"Turpitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and fidelity to the King of England; but how changed the meaning of that word in New England after the Declaration of Independence! Words and deeds before deemed patriotic were now traitorous, and so deeply was their moral turpitude impressed on the public mind as to have tainted popular opinions concerning the heroic deeds of our ancestors, performed in the King's service in the French Wars.... The War of the Revolution absorbed and neutralised all the heroic ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... heard by persons who were passing, and he was found after several hours of suffering, covered with blood, and dreadfully stung by the ants. This crime is perhaps without example in the history of human turpitude: it indicates a violence of passion less assignable to the climate than to the barbarism of manners prevailing among the lower class ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... hunted from pillar to post, eventually left Munich for Switzerland, it was in the company of Auguste Papon, who, on the grounds of "moral turpitude," had already been given his marching-orders. He described himself as a "courier." His passport, however, bore the less exalted description of "cook." It was probably the more correct one. The faithful Fritz Peissner, anxious to be of service to the woman he loved, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... portion, where he defends his marriage with Pudentilla and justifies his dealings with his step-sons, he clears himself in good earnest, nay does more than clear himself. For he unveils in the most merciless fashion the villany of his accusers—the base ingratitude of Pudens, and the unspeakable turpitude of Rufinus. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... relations would be a violence to her, which, in proportion as Wallace shrunk from the guilty affection she was so eager to lavish upon him, he was averse to committing; wishing, by showing her every proper consideration, to lead her to apprehend the turpitude of her conduct; by convincing her that his abhorrence of her advances had its origin in principle, rather than from personal repugnance to herself; and so she might see the foulness of her crime, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... adverse conditions these distressing features of their behavior may become habitual. Suitable surroundings and treatment would here consist of the presence of good models and high ideals, sympathetic help in resisting temptation, and not in a harsh denunciation of each unapproved act as evidence of turpitude and perversion. You need not assume that there is perversion until that is demonstrated beyond any doubt. For, if the child is morally redeemable, he should be treated like one who is weak and who needs help until the ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... uneasy mutterings and threats in many quarters. Yet, although the politician had by now virtually absorbed all the richest properties in the district and worked them through his hirelings, the people of Nome as a whole did not grasp the full turpitude of the scheme ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... a name, and so a distinct species, and the other not; yet, in respect of carnal knowledge, they are both taken in under INCEST: and that still for the same convenience of expressing under one name, and reckoning of one species, such unclean mixtures as have a peculiar turpitude beyond others; and this to avoid ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... that added to their plausibility, without ever tearing aside the veil that concealed his origin or the manner of his fall, if, indeed, a man who so jubilantly boasted of his crimes and seemed to find an infinite satisfaction and delight in his turpitude, could be said to have fallen. Having mentioned Brattleboro as the point at which they were to foregather with Red Leary, the Governor did not refer to the matter again, but chose routes and ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... most of the members of the bar, thought to be the law established by the Supreme Court in the Knight sugar case. But the Supreme Court in its decree dissolving the Standard Oil and Tobacco Trusts, condemned them in the severest language for moral turpitude; and an even severer need of condemnation should be visited on the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... good evil, put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. He openly threw aside the admission of any one moral obligation. Never did some of the Roslyn boys, to their dying day, forget the deep, intolerable, unfathomable flood of moral turpitude and iniquity which he bore with him; a flood, which seemed so irresistible, and the influence of such boys as Montagu and Owen to stay its onrush seemed as futile as the weight of a feather to bar the fury of a mountain stream. Eric might have done much, Duncan might have done much, to ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... press—when all these stinking, suffocating, deleterious vapors shall be destroyed by the ever-living light of truth, then the grateful people will bless your names, which, pure and luminous, will shine high above the stupidity, conceit, heartlessness, turpitude, selfish ambition, indirect and direct treason darkening ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... pardon will have flown over Europe, and the impression of treachery to a friend—this more detestable, more odious crime than any infraction of the laws of the country, because essentially fraught with turpitude, will be blended with my name in the minds of men who may never see this letter. And if all this injury could be inflicted by Mr. Jefferson without ill will, merely from want of consideration, under the disturbing influence of ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... ludicrous to be "a certain error and turpitude unattended with pain, and not destructive," a statement which may refer to moral or physical defects. Cicero and Quintilian, looking probably at satire, consider it to be mostly directed against the shortcomings and offences of men. Bacon in his "Silva Silvarum" says the objects of laughter ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... that was said of our friend Lord Lyttelton in one of them. He desired that it might be so; and I had at once the double mortification of concealing the good I had said of one friend, and of revealing the turpitude of another. I hope you will never have the same treatment that I have met with; neither will you. I am single in my circumstances—a species apart in the political society; and they, who dare to attack no one else, may attack me. Chesterfield says, I have made a coalition of Wig, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... the character with moral turpitude; and I believe the facts related above show that said Senator is a coward; at all events he lacks moral courage, and is afraid of the Justices of the United States Supreme Court, whose judge the Senator-attorney of the court becomes in case of trial of ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... every kind of degradation which an inordinate love of luxury and the insatiable desires of jaded senses had suggested as a means to satisfaction, until the treachery of his own accomplices had thrown the glaring light of publicity on a career of turpitude such as even these decadent times had seldom witnessed ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... what they desire him, why I wish he would teach me the gate of it. O Geordie, Jingling Geordie, it was grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing on the turpitude of incontinence.' 'I am afraid,' said George Heriot, more hastily than prudently, 'I might have thought of the old proverb of Satan reproving sin.' 'Deil hae our saul, neighbour,' said the king, reddening, 'but ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... deeds done in the flesh, I ask whether it is consistent with the idea we have of divine justice to think that both will be condemned to the same everlasting punishment? If it be, then there is no more moral turpitude in parricide than in telling a trivial falsehood, which injures no one, but still is offensive and displeasing to God. But if it be not consistent with divine justice, then you must admit the distinction of guilt, and consequently of punishment. ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... ideal of the past, colossal but extinct, on which his gloomy eloquence is exhausted. Among his contemporaries he finds no vestige of ancient goodness; honour has become a traffic, ambition has turned to avarice, and envy has taken the place of public spirit. From this scene of turpitude he selects two men who in diverse ways recall the strong features of antiquity. These are Caesar and Cato; the one the idol of the people, whom with real persuasion they adored as a god; [75] the other the idol of the senate, whom ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... and which even Satire blushes to name, vices such that, to borrow the energetic language of Lord Keeper Coventry, "the depraved nature of man, which of itself carrieth man to all other sin, abhorreth them." But the offences of his youth were not characterized by any peculiar turpitude. They excited, however, transports of rage in the King, who hated all faults except those to which he was himself inclined, and who conceived that he made ample atonement to Heaven for his brutality by holding the softer passions in detestation. The ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Turpitude of character must betray itself. Moral corruption can no more be hidden than physical corruption. Wickedness "will out," like murder or smallpox. A man's wife discovers it; his children shun him instead of clinging about his knees; ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... every kind, then flourished. We are refined in our vices, they were gross and barbarous in theirs. They had neither so many ways nor so many means of sinning; but the sum of their moral turpitude was greater than ours. We have a sort of decency and good breeding, which lay a certain restraint on our passions; they were boorish and beastly, and their bad passions ever in full play. Civilization prevents barbarity and atrocity; mental cultivation ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... aside for the moment from the study of more recent turpitude, is preparing an analytical memoir on the first murder, that of ABEL by CAIN. With all his well-known thoroughness he reconstructs the crime and shows in what particulars CAIN, although an innovator, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... a moving ship, and can not see its motion. We can not realize the world's yesterdays. We know them, but do not comprehend them, since between apprehending and comprehending an epoch lie such wide spaces. "Quo Vadis" has done good in that it has popularized a realization of that turpitude of condition into which Christianity stepped at the morning of its career; for no lazar-house is so vile as the Roman civilization when Christianity began—God's angel—to trouble that cursed pool. Christ has come into this world's affairs unheralded, as the morning does not come; for ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... Miss Sterling. Not that I would not be a match for him in all matters of open enmity; but in ways of secrecy and deep dealing, he is master, and all the more to be dreaded that he makes it impossible for one to understand him or measure the depths of turpitude to which he would descend. When, therefore I heard him say he should have that will back before it could pass into the hands of Mr. Nicholls, I trembled; and as the night passed and morning came without showing any ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... and confusion, without reply; and OMAR departed with the calm dignity of a benevolent and superior being, to whom the smiles and frowns of terrestrial tyranny were alike indifferent, and in whom abhorrence of the turpitude of vice was mingled with companion for ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... the crime. Traitors and deserters are hung upon trees: [76] cowards, dastards, [77] and those guilty of unnatural practices, [78] are suffocated in mud under a hurdle. [79] This difference of punishment has in view the principle, that villainy should he exposed while it is punished, but turpitude concealed. The penalties annexed to slighter offences [80] are also proportioned to the delinquency. The convicts are fined in horses and cattle: [81] part of the mulct [82] goes to the king or state; part to the injured ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... Webster's arraignment of South Carolina was directed against an alleged erroneous dogma and only incidentally affected personal morality. The reaction, therefore, was void of bitter resentment. Sumner's charges were directed against alleged moral turpitude, and the classic form and scrupulous regard for parliamentary rules which he observed only added to the feeling of personal resentment on the part of his opponents. Some of the defenders of slavery were themselves devoted ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... surely, as a French writer suggests, because the dirty work was too dirty for his fingers, but probably because he was getting old and stupid and out-of-date, and failed to keep in touch with new forms of turpitude. He left Venice again and paid a visit to Vienna, saw beloved Paris once more, and there met Count Wallenstein, or Waldstein. The conversation turned on magic and the occult sciences, in, which Casanova was an adept, as the reader of the Memoirs will remember, and the count ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Consistency of moral doctrine again demands both. But if we admit the restricted interpretation, and exclude the larger, we offend reason. All consistency is at an end. Individual responsibility for moral turpitude will be taken from man. Crimes, clearly marked and defined in the page of Christianity, will cease to be crimes at the will of princes. One contradiction will rush in after another; and men will ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... strange gods, the Episcopal service as administered by Allan had prevailed over her seasoned skepticism: through its fascinating leaven of romance—with faint and, as it seemed to her, wholly reverent hints of physical culture—the spirit may be said to have blandished her. And now this turpitude in a man of God came to disturb the first tender rootlings of ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... concerned, a solution of the problem exists—a solution so simple that only a statesman could explain why it has not been adopted long years ago. The statutes in force at Ellis Island permit the exclusion of immigrants who have been guilty of crimes involving moral turpitude in their native land, but do not provide for the compulsory production of the applicants' "penal certificate" under penalty of deportation. Every Italian emigrant is obliged to secure a certified document from the police authorities of his native ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... the grand Presentation Saloon, on the ceiling of which Lebrun had painted a likeness of Louis XIV. A tri-coloured cockade placed on the forehead of the great King still bore witness of the imbecile turpitude of the Convention. Lastly came the hall of the Guards, in front of the grand staircase of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... continued for life. It was called necessitudo sortis; and it was looked upon with a sacred reverence. Breaches of any of these kinds of civil relation were considered as acts of the most distinguished turpitude. The whole people was distributed into political societies, in which they acted in support of such interests in the State as they severally affected. For it was then thought no crime, to endeavour by every honest means to ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... pompons manner; and as though he had been sent as an executioner to punish condemned malefactors, he omitted no sort of rapine, or of vexation; where the case was really pitiable, he was most barbarous, and in things of the greatest turpitude he was most impudent. Nor could any one outdo him in disguising the truth; nor could any one contrive more subtle ways of deceit than he did. He indeed thought it but a petty offense to get money out of single ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... of licence of this kind, that nothing could prevent purity of manners, were marriage allowed, among the nearest relations, or any intercourse of love between them ratified by law and custom. Incest, therefore, being PERNICIOUS in a superior degree, has also a superior turpitude and moral deformity ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... the partiality of the people, exhibiting the free command of a pure and copious vocabulary, an inexhaustible fund of metaphors and similitudes, giving variety and grace to the most familiar topics, with an almost dramatic exposure of the folly and turpitude of vice, and a deep moral earnestness. His zeal as a bishop and eloquence as a preacher, however, gained him enemies both in the church and at the court. The ecclesiastics who were parted at his command from ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... notice of an immortal being about to stand the trial for eternity, before the Supreme Judge of heaven and earth. Be comforted: your crime, morally or religiously considered, has no very deep dye of turpitude. It corrupted no man's principles; it attacked no man's life. It involved only a temporary and reparable injury. Of this, and of all other sins, you are earnestly to repent; and may GOD, who knoweth our frailty, and desireth not our death, accept ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... Edward of all his affairs. It made him suspect that he was inconstant. The affair with the Dolciquita he had sized up as a short attack of madness like hydrophobia. His relations with Mrs Basil had not seemed to him to imply moral turpitude of a gross kind. The husband had been complaisant; they had really loved each other; his wife was very cruel to him and had long ceased to be a wife to him. He thought that Mrs Basil had been his soul-mate, separated from ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... explained to the natives why I did so, and told them that I should in like manner expel any other who so transgressed, and they appeared fully to concur in the justice of my conduct. There is no doubt indeed but that they punish each other for similar offences, although perhaps the moral turpitude of the action ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... was politically obnoxious, was looked on as an all-sufficient indictment. Even members of the Academy could not suppress their detestation of him. Their language seemed not to have words that would fully express their sense of his despicable meanness, not to say turpitude. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... evidently wishes, as much as possible, to spare the character of Laertes,—to break the extreme turpitude of his consent to become an agent and accomplice of the King's treachery;—and to this end he re-introduces Ophelia at the close of this scene to afford a probable stimulus of passion in ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... house of her protector since she first entered it, I have unconsciously committed such an offense against Mr. Blyth as no contrition can ever adequately atone for. Now indeed I feel how presumptuously merciless my bitter conviction of the turpitude of my own sin, has made me towards what I deemed like sins in others. Now also I know, that, unless you have spoken falsely, I have been guilty of casting the shame of my own deserted child in the teeth of the very man who had nobly ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... envious man is a wretch without talent, jealous of merit as beggars are of the rich; if, pressed by the indigence as by the turpitude of his character he writes you some "News from Parnassus," some "Letters of Madame la Comtesse," some "Annees Litteraires," this animal displays an envy that is good for nothing, and for which Mandeville could ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... alleged had been promised for his collusion. In repeated trials Farley was unable to produce evidence satisfactory to the courts, which held that in any case his claim must be rejected because 'based on inherent turpitude.' ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... became a recognized enterprise. In Homeric times it was dignified with a respect worthy of a nobler cause—a sentiment in which the freebooters of later centuries took arrogant pride. The pirate—cruel, vicious, debased to the lowest degree of turpitude—established a moral code governing his actions and circumscribing his wanton license, and it was in the rigorous observance of these "trade laws" and customs of their realm that this abortive sense of ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... chattels. The primitive Slavic communal organization thus survived only on the royal domain, and there it exists till the present day. The census of Peter having thus fairly inaugurated chattelhood, it immediately began to develop itself in all its turpitude. The masters grew more reckless and cruel; they sold chattels separately from the lands; they brought them singly into market, disregarding all family-ties and social bonds. Estates were no more valued ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... Though he is continually at pains to speak of his "moral" comedies, it is manners and not morals that he satirizes. He is interested, not so much in effecting a fundamental reform in the lives of his characters, as in giving them a little social sense. He preaches, not against distinct moral turpitude like hypocrisy and avarice, but against inordinate affection for lap-dogs (Melampe), pietistic objections to masked balls {Masquerades}, and superstitious belief in legerdemain (Witchcraft). Holberg voices the urbane humanistic spirit that characterized the eighteenth century ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... that was rising from the bottom of my soul suddenly ended in a burst of laughter. I was confounded by so much shrewdness and so much vileness, by ideas now so just and then so false, by such general perversity of sentiments, such complete turpitude, and such marvellously uncommon frankness. He perceived the struggle going on within me:] What ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... state institutions intrusted with the care or custody of habitual criminals, idiots, epileptics, imbeciles or insane, an "habitual criminal" being defined as "a person who has been convicted of some felony involving moral turpitude." It has been a dead letter ever since it was ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... most in those countries where polygamy is allowed, that is to say, in those countries where the affections of women are not consulted, but their persons purchased for gold—a remark which may lead to this conclusion, that it is rather a moral turpitude than a propensity arising from physical or local causes. The appetite for female intercourse soon becomes glutted by the facility of enjoyment; and where women, so circumstanced, can only receive the embraces of their proprietors from a sense of duty, their coldness and indifference, the necessary ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... indignation against the turpitude of slide-makers generally and that young Micky in particular, could avert his relatives' acknowledgments of their gratitude—what a plague thanks are!—from a benefactress who was merely consulting a personal dilettantism in her attitude towards her species, and who regarded ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... present no worse spectacles of carnality than these; and will it be claimed that anything so vile is seen among civilized nations at the present day? But though there may be less grossness in the sensuality of to-day, the moral turpitude of men may be even greater than that of ancient times. Enlightened Christianity has raised the standard of morality. Christ's commentary upon the seventh commandment requires a more rigorous chastity than ancient ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... very high standard for their behavior. Thefts and other crimes, implying moral turpitude, were totally unknown. There were only four instances of corporal punishment inflicted on the Highlanders of the regiment, and these were for military offences. Moral suasion and such coercion as a father might use towards his children were deemed sufficient to keep them in discipline ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... far as my knowledge goes, the sum total of the considerations and discussions tending to show and set forth the moral turpitude of the Negro, leave out, if they do not ignore wholly, a most vital element. Any conclusion, therefore, reached, must eliminate the same, and in the degree that this element is important, the conclusion ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... ontological absurdity. But granting, for the sake of argument, that archangels fall infinitely short of moral perfection, and I should only be able to see in the fact a hopeless aggravation of my previous difficulty. If it is hard to reconcile the supreme goodness of God with the moral turpitude of man, much more would it be hard to do so if his very angels are depraved. Therefore, if the reasonable question which I originally put "may be followed by a series of similar questions to which there is no end," ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... money of his own, and, never extravagant upon himself, was more liberal to the poor girl than ever she desired. But there was nothing mercenary in her. She was far more incapable of turpitude than he, for she was of a higher nature, and loved much where he loved only a little. She was nobler, sweetly prouder than he. She had sacrificed all to him for love—could accept nothing from him without the love which alone is the soul of any gift, ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... declare!" exclaimed Mrs. Bixbee, wondering not more at the deacon's turpitude than at the lapse in David's acuteness, of which she had an immense opinion, but commenting only on the former. "I'm ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... "Dismiss your care, his punishment is o'er; "But hear his crimes, and hear his well-earn'd fate. "Of human vice the fame had reach'd mine ear, "With hop'd exaggeration; gliding down, "From proud Olympus' brow, I veil'd the god, "And rov'd the world in human form around. "'Twere long to tell what turpitude I saw "On every side, for rumor far fell short, "Of what I witness'd. Through the dusky woods "Of Maenalus I pass'd, where savage lurk "Fierce monsters; o'er the cold Lycean hill, "With pine-trees waving; and Cyllene's ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... sores which canker them. Why fear to mention that which everyone knows? Why dread to sound the abyss which can be measured by everyone? Why fear to bring into the light of day unmasked wickedness, even though it confronts the public gaze unblushingly? Extreme turpitude and extreme excellence are both in the schemes of Providence; and the poet has summed up eternal morality for all ages and nations in ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... doubtless at times the wilder spirits would seek reprisal for the thwarting of their plans. But when even one of the great men in England, who made these laws against free-trading, could tell his fellow-lawmakers that the mind of man never could conceive of it as at all equalling in turpitude those acts which are breaches of clear moral virtue—how should it be expected that the parties chiefly interested should take a ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... moral turpitude of Mr. World he was scarcely ready, at first hearing, to accept this grinding ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... the subject of conjugal infidelity, when quietly carried on under the domestic roof and dignified by the name of serventismo, no court, no society, could do otherwise than virtuously resent so great a turpitude as a wife publicly running away by herself from her husband's house. It became necessary to win over the sympathies of those in power, to secure their connivance, or at all events their neutrality; and this task of ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... this devilish abdomen!" said Mr. Boggs, slapping that portion of his frame as if he had a special grudge against it and would be glad if he could hit it hard enough to bring it to a realizing sense of its turpitude. "My figure had gone to the devil! It was not as large as it is now, but it was large enough to cook my gruel. My waist had increased so gradually that I had never noticed it. I got a tape and took its measure. Forty-two inches, sir! The jig was up. With a ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... of squalor. But"—and here Mr. Tutt's voice rose indignantly—"our greatest mistake is to assume that crimes of violence are the most dangerous to the state, for they are not. They cause greater disturbance and perhaps more momentary inconvenience, but they do not usually evince much moral turpitude. After all, it does no great harm if one man punches another in the head, or even in a fit of anger sticks a dagger in him. The police can easily handle all that. The real danger to the community lies in the crimes of duplicity—the cheats, frauds, false pretenses, ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... frequently occurred, produced odd situations by the thousand. And then, woman was physically little understood, and what was actually sickness in her, was considered a prodigy, witchcraft or monstrous turpitude. In those days these creatures, treated by the law as reckless children, and put under guardianship, were by the manners of the time deified and adored. Like the freedmen of emperors, they disposed of crowns, they decided battles, they awarded fortunes, they inspired crimes and ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... convictions, both mental and moral, imperiously requires its exercise. In such a case he has no alternative. He must either exert the negative power intrusted to him by the Constitution chiefly for its own preservation, protection, and defense or commit an act of gross moral turpitude. Mere regard to the will of a majority must not in a constitutional republic like ours control this sacred and solemn duty of a sworn officer. The Constitution itself I regard and cherish as the embodied and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... whose character was as flawless as pure crystal, was like to fare as badly as the muddiest rascal of them all, if his side sank in defeat. And yet I cannot help believing that, in some cases at least, a man might have had a happier end if he had abstained from acts of political turpitude, which were as irrational in their conception as they were ruinous in their effect; acts, that is, which, in the existing circumstances, no sane man could have undertaken unless the mere doing of these rogueries had been a supreme and a necessary pleasure to him. There ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... concealed part of his garden, he was approaching his own mansion with the air of a man who returns home in the morning after having perpetrated some dreadful deed of turpitude under cover ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... of public faith may pass with some men for declamation—to such men I have nothing to say. To others I will urge, Can any circumstance mark upon a people more turpitude and debasement? Can anything tend more to make men think themselves mean, or degrade to a lower point their estimation of virtue and their standard ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... John Ryder's outward appearance to justify Lombroso's sensational description of him: "A social and physiological freak, a degenerate and a prodigy of turpitude who, in the pursuit of money, crushes with the insensibility of a steel machine everyone who stands in his way." On the contrary, Ryder, outwardly at least, was a prepossessing-looking man. His head was well-shaped, and he had an intellectual brow, while ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... were willing that the dream should come true. Emissaries were despatched, and Caracalla was stabbed. In his luggage poison was found to the value of five million five hundred thousand drachmae. What fresh turpitude he was devising no one knew, and the discovery might serve as an epitaph, were it not that by his legions he was adored. No one had abandoned to the army such booty ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... other exploits, that which ranks next in turpitude, and which led to their overthrow, was the piracy of the Morning Star. They fell in with that vessel near the island Ascension, in the year 1828, as she was on her voyage from Ceylon to England. This vessel, besides a valuable cargo, had on board several passengers, consisting of a major ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... libertine brother of a mistress of Louis XI.; all with many errors and absurdities. As for the scholars, they swore. This was their day, their feast of fools, their saturnalia, the annual orgy of the corporation of Law clerks and of the school. There was no turpitude which was not sacred on that day. And then there were gay gossips in the crowd—Simone Quatrelivres, Agnes la Gadine, and Rabine Piedebou. Was it not the least that one could do to swear at one's ease and revile the name of God a little, on so fine a day, in such good company ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Nor is there any doubt that Cain, after hearing the words from an angry father, was overwhelmed with terror and confusion, not knowing whither to turn. The expression, "which hath opened its mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand," is, indeed, terrifying, but it portrays the turpitude of the fratricidal deed better than ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... of the present British Negro philanthropy, and the occasion of her assumed moral turpitude in elevating the heathen barbarian of Africa to the primary plane of civilization, to the protection of its laws, and the meliorations of its moral, political, social, and religious institutions. It is because monarchy was beginning to be odious in the eyes of the European democracy, when ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... persons; (3) epileptics; (4) prostitutes; (5) paupers; (6) persons likely to become public charge; (7) professional beggars; (8) persons afflicted with a loathsome or contagious disease; (9) persons who have been convicted of a felony or other crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, not including those convicted of purely political offences; (10) polygamists; (11) anarchists (or persons who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of the government of the United States or of all government or forms of laws, or the assassination of public officials); ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... the dark again!" He turned a wall key, three pink-shaded lamps, a cluster of pink-glass grapes, and a center bowl of alabaster flashing up the familiar spectacle of Louis Fourteenth and the interior decorator's turpitude; a deep-pink brocade divan backed up by a Circassian-walnut table with curly legs; a maze of smaller tables; a marble Psyche holding out the cluster of pink grapes; a gilt grand piano, festooned in rosebuds. Around through these Mr. Ross walked quickly, ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... in European diplomacy, and more than any other has strained the conscience and the moral sense of Christian nations. We wish we might say that one nation had been able to resist this invitation to a moral turpitude masked by diplomatic subterfuges. But ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... sense of horror and of loathing with which the contact of her lips oppressed me. There was about her something so unnatural, so inhuman, that I believe even then I could have destroyed her with as little sense of moral turpitude as if she ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... had feared, throughout, the possible capture and conclusive testimony of Drann and Holvey, and, lest a worse thing befall him, he accepted a sentence of a long term in the penitentiary. In view of the turpitude of "lying in wait," though a matter of inference and not proof, he doubted the saving grace of that anomaly of the Tennessee law that in order to constitute murder in the first degree the victim of a premeditated slaughter must be the person ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... effort was made to work upon her principles, but in vain. Once or twice, it is true, she entertained the matter for a time—but a momentary deliberation soon raised her naturally noble and generous spirit above the turpitude of ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... the Bridge, "Do you observe," continued he, "that extensive building? That is called the Penitentiary. It is a building designed for the punishment, employment, and reformation of offenders of secondary turpitude, usually punished by transportation for a term of years. It has been conceived since the commencement of the disputes which terminated in the separation of the American States. The plan of it is known to be partly that of Mr. Jeremy Bentham. The culprits are confined ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... his hold like an offended goddess. "O heaven, I might have known that you, George, would have abetted my poor, wilful boy in his dirt and bodily viciousness, and that you, Jervas, would have condoned his turpitude and moral degradation. None the less, though you both desert me in this dreadful hour, shirking your duty thus shamelessly, this woman's hand shall pluck my dear, loved nephew from the abyss, this ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... conceites that stirre vp any vehement passion in a man, doo it by some turpitude or euill and vndecency that is in them, as to make a man angry there must be some iniury or contempt offered, to make him enuy there must proceede some vndeserued prosperitie of his egall or inferiour, ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... once of the highest and of the lowest. Mingled with their hardness was a melting softness, with their cruelty a large benevolence, with their hate a pitying tenderness, with their spirituality a hellish turpitude. They were the eyes of two opposite men, and as I gazed into them they reconciled for me the conflicting accounts of Lord Clarenceux which I ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... conviction that argument was futile, and that nothing would serve but a pitched battle, in which each fighting man should go to the poll and put a cross against a name in grim silence. Argue with these gross self-satisfied fellows about the turpitude of the artisans! Why, there was scarcely one of them whose grandfather had not been an artisan! Curse their patriotism! Then he would begin bits of argument to himself, and stop them, too impatient ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... just where it had found us—our tempers rather than our views suffering in the conflict. Two or three times I was tempted to rattle out a volley of indignation at his amazing and unparalleled effrontery, and of calling him to account for his turpitude; but my better judgment withheld me, bidding me reserve my blows until they should fall unerringly and fatally upon his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... none to assist her; the bigotry of patriotism rejected her for her birth,—the scrupulousness of modesty, for her history. The night, that consecrated so many homes and gathered together so many families in innocence and repose, was to her blacker than its own blackness in misery and turpitude; the morning, that radiated gladness over the face of the world, revealed the extent and exaggerated the sense of her own degradation. But the vision of Jesus had alighted upon her; she had seen him speeding on his errands of mercy; she hung ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... to render him responsible for the evil which he might easily have prevented; and, on the other hand, if he pervades the moral world with his power in such a manner as to bring all things to pass, this as clearly seems to implicate him in the turpitude ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... with death or in any other way, when committed by one "cookee" on the property of another; and it is abundantly evident, from many things which are stated, that the natives themselves really do not consider the act as implying, in ordinary cases, that moral turpitude which ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... not an ordinance of Christ or the Gospel. It was an ascetic practice which was enjoined and enforced on the clergy. They never obeyed it. The rule produced sin and vice, and introduced moral discord and turpitude into the lives of thousands of the best men of the Middle Ages. In the baser days of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the current practice was a recognized violation of professed duty and virtue, under money penalties or penances. Yet the notion ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... say, be pretended that the malefactors who regularly furnish the gibbets, who daily crowd the scaffolds, are either incredulous or atheists? No! Unquestionably, these unfortunate beings, these wretched outcasts, these children of turpitude, firmly believe in God; his name has been repeated to them from their infancy; they have been informed of the punishment destined for sinners: they have been habituated in early life to tremble at his judgments; nevertheless they have outraged society; their unruly passions, stronger than ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... I can control them. Through this detestable mystery, I have been insulted, reviled—a wretch has had the hardihood, the turpitude, to brand both you and me—me as the base-born child, and ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... seventy-five years before date—a difficulty all the more difficult in that he only claims to be in his eighty-seventh year. It would be worthy of little attention, if the eager assailants of Dryden's moral character had not sought to see evidence of the deepest turpitude in this tart-eating with Mrs. ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... Court, addressed himself to Heudicourt, whom he treated in the most cruel fashion. "The good little fellow" was strangely taken aback, and wished to defend himself; but Villars produced proofs that could not be contradicted. Thereupon the ill-favoured dog avowed his turpitude, and had the audacity to approach Villars in order to speak low to him; but the Marechal, drawing back, and repelling him with an air of indignation, said to him, aloud, that with scoundrels like him he wished ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... all in the form of universal good-will to all. (4) The disposition to desire and love moral excellence, whether observed in ourselves or others—in short, true piety towards God. He goes on to give a similar scale of moral turpitude. Again, putting aside the indifferent qualities, and also those that merely make people despicable and prove them insensible, he cites—(1) the gratification of a narrow kind of affection when the public good might have been served. (2) ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... that you perceive the indecency and turpitude of those of your 'Commensaux', who disgrace and foul themselves with dirty w——s and scoundrel gamesters. And the light in which, I am sure, you see all reasonable and decent people consider them, will be a good warning ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... yet looks on thee; But with my heart the other eye doth see. Ah, poor our sex! this fault in us I find, The error of our eye directs our mind. What error leads must err; O, then conclude, Minds sway'd by eyes are full of turpitude. ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition] |
