"Licentious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Governors. Example of Parents more effectual than their Precepts. Formation of Habits of Self-denial in Early Life. Denying Ourselves to promote the Happiness of Others. Habits of Honesty and Veracity. Habits of Modesty. Delicacy studiously to be cherished. Licentious and Impure Books to be banished. Bulwer a Licentious Writer, ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... of civil war. He charged that the free States "keep up and foster in the bosoms Abolition Societies, whose main purpose is to scatter fire-brands throughout the South, to incite servile insurrections, and stimulate by licentious pictures our negroes to invade the persons of our white women." Mr. Brown, of Mississippi, said he regarded slavery "as a great moral, social and religious blessing,—a blessing to the slave, and a blessing to the master." He graciously admitted that ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... courageous, courteous—according to the fashion of their times—and sensitive on the point of honor. They are far superior to the cold-blooded rakes of Dryden and the Restoration comedy. Still the manners and language in Beaumont and Fletcher's plays are extremely licentious, and it is not hard to sympathize with the objections to the theater expressed by the Puritan writer, William Prynne, who, after denouncing the long hair of the cavaliers in his tract, The {129} Unloveliness ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... 'If the brutil an' licentious soldiery av these parts gets sight av the thruck,' said Mulvaney, making practised investigations, 'they'll loot ev'rything. They're bein' fed on iron-filin's an' dog-biscuit these days, but glory's no compensation for a belly-ache. Praise be, we're here to protect you, sorr. Beer, ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... These could apparently be married, but other members of the priestly order must remain single; while the lay followers lived among their fellows, pursuing their ordinary lives and avocations. The strictness of the Swami on sexual matters was directed against the licentious practices of the Maharaj or Vallabhacharya order. He boldly denounced the irregularities they had introduced into their forms of worship, and exposed the vices which characterised the lives of their clergy. This attitude, as well as the prohibition of the worship of idols, earned ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... to fall again into the hands of the licentious Turks," he said; "remember, rash girl, these ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... to Nova Scotia; they were known by the name of Maroons in the island, and still termed so, on their landing at Halifax. Their story is replete with interest: during their brief stay in Nova Scotia they gave incredible trouble from their lawless and licentious habits, in addition to costing the government no less a sum than ten thousand pounds a year. Their idleness and gross conduct at last determined the government to send them, as the others, to Sierra Leone, which was accordingly done in the year 1803, after having resided at Preston for ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... ghosts that haunted the Abbey, asserting that though she had not seen them, she had heard them quite well, was particularly questioned by Mr. Irving as to the mode of life her young master led. She certified to his sobriety, and positively denied that he had led a licentious life at Newstead with his friends, or brought mistresses ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... looking out to make a bargain. Women, of course, sell better than the men, being fitted to more general purposes. For a good wife any sum might be given. But the saddest sight which came under my observation was the way in which some licentious-looking men began a cool, deliberate inspection of a certain divorced culprit who had been sent back to the market for inconstancy to her husband. She had learnt a sense of decency during her conjugal life, and the blushes on her face now clearly showed how her heart ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... although the London promoters desired a colony to be fixed that would be profitable to themselves, and many of the adventurers, Captain Smith among them, desired a permanent planting, a great majority of those who went thither had only in mind the advantages of trade, the excitement of a free and licentious life, and the adventure of something new and startling. It was long before the movers in it gave up the notion of discovering precious metals or a short way to the South Sea. The troubles the primitive colony endured resulted ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... grace to prize; And, with licentious babble, He blazed the secrets of the skies Through all the human rabble, And fed the greed of tattlers vain With high celestial scandal, And lent to every eager brain And wanton tongue a handle Against the gods. For which great sin, By righteous Jove's command, In ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... the Advocate and the Herald all the venom of outraged public plunder was emptied on the heads of Jeff Farnum and Captain Chunn. They were rebels, blackmailers, and anarchists. Jeff's life was held up to public scorn as dissolute and licentious. He had been expelled from college and consorted only with companions of the lowest sort. A free thinker and an atheist, he wanted to tear down the pillars which upheld society. Unless Verden and the state repudiated him and his gang of trouble ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... in so many temples, there is an opium-room in the temple at the back of the gilded shrine, where priests and neophytes, throwing aside their office, can while away the licentious hours till the gong ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... as to assert that his nurse, who had an excellent situation at Versailles, had communicated to him a nasty disease. The King shewed Madame de Pompadour the information he had procured from the province she came from, as to her conduct. A silly Bishop thought proper to say she had been very licentious in her youth. The poor nurse was told of this, and begged that he might be made to explain himself. The Bishop replied, that she had been at several balls in the town in which she lived, and that she had gone with her neck uncovered. The poor man actually thought ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... the witch. It was with the hosts of evil that she was now believed to have her dealings, however. When this notion of the alliance between demons and women had become a commonplace, "the whole tradition was directed against woman as the Devil's instrument, basely seductive, passionate and licentious by nature."[24] Man's fear of woman found a frantic and absurd expression in her supposed devil-worship. As a result, the superstitions about witchcraft became for centuries not only a craze, but a theory held by ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... been, they were in both respects superior to the music of the church." The Troubadours flourished from the middle of the twelfth century till the latter end of the fourteenth century, when their dissolute and licentious habits caused them to be universally banished and proscribed. During the barbarism of these times, not only had the arts themselves been lost, but even the principles on which they rest had been forgotten. Italy, indeed, possessed many ancient marbles, but they seemed to have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... honour of the former, and of the virtue of the latter; therefore, as long as she lived, her court was renowned for purity and politeness, noble and refined gallantry, and was never allowed to degenerate into imprudent amusements or licentious and culpable intrigues. ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... and flatter Michelangelo, he sought occasion to damage his reputation. Thus we find him writing in January 1546 to the engraver Enea Vico, bestowing high praise upon a copper-plate which a certain Bazzacco had made from the Last Judgment, but criticising the picture as "licentious and likely to cause scandal with the Lutherans, by reason of its immodest exposure of the nakedness of persons of both sexes in heaven and hell." It is not clear what Aretino expected from Enea Vico. A reference to the Duke of Florence seems to indicate ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... my brother; and relying upon the countenance and blind affection shown him by the King, had leagued himself with Quelus, Saint-Luc, Saint-Maigrin, Grammont, Mauleon, Hivarrot, and other young men who enjoyed the King's favour. As those who are favourites find a number of followers at Court, these licentious young courtiers thought they might do whatever they pleased. Some new dispute betwixt them and Bussi was constantly starting. Bussi had a degree of courage which knew not how to give way to any one; and my brother, unwilling to give umbrage to the King, and foreseeing that such proceedings would ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Antoinette, used passionately to exclaim)—que de choses dans un minuet! What worlds of modest dignity—of alternate amenity and scorn! The minuet has all the tender coquetry of the bolero, divested of its licentious fervour. With the minuet and the hoop, indeed, disappeared that powerful circumvallation of female virtue, rendering superfluous the annual publication of a dozen codes of ethics, addressed to the "wives of England" and their daughters. All was comprehended ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... prompts the partial praise) "Unknown he liv'd, unenvied, not unblest; Reason his guide, and Happiness his guest. In the clear mirror of his moral page, We trace the manners of a purer age. His soul, with thirst of genuine glory fraught, Scorn'd the false lustre of licentious thought. —One fair asylum from the world he knew, One chosen seat, that charms with various view! Who boasts of more (believe the serious strain) Sighs for a home, and sighs, alas! in vain. Thro' each ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... the very look of the scorpion deters you from handling it, though you never saw a scorpion before, so the very first line in some ribald profanity on which the tinker put his black finger made Lenny's blood run cold. Safe, too, was the peasant boy from any temptation in works of a gross and licentious nature, not only because of the happy ignorance of his rural life, but because of a more enduring safeguard,—genius! Genius, that, manly, robust, healthful as it be, is long before it lose its instinctive Dorian modesty; shamefaced, because so susceptible to glory,—genius, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Catholic Priest. Meanwhile, he did add considerably to his Droll Tales, the first series of which appeared in the same twelve months as Eugenie Grandet. These stories —in the style of Boccaccio, and of some of Chaucer's writing—broad, racy, and somewhat licentious, albeit containing nothing radically obscene, were meant to illustrate the history of the French language and French manners from olden to modern days. Only part of the project was realized. They are told with wit and humour that are nowhere present to the same degree ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... sacrifices honor God, nor the multitude of offerings glorify God, but the godlike mind well governed enters into union with God. For like is of necessity joined to like. But the victims of the senseless crowd are food for the flames, and their offerings are the supplies for a licentious life to the plunderers of temples. But, as I have said to thee, let the mind within thee be the temple of God. This must be tended and adorned to become a fit ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... to cultivate a love for literature. "The very women and maidens aspired to this praise and celestial manna of good learning," said Rabelais. But their reading was mainly limited to his own unsavory satires, to Spanish pastorals, licentious poems, and their books of devotion. It was on such a foundation that Mme. De Rambouillet began to rear the social structure upon which her reputation rests. She was eminently fitted for this role by her pure character and fine intelligence; but ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... down elect brethren in another world to-morrow.' As he said this, he brandished his rapier, exciting Dalcastle to offence. He gained his point. The latter, who had previously drawn, advanced upon his vapouring and licentious antagonist, and a fierce combat ensued. My companion was delighted beyond measure, and I could not keep him from exclaiming, loud enough to have been heard, 'That's grand! That's excellent!' For me, my heart quaked like an aspen. ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... discountenanced, and a sodden rule of ignorant craft and vulgarity was settled upon the nation. Those at the helm were clever demagogues who were prepared to humor the people, provided they had the control of the public funds wherewith to indulge their licentious tastes. President Bagshaw had converted Buckingham Palace into a barracks, where he sat day in, day out, with boon companions. Entrance was forbidden to none. The dirtiest scavenger might there at any moment shake the hand ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... the theater leads one into bad company. As a class, the performers are licentious. How can one be in their company, be moved to laughter and to tears and not be contaminated by them? One who has studied the theater tells us that the "fruits of the Spirit and the fruits of the stage exhibit as pointed a contrast as the human imagination ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... scribblers of this age. As Lord Chamberlain, I know, you are absolute by your office in all that belongs to the decency and good manners of the stage. You can banish from thence scurrility and profaneness, and restrain the licentious insolence of poets and their actors in all things that shock the public quiet, or the reputation of private persons, under the notion of humour. But I mean not the authority which is annexed to your office, I speak of that only which is inborn ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... 1792 the feet of the deserted Cesar were well-toughened to the pavements, his shoulders to the bales, and his mind to what he called the "humbugs" of Paris. So when Ursula abandoned him he was speedily consoled, for she had realized none of his instinctive ideas in relation to sentiment. Licentious and surly, wheedling and pilfering, selfish and a tippler, she clashed with the simple nature of Birotteau without offering him any compensating perspective. Sometimes the poor lad felt with pain that he was bound by ties that are ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... him the name of the "good" duke—an appellation to which the shady labyrinth of his career as a politician, as a persecutor of the Lollards, and as a licentious man, did not entitle him. But then Oxford—and its library—was most in need of such a friend as this English Gismondo Malatesta; not only on account of his generosity, but because his royal connexions enabled ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... to draw a sword for the common defence. At this period, the Counts of Flanders, of Holland, and other Netherland sovereigns, issued decrees, forbidding clerical institutions from acquiring property, by devise, gift, purchase, or any other mode. The downfall of the rapacious and licentious knights-templar in the provinces and throughout Europe, was another severe blow administered at the same time. The attacks upon Church abuses redoubled in boldness, as its authority declined. Towards the end of the fourteenth century, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of sixteen men and women with the five sons of Max and the women with whom they lived. In this group there was not a strain of industry, virtue, or scholarship. They were licentious, ignorant, profane, lacking ambition to keep them out of poverty and crime. They drifted into whatever it was easiest to do or to be. Midday and midnight, heaven and its opposite, present no sharper contrasts ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... force, they should surely separate. I had much rather see such bonds severed than to witness the soul-harrowing sight I do every day of my life-parties fearing public opinion, and dragging each other down, living false and licentious lives-" ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... we defy: "Lord, Madam! 'tis so unpolite to cry!— For shame, my dear! d'ye credit all this stuff?— I vow—well, this is innocent enough?" At Athens long ago, the Ladies—(married) 225 Dreamt not they misbehav'd tho' they miscarried, When a wild poet with licentious rage Turn'd fifty ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... this young man, whose only fault appears to have been that captivating the eyes of a noble lady, should perish in a dungeon, or save his life at the sacrifice of country, friends, connections; and all this for having listened to the passion of a woman, as licentious in manners as illustrious by birth: this frightful injustice rouses all my indignation. Well, then, since the power of the monarch of France is insufficient to protect his oppressed subject in his own realms, let him shield him ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... fables, that he first impressed a wide circle of his contemporaries with the fact of his mighty genius. The perfect sweetness of the verse, and the poetical imagery in 'Venus and Adonis' and 'Lucrece' practically silenced censure of the licentious treatment of the themes on the part of the seriously minded. Critics vied with each other in the exuberance of the eulogies in which they proclaimed that the fortunate author had gained a place in ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... or stranger soldiers who inhabit Damascus live in a most licentious manner. They are all men who have forsaken the Christian faith, and who have been purchased as slaves by the governor of Syria. Being brought up both in learning and warlike discipline, they are very active and brave; and all of them whether ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... pleasures, into a day of religious sacrifice. So actually on Shrove Tuesday a considerable number of boys were collected in front of the cathedral, and there divided into bands, which traversed the whole town, making a house-to-house visitation, claiming all profane books, licentious paintings, lutes, harps, cards and dice, cosmetics and perfumes—in a word, all the hundreds of products of a corrupt society and civilisation, by the aid of which Satan at times makes victorious war on God. The inhabitants ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... he from arrogant Vardanes? That haughty Prince eyes with a stern contempt All other Mortals, and with lofty mien He treads the earth as tho' he were a God. Nay, I believe that his ambitious soul, Had it but pow'r to its licentious wishes, Would dare dispute with Jove the rule of heav'n; Like a Titanian son with giant insolence, Match with the Gods, and wage immortal war, 'Til their red wrath should hurl him headlong down, E'en to destruction's ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... come to recognize that the drunkards and licentious among white men, with whom he too frequently came in contact, were condemned by the white man's religion as well, and must not be held to discredit it. But it was not so easy to overlook or to excuse national bad faith. When distinguished emissaries from the ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... Clepsydra, a spring Clisthenes, a debauchee —an effeminate —an ill-famed orator —a low personage Clitagoras, song writer Clopidian, meaning of Cock-fighting, allusion to Coesyra, wife of Alcmaeon Collar (iron) for torturing Connas, a poet Copper-coins Cordax (the), licentious dance Corinth, nickname of —mentioned Corinthians, allies of Sparta Corybantes, priests Cottabos, a favourite game Country-home, ousted from Crab, nickname of Corinth Cranaus, citadel of —the King Crates, a comic poet, character ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... sat round the table, who were all dressed in an uniform, and had all an expression, more or less, of wild fierceness, of subtle design, or of licentious passions. As Emily timidly surveyed them, she remembered the scene of the preceding morning, and again almost fancied herself surrounded by banditti; then, looking back to the tranquillity of her ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... and blessings representing the highest attainable degree of honor and virtue, whilst any criticism of or revolt against them is savagely persecuted as the extremity of vice. The revolt, driven under ground and exacerbated, produces debauchery veiled by hypocrisy, an overwhelming demand for licentious theatrical entertainments which no censorship can stem, and, worst of all, a confusion of virtue with the mere morality that steals its name until the real thing is loathed because the imposture is loathsome. Literary traditions spring up in which ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... become more difficult, every year it is more manifest that we need to have more knowledge and to get it soon, in order to escape, on the one hand, from the cruelty and waste of irresponsible competition and the licentious use of wealth, and, on the other, from the tyranny and the spiritual death ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... consideration which caused our voluntary removal to this country, and the object which we still regard with the deepest concern, is liberty—liberty, in the sober, simple, but complete sense of the word:—not a licentious liberty—nor a liberty without government—or which should place us without the restraint of salutary laws. But that liberty of speech, action, and conscience, which distinguished the free, enfranchised citizens of a free state. We did not enjoy that freedom ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... common to shopkeepers and mechanics; while the literary stores of a lady of the manor were confined chiefly to the prayer-book and the receipt-book. And those works which were produced or read were disgraced by licentious ribaldry, which had succeeded religious austerity. The drama was the only department of literature which compensated authors, and this was scandalous in the extreme. We cannot turn over the pages of one of the popular dramatists of the age without ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... he—"overcame their enemies and established their liberty, by no other power, than that of God. For this end they never slew Christian people for pay, but fought for freedom alone, that their persons, lives, women, children might not be so painfully subject to a licentious nobility. Therefore has God multiplied to them on all sides victory, honor and fortune, so surely, that no lord has ever conquered them, though never so strong; which, without doubt, is not to be attributed to human ability, ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... are indeed exempt from many of those causes which, in civilized society, tend to debilitate and impede the growth of the human body. Their diet is perfectly simple, their exercise conducive to health, and the air they breathe salubrious. Strangers to the licentious appetites which frequently proceed from a depraved imagination, they cheerfully receive the bounteous gifts of nature, and when night sways her ebon sceptre o'er ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... correspondent of a London paper in the Bavarian capital did not mince his words. "The indignation," he wrote, "against the King on account of his scandalous conduct, has been roused to the highest pitch.... King Ludwig, who possesses many good qualities, is, unfortunately, a very licentious old man.... Neither the tears of the Queen, nor the entreaties of his sons, nor the public's indignation, could influence the old monarch, who has become the slave of his silly passion and of the caprices of a ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... was Christ. The General Assembly adopted it. However, it was not in favor with all. Its standard of doctrine and discipline was too high to please some. Knox gives the reason: "Everything that impugned their corrupt affections was mockingly termed 'devout imaginations.' The cause was, some were licentious, some had greedily gripped the possessions of the Church, and others thought they would not lack their part of Christ's coat." Discipline was applied to the Church according to the book. The unworthy were suspended, and those who failed ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... pinafores of Mrs. Gurth's children might have been seen hanging on the gooseberry-bushes in more peaceful times, was now a ghastly heap of smoking ruins: cottage, bushes, pinafores, children lay mangled together, destroyed by the licentious soldiery of an infuriate monarch! Far be it from me to excuse the disobedience of Athelstane and Rowena to their sovereign; but surely, surely this cruelty might ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... encounter many prejudices, and men of gravity and wisdom shook their heads at what they thought his idle trifling. But if he wished to be counted respectable, and to separate himself from the crowd of foolish or licentious rimers, he must intend distinctly, not merely to interest, but to instruct, by his new and deep conceits. It was under the influence of this persuasion that Spenser laid down the plan of the Faery Queen. It was, so he proposed to himself, to be a work on moral, and if time ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... out comprehending it, much disunion at home. Lady Walpole. beautiful and accomplished, could not succeed in riveting her husband to his conjugal duties. Gross licentiousness was the order of the day, and Sir Robert was among the most licentious; he left his lovely wife to the perilous attentions of all the young courtiers who fancied that by courting the Premier's wife they could secure Walpole's good offices. Sir Robert, according to Pope, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... easily shaken off. Libertines, who are libertines in defiance of talents, of superior lights, of conviction, hardly ever reform but by miracle, or by incapacity. Well do I know mine own sex. Well am I able to judge of the probability of the reformation of a licentious young man, who has not been fastened upon by sickness, by affliction, by calamity: who has a prosperous run of fortune before him: his spirits high: his will uncontroulable: the company he keeps, perhaps such as ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... by reducing it to the plane of the purely physiological. Sexual experience, to be of contributory value, must be integrated and assimilated. Asceticism defeats its own purpose because it develops the obsession of licentious and obscene thoughts, the victim alternating between temporary victory over "sin" and the remorse of defeat. But the seeker of purely physical pleasure, the libertine or the average sensualist, is no less a pathological case, living as one-sided and unbalanced a life as the ascetic, ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... fables. Amongst the ancient Greeks we hear of the Ionian and Milesian tales, but they have now perished, and, from every account we hear of them, appear to have been loose and indelicate." Similarly, the classical dictionaries define "Milesiae fabulae" to be "licentious themes," "stories of an amatory or mirthful nature," or "ludicrous and indecent plays." M. Deriege seems indeed to confound them with the "Moeurs du Temps" illustrated with artistic gouaches, when he says, "une de ces fables milesiennes, rehaussees de peintures, que la corruption romaine recherchait ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... the poet mourns over the ruin and desolation of Rome, as a mother deserted of her children; another is a dialogue between two shepherds, in which St. Peter, under the pastoral disguise of Pamphilus, upbraids the licentious Clement VI with the ignoble servitude in which he is content to abide; a third shows us Clement wantoning with the shameless mistress of a line of pontifical shepherds, a figure allegorical of the corruption of the Church[25]; in yet a fourth Petrarch laments ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... acquainted. Burns gathered oral airs, and fitted them with words of mirth or of woe, of tenderness or of humour, with unexampled readiness and felicity; he eked out old fragments and sobered down licentious strains so much in the olden spirit and feeling, that the new cannot be distinguished from the ancient; nay, he inserted lines and half lines, with such skill and nicety, that antiquarians are perplexed to settle which is genuine or which is simulated. Yet with all this he abated not of ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... during the younger part of life was scandalously licentious: latterly he became, says Camden, uxorious to excess. In the early days of his favor with the queen, her profuse donations had gratified his cupidity and displayed the fondness of her attachment; but at a later period the stream ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... subject. It seems by this letter, which adverts to other topics, that the spirit in Bengal is very bad—that Lord W. has hitherto done nothing to check it, and that with the press in his power he has allowed it to be more licentious than it ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... maintained, with scarcely any exception. During the war between the Governments of Buenos Ayres and of Brazil frequent collisions between the belligerent acts of power and the rights of neutral commerce occurred. Licentious blockades, irregularly enlisted or impressed sea men, and the property of honest commerce seized with violence, and even plundered under legal pretenses, are disorders never separable from the conflicts of war ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... celebrated the fifteen joys of the Blessed Virgin; he would ironically depict the fifteen afflictions of wedded life, in scenes finely studied from the domestic interior. How far the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles are to be ascribed to him is doubtful; it is certain that these licentious tales reproduce, with a new skill in narrative prose, the spirit of indecorous mirth in their Italian models. The Petit Jehan de Saintre is certainly the work of Antoine de la Salle; the irony of a realist, endowed with subtlety and grace, conducts ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... His licentious conduct amongst his Indian friends seems to have roused them to such a pitch of anger that in 1632 they murdered him, then boiled and ate his body. But immediately afterwards misfortune seemed to fall on the place. The Hurons were terrified at what they had done, and thought ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... nature. But it is necessary to investigate the essence of every thing, not from its perversion, but from its energies according to nature. If therefore reason, when it energizes in us as reason, restrains the shadowy impressions of the delights of licentious desire, punishes the precipitate motion of fury, and reproves the senses as full ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... Surrounded by a guard of Africans, it was fully a moment, before the mob recognized Decius Magius, the partisan, of Rome. Then a chorus of howls and curses rose up. Insults were hurled,—the grossest that the minds of a licentious rabble could suggest, fists were shaken, women spat toward the prisoner,—even a few stones were cast, and when one of these happened to strike an African of the guard, he turned quietly and cut down the nearest citizen. Then, with their heavy ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... and good-fellowship had been wondering what had become of him. His new work in the Exhibitions supplied a sort of answer, and the few who chanced to meet him reported dolefully that he was a changed man. Gone was the light-hearted and light-footed dancer of the Paris pavement. Silent the licentious wit of the neo-Pagan. This was a new being with brooding brow and pained eyes that lit up only when they beheld his dream. Never had Bohemia ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... is not so licentious as might be supposed, for night linen had not then become in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... leader. He was thirty-one years of age, belonged to an ancient and powerful family, possessed vast wealth, had great personal beauty and attractive manners, but above all, was unboundedly ambitious, and grossly immoral—the most insolent, unprincipled, licentious, and selfish man that had thus far scandalized and adorned Athenian society. The only redeeming feature in his character was his friendship for Socrates, who, it seems, fascinated him by his talk, and sought ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... connections of the late King, prognosticated the severest fate to his defenceless children; and after the murder of Hastings, the Protector no longer made a secret of his intentions to usurp the crown. The licentious life of Edward afforded a pretence for declaring his marriage with the Queen invalid and all his posterity illegitimate. It was also maintained that the act of attainder passed against the Duke of Clarence had virtually incapacitated his children from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... in war; and how evidently the participation in the general council laid the foundation of the representative form of government, the only rational mode of preserving individual liberty in opposition to the licentious democracy of ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... thy licentious tongue pollute mine ear With that foul menace? Tyrant! dread'st thou not Th' all-seeing eye of heav'n, its lifted thunder, And all the red'ning vengeance which it stores For crimes like thine?—Yet know, Zaphira scorns thee. [crosses to R. Though robb'd by thee ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... Maintenon who, with her discreet and temperate nature, restored order, and was, for years, the living symbol of a changed condition in the Court in which piety and religious observance displaced licentious and voluptuous pleasure. And, along with this "wisdom of a repentant age," as Saint-Amand observes, "this reaction of austerity against pleasure, there was still the contrast of youth." It was the Duchess of Burgundy who was the living embodiment of this protest of ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... called out something in him which is in many ways his highest quality—righteous indignation. As a mere matter of the art of controversy of course he carried the war into the enemy's camp at once. He did not linger over loose excuses for licence; he declared at once that the Censor was licentious, while he, Bernard Shaw, was clean. He did not discuss whether a Censorship ought to make the drama moral. He declared that it made the drama immoral. With a fine strategic audacity he attacked the Censor quite as much for what he permitted as for what he prevented. ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... crystal flask. When he stood over that face, he was trembling so violently, that he was actually obliged to wait for a moment. But Don Juan had acquired an early familiarity with evil; his morals had been corrupted by a licentious court, a reflection worthy of the Duke of Urbino crossed his mind, and it was a keen sense of curiosity that goaded him into boldness. The devil himself might have whispered the words that were echoing through his brain, Moisten one ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... have been represented as gloomy, superstitious, severe, irrational, and of a licentious tendency. But when other systems shall have produced a piety as devoted, a morality as pure, a patriotism as disinterested, and a state of society as happy, as have prevailed where their doctrines have been most prevalent, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... hour of sunset; and before dark all resistance ceased. Colonel Drummond surrendered the castle hill on conditions; the infantry in the street were killed or led prisoners to the cathedral; and the city was abandoned during the obscurity of the night to the licentious passions ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... this polish'd age, Has swept immoral raillery from the stage; Since taste has now expung'd licentious wit, Which stamp'd disgrace on all an author writ; Since now to please with purer scenes we seek, Nor dare to call the blush from beauty's cheek; Oh! let the modest muse some pity claim, And meet indulgence—though she ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... pleasantry is pointed by a malicious footnote, to the effect that people who might be surprised that a serious man like Valere should have written works of this licentious and frivolous kind, will conceive that in a moment of leisure a philosopher should write Les Bijoux Indiscrets, for instance, and the next day follow it by a treatise on morality,[195]—as Diderot ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... to other men, was the station from which the Roman speculators took up their philosophy of human nature. Tried by such standard, Mark Anthony would be found wanting. As a citizen, he was irretrievably licentious, and therefore there needed not the bitter personal feud, which circumstances had generated between them, to account for the acharnement with which Cicero pursued him. Had Anthony been his friend even, or his near kinsman, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... tangles for Earth's first broad rectilinear way: Admonishing loftier reaches, the rich adventurous shoots, Pushes of tentative curves, embryonic upwreathings in air; Not always the sprouts of Earth's root-Laws preserving her brutes; Oft but our primitive hungers licentious in fine ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... province of Connaught, which he would have effected, if he had not been bought off by a sum greater than he hoped to gain by his iniquity, besides the luxury of confiscation. The Irish, during the reign of James I., suffered under the DOUBLE evils of a licentious soldiery and ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... the mother of men! Brought up in robust habits, accustomed to athletic exercises, her person exposed in public processions and dances, which, but for the custom that made decorous even indecency itself, would have been indeed licentious, the Spartan maiden, strong, hardy, and half a partaker in the ceremonies of public life, shared the habits, aided the emulation, imbibed the patriotism, of her future consort. And, by her sympathy with his habits and pursuits, she obtained an influence and ascendency over him which was unknown ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... console him, and some of the noblest lines ever penned by man were written by Johnston in reply. They even wrung tears of repentance from the pachyderms who had attacked him, and will be a text and consolation to future commanders, who serve a country tolerant of an ignorant and licentious press. Like pure gold, he came forth from the furnace above the reach of slander, the foremost man of all the South; and had it been possible for one heart, one mind, and one arm to save her cause, she lost them when Albert Sidney Johnston fell on ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... consecrated so long by Grecian and Jewish custom, and appeared with their heads uncovered in the Christian community. Still further than that, the Lord's Supper exhibited an absence of all solemnity, and seemed more a meeting for licentious gratification, where "one was hungry, and another was drunken"—a place in which earthly drunkenness, the mere enjoyment of the appetites, had taken the place of ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... dissoluteness of manners, continued beyond the pardonable period of life, was more common amongst them than it is with us; and it reigned with the less hope of remedy, though possibly with something of less mischief, by being covered with more exterior decorum. They countenanced too much that licentious philosophy which has helped to bring on their ruin. There was another error amongst them more fatal. Those of the commons who approached to or exceeded many of the nobility in point of wealth were not fully admitted to the rank and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... principles, opinions differ. Theology is as elastic as you like. Do not abandon your religion on the ground that her yoke is hard." Jansenius and his followers, on the other hand, fought uncompromisingly with the licentious spirit of the time, maintaining the austerest dogmas and denouncing any compromise or condescension. And their doctrine had a wonderful success, and penetrated everywhere. Few of the great literary men of the reign of Louis XIV. escaped it. ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... Cases of Conscience (not published till 1649) he thus describes the impression which Milton's Divorce pamphlet had made upon him when he first read it in its anonymous form: "I have heard too much of, and once saw, a licentious pamphlet, thrown abroad in these lawless times in the defence and encouragement of Divorces (not to be sued out; that solemnity needed not; but) to be arbitrarily given by the disliking husband to ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... most atrocious attempts; so that they have trampled upon all subordination, and violently borne down the unarmed laws of a free Government—barriers too feeble against the fury of a populace so fierce and licentious as ours. They contend that no adequate provocation has been given for so spreading a discontent, our affairs having been conducted throughout with remarkable temper and consummate wisdom. The wicked industry of some libellers, joined to the intrigues of a few disappointed ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... death; but life in the open air, absence from his wife, the state of excitement produced by the war, and this eagerness for pleasure common to all those who risk their lives, had suddenly awakened his licentious temperament. When his service allowed him to do so, he would go into Paris and spend twenty-four hours there, profiting by it to have a champagne dinner at Brebant's or Voisin's, in company with some beautiful girl, and to eat the luxurious dishes of that time, such as beans, Gruyere cheese, and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... melancholy reflection imbittered, however, the noblest of human enjoyments. They must often have recollected the instability of a happiness which depended on the character of single man. The fatal moment was perhaps approaching, when some licentious youth, or some jealous tyrant, would abuse, to the destruction, that absolute power, which they had exerted for the benefit of their people. The ideal restraints of the senate and the laws might serve to display the virtues, but could never correct the vices, of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... escape by a pleasantry or a compliment; each feeling himself attacked by all the forces of his adversary, he is obliged to employ all his own to defend himself, and this is how a mind acquires strength and precision. There may be here and there a licentious phrase, but there is no ground for alarm in that. It is not the least rude who are always the most pure, and even a rather clownish speech is better than that artificial style in which the two sexes seduce one another, and familiarise themselves decently with vice. ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Gervase, almost fiercely. "There are no words which truly describe this one emotion which rules the world. I know what YOU mean, of course; you mean evil words, licentious words, and yet it has nothing whatever to do with these. You cannot call such an exalted state of the nerves and ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... the destitution to which ecclesiastical bodies were reduced by the frequent predations of bands of robbers, the immorality of the priesthood, and the power of electing the popes falling into the hands of intriguing and licentious patrician females, whom aspirants to the holy see were not ashamed to bribe for their favors. So depraved had the general spirit of the age become that Pope Boniface VII, A.D. 974, robbed St. Peter's Church and its treasury and fled to Constantinople; while Pope ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... to have it impressed on your minds that he is not a licentious writer, and that this word does not fairly apply to his publications. You will have the documents before you, and you must judge for yourselves. I should say that he is right. He may be blasphemous, but he certainly is not licentious, in the ordinary sense of the word; and you do not find ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... he saw Burne's long legs propel his ridiculous bicycle out of sight beyond Alexander Hall, he knew he was going to have a bad week. Not that he doubted the war—Germany stood for everything repugnant to him; for materialism and the direction of tremendous licentious force; it was just that Burne's face stayed in his memory and he was sick of the hysteria he was beginning ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... proper sense. It must be taken, as was then the practice in Germany, through translations of Rousseau, in the equivocal and refined acceptation which reconciled innocence with indecency, virtue with every disorder of the imagination and the heart. Ecstatic and sensual, devout and licentious, a prey to violent appetites, tormented by scruples, superstitious and debauched, believing in ghosts, with a tendency towards cabal, Frederick William had a taste for ethics and a feeling for religion. He spoke of them with respect, with awe, with emotion. In his case ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... authority, the King's and their own, and the habitants were docile, the best of soldier stuff. "Little, very little," Murray wrote in 1764 to the Lords of Trade, "will content the New Subjects, but nothing will satisfy the Licentious Fanaticks Trading here, but the expulsion of the Canadians, who are perhaps the bravest and best race upon the Globe, a Race, who cou'd they be indulged with a few priviledges wch the Laws of England deny to Roman Catholicks at ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... retail to others. They are obstinate in their ideas, because they are inflated with vanity, and because they could not consistently deviate from a method of thinking of which they pretend God is the author. We often see them unbridled and licentious in their manners, because it is impossible that idleness, effeminacy, and luxury should not corrupt the heart. We sometimes see them austere and rigid in their conduct in order to impose on the people and accomplish their ambitious views. If they are hypocrites and rogues, they are ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... little in common with that ardent, hopeful, speculative, sentimental group of friends who met together every evening in the drawing-room of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. Born at the close of the seventeenth century, she had come into the world in the brilliant days of the Regent, whose witty and licentious reign had suddenly dissipated the atmosphere of gloom and bigotry imposed upon society by the moribund Court of Louis XIV. For a fortnight (so she confessed to Walpole) she was actually the Regent's mistress; and a fortnight, in those days, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... sensuality; and the associations which the unlearned reader has with the name are only strengthened by conversance with the literature to which it gave birth. Horace is its poet-laureate; and he was evidently as sincere in his philosophy as he was licentious in his life. There is a certain charm in good faith and honesty, even when on the side of wrong and vice; and it is his perfect frankness, self-complacency, nay, self-praise, in a sensuality which in plain prose ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... reward of food, raiment, and shelter." He also reminds us that the religion of China differs from all Pagan religions in this, that it encourages neither cruelty nor sensuality. No human victims have ever been offered on its altars, and those licentious rites which have appeared in so many religions have ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... before is not nearly all. The fourfold structure of the Gospel has lent itself to a certain kind of licentious handling—of which in other ancient writings we have no experience. One critical owner of a Codex considered himself at liberty to assimilate the narratives: another to correct them in order to bring them into (what seemed to himself) greater harmony. Brevity is found to have been a paramount ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... two alone has the management of affairs; for the latter, given up to evil deeds, makes use of his power only for the indulgence of his licentious passions. ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... not take them; and I have either to give her up or else become the rival of that degraded being. I will never do it. I will see Luella, and tell her she must decide at once between us, and take a decisive stand in the matter. I saw a sneer upon the licentious mouth and a leer in the bloodshot eye of the reptile as he saw me treated so cavalierly. If I had him here for about five minutes I would settle this matter with him. And then I thought Luella's parting was not as warm as usual. Was it my jealous fears, or has ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... rightly in his better moods the poet appreciated the conditions of the family. Unfortunately the better moods were not fixed, and we had Don Juan, where the wit and colour and power served to make an anti-social and licentious sentiment attractive to puny creatures, who were thankful to have their lasciviousness so gaily adorned. As for Great Britain, she deserved Don Juan. A nation, whose disrespect for all ideas and aspirations ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... Manichaeans being split into a number of sects, and statements true of some might be untrue of others. So we find St. Augustine, who had been a Manichaean, declaring that if all did not practise licentious rites, one sect (the Catharists) did, believing that they could only mortify the flesh by the exercise of bad instincts, since the flesh proceeded from demons. St. Augustine himself confesses to have taken part in various phallic ceremonies ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... and employments. A spirit, we may add, the same, or not materially differing from that, which, at an earlier period of human history, though in a condition of society not dissimilar, begot the practices denominated, by a most licentious ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... Thou shalt know me by the powers I have given thee. The calling of an Artist, then, is one of no common responsibility; and it well becomes him to consider at the threshold, whether he shall assume it for high and noble purposes, or for the low and licentious. ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... persuade himself that a measure is lawful because it is presently expedient, that acts can justly be performed because the courts do not punish them; and thus he will often violate the most sacred rights of his patients or of their relatives. Who has more frequent opportunities than a licentious Doctor to seduce the innocent, to pander to the passions of the guilty, to play into the hands of greedy heirs, who may be most willing to pay him for his services? No one can do it more safely, as far as human tribunals are concerned. ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... was not great to the roof of the lean-to, and she had been used to climb tall forest trees when a child, and fearlessly to drop from any height. She unclosed the casement and listened. She heard from below loud shouts and boisterous peals of laughter, mingled with licentious songs and ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... to arouse the nation against him. He did not propose to let anything happen which would send him on his travels again. He and his courtiers were fond of pleasure of a light-minded and immoral kind. The licentious dramas of the Restoration seem to indicate that those who had been forced by the Puritans to give up their legitimate pleasures now welcomed the opportunity to indulge in reckless gayety without regard to the bounds imposed ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... many licentious writers have led very regular and chaste lives; that many who have sung their success with women have not dared to declare their love to one woman; that all Sterne's sentiment was perfectly ideal, and proceeded always from the head and never from the heart; that Seneca's ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... luckless Christians of the Kasaba were cut down by their deliverers in the struggle for Kheyr-ed-d[i]n's treasures. The streets became shambles, the houses dens of murder and shame: the very Catholic chroniclers admit the abominable outrages committed by the licentious and furious soldiery of the great Emperor. It is hard to remember that almost at the very time when German and Spanish and Italian men-at-arms were outraging and slaughtering helpless, innocent people in Tunis, who had taken little ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... fact that the privilege is limited to unmarried women might be also urged in turn. As the system of exchanging wives was formerly common among the Alaskan Eskimo, and as they distribute their favors at will, it is rather remarkable that the married women are not included, as in the licentious feasts recorded of the Greenlanders.[16] From talks with some of the older Eskimo I am led to regard this as a relic of an ancient custom similar to those which have been observed among many nations of antiquity, in which a woman is open to violation at certain feasts. This privilege is taken advantage ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... raises it up immediately out of his pure oracle to the convincement of a perverse age, eager in the reformation of names and ceremonies, but in realities as traditional and as ignorant as their forefathers. I would ask now the foremost of my profound accusers whether they dare affirm that to be licentious, new and dangerous, which Martin Bucer so often and so urgently avouched to be moot lawful, most necessary, and most Christian, without the least blemish. to his good name among all the worthy men ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... These courtly figures culminate in Duerer's magnificent plate of the wild man of the woods kissing the hideous, leering Jezebel in her brocade and jewels. These aristocratic women are terrible; prudish, malicious, licentious, never modest because they are always ugly. Even the poor Madonnas, seated in front of village hovels or windmills, smile the smile of starved, sickly sempstresses. It is a stunted, poverty-stricken, plague-sick society, this mediaeval society of burghers and burghers' ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... sovereign plant Haemony which was to foil the wiles of Comus, had remembered not only Homer's description of the root Moly "that Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave,"{16:A} but also Ascham's remarks thereupon: "The true medicine against the enchantments of Circe, the vanity of licentious pleasure, the enticements of all sin, is, in Homer, the herb Moly, with the black root and white flower, sour at first, but sweet in the end; which Hesiod termeth the study of Virtue, hard and irksome in the beginning, but in the end easy ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... less difficult or uncertain in criticisms than in law. Imagination, a licentious and vagrant faculty, unsusceptible of limitations, and impatient of restraint, has always endeavoured to baffle the logician, to perplex the confines of distinction, and burst the inclosures of regularity. There is therefore scarcely any species of writing, of which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... and Asuras, since they were created by myself in my indescribable form as Brahma. As I have created the deities and the Asuras and the great Rishis so I have placed the Brahmanas in their respective situations and have to punish them occasionally. In consequence of his licentious assault on Ahalya, Indra was cursed by Gautama, her husband, through which Indra got a green beard on his face. Through that curse of Kausika Indra lost, also, his own testicles, which loss was afterwards (through the kindness of the other deities) ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... described. It is too horrible. When at last the barbarians, sated with blood, surfeited with lechery, glutted with gold, and decimated by pestilence, withdrew, Rome raised her head a widow. From the shame and torment of that sack she never recovered, never became again the gay licentious lovely capital of arts and letters, the glittering gilded Rome of Leo. But the kings of the earth took pity on her desolation. The treaty of Amiens (August 18, 1527), concluded between Francis I. and Henry VIII. against Charles V., ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... founded, with the arbitrary Steps by him taken to the Accomplishment of this wasteful Purpose; too clearly proved that Nobleman a second Verres. The cruel and intoxicated Administration of the Rump Parliament; the insolent, licentious, and riotous Controul of the military Independents; the abject Tyranny of Oliver Cromwell, who prostrated Constitution, Church and State, will always be recollected with the Contempt, Horror, and Detestation of ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... for 'to hold'—but it is a licentious construction, so also, in next line, 'themselves' for 'they themselves.' The stanza is on the whole the worst in the poem, its irony and essential force being much dimmed by obscure expression, and even slightly staggering continuity of thought. ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... and natural colouring, which characterised the old English drama. But the credit of the piece was redeemed by the comic part, which is a more light and airy representation of the fashionable and licentious manners of the time than Dryden could afterwards attain, excepting in "Marriage a la Mode." The king, whose judgment on this subject was unquestionable graced the "Maiden Queen" with the title of his play; and Dryden insinuates that it would have been dedicated to him, had he ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... judgment can be formed of any disputed point, especially when it has been carried so far as to end in personal resentment. When contests and dissensions shall be found to have gone that length, it will be obvious to every reader, why a licentious crew should hearken to any factious leader, rather than to the solidity of their captain's advice, who made it evident to every unprejudiced understanding, that their fairest chance for safety and a better fortune, was to proceed with the long-boat till they should make prize ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... only what you are, but ought to be: Though vice was natural, 'twas never meant, The stage should shew it, but for punishment! Warm with that thought his muse once more took flame, Resolv'd to bring licentious life to shame. Such was the piece, his latest pen design'd', But left no traces of his plan behind. Luxurious scenes, unprun'd, or half contriv'd; Yet, through the mass, his native fire surviv'd: Rough as rich oar, in mines the treasure lay, Yet still ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... knew she that seeming marble heart, Now masked by silence or withheld by pride, Was not unskilful in the spoiler's art, And spread its snares licentious far and wide; Nor from the base pursuit had turned aside, As long as aught was worthy to pursue: But Harold on such arts no more relied; And had he doted on those eyes so blue, Yet never would he join the ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... caliph. Afdual's son, whose name was Abu Ali Ahmed, perished in a popular tumult. The new caliph had great trouble with his next three viziers, and at length abolished the office altogether. After reigning twenty years, he was succeeded by his licentious son, Dhafir, whose faults led to his death at the hand ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... polite literature. But it is fatally true, that when the public taste is once corrupted, the mind which has been warped, seldom recovers its former tone. This difficulty was rendered still more insurmountable by the licentious spirit of our young men, and the popular applause, that encouraged the false taste of the times. I need not, in this company, call to mind the unbridled presumption, with which, as soon as genuine eloquence expired, the ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... that aristocratic society attempted, about the latter years of the reign of Louis XIII., to amend the coarse and licentious expressions, which, during the civil wars had been introduced into literature as well as into manners. It was praiseworthy of some high-born ladies in Parisian society to endeavour to refine the language ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... century), is perhaps as conspicuous a personal name as any that thus far emerges out of the sea of practically anonymous early French authorship. A frankly sordid and mercenary singer, Rutebeuf, always tending to mockery, was not seldom licentious,—in both these respects anticipating, as probably also to some extent by example conforming, the subsequent literary spirit of his nation. The fabliaux generally mingled with their narrative interest that spice of raillery ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... Savonarola tried to reform the conduct of the clergy and to maintain the purity of the Church, but failed. He made the republic of Florence a model Christian commonwealth. Debauchery was suppressed, gambling was prohibited, the licentious factions of the times were there publicly destroyed. He arraigned Rome for her sins. The Roman party turned against him and accused him of heresy, the punishment of which was death. He declared his innocence, and desired to test it with his accusers by walking through a field of living ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... disposed they need only flutter an eyelid to have men by the legion striving for their favors, each man with a bag of gold. Mildred, inexperienced as she was, had no such delusions. Her mind happened not to be of that chastely licentious caste which continually revolves and fantastically exaggerates the ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... states. In Athens the theatre enjoyed up to its maturity, under the patronage of religion, almost unlimited freedom, and the public morality preserved it for a time from degeneracy. The comedies of Aristophanes, which with our views and habits appear to us so intolerably licentious, and in which the senate and the people itself are unmercifully turned to ridicule, were the seal of Athenian freedom. To meet this abuse, Plato, who lived in the very same Athens, and either witnessed or foresaw the decline of art, proposed the entire ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... with his smirch'd complexion all fell feats Enlink'd to waste and desolation? What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause, If your pure maidens fall into the hand Of hot and forcing violation? What rein can hold licentious wickedness When down the hill he holds his fierce career? We may as bootless spend our vain command Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil As send precepts to the leviathan To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur, Take pity of your town and of your people, Whiles ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... fond, confiding woman; but he had been trained among the dissolute spirits of the Regency too thoroughly to feel more than a passing regret for a woman whom, probably, he loved better than any other of the victims of his licentious life. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... consigned to the other brother, who had for some time exercised the functions of lieutenant of that country. Being unpopular among the Egyptians, they revolted against him, giving the Crusaders a finer opportunity for making a conquest than they had ever enjoyed before. But, quarrelsome and licentious as they had been from time immemorial, they did not see that the favourable moment had come; or seeing, could not profit by it. While they were revelling or fighting among themselves, under the walls of Damietta, the revolt was suppressed, and Camhel firmly established on ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... opinions of Prynne, as to the 'unloveliness of love-locks;' but we do certainly look with a mixture of contempt and pity on the self-imposed trammels of affectation in style and manner which bound many of the poets of that period. The wits of Charles II. were more disgustingly licentious; but their very carelessness saved them from the conceits of their predecessors; and, while lowering the tone of morality, they raised unwittingly the standard of taste. Some of the songs of Lovelace, however, such ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... touch finally, but very lightly, on the commonplaces of stock plots and characters. The whole array of puppets is familiar to us all: the cunning slave, the fond or licentious papa, the spendthrift son and their inevitable confrA"res appear in play after play with relentless regularity. The close correspondence of many plots is also too familiar to need discussion.[187] The glimmering of originality in the plot of the Cap. called for special advertisement.[188] ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... ill-regulated youth,—but should I ever succeed to the family estate and honours, she hoped, she prayed, that my present course of life might be altered; that I should part from my unworthy associates; that I should discontinue all connexion with the horrid theatre and its licentious frequenters; that I should turn to that quarter where only peace was to be had; and to those sacred duties which she feared—she very much feared that I had neglected. She filled her exhortation with Scripture language, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... soon proved the unsoundness of Flecknoe's tribute. Amongst the most licentious beauties of the court was Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury, the daughter of Robert Brudenel, Earl of Cardigan, and the wife of Francis, Earl of Shrewsbury: amongst many shameless women she was the most shameless, and her face seems to have well expressed her mind. In the round, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... secretary, was the first to ascend, and there in this room was the dignitary of the Catholic Church in a half drunken condition, with two licentious and lude women, playing cards and drinking wine, and the trio were in a half nude condition, and frequently this dignitary of the Catholic Church would kiss ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... mentioned a gentleman of licentious character, and said, 'Suppose I had a mind to marry that gentleman, would my parents consent?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, they'd consent, and you'd go. You'd go though they did not consent.' Miss ADAMS. 'Perhaps their opposing might make me go.' JOHNSON. 'O, very well; you'd take one whom you think a bad ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... any serious resistance to their march, when they chose to move forward. And here thus lay their proud and infatuated chief for weeks, dreaming of coronets, frittering away the time in feasting with his officers, and indulging himself and them in all the follies which characterized their gay and licentious camp. On the other hand, the Americans, deeply sensible of the consequence of suffering their enemies to effect their contemplated junction at Albany, were vigilant, active, and determined. Though firmly ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... Roman comedy, that, however, was a new and piquant pleasure, a surprise for the young queen. He had the "Curculio" played before his wife, and if Catharine indeed could listen to the licentious and shameless jests of the popular Roman poet only with bashful blushes, Henry was so much the more delighted by it, and accompanied the obscenest allusions and the most indecent jests with his uproarious laughter and loud ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... Of Dryden's coldly licentious comedies and ranting bombastic tragedies a few only seem to have been produced at the Dorset Gardens Theatre. Among these we may mention Limberham, OEdipus, Troilus and Cressida, and The Spanish Friar. Limberham was acted at the Duke's Theatre, in Dorset ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... think, when I watch the follies at Whitehall, that those graceful dancers, sliding upon pointed toe through a coranto, amid a blaze of candles and star-shine of diamonds, are capering along the same fatal road by which St. Vitus lured his votaries to the grave. And then I look at Rowley's licentious eye and cynical lip, and think to myself, 'This man's father perished on the scaffold; this man's lovely ancestress paid the penalty of her manifold treacheries after sixteen years' imprisonment; this man has passed through ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... suicide, on death.[27] He suggests an indifference about salvation, without fear and without repentance.[28] As his book was not written with a religious purpose, he was not bound to mention religion; but it is always our duty not to turn men from it. One can excuse his rather free and licentious opinions on some relations of life (730,231)[29]; but one cannot excuse his thoroughly pagan views on death, for a man must renounce piety altogether, if he does not at least wish to die like a Christian. Now, through ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... apt all parties are to charge the doctrines they oppose with bad tendencies. It is well known that Calvinists and Arminians, Trinitarians and Socinians, Fatalists and Free-Willers, are continually exclaiming against one another's opinions, as dangerous and licentious. Even Christianity itself could not, at its first introduction, escape this accusation. The professors of it were considered as atheists, because they opposed pagan idolatry; and their religion was, on this account, reckoned a destructive and pernicious enthusiasm. If, ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... perusal, the general reader will find opened up for him a new view of Chaucer and his works. Before a perusal of these hundred pages, will melt away for ever the lingering tradition or prejudice that Chaucer was only, or characteristically, a coarse buffoon, who pandered to a base and licentious appetite by painting and exaggerating the lowest vices of his time. In these selections — made without a thought of taking only what is to the poet's credit from a wide range of poems in which hardly ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... death, shams. Instinctively I knew, too, that without the Catholic Church the Christian world would fall to the level of Rome at its worst, and that every enemy of Christ turned his face against her priests. I knew that every real atheist, every licentious man, most revolutionists, every anarchist, hated a priest. It annoyed me to think that they didn't hate me, the representative, as I thought, of a purer religion. But they did not hate me at all. They ignored the sacredness of my calling, ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... is nearly identical with that of Brule, although it is not proved that he was as licentious during the time that he lived with the Algonquins. He and Brule asserted that they were compelled by Kirke to serve under the British flag. Champlain severely blamed their conduct, saying: "Remember that God will punish ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... passions. Only in total abstinence from illicit pleasures is there moral safety and health, while integrity, peace, and happiness, are the conscious rewards of virtue. Impurity travels downward with intemperance, obscenity, and corrupting diseases, to degradation and death. A dissolute, licentious, free-and-easy life is filled with the dregs of human suffering, iniquity, and despair. The penalties which follow a violation of the law of chastity are found to ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... monuments of your pride, your insatiate extortion, your measureless extravagance and luxury. They say to the people, Behold the proofs of the outrages which your fathers, for countless ages, have endured. They lived in mud hovels that their licentious kings might riot haughtily in the apartments, canopied with gold, of Versailles, the Tuileries, and St. Cloud—the Palaces of France. The mind of the political economist lingers painfully upon them. They are gorgeous as specimens of art. They are sacred as memorials ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... wonderful that this opinion was so generally prevalent. A calm inquirer might, perhaps, have suspected that abandoned profligacy is not very compatible with severe study, and that an author is seldom loose in his life, even if he be licentious in his writings. A calm inquirer might, perhaps, have been of opinion that a solitary sage may be the antagonist of a priesthood without absolutely denying the existence of a God; but there never are calm inquirers. The world, on every subject, however unequally, is divided into parties; and ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... thought that when a man is said to be dissipated in his habits he must be a drinking man, or a gambler, or licentious, or all three; but dissipation is of two kinds, coarse and refined. A man can dissipate or scatter all of his mental energies and physical power by indulging in too many respectable diversions, as easily as in habits of a viler nature. Property and its cares make ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... allotments of the present life. Here the virtuous are often the objects of hatred and relentless persecution. Here the man of ambition and dark intrigue, circumvents and treads down his more honest rivals. Here Providence often afflicts even the most pious; while the licentious, and proud, and oppressive, are, perhaps, suffered to enjoy uninterrupted prosperity. Now we believe, assuredly, that "God is just;" and we infer, that he will so exhibit himself by another and more equal distribution of his favours and frowns. We conclude with the wise ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin
... learning, their life was freer and simpler. But the scholar of the Renaissance was forced to combine great learning with the power of resisting the influence of ever-changing pursuits and situations. Add to this the deadening effect of licentious excess, and—since do what he might, the worst was believed of him—a total indifference to the moral laws recognized by others. Such men can hardly be conceived to exist without an inordinate pride. They needed it, if only to keep their heads above water, and were confirmed ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... knew him, was sometimes "enticed by lewd persons:" and, once having lost his innocence, outdid even the students of Padua. For, as Greene says, "as our wits be as ripe as any, so our willes are more ready than they all, to put into effect any of their licentious abuses."[117] Thus arose the famous proverb, "An Englishman Italianate is a ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... valley of the Messasebe. The Ojibways were not to ambush the scattered parties of the Iroquois. The unambitious colonists of New England and New York were to be left to till their stony farms in quiet. Meantime, the fur trade, wasteful, licentious, unprofitable, was to extend onward and outward in all the marches of the West. From one end of the Great River of the West to the other the insignia of France and of France's king were to be erected, and France's posts were to hold all the ancient ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... Joan of Arc being proved to have been incontestably a virgin was of the highest interest. It was reserved for a countryman of Joan of Arc's (Du Bellay) to invent a legend to disprove the fact; and to the everlasting shame of French literature, Voltaire adopted the lying calumny in his licentious burlesque-heroic ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... farther on the objections to the reality and immutability of moral distinctions and to the universal diffusion of the moral faculty. The reference is, in the first instance, to Locke, and then to what he terms, after Adam Smith, the licentious moralists—La Rochefoucauld and Mandeville. The replies to these writers contain nothing ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... was opened the holy Bishop of Dromore stated the arguments in favour of Colonial taxation with learning and effect. Hugh himself impeached the Bards for their licentious and lawless lives. Columbkill defended both interests, and, by combining both, probably strengthened the friends of each. It is certain that he carried the Assembly with him, both against the monarch and those of the resident clergy, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee |
