"Libertine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her." Tears glittered in Pascal's eyes, but he breathed freely once more. "As for Vantrasson," resumed Madame Ferailleur, "it is certain that he took a violent fancy to his sister's apprentice. This man, who has since become an infamous scoundrel, was then only a rake, an unprincipled drunkard and libertine. He fancied the poor little apprentice—she was then but thirteen years old—would be only too glad to become the mistress of her employer's brother; but she scornfully repulsed him, and his vanity was so deeply wounded that he persecuted the poor girl to such an extent that she was ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... from Ducie. As the betrothed of Miss Grandison, Miss Temple would abjure him; as the lover of Miss Temple, under any circumstances, Mr. Temple would reject him. In what light would he appear to Henrietta were he to dare to reveal the truth? Would she not look upon him as the unresisting libertine of the hour, engaging in levity her heart as he had already trifled with another's? For that absorbing and overwhelming passion, pure, primitive, and profound, to which she now responded with an enthusiasm as fresh, as ardent, and as immaculate, she would only recognise ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... turns knave or libertine, and gives way to fear, jealousy, and fits of the spleen; when his mind complains of his fortune, and he quits the station in which Providence has placed him, he acts perfectly counter to humanity, deserts his own nature, and, as it ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe
... de Pierre, a piece in which a nobleman—who is a libertine as well as a sceptic and a hypocrite—is brought upon the stage, was first acted in February, 1665, and raised such an outcry that it was also forbidden to be played. In spite of failing health and serious depression of spirits, Moliere continued to produce play after play; and some ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... cloister and take thy way to the tavern; cast off the cloak of a dervish, and wear the robe of a libertine." ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... individual talent for painting woman in her first bloom, when the bud is about to burst into the rose and the child is about to become a maiden. As in the Eighteenth Century all the world was somewhat libertine, even the moralists, Greuze, when he painted an Innocence, always took pains to open the gauze and give a glimpse of the curve of the swelling bosom; he puts into the eyes a fiery lustre and upon the lips a dewy smile that suggests the idea that ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... blind Milton sitting, some pleasant afternoon of the autumn of that old year, in "the pretty box" at Chalfont, the soft wind through the open window lifting the thin hair of the glorious old Poet! Back-slidden England, plague-smitten, and accursed with her faithless Church and libertine King, knows little of poor "Master Milton," and takes small note of his Puritanic verse-making. Alone, with his humble friend, he sits there, conning over that poem which, he fondly hoped, the world, which had grown all dark and strange to the author, "would not willingly let die." The ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... began, without further explanation, "I am a man of the world, and I know the utmost capabilities of human wickedness. I don't believe you are a real libertine. But I know Grey Town. Many a dog has been hanged here because of his bad ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... "The old libertine appeared to be pleased with me. He patted me on the cheek, saying that I was a fine boy, but that I should be on my guard in Paris, where young men were easily debauched. Lescaut assured him that I was naturally of so grave a character that I thought of nothing but becoming ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... 1495 or 1496, a poet's son, was for a time in the service of Francis I. as valet de chambre, and accompanied his master to the battle of Pavia, where he was wounded and made prisoner. Pursued by the Catholics as a heretic, and afterwards by the Genevan Calvinists as a libertine, he was protected as long as was possible by the King and by his sister. He died at Turin, a ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... pleasures as he goes which intrinsically, as we have seen, may have the depth and ideality which nature breathes in all her oracles. His experience, for that reason, though disastrous is interesting and has some human pathos; it is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig. True, the libertine is pursued, like the animals, by unforeseen tortures, decay, and abandonment, and he is vowed to a total death; but in these respects the worldly man has hardly an advantage. The Babels he piles up may ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Baron's chambers. With the exception of two minutes, he was on the stage until the curtain fell. The Baron's effort, so precisely detailed, to reach and raise the dumb-bells from the floor; the inveterate libertine's interview with shrewd Rosa, the danseuse, who took the tips he expected would impoverish her and thus put her in his power, for the purpose of playing them the other way: the biting deliberation of his ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... to accept any teaching that they please. It has no punishment nor even a voice of disapprobation to its member who is a rationalist, an atheist, or a Christian so far as acceptance of such belief or non-belief is concerned. And, so far as conduct is concerned, a man may be a libertine, a robber or a murderer, and yet maintain his religious status. But when it comes to the violation of caste rules it is very different. Hinduism will tolerate anything but caste insubordination. So that when a man, in becoming ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... to any cause of policy, The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, Familiar as his garter: that when he speaks, The air, a chartered libertine, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... me, by their behaviour on these tender occasions, reason to think they had more virtue than not to be very apprehensive for your safety; and my lord often exclaimed, that he could not have thought his brother such a libertine, neither. ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... many dreadful thoughts. Nevertheless, he arrived at last in the dark, cheerless little private office that looked out upon a yard, and found Camusot seated gravely there; this was not Coralie's infatuated adorer, not the easy-natured, indolent, incredulous libertine whom he had known hitherto as Camusot, but a heavy father of a family, a merchant grown old in shrewd expedients of business and respectable virtues, wearing a magistrate's mask of judicial prudery; this Camusot was the cool, business-like head of the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... Remember I would not have come to you if I had not had evidence. You take exception to Lans and his ways of life, I have been informed that you have even called him a—a—libertine!" ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... to deposit one's money with a usurer than to borrow from him. Now it seems altogether unlawful to deposit one's money with a usurer, even as it would be unlawful to deposit one's sword with a madman, a maiden with a libertine, or food with a glutton. Neither therefore is it lawful to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... whatever it may cost; I am here to regret nothing I have ever done—to retract nothing I have ever said. I am here to crave, with no lying lip the life I consecrate to the liberty of my country. Far from it, even here—here, where the thief the libertine, the murderer, have left their footprints in the dust; here on this spot, where the shadows of death surround me, and from which I see my early grave in an appointed soil opened to receive me—even here, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... de Pierre"—the Feast of the Statue—well known to the modern stage under the name of "Don Juan," was the next vehicle of Moliere's satire. The story, borrowed from the Spanish, is well known. In giving the sentiments of the libertine Spaniard, the author of "Tartuffe" could not suppress his resentment against the party, by whose interest with the king that piece had been excluded from the stage, or at least its representation suspended. "The profession of a hypocrite," says Don Juan, "has ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... reckoning, and let itself criticise even great triumphators, even men whom it loved and respected. It was known that on a time they shouted during the entrance to Rome of Julius Caesar: "Citizens, hide your wives; the old libertine is coming!" But Nero's monstrous vanity could not endure the least blame or criticism; meanwhile in the throng, amid shouts of applause were heard cries of "Ahenobarbus, Ahenobarbus! Where hast thou put thy flaming beard? Dost thou fear that Rome might catch fire from it?" And those who cried ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... in St. Sulpice alone to convert the world; and owns so strong was the impress made on his own soul by his training as a priest that personally he had lived a pure life, "although," he adds, with an easy shrug of his shoulders, "it is very possible that the libertine has the best of it!" Another renegade priest, also eminent in literature, bears exactly the same testimony. Indeed, when we remember the argus-eyed hatred with which the French priesthood is watched by the anti-clerical ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... acting on his temperament, make him either reasonable, or irrational—enlightened, or stupid—a fanatic, or a hero—an enthusiast for the public good, or an unbridled criminal—a wise man, smitten with the advantages of virtue, or a libertine, plunged into every kind of vice. All the varieties of the moral man, depend on the diversity of his ideas; which are themselves arranged and combined in his brain by the intervention of his senses. His temperament is the produce of physical ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... broad crease over his cravat. That brow was the brow of the public Charles Fox, the thinker, the philanthropist, the man who rallied and led the Liberal party during the twenty most hazardous years of its existence. That jaw was the jaw of the private Charles Fox, the gambler, the libertine, the drunkard. Yet to his sins he never added the crowning one of hypocrisy. His vices were as open as his virtues. In some quaint freak of Nature, two spirits seemed to have been joined in one body, and the same frame to contain the best ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... good nature, for no one owes so much to it. Is not the vulgarity of these wretched imitations of Lord Byron carried to a pitch of the sublime? His indecencies, too, both against sexual nature, and against human nature in general, sit very awkwardly upon him. He only affects the libertine: he is, really, a very amiable, friendly, and agreeable man, I hear. But is not this monstrous? In Lord Byron all this has an analogy with the general system of his character, and the wit and poetry which surround hide with their light the darkness of the thing itself. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... feet high, lank, but graceful as a panther, and the pink of politeness, was, beneath his varnish, one of the wildest young men in London—gambler, horse-racer, libertine, what not?—but in society charming, and his manners singularly elegant and winning. He never obtruded his vices in good company; in fact, you might dine with him all your life and not detect him. The young serpent was torpid in wine; ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... in the struggle, La Rochefoucauld, though no devot, would seem a friend of the church rather than a foe, and in fact he retained the intimacy of Bossuet, in whose arms he died. We may be sure that he guarded himself with delicate care from the charge of being what was then called a "libertine," that is a man openly at war with the theory and practice of ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... understand me, and you begin to perceive how that man threatening to marry you to a man you hate, has opened again the wounds of my own sacrifice—a sacrifice he made nearly twenty years ago—heaven forgive him! Richard West was a gambler and a libertine. There was an indefinable something which told me as much, very soon after I met him. He was tall and fine-looking, and he had political influence. My brother had a motive for courting him. He carried out that object by introducing him to me. I can scarcely say that I loved elsewhere, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... position. It strikes me very oddly that good and wise men at Cambridge and Boston should think of raising me into an object of criticism. I have always been—from my very incapacity of methodical writing—a 'chartered libertine,' free to worship and free to rail,—lucky when I could make myself understood, but never esteemed near enough to the institutions and mind of society to deserve the notice of the masters of literature and ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... cynic's testimony (in the "New Republic") to the piquancy lent by Christianity to many a sin, otherwise pointless. If the moralist distinguishes between actions that are evil because they are forbidden, and those that are forbidden because they are evil, the libertine has a counter-distinction between those that are forbidden because they are pleasant, and those that are pleasant because they are forbidden. St. Paul himself is explicit enough as to ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... closely to her body, and as her eyes met mine, I, for the first time in my life, felt a sudden tenderness for her, something that I never before felt when any woman's eyes had looked into mine. And I had never been a saint, though never a libertine; but between the two courses, I think, I had had as much experience of women as falls to most men, and I had never yet met a woman who seemed to so hold and possess my moral sense as did this semi-savage girl, who, ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... and ritual by taking what she needed from the Greeks. But here this resource failed her because the poetic, artistic and even intellectual religion of the Greeks was hardly moral. And the fables of a mythology jeered at by the philosophers, parodied on the stage and put to verse by libertine poets were anything ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... that the man who insists on premarital sexual necessity has two roads open to him—one that of the libertine and seducer, the most contemptible of creatures; the other that of the whore-follower, whom nature perpetually menaces with vile and pestilential plagues, making him a misery to himself and menace to all clean persons who associate with him, especially ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... and actually printed by him as his own production, in the collection of plays and poems going under his name, published in 1745, 8vo., a copy of which I purchased at Nassau's sale, many years since. (2.) The Doating Lovers, or the Libertine Tamed, a comedy in five acts; acted in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It is dedicated to the Duchess of Hamilton and Brandon, whose "elegant taste and nice judgment in the most polite entertainments of the age," as well as ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... very smart and very exclusive, have a somewhat peculiar reputation. Lady Carey, although she is such a brilliant woman, says and does the most insolent, the most amazing things, and the Prince of Saxe Leinitzer goes everywhere in Europe by the name of the Royal libertine. They are powerful enough almost to dominate society, and we poor people who abide by the conventions are absolutely nowhere beside them. They think that we are bourgeois because we have virtue, and prehistoric because ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... libertine, cold, selfish, and unfeeling. He was eminently successful too in his diabolical enterprise, although there was nothing prepossessing in his person or in his manners; but he had the reputation of being irresistible, and of course he was so; for, whatever may be the reason, it is a most lamentable ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... preserve the energies of the people for a more noble trial. The multitude, moreover, impeded one another by their own violent impetuosity; and to this it was owing, more than to the defence of his followers, or the intercession of the popular Flaccus, that the young libertine was not torn to pieces, on the threshold of ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... a libertine's caprice should dare rest for an instant upon the pure and beautiful girl whom he loved with all the strength of his being—whom he had sworn should be his wife—all his blood mounted madly ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... of those who are 'there sitting where we dare not soar', are reprehensible. Let us assume that Homer was a drunkard, that Virgil was a flatterer, that Horace was a coward, that Tasso was a madman, that Lord Bacon was a peculator, that Raphael was a libertine, that Spenser was a poet laureate. It is inconsistent with this division of our subject to cite living poets, but posterity has done ample justice to the great names now referred to. Their errors have ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... a stonemason; chiefly in the gravestone, tomb, and monument way, and wholly of their colour from head to foot. No man is better known in Cloisterham. He is the chartered libertine of the place. Fame trumpets him a wonderful workman—which, for aught that anybody knows, he may be (as he never works); and a wonderful sot—which everybody knows he is. With the Cathedral crypt he is better acquainted than ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... of humanity are sad media through which to receive truth—often so opaque that no truth can reach the mind at all. It is impossible for a man whose affections are bestialized, whose practices are libertine, and whose imaginations are all impure, to receive the truth that there are such things as purity and virtue, and that there are men and women around him who are virtuous and pure. There is no truth which personal vice will not distort. The approaches to ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... concert. It was a failure. The room was as empty as the church has been of late. Those—women (my cloth prohibits me from supplying the adjective, Charles. I leave it with satisfaction in your hands) with their gabble have robbed me of my last shred of character. I assure you I am regarded as a libertine in the place—a professional breaker of hearts, a Don Juan bragging of my conquests! Each of those Fifteen has her own tale to tell of her own wrongs and of my deceit. They hold indignation meetings in Mrs ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... was ashamed of it, ashamed or even shocked? He was not readily shocked. A pure cynic, he let into his mind, on an easy footing, primitive desires that the average man admits only behind a screen. Yet when these libertine fancies played over Isabel's innocent head they were distasteful to him: as he remembered once, in a Barbizon studio, to have knocked a man down for a Gallic jest on the Queen of Heaven although Luke's Evangel meant no more to him than the legend ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... synonymous with vice, a dissolute and fearless assassin of private character, of domestic comfort, and of social happiness; when he is known to be the bosom friend and supporter of the profligate and abandoned libertine, who, from the vulgar debauches of night, hastens again to the invasion of private property. Who, through the robbery of the public revenue, and the violation of private seals, hurries down the precipice of deep ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... inferiority to those with whom her days must be spent. There is no election day in her year, and but the ghost of a Fourth of July. She must live not with those she likes, but with those who want her; she is not always safe from libertine insult in what serves her for a home; she knows no ten-hour rule, and would not dare to claim its protection if one were enacted. Though not a slave by law, she is too often as near it in practice as ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of liberty invoking the tyranny of terror! An assassin—shouting fraternity and committing fratricide! A libertine—claiming equality with the good, while ravishing the pure! A monster—part vulture, part toad—who, in the holy name of progress, makes our Country and our ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... Mrs. Van Tyle answered with perfect good humor. "Of course you couldn't want to marry him under any circumstances. His station in life—his anarchistic ideas—his reputation as a confirmed libertine—all of them make the thought of such ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... eagerness on the part of the young monarch to behold his bride than on that of his subjects. We will not say that he had exactly imbibed the principles of a libertine, but it is well known that he was a gallant in the most liberal signification of the term, and that his amours extended to all ranks. He had, therefore, until he had well nigh reached his thirtieth year, evaded the curb ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... libertine, the debauchee, the mastich- chewer, the too susceptible to amorous sights?' 'Yes; the lecher and whore-master. Well, Damasias fell down and worshipped the Goddess (they have an Artemis by Scopas in ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... have my fortune. Aunt exhausted all her stock of melodramatic and sentimental language and her tears in trying to get me to fulfill what she called my father's 'dying wish,' by marrying that debauchee and libertine; then she tried threats, and finally became so wild with rage, that she reminded me of the will, and told me I should never marry any one else; that Humphrey should have the property, as my father intended, sooner ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... writer, in regard to a due admission of her own failings, sufficient of uncoloured matter of fact remains to show the exposed situation of an unprotected beauty—or, what is worse, of a female of great personal and natural attraction, exposed to the gaze of libertine rank and fashion, under the mere nominal guardianship of a neglectful and profligate husband. Autobiography of this class is sometimes dangerous; not so that of Mrs. Robinson, who conceals not the thorns inherent in the paths along which vice externally scatters roses; ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... A very religious man, notwithstanding the austere and cruel principles of a bloody religion, will sometimes be, by a fortunate inconsistency, humane, tolerant, moderate; in this case the principles of his religion do not agree with the mildness of his disposition. A libertine, a debauchee, a hypocrite, an adulterer, or a thief will often show us that he has the clearest ideas of morals. Why do they not practice them? It is because neither their temperament, their interests, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... on earth where one can be so well-known by his neighbors as in Paris, it was not long before the people of my acquaintance who had seen me with Desgenais began to accuse me of being a great libertine. In that I admired the discernment of the world: in proportion as I had passed for inexperienced and sensitive at the time of my rupture with my mistress, I was now considered corrupt and hardened. Some one had just told me that it was clear I had never loved ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... middle-aged person, fate; for is it not practically certain that what I have done for twenty years I shall repeat to-day? What are the chances for a man who has been lazy and indolent all his life starting in to-morrow morning to be industrious; or a spendthrift, frugal; a libertine, virtuous; a profane, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... the previous 'good order, discretion, and sobriety.' But no little licence was permitted, and the tales of it commonly excite small surprise. As told of Ralegh, and yet more of Elizabeth Throckmorton, the story startles still. No evidence exists upon which he can justly be pronounced a libertine. How she, refined, faithful, heroic, should have been led astray, is hardly intelligible. She must have now been several years over twenty, probably twenty-eight or twenty-nine, and in her long after-life she bore herself as entitled to all social respect. She was allowed ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... yelled Colline, "will you hold your tongue with your libertine reflections. It was agreed that we should not speak of love, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... Tertius interested himself in sundry of the businesses left by his father. Though they had been carefully devised and surrounded with safeguards, the heir managed to break into and improve several of them. The result was more money. After having gambled with fair luck, played the profuse libertine for a time, tried his hand at yachting, horse-racing, big-game hunting, and even politics, he successively tired of the first three, and was beaten at the last, but retained an unsatisfied hunger for it. To celebrate ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to avoid vice of all kinds, drinking, gambling, and the rest. Among other things he mentioned the social evil, and contrasted the happy home of the chaste man and his virtuous wife with that of the drunken, vicious libertine. The seducer was anathematized, and a graphic description given of the poor degraded women who had lost the one jewel in their crown. It is needless to say that both Mrs. Hazelton and her paramour felt exceedingly uncomfortable during this discourse; the former who was to have sung ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... however, of a conquering temperament—a kiss-snatching, door- bursting type of libertine. In the very act of straying from the path of virtue he remained a respectable merchant. It would have been perhaps better for Flora if he had been a mere brute. But he set about his sinister enterprise in a sentimental, cautious, almost paternal manner; ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... to the "Castled Crag of Drachenfels." Portraits he painted from necessity, not choice; but he was too true an artist for the million. The sleek hypocrite wore not on his canvas the deceptive look of holiness that bore him on through life to wealth and honor, but the crafty, sensual smile, the libertine eye, and lips that indicated the secret phases of his character. Imbecile beauty saw her index in the painted mirror. Folly stood convicted by the pencil. It was frequently remarked, that you might learn more of a man from a glance at his portrait than from ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... of impunity, are things which they cannot resist; the attraction of gain acts upon them as drunkenness does upon their victims. How many crimes arise from the same source? There is no mother who does not fear for her daughter, no husband who does not dread for his wife, a libertine armed with a bottle of brandy; they rob and pillage these wretches, who, stupefied by intoxication when they are not maddened by it, can neither refuse nor defend themselves. There is no barrier which is not forced, ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... features of Fourier's private character were morality and the love of truth. He had a character both grave and dignified, religious and poetic, friendly and polite, indulgent and sincere, which never allowed truth to be profaned by libertine frivolity, nor faith to be confounded with austere duplicity. He was a man of dignified simplicity, a child of Heaven, loving God with all his heart, all his soul, and all his mind, also loving as himself his ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... before the terrible significance of what they beheld. In the abstract, a life-and-death struggle meant little enough to them. Witnessing it, however, violently stirred their deepest emotions. They hated the camp boss, the libertine, drunkard, bully, Arden Laval, who only held his position by reason of his fighting powers. They would be infinitely pleased to witness his end. All the more sure was their delight that it should ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... when the mind is absorbed by any powerful sentiment. Monsieur de la Bourdonnais delivered to her a letter from her aunt, who informed her, that she deserved her fate for having married an adventurer and a libertine; that misplaced passions brought along with them their own punishment, and that the sudden death of her husband must be considered as a visitation from heaven; that she had done well in going to a distant island, rather ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... how far you are right—how far suitability is a question of rank. A gentleman may be, and frequently is, a drunkard, a gambler, a libertine, or all ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... such an act from me,' he replied, looking into the eyes of the libertine robber, 'that I refuse to discuss a proposition so odious ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... an impossible caricature of an obstinate, vain, cruel libertine. Peregrine was precisely the man to fall in love with Emilia pour le bon motif, and then attempt to ruin her, though she was the sister of his friend, by devices worthy of Lovelace at his last and lowest stage. ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... maid; A box upon his shoulder held full well Her worldly riches, but the truth to tell She bore the chief herself; that nobler part. That beauteous gem, an uncorrupted heart. And then that native loveliness! that cheek! It bore the very tints her betters seek; At such a sight the libertine would glow, With all the warmth that he can ever know; Would send his thoughts abroad without control, The glimmering moon-shine of his little soul. "Above the reach of justice I shall soar, Her friends may weep, not punish; they're too poor: That very thought the rapture ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... you wooden-legged little monster,' cried the virago, with another bang of the umbrella, which raised such a cloud of dust that it nearly made Slivers sneeze his head off. 'He ain't been home all night, and you've been leading him into bad habits, you cork-armed libertine.' ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... of immodesty. At a first glance it is not easy to see why these shoes—terminating in a lion's claw, an eagle's beak, the prow of a ship, or other metal appendage—should be so scandalous. The excommunication inflicted on this kind of foot-gear preceded the impudent invention of some libertine, who wore poulaines in the shape of the phallus, a custom adopted also by women. This kind of poulaine was denounced as mandite de Dicu (Ducange's Glossary, at the word Poulainia) and prohibited by royal ordinances (see letter of Charles V., 17 October, 1367, regarding the garments ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Prince has been pictured as a libertine and a pillager. His face has been caricatured so often that people have the cartooned impression of him and believe him to be a sort ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... suited him to do so, leaving her as soon as his passion cooled and a more advantageous social connection presented itself. Towards the handsome young soldier Iglesias was, it must be owned, somewhat merciless. Why should he go to the rescue of this young libertine's family, and indirectly facilitate his marriage, and increase its promise of happiness, by helping to secure him an otherwise vanishing fortune? Let him pay the price of his illicit pleasures and become a pauper. Such a consummation ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... were not unfounded. Lord Alphingham loved Caroline, but the love of a libertine is not true affection, and such a character for the last fourteen years of his life he had been; nine years of that time he had lived on the Continent, gay, and courted, in whatever country he resided, winning many a youthful heart to bid it break, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... a Counter, would I do, but good? Du.Sen. Most mischeeuous foule sin, in chiding sin: For thou thy selfe hast bene a Libertine, As sensuall as the brutish sting it selfe, And all th' imbossed sores, and headed euils, That thou with license of free foot hast caught, Would'st thou disgorge ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... your estate. These, with an honest life following, are the only conditions that can save you from the penitentiary, as an embezzler, a receiver of stolen goods, a robber of county records, a defamer of innocent men, an accomplice in helping an Indian to steal a white girl, and a libertine. ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... take all this with reserve. D'Aubigne, being artist and man of science, has a vivid imagination. But he understands Carville, and appreciates the difference between him and the average libertine. With Carville it is always a grande affaire. For the time, as D'Aubigne quaintly puts it, his love is like a red, red rose. And I relate my adventures to you because you have roused my interest in your neighbours and it is only ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... puff'd and reckless libertine, Himself the Primrose path of dalliance treads And recks ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... that this priesthood was not much accounted of in those days, but also that for the cura and caerimonia of religion a pure mind was no longer needed. But it might be utilised as a kind of penal settlement for a libertine noble; and it is not impossible that a century and a quarter later the attempt to put the boy Julius Caesar into the same priesthood, though otherwise represented by the historians, may have had the same object.[725] But the strange ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... wrought out by a composer. The famous finale of Don Giovanni, after all, only shows us a libertine at odds with his victims, who invoke the vengeance of Heaven; while here earth and its dominions try to defeat God. Two nations are here face to face. And Rossini, having every means at his command, has made wonderful use of them. He has succeeded in expressing the turmoil of ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... Minister on High, Command the throbbing Breast, and watry Eye, And, as our captive Spirits ebb and flow, Smile at the Tempests you have rais'd below: The Face of Guilt a Flush of Vertue wears, And sudden burst the involuntary Tears: Honour's sworn Foe, the Libertine with Shame, Descends to curse the sordid lawless Flame; The tender Maid here learns Man's various Wiles, Rash Youth, hence dread the Wanton's venal Smiles— Sure 'twas by brutal Force of envious Man, First Learning's base Monopoly ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... humble. His devotion, which was quite real, kept him from no sin he had a mind to. His talk showed good-humour, gaiety, even wit enough; but there was a levity in his acts and words that he had brought from among those libertine devotees with whom he had been bred, and that shocked the simplicity and purity of the English lady, whose guest he was. Esmond spoke his mind to Beatrix pretty freely about the prince, getting her brother to put in a word of warning. Beatrix was entirely of their opinion; she thought he was very ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... you to be as little acquainted with him as politeness allows? He is a most agreable man, perhaps too agreable, with a thousand amiable qualities; he is the man I love above all others; and, where women are not concerned, a man of the most unblemished honor: but his manner of life is extremely libertine, and his ideas of women unworthy the rest of his character; he knows not the perfections which adorn the valuable part of your sex, he is a stranger to your virtues, and incapable, at least I fear so, of that tender affection which alone can make an amiable woman happy. ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... according to his capacities, and should give no occasion for a reaction against itself, nor provoke the individualist element into separation." (p. 173.) Of what sort the Ministers of such a "chartered libertine" are to prove, may be anticipated. "Thought and speech, which are free among all other classes," must be free also "among those who hold the office of leaders and teachers of the rest in the highest things." The Ministers of the Church ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... been perpetuated up to our own day. Briefly, then, the Toledot Yeshu relates with the most indecent details that Miriam, a hairdresser of Bethlehem,[86] affianced to a young man named Jochanan, was seduced by a libertine, Joseph Panther or Pandira, and gave birth to a son whom she named Johosuah or Jeschu. According to the Talmudic authors of the Sota and the Sanhedrim, Jeschu was taken during his boyhood to Egypt, where he was initiated into the secret doctrines of the priests, and ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... said to have been eminently handsome in his youth, tall, slender, with yellow hair falling in ringlets down his shoulders. He is likewise said to have been a great libertine. The following ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... their sons or grandsons. Sometimes I met a shaggy white horse drawing a cart in which a dozen sonsie lasses, their faces browned by wind and their tresses blown back from their brows in most bewitching manner by the libertine breeze, were jolting homeward, singing as they went. The young men in their loose linen garments, with their primitive hoes and spades on their shoulders, were as goodly specimens of manly strength and beauty as one could wish to look upon. It hurt me to see them stand humbly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... steered clear of giving serious offence, save on occasions extremely few, must be counted to him for righteousness. It is true that, as a Lord Chancellor once declared, "Punch is a chartered libertine." But for him to have won his "charter" at all proves him at least to have been worthy of it, the tolerance and indulgence of the nation having been in themselves a temptation. It is not so much that ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... he said, "that however gross and innumerable my errors and backslidings, I am no libertine." (Here Endicott's eyes flashed, but he contented himself with stroking, in a musing manner, the long tuft of hair on his chin.) "The evil we are called upon by the united voice of the suffering saints in this wilderness to suppress," continued ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... modelled by art to the usual rules of courtesy, yet so far frank and honest, that they seemed as if they disclaimed to conceal the natural workings of the soul. Such an expression is often mistaken for manly frankness, when in truth it arises from the reckless indifference of a libertine disposition, conscious of superiority of birth, of wealth, or of some other adventitious advantage, totally unconnected with personal merit. To those who did not think so deeply, and they were the greater number by a hundred to one, the splendour of ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... rather have expressed differently" for which reporters are responsible are of course legion. I forbear to enlarge on such familiar instances as "the shattered libertine of debate," applied to Mr. Bernal Osborne, and "the roaring loom of the Times" when Mr. Lowell had spoken of the "roaring loom of time." I content myself with two which occurred in my own immediate circle. A clerical uncle of mine took the Pledge ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Carthage to leap from the flame of his torch, lighting with his own hand the funeral pile, whose blaze the fugitive Eneas perceives upon the waves,—is altogether another thing than the promenade of a dreamer in the woods, or the disappearance of a libertine who drowns himself in the sea. Madame Sand will, I trust, yet associate her talents with subjects ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... were screamingly alive within him. To these was added the inordinate conceit of the habitual libertine, a combination than which there is nothing more sensitive in the ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... effect as a fact but no explanation of it. From the time of Alexander the Great that which is common, popular, realistic prevailed in politics and literature. The heroic and ideal-poetic declined and was made an object of satire in the mimus. "The trivial, prosaic, and libertine taste of the Macedonian princes of Egypt and Syria at last reigned alone in enslaved Greece." Then, under different forms and names, nothing remained but mimes, realistic representation of common life.[2030] The Olympian gods ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... overcome the centrifugal, and you can make the centrifugal overcome the centripetal. As when there is a mighty tide of good in a family that may be overcome by determination to evil, as in the case of Aaron Burr, the libertine, who had for father President Burr, the consecrated; as in the case of Pierrepont Edwards, the scourge of New York society seventy years ago, who had a Christian ancestry; while on the other hand some of the best ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... chimneys to the south-east, I saw Miss Dillon's romantic favorite, alternately cooing and fighting with a large mouser of the neighborhood, that I had seen for several afternoons previous, walking leisurely along the garden wall, as if absorbed in deep meditation, and forming some libertine resolve. In fine, they each seemed saturate with the spirit of the Gnome king, Umbriel, in the drama, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... harm—merely that every one thinks thoughts and feels impulses that would be startling if expressed in speech. Don't we all know how terrifying a thing speech is, and thought? a chartered libertine." ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... woes of Claire de Breze commenced in her earliest childhood. At the time of her marriage to the Duke d'Enghien she had lost her mother some six years, that parent having died in 1635. What befell her infancy, abandoned to the neglect of a fantastic and libertine father, ruled even before his widowhood by a mistress, the wife of one of his lacqueys, whom he killed one day during a hunting match in order to get him out of the way; of a father who, Tallemant tells us, carelessly ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... despises him as such. In truth however he was, by the acknowledgment of those who neither loved nor esteemed him, a man distinguished by fine parts, and in parliamentary eloquence inferior to scarcely any orator of his time. His moral character was entitled to no respect. He was a libertine without that openness of heart and hand which sometimes makes libertinism amiable, and a haughty aristocrat without that elevation of sentiment which sometimes makes aristocratical haughtiness respectable. The satirists of the age nicknamed him Lord Allpride. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had been, and, like them, entirely misinterpreted by the hearers. It struck like a dagger into the wounded and tender heart of Helen; it pierced Laura, and inflamed the high-spirited girl with scorn and anger. "And it was to this hardened libertine," she thought—"to this boaster of low intrigues, that I had given my heart away." "He breaks the most sacred laws," thought Helen. "He prefers the creature of his passion to his own mother; and when he is upbraided, he laughs, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... perceive that in the world, from which you are come, you have been two-fold, in internals having been quite a different man from what you were in externals; in externals you have been a civil, moral, and rational man; whereas in internals, you have been neither civil, moral, nor rational, because a libertine and an adulterer: and such men, when they are allowed to ascend into heaven, and are there kept in their externals, can see the heavenly things contained therein; but when their internals are opened, instead of heavenly things they see infernal. Know, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... the literary Kazi with exemplary impartiality and severity; "denouncing evil doers and eulogising deeds admirably achieved." The morale is sound and healthy; and at times we descry, through the voluptuous and libertine picture, vistas of a transcendental morality, the morality of Socrates in Plato. Subtle corruption and covert licentiousness are utterly absent; we find more real"vice" in many a short French roman, say ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... most mischievous authors of this abominable conspiracy is the man Brotteaux, once known as des Ilettes, receiver of imposts under the tyrant. This person, who was remarkable, even in the days of tyranny, for his libertine behaviour, is a sure proof how dissoluteness and immorality are the greatest enemies of the liberty and happiness of peoples; as a fact, after misappropriating the public revenues and wasting in debauchery a noticeable part of the people's patrimony, the person ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... wheeling round upon his new antagonist, "Mr. Pendragon! And do you suppose, Mr. Pendragon, that because I have had the misfortune to marry your sister, I shall suffer myself to be dogged and thwarted by a discredited and bankrupt libertine like you? My acquaintance with Lady Vandeleur, sir, has taken away all my appetite for the other members of ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... reason in particular, could attain a thorough conviction in these subjects. Clearness and propriety of style are the chief excellencies of Hobbes's writings. In his own person, he is represented to have been a man of virtue; a character nowise surprising, notwithstanding his libertine system of ethics. Timidity is the principal fault with which he is reproached; he lived to an extreme old age, yet could never reconcile himself to the thoughts of death. The boldness of his opinions and sentiments form a remarkable contrast to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... him; but while the crowd made their passage difficult, Albany, following and stopping her, said, "What is it you fear? a miserable old man, worn out by the sorrows of that experience from which he offers you counsel? What, too, is it you trust? a libertine wretch, coveting nothing but your wealth, for the gift of which he will repay you by the ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... And doubt not but to keepe my honour firme, But my deere brother, do not you Like to a cunning Sophister, Teach me the path and ready way to heauen, While you forgetting what is said to me, Your selfe, like to a carelesse libertine Doth giue his heart, his appetite at ful, And little recks how that his honour dies. Lear. No, feare it not my deere Ofelia, Here comes my father, occasion smiles vpon a second leaue. Enter Corambis. Cor. ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare
... responds, in a sonorous alto, without appearing to notice Gabou,—but smiling upon Fafa as she passes, with her great eyes turned full upon his face.... All the libertine blood of the man flames under that look;—he feels as if momentarily wrapped in a blaze of ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... has shown us the soul of the madman, drunkard, libertine, the street-walker, he has also exposed the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... heavily to his feet. There was his mission. For the sake of that, for the sake of comrades depending on him, he would go and once more offer succor to this libertine princelet. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... helpless intoxication, had invested himself in the domestic's livery, and had driven off with the lady in the darkness after the performance to the outskirts of the town. What happened exactly, the McMurrays did not know; but there was the devil to pay in Vienna. And yet this inconsequent libertine did the following before my own eyes. We were walking down Piccadilly together one afternoon in the hard winter of 1894. It was a black frost, agonizingly cold. A shivering wretch held out matches for sale. His ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... King given by Thackeray, but a party politician in those days could scarcely be a faithful chronicler. He could see what he wished to see, but found it necessary to shut his eyes when the prospect became unpleasant. George was a heartless libertine, but Addison observes with great satisfaction that the women most eminent for virtue and good sense are in his interest. 'It would be no small misfortune,' he says, 'to a sovereign, though he had all the male part of the nation ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... reverence; albeit I have to confess that she would touch me rather more potently, if she had a little more of loveliness and a little less of awfulness. And it is remarkable that even Lucio, light-minded libertine as he is, whose familiar sin it is to jest with maids, "tongue far from heart," cannot approach her, but that his levity is at once awed into soberness, and he regards her as one "to be talk'd with in sincerity, as with ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... right before them, how he had caught an innocent girl's heart by sending a love-letter, and offer of marriage, at the end of a long friendly correspondence,—a letter that had been written to show to his libertine set, and sent on the toss-up of a copper, because he cared nothing for it one ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... not have easily overlooked it: and it was impossible that his majesty, a most judicious prince, should not provide himself with a good number of such wise and able counsellors. Yet perhaps the virtue of those reverend sages was too strict for the corrupt and libertine manners of a court: and we often find by experience, that young men are too opinionated and volatile to be guided by the sober dictates of their seniors. However, since the king was pleased to allow me access to his royal person, I was resolved, upon the very first occasion, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... or lax, according to the temper of the penitent. The first object was to drive no person out of the pale of the Church. Since there were bad people, it was better that they should be bad Catholics than bad Protestants. If a person was so unfortunate as to be a bravo, a libertine, or a gambler, that was no reason for making him a ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... public as well as private notice. The French all speak highly of her, and it is impossible, on seeing Malmaison and hearing of her virtues, not to join in their opinion. To be sure, as a Frenchman told me in running through a list of virtues, "Elle avait ete un peu libertine, mais ce n'est rien cela," and, indeed, I could almost have added, "C'est bien vrai," for every allowance should be made; consider the situation in which she was placed, her education, her temptations; many a saint might have fallen from the eminence on which she stood; I never dwelt ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... the lofty office that Saturday morning he sat under the eye of Breede, in outward seeming a neat and efficient amanuensis. In truth he was pluming himself as a libertine of rare endowments. He openly and shamelessly wished he had kissed the creature again. When the next opportunity came she wouldn't get off so lightly, he could tell her that. It was base, but it was thrilling. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... tells us himself that he had never loved with passion. His death was of a piece with his life. Having been a public frequenter of brothels and the associate of the loosest company, he died like the libertine. He was taken ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... that the Roman general for an instant remained motionless. Then, urged either by compunction for his violence; or by the certainty that, if he attempted force, he would have but a corpse in his possession; or, as the unscrupulous libertine later pretended, by a generous impulse that had guided him throughout;—whatever his motive, Caesar stepped back several paces, and raised his hand to heaven as if to call the gods to witness that he would respect his prisoner. Still suspicious, the Gallic woman kept ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... capture of Cartagena in 1697 the history of the buccaneers may be said to end. More and more during the previous twenty years they had degenerated into mere pirates, or had left their libertine life for more civilised pursuits. Since 1671 the English government had been consistent in its policy of suppressing the freebooters, and with few exceptions the governors sent to Jamaica had done their best to uphold and enforce the will of the councils at home. Ten ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... should surely at least attain to the human standard, not only are capable of every phase of passion, anger, fear, jealousy and, above all, love, but indulge them all with a verve and an abandonment that might make the boldest libertine pause. Zeus himself, for example, expends upon the mere catalogue of his amours a good twelve lines of hexameter verse. No wonder that Hera is jealous, and that her lord is driven to put her down in terms better suited to the lips of ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... would you! Why is the stomach such a libertine and outlaw in England, and so highly respectable in the United States? No Englishman of good breeding, save he be far gone in liquor, ever mentions his stomach in the presence of women, clergymen, or the Royal Family. To avoid the necessity—for ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... Peer fables for himself and the reindeer in their ride along the vertiginous blade of the Gjende. In the second act, satire and fantasy become absolutely unbridled; the poet's genius sings and dances under him, like a strong ship in a storm, but the vessel is rudderless and the pilot an emphatic libertine. The wild impertinence of fancy, in this act, from the moment when Peer and the Girl in the Green Gown ride off upon the porker, down to the fight with the Boeig, gigantic gelatinous symbol of self deception, exceeds in recklessness anything else written since ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... villiany, his resolution fell away from him. He found himself not merely a man of the nearer time, but a Catholic—in training at least—and the words he had planned to utter fell dead on his lips. Libertine though he was, there were lines over which even his lawlessness could ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland |
