"Licentious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... theater leads one into bad company. As a class, the performers are licentious. How can one be in their company, be moved to laughter and to tears and not be contaminated by them? One who has studied the theater tells us that the "fruits of the Spirit and the fruits of the stage exhibit as pointed a contrast as the human ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... very ill-regulated youth,—but should I ever succeed to the family estate and honours, she hoped, she prayed, that my present course of life might be altered; that I should part from my unworthy associates; that I should discontinue all connexion with the horrid theatre and its licentious frequenters; that I should turn to that quarter where only peace was to be had; and to those sacred duties which she feared—she very much feared that I had neglected. She filled her exhortation with Scripture ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gay, licentious proud, Whom pleasure, power and affluence surround, How many pine in want! How many shrink Into the sordid hut, how many drink The cup of grief, and eat the bitter bread ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... perverted, had the Comic scene, (The flattering reflex of a sensual age) Shown prurient Folly's rank licentious mien, Refined, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... times—and sensitive on the point of honor. They are far superior to the cold-blooded rakes of Dryden and the Restoration comedy. Still the manners and language in Beaumont and Fletcher's plays are extremely licentious, and it is not hard to sympathize with the objections to the theater expressed by the Puritan writer, William Prynne, who, after denouncing the long hair of the cavaliers in his tract, The {129} Unloveliness of Lovelocks, attacked the stage, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... between me and Pompey from a difference of opinion on these measures. With him I have united myself in such close intimacy that both of us can by this union be better fortified in his own views, and more secure in his political position. However, the dislike of the licentious dandies, which had been roused against me, has been so far softened by a conciliatory manner on my part, that they all combine to show me marked attention. In fine, while avoiding churlishness to anyone, I do not curry favour with the populace or relax ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Beaton, Knox, believing the atmosphere had cleared, came back to Edinburgh and preached at the Castle. Soon he had quite a following, but of people who he himself says, in his "History of the Reformation," were "gluttons, wantons and licentious revelers, but who yet regularly and meekly partook of the sacrament." Knox saw plainly this peculiar paradox, that every reformer is followed and professed by lawbreakers who consider themselves just like him. These rogues who took the sacrament regularly were the cause of much ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... Nivernois, in 1519, and was originally a Catholic, and intended for the law. At the age of twenty, he gained an unenviable reputation by the composition of Latin poetry which was at once elegant and licentious, and which, some years afterwards, he published under the title of "Juvenile Poems." Though not in orders, he possessed benefices of considerable value. These, however, he abandoned in 1548, and retired to Geneva, where he publicly abjured Popery. To this he was induced ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... he has no hope of improvement. There is nothing in the state which he could not, without a scruple, join in defending or destroying." Compare with these scathing words his estimate of the character of Halifax, the Whig: "The most estimable of the statesmen who were formed in the corrupt and licentious Whitehall of the Restoration. He was called inconsistent because the relative position in which he stood to the contending parties was perpetually varying. As well might the Polar Star be called inconsistent because it is sometimes to the east and sometimes to the west of the ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... city. The corruption grew worse. Lower and meaner grafters rose to take the place of the earlier and more robust good fellows who trafficked in the city o' shame. Graft lost class, and lost caste. It was ultimately exposed in all its shocking indecency. The light and licentious town developed a conscience. Public indignation arose and reached its height, when the grafters ventured too far in the shooting of the attorney charged ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... seriously. The lettre de cachet of old France, confining its victim in a state prison, was too elaborate a method to be used with the turbulent lower classes—for them there were less dignified forms of proceeding; but it was freely employed against persons of any consequence. Spendthrifts and licentious youths were shut up at the request of their relations. Authors of dangerous books were readily clapped into the Bastille, Vincennes or Fors l'Eveque. Voltaire, Diderot, Mirabeau, and many others underwent that sort of confinement; and the first of them is said to have procured by his influence ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... find in the early part of the fourteenth century a decided tendency toward a recognition of her equality. Christine of Pisa, the most eminent woman of this period, supported a family of six persons by her pen, taking high ground on the conservation of morals in opposition to the general licentious spirit of the age. Margaret of Angouleme, the brilliant Queen of Navarre, was a voluminous writer, her Heptameron rising to the dignity of a French classic. A paper in the Revue des Deux Mondes, a few years since, by M. Henri Baudrillart, upon the "Emancipation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... acquired a taste for reading. I renewed my acquaintance with the classic authors. Horace and Virgil, licentious but alluring, drove me back to the study of Latin, and fixed in my mind a knowledge of the dead languages, at the expense of my morals. Whether the exchange were profitable or not, is left to wiser heads than mine to decide; my ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... be counted among the blessed, who show declining England, depraved Belgium, licentious France, uncouth Russia, the unconquerable youthful power and manhood of the German people, in a manner never to be forgotten.—"War Devotions," by PASTOR J. RUMP, ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... prevent it, that you should take Anselmo's dagger that I have asked of you and with it pierce this vile heart of mine? But no; there is no reason why I should suffer the punishment of another's fault. I will first know what it is that the bold licentious eyes of Lothario have seen in me that could have encouraged him to reveal to me a design so base as that which he has disclosed regardless of his friend and of my honour. Go to the window, Leonela, and call ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... they were thus employed, during which time Soto stood upon his own deck directing the operations; for the vessels were within a hundred yards of each other. The scene which took place in the cabin exhibited a licentious brutality. The sick officer, Mr. Gibson, was dragged from his berth; the clothes of the other passengers stripped from their backs, and the whole of the cabin passengers driven on deck, except the females, ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... which it had in reality even less in common than the historians of the latter imagine. It is not a difficult matter for the mind familiar with the undoubted Oriental origin of the 'heresies' of the middle ages, to trace in the origin at least of the fierce and licentious socialists of Muenster the same secret influence which, flowing from Gnostic, Manichaean, or Templar sources, founded the Waldense and Albigense sects, and was afterward perceptible in a branch of the Hussites. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... fiercely. "There are no words which truly describe this one emotion which rules the world. I know what YOU mean, of course; you mean evil words, licentious words, and yet it has nothing whatever to do with these. You cannot call such an exalted state of the nerves and ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... said the other constable. "What is this?" taking up the book from the table. "A book of plays! profane and wicked stage plays, in Salem village! You had better hold your peace, goodwife; or you may go to prison yourself for harboring such licentious devices ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... Mrs. Dang. I hope to see it on the stage next. Dang. Well, Sir Fretful, I wish you may be able to get rid as easily of the newspaper criticisms as you do of ours. Sir Fret. The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous—licentious—abominable—infernal.—Not that I ever read them—no—I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper. Dang. You are quite right; for it certainly must hurt an author of delicate feelings to see the ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... freely charged with the most abhorrent vices without an atom of foundation. But the truth probably is that he never thought of the subject seriously at all, and that, yielding to a regrettable inclination, he copied his licentious Greek ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... of Government, and involve the nation in the horrors of civil war. He charged that the free States "keep up and foster in the bosoms Abolition Societies, whose main purpose is to scatter fire-brands throughout the South, to incite servile insurrections, and stimulate by licentious pictures our negroes to invade the persons of our white women." Mr. Brown, of Mississippi, said he regarded slavery "as a great moral, social and religious blessing,—a blessing to the slave, and a blessing to the master." He graciously admitted that Northern people thought slavery an evil; ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... father Ferdinand in the empire three years later, stimulated by the triumph of his predecessor over the liberties of Bohemia, resumed with fresh zeal the crusade against the privileges of the Magyars. Not only was the persecution of the Protestants recommenced, but the excesses of the ill-paid and licentious German mercenaries, who were quartered on the country in defiance of the constitution after the twenty years' truce, under the pretence of guarding against any fresh attack from the Turks, were carried to such a height that disaffection ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... them leading licentious lives with women, I will not say that it is false, although I could not say that I know of such. I believe, indeed, that there is much exaggeration in this as in other things, and that not one quarter of it is to be ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... necessities and his childish capacities for business. With a keen sense of the power displayed in "Don Juan," and even in more melodramatic works, Shelley had acquired a full knowledge of the singularly licentious training from which Byron had then scarcely emerged, and of the vacillating caprice which enfeebled all his actions. His own ability to grapple with practical affairs was very great; but he himself had scarcely ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... behaviour. Their having shown something of this at first might have been excusable, or at all events, capable of explanation. They had not yet sobered down. Fresh from the streets of San Francisco, so lawless and licentious, it could not be expected. But most of them have been now some days aboard—no drink allowed them save the regular ration, with plenty of everything else. Kind treatment from captain and mate, and still they appear scowling and ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... wisdom, and on the exertions of this important day, is suspended the fate of this new world, and of unborn millions. If a boundless extent of continent, swarming with millions, will tamely submit to live, move, and have their being at the arbitrary will of a licentious minister, they basely yield to voluntary slavery, and future generations shall load their memories with incessant execrations. On the other hand, if we arrest the hand which would ransack our pockets, if we disarm the parricide which points the dagger to our bosoms, if ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... think, when I watch the follies at Whitehall, that those graceful dancers, sliding upon pointed toe through a coranto, amid a blaze of candles and star-shine of diamonds, are capering along the same fatal road by which St. Vitus lured his votaries to the grave. And then I look at Rowley's licentious eye and cynical lip, and think to myself, 'This man's father perished on the scaffold; this man's lovely ancestress paid the penalty of her manifold treacheries after sixteen years' imprisonment; this man has passed through the jaws of death, has left his country a fugitive and a pauper, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... gratification, we may degrade its tendency, and corrupt its effects. We may substitute stimulants to the senses for elevation to the principle, or softening of the heart. By abandoning its direction to the most volatile and licentious of the community, we may render it an instrument of evil instead of good, and pervert the powers of genius, the magic of art, the fascinations of beauty, to the destruction instead of the elevation of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... of Syrianus may be considered as a successful irruption rather than as an absolute conquest. The other churches of the city were profaned by similar outrages; and, during at least four months, Alexandria was exposed to the insults of a licentious army, stimulated by the ecclesiastics of a hostile faction. Many of the faithful were killed; who may deserve the name of martyrs, if their deaths were neither provoked nor revenged; bishops and presbyters were treated with cruel ignominy; consecrated virgins ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... guests sat round the table, who were all dressed in an uniform, and had all an expression, more or less, of wild fierceness, of subtle design, or of licentious passions. As Emily timidly surveyed them, she remembered the scene of the preceding morning, and again almost fancied herself surrounded by banditti; then, looking back to the tranquillity of her early life, she ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... who had better stay at Home and wrangle with their own Parishes, which is not so great a Novelty here as there. Neither would they have meer Scholars and Stoicks, or Zealots too rigid in outward Appearance, as they would be without loose and licentious Profligates; these do Damage to themselves, ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... faults can see, And gives applause to Blackmore, or to me. But you decline the mistress we pursue; Others are fond of fame, but fame of you. Instructive satire, true to virtue's cause! Thou shining supplement of public laws! When flatter'd crimes of a licentious age Reproach our silence, and demand our rage; When purchas'd follies, from each distant land, Like arts, improve in Britain's skilful hand; When the law shows her teeth, but dares not bite, And south sea treasures are not brought to ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... of God." It was the "holy Mr. Gifford" that was often in conference with John Bunyan; "the latter as the seeking pilgrim, the former the guiding evangelist." With such men as these the sweet spirit was kept aflame and eventually changed England and made her the great country she is. But in those licentious days this sweet spirit shone from its impure surroundings like the ignis fatuus, and 'twas a great, wicked world that Mistress Penwick stood all alone ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... careful cringing to parents, and his careless indifference towards their children, and in brief his total unfitness for the twin duties of pastor and teacher. A large private school of mixed ages and classes is perilously liable to infection from licentious youths left to themselves and their evil propensities, and I can feelingly recollect how miserable for nearly a year was that poor little helpless innocent of seven under the unrestricted tyranny of one Cooke (in after years a life convict for crime) ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... butchered without resistance; the streets of Paris flowed with blood; and the people, more enraged than satiated with their cruelty, as if repining that death had saved their victims from further insult, exercised on their dead bodies all the rage of the most licentious brutality. About five hundred gentlemen and men of rank perished in this massacre; and near ten thousand of inferior condition.[*] Orders were instantly despatched to all the provinces for a like general execution of the Protestants; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... Edinburgh Review, Tom Moore, who had just published his "Odes and Epistles" but had not yet begun his Irish melodies, is a man who "with some brilliancy of fancy, and some show of classical erudition ... may boast, if the boast can please him, of being the most licentious of modern versifiers, and the most poetical of those who, in our times, have devoted their talents to the propagation of immorality. We regard his book, indeed, as a public nuisance.... He sits down to ransact the impure places of his memory for inflammatory images and expressions, and commits ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... poor people, all would be right. But each class has a tendency to look for the faults of the other. A hard-working man of property is particularly offended by an idle beggar; and an orderly, but poor, workman is naturally intolerant of the licentious luxury of the rich. And what is severe judgment in the minds of the just men of either class, becomes fierce enmity in the unjust—but among the unjust only. None but the dissolute among the poor look upon the rich as their natural enemies, or desire to pillage their houses and divide ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... young imaginations are formed, to be the watchful guardians of our language. But I lament to say that in fact it is not so; and that the aberrations of our vernacular tongue have proceeded solely from the licentious use made of it by those whom we are taught to reverence as the fathers ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... of somewhat licentious character, most commonly sung during the period of the Indian carnival. For an account, at once brief and entertaining, of Hindoo popular songs and hymns, see Garcin de ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... the history of the past. Savonarola tried to reform the conduct of the clergy and to maintain the purity of the Church, but failed. He made the republic of Florence a model Christian commonwealth. Debauchery was suppressed, gambling was prohibited, the licentious factions of the times were there publicly destroyed. He arraigned Rome for her sins. The Roman party turned against him and accused him of heresy, the punishment of which was death. He declared his innocence, and desired to test it with his accusers by walking through a field of living fire. He ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... do, without blame, sue their husbands-in-law for the full 'payment of debt,' and demand a divorce if they please in default. Very often a man marries a second wife out of duty to provide for a brother's widow and children, or the like. Of course licentious men act loosely as elsewhere. Kulloolum Beni Adam (we are all sons of Adam), as Sheykh Yussuf says constantly, 'bad-bad and good-good'; and modern travellers show strange ignorance in talking of foreign natives in the lump, as they ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... what has fallen under my own observation while a slave, that the strongest reason why southerners stick with such tenacity to their "peculiar institution," is because licentious white men could not carry out their wicked purposes among the defenceless colored population as they now do, without being exposed and punished by law, if slavery was abolished. Female virtue could not be trampled under foot with impunity, ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... and his localities, with a brief description of a scene in his prison, which the pencil of Mr. Herbert, of the Royal Academy, has beautifully depicted. It must be remembered that More was a zealous Roman Catholic. He was committed to the Tower in 1534, by the licentious Henry VIII., partly to punish him for refusing to assist that monarch in his marriage with Anne Boleyn, "the pretty fool," as Mrs. Hall calls her; but particularly because he declined to acknowledge the king's ecclesiastical supremacy as head of the Reformed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the South Americans who, tired of pacing the deck, had dropped in to hear what the gringoes were saying, they were turning into Spanish the witticisms and licentious anecdotes awakened in the memory by a superabundance of beer. Julio was marvelling at the ready laugh of all these men. While the foreigners were remaining unmoved, they would break forth into loud horse-laughs throwing themselves back in their ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... richer country. He also states, that the average expense of supporting idle mendicants in Ireland, exceeds one million and a half annually, by the contribution of more than a ton of potatoes from each farm house, to encourage a system of licentious idleness, profligacy, insolence, and plunder; and the grand jury presentments amount annually to a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... liked, and had reason to like. She says the style of Lord Byron's conversation is very much that of Don Juan: just in the same manner are the familiar, the brilliant, the sublime, the affecting, the witty, the ludicrous, and the licentious, mingled and contrasted. Several little anecdotes which she related I need not write down; I can scarcely forget them, and it would not be quite fair as they were told en confiance. I am no anecdote hunter, picking up ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... hitherto given up to worldly pleasures, into a day of religious sacrifice. So actually on Shrove Tuesday a considerable number of boys were collected in front of the cathedral, and there divided into bands, which traversed the whole town, making a house-to-house visitation, claiming all profane books, licentious paintings, lutes, harps, cards and dice, cosmetics and perfumes—in a word, all the hundreds of products of a corrupt society and civilisation, by the aid of which Satan at times makes victorious war on God. The inhabitants of Florence ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... engaged had been brought up on a regime of such extreme indulgence as can only be met with amongst an Oriental people. His mother had never once restrained him in a childish selfishness nor a manly vice. From a spoilt, inconsiderate, wilful childhood he passed to a cruel, passionate, licentious manhood; finally, he took to opium smoking and ruin threatened the home. His mother reaped a bitter harvest of sorrow from the planting of those wasted years, and now her urgent plea was: "My son is good at heart, and a virtuous ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... Barcelona. I am this Evening going to a Ball; unfortunately Fandangos are not fashionable dances, but they have another called the Bolero, which in grace and Elegance stands unrivalled, but would scarcely be admitted in the less licentious circles of our N. Climate. I shall take lessons at Cadiz, and hope to become an adept in all those dances before I see you. If you write within a fortnight—and of course you will after receiving this—you may still direct to Cadiz. There has been a disturbance at Gibraltar, ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... the Greek Mylitta. This deity embodied the generative principle, the spring of fertility, whose beneficent agency was seen in the abundant harvest. She was clothed with sensual attributes, and propitiated with unchaste rites. It was in the worship of this divinity that the coarse and licentious side of the Semitic nature expressed itself. At the same time, there was an opposite ascetic side in the service of this deity. Her priests were eunuchs: they ministered at her altar in woman's attire. On the relation of the human soul to the gods, and its condition after death, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... a licentious Spanish nobleman, who is attracted by the charms of Donna Anna, the daughter of the Commandant of Seville, breaks into her palace under cover of night, in the hope of making her his own. She resists him and calls for help. ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... part of life was scandalously licentious: latterly he became, says Camden, uxorious to excess. In the early days of his favor with the queen, her profuse donations had gratified his cupidity and displayed the fondness of her attachment; but at a later period the stream of her bounty ran low; and following the natural bent of her disposition, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... past four hundred years the greatest evils that have afflicted the Church are traceable to a licentious Press. Printing was scarcely invented till Satan seized it for his own purposes. By it the Humanists of the fifteenth century scattered broadcast pagan ideas. The disentombed paganism continued to ferment and rot the ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... wicked deeds, known in the lives of wicked men and nations, with imperfections and apostacies of individuals in high places. This is what we must look for in a book of its pretensions. It professes to contain a revelation of God and his will to man. The ugly, wicked, licentious, and bloody things constitute the background of the picture, representing man in all his ways. It is also shaded with all there was, and is, of moral and noble character in the human. God with his attributes, as the true, grand and glorious Bible picture, shines ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... armed with power for the protection of their subjects: their laws were wise, and their administration was simple. The Latin throne was filled by a titular prince, the chief, and often the servant, of his licentious confederates; the fiefs of the empire, from a kingdom to a castle, were held and ruled by the sword of the barons; and their discord, poverty, and ignorance, extended the ramifications of tyranny to the most sequestered villages. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... expand their minds, and prove of vast advantage, among other means, in aiding their comprehension of Christianity. It must, not be expected, however, that the Indians will easily forsake a mode of life that is so congenial to man, in his natural love of ease and indolence and licentious freedom. Necessity, in a measure, must compel them to do this; but the children may be educated, and trained to industry upon the soil, in the hope that they may be recovered from their savage habits and customs, to see and enjoy ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... many more plays in which the popular morality is similiarly expressed. The seducer, or rascal of the piece, is always an aristocrat,—a wicked count, or licentious marquis, who is brought to condign punishment just before the fall of the curtain. And too good reason have the French people had to lay such crimes to the charge of the aristocracy, who are expiating now, on the stage, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Immoral, licentious, anarchical, unscientific—call them by what names you will—yet, from an aesthetic point of view, those ancient days of the Colour Revolt were the glorious childhood of Art in Flatland—a childhood, alas, that never ripened into manhood, nor even ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... libraries as large or valuable as are now common to shopkeepers and mechanics; while the literary stores of a lady of the manor were confined chiefly to the prayer-book and the receipt-book. And those works which were produced or read were disgraced by licentious ribaldry, which had succeeded religious austerity. The drama was the only department of literature which compensated authors, and this was scandalous in the extreme. We cannot turn over the pages of one of the popular dramatists of the age without ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... enthusiasm for lofty exploits, and to surrender him to the claims of frivolous amusement. This detestable queen presented before the impassioned young man all the blandishments of female beauty, that she might betray him to licentious indulgence. In some of these infamous arts she ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... Reverend Abner Hemingway, saying he wishes to indorse every word of Sister Baxter's appeal to me—asking why do I parade myself shamelessly in this garb of a fallen woman, and can nothing be said to recall me to the true nobility that must still be in my nature but which I am forgetting in these licentious habiliments, and so on! The picture had been burned after giving the Reverend his own horrified flash of it, and they would both pray daily that I might get up out of this degradation and be once more a good, true woman ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... and September, and during that period attacked the Bijapur troops at Ponda, which were commanded by Ankus Khan, with some success (Barros, Dec III. l. i. c. 8). Osorio (Gibbs' translation, ii. 235) represents De Monroy as a man of a very cruel and licentious disposition. He was married to ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... young man, whose only fault appears to have been that captivating the eyes of a noble lady, should perish in a dungeon, or save his life at the sacrifice of country, friends, connections; and all this for having listened to the passion of a woman, as licentious in manners as illustrious by birth: this frightful injustice rouses all my indignation. Well, then, since the power of the monarch of France is insufficient to protect his oppressed subject in his own realms, let him shield him from want in a foreign land, by allowing ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... grace to prize; And, with licentious babble, He blazed the secrets of the skies Through all the human rabble, And fed the greed of tattlers vain With high celestial scandal, And lent to every eager brain And wanton tongue a handle Against the gods. For which great sin, By righteous Jove's ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... holding orgies at which all the ceremonies of the ancient Liberalia, Floralia, and Saturnalia are duplicated. These devotees claim that, when they have reached the acme of religious enthusiasm, the spirit of God directs them, hence their licentious and ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... unalienable rights of a black man fallen among a family of thieves. I went to the court house. Outside it was belted with chains. In despotic Europe I had seen no such spectacle, save once when the dull tyrant who oppressed Bavaria with his licentious flesh, in 1844 put his capital in a brief state of siege and chained the streets. The official servant of the kidnapper, club in hand, a policeman of this city, goaded to his task by Mayor Bigelow and Marshal Tukey,—men congenitally mingled in such appropriate work,—bade me "Get under the ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... declared, was right. The false Demetrius was none other than his own nephew, Grishka Otrepiev, who had once been a monk, but, unfrocked, had embraced the Roman heresy, and had abandoned himself to licentious ways. You realize now why Smirnoy had been chosen by Basmanov ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... mediocrity, had been improved by travel as well as study. Himself and one younger brother had been early left masters of their fate and their several portions. The younger, Geoffrey, testified a roving and dissipated turn. Bold, licentious, extravagant, unprincipled,—his career soon outstripped the slender fortunes of a cadet in the family of a country squire. He was early thrown into difficulties, but, by some means or other they never seemed to overwhelm him; an unexpected turn—a lucky ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the nineteenth century were of one mind touching the greatness of "Don Giovanni." Beethoven was horrified by its licentious libretto, but tradition says that he kept before him on his writing-table a transcript of the music for the trombones in the second finale of the opera. Shortly after Mme. Viardot-Garcia came into possession of the ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... history of music. His chief distinction, however, lay in the ease with which he wore his accomplishments, and in a breadth of view that made it possible to discuss with him many subjects distasteful to most men of his cloth. The sceptical or licentious ecclesiastic was common enough; but Odo had never before met a priest who united serious piety with this indulgent temper, or who had learning enough to do justice to the arguments of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... boldness of others from a guilty poverty, have rendered them capable of the most atrocious attempts; so that they have trampled upon all subordination, and violently borne down the unarmed laws of a free Government—barriers too feeble against the fury of a populace so fierce and licentious as ours. They contend that no adequate provocation has been given for so spreading a discontent, our affairs having been conducted throughout with remarkable temper and consummate wisdom. The wicked industry of some libellers, joined to the intrigues of a ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... women found a response in the soul of the listener. "He felt his heart shake," to use his own words; he saw that he lacked the true tokens of a Christian. He now forsook the company of the profane and licentious, and sought that of a poor man who had the reputation of piety, but, to his grief, he found him "a devilish ranter, given up to all manner of uncleanness; he would laugh at all exhortations to sobriety, and deny that there was a God, an angel, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... that, and as he saw Burne's long legs propel his ridiculous bicycle out of sight beyond Alexander Hall, he knew he was going to have a bad week. Not that he doubted the war—Germany stood for everything repugnant to him; for materialism and the direction of tremendous licentious force; it was just that Burne's face stayed in his memory and he was sick of the hysteria he ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... down ten, like the gazettes after a battle when they count up the losses of the beaten side. And in any case I do not know that the Revolution and the Empire can reproach us; they were coarse, dull, licentious times. Faugh! it is revolting. Those are the brothels of ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... all that was learned from them in the north, while the introduction of the rose, as a primal element of decoration, only takes place when the luxury of English decorated Gothic, the result of that licentious spirit in the lords which brought on the Wars of the Roses, indicates the approach of destruction to the feudal, artistic, and moral ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... learning and art; of the statesman and soldier who sought a diversion in the formation of a library from severer employments; of the prince who loved to gather round him such evidences of his taste, or to lay them at the feet of a chere amie; of the licentious but superb Lady Marquise, who vied with her king in the magnificence of her books, as she did with his consort in that of her toilette—it is this which exercises upon our imagination ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... This story was told to the writer by a member of the committee.] That interested him, but matters of state he left to his time servers, to his hysterical wife, yes, to Grigory Rasputin, a dirty, ignorant, and licentious peasant, until the country blushed with shame and it became a saying, "Now we have Grigory I ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... anxious to have it impressed on your minds that he is not a licentious writer, and that this word does not fairly apply to his publications. You will have the documents before you, and you must judge for yourselves. I should say that he is right. He may be blasphemous, but he certainly is not licentious, in the ordinary sense of the ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... mensogulo. Libation oferversxo. Libel kalumnii. Liberal (generous) malavara. Liberate liberigi. Libertine malcxastulo. Liberty libereco. Librarian bibliotekisto. Library biblioteko. Libretto libreto. License permeso. Licentiate licencato. Licentious malbonmora. Lichen likeno. Lick (lap) leki. Lie (rest on) kusxi. Lie down kusxigxi. Lie mensogo. Lien garantiajxo. Lieu (in lieu of) anstataux. Lieutenant leuxtenanto. Life vivo. Lifeguard korpogardisto. Lifelong dumviva. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... The blunt, licentious Saxon words and sentences in the first text of Shakspere, have been ruthlessly expurgated by his editorial commentators, adding, no doubt, to the beauty and decency of the plays, but sadly detracting ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... lawfully you may exercise it over the petulant scribblers of this age. As Lord Chamberlain, I know, you are absolute by your office in all that belongs to the decency and good manners of the stage. You can banish from thence scurrility and profaneness, and restrain the licentious insolence of poets and their actors in all things that shock the public quiet, or the reputation of private persons, under the notion of humour. But I mean not the authority which is annexed to your office, I speak of that only ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... was regarded as one of the great reformers of the vices of his time. We may therefore conclude, that, although repugnant to our taste and feelings, they were the means of effecting much good in a gross and licentious age. ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... have whirled about all my life over all the dance-floors of philosophy, and yielded myself to all the orgies of the intellect, and paid my addresses to all possible systems, without satisfaction like Messalina after a licentious night, I now find myself on the same standpoint where poor Uncle Tom stands,—on that of the Bible! I kneel down by my black brother in the same prayer! What a humiliation! With all my science I have come no further than the poor ignorant negro ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... issued his first brief condemning him, Luther exclaimed: "It is incredible that a thing so monstrous should come from the chief pontiff, especially Leo X. If in truth it be come forth from the Roman court, then I will show them their most licentious temerity and their ungodly ignorance." These were bold words from a man who did not wish to become a reformer, a ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... a cruel necessity turned out of my home; must leave my books and all I possess, perhaps to be destroyed by a licentious soldiery." Andrew Eliot to Thomas Hollis, Proceedings Mass. ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... nor, what we would be more pleased to have found in them, the truth of passion, and natural colouring, which characterised the old English drama. But the credit of the piece was redeemed by the comic part, which is a more light and airy representation of the fashionable and licentious manners of the time than Dryden could afterwards attain, excepting in "Marriage a la Mode." The king, whose judgment on this subject was unquestionable graced the "Maiden Queen" with the title of his play; and Dryden insinuates that it would have been dedicated to ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... friends, but their prejudices on the subject of sensual enjoyment were so strong that I could never get them to listen to licentious talk, to allow certain small liberties which I would gladly have taken, or to afford me those pleasures of the eyes that we accept in default ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... blessed government, by ordering several persons to be strangled, who were the objects of his royal suspicion. He has also ordered his treasurer to advance some months pay to the janizaries, which seems the less necessary, as their conduct has been bad in this campaign, and their licentious ferocity seems pretty well tamed by the public contempt. Such of them as return in straggling and fugitive parties to the metropolis, have not spirit nor credit enough to defend themselves from the insults of the mob; the very children taunt them, and the populace ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... delineate it at our solicitation." "In his person were collected the most opposite defects and advantages of every kind. He was avaricious and ostentatious, ... haughty and obliging, politic and confiding, licentious and superstitious, bold and timid, ambitious and indiscreet; lavish of his bounties to his relations, his mistresses, and his favourites, yet frequently paying neither his household nor his creditors. His consequence always depended on a woman, and he was always unfaithful to her. Nothing ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... and imperious, enslaving the civilised world, and, not having the restraining laws of Greece, waxed luxurious and licentious, and chafed, in consequence, at the austere rigidity of the Greek style ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... as Brahma. As I have created the deities and the Asuras and the great Rishis so I have placed the Brahmanas in their respective situations and have to punish them occasionally. In consequence of his licentious assault on Ahalya, Indra was cursed by Gautama, her husband, through which Indra got a green beard on his face. Through that curse of Kausika Indra lost, also, his own testicles, which loss was afterwards (through the kindness of the other deities) made up by the substitution of the testicles of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... died in 1566, and had been succeeded by his son, Selim; this prince, bred in the Seraglio, was weak and licentious, given to that strong drink forbidden by the Prophet to an extent which caused him to be nicknamed by the Spaniards as "el ebrio," ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... version which I could make; and, secondly, I debated with myself whether it became my moral character to render into English—and so far, certainly, lend my countenance to language—much of which I thought vulgar, licentious, and blasphemous. I need not tell you that I never put pen to paper as a ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... solitude of remote chateaux who began to cultivate a love for literature. "The very women and maidens aspired to this praise and celestial manna of good learning," said Rabelais. But their reading was mainly limited to his own unsavory satires, to Spanish pastorals, licentious poems, and their books of devotion. It was on such a foundation that Mme. De Rambouillet began to rear the social structure upon which her reputation rests. She was eminently fitted for this role by her pure character and fine ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... laws against the licentious plays and spectacles which flourished in Greece and Rome in ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... her wild licentious youth, Confess'd the potent voice of Truth, And felt its just controul. The Passions ceas'd their loud alarms, And Virtue's soft persuasive charms O'er ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... men wise. The stars make them rich. "A man born on the first day of the week will excel in only one quality. He that is born on the second day will be an angry man, because on that day the waters were divided. He that is born on the third day of the week will be rich and licentious, because on it the herbs were created. He that is born on the fourth day will be wise and of good memory, because on that day the lights were hung up. He that is born on the fifth day will be charitable, because on that day the fishes and fowls were created. He that is born on the Sabbath, on the ...
— Hebrew Literature
... Richard Henry Lee, one of the committee who reported the ordinance to Congress, transmitted it to General Washington, (15th July, 1787,) saying, "It seemed necessary, for the security of property among uninformed and perhaps licentious people, as the greater part of those who go there are, that a strong-toned Government should exist, and the rights of property be clearly defined." The consent of all the States represented in Congress, the consent of the Legislature of Virginia, the consent of the ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... though treachery was far from rare, and treaties never lasted long unbroken. But to return to the First Protector. Towards the end of his glorious reign of forty-three years the Marquess of Ts'i grew arrogant, vainglorious, and licentious, so much so that his western neighbour, the powerful state of Tsin, declined to attend the durbars. Of the other great powers Ts'in (to the west of Tsin) was much too far off to take active part in these parliaments; Ts'u was too busy in spreading civilization ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... Spain at that time was a licentious and insolent favorite of the king and queen, Emanuel Godoy by name, who began life as a soldier, was made Duke of Alcudia by his royal patrons, and was appointed prime minister in 1792. In 1795, having made peace with France after a disastrous war, he received the title of "Prince ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... and guardianship were most seriously needed, that she became an orphan; and her future charge necessarily devolved upon an uncle, between whom and her father, since their early manhood, but little association of any kind had taken place. The one looked upon the other as too licentious, if not criminally so, in his habits and pursuits; he did not know their extent, or dream of their character, or he had never doubted for an instant; while he, in turn, so estimated, did not fail to consider and to style his more sedate ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... ballroom—as the evening progressed—became unpleasantly hot. Dancing was in full swing and the orchestra had just struck up the first strains of that inspiriting new dance—the latest importation from Vienna—a dreamy waltz of which dowagers strongly disapproved, deeming it licentious, indecent, and certainly ungraceful, but which the young folk delighted in, and persisted in dancing, defying the mammas ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... holy simplicity of his life as statesman and priest comes like a ray of sunshine in the gloom of the days of "half heathen and wholly vicious" kings. Mr. Hodgkin, with an eye no doubt to modern affairs, comments thus on the career of the prelate so different from the greedy, turbulent, and licentious men whom {145} Gregory of Tours describes: "In reading his life one cannot but feel that in some way the Frankish nation, or at least the Austrasian part of it, has groped its way upwards since the sixth century." [Sidenote: S. Arnulf.] Arnulf was a type of the good bishops of the ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... of this polish'd age Has swept immoral raillery from the stage; Since taste has now expung'd licentious wit, Which stamp'd disgrace on all an author writ; Since, now, to please with purer scenes we seek, Nor dare to call the blush from Beauty's cheek; Oh! let the modest Muse some pity claim, And meet indulgence—though she find not fame. Still, not for her ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... poet mourns over the ruin and desolation of Rome, as a mother deserted of her children; another is a dialogue between two shepherds, in which St. Peter, under the pastoral disguise of Pamphilus, upbraids the licentious Clement VI with the ignoble servitude in which he is content to abide; a third shows us Clement wantoning with the shameless mistress of a line of pontifical shepherds, a figure allegorical of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... "Ariadne auf Naxos," "Joseph's Legende" and "Eine Alpensymphonie" are makeshift, slack, slovenly despite all technical virtuosity, all orchestral marvels. Every one knows what the score of "Rosenkavalier" should have been, a gay, florid, licentious thing, the very image of the gallant century with its mundane amours and ribbons and cupids, its petit-maitres and furbelows and billets-doux, its light emotions and equally light surrenders. But Strauss's music is singularly flat and hollow and dun, joyless and soggy, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... first poet that mingled alexandrines, at pleasure, with the common heroick of ten syllables; and from him Dryden borrowed the practice, whether ornamental or licentious. He considered the verse of twelve syllables as elevated and majestick, and has, therefore, deviated into that measure, when he supposes the voice ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... passionately enamored of the classic past; in the rococo architecture and sculpture of a later time, we have the idle swagger, the unmeaning splendor, the lawless luxury, of an age corrupted by its own opulence, and proud of its licentious slavery. Had anything come of the aesthetic sensation immediately following the war, and the spirit of martial pride with which it was so largely mixed, we should probably have had a much greater standing-army in bronze and marble than would have been needed for the suppression ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... then prevalent, and, with such auxiliaries to its intrinsic merit, was universally and liberally applauded. It was on the side of charity against the intrigues of interest; and of regular learning against licentious usurpation of medical authority, and was therefore naturally favoured by those who read ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... description of the Tantric rites connected with Shakti worship I must refer readers to M. Barth's learned work on "The religions of India," of which an English translation has been published by Messrs Truebner in their Oriental series. In its extreme forms Shakti worship finds expression in licentious aberrations which, however lofty may be the speculative theories that gave birth to them, represent the most extravagant forms of delirious mysticism. Yet such men as Mr. Surendranath Banerjee[7], who in his relations with Englishmen claims to represent the fine ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... rough mountain-campaigning, but reckless and dissolute, as soldiers are apt to be when accustomed to predatory warfare. They would fight hard for booty, and then gamble it heedlessly away or squander it in licentious revelling. Alhama abounded with hawking, sharping, idle hangers-on, eager to profit by the vices and follies of the garrison. The soldiers were oftener gambling and dancing beneath the walls than keeping watch upon the battlements, and nothing ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... to be exposed to the Oh brother, you saw we all submitted to our fate without a murmur, and laboured cheerfully on the fortifications, when compelled to do so, by that inhuman monster Davoust, amidst the ribaldry of a licentious soldiery, merely because poor Janette had helped to embroider a standard for the brave Hanseatic Legion you know how we bore this"—here the sweet girl held out her delicate hands, galled by actual and unwonted labour and many other ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... a source of light, a centre of peace; mistress of learning and of the arts; faithful guardian of great memories in the midst of irreverent and ephemeral visions; faithful servant of time-tried principles, under temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires; and amidst the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped in her strange valour of good will ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Falls, and returns, and shivers where it lights. Such humours stirr'd them up; but this war's seed Was even the same that wrecks all great dominions. 160 When Fortune made us lords of all, wealth flow'd, And then we grew licentious and rude; The soldiers' prey and rapine brought in riot; Men took delight in jewels, houses, plate, And scorn'd old sparing diet, and ware robes Too light for women; Poverty, who hatch'd Rome's greatest wits,[593] was loath'd, and all the world Ransack'd for gold, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... palace, which overlooks the city from its craggy seat, attesting the splendor it enjoyed, when for thirty years the Papal Court was held there, and the gray, weather-beaten, irregular building, resembling a pile of precipitous rocks, echoed with the revels of licentious prelates. We could not enter to learn the terrible secrets of the Inquisition, here unveiled, but we looked up at the tower, from which the captive Rienzi was liberated at ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... "An Epistle to the Reader," after reprehending "the wits of our times" for "quibbling and drolling upon the Bible," says immediately after:—"This author's innocent abuse of Scripture is so far from countenancing, that it rather shames and condemns that licentious and abominable practice. Nor can we admit of the most useful allusions without that harmless (nay helpful and advantageous) [Greek: katachresis], or abuse here practised: wherein the words are indeed used ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... education has secured from licentious indulgences, the passion of love, when once it has seized him, is exceedingly strong; being unimpaired by dissipation, and totally concentrated in one object. This was experienced by Johnson, when he became the fervent admirer of Mrs. Porter, after her first husband's death[285]. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the city, and the busy turmoil of the streets had ceased; the laborer had repaired to his family, the wealthy had gone to their suburban villas, and licentious youth had sought the amusements over which darkness draws its veil. Politicians, newsmongers, and travellers made the cafe salons ring with their animated discussions. The policy of the Prime Minister, ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly |
