"Pestilent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... body-color will tend to teach you all this, more than any other method, and above all it will prevent you from falling into the pestilent habit of sponging to get texture; a trick which has nearly ruined our modern water-color school of art. There are sometimes places in which a skillful artist will roughen his paper a little to get certain conditions of dusty color with more ease than he could otherwise; ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... do his worst Till he burst, Let him bore and burrow, morning, noon, and night, If he finds the diet sweet, oh, Who am I to place a veto On the pestilent mosquito?— ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... under the general authority. The extension of the prohibition to bills of credit must give pleasure to every citizen, in proportion to his love of justice and his knowledge of the true springs of public prosperity. The loss which America has sustained since the peace, from the pestilent effects of paper money on the necessary confidence between man and man, on the necessary confidence in the public councils, on the industry and morals of the people, and on the character of republican government, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... a witch, but I, a prophetess or a seer. These things come to you with your blood, I suppose, seeing that your mother was of a gypsy tribe and your father a high-bred Spanish gentleman, very learned and clever, though a pestilent heretic, for which cause he fled ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... art not," said Don Quixote; "for not only art thou not sage silence, but thou art pestilent prate and perversity; still I would like to know what three proverbs have just now come into thy memory, for I have been turning over mine own—and it is a good ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the nations?" However, the rulers of the Church grew more and more alarmed at the circulation of the book. At length Archbishop Arundel, a zealous but not very learned prelate, complained to the Pope of "that pestilent wretch, John Wycliffe, the son of the old Serpent, the forerunner of Antichrist, who had completed his iniquity by inventing a new translation of the Scriptures"; and, shortly after, the Convocation ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... utterly deserted the front parlour; for there had come there a pestilent fellow, highly connected with the Press, as the lamp-maker declared, but employed as an assistant shorthand-writer somewhere about the Houses of Parliament, according to the silversmith, who greatly interfered with our navvy's authority. He would not at all allow that what Charley said ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... paragraph 2. The word "injustice" was changed to "justice" in the sentence: He reminded himself, too, of the murderer's present escape from JUSTICE by aid of this pestilent clergyman; . . . ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... was teeming everywhere; life feeding upon life. For what purpose? To what end? Is this a primary law of Nature? Does cannibalism prevail in Mars? Sometimes a mocking-bird would pipe its weird notes, deepening silence by the contrast. But besides pestilent mosquitos, the only living things in sight were humming-birds of every hue, some no bigger than a butterfly, fluttering over the blossoms of the orchids, or darting from flower to flower like flashes of ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... all speede up, arrived shortly after at James Towne. The time of the yeare being then most unseasonable, by intemperate heat, at the end of June his people suddenly fallinge generally into most pestilent diseases of Callentures and feavors, not lesse then one hundred & fifty of them died within few moneths after, & that chiefly for want of meanes to comfort them in their weak estates. The residue alsoe disabled by reason of sicknes ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... the Centurion, humbly; "but it is thus. We have here"—and he jerked his thumb towards me—"a magician of the most pestilent—um, I crave his pardon—of the very best sort, for he hath but just now, only by placing his eyes close to the nose of the worthy Captain Paulus, dragged him, the said Paulus, through the gates that Paulus swore the magician should not pass. By the same token, ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... Charles! Pym and his snarls To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles! Hold by the right, you double your might; So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight, Marching along, fifty-score strong, ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... sympathy with the Deists is afforded by the violent outcry which was raised against them on all sides. This outcry was not confined to any one class or party either in the political or religious world. We may not be surprised to find Warburton mildly suggesting that 'he would hunt down that pestilent herd of libertine scribblers with which the island is overrun, as good King Edgar did his wolves,'[186] or Berkeley, that 'if ever man deserved to be denied the common benefits of bread and water, it ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty!... And yet, to me, what is this ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... him. In 1604, there was in Oxford a certain Richard Haydock, a Bachelor of Physic. This Haydock practised his profession during the day like other mortals, but varied from the kindly race of men by a pestilent habit of preaching all night. It was Haydock's contention that he preached unconsciously in his sleep, when he would give out a text with the greatest gravity, and declare such sacred matters as were revealed to him in slumber, "his preaching coming by revelation." Though people went ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... the rain had continued falling for a number of days, and the valleys were all full of water, and the angry surges went roaring, with the voice of ten thousand thunders, high up along the sides of the hills, one of these pestilent fellows—deriding the miraculous exhibition going on all around him—undertook, in his self-conceit, to lead the people to a place of safety. So he selected a lofty peak that shot up from a range of mountains, and commenced travelling up its steep acclivities. But the flood ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... ages of history: the weather. Yet Erasmus' writings contain no traces of that delight in brilliant sunshine which most Northerners feel, nor of that wonder at the beauties of the firmament which was so real to Homer. He frequently remarks that the weather was pestilent, that the winds blew and ceased not, that the sea was detestably rough and the clouds everlasting; but of the praise which accompanies enjoyment there is scarcely a word. His utmost is to say that the climate of a place is salubrious. He often describes his ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... indiscriminate. They were in reality founded on a false principle. They took for granted that there was something radically corrupt and wicked in the body and in the physical system. According to this mode of viewing things, the body was a loathsome and pestilent prison, in which the soul was locked up and enslaved, and the eyes, the ears, the taste, the smell, were all so many corrupt traitors in conspiracy to poison her. Physical beauty of every sort was a snare, a Circean enchantment, to be valiantly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... activity. The marshes of Lerna, near Argos, were infested by great numbers of serpents, which, as fast as they were destroyed, were replaced by new swarms; draining the marshes, and, probably, setting fire to the adjacent thickets or jungles, he destroyed these pestilent reptiles, on which it was fabled that he had destroyed the Hydra of Lerna, with its heads, which grew as fast as they were cut off. The forest of Erymanthus was full of wild boars, which laid waste all the neighbouring country: he destroyed them all, and brought one with him to the court of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... more then now, 690 Avoided pinching cold and scorching heate? These changes in the Heav'ns, though slow, produc'd Like change on Sea and Land, sideral blast, Vapour, and Mist, and Exhalation hot, Corrupt and Pestilent: Now from the North Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shoar Bursting thir brazen Dungeon, armd with ice And snow and haile and stormie gust and flaw, Boreas and Caecias and Argestes loud And Thrascias rend the Woods and Seas upturn; 700 With ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... understand. But why should she be sacrificed? Were there no nurses in the country to be hired, but that she must go and remain there for a month at the bedside of a pestilent fever? There ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... enlightened by means of the Scripture spurned it from the island with disgust and horror, the land instantly after its disappearance becoming a fair field, in which arts, sciences, and all the amiable virtues flourished, instead of being a pestilent marsh where swine-like ignorance wallowed, and artful hypocrites, like so many Wills-o'-the-wisp, played antic gambols about, around, and above ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... were kept under the bed in one of these rooms. The fruit which is ripened in these places is sold daily in every section of the city, and people who live with healthful surroundings, far away from this pestilent hole, are risking the health of themselves and their children, unwittingly, by purchasing fruit that cannot help but have absorbed something of the poison from the atmosphere of these filthy, crowded quarters. The Board of Health know about this place, ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... on Apulia, the thirsty and arid, Exhaled a more baleful or pestilent dew, And the gift, which invincible Hercules carried, Burned not to ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... executed as a traitor. The fate of this noble-hearted patriot is a fatal blot upon his conqueror's memory, but it should not be forgotten that Edward was profoundly convinced of the legality of his own claims over Scotland, and that Wallace to him was merely a pestilent rebel, who had earned his doom by treason to his lord and by the cruelties he had inflicted upon Englishmen. The same year the king prepared a new constitution for the conquered kingdom, divided it into sheriffdoms ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... noticed the blanching of the elder man's brown face and the unutterable loathing of horror that spoke out of every feature. 'We've got to put our shoulder to the wheel, and leave no stone unturned to find Alick, and carry him out of this pestilent hole.' ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... companions of his innocent childhood, the associates of his boyish days, his fellow-adventurers in manhood's prime—all, all had perished. Some had been ruthlessly hunted down by a skilled body of German assassins; others had died under the cruel attacks of the pestilent Frenchman. The Cholera Bacillus, the king of them all, was the first to fall; typhoid and typhus, small-pox and measles, fits of convulsions or of sneezing, coughs and catarrhs, had all been deprived of Bacilli and slain. The Wart Bacillus had fought ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... work, and either indulging themselves in their delights in subject, or pluming themselves on their noble motives for attempting what they cannot perform; (and observe, by the way, that a great deal of what is mistaken for conscientious motive is nothing but a very pestilent, because very subtle, condition of vanity); whereas the great men always understand at once that the first morality of a painter, as of everybody else, is to know his business; and so earnest are they in this, that many, whose lives you would think, by the results of ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... and the very cost of their burial would have come from the pockets of pinched workers. I fancy that I have shown the advisability of neglecting strict economic canons in this instance. I abhor the pestilent beings who swarm in certain quarters, and I should never dream of removing any burden from their shoulders if I thought that it would only leave the rascals with more money to expend on brutish pleasures; but I desire to look far ahead, and I can see that, when the ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... article obliges us to do;—nay, instead thereof, they are tolerated, maintained, and protected by authority, as appears both from the late Act of Parliament, and from the liberty allowed to that pestilent generation of Quakers, who keep their general meetings yearly in Edinburgh, being guarded by a company of the town guards. And as the state do not prosecute the promoters and abettors of these heresies with civil pains, as is the duty of such as call ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... the carriage out of this pestilent throng, that I may the better hear thee," said the governor. The Escribano entered the carriage, when in a twinkling the door was closed, the coachman smacked his whip, mules, carriage, guards, and all dashed off at a thundering rate, leaving the crowd in gaping wonderment, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... was a pestilent innovator, it is certain. Before his time the Hall had been a fine block of the mellowest red brick; but Sir Richard had travelled in Italy and become infected with the Italian taste, and, having more money than his predecessors, he determined to leave an Italian palace where he had found ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... instead of tracing the direct connection between effects and causes. Misled by the splendour of some great renown they have concluded that to write like Cicero or to paint like Titian must be the pathway to success; which is true in one sense, and profoundly false as they understand it. One pestilent contagious error issued from this misconception, namely, that all maxims confirmed by the practice of the great artists must be maxims for the art; although a close examination might reveal that the practice of these artists may have been the result of their peculiar individualities ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... delayed for many months on the pestilent coast, for after buying their licenses in one kingdom and finding trade slack there they could ill afford to sail for another on the uncertain chance of a more speedy supply. Sometimes when weary of higgling the market, they tried persuasion by force of arms; but in some instances as at ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... cost of illness. If the explorer be unable to quit the spot before night, whether in summer or winter, his death is certain. In the earlier times some bold and adventurous men did indeed succeed in getting a few jewels, but since then the marsh has become more dangerous, and its pestilent character, indeed, increases year by year, as the stagnant water penetrates deeper. So that now for very many years no such attempts have ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... years. I must own, also, that the hermitage whither he retired to stifle his rebellious passion for the wife of another, however melancholy and impressive the ideas may be which it would of itself excite, is poisoned, in my mind, by the pestilent frivolities with which the mawkish of all ages have defaced its sombre features, in violation of truth and sound feeling. What syllables of dolour the forgotten Della-Cruscan school may have yelled ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... ages. The river swarms with ferry-boats. Was ever utility attained at so great a sacrifice of taste? Their model must have been a toad with a stick thrust through it (three of which, so impaled and hung up in the sun to dry, Luther recommended as the best cure for all manner of "pestilent humors"). At any rate, the difference between their aspect and that of the sail-boat is that of a beetle and a butterfly. The acme of ugliness is reached in the freight ferry-boats, floating fragments of railroad, whose cars look like the joints ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... stranger or a dog or cat, came in, it fell to hissing, and filled the room with such nauseous effluvia as rendered it hardly supportable. Thus the squnck, or stonck, of Ray's Synop. Ouadr. is an innocuous and sweet animal; but, when pressed hard by dogs and men, it can eject such a pestilent and fetid smell and excrement, that ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... be suppressed: it will be folly to expect peace or tranquillity while that pestilent body is in existence; smite it "hip and thigh," and you at once cut off the fruitful sources of discontent and crime. Stop the rent, and at one blow you annihilate the profligate press, which turns the minds of the people from their legitimate avocations, which panders to their prejudices, and excites ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... pale as the door softly opened, and Annorah herself, unobserved by the priest, came in. He went on: "Do you call her better, the pestilent crather, when, from her first going to the grand place on the hill, never a word about them has been got from her ...
— Live to be Useful - or, The Story of Annie Lee and her Irish Nurse • Anonymous
... they must deposit their eggs. You can hardly find them by day, for they are cunning and secrete themselves. "They love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil." They are a paltry looking, insignificant little grey-haired pestilent race of wax-and-honey-eating and bee-destroying rascals, that have baffled all contrivances that ingenuity has devised to conquer or ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... not thyself of to morrow." Here we might stand and take a look of the crookedness and perverseness of man's spirit since his departure from God. Self love and pride were the first poison that the malice of Satan dropped into man's nature, and this is so strong and pestilent, that it has spread through the whole of mankind, and the whole in every man. Every one is infected, and all in every one. What are all the disordered affections in men but so many streams from this fountain? ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... war of the theatres. Among them the most important is a college play, entitled "The Return from Parnassus," dating 1601-02. In it a much-quoted passage makes Burbage, as a character, declare: "Why here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down; aye and Ben Jonson, too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow; he brought up Horace, giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit." Was Shakespeare then concerned in this war of the stages? And what could have been the nature of this "purge"? Among several suggestions, "Troilus and Cressida" ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... superstition. In Middlesex, in Somerset and Devon, in York, Northumberland, and Cumberland, the attack upon witches on the part of the people was going on with undiminished vigor. If no great discoveries were made, if no nests of the pestilent creatures were unearthed, the justices of the peace were kept quite as busy with examinations as ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... you both have had much plenty food," the mother said: "out upon the moors, this bad, bad night, and for leagues possibly to travel. My son and my husband are much too good. You bad dog, why did you come, pestilent? But you shall have food also. Insie, provide him. While I make to eat your ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... in the battle whom to single." Parker, in fact, replied to Marvell anonymously, by "A Reproof to the Rehearsal Transprosed," with a mild exhortation to the magistrate to crush with the secular arm the pestilent wit, the servant of Cromwell, and the friend of Milton. But this was not all; something else, anonymous too, was despatched to Marvell: it was an extraordinary letter, short enough to have been an epigram, could Parker have written one; ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... forget your hospitality, friends all," said he, in his slightly swaggering and yet withal effeminate way; "and see, in some measure of return for it, we leave you our Sherwood free from pestilent robbers and evil defiers of the law. When we came to Nottingham there were these and others; but now they are all driven out of our Royal forest—many slain with the arrows of my Hubert, or beaten ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... more? But suddenly a bitter and unfounded reproach escapes him. England is responsible for his having become faithless to his monastic vows, 'for no other reason do I hate Britain more than for this, though it has always been pestilent to me'. ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... the midst of difficulties, the defects of their situation are supplied by industry: and while dry, tempting, and healthful lands are left uncultivated, [Footnote: Compare the state of Hungary with that of Holland.] the pestilent marsh is drained with great labour, and the sea is fenced off with mighty barriers, the materials and the costs of which, the soil to be gained can scarcely afford, or repay. Harbours are opened, and crowded with shipping, where vessels of burden, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... home, I am decidedly opposed to it. First, because the chance of your being taken ill is just as great as the chance of your being able to render us any help. To exchange the salubrious air of Brattleboro' for the pestilent atmosphere of this place with your system rendered sensitive by water-cure treatment would be extremely dangerous. It is a source of constant gratitude to me that neither you nor father are exposed ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... against a woman. Swollen with vain pride at their late victory, (the fiend hang the coward loons who fled before them,) they have sworn to make this noble lady serve them barefoot in their camp. By St. Dennis and my good sword, were I not hampered by this pestilent invasion of the Scots, I would desire no better pastime than to drive the ill-conditioned serfs howling from the walls. Say, who amongst you will undertake the enterprise?—What, all silent? are ye knights? are ye men? do I reign over ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... good Sir Lancelot; good morrow, Master Weathercock. By my troth, gentlemen, I have been a reading over Nick Matchivill; I find him good to be known, not to be followed: a pestilent humane fellow. I have made certain annotations of him such as they be.—And how ist Sir Lancelot? ha? how ist? A mad world, men cannot live quiet ...
— The London Prodigal • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... blue, and white, and gold, and, in short, a tent-roof somewhat ornate. I dare say if I were in a miserable mood, having been deceived and disappointed like Hamlet, I should with him see there nothing but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. But I know that when I am passive to its powers, I am aware of a presence altogether different—of a something at once soothing and elevating, powerful to move shame—even contrition and the desire ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... I suppose her pestilent father thought it was the nearest way to a coronet. I don't know why men should marry at all. They always ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... emissaries about the kingdom to arouse, and encourage, and assemble such Saxon forces as were yet to be found. In a word, they would commence a series of measures for recovering the country from the possession of its pestilent enemy, and for restoring the rightful sovereign to the throne. The development of these projects and plans, and the measures for carrying them into effect, were very much hastened by an event which suddenly occurred in the neighborhood of Ethelney, the account of ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the floor, "What the devil are you saying?" and stopped as if the heavens and the earth must refuse to go round on their axes because of this introduction into Parliament of the negligences of private conversation. Mr. Gibbs—a very pestilent and very empty member of the young army of silly obstructives—moved that the words be taken down—an ancient formula not heard of for years till the present Session, when everything is turned to account for the purpose of occupying time ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... completely enveloped and concealed their beloved village, and overhung the fair regions of Pavonia—so that the terrible Captain Argal passed on, totally unsuspicious that a sturdy little Dutch settlement lay snugly couched in the mud, under cover of all this pestilent vapor. In commemoration of this fortunate escape, the worthy inhabitants have continued to smoke almost without intermission unto this very day, which is said to be the cause of the remarkable fog which often hangs over Communipaw of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... and a prey to the same reflections. This was almost worse than all, for if he began to brood over their miseries instead of trying to make head against them there could be little doubt that such a state of mind would powerfully assist the influence of the pestilent climate. Never had the light of day been half so welcome to his eyes, as when awaking from a fitful doze, Mark saw it shining through ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... great liking for Anthony myself. No man could share his chamber and lack that. He is the best of comrades, and he has fine qualities and plenty of courage. But there are times when I fear he will be his own undoing. When he disputes in the schools he will often tread perilously near some 'pestilent heresy,' as the masters would deem it, or show by some of his arguments that he has a dangerous knowledge of forbidden books. Just now things are quiet in Oxford, and not much notice is taken. But who knows how long the calm may last? London has been set in a commotion of late, and is ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... thing which resembleth the earth in roundness, whose resting-place and whose spine are hidden from men's eyes; little of price and estimation; narrow of chest and shackled as to throat though it be nor runaway slave nor pestilent thief; thrust through and through, though not in fray, and wounded, though not in fight: time eateth its vigour and water wasteth it away; now it is beaten without blemish, and then made to serve without stint; united after separation; submissive, but ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... been lately? I had one fiery night when this same dragon "tic" held me for some hours with pestilent violence. It still comes at intervals with abated fury. Owing to this and broken sleep, I am looking singularly charming, one of my true London looks—starved out and worn down. Write ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Masses / and to entreate hym to be mercifull vnto yow / ye do not most mightyly kindle his wrathe against you by hearinge of theise Masses: which as ye playnly do se / ar nothing els but a shamfull deuise sett vpp to deface the deathe of christe / a pestilent practise fownde out to ouerthrowe the true vse of the Lordes supper / and an Idolatrie inuented to infect the poeple and to make them Idolatrors. whearby eich man may easily iudge / how great a synne it is / to be partaker of ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... minutes afterwards the other boys saw Hook in the water striking wildly for the ship; no elation on his pestilent face now, only white fear, for the crocodile was in dogged pursuit of him. On ordinary occasions the boys would have swum alongside cheering; but now they were uneasy, for they had lost both Peter and Wendy, ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... nodded her head twice. Her eyes laughed in triumph. She seemed happy now. My pestilent perversity gave me a ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... the servant watched by his master, "who lay in a lethargy," and was just beginning to show feeble signs of life when the enemy took the town by assault. On the twenty-eighth, some Catholic soldiers broke into his place of refuge, and finding a pestilent heretic lying ill, they threw him out of a window. Being lucky enough to fall upon one of the many dunghills which were beneath the windows of Rouen at that time, de Civille lay there in his shirt and nightcap for three days and nights without food or drink, and no one discovered him. ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... betwixt ancient trash and new, 'Twixt Cant and Blasphemy—the two Rank ills with which this age is curst— We can no more tell which is worst, Than erst could Egypt, when so rich In various plagues, determine which She thought most pestilent and vile, Her frogs, like Benbow and Carlisle, Croaking their native mud-notes loud, Or her fat locusts, like a cloud Of pluralists, obesely lowering, At ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... deal of pestilent talk which one sometimes hears, amongst young men especially, about 'following nature.' Yes! I say, 'Follow nature!' and nature says, 'Let the man govern the animal!' and 'Do not set beggars on horseback,' nor allow your passions to guide you, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... reflection followed by slumber. He was on the edge of a volcano, and he knew it. The question was whether he could hold the lid on without an eruption. General Valdez he dared not openly kill, on account of his fame and his popularity, but that pestilent Irishman O'Halloran could be assassinated and so could several of his allies—if they only gave him time. That was the rub. The general dissatisfaction at his rule had been no secret, of course, but the activity of the faction ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... detail by one Bianchini, prebendary of Verona, who wrote a scholarly work or so and was occasionally heard of in his time as having gleams of reason in him; and also of the testimony of Messrs. Fodere and Mere, two pestilent Frenchmen who WOULD investigate the subject; and further, of the corroborative testimony of Monsieur Le Cat, a rather celebrated French surgeon once upon a time, who had the unpoliteness to live in a house where such a case ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... employed, and idle words of obscure persons were made grounds of indictment. Both in the superior courts and at quarter sessions severe penalties were inflicted. One Frost, a broken-down attorney, and a pestilent rascal enough, though convicted merely of saying in a coffee-house that he was "for equality and no king," was sentenced to six months' imprisonment, to stand in the pillory, and be struck off the roll. A dissenting preacher, found guilty ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... love of the pestilent fool, uncle,' said Sir Gawaine, 'but we will stay here until we have made an end of him and his kingdom, if it ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... silk pocket handkerchief, instead of blowing it up with a match and train, is rarely successful; and, after three or four other and much guiltier victims than Lenny had been incarcerated in the stocks, the parish of Hazeldean was ripe for any enormity. Pestilent jacobinical tracts, conceived and composed in the sinks of manufacturing towns—found their way into the popular beer-house—heaven knows how, though the Tinker was suspected of being the disseminator by all but Stirn, who still, in a whisper, accused the Papishers. And, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... anaconda kills its prey by its pestilent breath, is wholly fabulous. Waterton altogether denies the existence of any odour in the snake's breath. It is possible, however, that some species may produce a horrible stench, from a substance secreted in certain glands near the tail—a fact which has probably given rise ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... friend, but candidly informed me that there was no hope of my succeeding in the above quarter. "The duke," said he, "says that your request cannot be granted; and the other day, when I myself mentioned it in the council, began to talk of the decision of Trent, and spoke of yourself as a plaguy pestilent fellow; whereupon I answered him with some acrimony, and there ensued a bit of a function between us, at which Isturitz laughed heartily. By the by," continued he, "what need have you of a regular permission, which it does not ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... and thou hast much cool store of wine. But the town thirsts, and every beat of our blood Hastens us on to maniac agony. The Assyrians have our wells, and half the tanks Are dry, and the pools shoal with baking mud: The water left to us is pestilent. And therefore have we asked the governors For death: ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... presumptuous chiefly by the treacherous puffing of his cockney fellow gossips, and profligate in his poems merely to make them saleable, we regret that he did not live long enough to acquire common sense, and abjure the pestilent and perfidious gang who betrayed his weakness to the grave, and are now panegyrising his memory into contempt. For what is the praise of cockneys but disgrace, or what honourable inscription can be placed over the dead by the hands of notorious libellers, exiled adulterers, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... in his anger is shown by the fact that, as he had foreseen, he reaped all the odium of Mann's conversion. The Bishop of Cordoba in Council branded him as "a dangerous, pestilent person, who under the pretence of selling the Scriptures went about making converts, and moreover employed subordinates for the purpose of deluding weak and silly people into separation ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... apparently dissatisfied with what his wife had done in entertaining me, and spoke to her in a manner so crusty that I thought proper to rebuke him, for the woman was comely in her person, and virtuous in her conversation; but the weaver, her husband, was large of make, ill-favoured, and pestilent; therefore did I take him severely to task for the tenor of his conduct; but the man was froward, and answered me rudely with sneering and derision and, in the height of his caprice, he said to his wife: "Whan focks are sae keen of a chance o' entertaining angels, gude-wife, it ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... in business, his own education and health. He saw how much he had to make him happy; and all jarred and marred, and cursed by his miserable fits of irritation; the fever, the plague increasing daily; becoming his nature, breathing the pestilent atmosphere of hell over himself ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... he is a pestilent Roundhead and Puritan," said Whitaker, "is no bad neighbour. What has he done to ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... been cut down. Cotton suffers from the ravages of a caterpillar. The mulberry tree, which, from its rapid growth, would be invaluable to silk growers, is covered with a black and white blight. Sheep are at present successful, but in some localities the spread of a pestilent "oat-burr" is depreciating the value of their wool. The forests, which are essential to the well-being of the islands, are disappearing in some quarters, owing to the attacks of a grub, as well ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity—an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the grey wall, and the silent tarn—a pestilent and mystic vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... loaned Charles large sums for his expedition against Tunis, and entertained him at their house on his return. In this case the emperor was not offended by the odor of cinnamon, since it was modified by a different and more agreeable perfume. The bankers, grateful to Charles for breaking up a pestilent nest of Barbary pirates, threw the receipts for the money they had loaned him into the fire, turning their gold into ashes in his behalf. This was a grateful sacrifice to the emperor, whose war-like enterprises consumed more money ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... and untouched,—thou 'lt preserve for me the chastity of my boy. I do not say from the public: I fear those naught who hurry along the thoroughfares hither thither occupied on their own business: truth my fear is from thee and thy penis, pestilent eke to fair and to foul. Set it in motion where thou dost please, whenever thou biddest, as much as thou wishest, wherever thou findest the opportunity out of doors: this one object I except, to my thought a reasonable boon. But if thy evil mind and senseless rutting ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... memorialists cannot withhold them from the Hon. General Assembly of Rhode Island. They invoke the General Assembly to exercise their constitutional powers, promptly and decisively, for the correction of a long-continued, and wide-spread, and pestilent social evil. They ask them, most respectfully and earnestly, to withdraw, as soon as may be, all legislative sanction of the lottery system, and to save Rhode Island from the enduring reproach of being among the last States to abandon that system. The memorialists beg leave to ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... rich, a man of great affairs, Steeped to the lips in monetary cares Down at Clazomenae: and some dispute 'Twixt him and King had festered to a suit. Tough, pushing, loud was he, with power of hate To beat e'en King's; so pestilent his prate, That Barrus and Sisenna you would find Left in the running leagues and leagues behind. Well, to return to King: they quickly see They can't agree except to disagree: For 'tis a rule, that ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... the terrible beauty of death. Mrs. Melville says, with full truth, 'I felt amidst all the glory of tropic sunlight and everlasting verdure a sort of ineffable dread connected with the climate.' Even when leaving the 'pestilent shore' she was 'haunted by the shadowy presence.' This is womanly, but a little reflection must suggest ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... hate revealed, Tattered khaki and shattered grey And the splintered wrecks of a battlefield. Thank God for the end that is sure and swift, For the fate that comes with a leap and bound, But what if God leaves you alone to drift To the lingering death in the pestilent ground? ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... cried. "'Tis our Tess and Dot—and Sammy Pinkney, the little scamp! It must be either his bulldog or old Tom Jonah those pestilent men have caught." ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... on in the sultry and pestilent steam which rose up from the floor. Gnats and flies of all kinds buzzed in the heavy air, or settled in black knots on the walls and the rafters. With a bunch of dried maize-leaves he drove them off the old man's face and hands and limbs, and ever and again at intervals gave the poor creature ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... no King Elect, but must e'en remain as you were ever, Sir, a most seditious pestilent old Knave; one that deludes the Rabble with your Politicks, then leaves 'em to be hang'd, as they ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... lost itself in a great green morass of sponge-like mosses, into which we sank up to our knees. The place was horribly haunted by clouds of mosquitoes and every form of flying pest, so we were glad to find solid ground again and to make a circuit among the trees, which enabled us to outflank this pestilent morass, which droned like an organ in the distance, so loud was it ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the "Freres de la Doctrine Chretienne" have been shot by their fellow-Christians of the Commune. A friend of mine saw Madame Milliere in a prisoners' gang, and we have authentic intelligence to-day that her husband, one of the most pestilent of the apostles of Fraternity and ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... topography. The while, world-wide forces, the hunger-struggle of nations, were shaking the roof above their heads. Theoretically they knew it. But they could escape in time; they had a cosy little corner preserved for themselves, safe from these pestilent worries. Fate has a grudge against the foolishly secure. If he laughed now, ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... Besides, if he should make a clever invention he would not be able to raise the necessary fees for a patent, or to get any one to help him thereto. The manufacturer "makes what his customers call for." Why should he spend his money and spoil his plant to introduce improvements? So things go, until some pestilent Yankees flood the markets with better articles at a lower price; and British consumers suddenly discover that they want something that the native manufacturer cannot make. The need was there; but invention did not follow. How happened it that the American manufacturer ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... extraordinary to watch the gradual emasculation of the monsters of Greek myth under the pestilent influence of the Apollo Belvedere. The chimaera was a creature of whom any healthy-minded people would have been proud; but when we see it in Greek pictures we feel inclined to tie a ribbon round its neck and give it a saucer of milk. Who ever feels that ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... lower animals, the which he who severeth from medicine, 'tollit solem e mundo,' as Tully quoth. Nay, wonder not at my fervour, good youth; where the general weal stands in jeopardy, a little warmth is civic, humane, and honourable. Now there is settled of late in this town a pestilent Arabist, a mere empiric, who, despising anatomy, and scarce knowing Greek from Hebrew, hath yet spirited away half my patients; and I tremble for the rest. Put forth thine ankle; and thou, Hans, breathe on ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... existence of a plot on the part of the native converts and the foreign emissaries to reduce Japan to the position of a subject state... Iyeyasu now put forth strenuous measures to root out utterly what he believed to be a pestilent breeder of sedition and war. Fresh edicts were issued, and in 1614 twenty-two Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian friars, one hundred and seventeen Jesuits, and hundreds of native priests and catechists, were embarked by force on board junks, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... (having read this morning) that the review in the 'Annals' (Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist. third series, vol. 5, page 132. My father has obviously taken the expression "pestilent" from the following passage (page 138): "But who is this Nature, we have a right to ask, who has such tremendous power, and to whose efficiency such marvellous performances are ascribed? What are her image and attributes, when dragged from her wordy lurking-place? Is she ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... of the Middle Ages, such persons as were afflicted by pestilent diseases were declared contaminated by the devil, and carried to churches and chapels, a dozen at a time, securely bound together. They were thrown upon the floor, where they lay, according to the attestation of a pitying chronicler, until dead or ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... no great acquaintance with this man, nor do I desire to have further knowledge of him. However, this I know, that he is a very pestilent fellow, from some discourse I had with him, the other day, in this town; for then, talking with him, I heard him say, that our religion was naught, and such by which a man could by no means please God. Which saying ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... of Derby, in the preface to his translation of the Iliad, calls it "That pestilent heresy of the so-called English Hexameter; a metre wholly repugnant to the genius of our language; which can only be pressed into the service by a violation of every rule of prosody." Lord Kames, in his "Elements of Criticism." says, "Many attempts have ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... if it went by wishing, there should never an one of them all have above twenty a year—a good stipend, a good stipend, Master Recorder. I in the meantime, howsoever I hate them all deadly, yet I am fain to give them good words. O, they are pestilent fellows, they speak nothing but bodkins, and piss vinegar. Well, do what I can in outward kindness to them, yet they do nothing but bewray my house: as there was one that made a couple of knavish verses on my country chimney, now in the time of my sojourning ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... excursion to the love-feasts at Kemberton and Kesfield, Broppindean and Dawnfold, from which I returned but two short weeks before my poor Matthew's demise. I called to remembrance that discourse about approaching death which in my poor human judgment I did esteem a pestilent error of mind, but which I do now recognise as a spiritual premonition; and I set myself earnestly to look for that letter which Matthew told me he would leave in the tulip-leaf bureau. But though I did search with great care and pains, my trouble ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... N. insalubrity; unhealthiness &c. Adj.; nonnaturals[obs3]; plague spot; malaria &c. (poison) 663; death in the pot, contagion; toxicity. Adj. insalubrious; unhealthy, unwholesome; noxious, noisome; morbific[obs3], morbiferous[obs3]; mephitic, septic, azotic[obs3], deleterious; pestilent, pestiferous, pestilential; virulent, venomous, envenomed; poisonous, toxic, toxiferous[obs3], teratogenic; narcotic. contagious, infectious, catching, taking, epidemic, zymotic[obs3]; epizootic. innutritious[obs3], indigestible, ungenial; uncongenial ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... was agreed that, next to the Muenster Anabaptists, the Quakers were of all dissenting sects the most pestilent and blasphemous. They used no force in propagating their beliefs or in defending their lives. They were believers in equality, and refused to doff their hats to any man, respecting neither magistrate nor priest. They were believers in liberty; no man to be restrained ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... plucky JAYNE, Punch fancies you looked sly When you met them, met them down at Chester, And gave them "one in the eye." Bigotry's waning fast, my boy, But Cant we sometimes hear, And Chester cant is pestilent cant, My Lord, that's pretty clear. Then pithy JAYNE, my plucky JAYNE, Of smiting don't be shy; But meet them, meet the moonstruck Puritans And tell them ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... into a pestilent habit of cross-questioning himself on anything which he was about—setting up himself like a cock at Shrovetide, and pelting himself with inexorable "whys?" and "wherefores?" A pestilent habit truly he had found it, and one which left a man no peace of his life—a relentless, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... find that the line of road is nearly impassable, and that a long succession of formerly cultivated estates presents now a series of pestilent swamps, overrun with bush, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... continuall heat conuerteth into a stone any body cast into it, the former shape only still remaining. The second is extremely cold. The third is sweeter then honey, and most pleasant to quench thirst. The fourth is altogether deadly, pestilent, and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... his course The steam makes head, Benacus then no more They call the name, but Mincius, till at last Reaching Governo into Po he falls. Not far his course hath run, when a wide flat It finds, which overstretchmg as a marsh It covers, pestilent in summer oft. Hence journeying, the savage maiden saw 'Midst of the fen a territory waste And naked of inhabitants. To shun All human converse, here she with her slaves Plying her arts remain'd, and liv'd, and left Her body tenantless. Thenceforth the tribes, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Mercuries speeding with messages from Jupiter. Look at our scientific drainage, which turns refuse into poison. Look at the subsoil of London, whenever it is turned up to the air, converted by gas leakage into one mass of pestilent blackness, in which no vegetation can flourish, and above which, with the rapid growth of the ever-growing nuisance, no living thing will breathe with impunity. Look at our scientific machinery, which has destroyed domestic manufacture, which ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... the ardent leveller of class-distinctions counts as his enemy any one who seeks to give the poor a truer knowledge of how far their earnings may be made to go toward securing better food or less pestilent homes. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... haunted the soil of Munich in the old days is still poisoning the springs and the atmosphere with his pestilent breath, nor can he be tempted forth to his destruction until he shall see his reflection mirrored in fountains ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... tiny scullery, from which light was pretty thoroughly excluded by the high, black wall which dripped and frowned no more than three feet away from its window. I have little doubt that this scullery was a pestilent place. At the time it appealed to my romantic ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... chamber was named, he thus soliloquized with himself—"It's a good thing to be a favourite. I well-nigh lost mine office, because one frosty morning Master Varney thought I smelled of aqua vitae; and this fellow can appear before him drunk as a wineskin, and yet meet no rebuke. But then he is a pestilent clever fellow withal, and no one can understand above one ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... fortunate rescue from the torments of miserliness and pestilent heirs; the author's notes on the origin of the ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... clerk of his at Plumstead, who had lost all his teeth, and whom the archdeacon hardly knew how to get rid of by other means.) There was living at Barchester a young man, a surgeon, named John Bold, and both Mr. Harding and Dr. Grantly were well aware that to him was owing the pestilent rebellious feeling which had shown itself in the hospital; and the renewal, too, of that disagreeable talk about Hiram's estates which was again prevalent in Barchester. Nevertheless, Mr. Harding and Mr. Bold were acquainted ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... young, now too tired or bored to go on asking questions, but an orthodoxy rather that is honest enough to revise on the evidence earlier judgments as too cocksure and hasty. Sir Isaac Harman was a tea-shop magnate, and a very pestilent and primitive cad who caught his wife young and poor and battered her into reluctant surrender by a stormy wooing, whose very sincerity and abandonment were but a frantic expression of his dominating egotism and acquisitiveness. Wooing and winning, thinks ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... After the birth of our Lord and Saviour Christ, one thousand and eighty-seven winters; in the one and twentieth year after William began to govern and direct England, as God granted him, was a very heavy and pestilent season in this land. Such a sickness came on men, that full nigh every other man was in the worst disorder, that is, in the diarrhoea; and that so dreadfully, that many men died in the disorder. Afterwards came, through the badness of the weather as we before mentioned, so great a famine ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... itself, by professions of excessive attachment to liberty, and by traducing and lessening in the public esteem, every man in whom he could discern a rival. To this aspiring temper they ascribed, not only "those pestilent whispers which, clandestinely circulating through the country, had, as far as was practicable, contaminated some of its fairest and worthiest characters," but also certain publications affecting the reputation of prominent individuals whom he might consider as competitors ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... it till Doom," cried his servant, "for my wife has gone away with that pestilent king, and he has got the double ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... learn, they are these: first, that there being many other more fruitful knowledges, a man might better spend his time in them, than in this. Secondly, that it is the mother of lies. Thirdly, that it is the nurse of abuse, infecting us with many pestilent desires: with a siren's sweetness, drawing the mind to the serpent's tail of sinful fancy. And herein especially, comedies give the largest field to err, as Chaucer saith: how both in other nations and in ours, before poets did soften us, ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... how long will it take? And now this pestilent woodward will be always finding fault—killing the fowls and ducks, and seizing the swine and sheep, and very like slaughtering the dogs and getting us turned out of house and home; for now you have offended the squire, he will ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... told that the change of its leaves from their usual colour gave more than once "fatal premonition" of coming misfortunes during the great civil wars; and Bacon mentions a tradition that "if the oak-apple, broken, be full of worms, it is a sign of a pestilent year." In olden times the decay of the bay-tree was considered an omen of disaster, and it is stated that, previous to the death of Nero, though the winter was very mild, all these trees withered to the roots, and that a great pestilence in Padua was preceded by the same phenomenon. [2] ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... sufferings; for they forgot the relation they bare to them, and at the sight of this sad accident approved of the judgment given against them; and because they looked upon the people about Dathan as pestilent men, they thought they perished as such, and did ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... fellow Shakespeare puts them all down; aye, and Ben Jonson, too. O! that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow. He brought up Horace, giving the poets a pill; but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit." Burbage continues, "He is a shrewd fellow indeed." This has, of course, been taken ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... influence of their own admirable rhetoric than they knew. Huxley, especially, was much more a literary than a scientific man. It is amusing to note that when Huxley was charged with being rhetorical, he expressed his horror of "plastering the fair face of truth with that pestilent cosmetic, rhetoric," which is itself about as well-plastered a piece of rhetoric as Ruskin himself could have managed. The difference that the period had developed can best be seen if we consider this: ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... for labor and pleasure, for time and sense; less and less for truth and good, for God and eternity. Absorbed in the materialistic game, or frittered and jaded in frivolous diversions, all eternal aims go by default. In what precious age was maddening rivalry so universal, giggling laughter so pestilent an epidemic, triviality at such a premium and sublimity at such a discount? But the things to which men really devote themselves dilate to fill the whole field of their vision. They soon come to disbelieve that for which ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Duchess of Malfi, to The Changeling, to The Virgin Martyr, to The Broken Heart. We must content ourselves with Gorboduc and Cornelia, with Cleopatra and Philotas, at the very best with Sejanus and The Silent Woman. Again Sidney commits himself in this same piece to the pestilent heresy of prose-poetry, saying that verse is "only an ornament of poetry;" nor is there any doubt that Milton, whether he meant it or not, fixed a deserved stigma on the Arcadia by calling it a "vain and amatorious poem." It is a poem ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... that it stood him to do so if he possibly could; but he said not a word. ''Tis conscience that makes cowards of us all.' He felt on his cheek the sharp points of Eleanor's fingers, and did not know who might have seen the blow, who might have told the tale to this pestilent woman who took such delight in jeering him. He stood there, therefore, red as a carbuncle and mute as a fish; grinning just sufficiently to show his teeth; ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... clerkship. He is a member of the Assembly for the city of Kingston, where not long since he was imprisoned, and tried for his life. He is also alderman of the city, and one of its local magistrates. He is now inspector of the same prison in which he was formerly immured as a pestilent fellow, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... about the beginning of August, leauing England full of all those calamities, which ciuill warre is accustomed to bring with it, as burning of houses, killing, robbing, and spoiling of people, so that the land was in danger of vtter destruction, by reason of that pestilent discord. ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (4 of 12) - Stephan Earle Of Bullongne • Raphael Holinshed
... were stifled in his throat. A chair overturned with a crash; a great body struck him on the chest; a hot, pestilent breath volleyed in his face, and wolfish teeth ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... of witchcraft, wherein the lewde dealing of witches and witchmongers is notablie detected, the knauerie of coniurors, the impietie of inchantors, the follie of soothsaiers, the impudent falshood of cousenors, the infidelitie of atheists, the pestilent practises of Pythonists, the curiositie of figurecasters, the vanitie of dreamers, the beggerlie art of Alcumystrie, the abhomination of idolatrie, the horrible art of poisoning, the vertue and power of naturall magike, ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... repudiate any desire to attack religion, which he deemed indispensable for the nations; he could only wish it had for its ministers philosophers instead of controversialists. He deplored the fact that the Jacobins were for replacing it by a newer and more pestilent religion, the cult of liberty, equality, the republic, the fatherland. He had observed this, that it is in the vigour of their youth religions are the fiercest and most cruel, and grow milder as they ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... she, "At once I will devise for thee to do away his life." "How so?" asked he; and she answered, "By means of our female slave the so-called Bakun." Now this Bakun was past mistress in all kinds of knavery and was one of the most pestilent of old women, in whose religion to abstain from wickedness was not lawful; she had brought up Kuzia Fakan and Kanmakan who had her in so great affection that he used to sleep at her feet. So when King Sasan heard his wife name ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... enterprised anything against them of trouble, vexation, or displeasure; but only have, with all charity, exercised the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church, as we are bound of duty, upon certain evil-disposed persons infected with the pestilent poison of heresy. And to have peace with such had been against the Gospel of our Saviour Christ, wherein he saith, Non veni mittere pacem sed gladium. Wherefore, forasmuch as we know well that there be as well-disposed and well-conscienced men of your Grace's ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... belonged to others, and to make dilapidations in their mother's government after he had killed her; but besides all this, that he introduced a spurious successor, and proposed to give the kingdom of their ancestors to that pestilent fellow Antipater:—that he would now appease the ghosts of Hyrcanus and Mariamne, by taking vengeance on him; for that it was not fit for him to take the succession to the government from such a father without bloodshed: that many things happen every day to provoke him so to do, insomuch that ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... expressed to Abdallah, in the warmest terms, his great obligations to him, for his endeavours to defend him from the power of a pestilent sorceress; and after some further conversation took his leave of him, and returned to the palace. Upon his arrival, he understood that the queen waited for him with great impatience in the garden. He went to her, and she no sooner perceived him, than she came in great haste to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... object was effectually attained. The wrongs of Napoleon, the cold cruelty of the English government, and the pestilent petty tyranny of Sir Hudson Lowe, were the perpetual themes of table-talk all over Europe. There were statesmen of high rank in either house of the British parliament, who periodically descanted on these ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... Yellow Jack! hie thee back! hie thee back! To thy pestilent swamp quickly hie thee; For I'll drink sangaree, Whilst my heart's full of glee, In thy death-doing might I'll defy thee, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... forward to the time when the institution of slavery should be removed from our midst as a trouble and a stumbling-block. The delusion could not be traced in any of the component parts of the Southern Constitution. In that instrument we solemnly discarded the pestilent heresy of fancy politicians, that all men of all races were equal, and we have made African inequality, and subordination, the chief corner-stone of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day in the sight of heaven ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens |
