"Libertine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... respected by me. I do not mean to justify myself, but at the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have nothing to urge—that because she was injured she was irreproachable, and because I was a libertine, she must be a saint. If the violence of her passions, the weakness of her understanding—I do not mean, however, to defend myself. Her affection for me deserved better treatment, and I often, with great self-reproach, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... less eagerness on the part of the young monarch to behold his bride than on that of his subjects. We will not say that he had exactly imbibed the principles of a libertine, but it is well known that he was a gallant in the most liberal signification of the term, and that his amours extended to all ranks. He had, therefore, until he had well nigh reached his thirtieth year, evaded the curb of matrimony; and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... indifference. This holds especially true of politics. This is a matter upon which I feel easier in my mind than upon any other, and yet a great many people look upon me as being very lax. I cannot get out of my head the idea that perhaps the libertine is right after all and practises the true philosophy of life. This has led me to express too much admiration for such men as Sainte-Beuve and Theophile Gautier. Their affectation of immorality prevented me from seeing how incoherent their philosophy was. The fear of ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... his own. The inevitable result of this was to create two classes of prelates—one of lay, the other of ecclesial investiture. Its ultimate effect was to render the Church completely depend upon the State, and to change and corrupt its very source with the varying vices of libertine despots. It was found (and how could it be otherwise?) that the proteges of the emperor studied only how to please him; and that, in serving the State and the prince, they became indifferent to the Church. ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... it after the traditional fashion by handing her a large purse full of coin of the realm, in the shape of broken crockery, which was generally used in financial transactions on the stage, because when the virtuous maiden rejected with scorn the advances of the lordly libertine, and threw his pernicious bribe upon the ground, the clatter of the broken crockery suggested fabulous wealth. But after the play Miss Cushman, in the course of some kindly advice, said to me: "Instead of giving me that purse don't you think it would have been much more natural if you ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... of a man whose name has become synonymous with vice, a dissolute and fearless assassin of private character, of domestic comfort, and of social happiness; when he is known to be the bosom friend and supporter of the profligate and abandoned libertine, who, from the vulgar debauches of night, hastens again to the invasion of private property. Who, through the robbery of the public revenue, and the violation of private seals, hurries down the precipice ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... was an unprincipled libertine, cold, selfish, and unfeeling. He was eminently successful too in his diabolical enterprise, although there was nothing prepossessing in his person or in his manners; but he had the reputation of being irresistible, and of course he was ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... accusation against the Creator, and supply material for sarcasm; under the latter they form an indictment against our own nature, our own will, and teach us a lesson of humility. They lead us to see that, like the children of a libertine, we come into the world with the burden of sin upon us; and that it is only through having continually to atone for this sin that our existence is so miserable, and ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... and let itself criticise even great triumphators, even men whom it loved and respected. It was known that on a time they shouted during the entrance to Rome of Julius Caesar: "Citizens, hide your wives; the old libertine is coming!" But Nero's monstrous vanity could not endure the least blame or criticism; meanwhile in the throng, amid shouts of applause were heard cries of "Ahenobarbus, Ahenobarbus! Where hast thou put thy flaming beard? Dost thou fear that ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... bear to expose those whom she loved best to the contaminating influence of such society. The moral advantages of the system of education which formed the Duke of York, the Duke of Cumberland, and the Queen of Denmark, may perhaps be questioned. George the Third was indeed no libertine; but he brought to the throne a mind only half open, and was for some time entirely under the influence of his mother and of his Groom of the Stole, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Brahma there no son, no heir? The Brahman mother suffers all the pangs Kshatriyas, Sudras or the Vassas feel. The Brahman's body, when the soul has fled, A putrid mass, defiles the earth and air, Vile as the Sudras or the lowest beasts. The Brahman murderer, libertine or thief Ye say will be reborn in lowest beast, While some poor Sudra, full of gentleness And pity, charity and trust and love, May rise to Brahma Loca's perfect rest, Why boast of caste, that seems so little worth To raise the soul or ward off human ill? Why pray for what ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... latter when he tells us himself that he had never loved with passion. His death was of a piece with his life. Having been a public frequenter of brothels and the associate of the loosest company, he died like the libertine. He was taken ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... she still had hopes of civilising you,' answered Maulevrier. 'Since then she has abandoned all endeavour in that direction, and has given you over to your own devices—and me. Since then you have become a chartered libertine. You have letters ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... had come to think that the man was innately a libertine, awaiting but the right one to strike the hidden flint and set the tinder aglow—the tinder that would burn, and consume, and destroy. He had known of men like that—of men who went the even pathway of their lives until there crossed it another who tore them from it; and that ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... a villain. He is the accomplice of Robert Macaire, a libertine of unblushing impudence, who sins without compunction.—Daumier, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the moment, in the struggle, La Rochefoucauld, though no devot, would seem a friend of the church rather than a foe, and in fact he retained the intimacy of Bossuet, in whose arms he died. We may be sure that he guarded himself with delicate care from the charge of being what was then called a "libertine," that is a man openly at war with the theory and ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... pain? She had not persevered. At that moment she heard the preacher ask if the most painful moments of our lives were the result of our having followed the doctrine of Jesus or the doctrine of the world? He instanced the gambler and the libertine, who willingly confess themselves unhappy, but who, he asked, ever heard of the good man saying he was unhappy? The tedium of life the good man never knows. Men have been known to regret the money they spent on themselves, but who ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... Sunday, gloomy as a Pharisaical Sabbath, were easily imitated by men to whom all religions were the same. The sincere Puritans soon found themselves lost in a multitude, not merely of men of the world, but of the very worst sort of men of the world. For the most notorious libertine who had fought under the royal standard might justly be thought virtuous when compared with some of those who, while they talked about sweet experiences and comfortable scriptures, lived in the constant practice of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... considerable change in the progress of the life of Wilton Brown. He found the young Lord Sherbrooke all that he had been represented to be in every good point of character, and less in every evil point. He did not, it is true, studiously veil from his new friend his libertine habits, or his light and reckless character; but it so happened, that when in society with Wilton, his mind seemed to find food and occupation of a higher sort, and, on almost all occasions, when conversing with him, he showed himself, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... looked as we passed between them, with a fair wind and studding sails set alow and aloft. Their tropical charms seemed more glowing, the water bluer, the palm trees statelier, the vegetation more libertine than ever. On the south the land rises gradually from the shore to a range of lofty mountains. Immediately behind Honolulu - the capital - a valley with a road winding up it leads to the north side of the island. This valley is, or was then, richly cultivated, principally ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... effeminate, the libertine, the debauchee, the mastich- chewer, the too susceptible to amorous sights?' 'Yes; the lecher and whore-master. Well, Damasias fell down and worshipped the Goddess (they have an Artemis by Scopas in the middle of the court), he and his old white-headed wife, and implored her compassion. The ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... galling inferiority to those with whom her days must be spent. There is no election day in her year, and but the ghost of a Fourth of July. She must live not with those she likes, but with those who want her; she is not always safe from libertine insult in what serves her for a home; she knows no ten-hour rule, and would not dare to claim its protection if one were enacted. Though not a slave by law, she is too often as near it in practice as one legally ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... faith in a gentleman's relations with a lower order. At least, some gentlemen do not feel any apprehension of incurring the odium of the circle in which they move by cheating of this kind. In the same manner the roue, or libertine of rank, may often be guilty of all manner of falsehoods and crimes to the females of the class below him, without any fear of incurring the odium of either males or females of his own circle; on the contrary, the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... guilt is thine! She was pure—she was pure as the fawn unborn. O why did I hark to the cry of scorn, Or the words of the lying libertine? Wakawa, Wakawa, the guilt is thine! The springs will return with the voice of birds, But the voice of my daughter will come no more. She wakened the woods with her musical words, And the sky-lark, ashamed of his voice, forbore. She called back the years that had ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... late years, yet her childhood had been spent in the stormy north, amid an English-speaking people. She had seen much that disgusted and saddened her here amongst the French of Canada. She despised the aged libertine who still sat upon the French throne with all the scorn and disgust of an ardent nature full of ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Thy path through the world is blazed as one blazes a path in the forest. He who is at thy side is before thee and after thee. Thou travelest in darkness, but thou art cursed and blessed with the gift of sight. The worlds of women are seven: spirit, weed, flower, the blind, the visioned, libertine, and saint. None of these is for thee. For each child of love there is a woman that holds the seven worlds within a single breast. Hold fast to thy birthright, even though thou journey with thy back unto the ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... with him, or, failing that, to get her money to live on himself. What time could be saved from these wranglings, which lasted almost till the poor woman's death, was devoted ardently to his literary work. The history grew apace, and other books besides. In the seditions of the Libertine party against the austerities of the new regime the old man took the side of law and order and good morals (in his book on L'ancienne et nouvelle Police de Geneve) with an ardor that was the more surprising as one remembered his antecedents. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Joe came to our meeting and told us that he was a gambler, a pickpocket, a drunkard, a libertine and worse—enticing girls from their homes and placing them in houses of infamy. He asked us to pray for him, which of course we did. Joe disappeared for an hour or so, but returned at midnight to our meeting, and ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... "Your libertine friends named you well; you would bewitch God the Father.—A few days more must pass, and then you will both ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... of the throng was a youth whose slender figure and beautiful countenance seemed hardly consistent with his sex. But the feminine delicacy of his features rendered more frightful the mingled sensuality and ferocity of their expression. The libertine audacity of his stare, and the grotesque foppery of his apparel, seemed to indicate at least a partial insanity. Flinging one arm round Zoe, and tearing away her veil with the other, he disclosed to the gaze of his thronging companions the regular ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... complain of Hunt's good nature, for no one owes so much to it. Is not the vulgarity of these wretched imitations of Lord Byron carried to a pitch of the sublime? His indecencies, too, both against sexual nature, and against human nature in general, sit very awkwardly upon him. He only affects the libertine: he is, really, a very amiable, friendly, and agreeable man, I hear. But is not this monstrous? In Lord Byron all this has an analogy with the general system of his character, and the wit and poetry which surround ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... the effect of this good lesson keep, As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother Do not as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, Whilst, like a puffed and wreckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads And recks not ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... mother's, but which has a peculiarly high bred, refined expression, worthy of a royal princess, all combine to make me believe it must be so. Then, alas! alas! it is his own sister that this cursed libertine has so wronged, and he has been guilty of a horrible, horrible crime. Oh! I am cruelly punished for ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... frenzied as you were a moment ago; and she would not listen to reason. If you dared to hint outside in the world, that you believed her guilty, there are some of her old friends who would feel like doing to you what you want to do to that libertine in there, to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... which you are come, you have been two-fold, in internals having been quite a different man from what you were in externals; in externals you have been a civil, moral, and rational man; whereas in internals, you have been neither civil, moral, nor rational, because a libertine and an adulterer: and such men, when they are allowed to ascend into heaven, and are there kept in their externals, can see the heavenly things contained therein; but when their internals are opened, instead of heavenly things they ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... meanest intelligence, he repeated; for to such only did he or would he then and there or ever or anywhere address himself—(loud applause) that the graceless author, more utterly lost to all sense of shame than any Don Juan or other typical libertine of fiction, had come forward to placard by way of self-advertisement on his own stage, and before the very eyes of a Maiden Queen, the scandalous confidence in his own powers of fascination and seduction so cynically expressed in the too easily ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... resembles the lyric, in so far as it is moulded by some central mood—whimsical, serious, or satirical. Give the mood, and the essay, from the first sentence to the last, grows around it as the cocoon grows around the silkworm. The essay-writer is a chartered libertine, and a law unto himself. A quick ear and eye, an ability to discern the infinite suggestiveness of common things, a brooding meditative spirit, are all that the essayist requires to start business with. Jacques, in "As You Like It," had the makings of a charming essayist. It is not the essayist's ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... counsel assured us of a complete victory, and that banishment would be the mildest award of the law on the offender. Mark how different was the result! From the shifts and ambiguities of a wicked Bench, who had a fellow-feeling of iniquity with the defenders, my suit was lost, the graceless libertine was absolved, and I was incarcerated, and bound over to keep the peace, with heavy penalties, before I ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... to whom it is a great misfortune that there are not three sides to a question—a libertine in argument; conviction, like enjoyment, palls him, and his rakish understanding is soon satiated with truth—more capable of being faithful to a paradox—'I love truth as I do my wife; but sophistry and paradoxes are my mistresses—I ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... royalty, and often turn greatness to corruption, were added the gay, volatile, voluptuous part of the officers, who had obtained leave of absence from their respective cantonments, and who thought the hardships of a soldier excused the excesses of a libertine. These were chiefly young men of high birth, neglected education, and unsound principles; unacquainted with the nature of the church and government for which they professed to fight, and so ignorant of religion and morality, as to be perpetually confounding them with fanaticism ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... and to accept any teaching that they please. It has no punishment nor even a voice of disapprobation to its member who is a rationalist, an atheist, or a Christian so far as acceptance of such belief or non-belief is concerned. And, so far as conduct is concerned, a man may be a libertine, a robber or a murderer, and yet maintain his religious status. But when it comes to the violation of caste rules it is very different. Hinduism will tolerate anything but caste insubordination. So that when a man, in becoming a ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... true that all who knew him remarked the singularity of his habits. His frequent absences from home had given to his proceedings an appearance at once eccentric and mysterious. Never was young libertine more irregular in his habits than this old man. He came or failed to come home to his meals, ate it mattered not what or when. He went out at every hour of the day and night, often slept abroad, and even ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... between the custom of the empire and the wishes of the church, [129] and the author of the Novels too frequently reforms the jurisprudence of the Code and Pandects. In the most rigorous laws, a wife was condemned to support a gamester, a drunkard, or a libertine, unless he were guilty of homicide, poison, or sacrilege, in which cases the marriage, as it should seem, might have been dissolved by the hand of the executioner. But the sacred right of the husband was invariably maintained, to deliver his name and family from the disgrace of adultery: the list ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... considers worthy of himself—a National Guard truly imposing when under arms. Oh, sacred private life, where art thou! Paris is a city ever ready to exhibit itself half naked, a city essentially libertine and devoid of modesty. For a person's life to be decorous in it, the said person should have a hundred thousand a year. Virtues are dearer than vices ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... ritual which robs it of ethical content, and makes it into what an indignant Brahman writer recently called "a huge sham." To the ordinary Hindu, all of life's values are measured in the coin of external rites. Let one be an atheist if he please, or even a libertine or a murderer, and his status in Hinduism is not impaired. But let him eat beef, even unwittingly, or let him ignorantly drink water which has been touched by a man of lower caste than himself, and his doom is irrevocably sealed! Through this whole system the Hindu conscience is ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... surpass the adaptedness of such preaching as that to the need of the moment for which it was prepared? And how did the libertine French monarch contrive to escape the force of truth like the following, with which ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... has been pictured as a libertine and a pillager. His face has been caricatured so often that people have the cartooned impression of him and believe him to be a sort of ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... for Laurent in the mocking and libertine sense that one gives to this word in love. It was by an act of her will, after nights of sorrowful meditation, that she said to him—"I wish what thou wishest, because we have come to that point where the fault to be committed is the inevitable reparation of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... (Violently) Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men. A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery, recalling the cities of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the white bull mentioned ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... by a greater libertine than Cardinal Fesch: his amours are numerous, and have often involved him in disagreeable scrapes. He had, in 1803, an unpleasant adventure at Lyons, which has since made his stay in that city but short. Having thrown ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... licensed immoral houses at Hong Kong did not wish the libertine to be disturbed in his depredations. The Chinese merchants were able to see this fact if those officials were not ready to admit it even to themselves. They knew how to throw a stone that would secure their own glass houses. Hence ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... fights shy of everything, and never stands his ground, becomes a coward; while he who never fears at all, but walks boldly up to all danger, turns out rash. The enjoyer of every pleasure, who knows not what it is to deny himself aught, is a libertine and loose liver; while to throw over all the graces and delicious things of life, not as St. Paul did, who counted all things dross, that he might gain Christ, but absolutely, as though such things were of themselves devoid of attraction, is boorishness ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... overcome the centrifugal, and you can make the centrifugal overcome the centripetal. As when there is a mighty tide of good in a family that may be overcome by determination to evil, as in the case of Aaron Burr, the libertine, who had for father President Burr, the consecrated; as in the case of Pierrepont Edwards, the scourge of New York society seventy years ago, who had a Christian ancestry; while on the other hand some of the best men and women of this day are those who have come of an ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... Cenni; and then, too, she has a million florins from her grandfather, and this money would come in well to help me carry out my plans. But my aunt does not consent to give the girl to me. She says I am a libertine, a frivol viveur, etc., and she won't take the responsibility of trusting ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... anomaly of a man scrupulously honorable in regard to his own sex, and absolutely codeless in regard to the other. He was what modern nomenclature calls a "contemporaneous varietist." He was, in brief, an offensive type of libertine. Woman, first and foremost, was his game. Every woman attracted him. No woman held him. Any new woman, however plain, immediately eclipsed her predecessor, however beautiful. The fact that amorous interests took precedence over all others was quite enough to make him vaguely unpopular ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... and her humble name without spot or stain; yes, he could have witnessed and borne all this, and the blessed memory of her virtues would have consoled him in his bereavement and his sorrow. But to reflect that she was trampled down into guilt and infamy by the foot of the licentious libertine, was an event that cried for blood; and blood he had, for he murdered the seducer, and that with an insatiable rapacity of revenge that was terrible. He literally battered the head of his victim out of all shape, and left him a dead and worthless mass of inanimate ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... aunt) of sketches of the society which has passed away. I wish I could describe to you Sir Philip Forester, the "chartered libertine" of Scottish good company, about the end of the last century. I never saw him indeed; but my mother's traditions were full of his wit, gallantry and dissipation. This gay knight flourished about the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century. He was the Sir ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... subjects of Christian's apprehension, he was never visited by any long or permanent doubt that the virtue of his niece might prove the shoal on which his voyage should be wrecked. But he was an arrant rogue, as well as a hardened libertine; and, in both characters, a professed disbeliever in the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... a moment. "Sir," said she, "I don't think it is; and I would not much mind telling you. Of course I studied you before I came here. Even hunger would not make me sit in a tavern beside a fool, or a snob, or (with a faint blush) a libertine. But to tell one's own story, that is so egotistical, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... strikes me very oddly that good and wise men at Cambridge and Boston should think of raising me into an object of criticism. I have always been—from my very incapacity of methodical writing—a 'chartered libertine,' free to worship and free to rail,—lucky when I could make myself understood, but never esteemed near enough to the institutions and mind of society to deserve the notice of the masters of literature and religion. I have appreciated fully the advantages of my position, for I well know ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... long—the odor of the room from the fumes of strong liquor was almost unbearable; it was blue with smoke, too, and Lester Armstrong always led us to believe that he had never smoked a cigar in his life; and, worst of all, from a gentleman he has suddenly turned into a libertine, if I am any ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... mean," I hear my reader exclaim, "that the good Zamore had hidden vices?—that he was a thief?" No. "A libertine?" No. "That he loved brandied cherries?" No. "That he bit people?" Never. Zamore was crazy about dancing. He was an artist devoted to ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... Ujjayini with mansions, cloisters, parks, temples, pools, and fountains, and he should be mad enough to commit such a crime—and for a mere trifle? [Wrathfully.] You offspring of a loose wench, you brother-in-law of the king, Sansthanaka, you libertine, you slanderer, you buffoon, you gilded monkey, say it before me! This friend of mine does n't even draw a flowering jasmine creeper to himself, to gather the blossoms, for fear that a twig might perhaps be injured. How should ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... round upon his new antagonist, "Mr. Pendragon! And do you suppose, Mr. Pendragon, that because I have had the misfortune to marry your sister, I shall suffer myself to be dogged and thwarted by a discredited and bankrupt libertine like you? My acquaintance with Lady Vandeleur, sir, has taken away all my appetite for the other ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... is contemptible. A frank libertine may be an amusing fellow. If we do not think so, ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... maid; A box upon his shoulder held full well Her worldly riches, but the truth to tell She bore the chief herself; that nobler part. That beauteous gem, an uncorrupted heart. And then that native loveliness! that cheek! It bore the very tints her betters seek; At such a sight the libertine would glow, With all the warmth that he can ever know; Would send his thoughts abroad without control, The glimmering moon-shine of his little soul. "Above the reach of justice I shall soar, Her friends may weep, not punish; they're too poor: That very thought the rapture ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... must be a picture of the painter's best time. No great sales, therefore, took place but Elie Magus was there; every mart knew him; he traveled all over Europe. The ice-cold, money-worshiping soul in him kindled at the sight of a perfect work of art, precisely as a libertine, weary of fair women, is roused from apathy by the sight of a beautiful girl, and sets out afresh upon the quest of flawless loveliness. A Don Juan among fair works of art, a worshiper of the Ideal, Elie Magus had discovered joys that transcend the pleasure of a miser gloating over his gold—he ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... said that this libertine Duchesse was mad; and certainly he would be a bold champion who would try to prove her sanity. But, apart from any question of a disordered brain, there was a taint in her blood sufficient to account for almost ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... need not tell you all, or even a part of all, that happens to Mr. Tubbs and Belinda and the yellow cat after their arrival as fugitives at the pleasant village of Holmes-Eaton, or do more than hint at the trials of this poor knight-errant, mistaken for a burglar and a libertine, till the hour when (the book being sufficiently full) he is rewarded with the hand of beauty and the prospect of what I will venture to call a Buckroseate future. They were no more than his due for remaining a consistent gentleman amid the temptations of farce. One word of criticism ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... businesses left by his father. Though they had been carefully devised and surrounded with safeguards, the heir managed to break into and improve several of them. The result was more money. After having gambled with fair luck, played the profuse libertine for a time, tried his hand at yachting, horse-racing, big-game hunting, and even politics, he successively tired of the first three, and was beaten at the last, but retained an unsatisfied hunger for it. To celebrate his fortieth birthday, he had bought ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... which concealed Russia from the rest of Europe was rent. An army of three hundred thousand men was enlisted, Siberia was discovered, the printing press introduced, and civilization commenced. But the czar was, nevertheless, a brutal tyrant and an abandoned libertine, who massacred his son, executed his ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... beauties, and that I had been cruelly disappointed in not having seen the shadow of a woman. At this frank avowal the Emperor, who had expected it in advance, laughed heartily, and took his revenge on my ears, calling me a libertine: "You do not know then, Monsieur le Drole, that your good friends the Greeks have adopted the customs of those Turks whom they detest so cordially, and like them seclude their wives and daughters in order that they may never appear before bad men ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... mention her name, if you are wise. Be patient and cheerful; cultivate your talents, and take care of your good looks—no woman can afford to dispense with these, however gifted; and you will soon find yourself as free as that 'chartered libertine' the air, for which last two words I am afraid you will be malicious enough to substitute the name you will not find appended, of your true ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... pleasant afternoon of the autumn of that old year, in "the pretty box" at Chalfont, the soft wind through the open window lifting the thin hair of the glorious old Poet! Back-slidden England, plague-smitten, and accursed with her faithless Church and libertine King, knows little of poor "Master Milton," and takes small note of his Puritanic verse-making. Alone, with his humble friend, he sits there, conning over that poem which, he fondly hoped, the world, which had grown all dark and strange to the author, "would not willingly let die." The suggestion ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... incumbent, who had brought to the Throne of Galavia all the libertine's irresoluteness, paced the floor in perplexed distress. He feared Jusseret. He dared not anger or disobey him. It appeared that being a King was not what he had conceived it, as he sat under the chestnut trees of the Paris boulevards and ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... narrow, but red and pouting, with the upper one short and slightly projecting over the lower,—and her small, delicately rounded chin, indicated both decision and sensuality: but the insolent gaze of the libertine would have quailed beneath the look of sovereign hauteur which flashed from ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... brother, Robespierre junior as well as Loizerolles. "They are greatly in advance to be dead," he exclaimed. He said of the crucifix: "There is a gibbet which has been a success." A rover, a gambler, a libertine, often drunk, he displeased these young dreamers by humming incessantly: "J'aimons les filles, et j'aimons le bon ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... first. I don't know what change you've made in yourself during these two years; you look like a desperate and defeated man, but you don't look like that. You don't look like one of those scoundrels who lure women from their duty, ruin homes, and destroy society, not in the old libertine fashion in which the seducer had at least the grace to risk his life, but safely, smoothly, under the shelter of our infamous laws. Have you really come back here to give your father's honest name, and the ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... though he does not mind to some extent gulling the gullible. His chief aim is to trick his creditors—themselves, as it happens, not worthy of much pity; and, himself kind-hearted, loving his wife and daughter, and not a libertine, he appeals to the sympathies of the reader or the audience. Most of the amusement of the play—and it is very amusing —is derived from the metamorphoses adopted by the Jobber in dealing with each sort of creditor. Moreover, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... say what I've heard you say. You told me that Monsieur Tremorel has been a libertine, a ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... mine? Who the buoy deemed securely moored? Who the paddles and the rowlocks and the signal halyards, lost because of Neptune's whims and violence? Beachcombing is a nicely adjusted, if not quite an exact art. Not once but several times has the libertine Neptune scandalously seduced punts and dinghies from the respectable precincts of Brammo Bay, and having philandered with them for a while, cynically abandoned them with a bump on the mainland beach, and only once has he sent ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... passion! The war had left havoc. The physical, the sensual, the violent, the simian—these instincts, engendering the Day of the Beast, had come to dominate the people he had fought for. Why not go out and deliberately kill a man, a libertine, a slacker? He would still be acting on the same principle that ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... a tone into which, despite his awe of that terrible man, THE FIRST GRAND INQUISITOR OF SPAIN, his libertine spirit involuntarily forced itself, in a half latent raillery,—"sorcery of eyes like those bewitched the wise son of a more pious sire ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... triangular sequences—the Princess has more amitie and estime than amour for her husband, though he, less usually, is desperately in love with her. So, very shortly, is Nemours, who is represented as an almost irresistible lady-killer, though no libertine, and of the "respectful" order. His conduct is not quite that of the Elizabethan or Victorian ideal gentleman; for he steals his mistress's portrait while it is being shown to a mixed company; eavesdrops (as will be seen presently) in the most atrocious ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... harder will, had not a little beauty in their toughness, so that grit, lifted to heroism, would allure affection as well as enforce respect. But their sense is so rigid, their integrity so gruff, and their courage so unjoyous, that all the genial graces fly their companionship; and a libertine Sheridan, with Ancient Pistol's motto of "Base is the slave that pays," will often be more popular, even among the creditor portion of the public, than these crabbed heroes, and, if need be, surly martyrs, of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... cried the virago, with another bang of the umbrella, which raised such a cloud of dust that it nearly made Slivers sneeze his head off. 'He ain't been home all night, and you've been leading him into bad habits, you cork-armed libertine.' ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... exposure of a paradox of my own: the literary-prostitute disappeared from view at a phrase of yours - 'The essence is not in the pleasure but the sale.' True: you are right, I was wrong; the author is not the whore, but the libertine; and yet I shall let the passage stand. It is an error, but it illustrated the truth for which I was contending, that literature - painting - all art, are no other than pleasures, which we ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fate. But I am here to speak the truth, whatever it may cost; I am here to regret nothing I have ever done—to retract nothing I have ever said. I am here to crave, with no lying lip the life I consecrate to the liberty of my country. Far from it, even here—here, where the thief the libertine, the murderer, have left their footprints in the dust; here on this spot, where the shadows of death surround me, and from which I see my early grave in an appointed soil opened to receive me—even here, encircled ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... very gravely, "do you know that I have often heard that Caesar is a wicked libertine, who wishes to make himself tyrant? What have ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... girls and babies. Life changed its aspect entirely. Gone were the days of vagabondage, the lazy, the delicious even though cold and hungry hours of dreaming and reading in the brickfield; gone was the happy freedom of the chartered libertine of the gutter. He was bound, a little slave, like hundreds of other little slaves and thousands of big ones, to a relentless machine. He entered the hopeless factory gate at six in the morning and left it at half-past five in the evening; and, his rough food swallowed, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... liberty and overstimulated desire. The poor are growing poorer, and to "keep in the ring," to live and dress beyond their means as many do, it is necessary to have an unexacting standard of morals. In this way the promiscuous libertine is evolved,—the most insidious and dangerous product of present day civilization, and the most pernicious factor in the spread of immoral impulses and ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... muslin gown was wet through from neck to hem, and clung closely to her body, and as her eyes met mine, I, for the first time in my life, felt a sudden tenderness for her, something that I never before felt when any woman's eyes had looked into mine. And I had never been a saint, though never a libertine; but between the two courses, I think, I had had as much experience of women as falls to most men, and I had never yet met a woman who seemed to so hold and possess my moral sense as did this semi-savage girl, who, ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... days. Over these matters the Kirk, with all her power, and the Free Kirk too, have had absolutely no influence whatever. To leave so delicate a topic, you were but as other swains, or, as "that Birkie ca'd a lord," Lord Byron; only you combined (in certain of your letters) a libertine theory with your practice; you poured out in song your audacious raptures, your half- hearted repentance, your shame and your scorn. You spoke the truth about rural lives and loves. We may like it or dislike it but we cannot deny ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... the public Charles Fox, the thinker, the philanthropist, the man who rallied and led the Liberal party during the twenty most hazardous years of its existence. That jaw was the jaw of the private Charles Fox, the gambler, the libertine, the drunkard. Yet to his sins he never added the crowning one of hypocrisy. His vices were as open as his virtues. In some quaint freak of Nature, two spirits seemed to have been joined in one body, and the same frame to contain the best ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... read it twice through, before entirely grasping its meaning, and then—as she realised that the man who had caused her so much pain and shame by his lawless and reckless pursuit of her in the character of a libertine, was now, with a frank confession of his total unworthiness, asking her to be his wife,—the tears rushed to her eyes, and a faint ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... And rescued righteous Lot who was troubled greatly by the libertine course of the wicked. Was it not a great aggravation that they not only rushed publicly and shamelessly into whoredom and adultery, but into such sins as may not be mentioned,—insomuch that they did not even spare ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... sufficiently marked in the fifteenth century, and even in the fourteenth, to rob the eighteenth of the credit of originating the doctrine of equality. To mention only one of the early writers,—[For copious references to authorities on the spread of communistic and socialistic ideas and libertine community of goods and women in four periods of the world's history—namely, at the time of the decline of Greece, in the degeneration of the Roman republic, among the moderns in the age of the Reformation, and again in our own day—see Roscher's Political Economy, notes to Section LXXIX., et seq.] ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... every thing, and the whole appears but a covered indigence, a magnificent poverty. That neatness and chearfulness, which attends the table of him who lives within compass, is wanting, and exchanged for a libertine way of service ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... than the great god Pan. If she had consented he would have taken her off on that yawl of his imagination round the world or down to Florida, without thought of the morrow or the convenances, or Society; but please do not imagine this rather primitive gentleman a chartered libertine. He would have married her as soon as not, but he had neither the genius nor the inclination for the courtship that leads by slow degrees up to the question, "Will you ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... knew of each of them—of Grattan, the noblest Irishman of them all, of Castlereagh, whose coffin was pursued to the gates of the Abbey by a raging mob who wished to tear out his corpse, of Fox the libertine philosopher, of Palmerston the gallant sportsman, who rode long after he could walk. They marvelled together at the realism of the sculptor who had pitted Admiral Warren with the smallpox, and at the absurdity of that other one ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... afflicted with a double embarrassment here, as he has never left Sally without her "miss" in speaking to Fenwick, while, on the other hand, he holds a definite licence from her mother—is, as it were, a chartered libertine. But that's a small matter, after all. The real trouble is having to look Sally in ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Francis I. as valet de chambre, and accompanied his master to the battle of Pavia, where he was wounded and made prisoner. Pursued by the Catholics as a heretic, and afterwards by the Genevan Calvinists as a libertine, he was protected as long as was possible by the King and by his sister. He died at Turin, a refugee to Italy, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... energies of the people for a more noble trial. The multitude, moreover, impeded one another by their own violent impetuosity; and to this it was owing, more than to the defence of his followers, or the intercession of the popular Flaccus, that the young libertine was not torn to pieces, on the threshold of his ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... take his part, my dear," said Mr. Ayrton. "I think that he's a bit of a fool to run his head into a hornet's nest because he has come to the conclusion that Abraham's code of morality was a trifle shaky, and that Samson was a shameless libertine. Great Heavens! has the man got no notion of the perspective ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... saturnine man, cool, insolently polite, and plentifully endowed with the judgmatical daring that is the necessary equipment of a society libertine—counseled patience, toleration, even silent recognition of Anstruther's undoubted claims for ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... libertine like you! At any rate be quick, and let us see if I may know what that large paper is that your uncle has sent you. It looks like a ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... how unaffected with the sense of its own crimes, is the heart that could dictate to the pen this libertine froth?' ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... refined and pleasing and fascinating in manner. Even the severe Astarte could not call him a boor. She does not know a gentleman, probably, more gentlemanly than Lovelace. She must, then, admit that she can not arbitrarily deny Lovelace to be a gentleman because he is a libertine, or because he is false, or mean, or of a coarse mind. She may, indeed, insist that only upright and honorable men of refined mind and manner are gentlemen, and she may also maintain that only men of truly lofty and royal souls are princes; but there will ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... ourselves with rosebuds before they be withered," said Solomon's libertine. Alas! he did not reflect that they withered in the very gathering. The roses of pleasure seldom last long enough to adorn the brow of him who plucks them; for they are the only roses which do not retain their sweetness after they have lost ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... everything that surrounds us is vitiated; many of the children playing on the promenades are sickly, their little faces are often enough marked with livid blotches, their bones are often enough twisted, sad symptoms of the degradation of parents. At every street corner are distributed libertine productions by traders in the depravity of the weak. If any one wishes to recognize the furnace of vice burning within us, let him observe merely the looks cast upon an honest woman as she passes, by respectable ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... which, as we shall see, it has been perpetuated up to our own day. Briefly, then, the Toledot Yeshu relates with the most indecent details that Miriam, a hairdresser of Bethlehem,[86] affianced to a young man named Jochanan, was seduced by a libertine, Joseph Panther or Pandira, and gave birth to a son whom she named Johosuah or Jeschu. According to the Talmudic authors of the Sota and the Sanhedrim, Jeschu was taken during his boyhood to Egypt, where he was initiated into the secret doctrines of the priests, and on his return to Palestine ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... tendencies accommodating themselves to reign alternate, sharing the individual in distinct halves, till he becomes like unto that hero of Gautier's witch story, who was a pious priest one-half of the twenty-four hours and a wicked libertine the other: all power of selection, of reaction gone in this passive endurance of conflicting tendencies; all identity gone, save a mere feeble outsider looking on at the alternations of intentions and lapses, of good and bad. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... with suddenly narrowed eyes. "You have not by chance sought me to talk politics?" said he. "Or..." and he suddenly caught his breath, his nostrils dilating with rage at the bare thought that leapt into his mind. Had Monmouth, the notorious libertine, been to Lupton House and persecuted her with his addresses? "Is it that you are acquainted with His ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... brought about the match, thought it most decorous to separate them for some time, and, while she remained at home with her friends, the bridegroom travelled for three or four years on the continent. The lady proved the greatest beauty of her time, but along with this had the most libertine and unprincipled dispositions. ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... nor strength of mind, but who possesses wealth, has a far greater chance of securing unlimited sexual indulgence and the life companionship of the fairest maid, than her brother's tutor, who may be possessed of every manly and physical grace and mental gift; and the ancient libertine, possessed of nothing but material good, has, especially among the so-called upper classes of our societies, a far greater chance of securing the sex companionship of any woman he desires as wife, mistress, or prostitute, than the most physically attractive and mentally developed ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... who, in the last Parliament had represented Buckinghamshire, and who was already conspicuous both as a libertine and as a Whig, had written a satirical ballad on the administration of Tyrconnel. In his little poem an Irishman congratulates a brother Irishman in a barbarous jargon on the approaching triumph of Popery and of the Milesian race. The Protestant heir will be excluded. The Protestant ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... "Mems.," vol. 1., ch. xv. Lucien settled in the Papal States, where he, the quondam Jacobin and proven libertine, later on received from the Pope the title of ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... introduced into the novel. One often remembers these while forgetting many vital constructive features. That picture of the pretty young girl, fifteen or sixteen years old, staggering about in the heat of the early afternoon, completely drunk, while a fat libertine slowly approaches her, like a vulture after its prey, stirs Raskolnikov to rage and then to reflection—but the reader remembers it long after it has passed from the hero's mind. Dostoevski's books are full of ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... Captain Wybrow, who knew that it would be ridiculous to dream of his marrying Caterina, must have been a reckless libertine to win her affections in this manner! Not at all. He was a young man of calm passions, who was rarely led into any conduct of which he could not give a plausible account to himself; and the tiny fragile Caterina was a woman who touched ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... far you are right—how far suitability is a question of rank. A gentleman may be, and frequently is, a drunkard, a gambler, a libertine, ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... Marks were standing by me, and across the deck came the acridly nasal tones of the dance-hall girls. I saw the libertine eyes of Bullhammer rove incontinently from one unlovely demirep to another, till at last they rested on the slender girl standing by the side of her white-haired grandfather. Appreciatively he ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... He drew a deep breath of satisfaction as, looking above and beneath and all about him, he saw that they were folded in an almost impenetrable net of foliage, through which nothing could steal into their sanctuary, save "the chartered libertine, the air," and a few stray beams of the setting sun, filtering through the multitudinous leaves, from which they caught a ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... The Mitre thus above the Diadem soar'd, Gods humble servant He, but Mans proud Lord. It was in such Church-light blind-zeal was bred, By Faiths infatuating Meteor led; Blind Zeal, that can even Contradictions joyn; A Saint in Faith, in Life a Libertine; Makes Greatness though in Luxury worn down, Bigotted even to th' Hazard of a Crown; Ty'd to the Girdle of a Priest so fast, And yet Religious only to the wast. But Constancy atoning Constancy, Where that once raigns, Devotion may lye by. ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... the mature age of twelve was formally entered at the University of Kasi, where, without loss of time, the first became a gambler, the second a confirmed libertine, the third a thief, and the fourth a high Buddhist, or in other words ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... soberness;" and then, turning to the royal stranger, vigorously pressed home his argument. "King Agrippa," he exclaimed, "believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest." [140:3] The King, thus challenged, was a libertine; and at this very time was believed to be living in incestuous intercourse with his sister Bernice; and yet he seems to have been staggered by Paul's solemn and pointed interrogatory. "Almost," said he, "thou persuadest me to be a Christian." [140:4] It has been thought by some that these ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... happy—happy if only I could look at your lighted windows from the street, and watch your shadow— happy if only I could think that you were well and happy, my sweet little bird! Yet how are things in reality? Not only have evil folk brought you to ruin, but there comes also an old rascal of a libertine to insult you! Just because he struts about in a frockcoat, and can ogle you through a gold-mounted lorgnette, the brute thinks that everything will fall into his hands—that you are bound to listen to his insulting condescension! ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... before the terrible significance of what they beheld. In the abstract, a life-and-death struggle meant little enough to them. Witnessing it, however, violently stirred their deepest emotions. They hated the camp boss, the libertine, drunkard, bully, Arden Laval, who only held his position by reason of his fighting powers. They would be infinitely pleased to witness his end. All the more sure was their delight that it should come at the hands of this pleasant-voiced young giant, who had come ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... the most mischievous authors of this abominable conspiracy is the man Brotteaux, once known as des Ilettes, receiver of imposts under the tyrant. This person, who was remarkable, even in the days of tyranny, for his libertine behaviour, is a sure proof how dissoluteness and immorality are the greatest enemies of the liberty and happiness of peoples; as a fact, after misappropriating the public revenues and wasting in debauchery ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... problems of human nature, which may be noted down, but not solved;—although Ralph felt no remorse at that moment for his conduct towards the innocent, true-hearted girl; although his libertine clients had done precisely what he had expected, precisely what he most wished, and precisely what would tend most to his advantage, still he hated them for doing it, from the very bottom ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... heedless as a libertine, Even grown a master in the school of vice, One that doth nothing but invent deceit: For all the day he humours up and down, How he the next day might deceive his friend. He thinks of nothing but the present time: For one groat ready down, he'll pay ...
— The London Prodigal • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... and selfishness were screamingly alive within him. To these was added the inordinate conceit of the habitual libertine, a combination than which there is nothing more sensitive ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... must here inform the reader that M'Carstrow no longer acted the part of a husband towards Franconia. His conduct as a debauchee had driven her to seek shelter under the roof of Rosebrook's cottage, while he, a degraded libertine, having wasted his living among cast-out gamblers, mingled only with their despicable society. Stripped of all arts and disguises, and presented in its best form, the result of Franconia's marriage with Colonel M'Carstrow was but one of those very ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... perfectly true that, libertine as he was, he had so far felt no inclination whatever to make love to the English girl. Nor was the effect merely the result of Madame Cervin's vigilance. Personally, for all her extraordinary beauty, his new model left him cold. Originally ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he introduced him into a room where a number of wretched creatures were expiating, under a terrible treatment, the vices which had brought them into this plight. This hideous and revolting spectacle sickened the young man. "Miserable libertine," said his father vehemently, "begone; follow your vile tastes; you will soon be only too glad to be admitted to this ward, and a victim to the most shameful sufferings, you will compel your father to thank God when ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... similarly so throughout St. Mark) substitute for the preposition [Greek: en] the preposition [Greek: eis],—(a sufficient proof to me that they understand [Greek: EN] to represent [Greek: en], not [Greek: hen]): and are followed by Tischendorf, Tregelles, and the Revisers. As for the chartered libertine B (and its servile henchman L), for the first [Greek: en] (but not for the second and third) it substitutes the preposition [Greek: EIS]: while, in ver. 20, it retains the first [Greek: en], but omits the other two. In all these vagaries Cod. B is ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... heirs to your estate. These, with an honest life following, are the only conditions that can save you from the penitentiary, as an embezzler, a receiver of stolen goods, a robber of county records, a defamer of innocent men, an accomplice in helping an Indian to steal a white girl, and a libertine. ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... de Pierre"—the Feast of the Statue—well known to the modern stage under the name of "Don Juan," was the next vehicle of Moliere's satire. The story, borrowed from the Spanish, is well known. In giving the sentiments of the libertine Spaniard, the author of "Tartuffe" could not suppress his resentment against the party, by whose interest with the king that piece had been excluded from the stage, or at least its representation suspended. "The profession of a hypocrite," says Don Juan, "has marvellous advantages. The imposture ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... him to any cause of policy, The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, Familiar as his garter: that when he speaks, The air, a chartered libertine, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... them by, And seek elsewhere in turning other books, Which better may his labor satisfy. No far-fetched sigh shall ever wound my breast; Love from mine eye a tear shall never wring; Nor in "Ah me's!" my whining sonnets dressed! A libertine, fantasticly I sing! My verse is the true image of my mind, Ever in motion, still desiring change; And as thus, to variety inclined, So in all humors sportively I range! My Muse is rightly of the English strain, That cannot ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... between eight and nine o'clock in the evening when we took up our position in the garden adjoining that of Reuben Rosenthall; the house itself was shut up, thanks to the outrageous libertine next door, who, by driving away the neighbors, had gone far towards delivering himself into our hands. Practically secure from surprise on that side, we could watch our house under cover of a wall just high enough to see over, while ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... Village," "La Cruche Cassee," and the "Retour de nourrice," with other rural and domestic idylls by Greuze; the voluptuous element, the tempting undercurrent of sensuality made perceptible in the fragile simplicity of his artless maidens, is a dainty bit for the libertine tastes which are kept alive beneath moral aspirations.[2309] After these, Ducis, Thomas, Parny, Colardeau, Boucher, Delille, Bernardin de St. Pierre, Marmontel, Florian, the mass of orators, authors and politicians, the misanthrope Champfort, the logician La Harpe, the minister Necker, the versifiers ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... What, for a Counter, would I do, but good? Du.Sen. Most mischeeuous foule sin, in chiding sin: For thou thy selfe hast bene a Libertine, As sensuall as the brutish sting it selfe, And all th' imbossed sores, and headed euils, That thou with license of free foot hast caught, Would'st thou disgorge into ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... interprets him, resembles the "Jansenistes du Salon" who prided themselves on the fashionable rigor of their doctrine but insisted on the practical impossibility of living up to it in the absence of efficacious grace. In my interpretation, Mandeville was both intellectually and temperamentally a "libertine" patently putting on the mask of rigorism in order to be able at the same time to attack the exponents of austere theological morality from their rear while making a frontal attack on less exacting and more humanistic systems of morality. The phenomenon was ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... when I first saw you, when you entered the terrace-room at Cherbury and touched my cheek. From that moment I was yours. I declare to you, most solemnly I declare to you, that I know not what love is except to you. The world has called me a libertine; the truth is, no other woman can command my spirit for an hour. I see through them at a glance. I read all their weakness, frivolity, vanity, affectation, as if they were touched by the revealing rod of Asmodeus. You were born to be my bride. Unite yourself ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... crawled into the cave and woke the strangers, in order to get them away from the libertine. For he dared not venture a trial of strength with Barabbas. He had some trouble with Joseph, but at last they were beneath the starry sky, Mary and the child on the ass, Joseph leading it. Dismas walked in front in order to show ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... circumstance which renders it so innocent is what chiefly exposes it to the public hatred and resentment. By flattering no irregular passion, it gains few partizans: By opposing so many vices and follies, it raises to itself abundance of enemies, who stigmatize it as libertine ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... Mrs. Cole was previously satisfied with their character and discretion. In short, this was the safest, politest, and, at the same time, the most thorough house of accommodation in town: every thing being conducted so, that decency made no intrenchment upon the most libertine pleasures; in the practice of which, too, the choice familiars of the house had found the secret so rare and difficult, of reconciling even all the refinements of taste and delicacy, with the most gross and ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... you hold your tongue with your libertine reflections. It was agreed that we should not speak of love, it ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... priggishness and prurient unreality. To him the pretensions to virtue and consideration of the vulgar little hussy whom Richardson selected for his heroine were certainly not less preposterous than the titles to life and actuality of the wooden libertine whom Richardson put forth as his hero. He was artist enough to know that the book was ignoble as literature and absolutely false as fact; he was moralist enough to see that its teachings were the reverse of elevating and improving; and he uttered his conclusions more suo in one of the best and ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... another form of slavery. Old people wished for the delights of youth; a fop for a fashionable coat; an idle reader, for a new novel; a versifier, for a rhyme to some stubborn word; a painter, for Titian's secret of coloring; a prince, for a cottage; a republican, for a kingdom and a palace; a libertine, for his neighbor's wife; a man of palate, for green peas; and a poor man, for a crust of bread. The ambitious desires of public men, elsewhere so craftily concealed, were here expressed openly and ...
— The Intelligence Office (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with guilt, he was not as yet acquainted with it in its basest shapes—he had not yet acted with meanness, or at least with what the world terms such. He had been a duellist, the manners of the age authorized it—a libertine, the world excused it to his youth and condition—a bold and successful gambler, for that quality he was admired and envied; and a thousand other inaccuracies, to which these practices and habits ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... and reproaches!... that this 'Exciter of Desire' (bravo! Messieurs of the 'Post'!), this 'Adonis in Loveliness,' was a corpulent man of fifty!—in short, this 'delightful, blissful, wise, pleasureable, honourable, virtuous, true', and 'immortal' prince was a violator of his word, a libertine over head and ears in disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers and demireps, a man who has just closed half a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his country or ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... public men, not only ministers, but noble men and worthy persons of every degree, could personally address the Queen, and that almost in the form of an accusation couched in the most vehement terms, because of a libertine raid made by a few young gallants in the night, on a house supposed to be inhabited by a woman of damaged character, is inconceivable to us—a certain parochial character, a pettiness as of a village, thus comes into the great national ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... the right view of things, this loss is well made up in that she is the more an object of reverence; albeit I have to confess that she would touch me rather more potently, if she had a little more of loveliness and a little less of awfulness. And it is remarkable that even Lucio, light-minded libertine as he is, whose familiar sin it is to jest with maids, "tongue far from heart," cannot approach her, but that his levity is at once awed into soberness, and he regards her as one "to be talk'd with in ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... glory as much as any man; but he desired to receive it only on his own terms. He profoundly appeals to writers endowed with "the artistic conscience" as "the martyr of literary style." In morals something of a libertine, in matters of art he exhibited the intolerance of weakness in others and the remorseless self-examination and self-torment commonly attributed to the Puritan. His friend Maxime Du Camp, who tried to bring him out and teach him the arts ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... would you! Why is the stomach such a libertine and outlaw in England, and so highly respectable in the United States? No Englishman of good breeding, save he be far gone in liquor, ever mentions his stomach in the presence of women, clergymen, or the Royal Family. To avoid the necessity—for ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... and sobriety.' But no little licence was permitted, and the tales of it commonly excite small surprise. As told of Ralegh, and yet more of Elizabeth Throckmorton, the story startles still. No evidence exists upon which he can justly be pronounced a libertine. How she, refined, faithful, heroic, should have been led astray, is hardly intelligible. She must have now been several years over twenty, probably twenty-eight or twenty-nine, and in her long after-life she bore ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... is what your father was that affects them. I really believe," she finished half angrily, half humorously, "that Aunt Mitty—not Aunt Matoaca—would honestly rather I'd marry a well-born drunkard or libertine than you, whom she calls 'quite ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... Even the gay libertine who sang "How happy could I be with either!" did not go so far as this. But we have already had occasion to remark on the laxity ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... life with unwavering energy to the pursuit of what I may call private and personal ends. Thus the man of business lives for the acquisition of riches; the scholar and the scientist, of knowledge; the statesman, of power; the speculator, of excitement; the libertine, of pleasure; and so forth. Few are they who ever dream of devoting life as a whole to the pursuit of an end which is potentially attainable by all men, and which is therefore worthy of Man as Man. The idea of there ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... and kind man, but unhappily devoid of all religion, and the whole family are the same. I say enough when I tell you that his daughter was a most disreputable character. Ramm is a good fellow, but a libertine. I know myself, and I have such a sense of religion that I shall never do anything which I would not do before the whole world; but I am alarmed even at the very thoughts of being in the society of people, during my journey, whose mode ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... that of a cathedral, nor the music to Wilde's Salome that of Brahms' German Requiem, yet whatever of beauty there may be in the shapes will divert the attention from the meanness or vileness of the non-aesthetic suggestion. We do not remember the mercenary and libertine allegory embodied in Correggio's Danae, or else we reinterpret that sorry piece of mythology in terms of cosmic occurrences, of the Earth's wealth increased by the fecundating sky. Similarly it ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... court, but whose acquaintance she had never made, and who had been absent when the scandalous occurrence which led to her disgrace came to light. He was a man of from twenty-five to twenty-six years of age, who idled his life away: his courage was undoubted, and being as credulous as an old libertine, he was ready to draw his sword at any moment to defend the lady whose cause he had espoused, should any insolent slanderer dare to hint there was a smirch on her virtue. Being deaf to all reports, he seemed one of those men expressly framed by heaven to be the consolation of fallen ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... been: each must tell the other everything; a common bond of suffering was between them and a common bond of love, though love so differing. "I knew, of course, that he was often unfaithful to me; he is a libertine; but I was the centre; he always came back to me.—I saw the end approaching about five years ago. I fought—oh how warily—so that he shouldn't dream I was afraid;—it is fatal for a woman to let a man know she is afraid,—the brutes, the cruel brutes,"—said Lady Elliston;—"how ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... their hearts. In like manner, when the great Teacher warned his followers to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees, he meant that they should eschew on the one hand the lie of self-righteous superstition, and on the other the lie of libertine unbelief. The Apostle Paul, too, while he does not forbid another use, employs the conception, in point of fact, to illustrate the presence and power ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... for such a man as Mr. Philip Slotman to be shocked, then Slotman was deeply shocked at this moment. He had come to regard Joan as something infinitely superior to himself. Self-indulgent, a libertine, he had pursued her with his attentions, pestered her with his admiration and his offensive compliments. Then it had slowly dawned on the brain of Mr. Philip Slotman that this girl was something better, higher, purer than most women he had known. He had come to ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper |
