"Dissipation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wondered at the presence in Katleean of such a man as Harlan, and the reason for his connection with the dead Naleenah. Understanding of another's lapses comes with years and Jean, Ellen knew, was too young fully to realize what this young man's dissipation portended. ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... with the young ladies on his knee at the Mitre, to give them good advice, in which situation, if not explained, he might be taken for Falstaff; and last and noblest, his carrying the unfortunate victim of disease and dissipation on his back up through Fleet Street, (an act which realises the parable of the good Samaritan)—all these, and innumerable others, endear him to the reader, and must be remembered to his lasting honour. He had faults, but they lie buried with him. He had his prejudices ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... was duly deposited, the amount being entered in the storekeeper's book, and each miner retaining enough to cover his evening's expenses. After that, all restraint was at an end, and each set to work to get rid of his surplus dust with the greatest rapidity possible. The focus of dissipation was the rough bar, formed by a couple of hogsheads spanned by planks, which was dignified by the name of the "Britannia Drinking Saloon." Here Nat Adams, the burly bar-keeper, dispensed bad whisky at the rate of two ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to have been lighted at nights, while the Roman streets remained dark and dangerous. In the neighbourhood of the city was the celebrated park called Daphne, where the voluptuous and almost incredible dissipation of the ancient world perhaps reached its acme. Like Alexandria, Antioch was furiously addicted ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... had less to justify them, either in their causes or in their consequences, than this long struggle between England and France. It was a calamity to both lands. For England it meant the dissipation abroad of the energies which would have been better employed at home. For France it resulted in widespread destruction of property, untold suffering, famines, and terrible loss of life. From this time dates that traditional hostility ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... favourite. To the work of that grave master, nevertheless—of Parmenides—a very different person certainly from his rattling disciple, Zeno's [32] seemingly so fantastic doctrine was sincerely in service. By its destructive criticism, its dissipation of the very conceivability of the central and most incisive of sensible phenomena, it was a real support to Parmenides in his assertion of the nullity of all that is but phenomenal, leaving open and unoccupied space (emptiness, we might say) to that ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... man of the first quality made it his constant practice to pass his time without shaking his arm at a gaming-table, associating with jockeys at Newmarket, or murdering time by a constant round of giddy dissipation, if not of criminal indulgence. Diaries were not uncommon in the last age: Lord Anglesea, who made so great a figure in the reign of Charles the Second, left one behind him; and one said to have been written by the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... from Reticularia chiefly by the more perfectly developed sporangial walls. These are everywhere membranous and do not show the abundant filiform dissipation so characteristic of Reticularia. The resultant structure in Reticularia is a mass of more or less lengthened and anastomosing threads; in Enteridium, an exceedingly delicate but sufficiently ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... attendance on the kings had indeed prevented either Malcolm or Percy from even having the temptation of running into any such lengths as those gentry who had plundered the shrine of St. Fiacre at Breuil, or were continually galloping off for an interval of dissipation at Paris; but they were both on the outlook for any snatch of stolen diversion, for in ceasing from monastic habits Malcolm seemed to have laid aside the scruples of a religious or conscientious youth, and specially avoided Dr. Bennet, ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Globe gave the latest telegram from Italy; as how Hannibal obtained a glorious victory over the Roman troops at Thrasymene, or that the commissariat was bad; then, perhaps, old grumblers decried the dissipation at Cannae, and the expense of the war; and ancient merchants on 'Change complained of the rising importance of the Roman navy, whose ships had just captured the large Phoenician brigantine Argo, from Sidon, ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... suffices to make it worth living. Duty to the world at large and to the vast empire slipping from his grasp seems to be all that holds Philip; and when we consider that he had lost his first wife and her promising son, and of his children by his second wife one or two were dead already; that dissipation and anxiety had sapped his energies, and superstition had crabbed his intelligence; it is not strange that the face should be as ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan
... severe skirmish among the Alemanni, crossed his right cheek and one side of his nose, giving him an expression more curious than pleasing. His general appearance was after the common type of an old, war-worn soldier, rough and unscrupulous by nature, hardened by camp life and dissipation, grown cruel by excess of petty authority, overbearing with his inferiors, jovial and complaisant with his equals, cringing to his superiors, and with an air of discontent overlaying every other expression, as though he was continually tortured with the belief that his success ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the world, under the rule of the Caesars, exhausted itself in slavery, superstition, and voluptuousness. The people—intoxicated and, as it were, stupefied by their long-continued orgies—had lost the very notion of right and duty: war and dissipation by turns swept them away; usury and the labor of machines (that is of slaves), by depriving them of the means of subsistence, hindered them from continuing the species. Barbarism sprang up again, in a hideous form, from this mass of corruption, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... as his beard, with features swollen and blurred by dissipation, and a hot, blazing blue eye. His face was strained—that of a man who is controlling himself with difficulty—and he kept plucking at his beard with a sort of fierce resentment. Steavens, sitting by ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... an instant, and put a couple of half-arm blows in; but the prize-fighter pulled him over by his weight, and the two fell panting side by side upon the ground. Jim sprang up, however, and walked over to his corner, while Berks, distressed by his evening's dissipation, leaned one arm upon Mendoza and the other upon Dutch Sam as he made ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... masses and heaps of stones in Egypt—was named Tage Mehalle [Mumtaz-i-Mahall], or the Crown of the Seraglio; and the wife of Jehan-Guyre, who so long wielded the sceptre, while her husband abandoned himself to drunkenness and dissipation, was known first by the name of Nour Mehalle, the Light of the Seraglio, and afterwards by that of Nour-Jehan-Begum, the Light of the World.' (Bernier, Travels, ed. Constable, and V. A. Smith, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... that fascinating region, and, what was worse, falling into the hands of certain sharpers, not Italian, but English, he was fleeced of considerable sums of money. The abbe, who, it seems, was an excellent individual of the old French school, remonstrated with his pupil on his dissipation and extravagance; but, finding his remonstrances vain, very properly informed the guardians of the manner of life of his charge. They were not slow in commanding Francis Ardry home; and, as he was entirely in their power, he was forced to comply. He had been about three months ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Thornton would have yielded again of his own accord to the impulse to travel Four Corners-ward remained unsolved. He had on hand some experiments that he was undertaking for a paper which he had to deliver at the close of the month. His day of dissipation seemed to spur him on once more along the accustomed path, and only in the few lazy moments at the end of the day did his mind recur to the still meadows baked in the June sun, and to the woman who had tempted him into a ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... Gorman should propose an evening out was natural enough. I should not call him a dissipated man, but he has a great deal of vitality and he likes what he calls "a racket" occasionally. What surprised me was that a circus should be his idea of dissipation. A circus is the sort of entertainment to which I send my nephew—a boy of eleven—when he spends the night with me in London on his way to school. My servant, a thoroughly trustworthy man, takes him there. I pay for the tickets. Gorman, Ascher, and I were three grown men ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... human beings. In addition to the pain of separation, there was the horrid dread of falling into the hands of Master Andrew. He was known to us all as being a most cruel wretch,—a common drunkard, who had, by his reckless mismanagement and profligate dissipation, already wasted a large portion of his father's property. We all felt that we might as well be sold at once to the Georgia traders, as to pass into his hands; for we knew that that would be our inevitable condition,—a condition held by us all in ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... fertile with stories. Many a rich man's automobile crashes into a culvert or a telegraph pole and nobody knows of it but the mechanic in the repair shop. Many a prominent club-man indulges in orgies of revelry and dissipation of which none knows but the caterer and a few chosen, non-committal friends. Many a society leader plans receptions and dinners of which the florist learns before the friends who are to be invited. And by skilfully encouraging the ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... very regularly and attentively at the studio, but now Marshall's society was an attraction I could not resist. For the sake of his talent, which I religiously believed in, I regretted he was so idle; but his dissipation was winning, and his delight was thorough, and his gay, dashing manner made me feel happy, and his experience opened to me new avenues for enjoyment and knowledge of life. On my arrival in Paris I had ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... by long-continued success, our champion gradually permits himself to drift into a weakened physical condition. He omits his regular training and indulges in all kinds of dissipation. ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... they made D. Jean know his quality is worth the knowing), generalissimo of the Christian forces, he would not appear to be moved wt the least joy, al he sayd was, Dom Juan a beaucoup hazarde. When the news was told him of the dissipation of his invincible Armado, commanded by the Duc of Medine Sidonia, he would not seim to be troubled wt it, all he sayd was, j'ay envoye une flote pour combattre des hommes non pas les vagues et ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... Lucien's whole time was taken up with supper parties, dinner engagements, breakfasts, and evening parties; he was swept away by an irresistible current into a vortex of dissipation and easy work. He no longer thought of the future. The power of calculation amid the complications of life is the sign of a strong will which poets, weaklings, and men who live a purely intellectual life can never counterfeit. Lucien was living from hand to mouth, spending ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... foregoing, would be to form an incorrect and inadequate estimate of the human mind. The fact was that Van Stingey was a false, low, cruel man, whose soul, steeped in the sensuality of his past life, had lost all that was divine in its nature. His circumstances were so reduced by his crimes and dissipation, that, being "too lazy to work, and ashamed to beg," he assumed first the guise of religion to gain popularity; and when he had "got religion," then the teachers of the stuff which they call by that noble name, to keep it respectable, ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... admirer of Burke's genius in public, has no reason to blush for his character in private; and that when we have listened to his matchless oratory upon the arena of the House of Commons, we have not to mourn over dissipation, impurity, and depravity amid the circles of private history. Our theory, then, is, that beyond what his distinctive genius inspired, Burke's wondrous power of enunciating everlasting principles and of associating the loftiest ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... realizing that she loved him—she followed him out. On her way, she is captured by a bandit band, and trouble begins when she shoots Kells, the leader—and nurses him to health again. Here enters another romance—when Joan, disguised as an outlaw, observes Jim, in the throes of dissipation. A gold strike, a thrilling robbery—gambling and gun play ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... 99 of potatoes. The immediate effect of this facility of supplying the wants of nature is, that the man who can, by labouring two days in the week, maintain himself and family, will devote the remaining five to idleness or dissipation. The same regions that produce the banana, also yield the two species of manioc, the bitter and the sweet: both of which appear to have been cultivated before ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... by individuals.(821) The revolutions in prices in ancient times were produced as frequently by the sudden opening of such reservoirs, as by the discovery of richer sources. Thus, for instance, such events as the dissipation of Pericles' treasures, the subsidies of the Persian kings, the spoliation of many temples in consequence of declining religiousness, the distribution of Persian treasures by Alexander the Great,(822) had a vast influence on the undeniable rise in the price of Greek commodities ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... yet witnessed. John Clare had not been many weeks in his new place, before he found that his master, the head-gardener, was but a low, foul-mouthed drunkard, while his fellow-apprentices and the other workmen sought pride in rivalling their chief in intemperance and dissipation. It was the custom at Burghley Park to lock up all the workmen and apprentices employed under the head-gardener during the night, to prevent them robbing the orchards. The men did not much relish ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... year that he remained in college, he passed a life of idleness, negligence, and, in some measure, of dissipation. He applied himself but little to his studies, and was in the constant pursuit of pleasure. He graduated, however, when only sixteen years of age, with a reputation for talents, and receiving the highest academic honours ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... favoritism and special interest legislation, Henry, who had developed a thriving legal trade representing creditors against debtors, knew whereof he spoke when he exclaimed, "What, sir, is it proposed then to reclaim the spendthrift from his dissipation and extravagance, by filling his pockets with money?" Robinson had the votes and carried the house, but lost in the council whose members disliked all public finance schemes. Chief opponent was Richard Corbin, wealthy, receiver-general of royal ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... necessaries to bestow them on her orphan boy. That boy, unmindful of her prayers, and forgetful of the sufferings she had endured for him—incessant anxiety of mind, and voluntary starvation of body—had plunged into a career of dissipation and crime. And this was the result; his own death by the hangman's hands, and his mother's shame, and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... associate with persons of grave character and decorous manners. Is the distracted remnant of the Party, now surviving, improved in that respect? The dazzling talents with which it was once distinguished have passed away; pleasure and dissipation are no longer, in that quarter, exhibited to the world in such reconcilement with business as excited dispositions to forgive what could not be approved, and a species of wonder, not sufficiently kept apart from envy, at the extraordinary gifts and powers by which the union was accomplished. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... ask our readers to shift the scene—if they don't mind doing this for us—to the apartments of the Earl of Wynchgate in St. James's Close. The hour is nine o'clock in the evening, and the picture before us is one of revelry and dissipation so characteristic of the nobility of England. The atmosphere of the room is thick with blue Havana smoke such as is used by the nobility, while on the green baize table a litter of counters and cards, in which aces, kings, and even two ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... of dark, intense eyes, that seemed to burn in their sockets. Their owner was a gentleman, who appeared about forty years of age, of a very striking figure, and features originally handsome, but wearing the unmistakable stamp of dissipation. I blushed at his bold and steadfast scrutiny, and drew involuntarily nearer to Ernest. Ernest observed his undaunted stare, and his brows contracted over his flashing eyes. The gentleman, perceiving this, turned towards the stage, and seemed absorbed in admiration ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... practice decency; that he should be clean and straight, honest and truthful, gentle and tender, as well as brave. If he can once get to a proper understanding of things, he will have a far more hearty contempt for the boy who has begun a course of feeble dissipation, or who is untruthful, or mean, or dishonest, or cruel, than this boy and his fellows can possibly, in return, feel for him. The very fact that the boy should be manly and able to hold his own, that he should be ashamed to submit to bullying without instant retaliation, should, in return, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... what can you know of the physiology of dissipation? I tell you that young man is dissipated. I saw him playing ecarte with a Frenchman just before we left Madame Caballero's; and, unless I am profoundly mistaken, the man is ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... confer the property it is only by the destruction or dissipation of organic or other matter which had previously soiled the plate ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... dissipation of a life which hindered her from ever being alone with her God. Bewildered by the gossip and ashamed of wearing clothes that were offensive to her, compelled to steal away before daylight, disguised as a waiting-woman, to pray in a deserted church far from all this turmoil, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... fellow!" said Mme. Couture, putting back Eugene's hair that had fallen over his eyes; "he is like a young girl, he does not know what dissipation is." ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... cities of the cantons, debauchery and dissipation were rife. There was much division between citizens and councillors; envy and distrust between the different professions. The lords, when once seated in the great and small councils—legislative and executive—cared more for themselves and their families than for the welfare of the citizens; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... "storm and stress" will be briefer and less severe than it would be otherwise; but if the negative training has prevailed, there is less hope that the storm will be weathered. The youth may be caught in the stream of dissipation and whirled to destruction. At the very least, the parent must expect fitful and obstinate behavior, and unreasonable action. In boys, the beginning of the use of tobacco and liquor usually comes at this time. This is the ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... that it may be worth while saying something about them. In the first place, it must have been deadly dull for the inhabitants, for nothing whatever happened there. Even the familiar "tea and tennis," the stereotyped mild dissipation of little English towns, was quite unknown. There was no entertaining of any sort, beyond the formal visits the ladies were perpetually paying each other. The Ducros alone, occasionally, asking their legal ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... there was an additional shock that this was Alison's brother and Eldon Parr's son. Not that his appearance was shocking, although the well-clad, athletic figure was growing a trifle heavy, and the light from the side lamps of the car revealed dissipation in a still handsome face. The effect was a subtler one, not to be analyzed, and due to a multitude ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 'never did the full realization of what I am, come so plainly before me, as when this villian so cooly told me of his plans. I drove him from my presence as I would a dog.' This shows that Molly's race pride is not entirely blunted by dissipation and unholy living. I counsel you all ere you depart, to remember that we are at the mercy of the whites, and each one of us should do all in our power to show our men the wisdom of coolness. By this, ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... different points about the room. In the center stood Mott, a lusty sophomore whom he had frequently seen and whose general bearing he had intensely disliked, for his face bore the unmistakable traces of dissipation and his bearing was that of a rowdy. The fact that Mott had secured a high position among the college athletes had in a measure made amends for his low tendencies of life in the eyes of his thoughtless mates, but though he was by nature somewhat of a leader still his personal popularity ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... disturbed by the discovery he had made, for he had no suspicion before that any of his pupils had made so much progress in vice. He knew what a terrible evil gambling was among men; that it was the forerunner of dissipation and crime; and he felt the responsibility which rested upon him as a guardian and instructor ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... gentlemanly young follow of University education, who had been a writer of fiction, and once acted as secretary to a gentleman who travelled on the Continent and in the East. Losing his employment, he took to a life of dissipation, became ill, and sank to the very bottom. He informed me that his ideals and outlook on life were now totally changed. I have every hope that he will do well in the future, as his abilities are evidently considerable, and Nature has favoured him ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... bowed and shrunken look of an invalid, and from time to time he coughed terribly, the ominous cough of a person with lungs half consumed by tubercle. He had not the air of a man who gambles for pleasure; nor, I thought, that of a spendthrift or a "ne'er-do-weel;" disease, not dissipation, had hollowed his cheeks and set his hands trembling, and the unnatural light in his eyes was born of fever rather than of greed. He played anxiously but not excitedly, seldom venturing on a heavy stake, and watching the game with an intentness which no incident ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... all her property to an idle cousin, whom it will but accelerate in his downward course of idleness and dissipation. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... his chambers every day, and on Sundays could do the round of the parks on foot. Twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, he dined at that old law club, the Eldon, and played whist after dinner till twelve o'clock. This was the great dissipation and, I think, the chief charm of his life. In the middle of August he and his daughter usually went for a month to Wharton Hall in Herefordshire, the seat of his cousin Sir Alured Wharton;—and this was the one duty of his life which was a ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... covering his lawn, overflowing into the yards of his neighbours, dense, crowding the better to see, all-surrounding, was a solid zone of motley humanity. Old men with weather-beaten faces and untrimmed beards were there, young men with the marks that dissipation and passion indelibly stamp, awkward, gawky youths unconsciously aping their elders, smooth-faced youngsters in outgrown garments; all ages and conditions of the human frontier male were there—but in that zone not a single woman. Ranchers there were ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... among the Greeks, the most refined people that cultivated hero-worship, Hercules was the sun, and the mythologic fable of his destroying with his arrows the many-headed hydra of the Lernaean marshes was but an allegory to denote the dissipation of paludal malaria by the purifying rays of the orb of day. Among the Egyptians, too, the chief deity, Osiris, was but another name for the sun, while his arch-enemy and destroyer, Typhon, was the typification of night, or darkness. And ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... Dr Bewley's pupils were greatly exercised about the trouble that hung like a cloud over the school; and in its dissipation Glyn Severn and Singh had a good deal to do, while, oddly enough, Wrench's ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... cried he, with a jocular simulation of disquiet. "You should not have told me that, till I had finished my cup. Now I shall feel that I am sharing a dissipation with our spoliators." ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... pioneer of Teuton Kultur in Roumania can hardly be exaggerated. An upright ruler, who discharged his duties conscientiously, the King reckoned among these the dissipation of native gloom by means of German light. And during his long reign he succeeded in spreading a network of German economic interests throughout his realm which, while raising the material level of the nation, has reduced ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... he seized Yoshitsugu, threw him into prison, and ultimately caused him to be killed. With the blood of his younger brother on his hands he abdicated in favour of his own sixteen-year-old son, Yoshikazu. But the latter died—some historians say that dissipation destroyed him—in two years, and having no second son to succeed, Yoshimochi himself resumed the office of shogun, holding it until ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... now, but the crooked scar had not faded with time. In a coffin his would be the face of an old man. Alive, it was so colorless and uninteresting in expression that not one person in a hundred would turn to take a second look at him nor dream of the orgies of dissipation his years could recount. Withal, he had the shabby, run-down appearance as of a man in hard ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... larger number of writers of the better sort, in the line we are talking of: they go into society as they go to galleries, not to copy pictures, but to enjoy them. They enter into the amusements and dissipation of their class, not to look on merely, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... require desperate remedies. Well, Ma told Pa he looked awfully bloated, and that his dissipation was killing him, as well as all the rest of the family. Pa said he guessed he wasn't bloated very much, but he got up and put on his spectacles and looked at himself in the glass. You'd a dide to see him look at himself. His face looked as big as two faces, through the glass, and his nose ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... never very large, had been shattered by early dissipation. Naturally of a proud and somewhat exacting temper, he actively felt the mortifying consequences of his poverty. The want of what he felt ought to have been his position and influence in the county ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... like, sir. We sha'n't be able to show you anything very wild in the way of dissipation. Vintage port and a decent cigar are the only changes we can ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to his heart. He had grown handsomer, indeed, than ever; but the wild eye, the haggard brow, and the deep lines about his mouth spoke of days spent in fierce excitement—nights passed in reckless dissipation. He had never forgotten Lucy through it all, but even her image only goaded him to fresh extravagances—anything to deaden the sting of remembrance—anything to efface the maddening past. So Cousin Edward too became a Jacobite; and was ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... contained in the sacred writings of his country; and his ministrations were being received with that beautiful seriousness which is so characteristic of the town. In Boston there are many persons whose chief object in life seems to be the discovery of novel forms of spiritual dissipation. The cycle of mystic hymns which the Persian was expounding to the select circle of devotees assembled at Mrs. Gore's was full of the most sensual images, under which the inspired Persian psalmists had concealed the highest truth. ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... like all those other little villages which solicit without obtaining it a branch of the railway; just as if it were not the sole dissipation of the natives to go every day, at the same hour, to the Place de la Fontaine to see the diligence come in at full gallop, with its gay cracking of the ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... opportunities of wild freedom, their record of used-up relatives, parents, clever, eager, fair, slim brothers—these the most loved—all engaged, as well as successive superseded guardians, in a high extravagance of speculation and dissipation that had left this exquisite being her black dress, her white face and her vivid hair as the mere last broken link: such a picture quite threw into the shade the brief biography, however sketchily amplified, of a mere middle-class nobody in Bayswater. And though that ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... the direction indicated, and observed a person whom I supposed to be twenty-five years of age, and whose face bore the marks of dissipation. I signified, by a single word, that I saw the individual ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... lively suspicion how matters stood, and knew that Stephanie also suspected; but he only said, carelessly: "It's probably dissipation. You know what a terrible pace he's been going ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... frequent pious reading and consideration oppose a strong fence to its waves. The more deeply a person is immersed in its tumultuous cares, so much the greater ought to be his solicitude to find leisure to breathe, after the fatigues and dissipation of business and company; to plunge his heart, by secret prayer, in the ocean of the divine immensity, and, by pious reading, to afford his soul some spiritual refection; as the wearied husbandman, returning from his labor, recruits his spent ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... that this young man of twenty could lie without a blush and with the air of perfect candor. When dissipation dragged him into the mire of debt, and his allowance would not help him out, he resorted again to the most ingenious devices of falsehood. He pretended that the money wasted in riotous living had been stolen by ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... than they are able to perform in marriage," said my lady, with a sigh. "I fear he has lost large sums; and our property, always small, is dwindling away under this reckless dissipation. I heard of him in London with very wild company. Since his return, letters and lawyers are constantly coming and going: he seems to me to have a constant anxiety, though he hides it under boisterousness and laughter. I looked through—through the door last night, and—and before," ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... the Cabinet into fourteen departments and held the Minister at the head of each department responsible. He converted the Army and Navy (who were eating up the hard-earned wages of the working men and women of our land in idleness and dissipation), into a great industrial army and assigned them to work under the different departments as they were required, weeding out the worthless and reducing to the ranks all officers that conducted themselves in a manner unbecoming a gentleman and by election of officers giving every ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans
... as they would go to London or to Paris, to seek the dissipation of a great city; and if they dared confess they were bored at Rome, I believe the greater part would confess it; but it is equally true that here may be found a charm that never tires. Will you pardon me, my lord, a wish that this charm were ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... cause, and dissipation, That is clear — Maybe friend or kind relation Cause of beer. And the talking fool, who never Reads or thinks, Says, from hearsay: 'Yes, he's clever; ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... at the end of her tether. Nothing short of the Astrarium could set her on her legs again. She had no choice; it was either that or an absolute come-down: the nautch-girl on the bike, at Earl's Court, or else nights of dissipation, champagne and diamonds, like Poland; and Lily, like her Pa in the old days, clenched her fists and gnawed her lip as she went off to the Three Graces, who had their engagement and who would be able to give her ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... stand the great fight, of which a sublime tranquillity, produced by conviction, is the prize. Truth and error had not yet been interwoven with your interests. Your enjoyments and virtues were independent of both. You required no images of terror to tear you from low dissipation. The feeling for nobler joys had made these odious to you. You were good from instinct and from unconsecrated moral grace. I had nothing to fear for your morality, if a building crumbled down on which it was not founded. Nor do your anxieties alarm me, though you may conjure up many dark ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... good—he was great! How could she ever have dreamt of setting up her will against his wisdom, her ignorance against his knowledge, her fancies against his perfect taste? Had she really once loved London and late hours and dissipation? She who now was only happy in the country, she who jumped out of bed every morning—oh, so early!—with Albert, to take a walk, before breakfast, with Albert alone! How wonderful it was to be taught by him! To be told by him which trees were which; ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... cordiality as he came up, and at once proposed a drink. Sargeant was a sleek, well-groomed, well-looking fellow of thirty, just beginning to show the effects of a certain amount of dissipation in the little puffs under the eyes and the faint blueness of the temples. The sudden death of his father for which event Sargeant was still mourning, had left him in such position that his monthly income was about five times as large as Condy's ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... God by his action. Jasko of Olesnica sent me with a letter to Prince Witold, when Prince Henryk, elect of Plock, was sent by the king to Ryterswerder. At that time, Witold was tired of the war, because he could not capture Wilno, and our king was tired of his own brothers and their dissipation. The king having noticed that Witold was shrewder and more intelligent than his own brothers, sent the bishop to him, to persuade him to leave the Knights of the Cross, and return to his allegiance, for which he promised to make him ruler over Litwa. Witold, always fond of changing, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... clerk, a mere boy with pallid cheeks and heavy eyes bespeaking dissipation, reclined on a couch behind the rough counter, reading a Denver paper. He was alone in the room, excepting a drunken man noisily slumbering in an arm-chair behind the stove. Miss Norvell, clasping her skirts tightly, picked her way forward across the littered ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... began to distinguish in the squalor of the faces that surrounded him the separate causes of their malady—to know drink from disease, dissipation from destitution, the drug-habit from hunger. Complexion and facial expression stood more than dress as an indication of trade, habit, and environment; from physiognomy he began to learn history, and from Monday's streets a commentary on the linked sweetness long drawn out of ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... a few illustrations of this resultless restlessness, this dissipation of the youthful forces, to which I have alluded; but there is one phase of my experience here which goes further to prove its prevalence and baneful effects than a thousand instances derived from my knowledge of boys in school or in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... to him when I became a militant suffragist. It was blow enough to his nephew, Sir Archibald, my late husband. The Earl maintains that it hastened poor Archibald's death. But that is ridiculous. Archibald had undermined his constitution with dissipation, and died following an operation for gravel. He was to have succeeded to the title, as both of the Earl's legitimate sons were dead without issue—one of them perished in the Boer War, and the other was killed in the ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... father, a friend and protector. Washington expressed a desire in this letter, that he should become a member of the university in Cambridge, if qualified for admission, where he would be under the inspection and tuition of excellent men; for he was aware that want of employment would lead to dissipation; and that the season of youth was to be diligently improved for the cultivation of the mind. He desired Mr. C. to call on him to meet any expenses which might accrue in his education and support. The French ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... is almost universal in this country, and, though friendly and sociable in its way, is the fruitful source of much dissipation. It is almost impossible, in travelling, to steer clear of this evil habit. Strangers are almost invariably drawn into it in ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... weird beauty which owed nothing of its fascinations to the ordinary charms of delicate outlines and dainty coloring. Her features were small and attenuated, and her complexion was of a sallow paleness, whose lack of freshness seemed caused by dissipation and late hours or by the ravages of illness. Heavy masses of soft silken hair, black as midnight, with bluish reflections on its lustrous waves (bleu a force d'etre noir, as Alexandre Dumas describes such tresses), ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... the door of her shop. "But I've been thinking about comedy. You know my new one I'm writing—of course it's a big, vital theme, all about a heartless wife with her mind wholly on society and bridge clubs and dancing and that sort of dissipation, and her husband is Hubert Glendenning, a studious young lawyer who doesn't like to go out evenings but would rather play with the kiddies a bit after their mother has gone to a party, or read over some legal documents in the library, which is very beautifully furnished; and her old ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... which would not be seemly in your place. The king loving you, his ministers must needs respect you; by asking nothing that is not right and proper, you make yourself respected and loved at the same time. I fear nothing in your case (as you are so young) but too much dissipation. You never did like reading, or any sort of application: this has often caused me anxieties. I was so pleased to see you devoted to music; that is why I have often plagued you with questions about your reading. For more than a year past there has no longer been any question of reading or ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... attractive and interesting. But with them as with all aboriginal people who have absorbed the vices and none of the virtues of the whites, the Washoes are fast losing power, vigor and strength by disease and dissipation. The smoke of the campoodie fire is also ruinous to their eyes and ophthalmia is prevalent among them. It is no uncommon thing to see a man ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... belonged to one of the first families of Normandy. His appointment to be Presiding Judge would have been the stepping-stone to a peer's seat; whence this strange lack of ambition? Why had he given up his great book on Law? What was the meaning of the dissipation which for nearly six years had made him a stranger to his home, his family, his study, to all he ought to hold dear? The Countess' confessor, who based his hopes of a bishopric quite as much on the families he governed as on the ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... Perier in 1760. Their fortune resembled many others of that period: it was more nominal than actual, more showy than solid. Not that the husband and wife had any cause for self-reproach, or that their estates had suffered from dissipation; unstained by the corrupt manners of the period, their union had been a model of sincere affection, of domestic virtue and mutual confidence. Marie-Francoise was quite beautiful enough to have made a sensation in society, but she renounced it of her own accord, in order to devote herself to the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... acquired to make old age supportable." That forcible power of genuine feeling, which directs the tongue to eloquence, had its effect while she listened to him, and she sometimes put on the looks and gesture of assent—sometimes even spoke the language of conviction; but this the first call of dissipation would change to ill-timed raillery, or peevish remonstrance, at being limited in delights her birth and ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... minuteness of a sensitized plate. Ironic chance had chosen an unpropitious night for his call. Intoxication surrounding a bar, under the stimulus of numbers, and preceding or following some exciting event, he could understand, could, perhaps, condone; but this solitary dissipation, drunkenness for its own sake, was something new to him. The observing eyes fastened themselves ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... my fetters; I had not to learn that liberty was desirable, but how to obtain it, and what use to make of it. All the disorder through which I have gone was a struggle towards self-knowledge and understanding of my time. You and others are wildly in error in calling it dissipation, profligacy, recklessness, and so on. You at least, Miriam, ought to have judged me more truly; you, at all events, should not have classed ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... without mercy. Isabella, unceasingly urged to this excursion, at length set out for the city of Winchester, followed by a numerous train of attendants, where, in due time, they arrived, mingling in the bustle and dissipation ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... great numbers besides were injured. Rumours reached England of the dissatisfaction expressed by Sir Charles Napier with many things connected with the native armies in India. The extravagance and dissipation of the officers, and the constitution generally of the army of the Bengal Presidency, were named as the subjects of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... seemed. MacQueen celebrated by frequent trips to his sleeping quarters, where each time he resorted to a bottle and a glass. No man had ever seen him intoxicated, but there were times when he drank a good deal for a few days at a stretch. His dissipation would be followed by months of ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... supplications which saved him and dishonoured him. From that moment, he never knew peace of mind. His temper became perverse; and his understanding was perverted by his temper. He tried to find relief in devotion and in revenge, in fashionable dissipation and in political turmoil. But the dark shade never passed away from his mind, till, in the twelfth year of his humiliation, his unhappy life was terminated ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... California is especially kind to childhood and old age. Men live longer there, and, if unwasted by dissipation, strength of body is better conserved. To children the conditions of life are particularly favorable. California could have no better advertisement at some world's fair than a visible demonstration of this fact. A series of measurements of the children of Oakland ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan
... aesthetic in him, through her hold on his material nature, his vanity, his luxuriousness. She is one of the young women who begin timidly, and when they see that they enjoy comparative impunity, grow intrepid in dissipation, and that palling, they are ravenously ambitious. She will drive him at his mark before the time is ripe—ruin-him. He is a Titan, not a god, though god-like he seems in comparison with men. He would be fleshly enough ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of health did not trouble me. I was young and strong, and my constitution quickly threw off the effects of my dissipation. Then, gradually, I began to feel worse. I was losing my grip. I found a difficulty in concentrating my attention on my work. I had dizzy spells. I became nervous and distrait. Eventually I went to a doctor. He examined me thoroughly, and ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... quickly as Floretta mentioned the name of the popular young actress. Stella Larue was a pretty girl on whom the wild dissipation of the night life of New York was just beginning to show its effects. The name of Warrington, too, recalled to Constance instantly some gossip she had heard in Wall Street about the disagreement in the board of directors of the new Rubber Syndicate and the effort to oust the ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... anecdote of Christopher Schwarts, a famous German painter, which, if true, redounds more to his ingenuity than to his credit. Having been engaged to paint the ceiling of the Town Hall at Munich by the day, his love of dissipation induced him to neglect his work, so that the magistrates and overseers of the work were frequently obliged to hunt him out at the cabaret. As he could no longer drink in quiet, he stuffed an image of himself, left the legs hanging down between the staging where he was accustomed to work, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... between school hours, are spent in frequent change of dress, and his afternoons in a lounge a la Bond-street, annoying the modest females and tradesmen's daughters of Eton; his evenings (after absence{1} is called) at home, in solitary dissipation over his box of liqueurs, or in making others uncomfortable by his rudeness and overbearing dictation. He is disliked by the dame, detested by the servants, and shunned by his schoolfellows, and yet he is our captain, a Sextile, a Roue, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... proportioned man, with deep chest, great breadth of shoulders, and strong individual face, yet bearing unmistakable signs of dissipation, together with numerous marks of ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... sure, for to me there was something equivocal in his air and bearing. He might have been, I thought, the son of some good family who had fallen early into dissipation and run from home. But, making every allowance, how admirable was his talk! I wish you could have heard him tell his own stories. They were so swingingly set forth, in such dramatic language, and illustrated ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dancing attendance on a notorious Phryne or Lais of the day (classical names were still in vogue at that date); the Peace of Tilsit had only just been concluded and all the world was hurrying after pleasure, in a giddy whirl of dissipation, and his head had been turned by the black eyes of a bold beauty. He had very little money, but he was lucky at cards, made many acquaintances, took part in all entertainments, in a word, he was ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... true about Amalia having been forced into a marriage with Don Pedro by her family who were in great straits. Don Antonio Sanchiz, the lady's father, was a Valencian gentleman of means, but gambling and dissipation swallowed up three-fourths of his property. His eldest son, who had the same tastes, spent the remaining fourth by the same means. Amalia was the youngest of the family, which consisted of four girls and one boy. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... you a list. Visit them. You will find that liberty can be the father of tyranny. Petty tradesmen have come in and built cottages, and ground the poor down with rents unknown in Islip; farmers have built cottages, and turned their laborers into slaves. Drunkenness, dissipation, poverty, disaffection, and misery—that is what you will find in the open villages. Now, in Islip you have an omnipotent squire, and that is an abomination in theory, a mediaeval monster, a blot on modern civilization; but practically the poor monster is ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... make nothing of it, nor reconcile the two characters in the least. It seemed as if the estate were possessed by a devil,—a foul and melancholy fiend,—who resented the attempted possession of others by subjecting them to himself. One had turned from quiet and sober habits to reckless dissipation; another had turned from the usual gayety of life to recluse habits, and both, apparently, by the same influence; at least, so it appeared to Redclyffe, as he insulated their story from all other circumstances, and looked at them by one light. He even thought that he ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of young men's dissipation—1. Horace's record of his father's advice: 'Concessa,' ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... a very Old Harry in the person of Harry Main, a dark-souled being, who, after a career of piracy, smuggling, blasphemy, and dissipation, became a wrecker, and lured vessels to destruction with false lights. For his crimes he was sent, after death, to do penance on Ipswich bar, where he had sent many a ship ashore, his doom being to twine ropes of sand, though some believe it ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... we will say that, even under the socialist regime—although they will be infinitely fewer—there will always be some who will be vanquished in the struggle for existence—these will be the victims of weakness, of disease, of dissipation, of nervous disorders, of suicide. We may then affirm that socialism does not deny the Darwinian law of the struggle for existence. Socialism will, however, have this indisputable advantage—the ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... while with the other he twirled his mustache, that was continually quivering with smiles. Chelkash was pleased with his success, with himself, and with this youth, who had been so frightened of him and had been turned into his slave. He had a vision of unstinted dissipation to-morrow, while now he enjoyed the sense of his strength, which had enslaved this young, fresh lad. He watched how he was toiling, and felt sorry for him, wanted to ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... juice in the neck of a dried calabash, and toss off the blood-red wine. With my romantic notions, imbibed from my reading, I always called it the blood-red wine, though it was in reality a rather muddy looking gray-colored liquid with the musky flavor peculiar to wild grapes. This wild dissipation I felt compelled to abandon after I joined a temperance society and wore a tinsel star ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... mother—solicitous about every trifle which affected the training of her child—decided on the books which she was to place in his hands. She wished him to develop his intellectual faculties, but not at the expense of his spiritual; and romantic frivolity and mental dissipation on the one hand, and a too severe repression—dangerous in its after reaction—on the other, were the Scylla and Charybdis between which she had to steer. The ascetic Puritanism of her training and surroundings would naturally have led her ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... are told, was often guilty of procuring it by accepting bribes, and spent it in luxury and dissipation. Coriolanus declined to receive it, even when pressed upon him by his commanders as an honor; and one great reason for the odium he incurred with the populace in the discussions about their debts ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... nervous, invalid wife to count her fingers in solitude; not even waiting till Dolly should be at home again. Are all men like that? Mr. Shubrick, for instance? But what was to be done? If Mr. Copley had found places and means of dissipation in Rome, then Rome was a safe abode for him no longer. Where would be a safe abode? Dolly's heart was bitter in its sorrow for a moment; then she gathered ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... filled (truth to say) by the profits of the Agence Pujol, could contribute but modestly to this reckless expenditure, found himself forced to accept his friend's lavish hospitality. Once or twice, delicately, he suggested withdrawal from the evening's dissipation. ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... therefore, that he with his iron muscles bore the strain better than any of his companions. He seemed to be tireless, and his sturdy strength often put others to shame. He had never sapped his constitution by dissipation; and it may be said that the severe hardships of that journey from Dyea through Chilkoot Pass and the wild regions about the Upper Yukon confirmed that which already existed within his splendid make-up. As for Roswell ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... messenger, seemed to be energetically following the example set them by their over-lord at the head. Count Bertrich's hair was unkempt, his face a purplish red, his eye bloodshot; and his corselet, open at the throat, showed the great bull-neck of the man, on whose gigantic frame constant dissipation seemed to have ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... was an undercurrent of criticism against the dispersion of British forces and dissipation of British energy, and the briefest history of it cannot avoid a certain amount of discursiveness. The reason, if not the justification, is the same in both cases; for happily or unhappily the British Empire is scattered all over the globe, and unless colonies were to be abandoned to enemy attacks ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... put his affairs in order, readily settled his account with M. de Nucingen, who found a worthy German to succeed him, and then determined on a carouse worthy of the palmiest days of the Roman Empire. He plunged into dissipation as recklessly as Belshazzar of old went to that last feast in Babylon. Like Belshazzar, he saw clearly through his revels a gleaming hand that traced his doom in letters of flame, not on the narrow walls ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... will laugh at you for getting the big head and going back on those who are just as good as you are, but who have not yet attained the dignity of wearing shoulder straps. I meet officers every day, who were good soldiers before they were raised from privates, and they show signs of dissipation, and have a hard look, leering at women, and trying to look blase. They try to act as near like foreign noblemen who are officers, as they can, from reading of their antics, but Americans just from farms, workshops, commercial pursuits, and the back ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... have found it impossible to procure a conveyance for Emma before Wednesday, on which day between the hours of 3 and 4 in the afternoon you will see your little friend, with her bloom somewhat impaired by late hours and dissipation, but her gait, gesture, and general manners (I flatter myself) considerably improved by—somebody that shall be nameless. My sister joins me in love to all true Trumpingtonians, not specifying any, to avoid envy; and begs me to assure ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... it is true, somewhat staled her beauty, marred the delicacy of her complexion, and coarsened the naturally elegant curves of her figure; but it is such women who from time immemorial have had the strongest attraction for profligate men. It seems as if dissipation destroyed the power to perceive true beauty, and the man of pleasure must be aroused to admiration by a bold glance and a meaning smile, and will only seek satisfaction along the trail left by vice. Louise-Angelique was admirably ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... without even the semblance of a Government. It is liberty, equality, and swearing. As it is just within the limit of a borough, almost all the cottagers have votes, and are not to be trifled with. The proximity of horse-racing establishments adds to the general atmosphere of dissipation. Betting, card-playing, ferret-breeding and dog-fancying, poaching and politics, are the occupations of the populace. A little illicit badger-baiting is varied by a little vicar-baiting; the mass of the inhabitants are the reddest ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... French-Sheldon has described the marriage-rites she observed at Taveta in East Africa. "During this time the young people dance and carouse and make themselves generally merry and promiscuously drunk, carrying the excess of their dissipation to such an extent that they dance until they fall down in a species of epileptic fit." It is the privilege of the bridegroom's four groomsmen to enjoy the bride first, and she is then handed over to her legitimate husband. This people, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... dissipation. He was very angry with Gerald. It is not the best way, I think, to become angry with either of us—either me or Gerald—because then we are usually inclined to do it again—whatever it is. . . . I do not mean for one moment to be disloyal to Austin; you know ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... stages; though they used the railway, of course, they did so only for a few hours a day, and got out and remained at places of interest. Richard was very amenable, and indeed showed no desire for dissipation; his one weakness—that of having a "spree"—had no opportunity of being gratified; and Maitland wrote home the most gratifying letters, not only respecting the behaviour of his charge, but of the improvement ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... sign of understanding. Jernyngham, stamped with dissipation and injured in a brawl, and his small homestead where everything was in disorder and out of repair, were hardly likely to create a favorable impression on his English relatives. Besides, there was Mrs. Jernyngham. The effect ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... little astonished. She had seen no signs of squalor or dissipation since she entered Canada, and had almost fancied ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... right to call one's self an artist one must add honest work to talent, and he put before me the example of certain actors who had risen to fame, but who were repulsed by society on account of the triviality of their conduct; of others who were brought by dissipation to die in a hospital, blamed by all; and of still others who had fallen so low as to hold out their hands for alms, or to sponge on their comrades and to cozen them out of their money for unmerited subscriptions—all of which things ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... for him, like the rest of his family."[36] Indeed he always spoke of him as his "relative," not as his brother. Here again Scott's severity was due to his brother's failure as a "man of honour," i. e. in courage. He was forbearing enough with vices of a different kind; made John Ballantyne's dissipation the object rather of his jokes than of his indignation; and not only mourned for him, but really grieved for him when he died. It is only fair to say, however, that for this conventional scorn of a weakness rather than a sin, Scott sorrowed sincerely later ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... strove to blot out past memories in the innocent pleasures of my associates, mingling in all the social festivities, dancing with the dark-eyed senoritas and gambling at every fiesta. Yet in the midst of the dissipation, there was ever present to my mind the thought of a girl, likewise living a life of loneliness at the mouth of the ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... no breath is wasted, that every particle of breath, as it comes out, is converted into voice. Dissipation of breath results in uncertainty of voice-production, a branch of the subject which will be taken up in the chapter on "attack." An excellent test for economy of breath is to hold a lighted candle before the mouth ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... nothing for miles but farms and hamlets, while the only near neighbour in the east was a hunting squire, who thought Father Payne kept a sort of boarding-house, and ignored him entirely. The result was that callers were absolutely unknown, and the wildest form of dissipation was that Pollard and Rose occasionally played lawn-tennis ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... really an artist, that one feels it necessary to mention the subject. This idea has evidently arisen from the inability of the average person to associate an unconventional mode of life with anything but riotous dissipation. A conventional life is not the only wholesome form of existence, and is certainly a most unwholesome and deadening form to the artist; and neither is a dissipated life the only unconventional one open to him. It is as well ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... properly washed, dressed, and fed. And now, at the usual hour, they came down, a little hungry, and impatient for the morning meal. But for some time no one joined them. All seemed to be sleeping off the night's dissipation. Bee waited nearly an ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... paper before her, preparing her future work for the press, copying a bit here and a bit there, inventing historical details, dovetailing her chronicle, her head would sometimes seem to be going round as she remembered the unpaid baker, and her son's horses, and his unmeaning dissipation, and all her doubts about the marriage. As regarded herself, Mr Broune would have made her secure,—but that now was all over. Poor woman! This at any rate may be said for her,—that had she accepted the man her regrets would have been ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Louis. All this time my husband was a source of trouble to me, and a burden. Too close occupation with my needle had its effects upon my health, and feeling exhausted with work, I determined to make a change. I had a conversation with Mr. Keckley; informed him that since he persisted in dissipation we must separate; that I was going North, and that I should never live with him again, at least until I had good evidence of his reform. He was rapidly debasing himself, and although I was willing to work for him, I was not willing to share his degradation. Poor ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... into harbor, I found myself in a pensive, half-uncertain mood, which brought with it its own depression. The few sailors who manned my vessel dispersed right and left as soon as they were landed—each to his own favorite haunts of pleasure or dissipation—but I was in no humor to be easily amused. Though I had plenty of acquaintance in the city, I cared little for such entertainment as they could offer me. As I strolled along through one of the principal streets, considering whether or not I should return on ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... allurements," in an altogether strict and monotonous manner. Of course this style of living is no more to be recommended to healthy, hearty, fun-loving girls of fifteen than is its extreme of gayety and indulgence, but it had its effect in those bad old days of dissipation and excess, and the simplicity and soberness of this wise young girl's life in the very midst of so much power and luxury, made even the worst elements in the empire ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... our machines vary from the one thousand, five hundred dollar touring car to the five hundred dollar little fellows; and since they have come, life in Homeburg is twice as interesting. They are our dissipation, our excitement, our amusement, and the focus of our town pride. The Checker Club disbanded last winter because the members got to quarreling over self-starters, and I understand that in the Women's Missionary Societies ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... — N. pleasure; physical pleasure, sensual pleasure, sensuous pleasure; bodily enjoyment, animal gratification, hedonism, sensuality; luxuriousness &c adj.; dissipation, round of pleasure, titillation, gusto, creature comforts, comfort, ease; pillow &c (support) 215; luxury, lap of luxury; purple and fine linen; bed of downs, bed of roses; velvet, clover; cup of Circe &c (intemperance) 954. treat; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... degeneracy of Spain in her new career of wantonness was at least shared by the women. At the court, the king, who was in many ways what might be termed a mystic voluptuary, spent his time in alternate fits of dissipation and devotion, wasted his time in gallantry, and neglected his royal duties; and the all-powerful Lerma was the centre of a world of graft, where the highest offices in the land were bartered for gold, and ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... ran over a very pretty young woman who was coming up the steps. She was rather rustically, but not unbecomingly dressed, and altogether so fresh and rosy that it was a treat to see her after the fine town ladies, even the youngest of whom were beginning to look faded and jaded from the dissipation of the season. But when she opened her mouth in reply to Benson's affable salutation, it was like the girl in the fairy tale dropping toads and adders, so nasal, harsh, and inharmonious was the tone in ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... broke when he danced. Another was Tappingham Marsh, an exceedingly handsome person, somewhat languid in appearance, dainty in manner with women, offhand with men; almost as reckless as Crailey, and often the latter's companion and assistant in dissipation. Young Francis Chenoweth never failed to follow both into whatever they planned; he was short and pink, and the uptilt of his nose was coherent with the appealing earnest-ness which was habitual with him. Eugene Madrillon was the sixth of these ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington |
