"Viciousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me a start to look up six feet of legs and chest, and end in an expression of face which seemed about to remark that the world was a strange place, and might be wicked. The other white man and the negroes were a bad lot, and given to viciousness, but Monson ruled them with a heavy fist. He hadn't been three hours away from the river before he was banging a negro with a board, the others looking on and grinning. He was spanking him, in a way. He ran to me with tears in his eyes. "I'll throw that nigger overboard!" he shouted, ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... find this custom of bundling in bed attended with so much innocence in New England, while in Europe it is thought not safe or scarcely decent to permit a young man and maid to be together in private anywhere. But in this quarter of the old world the viciousness of the one, and the simplicity of the other, are the result merely of education and habit. It seems to be a part of heroism, among the polished nations of it, to sacrifice the virtuous fair one, whenever an opportunity offers, and thence it is concluded ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... praise of white, one does not expect—"I think nature mixes yellow with almost every one of her hues;" but this is said merely in aversion to purple. "I think the first approach to viciousness of colour in any master, is commonly indicated chiefly by a prevalence of purple and an absence of yellow." "I am equally certain that Turner is distinguished from all the vicious colourists of the present day, by the foundation of all his tones being black, yellow, and intermediate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... be noticed before we proceed to review the sects of to-day. Hindu morality, the ethical tone of the modern sects, is older than the special forms of Hindu viciousness which have been received into the cult. A negative altruism (beyond which Brahmanism never got) is characteristic of the Hindu sects. But this is already embodied in the golden rule, as it is thus formulated in the epic ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... but not fast, frivolous though not dissipated. His errors were errors of unprofitableness, but never of viciousness. Even in his most frivolous moments he had never been anything but a gentleman and a good fellow. Still, it had been unsatisfactory, and he knew it to be so ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... disagree with the Report. Which clauses of it?" and there was that soft viciousness in her voice which showed that she knew Mrs. Hilary had not even read the Minority Report, or the Majority Report either. Nan was spiteful; always trying to prove that her mother didn't know what she was talking about; always trying to pin her down on points of detail. Like the people ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... she cried, shaking her son with viciousness, "how could you have been so monotonous as ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... and schisms. As if he had forgotten that he had already berated them, the Apostle once more reproves those who provoke and envy others. Was not one reference to them sufficient? He repeats his admonition in order to emphasize the viciousness of pride that had caused all the trouble in the churches of Galatia, and has always caused the Church of Christ no end of difficulties. In his Epistle to Titus the Apostle states that a vainglorious man should not be ordained as a minister, for pride, as St. Augustine points ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... relations with our children we all too frequently cling to the theory of punishment that justifies us in "paying back" for the trouble we have been caused—if, indeed, we 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 ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... the experiment, however, was never put to the final test, as the duke died before coming to the throne. There seems to be no doubt that the cure was permanent, and it is not believed that, like Nero, he would have relapsed into his former viciousness and cruelty. ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... high-born ladies, making of countesses and princesses the most tormented slaves under the sun. Stories like that of Conrad and Elizabeth of Hungary, recurred again and again, with all its dreadful viciousness, sickening tyranny and black impiety: tales that were nightmares of oppression, privation, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... fond of complaining about all the terrible things done to them by the people they have or have had problems with, or sometimes, so proud of not complaining about all the terrible things done to them. Actually, almost inevitably this person has committed a huge mass of secret crimes, viciousness and betrayals, rarely indictable felonious acts, but crimes none the less, disreputable deeds that must be ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... hunters, but never subjugated them. We may well encourage the idea that the quality of air of the wilderness has entered the soil. When, in Manila, I have seen the men bearing burdens on the streets spring out of the way of those riding in carriages, and lashed by drivers with a viciousness that no dumb animal should suffer, I have felt my blood warm to think that the men of common hard labor in my country would resent a blow as quickly as the man on horseback—that even the poor black—emancipated the other day from the subjugation of slavery by a masterful and potential race, stands ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... reviving the power of its local representative. In other words, it is a connecting link between the High Commissionerships of Frere and Milner. The events which followed the recall of Frere were accepted by the British inhabitants of South Africa as a practical demonstration of the inherent viciousness of the system under which the decision of cardinal questions of South African administration was left in the hands of the House of Commons, a body in which they were not represented; which met 6,000 miles away; whose judgment was liable to ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... the bed, I caught myself looking at him in a fascinated sort of way. He was certainly a handsome man—beautiful in the masculine sense. And again, with never-failing wonder, I remarked the total lack of viciousness, or wickedness, or sinfulness in his face. It was the face, I am convinced, of a man who did no wrong. And by this I do not wish to be misunderstood. What I mean is that it was the face of a man who either did nothing contrary to the dictates of his conscience, or who had no conscience. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... self-esteem. He who loves the praise of man naturally begins to praise himself. As a result of self-esteem arises (3) Censoriousness, since he who thinks well of himself is apt to think ill of others. As a system Pharisaism was wanton hypocrisy—a character of seeming righteousness, but too often of real viciousness. ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... to come breaking a man's rest!" growled the voice of Archelaus, audibly, and not without viciousness, as though he meant ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... been ripped to ribbons and his exposed chest showed a spiderwork of scratches, where branches and brambles had sought to restrain him in his frenzied flight. Across his back from shoulder to shoulder ran a deeper cut around which the caked blood attested to the needle-sharp viciousness of a thorn bush a mile to the north. With each tortured breath he winced, as drops of sweat ran down, following the spiderwork network and burning like acid. Incessantly he rubbed his bruised torso with mud-caked ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow
... whole Empire. Each day there were complaints against him; the Emperor himself frequently admonished him on account of the high esteem he had for his brave father. But there resulted no improvement, and his natural viciousness only manifested itself the more. He was killed in some battle, I forget which; and as little worthy of regret as he was, his death was a deep affliction to his excellent mother, although he even forgot himself so far as to speak ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... unfortunate princes; though, perhaps, of all the royal families that ever existed upon the earth, this family was the worst. It was unfortunate enough, it is true; but it owed its misfortunes entirely to its crimes, viciousness, bad faith, and cowardice. Nothing will be said of it here until it made its appearance in England to occupy the ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... can not at once be entrusted with the powers and privileges of self-government. However this may be, they can not be better qualified under the influence of slavery. That must be broken up from which their ignorance, and viciousness, and wretchedness proceeded. That which can only do what it has always done, pollute and degrade, must not be employed to purify and elevate. The lower their character and condition, the louder, clearer, sterner, the just demand ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... like to be generous, but is made despicably mean by necessity. What a true sentence that is of Landor's: "It has been repeated often enough that vice leads to misery; will no man declare that misery leads to vice?" I have much of the weakness that might become viciousness, but I am now far from the possibility of being vicious. Of course there are men, like Fadge, who seem only to grow meaner the more prosperous they are; but these are exceptions. Happiness is the nurse ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... walks in life. Her fascination was as undeniable as her insincerity of purpose. She had never made an honest effort to be an honest woman, although she imagined herself always persecuted, the victim of circumstances,—and was always ready to excuse any viciousness of character which led her into her peculiar difficulties. While acknowledged to be a mistress of her business—that of acting—from a purely technical point of view, her lack of sympathy, her abuse ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... the stranger which had made them suspicious from the start. His prodigal disposition of the box of matches impressed most of them as reckless dare-devilism; his haste, anxiety, and a single instance of mild profanity told others of his viciousness. One man was sure he had seen the stranger's watch chain in farmer Grover's possession; and another saw something black on his thumb, which he now remembered was a ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... these various ill turns partly out of native viciousness, and partly because he hated him for his superiorities of physique and pluck, and for his manifold cleverness. Tom couldn't dive, for it gave him splitting headaches. Chambers could dive without inconvenience, and was fond of doing it. He excited so much admiration, one day, among a crowd ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... true that in the case of drunkenness the viciousness of a bodily transgression is recognized; but none appear to infer that if this bodily transgression is vicious, so too is every bodily transgression. The fact is, all breaches of the law of health are ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... in vice when virtue is present, but with Barbara's departure all restraint seemed to vanish. There were probably degrees in the viciousness of these men and women, but, as a whole, it would have been difficult to bring together a more abandoned company. High play was here, and the ruin of many a man's fortune. Honour, save of the spurious sort, held no man in check, and virtue was as dross. Debauchery of every ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... of the German soldier of to-day be the result not only of the ruthless command from the official higher up but also of the de-souling, materialistic influence of Socialism on the common people of Germany during the past twenty-five years? Is not the viciousness of Prussian militarism plus the demoralizing influence of ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... establish discipline, the men were well behaved, and did not dare to disobey the orders of their chiefs. It was only when special orders for "frightfulness" had been issued, or when officers in subordinate command let their men get out of hand, or led the way to devilry by their own viciousness of action, that the rank and file of the enemy's army ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... shouting and exhorting against the immorality and vice of the levee, but I wonder if it isn't society's hue and cry to divert attention from viciousness in what are called "the best circles," a condition that is a hundred ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... poor, on the other. A great gulf separates these two classes, who have nothing in common, and society rests on a social basis composed of forlorn, dissatisfied, ignorant people, developing day by day still more the accompaniments of ignorance and poverty—brutality, viciousness, drunkenness, and ferocity. This separation has too long continued, has too long left the country a prey to political demagogues, who have plunged it into repeated turmoils, and finally into civil war, by being able to operate upon the fears ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... observes, "might have been endured, so far as mere superciliousness and hauteur to the professional musician were involved, if these people had possessed any real feeling or love for music; but it was their total want of all taste, their utter viciousness, that rendered them hateful to Mozart. He was ready to make any sacrifice for his family, but longed to escape from the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... before us shows that it is not every kind of pardon which makes a man better. The scapegrace Absalom came back unsoftened, without one touch of gratitude to his father in his base heart, without the least gleam of a better nature dawning upon him, and went flaunting about the court until his viciousness culminated in his unnatural rebellion. That is to say, there is a forgiveness which nourishes the seeds of the crimes that it pardons. We have only to look into our own hearts, and we have only to look at the sort of people round us, to be very sure that, unless ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to flight, the rest follows it. Fear is very contagious. The Bengal reading jangha is evidently incorrect. The Bombay reading is sangha. The Burdwan translators have attempted the impossible feat of finding sense by adhering to the incorrect reading. The fact is, they did not suspect the viciousness of the text. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... man. In those days The Sphere specialized on scandals; the rottener, the better; stuff that it wouldn't touch to-day. Well, a hell-cat of a society woman sued her husband for divorce and named Miss Corcoran. Pure viciousness, it was. There wasn't a shadow of proof, or ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... made my intentions known to Ascyltos, who, as he wished to rid himself of the importunities of Psyche, was delighted; had not Giton been shut up in the bridal-chamber, the plan would have presented no difficulties, but we wished to take him with us, and out of the way of the viciousness of these prostitutes. We were anxiously engaged in debating this very point, when Pannychis fell out of bed, and dragged Giton after her, by her own weight. He was not hurt, but the girl gave her head a slight ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... would have been to abandon to the enemy the very important link in the communications, upon which chiefly depended the re-enforcement and supplies for both armies on the Niagara peninsula. The inherent viciousness of the plan upon which the American operations were proceeding was now quickly evident. At the very moment of the attack upon Fort George, a threatening but irresolute movement against Sackett's was undertaken by Prevost, with the co-operation of Yeo, by whom ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... become great when he doth so confuse justice with viciousness;—but, nurse, I would have thee haste. Tell my lord that I beg his presence, if for a moment only; he surely would not refuse ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... word, the viciousness of our social hierarchy lies in the fact that it is based solely upon material success. We have no titles of nobility; but we have Coal Barons, Merchant Princes and Kings of Finance. The very catchwords of our slang tell the story. The achievement ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... you firmly planted on the ground, and then quickly withdraw backwards leaving you, with your legs wide apart and standing like a fool, to meditate on equine wickedness in the Realm of the Morning Calm. They are indeed the trickiest little devils for their size I have ever seen; and for viciousness and love of fighting, I can recommend you to no steed more capable of showing these qualities. The average price of an animal as above described varies from the large sum of five shillings to as much as thirty shillings (at the rate of two shillings per Mexican ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... we in our viciousness grow hard, O, misery on't! the wise gods seal our eyes: In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us Adore our errors, laugh at us while we strut To ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... boards, and down again almost as soon as he was up. Kennedy was always a straight hitter, and now a combination of good cause and bad temper—for the thought of the foul in the first round had stirred what was normally a more or less placid nature into extreme viciousness—lent a vigour to his left arm to which he had hitherto been a stranger. He did not use his right ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... drawings, death-masks, Chinese pictures, and queer old flutes, with an air of displaying them for the first time to one who could truly appreciate. And she kept thinking of that saying, "Une technique merveilleuse." Her instinct apprehended the refined bone-viciousness of this place, where nothing, save perhaps taste, would be sacred. It was her first glimpse into that gilt-edged bohemia, whence the generosities, the elans, the struggles of the true bohemia are as rigidly excluded as from the spheres where bishops moved. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... for their undesirable inheritance? Furthermore, that girl's mother was what we call an outcast. Can you reasonably look for morality of any sort in the offspring of such an infamous union? You do not answer, because you cannot! I defy any of your Christians to straighten out this matter. The viciousness of most children is their only endowment, unless we add the poverty, the diseases and the hopelessness that go with it. Now to consider her environments and her temptations in that store. She is working for thieves, why should she not steal? She is ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... twenty-seven of them against the eleven of us. But there are men, strong in viciousness, among them. They, too, have their serfs and bravos. Guido Bombini and Isaac Chantz are certainly bravos. And weaklings like Sorensen, and Jacobsen, and Bob, cannot be anything else than slaves to the men who ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... Waldo, as the grizzly suddenly upreared its mighty bulk, head wagging, paws waving in queer fashion, lolling tongue lending the semblance of drollery rather than viciousness. ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... is no complaint more just than what we find in almost every family, of the folly and ignorance, the fraud and knavery, the idleness and viciousness, the wasteful squandering temper of servants, who are, indeed, become one of the many public grievances of the kingdom; whereof, I believe, there are few masters that now hear me who are not convinced by their own experience. And I am not very confident, that more families, of all ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... most infamous of the many impostors who have so often disgraced the cause of religious reformation. By more than four centuries, he anticipated the licentiousness and greediness manifested by a series of false prophets, and was the first to turn both the stupidity of a populace and the viciousness of a priesthood to his own advancement; an ambition which afterwards reached its most signal expression in the celebrated ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was indeed curious. Prematurely aged though she was, Seraphine, amid her growing insanity, continued to lead a wild, rackety life, and the strangest stories were related of her. A singular caprice of hers, given her own viciousness, was to join, as a lady patroness, a society whose purpose was to succor and moralize young offenders on their release from prison. And it was in this wise that she had become acquainted with Alexandre-Honore, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... in a new role. Would her proteanness never end? he wondered, as he glanced over the magnificent, sweating, mastered creature she bestrode. Mountain Lad, despite his hugeness, was a mild-mannered pet beside this squealing, biting, striking Fop who advertised all the spirited viciousness of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... have been a boggler ever:— But when we in our viciousness grow hard,— O misery on't!—the wise gods seal our eyes; In our own filth drop our clear judgments: make us Adore our errors; laugh at's while ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... alteration of his ways the undoubtable indication of an altered character. That he had approached the Sacrament on the morning after his wild words to her, she took to mean that he repented him the viciousness of the animosity he had entertained that he continued so extremely devout thereafter she construed into meaning that his ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... gambling table of San Francisco seemed very far away. But there was more than illicit pleasure in his mood. It was as though he were going through a sort of cleansing bath. No room here for all the sordidness, meanness, and viciousness that filled the dirty pool of city existence. Without pondering in detail upon the matter at all, his sensations were of purification and uplift. Had he been asked to state how he felt, he would merely have said that he was having a good time; for he was unaware ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... named Charlie Madden," he said with a viciousness which evidently puzzled her until he had gone on. "You've ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... still less can we expect it from the men themselves. In writing his own memoirs, a man will not tell all that he knows about himself. Augustine was a rare exception, but few there are who will, as he did in his 'Confessions,' lay bare their innate viciousness, deceitfulness, and selfishness. There is a Highland proverb which says, that if the best man's faults were written on his forehead he would pull his bonnet over his brow. "There is no man," said Voltaire, "who has not something ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... pointed chin, with dirty muffler round its chicken-neck, shoddy coat clothing its sloping shoulders, baggy corduroy trousers flapping round its bony shanks—this was Popinot's, and but one of a thousand differing in no essential save degree of viciousness. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... on his companion with a sudden viciousness. "By James!" he snapped, "you better take care of your-words, or there'll be a man in this smoke-room with a broken jaw. I allow no one to sling slights at either me or my ship. No, nor at the firm either that owns ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... me and I was pleased to see her hatred increase. It was amazingly vivid. I observed the viciousness of her features. Her face had become contorted. Its fury was like a mask. But she had dropped the knife. I could not refrain smiling an encouragement at her—the naive applause an author bestows upon ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... the reins with a great show of solicitude and vigilance, appearing to dread another display of viciousness from the mare, that was now most sheeplike in her docility; and thus, with his confiding victim, he jogged along through the crowded street, the object of general approval and ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... fun-loving sister Prue is almost as much a central figure as Randy, growing toward womanhood with each book. The sterling good sense and simple naturalness of Randy, and the total absence of slang and viciousness, make these books in the highest degree commendable, while abundant life is supplied by the doings of merry friends, and there is rich humor in ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... had a viciousness in it I hadn't seen before. He held out his hand. I struggled erect and handed my wallet to him. He only took out the big bills, and tossed it back across the desk to me. "Thanks," he said. "You'll get half of this back if you decide to join ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... Daughter" are like divergent lines, which originate at an single point; and that point is the radical viciousness of trying experiments on human beings. It is bad enough, although excusable, to vivisect dogs and rabbits; but why should we attempt the same course of procedure with those that are nearest and ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... had, by the simpering viciousness of her comments on the new furniture, stirred Carol to economy. She spoke judiciously to Bea about left-overs. She read the cookbook again and, like a child with a picture-book, she studied the ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... said to me recalls these facts most vividly to my mind—I hope, Miss Harding, that you will never regret having spoken them," and to the bottom of his heart the man meant what he said, at the moment; for inherent chivalry is as difficult to suppress or uproot as is inherent viciousness. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... houses, its myriads of draggled prostitutes, its millions of hurrying clerks? The very leaves upon its trees were foul with greasy black defilements. Where is lime-white Paris, with its green and disciplined foliage, its hard unflinching tastefulness, its smartly organized viciousness, and the myriads of workers, noisily shod, streaming over the bridges in the gray cold light of dawn. Where is New York, the high city of clangor and infuriated energy, wind swept and competition swept, ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... his condition of body, his age, the just conformation and proportion of his limbs, but especially his penis, which was found to be of as proper a thickness, length and colour as could be wished: and likewise his testicles, which exhibited no perceptible viciousness or malformation, they are of opinion that from all these outward marks, which are the only ones they consider themselves justified in judging from, the said De But is capacitated to perform the matrimonial act. Signed by them at Paris, July 18, 1675, ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... Fawcett during that long vigil. Her mind for the first time dwelt with kindness, almost with softness, on the memory of her husband. Beside this awful Dane his shadow was god-like. He had been high-minded and a gentleman in his worst tantrums, and there was no taint of viciousness in him. A doubt grew in her brain, grew to such disquieting proportions that she sometimes deserted Rachael abruptly and went out to fatigue herself in the avenue. Had she done wrong to leave him alone in his old age, to bear, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Mrs. Crane," Shelby assured her. "It was an accident, you see. The storm was beyond anything you can imagine. The wind was not only icy and cutting, but of a sharp viciousness that made it impossible to hear or to see. Almost impossible to walk. We merely struggled blindly against it,—against it, you understand, so that if Peter, who was behind, had called out, we could ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... 214: The celebrated LUDOVICUS VIVES has strung together a whole list of ancient popular romances, calling them "ungracious books." The following is his saucy philippic: "Which books but idle men wrote unlearned, and set all upon filth and viciousness; in whom I wonder what should delight men, but that vice pleaseth them so much. As for learning, none is to be looked for in those men, which saw never so much as a shadow of learning themselves. And when they tell ought, what delight can be in those things that be so plain and foolish lies? One ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... time-torn banners from the edge of his wide hat. His piercing, black eyes were those of a man who drinks deep, fights hard, and lives always in the open air. Wild animals have such eyes, only there is this difference: the viciousness of an animal is natural; at least one-half of the viciousness of ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... slay, the long-imprisoned evils rushed forth upon the fair earth and on the human beings who lived on it—malignant, ruthless, fierce, treacherous, and cruel—poisoning, slaying, devouring. Plague and pestilence and murder, envy and malice and revenge and all viciousness—an ugly wolf-pack indeed was that one let loose by Pandora. Terror, doubt, misery, had all rushed straightway to attack her heart, while the evils of which she had never dreamed stung mind and soul into dismay and horror, when, by hastily shutting the lid of the ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... lashed the horse into a gentle gallop, "he can't kick at my batch of bills. When he gets on a high horse, I know how to fix him." He laughed. Jarvis Thornton turned a curious eye on his companion. Just this kind of intimacy in families he had never experienced—an armed neutrality of viciousness. He was anxious to get on, to reach his Camberton rooms, where the Sunday forlornness was peace after this swinish atmosphere. Once back in his arm-chair, in the familiar confusion of books and papers and letters lying about, ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... for a time—only for a time, and not truly. But, be it remembered, Sheridan's evil days had not commenced. He sowed his wild oats late in life,—alack for him!—and he never finished sowing them. His was not the viciousness of nature, but the corruption of success. 'In all time of wealth, good Lord deliver us!' What prayer can wild, unrestrained, unheeding Genius utter with more fervency? I own Genius is rarely in love. There is an egotism, almost ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... the Home Office indicate that this was in a measure understood, but the tenor of the despatches also shows that it was thought the evils arose less from viciousness of the governed than from want ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... than the viciousness of his life, was the brazen openness with which he flaunted it in the ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... critic; Thirlwall and Grote, in their province, have greatly increased the fame of British scholarship; and Macaulay, brilliant and picturesque beyond any of his contemporaries, has an unprecedented popularity, which will last until the worthlessness of his opinions and the viciousness of his style are more justly appreciated than they are likely to be by the mobs of novel readers who in this generation have preferred him to James and Ainsworth. Lord Mahon is the most legitimate successor of the greatest historian ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... at his mother's unexpected comment took the form of kicking his sister, heavily. Tishy, who sang in the chapel choir, and was at this time inclined to regard herself as a pillar of the Church, returned the kick with a viciousness that indicated a hostile point of view, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... are often very good, and this season the gardeners had taken much pains with a crop of fine watermelons that were just beginning to ripen. But not one of these was spared—every one was broken and crushed by the little hoofs of the ponies, which seem to enjoy viciousness of this kind as much as the ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... with large ears, and large, fine eyes full of a wild, harmless look. He is daintily marked, with white feet and a white belly. When disturbed by day he is very easily captured, having none of the cunning or viciousness of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... direct, to guard. Even more than if it had been his own property did he feel the obligation, for the interests concerned were not his. But the matter went deeper than a prospective money loss; it struck down to principles and rights—the principles of order and industry as against viciousness and havoc; the rights of law-abiding men who create as against the wantonness of lawless men ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... more viciousness than I gave him credit for, has Master Joseph. He flew at me with his knife, and I had to grasp him twice, and got a cut over the knuckles, before I had the upper hand of him. He looked murder out of the ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... aroused in Clarendon that enthusiastic loyalty which he felt for Charles I. was the consummate dignity of a pure life. Dignity as well as purity were alike banished from the Court of Charles II., with the examples before it of his own more open debauchery and of his brother's more morose viciousness, which was rendered all the uglier by his sullen bigotry. With a discerning eye Clarendon read the prevailing defects of the Stuart race—their proneness to succumb to flattery and vicious influence, and then obstinately ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... largely on the temperament of the individual and the circumstances of the case. In some men it results in paralysis of the energies, changing the character into shiftlessness. In other cases it results in destroying the moral sense, but does not amount to positive viciousness, while on the other hand it may result as it unquestionably did in this case, in absolutely perverting the affections so as to render the man incapable of the natural feelings of a husband and father, and supplying motives which seem to be of the most ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... is a place to be shunned by day—at night it becomes terrible; it seems to breathe the hidden viciousness of its past, as if its ruins were the tombs of ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... degeneration. For this degradation of character we are bound to hold this new social force in a measure responsible, even though it has so operated because of its inherent qualities and in no material respect through conscious cynicism or viciousness; indeed it is safe to say that in so far as it was acting consciously it was with good motives, which adds an element of even greater tragedy to a ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... over people on foot, you would not be held responsible, as in law it would be regarded as an inevitable accident. Thus, if your horse should get scared by some sudden noise or frightful object by the wayside, or through his natural viciousness of which you were ignorant, or by some means should get unhitched after you had left him securely tied, and in consequence thereof should plunge the shaft of your wagon into some other man's horse, or should knock down and injure a dozen ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... imported ideas, was very like such a ceremony in America, save that the cavalry was small in numbers, riding upon the merest caricatures of horses,—ponies about the size of Newfoundland dogs; but what they lacked in size they made up in viciousness, so that it was about all the gallant cavalry could do to keep in their saddles. Indeed, many of them came to grief, spread out like galvanized bullfrogs upon the greensward, while their horses scampered ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... who, I find, lives now in Lyme Streete, and with the same credit as ever, this fire having not done them any wrong that I hear of at all. Thence he and I together to Westminster Hall, in our way talking of matters and passages of state, the viciousness of the Court; the contempt the King brings himself into thereby; his minding nothing, but doing all things just as his people about him will have it; the Duke of York becoming a slave to this whore Denham, and wholly minds ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys |
