"Vicious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and luxuriant Campagna stagnates into malaria, because of its want of ventilation and movement, so does this grand and noble people. The government makes what use it can, however, of the classes it exploits by its system; but things go in a vicious circle. The people, kept at a stand-still, become idle and poor; idleness and poverty engender vice and crime; crime fills the prisons; and the prisons afford a body of cheap ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... mentally "overloaded." It may be the result of a great variety of causes. It may be from too many hours of continuous mental effort. But the probabilities are that it is the result of vexation, worry, dissipation, or allowing the mind to be burdened with the strain of vicious, or at least irrelevant and distracting, impulses and desires. And so ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... terms must be distinguished from contradictory. Contrary terms are those which are most opposed under the same head. Thus 'white' and 'black' are contrary terms, being the most opposed under the same head of colour. 'Virtuous' and 'vicious' again are contraries, being the most opposed under the same ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... new Pinkerton fourpenny, the Wednesday Chat, brighter, more emotional, gentler, spicier, and chattier than them all, and vulgar as well, nearly as vulgar as John Bull, and quite as sentimental, but less vicious, so that it sold in its millions from the outset, and soon had a poem up on the walls of ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... spirit. He labours with a stronger influence. Many hearts were purified by his sacrifice. One of Nogi's reasons for suicide was no doubt that he might be able to follow his beloved Emperor, but his intention was also to warn many vicious or unpatriotic people. Some politicians and rich people say they are patriotic, but they are animated by selfish motives and desires. Nogi's suicide was due to his loving his fellow-countrymen sincerely. Surely he was acting after the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... be three hundred thousand free negroes on the island, of whom comparatively few are found inland upon the plantations; they are all inclined to congregate in the cities and large towns, where, truth compels us to say, they prove to be an idle and vicious class, and as a body useless both to themselves and to the public. There are believed to be at present in Cuba about one hundred and forty thousand male and about sixty thousand female slaves. To carry on the great industry of the ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... be obtained by suggestion, would it not be beneficial—I might even say indispensable—to take up this method and introduce it into our reformatories? I am absolutely convinced that if suggestion were daily applied to vicious children, more than 50 per cent could be reclaimed. Would it not be an immense service to render society, to bring back to it sane and well members of it who were formerly corroded by ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... latent in us, and we feel the affinity. We do not hate thieves. We feel satisfied that even in the character of a man who does not respect ownership there may be much to admire. Sparkles of genius scintillate along the line of many a rogue's career. Many there are, it is true, who are obtuse and vicious below the mean,—but a far greater number display skill and courage infinitely above it. Points of noble character, of every good as well as most base characteristics of the human race, will be found in the annals of thievery, when they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... for your love, old Baba, old fiend, nor for your knife. Where did my Ume go? You grin like an old she-ape! Never, upon my mountains did I see so vicious a beast." ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... days you will be able to mount your saddle with your arm in a sling, but you must by no means appear with your arm in a sling at Horncastle, as people would think that your horse had flung you, and that you wanted to dispose of him because he was a vicious brute. You must, by all means, drop the sling before you ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... must know that our immense commerce, while it affords ample occupation for the enterprising and industrious, draws hither also a large proportion of the idle, depraved, and vicious. For many years, it was one of the most difficult questions with which our Senate has had to grapple, to determine what should be done with the hordes of vagrant children who swarmed about our quays, and were harbored in the filthy dens which before the great fire of 1842 were so abundant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... rudely upon Fisher's arm and pulled him away from the Baron. Fisher, more and more astonished, made no resistance, but suffered himself to be led, or pushed, toward the door. Dr. Rapperschwyll opened the door wide enough to give the American exit, and then closed it with a vicious slam. A quick click informed Fisher that the key had been turned in ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... almost incredible that this should not be satire. Certainly the most delicate irony could not portray the vicious institutions under which the magnificent territory and noble people of Spain were thus doomed to ruin more subtly end forcibly than was done by the honest brutality of this churchman. The careful tillage, the beautiful system ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... desperado of these early days was Harpe, or Big Harpe, as he was called, to distinguish him from his brother and associate, Little Harpe. Big Harpe made a wide region of the Ohio valley dangerous to travelers. The events connected with his vicious life are thus given by that always interesting ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... North-Eastern India the great festival of the year is the harvest home, held in January, when the granaries are full of grain, and the people, to use their own expression, are full of devilry. "They have a strange notion that at this period, men and women are so overcharged with vicious propensities, that it is absolutely necessary for the safety of the person to let off steam by allowing for a time full vent to the passions." The ceremonies open with a sacrifice to the village god of three fowls, a cock and two hens, one of which must be black. Along with them are offered flowers ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... but do you know how easy it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to destroy life in you?" Every lean bare arm, that had been without work before, had this work always ready for it now, that it could strike. The fingers of the knitting women were vicious, with the experience that they could tear. There was a change in the appearance of Saint Antoine; the image had been hammering into this for hundreds of years, and the last finishing blows had told mightily on ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... was a great deal of cry for very little wool. Anyway that old woman's patience was wonderful; she kept me—how long was it?—nearly four months lying in her hut, raving like a mad thing at intervals, and as vicious as a bear with a sore ear between-whiles. The pain was pretty bad, you see, and my temper had been spoiled ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... civilian, as soon as he finds his valet, butler, or groom in the wrong, exclaims, 'It is so like blacky—so like the niggers; they are all alike!' And what could you expect from him? He has been constantly accustomed to the same vicious association of ideas in his native land—if he has been brought up in a family of Tories, he has constantly heard those he most reverenced exclaim, when they have found, or fancied they found, a Whig in the wrong, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... the dunce! (To Trufaldin). You do not understand him; he means Tunis; it was in reality there he left your son; but the Armenians always have a certain vicious pronunciation, which seems very harsh to us; the reason of it is because in all their words they change nis into rin; and so, instead of saying Tunis, they ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... all day and not sleep the hours away if he would be in the race with the man from the Eastern land, he had nothing to say about the character of the man from China. But so soon as he felt the pressure of want because of his sloth, he began to find that the "yellow man" was vicious, and soon his depravity became a by-word. The Chinese were abused because of their virtues rather than their vices, for things for which all other nations are applauded— love of work and economy. It is the industry of our people that offends, because it competes ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... chair Jonathan saw a short man with a face resembling that of a jackal. The grizzled, stubbly beard, the protruding, vicious mouth, the broad, flat nose, and deep-set, small, glittering eyes made a bad impression on the observer. This man, Jonathan concluded, was the servant, Case, who was so eager with his knife. The borderman made the reflection, that if ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... local from Europe appears to have arrived." He gathered in his reins with an almost vicious jerk which brought the bay's head up with a ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... an 'old cat' up stairs. And now I have here a character. WILL you sit down? Is it of a necessity that up and down you should walk and awaken the whole house? There!"—she had given him a vicious dab with her fan as ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... freed from dependence upon the inter-relationships between the two conditions. Exactly the reverse is true. Multitudes of souls only begin their true living, their comprehension of life's meanings, after death has sifted them out of the ashes and lifeless embers of their mistaken ideas, or vicious indulgences. Shall these, then, be brought beneath the ban of limitless darkness, and exiled from the "many mansions" of our Heavenly Father's and Mother's house? A tiny rap, untraceable to any material source, a table moved by invisible force, a closed and locked piano skillfully ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... nervously ramming the shells into the revolver, the beast turned on his prey with a vicious growl and seized Guy's arm loosely in his mighty jaws. In another instant Chutney would have been dragged off, but help was to come from ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... methods employed have been very similar and in not a few instances the same men who acted as the agents of espionage and tyranny for the Czar have served the Bolsheviki in the same capacity. Just as under Czarism there was alliance with the Black Hundreds and with all sorts of corrupt and vicious criminal agents, so we find the same phenomenon recurring under the Bolsheviki. The time has not yet arrived for the compilation of the full record of Bolshevism in this particular, but enough is known to justify the ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... missionary labour has been so long uncared-for and untried. Nowhere is there more ample scope for exertion of this nature than in the European provinces of Turkey; for while the Christian population could not but contrast the simple purity of the missionary life with the vicious habits and grasping avarice of their own clergy, the Mussulmans would see Christianity in a very different light from that in which they have been accustomed to regard it. Nor would any obstacles be thrown in the way by ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... to the next full stop, and read the whole chapter over again. I have imposed this penance upon the lady, neither out of wantonness nor cruelty; but from the best of motives; and therefore shall make her no apology for it when she returns back:—'Tis to rebuke a vicious taste, which has crept into thousands besides herself,—of reading straight forwards, more in quest of the adventures, than of the deep erudition and knowledge which a book of this cast, if read over as it should be, would infallibly impart with them—The ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... are a never-failing source of amusement to the man whose sympathies are hospitable enough to embrace all his kind, and who, refined though he may be himself, will not sneer at the humble wit or grotesque peculiarities of the boozing mechanic, the squalid beggar, the vicious urchin, and all the motley group of the idle, the reckless, and the imitative that swarm in the alleys and broadways of a metropolis. He who walks through a great city to find subjects for weeping, may find plenty at every corner to wring his heart; but ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... directed to just such reforms of language as would be apt to strike the imagination of a pedagogue of his calibre. In the first place, he had brought from home with him a great number of sounds that were decidedly vulgar and vicious, and with these in full existence in himself, he had commenced his system of reform on other people. As is common with all tyros, he fancied a very little knowledge sufficient authority for very great theories. His first step was to improve the language, by adapting sound to spelling and he ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... he attempted to assault me, but I took pains to carry a revolver with which I purposed, if attacked, to kill him if possible before I received any serious injury. I soon met, saluted, and passed him without receiving and recognition in return except a fierce, vicious stare. After this, on several occasions, I passed him about the camps or on the roads without noticing him, and although his threats were repeated I was not molested by him. Soon the incident and his subsequent conduct led to some trouble between him and Milroy. ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... misunderstood. We are not of those who think that children, in any condition whatever, will inevitably develop into beauty and goodness. Human nature tends to revolve in a vicious circle, around the individuality; and children must have over them, in the person of a wise and careful teacher, a power which shall deal with them as God deals with the mature, presenting the claims of sympathy and truth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... between the name of your city, Philadelphia, and the spirit of rancor, malice, and hatred that breathes in the newspapers. For I learn from those papers that State is divided into parties, that each party ascribes all the public operations of the other to vicious motives, that they do not even suspect one another of the smallest degree of honesty, that the anti-Federalists are such merely from the fear of losing power, places, or emoluments, which they have in possession or expectation; that the Federalists are a set of conspirators, who aim ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... or nearly? What he had suffered in that time! An instant's shudder ran through him, during an interval, while Betty's unwilling occupation with her left-hand neighbour left memory its chance. All the flitting scenes of the past month, Ancoats's half-vicious absurdities, the humours of the Trouville beach, the waves of its grey sea, his mother's whims and plaints, the crowd and heat of the little German watering-place where he had left her—was it he, George Tressady, that had been really wrestling with these things and persons, walking among ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a dog would obey such orders," replied Mr. Davis, emphasizing his determination never to be manacled alive by grasping the stool and aiming a very vicious blow. The sentries rushed forward to disarm him, but were ordered back into their places. Captain Titlow explained that such demonstrations of self-defense were foolish and useless, and that it would be much better for Mr. Davis ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... customers had left him, and Catharine's cough had become so much worse that, except on fine days, she was not allowed to go out of doors. For the first time in his life he was obliged to overdraw his account at the bank, and when his wife questioned him about his troubles he became angry and vicious. One afternoon he had a visit from one of the partners in the bank, who politely informed him that no further advances could be made. It was near Christmas, and it was Mr. Furze's practice at Christmas to take stock. He set to work, and his balance- sheet showed ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... I think she a little resented my familiarity, and retaliated by comparisons between her compatriots and mine, always in a tone derogatory to the latter. She informed me as a matter of history, patent to all nurses, that the English race were notoriously bow-legged; and that this was due to the vicious practice of allowing children to use their legs before the gristle had become bone. Being of an inquiring turn of mind, I listened with awe to this physiological revelation, and with chastened and depressed spirits made a mental note of our national calamity. Privately I fancied that the mottled ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... President Thompson, at the Dock Board meeting of February 26, 1919, reviewing the development of the canal plans, "was inspired by vicious and spectacular attacks of certain private interests hostile to the canal project and to the port of New Orleans." Railroads, whose right of way crossed the Canal, were the principal propagandists. They realized that the Dock Board could not be required ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... worse would be beaten out of the field by those of the better. It is in dependency upon this law that all those innumerable proposals for cultivating waste-lands, as in the Scottish Highlands, in the Irish bogs, &c., are radically vicious; and, instead of creating plenty, would by their very success impoverish us. For suppose these lands, which inevitably must have been the lowest in the scale (or else why so long neglected?) to be brought into tillage—what follows? Inevitably ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... ambition that passion was, in his bosom, so regulated by principles or controlled by circumstances that it was neither vicious nor turbulent. Intrigue was never employed as the means of its gratification, nor was personal aggrandizement its object. The various high and important stations to which he was called by the public ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... to virtue, religion, or conscience, as if all those were utterly extinct in the world; and of all the actions, however brave an outward show they make, he always throws the cause and motive upon some vicious occasion, or some prospect of profit. It is impossible to imagine but that, amongst such an infinite number of actions as he makes mention of, there must be some one produced by the way of reason. No corruption could so universally have affected men, that some of them would not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... would tell you so," he said sadly, "and his poor wife. He is not a bad or vicious fellow, like the rest of the rascally pack. Probably when he came to himself, after the moment of rage, he could not simply believe what he had done. But that makes no difference. It was murder; no judge or jury could possibly take any other view. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... (N. Y.) closed the session with a serious, impressive address on Our Real Opposition; Ignorance and Vice, the Silent Foe. She pointed out the "indirect alliance between the anti-suffragists and the vicious elements, opponents of all reform, fearful that if women vote good will prevail over evil." "The chief foes of woman suffrage," she said, "are the saloon keepers, scum of society, barred from fraternal organizations, social clubs ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... brooding and hovering, like a dark cloud, upon the face of the soul; that there he might take a prospect of the fancy, and view it acting over the several scenes of pride, of ambition, of envy, of lust, and revenge; that there he might tell how often a vicious inclination has been restrained, for no other reason but just to save the man's credit or interest in the world; and how many unbecoming ingredients have entered into the composition of his best actions. And now, what man in the whole world would be able ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... rusty-looking as his helmet; and that he carried a sword was plain enough, for the well-worn scabbard had found a very convenient hole in the cloak, through which it had thrust itself in the most obtrusive manner, and looked like a tail with a vicious sting, for the cap of the leathern scabbard had been lost, and about three inches of steel blade ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... was, before the Revolution, a journeyman printer, and married to a washerwoman, whose industry and labour alone prevented him from starving, for he was as vicious as idle. The money he gained when he chose to work was generally squandered away in brothels, among prostitutes. To supply his excesses he had even recourse to dishonest means, and was shut up in the prison of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... retorted Bea, stung quite out of her patient politeness; and Miss Strong got up immediately, shutting her mouth with a vicious snap. ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... brought it down on the side of one of their heads with such a swashing blow, that had it not been for his stiff hat the man would never have uttered oath again. As it was, he dropped like a log upon the stones of the yard, while his companion whipped out his rapier and made a vicious thrust; but my father, who was as active as he was strong, sprung aside, and bringing his cudgel down upon the outstretched arm of the officer, cracked it like the stem of a tobacco-pipe. This affair made no little stir, for it occurred at the time when those arch-liars, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that asks no one's pardon, that lives by the survival of the fittest. Oh, you have seen things so distortedly!—you, whom I had hoped to be proud of, are a shameless sacrifice upon the altar to this god, Nature! Her reward is the brand of outcast; you are catalogued in her museum as a vicious failure, even with all you've accomplished! I shall leave you now, and doubt if I ever ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... cliques; and, with all his anxiety for its verdict, Byron never solicited the favour of any portion of the press. Another is, the fact that the adverse critics missed their mark. They had not learnt to say of a book of which they disapproved, that it was weak or dull: in pronouncing it to be vicious, they helped to promote its sale; and the most decried has been the most widely read of the author's works. Many of the readers of Don Juan have, it must be confessed, been found among those least likely to admire in it what is most admirable—who ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... of the Mission in 1865 to investigate the Education of the Upper and Middle Classes in France, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. Its bearing on English Education may be inferred from these words of its author, written in October, 1868: "There is a vicious article in the new Quarterly on my school-book, by one of the Eton undermasters, who, like Demetrius the Silversmith, seems alarmed for ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... him to go ahead. Thus into Fort Rae drove the gay Louison with an untamed timber-wolf in harness actually helping to haul his sled as one of his dog-team. The half-breed kept the wolf for more than a month trying to train it, but it proved so intractable and so vicious that fearing for the children around the ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... treacherous—promising grief and pain. Off shore, the schooners of the great fleet crept by day to the s'uth'ard, harbouring by night: taking quick advantage of the variable winds, as chance offered. 'Twas thus that the doctor returned to our harbour; and there he was held, from day to day, by vicious winds, which the little sloop could not carry, by great, black seas, which she could not ride.... One day, being ill at ease, we went to the Watchman, that we might descry the first favourable sign. In the open, the wind was still to the north of east—but ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... I get you a pillow from the next room? Personally I cannot bear upholstery; I cannot conceive anything more hideous than a padded arm-chair. All design is lost in that infamous stuffing. Stuffing is a vicious excuse for the absence of design. If upholstery was forbidden by law to-morrow, in ten years we should have a school of design. Then the necessity ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... as the slender rider who, a year ago, after the untamable Cyclone horse had killed Dick Stanley before their eyes and in front of where they sat, had ridden, straight-up and scotching him at every jump, that vicious, murderous-hearted outlaw. ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, presented a bright contrast to the general laxity of morals prevailing at the time. The rather austere rule of William and Mary had not really purged the court of vicious habits, though such had been steadily discouraged. Anne had not the force of character to impose her will upon her subjects; and extravagance, frivolity, ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... kept well in the rear, and apparently urged the lesser dogs on. The little dogs didn't object, for little dogs are generally the most pugnacious. At this big dog Crusoe directed a pointed glance, but said nothing. Meanwhile a particularly small and vicious cur, with a mere rag of a tail, crept round by the back of the tent, and, coming upon Crusoe in the rear, snapped at his tail sharply, and then fled shrieking with terror and surprise, no doubt, at ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... view was too true; but there was one boy who bade fair to rival me on the score of delinquency; this was Tom Crauford, who from that day became my most intimate friend. Tom was a fine spirited fellow, up to everything; loved mischief, though not vicious; and was ready to support me in everything through thick and thin; and truly I found him sufficient employment. I threw off all disguise, laughed at any suggestion of reform, which I considered as not only useless, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... moral effect of their promenade up and down and of their meeting at Vicksburg was accurately weighed by the enemy; and, however it may have imposed upon the Northern people, did nothing to insure the safety of the unarmed vessels upon which supplies depended. This essentially vicious military situation resulted necessarily in a degree of insecurity which could have but one issue—a retreat by both squadrons toward their respective bases, which ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... I answered humbly. "But barbarous as you think we are, no epithet could be too scathing, too comprehensive of all that was vicious and inhuman, to apply to a person who should dare to assail the expense of those institutions, or suggest that they be converted to the cultivation of ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... the good fortune which had come to another and yet there was a little envy mingled with the pleasure. It was with a rather vicious little shake that she picked up the soft bath-robe Dorothy had discarded and folded it about her own shoulders; but the reflection of her own face in the mirror opposite so surprised her by its crossness that she stared, ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... a hammer blow merely grazed him. But the Terran's stiffened hand swept sidewise in a judo chop. Vistur gave a whooping cry and went to his knees and Ross swung again, sending the Rover flat to the deck. It had been quick but not so vicious as it might have been. The Terran had no desire to kill or even disable Vistur for more than a few minutes. His victim would carry a couple of aching bruises and perhaps a hearty respect for a new mode of fighting from this encounter. He could have as easily been dead had either of those blows ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... appears, leaving the middle class despised and disliked for its helpless and offensive unsociability as much by those below it as those above it, and yet ignorant enough to be proud of it, and to hold itself up as a model for the reform of the (as it considers) elegantly vicious rich ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... the chronic thirst with which the public seem to be afflicted; and groups of the natives gathered around a cucumber stand, devouring great piles of unwholesome-looking cucumbers, which skinny old women are dipping up out of wooden buckets. The voracity with which all classes stow away these vicious edibles in their stomachs is amazing, and suggests a melancholy train of reflections on the subject of cholera morbus. It was a continual matter of wonder to me how the lower classes of Russians survived the horrid messes with which they tortured ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... returning to the ship even had we felt so inclined; the resolution that had thus far nerved me, began to succumb in a measure to the awful loneliness of the scene. Ere this, I had regarded the ocean as a slave, the steed that bore me whither I listed, and whose vicious propensities, mighty though they were, often proved harmless, when opposed to the genius of man. But now, how changed! In our frail boat, I would fain have ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... do any more than vent our temper at the annoyance. It is not viciousness on our part; it is merely ignorance. But the time is rapidly approaching when there will be no excuse for ignorance, even if it is not yet time to say that preventable ignorance is vicious. ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... peculiarly slender, their cheek-bones high, and their eyes projecting. The females, with the same character of form, were somewhat more handsome. Both sexes appeared cheerful and sprightly, but afforded many indications of being both cunning and vicious. The men shave the hair off their heads, except a small tuft on the top, which they suffer to grow, so as to wear it in plats over the shoulders. In full dress, the principal chiefs wear a hawk's feather, worked with porcupine-quills, and fastened to the top of the ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... between the two oceans. The imperfection of political institutions may for ages have converted into deserts places where the commerce of the world should be found concentred; but the time approaches when these obstacles shall exist no longer. A vicious administration cannot always struggle against the united interest of men; and civilization will be carried insensibly into those countries, the great destinies of which nature itself proclaims, by the physical configuration of the soil, the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... behooved, in this universal dotage and deliration, the sound portion of mankind to bestir themselves and rally. When the widest and wildest violations of that divine right of Property, the only divine right now extant or conceivable, are sanctioned and recommended by a vicious Press, and the world has lived to hear it asserted that we have no Property in our very Bodies, but only an accidental Possession and Life-rent, what is the issue to be looked for? Hangmen and Catchpoles may, by their noose-gins and baited fall-traps, keep-down ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... our party, boys; Rally to the blue, And battle for our candidate, So sterling and so true, Fight for honest government, boys, And down the vicious crew; Voting for freedom ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... Because he skips it, and has skipped it until habit has become a convention, much of it has become by natural adaptation of supply to demand too literary, too narrow, too subtle and complex for him now. The vicious circle is complete. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... affectionate, and had always been very near his mother's heart. To feel that he had passed from her sight was a great sorrow; but it was a greater still not to know where he was. He might be suffering pain or privation; he might have fallen into bad and vicious habits for aught she knew. It would have been a relief, though a sad one, to know that he was dead. But nothing whatever had been heard of him since the letter of which the ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... Her father walked to the window. There as he looked blindly out, his eyes were assaulted by the lights of all those titty-tatty flats. And a look of vicious triumph appeared for a ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... individual antagonist. The excitement was intense during the suspense that followed the counting of the ballots, and Mr. Cleveland went into the White House amidst a roar of public opinion so confused and so vicious that there was no certainty of ultimate order in the country. In after years I enjoyed his confidence and friendship, and I learned to appreciate the stability and reserve of his nature. In a Milestone beyond this, ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... and then, if not satisfied, they might do as they liked with him. Silence being restored, he stood upon a chair, and entered on his defence. He acknowledged that he was the author of the obnoxious verses, but denied that they bore reference to all womankind. He only meant to speak of the vicious and abandoned, whereas those whom he saw around him, were patterns of virtue, loveliness, and modesty. If, however, any lady present thought herself aggrieved, he would consent to be stripped, and she might lash him till her arms were wearied. It is added, that by this means ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... close upon seventy, and to-day looked even older than his years. It was not a vicious face, but it was not a strong one. People who wanted to say nice things of the Governor called him pleasant or genial or kindly. Even the men in the appointive offices did not venture to say ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... reflected with the utmost distinctness. In the crevices hang numerous beehives, whose inmates one has to be careful not to disturb, for on the bank are the graves of two Englishmen who, having incautiously aroused the vicious little creatures, were attacked and drowned in diving under the water ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... throws his head back and hangs his lips, keeping the mouth open, and making his frown with the upper part of his face. Jealousy in the case of the women finds expression in a look somewhat similar to the above, with an additional vicious ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... always been an instinctive dislike between them as boys, everybody in Freekirk Head knew, and several vicious fights to ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... letters can be supposed to deliver without departing from his character, and, without palliating, in any degree, the corrupt use which has been almost always made of an exhibition, which, in its nature, might be innocent; but has been vicious from the time that it has been infected with the wickedness of men. It is not for publick exhibitions that I am now writing, but for literary inquiries. The stage is too much frequented, and books too much neglected: ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... won't have you classing Roger Hamley and Mr. Preston together in the same sentence. One was as much too bad for me, as the other is too good. Now I hope that maxi in the garden is the juste milieu,—I'm that myself, for I don't think I'm vicious, and I know ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... vicious circle. The average job gave the worker little or no chance to show any initiative, to feel any sense of ownership or responsibility, to use such intellect and enthusiasm as he possessed. The attitude of the average employer built ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... is an injury to the body and character both and is one of the causes and effects of the widespread neurasthenia of our day. For fear injures sleep, and this brings on fatigue and fatigue breeds more fear, —a vicious circle indeed. Fear disturbs digestion and the energy of the organism is thereby lowered. The greatest damage by worry is done in the hypochondriac, the worrier about health. Here, in addition to the effects of fear, introspection and a minute attention ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... numerous atajos, in charge of their arrieros. We observe the mules, small, smooth, light-limbed, and vicious. We glance at the heavy alparejas and bright worsted apishamores. We notice the tight wiry mustangs, ridden by the arrieros; the high-peaked saddles and hair bridles; the swarth faces and pointed beards of the riders; the huge ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... day the whole family had such a vicious expression of countenance that every one who came to see them ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... is judged by its results; it is considered either virtuous or vicious according as its results are harmful or ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... up, knocked Good head over heels off the ant-heap, and began to spear him. We rushed forward in terror, and as we drew near we saw the brawny warrior making dig after dig at the prostrate Good, who at each prod jerked all his limbs into the air. Seeing us coming, the Kukuana gave one final and most vicious dig, and with a shout of "Take that, wizard!" bolted away. Good did not move, and we concluded that our poor comrade was done for. Sadly we came towards him, and were astonished to find him pale and faint indeed, ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... the workmen, when the speculators failed of their object. All this while the country was the sufferer;—for whoever gained, the result, being upon the whole a loss, fell on the nation, together with the task of maintaining a poor, rendered effeminate and vicious by over-wages and over-living, and necessarily cast loose upon society. I cannot but think that the necessity of making some fund beforehand, for the provision of those whom they debauch, and render ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... respect for authorities, the desire to measure himself with his companions—all tend to keep him right and diligent. But many of these incentives are removed after the first brush of novelty, and many a lad who has given good promise at first, turns out, after a short probation, idle, or vicious, or indifferent. ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... Marielihou was, always and at all times. If Graeme found her in the hedge with Johnnie, she was busy licking her lips with vicious enjoyment as though she had just finished eating something that had screamed as it died. Or she was licking them snarlishly and surreptitiously, and sharpening her claws, as though just about starting out after ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... man's mislucket, Moidart and mismeaved and beside himself. I fancied I'd be in clover at Krindlesyke, With you and all: but, sink me, if I haven't Just stuck my silly head into a bee-bike! What's turned you vicious? I only want to smoke A cutty in peace: and you go on the rampage. I mustn't smoke young master's pipe, it seems— His pipe, no less! Young cock-a-ride-a-roosie Is on the muckheap now; and all the hens Are clucking round him. I ken what it is: The cockmadendy's been too easy with ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... same period are the height of the disagreeable. The most repugnant of them all is Pereda. When I read him, I feel as if I were riding on a balky, vicious mule, which proceeds at an uncomfortable little trot, and then, all of a sudden, cuts stilted ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... in religion; and he was understood to be irreligious, a disturber and innovator. And the democracy was still smarting from the wound; imposed on it by Critias and Charmides, understood to have been his disciples; and could not forget the treacheries of Alcibiades, another. And there were vicious youths besides, whom he had tried and failed to save; they had ruined themselves, and their reputable parents blamed and hated him for the ruin, not understanding the position. And he himself had seen so many of his efforts come to nothing: ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... try, General." "No, sir, you can't!" exclaimed Proudfit. His cigar went into the fireplace with a vicious spat, and his eyes snapped. "Ow niggehs ah res'less an' discontented enough now, and whether you'll succeed aw not you shan't come 'round amongst them tryin' to steal them away! Damned if we don't run you out of the three counties! So long, General!" He went by March ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... as per announcement; but he was not long in discovering by various signs not to be mistaken that his charges were in no humour to be played with on that day. Even the ring master from his place in the centre of the ring, perceived that old King of the Forest, the largest and most vicious of the lions, was meditating mischief, and called to the Signor to come out of the cage. The Signor, keeping his eye steadily fixed on the brute, began a retrograde movement from the den. He had the door open, and was swiftly ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... disappointment and grief down below his anger, but that for the moment was decidedly in the lead. He had been badly treated, and he knew it. What's more, he didn't care who else knew it. He was in a thoroughly vicious mood and ready to wreak his anger on the first thing that came to hand. That happened to be his horse. By the time he got home he had expended the most of his temper and his disappointment had come to the top. You found him wrestling ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... towns; possibly he had even landed here before. He was a man feared, hated, but obeyed the full length of the great stream; his name stood for reckless daring, unscrupulous courage everywhere; he could command the admiration and loyalty of every vicious character in the steamboat service between Fort Crawford and New Orleans. It was hardly likely that none of these men, floaters at best, were in this miscellaneous outpouring of militia; indeed it was almost certain there ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... also another relation in which it is to be considered. Without being much of a moralist, one may clearly perceive that its tone is unhealthy and its sentiment vicious. What it aims at we would not assume to decide; what it accomplishes is, to secure a sympathy for a reckless and dare-devil spirit which drives the hero through a tolerably long career of more than moderate iniquity, and leaves him impenitent at the end. It will hardly do ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... surprise at my unheard-of conveyance to the island; on the contrary, they merely observed, that sharks were too vicious to ride; and asked me to accompany them to their town, an invitation which I gladly accepted. As I walked along I observed that the island was composed of white porous pumice stone, without the least symptoms of vegetation; not even a piece of moss could I discover—nothing ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... will face defeat like a gentleman, Miss Eliot; have no fear of that. He will speak out, no matter what happens." "And when he speaks, when he tells the truth about this whole alliance between the greedy, ruthless rich and the brutal, vicious dregs of this ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... of the wind is as vicious as ever,' she answered, looking into his face with pausing thoughts on, perhaps, other subjects than that discussed. 'It is your mood of viewing it that has changed. "There is nothing either good or bad, ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... companions—all tend to keep him right and diligent. But many of these incentives are removed after the first brush of novelty, and many a lad who has given good promise at first, turns out, after a short probation, idle or vicious, or indifferent. ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... probably needed purging by fire, for the order to burn them indicates that they contained evidence derogatory to his position as a dignitary of the church. The prince cardinal was a vain and profligate man, full of vicious inclinations, and credulous to a degree that had made him the victim of the unscrupulous schemer, Madame de La Motte Valois, a woman as adroit and unscrupulous as she was daring. Of low birth, brought up by charity, married to ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... because of the indignity of the punishment. The scarred executioner spat on his hands, took the heavy rope and squared his feet. "Shiver away, you cowardly pup," said he, grinning at one side of his twisted mouth. Then with a vicious whirl of his arm he brought the hard hemp down on the boy's naked shoulders—once, twice, three times—the lad lost count. At last he nearly lost consciousness under the torturing fire of the blows. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... brighter day for the colored people. In 1840 an observer said that they had improved faster than any other people in the city. The Cincinnati Gazette after characterizing certain Negroes as being imprudent and vicious, said of others: "Many of these are peaceable and industrious, raising respectable families and acquiring property."[36] Mr. James H. Perkins, a respectable citizen of the city, asserted that the day school which the colored children attended had shown by examination ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... umbrage; but there is in this army from the southward, a number called riflemen, who are the most indifferent men I ever served with. These privates are mutinous, and often deserting to the enemy; unwilling for duty of any kind; exceedingly vicious; and I think the army here would be as well off without them. But to do justice to their officers, they are, some ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... luscious only to his own lips, and spends his hours only in the thrusting-in of his sting? Is not such pity—wasted upon the wasp—an insult to the bee who toils so wearily to gather in for others; and who, because he stings not man, is by man maltreated? Now it seems to me, if I read them aright, that vicious women, and women that are of honesty and honour, are much akin to the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... on by vicious courses, by over-study, or by voluntary sacrifice for some great cause, will bring about delay in Kamaloka, but the state of the disembodied entity will depend on the motive that ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... vicious," she said. "And vice is the only thing that's dangerous. His mouth is perfect, but he's nervous and wants handling. I'll just take him up ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... death the sick person is, the more rigorous should be the observance of this suggestion. Nor should the sick-room be opened to privileged classes; for the excitement caused by a visit from relations and the virtuous, will do as much injury to the sick, as that produced by strangers and the vicious. ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... entered. As he doffed his hat to her she thought she had never seen anything more beautiful than the smooth forehead, white hair, and long beard of the returned patriot. That was the first impression; but a closer scrutiny detected the furtive, watery eye, the unwholesome, drooping mouth, the vicious teeth, blackened and irregular. There was, too, something sinister in the yellow stockings, luridly contrasting with the black knickerbockers and rusty ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... kick his foremost button, hard," said Mr. Ross-Ellison to her as he gathered up the reins and, dodging a kick, prepared to mount. This was wrong of him, for Zuleika had never suffered any harm at the hands of General Miltiades Murger, "'eavy-sterned amateur old men" he quoted in a vicious grumble. ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... her opening life craved width and colour, and found the largest possibilities of them in the rollicking young stranger. Truly he brought colour enough and to spare into the sober gray of her life. It was when the red blood started under his vicious blows ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... third evening, just at sunset, came A scud of driving cloud; the lightning's flame; The sun glared from a vicious, misty socket, And in the moaning twilight curved a rocket While a blue flame blurred and frayed At Castle Pinckney; thus we knew the storm ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... must ever mind the insults of the vicious dog. Th' official's rank in San Ch'i was but fixed when his coffin was closed Tell all people that upon earth do dwell to look down upon none. The bounty of one single bowl of rice should be ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... which sought to establish fear had to reckon with an Opposition which was making capital out of love. Moreover, the suggestion that the Irish Question is not a matter of policy but of police, while by no means without influential adherents, is altogether vicious. You cannot physically intimidate Irishmen, and the last thing you want to do is morally to intimidate a people whose greatest need at the ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... studied the Platonic philosophy. Appuleius was an agreeable speaker, and had filled his mind with the learning of his age; but his fame with posterity rests upon his novel Metamorphoseon, in which he strives to correct the vices of his contemporaries. In this work a vicious young man is transformed into an ass, under which form he goes through many amusing adventures, but is at last changed to a new man through the influence of the mysteries. The story is full of episodes, the moral good, but the language shows the ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... his father, who proved to be a respectable tradesman residing in the neighbourhood. The unfortunate parent was sent for, and his son's situation made known to him. The afflicted man earnestly beseeched, that his son might not be prosecuted; he was not aware, he said, that the lad was habitually vicious; this probably was his only deviation from honesty; he, the father, would make every reparation required; but exposure would entail upon his family irretrievable ruin. It was elicited from the boy, amid tears and sobs of apparent contrition, that the articles of apparel were in pledge ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... as he snatched the bottle from his lips. "Cold tea! Weak—no milk, of course; but you might have put in a bit of sugar." Then replacing the cork, he gave the yielding stopper so vicious a twist that the neck emitted a screech which sounded strangely loud in the black silence of the night, and was followed by a heavy splash and the sound of wallowing about a dozen yards away. Then, apparently from just below the bank of the river a little higher up, there was a horrible ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... inherent liability to this abuse in the collection of such a tax, but also the vicious character of the tax itself. The very word 'infidel' was hateful to him. 'Who is certain that he is right,' was his constant exclamation. Recognising good in all religions, he would impose no tax on the conscientious ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... was by this appearance of his dearest enemy, he wasted no precious time on mere words. He swung a vicious blow at Larry, intended to remove this barrier to his freedom. But the experienced Larry let it glance off his forearm, and with the need of an instantaneous conclusion he sent a terrific right to Barney's chin. Barney staggered ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... nothing which betrays a Man into so many Errors and Inconveniences, as the Desire of not appearing singular; for which Reason it is very necessary to form a right Idea of Singularity, that we may know when it is laudable, and when it is vicious. In the first Place, every Man of Sense will agree with me, that Singularity is laudable, when, in Contradiction to a Multitude, it adheres to the Dictates of Conscience, Morality, and Honour. In ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... much as possible,—they being, indeed, only means for the excitement and deepening of noblest emotions towards the Lear, Cordelia, &c. and employed with the severest economy! But even Shakspeare's grossness—that which is really so, independently of the increase in modern times of vicious associations with things indifferent,—(for there is a state of manners conceivable so pure, that the language of Hamlet at Ophelia's feet might be a harmless rallying, or playful teazing, of a shame that would exist in Paradise)—at the worst, how diverse in kind is it from Beaumont ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... respective crews were idle. They, too, were fighting fiercely, and, closing about the struggling commanders, each side endeavored to help its own. The crowd surged back and forth and became mixed in inextricable confusion. One of the Turks saw a chance to help his captain and made a vicious blow at his opponent with his scimiter. Reuben James, a sailor, who was so wounded in his arms that he could not use them, thrust his head forward and received the stroke upon his skull. The wound was a frightful one, but, beyond dispute, it saved the life of Decatur, who never forgot ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... himself, he professedly "follows the plan" of Le Sage, in "Gil Blas" (a plan as old as Petronius Arbiter, and the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius); but he gives more place to "compassion," so as not to interfere with "generous indignation, which ought to animate the reader against the sordid and vicious disposition of the world." As a contrast to sordid vice, we are to admire "modest merit" in that exemplary orphan, Mr. Random. This gentleman is a North Briton, because only in North Britain can a poor orphan get such an education as ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... profitable to export horses in favorable seasons to Manila, where they would fetch twice their value. According to Morga, there were neither horses nor asses on the Island until the Spaniards imported them from China and New Spain. [111] They were at first small and vicious. Horses were imported also from Japan, "not swift but powerful, with large heads and thick manes, looking like Friesland horses;" [112] and the breed improved rapidly. Those born in the country, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... increase in the stringency of the laws to keep out insane, idiotic, epileptic, and pauper immigrants. But this is by no means enough. Not merely the Anarchist, but every man of Anarchistic tendencies, all violent and disorderly people, all people of bad character, the incompetent, the lazy, the vicious, the physically unfit, defective, or degenerate should be kept out. The stocks out of which American citizenship is to be built should be strong and healthy, sound in body, mind, and character. If it be objected that the Government agents would not always select well, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... what I wish, father," broke in Fred angrily. "I want an order from the court to have that dog seized and shot. He's a vicious and dangerous brute!" ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... previous to the transformation seems not to have been neglected any more by the offended Goddesses of the classical Mythology, than by the intriguing enchantresses of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments; as the unfortunate Beder, when under the displeasure of the vicious queen Labe, experienced to his great inconvenience. The love for the supernatural, combined with an anxious desire to attribute its operations to material and visible agencies, forms one of the most singular ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... a man has taken his son back, not upon compulsion, but of his own motion and after inquiry, how can further chopping and changing be justified? What further occasion for the law? Its author might fairly say to you, sir: If your son was vicious and deserved to be disinherited, what were you about to recall him? Why have him home again? Why suspend the law's operation? You were a free agent; you need not have done it. The laws are not your play-ground; you are not to put the courts ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... youth about seventeen years of age, well-built, good-looking, full of life and vigor, and at this time engaged in that serious occupation, common to many young men, sowing his wild oats. He was boisterous and rather reckless, but not vicious. His moral nature was touched by evil, but not yet corrupted. However, he had begun to walk in the broad way of youthful folly, and was in great danger of going its full length. He was restrained from drinking the full cup ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... at Bury, but the punishment was not abolished. Whipping was constantly inflicted, not merely on men but on women, and in public as well as privately. The poor were brutalised by cruel and indecent punishments, and were far too much under the power of magistrates, some of them vicious and ignorant men, who had summary jurisdiction in a large number ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... So the man of charming personality, while loved by all the ladies who know him well, yet not too well, must endure with such fortitude as he may the consciousness that those others who know him only "by reputation" consider him a shameless reprobate, a vicious and unworthy man—a type and example of moral depravity. To name the second disadvantage entailed by his ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... It was so in Christ's time; it is so still. The popular American ballad, "Jim Bludso," and Ian Maclaren's touching story of the Drumtochty postman, are familiar illustrations of self-sacrificing virtues revealed by men of coarse and vicious lives. Nor ought we to deny the reality of such virtues; still less ought we to follow the bad example of St. Augustine and call them "splendid vices." Such was not Christ's way. He assumed the existence and reality of this "natural goodness," ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... commandment of GOD. And thus full many men and women now, and specially men that are named to be "principal limbs of Holy Church," stir GOD to great wrath; and deserve His curse for that they call or hold them "just men" which are full unjust, as their vicious words, their great customable swearing, and their slanderous and shameful works shew openly and witness. And herefore such vicious men and unjust in their own confusion call them "unjust men and women," which after their power and cunning, busy themselves to ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... command it," he interrupted with decision, his dull eye flashing—"if they demand it of me, I do it willingly. Tell them Martialis's sword is ever at their service. It has made short work of stronger men than that vicious stripling." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
