"Dissolute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... villenage, or who had in a more summary manner emancipated themselves, multiplied in poverty and wretchedness. Lastly, owing to the fashion for large households of retainers, great numbers of men were trained up in an idle and dissolute way of life, liable at any time to be cast off when age or accident invalided them, or when the master of the family died; and then if not ashamed to beg, too lewd to work, and ready for any kind of mischief. Owing to these co-operating causes, a huge population of outcasts was ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... "and I soon found one. And the next step was to throw away all false judgment in regard to such things. And so I can see more clearly than you into the right of the matter.—Would you hesitate a moment between Tom Weir and the dissolute son of an ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... the Baron von Putkammer, after leading a wild and dissolute life, had expired within its walls. For years previously, many a mysterious story, fraught with dark hints of seduction and infanticide, had been whispered over the surrounding country; and when at last death arrested the Baron's profligate career, some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... familiar to, and held by the dissolute, who, not content with spreading the contagion of their souls, aim at poisoning the very wells of morality. They reason somewhat after this fashion: Human nature is everywhere the same. He knows others who best knows himself. A mere glance at themselves reveals the fact that they are chained fast ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... But there too, in the little courtyard, [170] the officers of justice are already in waiting to take him, on the charge of having caused the death of his young server by violence, in a fit of mania, induced by dissolute living in that solitary place. One hitherto so prosperous in life would, ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... no need Of trusting to their faith; who, save ourselves And our more chosen comrades, is aware 10 Fully of our intent? they think themselves Engaged in secret to the Signory,[421] To punish some more dissolute young nobles Who have defied the law in their excesses; But once drawn up, and their new swords well fleshed In the rank hearts of the more odious Senators, They will not hesitate to follow up Their blow upon the others, when they see The example ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... True," added Gawtrey, somewhat more seriously, "if I saw how you could support yourself in a broader path of life than that in which I pick out my own way, I might say to you, as a gay man of fashion might say to some sober stripling—nay, as many a dissolute father says (or ought to say) to his son, 'It is no reason you should be a sinner, because I am not a saint.' In a word, if you were well off in a respectable profession, you might have safer acquaintances ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... large sums of money, deposited in the bank, whereas humility is like the pence, always at hand, always current. Obedience to our superiors is the sure path. He could not persuade himself that it was right for him to allow the Kavanaghs to continue a dissolute life of drinking and dancing. They were the talk of the parish; and he would have spoken against them from the altar, but his uncle had advised him not to do so. Perhaps his uncle was right; he might be right regarding ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... attempt was made. Another, it is believed, was instructed to remove Grant, but the general unexpectedly left Washington, and no direct threat was offered to him. The task of making away with the President was assigned to John Wilkes Booth, a dissolute and crack-brained actor. Lincoln and his wife were present that night at a gala performance of a popular English comedy called "Our American Cousin." Booth obtained access to the Presidential box and shot his victim behind the ear, causing instant loss of consciousness, ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... great saving of thought. The change is made to explain itself. History becomes a record of oscillations; we are always swinging backwards and forwards, pendulum fashion, from one extreme to another. The courtiers of Charles II. were too dissolute because the Puritans were too strict; Addison and Steele were respectable because Congreve and Wycherley were licentious; Wesley was zealous because the Church had become indifferent; the Revolution of 1789 was a reaction against ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... travelled on foot carrying her little bundle of poor clothing, as she did in the public conveyances, that were disagreeable to her, because the roads were rough, and the companions she met were frequently dissolute libertines, although her modest exterior and edifying conversation frequently silenced their licentious discourses. In fact her travels were a sort of continuous mission, effecting good for the souls of her neighbor, and advancing ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... the talk of the place, which was an exceedingly undesirable thing; especially since an "exclusive" girl's name is so tender a bloom, and Mr. Canning was very probably downstairs listening to it now—the talk, that is. But, after all, young Dalhousie's dissolute misbehaviors were so well known, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... elected, the Polish diet accomplished nothing, because any noble who voted against a proposition could defeat it. This was the so-called "liberum veto" so fatal to Poland. Katharine of Russia, that clever, wise, dissolute but great German Princess, placing a puppet favourite on the Polish throne, insisted on the retention of the "liberum veto" in the Polish Constitution, because she knew that by the mere existence of this asinine institution Poland could be counted on to commit ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... his authority for the suppression of the disturbances excited by the settlers of Quincy. This place was inhabited by a set of low and immoral men, one of whom, named Thomas Morton, had come over in the wild and dissolute train sent out by Weston several years previously. He was a man of some talent, but of very contemptible character: and had attached himself to the retinue of Captain Wollaston and his companions, who first settled at Quincy, and gave it the name of Mount Wollaston. ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... "That about two years since, her too indulgent Parents," naming a Family of good account in the Country, "had unfortunately married her to Mr. —— a Mercer on Ludgate-Hill; but that his Life, since their Marriage, had been so scandalous and dissolute, that, in short, he had not only ruin'd her Fortune, but she fear'd her Constitution, by his Conversation with Scrumpets; and that her Condition was such, she knew not what to do with herself, nor how to make her Case known to any living Creature." He was going directly to examine her, but that ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... tales of old, Shedding true honest tears for thee unknown: Precious be these, and sacred in thy sight, Mingle them not with blood from hearts thus kind. If only warlike spirits were evoked By the war-demon, I would not complain, Or dissolute and discontented men; But wherefore hurry down into the square The neighbourly, saluting, warm-clad race, Who would not injure us, and cannot serve; Who, from their short and measured slumber risen, In the faint sunshine of their balconies, With a half-legend of a martyrdom And ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... time, through those godless intrigues and feasts, through those crowds, pushing, and eager, and struggling,—rouged, and lying, and fawning,—I have wanted some one to be friends with. I have said, Show me some good person about that Court; find me, among those selfish courtiers, those dissolute gay people, some one being that I can love and regard." And Thackeray confesses that, for all his research, he could not find anybody living irreproachably, at this ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... undesirable water-colors, had been once an artist's model, and that she smoked. From the top floor back, in turn, we discovered that the woman across the way, now a writer of more or less impossible plays, had been formerly a ballet girl and still did a turn now and then to aid in the support of a dissolute and ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... tomrig for a mistress, and these are the fine people of the play; and there is that latitude in this, that almost anything is proper for them to say; but their chief subject is bawdy, and profaneness, which they call brisk writing, when the most dissolute of men, that relish those things well enough in private, are choked at 'em in publick: and, methinks, if there were nothing but the ill manners of it, it should make poets avoid that indecent way of ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... the sparkling draught, and tossed the goblet down into the upraised hand of a handsome, but dissolute-looking man, who, attired in the theatrical idea of Mephistopheles, appeared to be a kind ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... of physicians and statesmen; but a stronger appeal has been made for the sake of morality itself. The detestable crime of abortion is appallingly rife in our day; it is abroad in our land to an extent which would have shocked the dissolute women of pagan Rome. Testimony from all quarters, especially from New England, has accumulated within the past few years to sap our faith in the morality and religion of American women. This wholesale, fashionable murder, how are we to stop it? Hundreds of vile men and women in our ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... and gluttony. His chilled being, as if inwardly rigid, became enervated at the kisses and feasts. Feeling disgusted beforehand, they failed to arouse his imagination or to excite his senses and stomach. He suffered a little more by forcing himself into a dissolute mode of life, and that was all. Then, when he returned home, when he saw Madame Raquin and Therese again, his weariness brought on frightful fits of terror. And he vowed he would leave the house no more, that he would ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... humours, that he met with a welcome reception; and was even introduced to the tent of Guthrum, their prince, where he remained some days [y]. He remarked the supine security of the Danes, their contempt of the English, their negligence in foraging and plundering, and their dissolute wasting of what they gained by rapine and violence. Encouraged by these favourable appearances, he secretly sent emissaries to the most considerable of his subjects, and summoned them to a rendezvous, attended by their warlike followers, at Brixton, ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... quantity of strong liquors sold to these Indians, in the places of their residence, and during their hunting season, have increased to an inconceivable degree, so as to keep these poor creatures continually under the force of liquors, that they are thereby become dissolute, enfeebled and indolent when sober; and untractable and mischievous in their liquor, always quarreling, and often murdering one another." Some of the chiefs at this treaty said, "these wicked whisky-sellers, ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... state the Iland stood whiles Aruiragus reigned; the dissolute and loose gouernement of Petronius Turpilianus, Trebellius Maximus, and Victius Volanus, three lieutenants in Brltaine for the Romane emperours, of Iulius ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (4 of 8) - The Fovrth Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed
... Segrim came back, and said, "So, young sirs, have you seen enough of your doting kinsman? The sub-prior bids me say that we harbour no strange, idling, lubber lads nor strange dogs here. 'Tis enough for us to be saddled with dissolute old men-at- arms without all their idle kin making an excuse to come and pay their devoirs. These corrodies are a heavy charge and a weighty abuse, and if there be the visitation the king's majesty speaks of, they will be one of the first matters ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Mohocks. Ever since the Restoration the streets of London had been infested at night with bands of dissolute young men who assaulted and injured men and women by wounding and beating them. No sort of mischief came amiss to them; they effected endless damage by the breaking of windows, and so forth, and a favourite diversion consisted in binding ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... liberated, according to Dean Patrick, until he had paid three thousand marks. After his liberation, he returned to the monastery, and made himself more odious to the monks than before. He was depraved and dissolute, and, to satisfy his licentious desires, he is said to have made free with the treasury. He introduced two monks likewise into the monastery, who were foreigners, and quite as unscrupulous as himself, in purloining ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... soon see how he dealt with the embarrassments of the roads and relished the bad diet; and not alone would I test him by hardships and hunger, fatigue and occasional upsets; but I'd try his powers of self-resistance by surrounding him with dissolute young attaches given to blind hookey and lansquenet. I'd have him invited to ravishing orgies, and tempted in as many ways as St Anthony; and all these after long privations. Then, I'd have him kept waiting either under a blazing sun or ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... conversation. "It doesn't quite follow," he suggested. "You people don't, I regret to say, understand the destiny of this child. The fact is that even the old Hanlin scholar Mr. Cheng was erroneously looked upon as a loose rake and dissolute debauchee! But unless a person, through much study of books and knowledge of letters, so increases (in lore) as to attain the talent of discerning the nature of things, and the vigour of mind to fathom the Taoist reason as ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... "Ha!" exclaimed the dissolute Aristocrat, "whom have we here? Stay, pretty one, and let me see the fair countenance that I ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... Finot. This brilliant condottiere of the pen was, in fact, long to remain a slave. Finot hid a brutal strength of will under a heavy exterior, under polish of wit, as a laborer rubs his bread with garlic. He knew how to garner what he gleaned, ideas and crown-pieces alike, in the fields of the dissolute life led by men engaged in ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... to Roldan, to endeavor to persuade him to return to his duty; but the mutineer feared to submit, believing that he had gone too far for forgiveness. He marched into the province of Xaragua, where he allowed his dissolute followers to abandon themselves to every kind of excess. The three caravels which had been despatched from Gomera by the admiral unfortunately made a bad landfall, and appeared off Xaragua. Roldan concealed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... it would have appeared to him in the likeness of a fair beautiful Cherubim. For there is nothing amongst mortal men more fair and admirable, than the chaste minds of this people. Know therefore, that with them there are no stews, no dissolute houses, no courtesans, nor anything of that kind. Nay they wonder (with detestation) at you in Europe, which permit such things. They say ye have put marriage out of office: for marriage is ordained a remedy for unlawful concupiscence; and natural concupiscence seemeth as a spar to marriage. ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon
... preaching of soporific truths (or untruths) to keep the mob quietly at work, while we amuse ourselves; and the necessity for this amusement is fastening on us as a feverous disease of parched throat and wandering eyes—senseless, dissolute, merciless. How literally that word Dis-Ease; the Negation and impossibility of Ease, expresses the entire moral state of our English Industry and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... spot where the conference took place in which Francis and Charles swore a peace in the presence of His Holiness which they took the first opportunity to violate. In 1540 the war recommenced, and a number of dissolute young men of good family formed themselves into organized companies of bandits and overran the country, to the terror of the wretched peasantry and the utter ruin of many hundreds of honest families. But in 1543 a second Joan of Arc was raised up by Providence to deliver ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... world. As a fact any town furnishes material for speculations of the spirit. The postboys tell us that yonder is Montbard, a place utterly unknown to me. Nevertheless I am not afraid to affirm, by analogy, that the people living therein resemble ourselves, are egotistic cowards, perfidious gluttons, dissolute. Otherwise they could not be human beings and descendants of Adam, at once miserable and venerable, and in whom all our instincts, down to the most ignoble, have their august origin. The only possible doubtful matter with yonder people, ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... By cottage-door on breezy mountain side, Or in some sheltering vale, was seen a babe 355 By Nature's gifts so favoured. Upon a board Decked with refreshments had this child been placed, His little stage in the vast theatre, And there he sate surrounded with a throng Of chance spectators, chiefly dissolute men 360 And shameless women, treated and caressed; Ate, drank, and with the fruit and glasses played, While oaths and laughter and indecent speech Were rife about him as the songs of birds Contending ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... indifference gave place to the most marked admiration; and it became evident that he was seriously contemplating an alliance with the Princess who had been designed for him by his father. In so trivial and dissolute a Court as that of France at this period, it is needless to remark to how many fears and regrets such a resolution immediately gave birth; nor was it long ere two separate cabals were formed—the one favouring, and the other seeking to impede, the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... Theolog., loc. 33: "Magistrates do not admit the yoke; they are afraid for their honours; they love licentiousness," &c. "The common people are too dissolute; the greatest part is most corrupt," &c. "In the meanwhile, I willingly confess that we are not to despair, but the age following will peradventure yield more tractable spirits, more mild hearts than our ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... poor, downtrodden France. They talked of Liberty mostly, with many oaths and curses against the tyrants, and then started a tyranny, an autocracy, ten thousand times more awful than any wielded by the dissolute Bourbons. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... mingling with the crowd, her head-dress arranged to hide her face as much as might be, she saw the rich lords of Rome go by in chariots, on horseback, in litters, all sorts and conditions of them, fat, proud men with bold eyes; hard-faced statesmen or lawyers; war-worn, cruel-looking captains; dissolute youths with foppish dress and perfumed hair, and shuddering, wondered whether she was appointed to any one of these. Or was it, perhaps, to that rich and greasy tradesman, or to yon low-born freedman with a cunning leer? She knew not, God alone knew, ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... driven out to the place by his brother, who took advantage of the occasion to point out to the youth the beauties of a country life, away from the temptations of cities. Also he remarked upon the folly of a young man spending the bloom of his years among the dissolute natives of the South Seas; and then casually inquired if the women down there were pretty. Then the younger Denison began to talk, and the elder brother immediately pulled up the horse from a smart trot into a slow walk, saying there ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... some degree of contempt as a low and thievish race of outcasts, nevertheless take a strange interest in all that concerns them, it having been from time immemorial their practice, more especially of the dissolute young nobility, to cultivate the acquaintance of the Gitanos, as they are popularly called, probably attracted by the wild wit of the latter and the lascivious dances of the females. The apparation, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... John, I know your life is not a dissolute one; but your mother is very anxious—remember you are the last. Is there no chance of ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... number amounted to seventeen hundred. It was the opinion of many that this fire occurred by accident during the heat of the disturbances. Others affirm that it was begun willfully by Neri Abati, prior of St. Pietro Scarragio, a dissolute character, fond of mischief, who, seeing the people occupied with the combat, took the opportunity of committing a wicked act, for which the citizens, being thus employed, could offer no remedy. And to insure his success, he set fire to the house of his own brotherhood, where he had the best ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... an odium lasting for years. There, in that maddening bedlam, called a city, the acknowledged inferno of industrialism, the agitation was tensest. With its brutalities, cruelties, corruptions and industrial carnage, its hideous contrasts of dissolute riches and woe-begone poverty, its arrogant wealth lashing the working population lower and lower into squalor, pauperism and misery, Chicago was overripe for any ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... 1730. "... Reichenbach has told his Prussian Majesty to-day by a Courier who is to pass through Brussels [Austrian Kinsky's Courier, no doubt], what amours the Prince of Wales," dissolute Fred, "has on hand at present with actresses and opera-girls. The King of Prussia will undoubtedly be astonished. The affair merits some attention at present,"—especialIy from an ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... with the youth who preceded him. How frequently do we see the youth vicious and depraved, and the man who follows him upright and virtuous, hating iniquity! How often, on the other hand, is a pure and innocent girlhood succeeded by a dissolute and shameless womanhood! In many cases age looks back upon youth with inexpressible longing and tenderness, and quite as often with shame and remorse; but in all cases with the same consciousness of profound contrast, and of a great gulf ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... The first of them came to the deep arch, in whose recess is a lamplit shrine; I stood aside to see them go past. The soldiers were wrenching the man along by the arms, each holding him on one side; I recall yet the prisoner's lean, miserable face, with the suggestion it had of dissolute and desperate youth; and as they came abreast of the faintly gleaming ikon in the gate they let him go for a moment. His dazed eyes wandered up to the shrine; he was already bareheaded, and with a shaking, uncertain hand he ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... regards Spenser himself, it is clear from the letters that Harvey was not without uneasiness lest his friend, from his gay and pleasure-loving nature, and the temptations round him, should be carried away into the vices of an age, which, though very brilliant and high-tempered, was also a very dissolute one. He couches his counsels mainly in Latin; but they point to real danger; and he adds in English,—"Credit me, I will never lin [ cease] baiting at you, till I have rid you quite of this yonkerly and womanly humour." But in the second pair of letters of April, 1580, a lady appears. Whether ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... at Windsor. I found every one in the drawing-room, but His Majesty and Lady ——. She entered but a minute before him, like a queen. Her reception was that of a queen; young, unmarried females kissed her hand. Now, all this might happen in France, even now: but Louis XV. the most dissolute of our monarchs, went no farther. At Windsor, I saw the husband, sons, and daughters of the favourite, in the circle! Le parc des Cerfs was ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... this feudal life still is, the Chinese are fast gaining permanent influence. Their dissolute and drunken and inhuman daily practices are tending to work out among this people their own destruction, and in years to come in this neighborhood the traveler will be perplexed at finding here and there a fine specimen of an upstanding Chinese, with clean-cut ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... between him and the whole nobility of France, he had been placed at the head of the army of Hanover; and in that situation he did his best to repair, by extortion and corruption, the injury which he had done to his property by a life of dissolute profusion. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... were very numerous, but of no great merit. Allan was his own compositor, and gave much time to his hobby; but his printer appears to have been a dissolute and dirty workman, who caused him much annoyance and trouble. Altogether it may safely be said that Allan's press cost him a great deal more than it ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... may not be able to go on. Well, I have been through the mill. Clifford was right. They say it is a phase through which all men must pass. I say, must or not, if you pass through it you don't come out without a stain. You're never the same man after. Don't imagine I mean that I was brutally dissolute. I don't want you to think worse of me than I deserve. I kept a clean tongue in my head — always. So do you. I never got drunk — neither do you. I kept a distance between myself and the women whom those fellows were celebrating in song just now — so do you. How much is due in both ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... informed by other people, that from the greatest to the lowest they sinned most dishonestly, not only in natural but in unnatural ways, without any restraint or remorse to shame them; so much so that for the poor and the dissolute of both sexes to take part in any affair was no small thing. Besides this he saw that they were universally gluttons, wine-drinkers, and drunkards, and much devoted to their stomachs after the manner ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... this Catullus and Martial in Antiquity witness that they had no perception at all, for they filled up their works with a good deal of ill-bred filth, and on that account must be regarded not only as dissolute but also as vulgar, uncultivated, and, to use Catullus' ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... of which perhaps we little guess the origin, and the very idioms of our familiar conversation. The man in the comedy spoke prose without knowing it; and we Catholics, without consciousness and without offence, are ever repeating the half sentences of dissolute playwrights and heretical partizans and preachers. So tyrannous is the literature of a nation; it is too much for us. We cannot destroy or reverse it; we may confront and encounter it, but we cannot make it over again. It is a great work ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... that quiet and sober way of faith which their fathers held before them. However, the reader will be glad to learn that, after all his doubts and sorrows, Spiridion does discover the truth (THE truth, what a wise Spiridion!) and some discretion with it; for, having found among his monks, who are dissolute, superstitious—and all hate him—one only being, Fulgentius, who is loving, candid, and pious, he says to him, "If you were like myself, if the first want of your nature were, like mine, to know, I would, without hesitation, lay bare to you my entire thoughts. I would make ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... say the Pavilion, which is too cosmopolitan, dreary French comics are heard there—for preference let us say the Royal. I shall not easily forget my first evening there, when I saw for the time a living house—the dissolute paragraphists, the elegant mashers (mark the imaginativeness of the slang), the stolid, good-humoured costers, the cheerful lights o' love, the extraordinary comics. What delightful unison of enjoyment, what unanimity of soul, what communality of wit; all knew each other, all ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... takes itself seriously, that has a notion of what it may exact, and that dares to endanger his income, his business, and his habits! Upon such an art he turns his back, as though it were something dissolute; and, affecting the attitude of a. guardian of chastity, he cautions every unprotected virtue on no account ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... "business" that goes on daily at the Bourse.' 'Still,' faltered Pauline, 'such horrid persons do play, —such men,—such women! It is not respectable.' 'It is not respectable for most people certainly,' he said, 'because other ways of earning are open to them. The idle come here, the dissolute, the good-for-nothings. I know all that. But we are quite differently placed; and have no other means of getting money to live with. At those tables, Pauline, I shall be working for you as sincerely and honestly as though I were buying up shares ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... as queer a set as may be found anywhere. In his more serious intervals, he talks philosophy and deism, and preaches obedience to the law of reason and morality; which law he says (and I believe him) he has so well observed, that, notwithstanding his residence in dissolute countries, he has never yet been sinful. He wishes me, eight or nine weeks hence, to accompany him on foot to Quebec, and then to Niagara and New York. I should like it well, if my circumstances and other considerations would permit. What pleases much ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... maiden who had stumbled on a dust-grimed, lime-washed, sun-peeled, collarless wanderer come from and going to goodness knows where, would, her mother inciting her and her father brandishing an umbrella, have regarded him as a dissolute adventurer—a person to ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... as well as those in the more northern climates. After the Restoration, a total change in the manners of the English nation took place, and many of the people from the strictest rigour and severity in point of morals, became profane, dissolute and abandoned. The Cavaliers, who had suffered during the usurpation, began to retaliate on the Puritans, and having obtained the ascendency over them in public affairs, on all occasions treated them with severe ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... It was at this critical period that Lord Wharton, who has been described as "a political weathercock, a bad spendthrift, and a poet of some pretensions," joined the Prince of Orange in the Revolution, and published this famous song. He seems to have been a dissolute man, and ended badly, although he was a visitor at the "Dolphin" at that time, with many distinguished personages. In the third edition of the small pamphlet in which the song was first published Lord Wharton was described "as a Late Viceroy of Ireland who has so often boasted himself upon ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... could portray the sad story of suffering and wrong she poured into my ears, of a niece—beautiful, young, passionate, and willful—and of her prayers and useless expostulations, and of a handsome, dissolute lover to whom the girl was passionately attached, and of elopements she had frustrated, alas! more than once. Ah! how shall I say it!—the lover was ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... shown anew, moreover they are about to reach their culmination. The husband disguised here tests the wife, and finds out by his own personal observation her fidelity. Her womanly instincts are still intact, in spite of the dissolute surroundings. Ulysses discovers that he is not to meet with the fate of Agamemnon on his ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... boldly, No matter how coldly The rough river ran,— Over the brink of it, Picture it—think of it, Dissolute Man! Lave in it, drink of it, ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... winner of the game, it foretells that you will be much courted and admired by certain dissolute characters, bringing you selfish pleasures, but ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... necessary that the son should go away to do for himself for a while. For a time good reports came from him, and the old shepherd would go out when he had leisure and would work on the sheepfold which he was building. By and by, however, sad news came from Luke. In the great dissolute city he had given himself to evil courses. Shame fell on him and he was driven to seek a hiding-place beyond the seas. The sad tidings broke the old father's heart. He went about as before, caring for his sheep. To the hollow dell, too, he would repair from time to time, meaning to build at the ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... buildings—I believe he said they were fortyfications, but I think there must have been fifty of them; he also showed me the Lines at Chatham, which I saw quite distinctly, with the clothes drying on them. Rochester was remarkable in King Charles's time, for being a very witty and dissolute place, as I ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... Company out of their anchorage. What a school of virtue for a young gentleman;—and for the elder ones concerned with him! He did not get to the Rhine Campaign; nor indeed ever to anything, except to writing madrigals, and being very futile, dissolute and miserable with what of talent Nature had given him. Let us pity the poor constitutional Prince. Our Fritz was only in danger of losing his life; but what is that, to losing your sanity, personal identity almost, and becoming Parliamentary Fireship to his ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... all such men away from him, in his anxiety to get the credit of every achievement for himself; for in addition to all his other qualities, his jealousy is insurpassable. On the other hand, any generally temperate or upright man, who cannot endure the dissolute life there, day by day, nor the drunkenness and the lewd revels, is thrust on one side and counts for nothing. {19} Thus he is left with brigands and flatterers, and men who, when in their cups, indulge in dances of a kind which ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... endeavored to cast contempt upon the adherents of the reformed faith: "What are all these Lutherans? A crew of insolent pedagogues, corrupt priests, dissolute monks, ignorant lawyers, and degraded nobles, with the common people whom they have misled and perverted. How far superior to them is the Catholic party in number, ability, and power! A unanimous decree from this illustrious assembly will enlighten ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... Madame de Vallorbes, resplendent in crocus-yellow brocade, costly lace, and seed pearls, the young man, her companion—the young man of the light, forked beard, domed skull, vain eyes and peevish mouth—the young man of holy and dissolute aspect—were good enough instruments for the Eternal Justice to employ in ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... inclination of the people; or, with their public resolution-brethren, the Seceders, exchanging the clear scriptural and covenanted basis of civil government, with the obscure foundation of the law and light of nature, or the more dissolute basis of mere election and acknowledgment of whomsoever the primores regni, though never so wicked and licentious, choose and set up as magistrates. Which notion contains an injurious and impious impeachment ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... tainted atmosphere of Atheism which is slowly and insidiously spreading itself through all ranks, particularly among the upper classes, who, while becoming every day more lax in their morals and more dissolute of behavior, consider themselves far too wise and 'highly cultured' to believe in anything. It is a most unwholesome atmosphere, charged with the morbidities and microbes of national disease and downfall; ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... is the idea of many that sailors have little or no religion: and their dissolute conduct, when thrown on shore, is certainly a strong argument in support of this opinion; but they must not be so partially judged. Those who are constantly mixed with the world, and exposed to its allurements, are subject to a continual struggle against ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... things that to a marvellous degree bring people under subjection—moral and corporeal fear. The most dissolute are held in restraint by the influence of moral worth, and there are few who would engage in a quarrel if they were certain that defeat or death would be the consequence. Cromwell obtained, and we may add, maintained his ascendancy over the people of England, by his earnest ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... they are zealous on the other side of a due Reformation both in Church and State. In which work, whilest they were labouring, they have been interrupted by the plots and practises of a malignant party of Papists, and ill affected persons, especially of the corrupt and dissolute Clergy, by the incitement and instigation of Bishops and others, whose avarice and ambition being not able to bear the Reformation endeavoured by the Parliament, they have laboured (as we can expect little better fruit from such trees) to kindle a flame, ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... he means nothing by it. He is as much mistaken in what he does intend really, for that which he takes for the ornament of his language renders it the most odious and abominable. His custom of swearing takes away the sense of his saying. His oaths are but a dissolute formality of speech and the worst kind of affectation. He is a Knight-Baronet of the Post, or gentleman blasphemer, that swears for his pleasure only; a lay-affidavit man, in voto only and not in orders. He learned to swear, as magpies ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... which I can assure you, Sir, is not true. What might have given a Handle to this Charge, must be a Political Dissertation concerning the best Method to guard and preserve Women of Honour and Virtue from the Insults of dissolute Men, whose Passions are often ungovernable. As in this there is a Dilemma between two Evils, which it is impracticable to shun both, so I have treated it with the utmost Caution, and begin thus: I am far from encouraging Vice, ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... not dishonoured by their conduct, which appears holy. But you want the Church to judge neither of the inward, because that belongs to God alone, nor of the outward, because God dwells only upon the inward; and thus, taking away from her all choice of men, you retain in the Church the most dissolute, and those who dishonour her so greatly, that the synagogues of the Jews and sects of philosophers would have banished them as unworthy, and have abhorred ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... wearing nothing at all on their feet; bevies of brazen-faced hussies looking out of grim doorways for more victims and more drink; stray soldiers struggling about beer or dram shops entrances, with dissolute, brawny-armed females; and wandering old hags with black eyes and dishevelled hair, closing up the career of shame and ruin they have so ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... first-born sons, but also the first-born daughters, and not only the first-born of the marriages then existing, but also the first-born issuing from previous alliances of the fathers and the mothers, and as the Egyptians led dissolute lives, it happened not rarely that each of the ten children of one woman was the first-born of its father. Finally, God decreed that death should smite the oldest member of every household, whether or not he was the first-born of his ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... now possible to us—the highest ever set before a nation to be accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race; a race mingled of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in temper, but still have the firmness to govern, and the grace to obey. We have been taught a religion of pure mercy, which we must either now betray, or learn to defend by fulfilling. And we are rich in an inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... Frank resided, was a deep stone cellar, originally designed as a wine vault; it was built in the most substantial manner, the only entrance being protected by a massive iron door—the said door having been attached in order to prevent dishonest or dissolute servants from plundering the wine. In the course of the day upon which he had sent the letter to Nero, Frank paid a visit to this cellar, and having examined it with great care, said to himself—'This will answer the ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... came by, arm in arm with his friend, the Duke of Wharton. It was a one-sided friendship. Lord Rotherby was but one of the many of his type who furnished a court, a valetaille, to the gay, dissolute, handsome, witty duke, who might have been great had he not preferred his vices ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... news of his father's death, which took place not long afterwards, he left AEgae for his native place, where he gave up half his inheritance to his elder brother, whom he is said to have reclaimed from a dissolute course of life, and the greater part of the ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... that the great minister Sully feared was that of Gabrielle, whom the King had promised to marry when the tie that bound him to his beautiful, wilful, dissolute cousin, Marguerite of Valois, should be annulled by the Pope. Sully, however, had other ambitions for Henry and for France, as he was already entering into negotiations with the Medici with a view ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... without salary, lecturing on Kantian philosophy and aesthetics. Three times he was married; his days were full of financial struggles and self-wrought misery; there is little in his private life that is creditable to record: a dissolute youth was followed by a misguided manhood, and he died in his ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... passionate idolatry. It has just been shown in what terms Louise of Savoy, in her daily collection of private memoranda, used to speak to herself of her son, "My king, my lord, my Caesar, and my son!" She was proud, ambitious, audacious, or pliant at need, able and steadfast in mind, violent and dissolute in her habits, greedy of pleasure and of money as well as of power, so that she gave her son neither moral principles nor a moral example: for him the supreme kingship, for herself the rank, influence, and wealth ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... liege.] Some contemporary historians affirm that the Dauphin sent Henry the contemptuous present, which has been imputed to him, intimating that such implements of play were better adapted to his dissolute character than the instruments of war, while others are silent on the subject. The circumstance of Henry's offering to meet his enemy in single combat, affords some support to the statement that he was influenced ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... sure 't would amaze yiz How one Misther Theseus Desarted a lovely young lady of owld. On a dissolute island, All lonely and silent, She sobbed herself sick as she sat in the cowld. Oh, you'd think she was kilt, As she roar'd with the quilt Wrapp'd round her in haste as she jumped out of bed, And ran down to the coast, Where ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... Bohemia, was now emperor. It will be remembered that by marrying Mary, the eldest daughter of Louis, King of Hungary and Poland, he received Hungary as the dower of his bride. By intrigue he also succeeded in deposing his effeminate and dissolute brother, Wenceslaus, from the throne of Bohemia, and succeeded, by a new election, in placing the crown upon his own brow. Thus Sigismond wielded a three-fold scepter. He was Emperor of Germany, and King of Hungary ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... been ruinous to the country's finance, the new Duke maintained half a dozen such ladies in the greatest splendour. Suess was accused of arranging the Duke's relations with these ladies, and of sharing their favours with his unsuspecting patron. It is certain that the Jew led a dissolute life, and that ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... did him no good, for when he returned to Shrewsbury he formed, with Vetch and others of his kidney, a gang in imitation of the Mohocks, as they were called—the band of dissolute young ruffians who then infested London, wrenching off knockers, molesting women in the streets, pinking sober citizens, and tumbling the old watchmen into the gutters. Our streets at night became the scene of riotous exploits of this kind, and our watch, being old and ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... shall hear more anon, to be educated by their mother, Archbishop Arundel's niece, in her own Popish views. He is described by the monkish chroniclers as "very handsome and very courteous, most dissolute of life, and extremely remiss in all matters of religion." We can guess pretty well what that means. "Remiss in matters of religion," of course, refers to his Lollardism, while the accusation of "dissolute life" ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... your son, sir," Dick went on solemnly, and hating his task, "I am much afraid that you are going to be disappointed in him. The boy is known as Tag Mosher. He believes a dissolute, drunken, thieving fellow named Bill Mosher, who is now in jail, to be his father. Tag is himself a wild young savage of the forest, and maintains ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... was worse than you are, Base and pitiless to boot; Doubtless all are bad, yet few are Cruel, false, and dissolute. ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... austere principles look upon mirth as too wanton and dissolute for a state of probation, and as filled with a certain triumph and insolence of heart that is inconsistent with a life which is every moment obnoxious to the greatest dangers. Writers of this complexion have observed, that the sacred Person who was the great pattern of perfection, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... children of the devil. He resolved to remedy the evil. The Emperor, Rudolph II., paved the way. He was just the man that Budowa required. He was weak in body and in mind. He had ruined his health, said popular scandal, by indulging in dissolute pleasures. His face was shrivelled, his hair bleached, his back bent, his step tottering. He was too much interested in astrology, gems, pictures, horses, antique relics and similar curiosities to take much interest in government; he suffered from ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... to have Charteris to talk against. The little man had many tales to tell me of those dissolute gay people we had known and frolicked with; indeed, I think that he was trying to allure me back to the old circles, for he preoccupied his life by scheming to bring about by underhand methods some perfectly unimportant consummation, which very often a plain ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... into foure parts. The first, the Castle of delight: Wherin is reported, the wretched end of wanton and dissolute liuing. The second, the Garden of Vnthriftinesse: Wherein are many sweete flowers, (or rather fancies) of honest loue. The thirde, the Arbour of Vertue: Wherein slaunder is highly punished, and vertuous Ladies and Gentlewomen, worthily commended. The fourth, the Ortchard of Repentance: ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... the means of an inglorious and frequently dissolute existence from the periodical receipt of money sent out to him ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... neighborly assistance, even though they have means for their necessities, most of the neglected are infants and children. Orphans and foundlings for whom homes must be found, children who are over-worked or abused, or who are living with dissolute parents, all of these must be given proper guardianship and a chance for healthful growth and education, or they are likely to become delinquent and thus become a permanent liability to society. It is true that in the country the home is at its best (see chapter II), but ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... suddenly dried up the tears of those who read a certain pathetic ode, in which the desolate widow was printed as "dissolute;" and the accident which destroyed a poetic reputation by making the "pale martyr in his sheet of fire" come forward with "his shirt on fire." So also a certain printer, whose solemn duty it was to have announced ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... and deed formed no small part of his ideal, his tastes in architecture, painting, sculpture, rhetoric, or poetry were severe. He had no patience with what was artistically dissolute, luscious, or decorated more than in proportion to its animating idea—wishy-washy or sentimental. The ornamental parts of his own rooms (in which I lived in his absence) were a slab of marble to wash ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... of Henry VIII. is only important now as it bears upon the policy of his reign. That Froude washed him too white is almost as certain as that Lingard painted him too black. The notion that lust supplies the key to his marriages and their consequences is utterly ridiculous. The most dissolute of English kings was content, and more than content, with one wife. On the other hand, Froude does at least give a clue when he suggests that these frequent marriages were political moves. A female sovereign reigning in her own right had never ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... that a licence-holder or supervisee shall produce a license when called upon, shall not habitually associate with persons of bad character, shall not lead an idle or dissolute life, shall report themselves monthly to the nearest police station (this regulation does not apply to women), and report any change ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... a lasting hatred and distrust for all monks and ecclesiastics. As a wandering student he visited the leading centres of learning in Germany and Northern Italy, where he was particularly remarkable for his dissolute life, his ungovernable temper, and his biting sarcasm. Taking advantage of the rising spirit of unfriendliness between the Teuton and the Latin countries, he posed as a patriot burning with love for Germany and the Germans, and despising ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... devoted to Crockford's, and his friendships with Brougham, Lord Grey and Lord Holland, Talleyrand, and all the most distinguished people in the country, did not alienate him from the company of the idle, gay, and dissolute frequenters of clubs and race-courses, congenial spirits from whom he extracted their several contributions of entertainment. The one thing needful to him was excitement, and so fixed and rooted was his habit of seeking it, that there was a sort of regularity in ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... state of matrimony, and comprehended so much of it as to be aware, that its important purposes could not be accomplished while the whole continent of Europe was interposed betwixt the married pair; for as to a hint from the Constable, that his young spouse might accompany him into the dangerous and dissolute precincts of the Crusader's camp, the good lady crossed herself with horror at the proposal, and never permitted it to be a second time ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... clearly as that philosopher has traced all knowledge to sensation. What prolific sources of disease are not those mineral and vegetable poisons, that have been introduced for its extirpation! How many thousands have become murderers and robbers, bigots and domestic tyrants, dissolute and abandoned adventurers, from the use of fermented liquors, who, had they slaked their thirst only with pure water, would have lived but to diffuse the happiness of their own unperverted feelings! How many groundless opinions ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... urgent fashion, by letters under his seal, he invited the Bishop Nicolas, in co-operation with himself, to arrest, imprison, interrogate, and sentence these enemies of God, and especially their principal leaders, the Franciscan monk, Sulpice, and a dissolute woman named Mirande. The great St. Nicolas burned with an ardent zeal for the unity of the Church and the destruction of heresy, but he dearly loved his niece. He hid her in the episcopal palace, and refused to hand her over ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... value of some sort. The orthodox explanation, I believe, is something of this kind. With every sin there is the moral guilt and the temporal penalty. The pardon cannot touch the guilt; but when the guilt is remitted, there is still the penalty. I may ruin my health by a dissolute life; I may repent of my dissoluteness and be forgiven; but the bad health will remain. For bad health, substitute penance in this world and purgatory in the next; and in this ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... this place judges of Semiramis, as almost all the profane historians do of the glory of conquerors. But, if we would make a true judgment of things, was the unbounded ambition of that queen much less blamable, than the dissolute effeminacy of Sardanapalus? Which of the two vices did most ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... when a man has been a Prime Minister, he ought to think himself fit for anything; and sooner than live on a dissolute island all me life, I'd undertake to build a ninety-gun ship, if I had ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... of this devotion to a wise care of his kingdom was about all this young man could stand, and he went back to his dissolute ways, and the bad blood of his heathen ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... warned by Judge Graney that Watkins would try to "pack" the sheriff's office with his friends on the night of the primary. This had been the usual method employed by Dunlavey when opposition to Watkins developed. Drunken, dissolute, dangerous men were usually on hand to overawe the opposition; the Judge told of instances in which gunplay had developed. But Hollis had determined that ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the hearth, and smoke and the odour of gulyas (meat stew) filled the place. Close to the fire in an armchair of polished wood sat old Kapus Benko, now a hopeless cripple. The fate which lies in wait in these hot countries for the dissolute and the drunkard had already overtaken him. He had had a stroke a couple of years ago, and then another last summer. Now he could not move hand or foot, his tongue refused him service, he could only see and hear and eat. Otherwise he was like a log: carried from his palliasse ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy |
