"Swinish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... herself her own power for evil. And he asked himself with horror: what is this impulse towards dirtiness, which is in the majority of human beings—this desire to besmirch the purity of themselves and others,—these swinish souls, who take a delight in rolling in filth, and are happy when not one inch of their skins is ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... proletariat; fruges consumere nati[Lat], demos, hoi polloi [Grk][Grk][Grk], great unwashed; man in the street. mob; rabble, rabble rout; chaff, rout, horde, canaille; scum of the people, residuum of the people, dregs of the people, dregs of society; swinish multitude, foex populi[obs3]; trash; profanum vulgus[Lat], ignobile vulgus[Lat]; vermin, riffraff, ragtag and bobtail; small fry. commoner, one of the people, democrat, plebeian, republican, proletary[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Now and then it was rumored that he found some single individual in whom he would take an interest, but not often. In the main I think he despised them one and all for the puny machines they were. He even despised life and the pleasures and dissipations or swinish indolence which, in his judgment, characterized most men. I recall once, for instance, his telling us how as a private in the United States Army when the division of which he was a unit was shut up in winter quarters, huddled about stoves, smoking ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... may be made in favor of general honesty. But I have always found that rogues would be uppermost, and I do not know that the proportion is, too strong for the higher orders, and for those who, rising above the swinish multitude, always contrive to nestle themselves into the places of power and profit. These rogues set out with stealing the peoples' good opinion, and then steal from them the right of withdrawing it, by contriving laws and associations against the power of the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... give my meaning clearly. A little story may help. The story of the worthy old woman of Goshen, a very moral old woman, who wouldn't let her shoats eat fattening apples in fall, for fear the fruit might ferment upon their brains, and so make them swinish. Now, during a green Christmas, inauspicious to the old, this worthy old woman fell into a moping decline, took to her bed, no appetite, and refused to see her best friends. In much concern her good ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... her eyes furtively toward the adversary, an appraising glance, as if to judge his gullibility. The brutish passion of the man showed in the pendulous lower lip, thrust forward a little, in the swinish lifting of the wide-flaring nostrils, in the humid glowing of the inflamed eyes. A nausea of disgust swept over her. She fought it down. Then, with hypocrisy that amazed herself, she met his ardent stare boldly, though with a pretense of timidity. She spoke with a hesitant, remonstrant ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... Victoria Woodhull and her swinish crew of free lovers had but a single body, and that body lay asleep under the upturned root of a prostrate oak, we would work with a dull jack-knife day and night-month in and month out-through summer's sun and winter's storm-to sever that giant trunk, and let ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... temptation and a snare to me, I cannot, will not give her up! No, I cannot!—no, I will not! Why should I not love her? Is she not pure as Mary herself? Ah, blessed is he whom such a woman leads! And I—I—have condemned myself to the society of swinish, ignorant, stupid monks,—I must know no such divine souls, no such sweet communion! Help me, blessed Mary!—help ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... carrying small kettles of the hot beverage, which they served in tumblers. Occasionally there was a man with a whole litter of sucking pigs frozen solid and slung over his shoulder or festooned into a necklace. The diminutive size of these pigs awakened reflections upon the brevity of swinish life. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... in riotous distress with a bruised knee, the result of his attempt to imitate the Prodigal Son, which had ended in an ignominious head-over-heels tumble into the midst of his swinish friends. This caused a delay, for he had to be hurried out to the back stoop and divested of garments as odorous, if not as ragged, as those of his prototype. Then he must be immersed in a hot bath, his knee bound up, reclothed in a fresh suit, and ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... to us a curious incident illustrating the instinct of the swinish quadruped; but which to his mind, as well as to ours, seemed more like a proof of a rational principle possessed by the animal. The incident he had himself been witness to, and in his own ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... him in that dull country neighborhood had wrought great changes in the simple feeling with which she had sought him at first. He had then been to her only a Prodigal who had squandered his substance, tried to feed his soul on the swinish husks of Doubt, and returning to his father's house unrepentant, had been admitted yet remained rejected: a Prodigal not of the flesh and the world but of the spirit and the Lord. But what has ever interested the heart of woman as a prodigal of ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen |
