts for our barrels! You may perhaps look upon the whole as a piece of pleasantry but let me tell you that you ran a narrow chance of being indicted for a breach of ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... because they opposed pagan idolatry; and their religion was, on this account, reckoned a destructive and pernicious enthusiasm. If, therefore, the rulers of a state are to prohibit the propagation of all doctrines, in which they apprehend immoral tendencies, an opening will be made, as I have before observed, for every species of persecution. There will be no doctrine, however true or important, the avowal of which will not, in, some country or other, be ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... remarkably rich in old dramas; but they are of little use to the present age. Fastidiousness and hypocrisy have grown for many years, slowly but surely, and have at last arrived at such a pitch, that there is hardly a line in the works of our old comic writers, which is not reprobated as immoral, or at least vulgar. The excessive squeamishness of taste of the present day is very unfavourable to the genius of comedy, which demands a certain liberty and a freedom from restraints. This morbid delicacy is a great evil, for it renders the time of limitation ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... seized on Westall, coaxing him, somewhat to his wife's surprise, into a flattered participation in her fraud. It was vaguely felt, in the Van Sideren circle, that all the audacities were artistic, and that a teacher who pronounced marriage immoral was somehow as distinguished as a painter who depicted purple grass and a green sky. The Van Sideren set were tired of the conventional color-scheme in ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... often as any, except the ubiquitous "Wesen-genesen." It is "My country, right or wrong," invariably quoted in the form, "Right or wrong, my country." This is supposed to be the shockingly immoral watchword of British patriotism. It matters nothing to the German pamphleteer that the maxim is American, and that it is never quoted in England—nor, I believe, in the country of its origin—except in a ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... maya, or illusion, which is a characteristic of Samkara's monism. This community has become very influential, chiefly in Bombay Presidency; but in recent times it has been under a cloud owing to the scandals arising from a tendency to practise immoral orgies and from the claims of its priesthood, as representing the god, to enjoy the persons and property of ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... English history was so notorious for the publication of immoral books, calculated to debauch the mind, as the reign of Charles II. It must have been more painfully conspicuous to Bunyan, who had lived under the moral discipline ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... presents itself on the surface to the plain man. But there is more in the quarrel than appears at first sight. The real sting of the comedy from which we have quoted lies in the assumption, adopted throughout the play, that the atheist is also necessarily anti-social and immoral. The physicist, in the person of Socrates, is identified with the sophist; on the one hand he is represented as teaching the theory of material causation, on the other the art of lying and deceit. The object of Strepsiades in attending ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... were insincere and vacillating, that Alcibiades stood forth as a party leader. He was thirty-one years of age, belonged to an ancient and powerful family, possessed vast wealth, had great personal beauty and attractive manners, but above all, was unboundedly ambitious, and grossly immoral—the most insolent, unprincipled, licentious, and selfish man that had thus far scandalized and adorned Athenian society. The only redeeming feature in his character was his friendship for Socrates, who, it seems, fascinated him by his talk, and sought to improve his morals. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... Amendment; Hours of Labor Laws for Men; Hours of Labor Laws for Women; Prohibited Employments to Women; Hours of Labor of Children; Laws of All the States To-day; Hours of Labor in Factories, etc.; Child Labor Prohibited; Hours of Labor in Mines; Age Limit for Child Labor, Dangerous and Immoral Trades, Protection of Young Girls, Labor in Mines, Hours of Labor in Peculiar Trades, The Constitutional Difficulty, Farms and Domestic Labor, Continental Legislation, Sanitary Restrictions on Female Labor, Sweatshop Laws, The Factory Acts, Employers' ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... day of leisure. But never have I heard one objectionable word there, still less have I ever seen anything that could be called immoral. No; but do you know when and where I have met ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... sang like a veritable Orpheus, and sensitive women had been known to faint under the excitement of his Moo-lee-wha, or national song. He even danced,—a most rare faculty in Pekin, as in all China,—but this was frowned upon, as immoral, by his family. Comely indeed he was, especially on state occasions, when he appeared in all the radiance of rosy health, overflowing spirits, and the richest crapes and satins,—decorated with the high ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... spreads its immoral contagion beyond its walls, out into the front yard, out and up and down the street, and all through the village and city. The City Beautiful cannot come until we have the Home Beautiful. Training each one to play his part in keeping the ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... customs of the natives could not fail to leave an impression upon the simple aliens, and invite imitation on their part. On the other hand, the whole life of the Egyptians, their crude notions of religion, and their immoral ways, were calculated to inspire the more enlightened among the Israelites with disgust. The hostility of the Egyptians toward the "intruders," and the horrible persecutions in which it expressed itself, ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... their cheeks covered with brown or flaxen down, their hair carefully brushed, or already bald, seemed quite surprised to find themselves in such a place, and chattered and cackled among themselves like beardless conscripts, perverted and immoral but with some scruples still remaining and less cunning than these well-dressed old roues standing firmly at their ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... which is "Beatus Populus cujus Dominus Deus est,") there is, on the other hand, an elaborate and most Jesuitical article, in which the lottery is defended with amusing skill. What Christendom in general has agreed to consider immoral and pernicious in its effects on a people seems, on the contrary, to the writer of this article, to be highly moral ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... them would be in bed, and others with their nurses and governesses. She said we were happy in that: but that here, there were no such persons, and that the children would be left to the care and example of the slaves, whose manners were so depraved, and practices so immoral, that it must be the destruction of the children; and that those who loved their children must keep them under their own eyes, where, if they were brought too forward in company, they at least could learn no ill. ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... see how work keeps bubbling in my mind. Then I shall do another fifteenth century paper this autumn—La Sale and Petit Jehan de Saintre, which is a kind of fifteenth century Sandford and Merton, ending in horrid immoral cynicism, as if the author had got tired of being didactic, and just had a good wallow in the mire to wind up with and indemnify himself for so ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... But what is there immoral in a widow living alone in a big country house—with perhaps the niece of a dear friend of hers— staying with her ...
— Mr. Pim Passes By • Alan Alexander Milne
... But in an age of despotism it might have to confine its political morality to the duty of patient submission, and content itself with offering little sanctuaries of freedom to the oppressed in the Christian fraternities. Today, in the age of democracy, it has become immoral to endure private ownership of government. It is no longer a sufficient righteousness to live a good life in private. Christianity needs ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... faith in their efficacy; but he rejoiced greatly when his mother was restored to soundness of mind. Daniel says: "When I was about nineteen years of age, I gave myself up to many wicked practices, and my conduct for many months was very immoral. Our family was poor, and I determined to leave Singonahully for some place where I might get on a little better in the world. But one of my uncles, who was a wealthy man, interposed, and took me to his house. He set me to work in his fields, and assist him generally ...
— Old Daniel • Thomas Hodson
... this separation of man and wife justifiable. Says Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell: "I have not the slightest doubt that it is a wrong; and a great wrong, to give help to the family of a drunkard or an immoral man who will not support them. Unless the woman will remove her children from his influence, it should be understood that no public or private charity, and no charitable individual, has the right to help perpetuate and maintain such families as are brought ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... inhabitants of every town in Italy! What execrations against Florence, Pistoia, Pisa, Siena, Genoa! what hatred against the whole human race! what exultation and merriment at eternal and immitigable sufferings! Seeing this, I cannot but consider the Inferno as the most immoral and impious book that ever was written. Yet, hopeless that our country shall ever see again such poetry, and certain that without it our future poets would be more feebly urged forward to excellence, I would ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... same time an exceedingly clever, satire. It is illustrative of the life, manners, and predilections and pursuits of a class of society left hereafter to enjoy the manifold attractions of fashionable watering-places, without the scourge that for so many years held its immoral and degrading ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... clouds on the damp heavy earth, and there's no lifting it, nor disburthening of the souls of men of this intolerable weight. I was met on every side with a stare of curiosity, as if I were propounding something immoral or heretical. People looked at me, put their hands in their pockets, whistled dubiously, and went slowly away. Oh, it was weary, weary work! The blood was stagnant in the veins of the people and their feet were shod with lead. They walked slowly, spoke with difficulty, stared all day at leaden ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... any State or States, or their citizens, to abolish slavery in the District, or any of the Territories, on the ground, or under the pretext, that it is immoral or sinful, or the passage of any act or measure of Congress with that view, would be a direct and dangerous attack on the institutions of ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... class—since the increase of wealth has divided society into classes—has ever been accounted moral conduct; conduct that has tended to weaken or subvert the power of the ruling class has always been branded as immoral. There you have the key to all the varying codes of ethics the world has seen. For it must never be forgotten that ideas of right and wrong are not absolute, but relative; not fixed, but fluid, changing with ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... entirely astray. When other girls were convicted of being in love with married men, it had always sounded so immoral! But no one could think of Honor as such. She was plainly an upright and ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... know if the reminiscence of his lost "pony" was rankling in Forrester's mind, or if he was only affected by the presence of Sir Henry Fallowfield—an immoral Upas, under whose shadow the most flourishing of good resolutions were apt to wither and die; but certainly, after dinner, he broke through the cautious reserve which he had always in public maintained toward ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... are interested in the subject of physical, and we may add, moral education, to the field which is here opened, and which, if not improved, as it may be, for noble and useful ends, will certainly be perverted for low and immoral purposes. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... people of our sort are hiding and shamming about their desires, their gratifications, their true relationships. I do not mean the open offenders, for they are mostly honest and gallant people, but the men and women who sin in the shadows, the people who are not clean and scandalous, but immoral and respectable. This underworld is not for us. I wish that I who have looked into it could in some way inoculate you now against the repetition of my misadventure. We Strattons are daylight men, ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... tendency than is generally supposed. As we cannot rage and storm from morning till night, and as the most ferocious animal has necessarily its intervals of repose, these intervals in man are greatly influenced by the immoral character of the conduct which may have preceded them. He appears to be at peace, indeed, but it is an irreligious, malignant peace; a savage sardonic smile, destitute of all charity or dignity; a love of ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... here to touch his work at a point or two, leaving the proof of my sayings mostly to the honesty of the reader. It will not require so great an effort of his honesty now, as it once would, to own that Zola's books, though often indecent, are never immoral, but always most terribly, most pitilessly moral. I am not saying now that they ought to be in every family library, or that they could be edifyingly committed to the hands of boys and girls; one of our first publishing houses is about to issue an edition even of the Bible "with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... as a business transaction, of esteeming it as a financial or commercial partnership, and making everything subordinate to the equality of the personal estates. This principle is revolting to me, my dear friend. We are accused in foreign countries of being an immoral people. Heavens! it seems to me that we understand and practise virtue quite as much as the English or Germans, and, to speak the whole truth, I am not afraid to advance the opinion that this, of all the countries of the universe, is the one where there is the most virtue. It is ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... that it was at this island the renowned navigator, Captain Cook, was slain; and the people have long in consequence been looked upon as very savage and treacherous. This we do not find them to be, but they are heathens given up to gross superstition, and are ignorant and immoral. They carry on bloody wars with each other, offer up human sacrifices, and are, it is reported, cannibals. But if so be they are all this, and more, surely it behoves us as Christians to teach them better things. What, however, do we do? We sell them firearms and ammunition ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... out of ignorance regarded Atheism as implying degraded morality and bestial life, and they assailed my conduct not on evidence that it was evil, but on the presumption that an Atheist must be immoral. Thus a Christian opponent at Leicester assailed me as a teacher of free love, fathering on me views which were maintained in a book that I had not read, but which, before I had ever seen the National Reformer, had been reviewed in its columns—as it was reviewed in other London papers—and ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... without political principle or even personal honesty. The Church, too, was in a condition of spiritual deadness. Bishoprics and livings were sold and given to political favorites. Clergymen, like Swift and Lawrence Sterne, were worldly in their lives and immoral in their writings, and were practically unbelievers. The growing religious skepticism appeared in the Deist controversy. Numbers of men in high position were Deists; the Earl of Shaftesbury, for example, and Pope's brilliant friend, Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, the head ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... woman suffrage were considered by Miss Lexow, Miss Laura Gregg (Kans.), Mrs. William C. Gannett (N. Y.), Mrs. Kelley and Miss Maude E. Miner, a probation officer in New York. Miss Miner said in answering the objection to "the immoral vote": "Is the fact that immoral women would have the vote a real objection? I do not believe that it is. In the first place such women are a very small proportion of the whole. Fifty to one hundred ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... money extorted from the saloonkeepers to the city, there might be some excuse for the tax. We would get some benefit from it, but it gives a big part of the tax to local option localities where the people are always shoutin' that liquor dealin' is immoral. Ought these good people be subjected to the immoral influence of money taken from the saloon tainted money? Out of respect for the tender consciences of these pious people, the Raines law ought to exempt them from all contamination from the plunder that comes from ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... possible. But I was not interested in the beliefs or practices of individuals. I am not at all interested in what opinions may or may not have been held by Cranmer at various stages of his career, or what opinions may be unearthed from the writings of Bale by experts in immoral literature; I am interested solely in the official ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... time. But a villain in De Foe is extremely like a virtuous person, only that, so to speak, he has unluckily backed the losing side. Thus, for example, Colonel Jack is a thief from his youth up; Moll Flanders is a thief, and worse; Roxana is a highly immoral lady, and is under some suspicion of a most detestable murder; and Captain Singleton is a pirate of the genuine buccaneering school. Yet we should really doubt, but for their own confessions, whether they have villainy enough amongst them to furnish ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... immoral thing in all this way of living has always been the fact that it compelled people to continually violate their consciences, by pretending to believe one thing and constantly practicing the reverse of their proclaimed belief. That is, it lured them into living a continual lie, and ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... problem of self-help is the industrial solution. Many overlook it because they think the Negro has already had much of it in his past history. But the Negro has never had the best of it. His industrial training before the war was immoral as well as unscientific. The industrial education of the Negro then was carried on without mental and moral culture; now the head, the hands, and the heart are the triplets which must control his development. Before the war he was simply a machine in industry; now he is to be trained as ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 9, September, 1896 • Various
... into application purely mundane utilitarian standards, and may account conduct as immoral or moral according as it seeks only the happiness of the agent, or the happiness of the narrow circle of humanity which includes along with him also his relatives and intimate friends, or again, the welfare of the wider circle which ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... dances, but condemn the waltz. Some sects allow pipe-organ music, but draw the line at the violin; while others, still, employ a whole orchestra in their religious service. Some there may be who regard pictures as implements of idolatry, while the Hook-and-Eye Baptists look upon buttons as immoral. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... could maintain this position most stiffly, what compensation he will accept to go to church some Sunday and sit during the sermon with his wife's bonnet upon his head? Not a trifle, I'll venture. And why not? There would be nothing irreligious in it, nothing immoral, nothing uncomfortable—then why not? Is it not because there would be something egregiously unfashionable in it? Then, it is the influence of fashion. And what is the influence of fashion but the influence that other people's actions have on our ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... now, it seems to me rather an immoral transaction for your ah friend, Mr. Rawdon, to give ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... friend told me that Wigurd was a good man in the main, though he had been as much hated by some as if his conduct had been immoral, instead of his opinions merely being singular. "He not long ago," added the Brahmin "wrote a book against marriage, and soon afterwards wedded, in due form, the lady you saw at his table. She holds as strange tenets as he, which she supports with ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... ludicrously just. Then Newman reflected that these are mighty mysteries, that possibly he himself was indeed that baleful and barely mentionable thing, a cynic, and that his manner of considering the treasures of art and the privileges of life was probably very base and immoral. Newman had a great contempt for immorality, and that evening, for a good half hour, as he sat watching the star-sheen on the warm Adriatic, he felt rebuked and depressed. He was at a loss how to answer Babcock's letter. His good nature checked his resenting the young minister's lofty ...
— The American • Henry James
... eye," a life for a life. Jesus said all that sort of compensation rested forever with God, that He alone, who saw and knew the hearts of men, could deal justly with them. The old Jewish law stoned to death the immoral woman—not the man—O no! certainly not! Jesus said to a flagrant woman brought before him by a rabble of men: "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone." What divine sarcasm, and how they are said to have slunk away ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... in their lives sometimes clean and straight, and sometimes immoral, with a gross and uncouth viciousness. We read of one party of six men and a woman, who were encountered on the Cumberland River; the woman acted as the wife of a man named Big John, but deserted him for one of his companions, and when ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... recalcitrant, and are being forced along that way by painful pressure of circumstances, protesting at every step that nothing will induce us to go; that it is a ridiculous way, a disgraceful way, a socialistic way, an atheistic way, an immoral way, and that the vanguard ought to be ashamed of themselves and must be made to turn back at once. But they find that they have to follow the vanguard all the same if their lives are to be ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... remaining days to shun all men, be blind to all men, scorn all men. Friendship, hospitality, society, compassion—vain words all. To be moved by another's tears, to assist another's need—be such things illegal and immoral. Let me live apart like a wolf; ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... to the reader's undivided attention. To deny him this is immoral. To make him share your attention with the rattle of a street car, the moving panorama of the crowds on the sidewalks, and the buildings beyond—with any of the thousands of distractions which make our customary environment—is to treat ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... how a husband can stand by and see his wife in another man's arms, and as far as I'm concerned I've never danced a step since I married. But the native dancing is quite another matter. It's not only immoral in itself, but it distinctly leads to immorality. However, I'm thankful to God that we stamped it out, and I don't think I'm wrong in saying that no one has danced in our ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... Captain Clinton it was to take the trouble to build up a case only to have it suddenly demolished. He scoffed at the "suicide letter," safely committed to Judge Brewster's custody, and openly branded it as a forgery concocted by an immoral woman for the purpose of defeating the ends of justice. He kept Annie a prisoner and defied the counsel for the defence to do their worst. Judge Brewster, who loved the fray, accepted the challenge. He acted promptly. He secured ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... and how, conversely, the outward applause of their fellows is a stimulus surpassing all others in intensity. Fully realising which facts, he will see that the immoralities of trade are in great part traceable to an immoral public opinion. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... that in the saloon in which he worked he was chiefly engaged in supplying beer to residents of neighboring tenements; that there was no gambling or other immoral conduct practiced or encouraged in this business place. He went on for over 12 years as barkeeper. His uncle and aunt had during this time accumulated means for the purchase of a small tenement. At the death of the uncle and aunt in ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... difficulty would, of course, have been for the clergy, as the supreme representatives of the doctrine of brotherhood, to apply that doctrine boldly to every part of man's conduct; to pronounce that all violence and bloodshed were immoral, and to devise a humane means of settling international quarrels. I will consider in the next chapter why the Christian leaders failed even to attempt this great reform. For the moment it is enough to observe that the conditions of modern times favoured a fresh assertion of ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... and that of the race, or the reverse. In this view, if a child places its hand on a hot stove, the action is "wrong," because it brings pain and unhappiness, although the act is neither moral or immoral. And another action is "right" because it brings happiness, well-being and satisfaction, present and future, although the act was neither moral nor immoral. In this view there can be neither reward nor punishment, in the common acceptation ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... causes had still more to do with it. The more cultivated Greek states, to judge from the writings of Plato, had not been an over- righteous people during the generation in which he lived. And in the generations which followed, they became an altogether wicked people; immoral, unbelieving, hating good, and delighting in all which was evil. And it was in consequence of these very sins of theirs, as I think, that the old Hellenic race began to die out physically, and population throughout Greece to decrease with frightful rapidity, after the time of the Achaean league. ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... burial-ground are beautiful, and the square is entirely shaded by about ten or twelve superb oaks; nothing prettier can be conceived. It is not popular in the neighbourhood. 'You see it makes the d-d niggers cheeky' to have homes of their own—and the girls are said to be immoral. As to that, there are no so-called 'morals' among the coloured people, and how or why should there? It is an honour to one of these girls to have a child by a white man, and it is a degradation to him to marry a dark girl. A ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... freeholder alike. When the aims and the experiences of the old fighting and sporting days had passed away, and nothing was left but ceaseless toil, these essentially combative people, to whom violent and continuous excitement was the very breath of life, became, for a while at least, knavish and immoral, sunk almost to one dead social level, and totally uninteresting because, in their new life of peaceful tillage—a life far more suited to their English law-givers than to themselves—they were apparently incapable of maintaining that complete, vigilant ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... all?' some grown reader asks. Because this volume is meant for you as well as for children, and if you have gone ever so little into the world with open eyes, you must have seen, yes, every day, things much more shocking. Because there is nothing immoral in their spirit. Because they are intrinsically valuable, as illustrating manners and traditions, and so could not well be left out. Because they complete the number of the Norse originals, and leave none untranslated. And last, though not least, because the Translator hates family ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... behind the times, and all he thinks about is bringing in subscriptions and collecting new converts. He's like one of those men who beat drums outside tents in a fair ... He's a sickening man! He doesn't believe in his religion or anything else. I should think he's crooked about money, and immoral probably too. You're much too innocent, father. You're so good and trustful yourself that you don't know how these fellows are doing you in. There's a regular plot against you and they'd be most awfully pleased if you were to retire. They're not genuine like you. They simply use the ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... nation—and "The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children even unto the third and fourth generation." All this would be impossible if women generally would recognise the primary fact that because a man is immoral that it is no reason why he should become syphilitic. We all want to abolish sin, but failing that we must cease wanting to poison the sinner. We must actively work to save him from the penalties of his folly, for that ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... years. I had the Curiosity to see her tried; she was a decrepid Woman of about 80 years of age, and did not use many words in her own defence. She was accused by about 30 Witnesses; but the matter alledged against her was such as needed little apology, on her part not one passionate word, or immoral action, or evil, was then objected against her for 20 years past, only strange accidents falling out, after some Christian admonition given by her, as saying, God would not prosper them, if they wrong'd the Widow. Upon the whole, there was not proved against her any thing worthy of Reproof, or ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... been a knight returning wounded from some Holy War, instead of a discomfited scalp-hunter, bearing still evident traces of the "war-paint." A stern old lady told her once that such condonation of offenses was unprincipled and immoral. It may be so, but I can not think the example is likely to be dangerously contagious. Whatever happens, there will always remain a sufficiency of matronly Dicaearchs, over whose judgment-seats the legend is very plainly inscribed, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... might expect to become a mother next fall. She was so utterly dismayed that he began to look stern in anticipation of an appeal to him to avert this; an appeal which he had often had to refuse without ever having succeeded in persuading a woman that it was futile, or convincing her that it was immoral. But Marian spared him this: she was overwhelmed by the new certainty that a reconciliation with her husband was no longer possible. Her despair at the discovery shewed her for the first time how ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... union of three persons; but finally the mysterious conjugal trinity appeared to them so rare and pleasing a spectacle, that if M. du Hautoy had shown any intention of marrying, he would have been thought monstrously immoral. Mme. de Senonches, however, had a lady companion, a goddaughter, and her excessive attachment to this Mlle. de la Haye was beginning to raise surmises of disquieting mysteries; it was thought, in spite of some impossible discrepancies in dates, that Francoise de la Haye bore ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... character of women. Christine herself heartily disapproved of the Romance of the Rose, and wrote a sharp criticism upon it. Her "Cit des Dames" is an elaborate confutation of the opinion that women are naturally more immoral and less capable of noble studies or high intellectual attainments than men. In her introduction she says: "I reflected why men are so unanimous in attributing wickedness to women. I examined my own life and those of other women to learn why we should be worse than men, since we also were ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... began to seem quite worthless; so soon as they conflicted with indispensable human ideals, or thwarted too extensively other values; so soon as they appeared childish, contemptible, or immoral when reflected on, the deity grew discredited, and was erelong neglected and forgotten. It was in this way that the Greek and Roman gods ceased to be believed in by educated pagans; it is thus that we ourselves judge of the Hindu, Buddhist, and Mohammedan theologies; Protestants ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... that man is weak he gives him a blow with a hatchet, to make him fall into sin, but when he sees him strong he strikes him down with an axe. If there be a young woman, honest and well brought up, he sets an immoral youth near her, and with all kinds of flattery deceives her, and makes her fall into sin. Here the devil has dealt a blow with an axe. Here is an honorable citizen, he enters the courts of the great lords; there is the axe, and so well sharpened, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... matters of private morals these were my most uncharitable years. I didn't want to think of these things any more for ever. I hated the people whose talk or practice showed they were not of my opinion. I wanted to believe that their views were immoral and objectionable and contemptible, because I had decided to treat them as at that level. I was, in fact, falling into the attitude of the normal ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... suited for the dignity of Orders. It was lamentable that Godwin should have become so intimate with that earth-burrowing Mr. Gunnery, who certainly never attended either church or chapel, and who seemed to have imbued his pupil with immoral theories concerning the date of creation. Godwin held more decidedly aloof from his aunt, and had been heard by Charlotte to speak very disrespectfully of the Misses Lumb. In short, there was no choice but to discover an opening ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... hope the poor little fellows may see the hideousness of sin, and loathe it as much as they do the vile tobacco-leaves you give them to suck, and the spirits and beer which you teach them to drink. Stop! hear me out. There is nothing immoral in drinking a glass of beer or in smoking, but in our case they are both forbidden by the Doctor, whom we are bound to obey. Both become vices when carried to excess, as you, Blackall, carry them, and would teach your pitiable ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... maire, that you are mistaken," said Phellion. "Madame la Ressource is a character in 'Turcaret,' a very immoral play ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... Their fancy must be taken, and their favour must be earned. Mr. Borrow quotes, in proof of their virtue, one trait which does honour to his own, and especially to his simplicity: he declares that an immoral man of his acquaintance offered several gold ounces to a pretty gitana, and offered them in vain. An Andalusian, to whom I retailed this anecdote, asserted that the immoral man in question would have ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... the campaign against immorality in this village—responsible, with us, for many decisions that must have seemed harsh to poor things in trouble—who yet now proposes, himself, to maintain what we can only regard—what everybody on this estate has been taught to regard—as an immoral connection with a married woman! Of course I understand his plea. The thing is not to be done openly. The so-called wife is to move away; nothing more is to be seen of her here; but the supposed marriage is to continue, and they will ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... allowances for human nature's ignorance and superstition which he refused to make; she lessened the hardship of taking her common-sense prescriptions by veiling them in medical hocus-pocus—a compromise of the disagreeable truth which her father had always inveighed against as both immoral and unwholesome. ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... me as a most immoral game," said the Lady, who had been a sympathetic spectator from a corner, doubtful of the ginger-ale, horrified at the pipe, and delighted at the ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... agree that the Austrian note was directed against Servia alone. On July 24 the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs told the British Ambassador at St. Petersburg that Austria's conduct was provocative and immoral; that some of her demands were impossible of acceptance; that Austria would never have taken such action unless Germany had first been consulted; that if Austria began military measures against Servia, Russia would ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... were out of my mouth I fancied I had said something immoral. He shook his head negatively. It had to be told. He considered it proper that the relations of the lady should know. No doubt—I thought to myself—had Miss Vanlo not been thirty and damaged by the climate he would have ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad |
