"Profanity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he might venture to write to Amabel, on whom alone he could depend; but he felt it a sort of profanity to ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Feejee cannibalism and the destruction of the tender germ of life, to swallow an oyster was to mask murder. A still selecter circle denounced the chains that shackled the tongue and the false delicacy that clothed the body. Profanity, they said, is not the use of forcible and picturesque words; it is the abuse of such to express base passions and emotions. So indecency cannot be affirmed of the model of all grace, the ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... do with Art. Hence religious reformers are mystics, enthusiasts: this is the look of Luther, even of the hard-headed Calvin, as seen from the Roman-Catholic side. Hence, also, every epoch of revolution in Art seems to the preceding like an irruption of frivolity and profanity. Christian Art would have seemed so to the ancients; the Realism of the fourteenth century must have seemed so to the Giotteschi and the Renaissance, to both. The term Pre-Raphaelitism, though it seems an odd collocation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... well-deserved perdition. But Abigail did not say perdition. She left that to weak spirits. She thought it a virtue to say "hell" with unction and emphasis, by way of alarming the consciences of sinners. Mrs. Anderson's prayer is not reportable. That sort of profanity is too bad to write. She capped her climax—even as I have heard a revivalist pray for a scoffer that had vexed his righteous soul—by asking God to convert her daughter, or if she could not be converted to take her away, that she ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... There's lots of miserable wretches and immorality and profanity among the regulars. I want you to remain a good boy, as you always have been. I need not tell you to be brave. You will ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... fruits of his toil. A little village on a neck of land or beneath a grove shows where the wives and children of these millers live. The mills are a source of prosperity for thousands of humble folk, and of provocation to hurricanes of profanity on the part of the Austrian, Italian and Dalmatian captains who are compelled to pass them. Stealing through an aquatic town of this kind at midnight, with the millers all holding out their lanterns, with the steamer's bell ringing violently, and with rough voices crying ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... in!" Nor would he, perhaps, have shown himself and Jerrold, in the accompanying cut, listening in fraternal shame-facedness and disgust to a fellow-passenger declaiming against the wickedness and profanity of Punch. ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Isobel had such thrilling occupation as that of returning Ezra Quinby's grandson to the spiritual fold. In spite of the fact that Quin was a fairly decent chap already, whose worst vices were poker and profanity, she persisted in regarding him as a brand which she had been privileged to snatch ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... denunciatory. I called down curses on the brig, and all that belonged to her, not hesitating about wishing that she might founder at sea, and carry all hands of us to the bottom of the ocean. In a word, I indulged in all that looseness and profanity of the tongue, which is common enough with those who feel no restraints on the subject, and ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... scourging them with serpents, or driving them with tridents, or dragging them with chains into the flaming mouth of hell. Even in the most hidden and sacred places of the medieval cathedral we still find representations of Satanic power in which profanity and obscenity run riot. In these representations the painter and the glass-stainer vied with the sculptor. Among the early paintings on canvas a well-known example represents the devil in the shape of a dragon, perched near the head of a dying man, eager to seize his soul ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... "Tommy Tuttle!" and in walked a big bulk of a man, six feet and more tall, with shoulders broad and burly and legs like tree trunks. Ellhorn turned toward him a beaming face and broke into a string of oaths. But his profanity was cordial and joyous. It bloomed with glad welcome and was fragrant with good fellowship and ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... him!" said the Colonel, who seemed to have a small bottle of profanity lately uncorked, or one that he certainly was not in the habit of uncorking in the presence of those on whom he wished to produce a ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... become fourth in the tourney. Magnificently, he boarded at the yellow pine hotel instead of at the Parisian Restaurant; but he came to be a formidable visitor in the Hinkle parlor. His competition reduced Bud to an inspired increase of profanity, drove Jacks to an outburst of slang so weird that it sounded more horrible than the most trenchant of Bud's imprecations, and made me dumb ...
— Options • O. Henry
... knew about the parrot. The Dummy had slipped it into the ward more than once and its profanity had delighted the patients. The Avenue Girl had been glad to see it too; and as it sat on the bedside table and shrieked defiance and oaths the Dummy had smiled benignly. John and the dove—the girl ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Andy at noon with real regret. He was the first boy with whom I had ever had any intimacy. And I admired him: chiefly, I fear, for his fluent use of profanity and his fighting qualities. He was a merry lad, with a wondrous quick temper but a good heart. And he seemed sorry to say good-by. He filled my pockets with June apples—unripe, by the way—and told me to remember him when I got ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... performances. Temperament and emotional traits we usually think of as belonging to a man's "nature", though we have to admit that a naturally cheerful disposition may be soured by ill treatment. On the other hand, while we reckon habits, such as profanity, or free spending, or an erect carriage, as belonging with the acquired traits, we know that some natures are prone to certain habits, and other natures to other habits. Thus the effects of "nature" and "experience" are almost inextricably interwoven in the ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... who are disinclined to rely upon so-called "expert" opinion, but wish to look into these things for themselves and intelligently purchase an instrument which is thoroughly up-to-date in every particular, which will not drive the organist to the verge of profanity every time he plays upon it, and will not prove a snug source of income ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... on record what Terwilliger said in answer to this statement. It was forcible rather than polite, and the earl from that moment adopted a new simile for degrees of profanity, substituting "to swear like an American" for the old forms having to do with pirates and troopers. The string of expletives was about five minutes in length, at the end of which time ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... workingwoman, whose ideas were limited to those of a savage and who was a woman only in sex. Her ideas of morality, decency, conjugal happiness, children, education, were limited by quarrels, profanity, blows, fights. At that time brandy was the sole consolation for those women; it supplied their moral force and their moral resistance, making them forget cold, hunger, fatigue, evil, and giving them courage and patience; it was the fire that ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... election in Wilkes County, and a delegation, in spite of the lateness of the hour, went to Mr. Toombs' residence, awoke him, and asked for an authoritative denial of what they considered a damaging charge. Mr. Toombs listened to the delegation, and then declared with emphasis, not free from profanity, that it was so. "I have responded to their calls just as I have those of other denominations. You can tell the people that the distribution of my money is ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... a sound of a heavy fall, followed by a volley of profanity, and the next instant something flew against the wall, and was shivered to fragments that fell ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... about her,—a divinity which made it almost a profanity to have talked about her at all to such a one as Dolly Longstaff. She was his Holy of Holies, at which vulgar eyes should not even be allowed to gaze. It had been a most unfortunate interview. But this was clear; that, as he had announced his engagement to such a one as Dolly Longstaff, ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... drew a little breath. For a moment he was speechless. To him it seemed something like profanity that this young man should ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... whole, quicker. One could improve upon them, too, with imagination and wit and a natural gift for terms. That Samuel Clemens maintained his promise as to drink and cards during those apprentice days is something worth remembering; and if he did not always restrict his profanity to moments of severe pressure or sift the quality of his wit, we may also remember that he was an extreme example of a human being, in that formative stage which gathers all as grist, later to refine it for the uses and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... coarseness and profanity of villany increased almost to the depth of a sentiment as he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the point of suppressed profanity, he elbowed out of the thronged saloon just in time to espy a steward (quite another steward: not him with whom Staff had left his things) struggling up the main companionway under the handicap of several articles of luggage ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... lost his presence of mind. In the very instant of his first eye's opening, the other eye and his mouth behaved similarly, the latter loosing upon the quiet air one shriek of mental agony before the little dog scrambled to his feet and gave further employment to his voice in a frenzy of profanity. At the same time the subterranean diapason of a demoniac bass viol was heard; it rose to a wail, and rose and rose again till it screamed like a small siren. It was Gipsy's war-cry, and, at the sound of it, Duke became a frothing maniac. He made a convulsive ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... made to Manager Moss.—Have the fire scene take place in the first act, and let all the dramatis personae perish in the flames. Thus shall the audience be spared the vulgar profanity of STODDART'S "Comic Villain," the absurdity of WALLACK'S "Coram," the twaddle of HIELD'S "Virtuous Banker," and the impossible imbecility of FISHER'S "Unprincipled Clerk." Miss GERMON in trowsers, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... Illinois and one of the unsuccessful candidates for the presidency in 1860, made a speech in Ohio early in 1861, in which, in alluding to a question that had been asked, or rather suggested, as to General Scott's loyalty to the Government, said: "Why, it is almost profanity to ask such a question. I saw him only last Saturday. He was at his desk, pen in hand, writing his orders for the defense and safety of ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... served upon the demand of the patrons. The evil of the situation is significant when it is remembered that the larger percentage of the patrons of those places are men under twenty-five years of age. Profanity is common, and usually gambling is permitted. Often these pool- and billiard-parlors are the "hang-outs" of vicious, depraved young men who live upon the earnings of unfortunate women. This use of the leisure time of men is physically, morally, ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... mourner punished him for what he thought his fiendish wish, and bade him say, "Pray God, send the soul to heaven!" which he was bawling when he met a he and a she-dog going to be hanged. The good people who heard him were greatly shocked at his seeming profanity, and striking him, strictly charged him to cry, "A he and a she-dog going to be hanged!" On he went, accordingly, repeating this new cry, till he met a man and a woman going to be married. When the bridegroom heard what the booby said, he gave him many ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... twenty-three I was ever destined to behold, broke from its pen and ran bellowing to its mother. The dogs bayed, the niggers yelled, the Mexican swore in his delightful tongue; and the stuttering Michigander remained silent, simply from his inability to pronounce the profanity of ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... time you turned in. There's your bunk," pointing to a shelf in the dark and damp look-out house. Paul prepared to retire while the men continued their stories. The river-men of that time were rather given to profanity, so their yarns were freely interspersed with oaths. Suddenly Tom ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... Well, you get him! Get him, or I'll get you! If he ain't back in jail to-day, off comes your buttons to-morrow—do you get that?" Old John banged the receiver onto the hook, and launched what would undoubtedly have been a classic of denunciatory profanity, had it not been interrupted in its inception by Jean, who had slipped into the office unnoticed at the beginning of ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... bitterness became more and more apparent. Long before the end, the record was frankly profane, and saddest of all was the evidence that under the stress of annoyance the great love for "my Rebecca" was slowly, but surely, becoming tainted. From simple profanity, Uncle Ebeneezer descended into blasphemous comment, modified at times by ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... then he saw WESTCOTT'S huntin' cap above the rocks on the point, and saw his double-barrel poked out in the direction of the leader of the pack, and he knew that that old grey-back's time had come. Mark let off a fresh volley of profanity, and as the wolves seemed preparing for a rush, WESTCOTT'S rifle broke the frozen stillness of the woods, and old grey-back turned a summerset and went down. The astonished wolves clustered together for a moment in confusion, and the ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... know what you're going to say, child, you want me to go and 'see for myself,' which means that I'm to soil my boots in filthy places, subject my ears to profanity, my eyes to horrible sights, and my nose to intolerable smells. No, Ruth, I cannot oblige you. Of what use would it be? If my doing this would relieve the miseries of the poor, you might reasonably ask me to go among them, but it would not. I give them as much money as I can afford to give, ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... the gale continued to increase, Captain Markham was not the man to put back into port as long as he could possibly keep the sea. He had a good deal of the Flying Dutchman spirit about him, without the profanity of that far-famed navigator, which has so justly doomed him ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... comes in from the street, and has learned to swear from the bad boys congregated there, it is a very different thing to you from what it was when you heard the profanity of those boys as you passed them. Now it takes hold of you, and makes you feel that you are a stockholder in the public morality. Children make men better citizens. Of what use would an engine be to a ship, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... was jingling excitement. The men of the Y.D. were fraternally assisting Transley's gang in hitching up and getting away, and there was much bustling activity to an accompaniment of friendly profanity. It was not yet six o'clock, but the sun was well up over the eastern ridges that fringed the valley, and to the west the snow-capped summits of the mountains shone like polished ivory. The exhilaration in ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... touched the faces of the men. They looked at one another. Suddenly McCann grasped Champney's hand, and reaching over the slab caught in his the hands of the other two; he gripped them hard, drew a long shuddering breath, and spoke, but unwittingly on account of his habitual profanity, the last word: ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... slightly and his slack lower jaw tightened in a ghastly little grimace. The transported Pablo seized him and shook him furiously, meanwhile deluging Don Mike with a stream of affectionate profanity that fell from his lips ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... elaborate morning-costume. Everything took pattern and was elaborate. Nothing was left to the imagination, the taste, the curiosity. A bland, smooth, smiling surface baffled and blinded you, and threatened profanity. Now profanity is wicked and vulgar; but if you listen to the reeds next summer, I am not sure that you will not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ponderously up the rough plank with a piece balanced upon his shoulders, missed his footing and fell with a loud splash into the water. The Indian scrambled clumsily ashore, and the piece was rescued, but not before a perfect torrent of French-English-Indian profanity had poured from the lips of the ever-versatile Vermilion. Harriet Penny shrank against the younger ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... stating that they contained such things as "a fair piece of Moses' left horn, a whole pound of the wind that blew for Elijah in the cave on Mount Horeb and two feathers and an egg of the Holy Ghost" as a dove. All this, of course, not in ribald profanity, but in works intended ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... of coercion, or any particular care which was exercised over them; for perhaps in no part of the world are prisoners so left to themselves and so utterly neglected as in Spain. Yet in this prison of Madrid the ears of the visitor are never shocked with horrid blasphemy and profanity, nor are his eyes outraged and himself insulted. And yet in this prison were some of the most desperate characters in Spain. But gravity and sedateness are the leading characteristics of the Spaniards, and the very robber, except in those ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... city Saturday night, behaved on the train and here like barbarians, disgracing their uniforms, their States and themselves. They were drunk and disorderly, and their firing of pistols, destruction of property and theft of edibles was not as bad as their outrageous profanity and obscenity on the cars in the hearing of ladies. Clearly they are brutes when sober and whiskey only developed the ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... pretty as an angel, and as coarse in his manners as any carter. He had curly chestnut hair, beautiful eyes, and an innocent-looking mouth which gave vent to language that even a gendarme would have hesitated to use. Brought up amidst all the ribaldry and profanity of the markets, he had the whole vocabulary of the place on the tip of his tongue. With his hands on his hips he often mimicked Grandmother Mehudin in her anger, and at these times the coarsest and ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... into Tim's hard blue eyes and a glance at his fist curled around the butt of his belt gun, the bogas backed up. A moment later they were thrown boldly into their own part of the boat by Jose, who blistered them with the profanity of three languages at once. Then McKay came ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... perturbed Alma almost more than anything else, as the dreaded cravings grew, with each siege her mother becoming more brutish and more given to profanity, was where she obtained ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... nothing in this but profanity. She turned the attack on Bertha, who, by her soft way of speaking, simply encouraged the servants, she ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... remark of Martin O'Connor's is fit for quotation. It came when his vocabulary was bare of vituperation, abusive epithet, and profanity. ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... I'll do it!" There was no profanity in this assertion. It was the strongest way he could put it; and we dropped on our knees on the deck and began to pray. In a minute or two half a dozen others joined us. Then it seemed as if everybody around us was on his knees; and then, ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... this transparent device; they petitioned the king to command the prosecution of Wilkes and, later, when he was out of their reach, ordered that he should be confined for his offence against themselves. Their proceedings excited public ridicule. That Sandwich should complain of obscenity and profanity, and should censure Wilkes, a fellow-monk of Dashwood's debauched fraternity, for indulging in them was, indeed, a case of Satan rebuking sin. At a performance of the "Beggar's Opera" at Covent Garden theatre the audience caught up with delight Macheath's ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... they found fault with their vittles. They can go to the other place next time," which was as near as Ledlie ever came to profanity. ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... however, she was a child transformed. No one now could possibly mistake her for a boy. She could read and write, spell fairly, had some knowledge of arithmetic and the conjugation of Amo: and, finally, her knowledge of intricate profanity had materially lessened. Nowadays, when she was left alone in her rage, her most forceful expressions seemed to be "Dieu de Dieu de Dieu!" or "Sapr-r-risti!" of her mild little tutor or her more ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... put a quick end to the human race had they been laws of nature. He wished the church would take them all and consign them to its own favorite place of punishment. He had a disagreeable trick of gibing at his wife's orthodoxy on this point, and when she remonstrated at his profanity, he smiled contentedly and said: "There is nothing profane about it. It is sound church doctrine, and I envy you for being able to believe it. You can hope to see them with your own eyes ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... on or the air less thin, one might have determined that Goat Hennessey was utilizing some choice profanity, directed at those two absent personages whose names were, respectively, Adam ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... halt betwixt two ways like one distracted, but only he did mingle a mass of sacred words with his arguments which seemed to me nought but profanity, his sole concern being the gain of money. Then he falls to the old excuses Don Sanchez had told us of, saying he had no money of his own, and offering to show his books that we might see he had taken not one penny beyond his bare expenses ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... feelin' to know 'at you're goin' to be missed; but I couldn't savvy that cook. He had one big tearin' time of it an' sluiced himself out with gin an' dug up his old profanity, an' then he simmered down an' just cooked himself into a new record. Gee! it was hard to separate from that mess table; but I had set my day an' the' was ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... chastity, and fragrance, he will have achieved distinction. When society shall have attained to the lily-of-the-valley plane, life will be fine, fragrant, and beautiful. Intemperance will be no more, and profanity, vulgarity, and coarseness will disappear. Such things cannot thrive in a lily-of-the-valley world, but shrink away from the presence of beauty ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... sufficient to kindle his anger against him, and Haight, by his talk, added fuel to the slowly smoldering fire. At home, but more particularly among the miners, in the camp or at the Y, Maverick expressed his views regarding Houston in language abounding with profanity and obscenity, and many were the muttered threats of what he would do should the object of his hatred ever ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... about 215,000 retail liquor houses in this nation. Allowing 20 feet to each, it gives us an unbroken liquor front of about 781 miles. Just think of it! Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of profanity and vulgarity. Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of Sabbath-breaking. Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of drunkard-making. Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of filth, debauchery, anarchy, dynamite and bombs. [Applause]. Seven ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... asked for 'yellow'—a glass of agwa with yellow." Branch's voice shook. "I'm dying of a fever, and this ivory-billed toucan brings me a quart of poison. Bullets!" It was impossible to describe the suggestion of profanity with which the speaker colored this innocuous expletive. "Weak as I am, I shall gnaw his windpipe." He bared his teeth suggestively and raised two ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... plays, but it is quite possible that the Boy-Bishop ceremonies themselves had degenerated into a farce. As the Rex Stultorum festival was prohibited at Beverly Minster in 1371, we must conclude that similar extravagance and profanity had crept into Yuletide observances in this country. The festival of the Boy-Bishop, however, was conducted with a decency hardly to be expected in view of its apparent associations. It would seem, indeed, to have been an impressive and edifying ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... footstep should send a dart of agony to the point of mutilation. My wife gave much assistance in my hospital duties, often reaching and influencing those beyond me. I recall one poor fellow who was actually six months in dying from a very painful wound. Profanity appeared to be his vernacular, and in bitter protest at his fate, he would curse nearly every one and everything. Mrs. Roe's sympathy and attentions changed him very much, and he would listen quietly as long as she would read to him. Some of the hospital ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... My townsmen have all heard the tradition—the oldest people tell me that they heard it in their youth—that anciently the Indians were holding a pow-wow upon a hill here, which rose as high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep into the earth, and they used much profanity, as the story goes, though this vice is one of which the Indians were never guilty, and while they were thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one old squaw, named Walden, escaped, and from her the pond was named. It has been conjectured that when the hill shook, these ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... on which teamsters and others were mounted, all in great disorder took wildly to the hills and mountains to the northwest, followed by infantry in somewhat better order; the mules brayed, the horses neighed, the teamsters and riders indulged in much vigorous profanity, but the most of the retreating mass reached Bloody Run, Pennsylvania, marching via Sir John's Run, Hancock, and Bath. Citizens on Apple-Pie Ridge who witnessed the wild scene describe it ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... until Miller Lyddon returned, heard the news, and heartily congratulated Billy on a merciful escape, that the old man grew a little calmer under his disappointment, and moderated the bitterness and profanity of ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... of these things our friends would listen openmouthed—it seemed to them impossible of belief that anything so stupendous could have been devised by mortal man. That was why to Jurgis it seemed almost profanity to speak about the place as did Jokubas, skeptically; it was a thing as tremendous as the universe—the laws and ways of its working no more than the universe to be questioned or understood. All ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... born in East Tennessee, went into the United States Navy at the early age of eleven. He was the youngest midshipman in the service. "Before I had reached the age of sixteen," he says, "I prided myself on my profanity, and ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... a guttural rumbling, ninety per cent profanity, and Hopalong, nodding wisely, picked up two wedges. "Johnny, here's yore gun. If this man will stop talking to hisself and drop that lead-sprayer long enough to take our good money, ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... it whither they would. They made straight for the Judaean hills, and in the first little village were welcomed by the inhabitants at their harvest, as they saw them coming across the plain. But again death attended the Presence, and curiosity, which was profanity, was punished. So the villagers were as eager to get rid of the ark as they had been to welcome it, and they passed it on to the little city of Kirjath-jearim,'the city of the woods,' as the name means, or, as we might say, 'Woodville.' And there it lay, neglected and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... dark youthful passion in Lorna's face. Lane felt rise in him a desire to bid her sharply to omit slang and profanity from the conversation. But the desire faded before his bewilderment. All had suffered change. What had he come home to? There was no clear answer. But whatever it was, he felt it to be enormous and staggering. ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... the gray dawn had already faintly appeared in the east, while our delirious extravagance was at its height. Madly flushed with cards and intoxication, I was in the act of insisting upon a toast of more than wonted profanity, when my attention was suddenly diverted by the violent, although partial unclosing of the door of the apartment, and by the eager voice of a servant from without. He said that some person, apparently in great haste, demanded to speak with ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... them understand that the lax discipline of the march cannot be permitted here. You will instruct them to shave every day, not every week. You will impress on them particularly that there must be an end to the profanity and blasphemy of singing Christian hymns on the march. I have to reprimand you, Centurion, for not only allowing this, but ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... had a liking for all forthright and pugnacious men, and a contempt for lawyers, schoolmasters and all other such obscurantists. He was not pious. He drank whisky whenever he felt chilly, and kept a jug of it handy. He knew far more profanity than Scripture, and used and enjoyed it more. He had no belief in the infallible wisdom of the common people, but regarded them as inflammatory dolts, and tried to save the republic from them. He advocated no sure cure for all the sorrows of the ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... affection. Bill Hay himself was a diamond in the rough,—square, sturdy, uncompromising, generous and hospitable; his great pride and glory was his wife; his one great sorrow that their only child had died almost in infancy. His solecisms in syntax and society were many. He was given at times to profanity, and at others, when madame was away, to draw poker; but officers and men alike proclaimed him a man of mettle and never hesitated to go to him when in financial straits, sure of unusurious aid. But, even had ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... Eastern hall. Miao Yue, with a face beaming with smiles, made way for her to walk in. "We've just been filling ourselves with wines and meats," dowager lady Chia observed, "and with the josses you've got in here, we shall be guilty of profanity. We'd better therefore sit here! But give us some of that good tea of yours; and we'll get off so soon as we have had ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... tremendous profanity burst from Nash. It rose, it rushed on, it seemed an exhaustless vocabulary built up by long practice on mustangs ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... his two friends to their host he fell again into a tone of rallying the latter about his wreckage of the fence and his apparent rage of profanity. The Admiral pooh-poohed it at first as a piece of necessary but annoying garden work; but at length the ring of real energy came back into his laughter, and he cried with a mixture of impatience ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... saw the combination of ancient equine and youthful tree and rushed bellowing to the rescue of the latter. When he returned, empty of profanity and copiously perspiring, his former skipper ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... for your profanity, John Barren," said Tarrant. "That He places in your hand such power and suffers your brain to breed the devil's dung that fills it, is to me a mystery. May you live to learn ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... histories. The most heavily annotated plays are, however, the tragedies, and it is curious to observe that the sombre "problem comedy," Measure for Measure, commands more notes than any other comedy. Further, Johnson's moral and religious sensibilities were offended by profanity and obscenity in the drama, and Shakespeare's comedies, far more than his tragedies and histories, transgress in this direction. One recollects, finally, that the dramatic genre favored most by Johnson was the "she-tragedy." ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... did not intend to pick up a pilot, as he considered their charges exorbitant. At the base of the great mine-field which lies across the mouth of the Straits we were hailed by a British patrol boat, whose choleric commander bellowed instructions at us, interlarded with much profanity, through a megaphone. The captain of the Padova could understand a few simple English phrases, if slowly spoken, but the broadside of Billingsgate only confused and puzzled him, so, despite the fact that he had no pilot and that darkness was rapidly descending, ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... person. Needless to say that such a process belongs distinctly to "Black" Magic, and is wholly evil. Ethereal corpses, like dense ones, if not swiftly destroyed by burning, should be left in the silence and the darkness, a silence and a darkness that it is the worst profanity to break. ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... resources of vituperation were cyclopedic. He possessed in this particular department an eloquence which was incredible. His blasphemy was vast, illimitable, infinite. He told me once that he could not explain it; that when he was sober he abhorred profanity, and never uttered an oath; when he was in liquor his brain took this turn, and distilled blasphemy in volumes. He said that all of its energies were quickened and concentrated in this direction, and then he took not only pleasure, but pride ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... suggested curling the moustaches with a heated iron, but at this my charge fell into so unseemly a rage that I deemed it wise not to insist. He, indeed, bluntly threatened a nameless violence to the barber if he were so much as touched with the iron, and revealed an altogether shocking gift for profanity, saying loudly: "I'll be—dashed—if you will!" I mean to say, I have written "dashed" for what he actually said. But at length I ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Abel Day, piously. "Entomology must be an awful interest-in' study, though I never thought of observin' words myself, kept to avoid vulgar language an' profanity." ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... under herd was a constant fight, resulting in every hoof arising on the bed-ground at midnight and escaping to their old haunts. I worked as good a ranch outfit of men as the State ever bred, I was right there in the saddle with them, yet, in spite of every effort, to say nothing of the profanity wasted, we lost the herd. The next morning every lad armed himself with a prod-pole long as a lance and tipped with a sharp steel brad, and we commenced regathering. Thereafter we corralled them at night, which always called for a free use of ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... uttered violent language; but, since there was nobody present to hear him, it is likely he found small satisfaction in his profanity, rich though it may have been in metaphor and variety. So presently he betook himself off, going straight to the office in Legal Row of H. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... available means to get rid of Charley, but without success. Either direct sale or horse-trade proved useless. Charley liked Denver too well to put up with less interesting owners so Charley always came back, and nearly always accompanied by profanity and threats. Charley was spectacular, and a monstrous care but Denver ended by becoming fond of the nuisance. He would miss the radiant, stupid and ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... only one way to get the attention of the crew, and that was by an overpowering blast of profanity. I called to my assistance every ear-splitting, soul-sizzling oath ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... the barrel which he had used for his interview with Toby, beheld the transfigured face of the young man as the chestnut vender passed the mouth of the alley, and the committee-man released from his soul a burdening profanity in the ear of his companion and confidant, a policeman who would be on duty in Pixley's precinct on the morrow, and who had now reported for instructions not necessarily received ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... listenin' to any more of that sorta talk, I tell you! I've got my eyes open. Why!" he said in surprise, starting up, "he's gone!" He suddenly shuddered and cursed. "In the back," he said. "You—you——" And profanity gushed from his lips. Then he collapsed, closing his eyes, and ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... there is anything I dislike, it is flippancy or profanity, and this young man had both to a major degree. Besides, I loathe the modern musical journalist, flying his flag one week for one piano house and scarifying it the next in ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... and the matron who breaks into the game with seven obedient husbands to her credit has no advantage over the old maid who never swallowed a pillow while watching a man clad only in a single garment and a cerulean halo of profanity, making frantic swipes under the bureau ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... loafer hanging about in the store, and having paid only attention to the dram counter, the necessary concomitant of the village center, became garrulous, but unfortunately more than seasoned the flow with a profanity tolerably rich in variety if not distinguished for refinement; he was of the Clary's Grove genus. As there was a crowd at the "ladies' department," that is, the dry-goods and finery, where it happened Lincoln was commonly besieged, the language was resented by woman's weapons—tosses of the ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... I tried to piece together the fragments of that journey, I remembered that my coat, which had been folded and placed beyond my restless tossing, had been rescued in the morning from a heterogeneous jumble of blankets, evening papers and cravat, had been shaken out with profanity and donned with wrath. At the time, nothing occurred to me but the necessity of writing to the Pullman Company and asking them if they ever traveled in their own cars. I even formulated some ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of Josephine affected very differently the three men, to whom her coming was equally surprising. Her husband, after an exclamation which savoured of profanity, stared at her with a doubtful and malicious frown upon his forehead. With Wingate she exchanged one swift glance of mutual understanding. Phipps, after his first start of surprise, welcomed her with ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... principle is to be found in Tennessee Williams' play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the point of which many people miss because of what they regard to be the vulgarity, profanity, and licentiousness of its characters. In the play, Brock, the son, evaded his problems with himself, his father, his wife, and his work through an excessive use of alcohol. His father, Big Daddy, in his rough, profane way was greatly concerned about his son. Finally, in a tremendous ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... swinging over the other knee, would say, "Yes, damn it," or, "No, damn it," as the case might be. It was then that the reproving protest of his sister's face would jelly in the fat folds of her double chin, helping, somewhat, to cover profanity ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... less a hero because he yielded to a great temptation; but he remains a hero in spite of the stain on his fame. It is much better not to be profane under any circumstances, but when Washington swore fiercely at Charles Lee on the battle field of Monmouth his profanity was the expression of the righteous wrath of a good man. In judging the hero one must take into account the age in which he lived, the differences in moral standards between the past and the present, and ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... very touching in the Flemish peasant's relation with his Deity. It is all very vague to him: a jumble of veneration and familiarity, of sanctity and profanity, without any thought of being familiar, or any ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... of profane language that experience could suggest and impatience stimulate. On his part, had he consulted his own feelings only, he would then and there have turned them out, and locked the doors behind them. So far as silent maledictions were concerned, no profanity of theirs could hold its own against the intensity and deliberation with which, as he found himself approaching his own door, he expressed between his teeth his views in respect to their eternal interests. Nothing could be less suited to his present humour ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... broke in Buxton, with an outburst of profanity. "Not sunset! why, it's well-nigh dark now, sir, and every man in the troop had side-lined his horse half an hour ago. D—n your insolence, sir! your excuse is worse than your conduct. Mr. Billings, see to it, sir, that this man walks and leads his horse in rear of the ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... concede that you are ill, nor permit others to talk about disease or pain or death or similar nonexistences in your presence. Such talk only encourages the mind to continue its empty imaginings." Just at that point the Stuben-madchen trod on the cat's tail, and the cat let fly a frenzy of cat-profanity. I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the battle-field was Putnam's. At the unfinished fortification on Bunker Hill he implored the fugitives to rally and "give them one shot more." The profanity which he used on this occasion he afterwards penitently acknowledged in church. He retired only when the pursuers were close behind, but went no further than Prospect Hill. There, seizing on the chance which so long had been denied him, without orders he ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... in which the maskers had arrayed themselves was endless, while the profanity of some of them was no less remarkable. Here might be seen a gigantic tenatero, or porter, in a sergeant's jacket, and with the enormous cocked hat of a Spanish general upon his head, a globe and sceptre in one hand, in the other a pasteboard ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... his profanity. "Man," said he solemnly, "do you know that you are on the brink of the grave? and must soon appear at the bar of Him whose holy name ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... day, the chief returned, carrying in his hand a small bag made of bark, and filled with something they did not attempt to ascertain, well knowing the chief would look on such an act as unpardonable profanity. He had gone into the forest without supper, and had taken no breakfast, yet he refused anything to eat. They did not urge him, for they had never seen such an expression of humility and meekness on the chief's features before as they wore then; and Jane and ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... meant nothing wrong; but such expressions do not add anything to the force of language, and using them may induce a bad habit. If you associated with boys accustomed to use profanity, this desire to use strong words would lead ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... half the women in the Punjab; scores and scores of saises, betting freely on the match, arguing, shouting, or shampooing the legs of ponies, whose turn was yet to come; and through all the confused hubbub of laughter, cheering, and mercifully incoherent profanity, a British infantry band hammering out with insular assurance, "We'll fight and we'll ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... communion with the conscious life of the race; he has no true conception of the dignity of souls, no sense of the beauty of modest and unselfish action. He mistakes rudeness for strength, boastfulness for ability, disrespect for independence, profanity for manliness, brutality ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... station. Congratulatory messages. Intimations of receptions. A triumphal march. Messrs. Clunes Brothers. An address. Culham. White ladies. Newcastle. A triumphal arch. A fine tonic. Tommy's speech. Unscientific profanity. Guildford on the Swan. Arrival at Perth. Reception by the Mayor. The city decorated. Arrival at the Town Hall. A shower of garlands. A beautiful address. A public reception at Fremantle. Return to Perth. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... pleased the old Colonel so that he waved a feeble hand above his head, then groaned most dismally, and ground his teeth to avoid profanity. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... and reflection, superstition and profanity, deliberate atrocity and fear of judgment, are united in the same nature; and to make the complex still more strange, the play-wright has gifted these tremendous personalities with his own wild humour and imaginative irony. The result is almost monstrous, such an ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... cloud, with Justice gleaming with fiery eyes on Sin, and holding those scales, the decision of which would destine to eternal bliss or eternal woe, and that Justice personified in Him "whose glory is a burning like the burning of a fire,"—no, but the revolting fears produced by the profanity of that poor worm of very common mud, which has been since the beginning of time acting the God. Ay, the aurelia-born image of grace sees a difference when it looks from the sun to the epigenetic thing which He raises out of corruption. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... and indulged himself in a piece of profanity that was inexpressibly disgusting and mean in the mouth of a man who was used to cross himself when alarmed and swear by the saints. But perhaps he knew, even better than I, how little he had to expect from Providence. ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... PROFANITY. The extent to which some men habitually interlard their talk with oaths is disgusting even to many who, on occasion, do not themselves hesitate to give expression to their feelings in oaths portly and unctuous. If these fellows could be made to know ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... assembled sophomores seemed in quite as bad a plight, and some of them were inclined to indulge in profanity, which, although it relieved their feelings for the moment, did not suggest any ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... indifferent air he walked about the veranda, observing every person he encountered, as well as those who were seated in groups, engaged in rather noisy conversation, intermixed with a great deal of profanity. He breathed easier when he had made the circuit of the piazzas on the first floor, though there were two others on the stories above it, for he found no one he could identify as a person ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... against all of Jim's crude but honest ethics of the big wilderness to take the Lord's name in vain, and the words he uttered were filled more with the softness of a prayer than the harshness of profanity. He was big, and his hands were hard and knotted, and his face was covered with a coarse red scrub of beard. But his hair was blond, and his eyes were blue, and just now they were filled with unbounded amazement. Slowly the fork loaded with beans ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... might be regarded by them as more complete if you were taken by surprise. Miss Hickey: that I admire all that is admirable in you is but to say that I have a sense of the beautiful. To say that I love you would be mere profanity. Mr. Langan: I have in my pocket a loaded pistol which I carry from a silly English prejudice against your countrymen. Had I been the Hercules of the ploughtail, and you in my place, I should have ...
— The Miraculous Revenge - Little Blue Book #215 • Bernard Shaw
... medias res upon a sketch of De Quincey's life; were it not a rudeness amounting to downright profanity to omit the important ceremony of prelibation, and that at a banquet to which, implicitly, gods are invited. The reader will assuredly unite with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... contempt for "a Lenten pie," and his preference for a flesh diet as "very good meat in Lent," is clearly a disciple of Calvin; and the impotence of the Nurse, however scandalised at the nakedness of his ribald profanity, to protect herself against it by appeal to reason or tradition, is dwelt upon with an emphasis sufficient to indicate the secret tendency of the poet's own sympathies and convictions. In Romeo's ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to goad Shorty to further profanity, the result should have satisfied him. The huge shadow of Shorty moving back and forth upon the front wall of the tent, became violently agitated and developed a gigantic arm that waved threateningly over the ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... up to us to play it alone. He's put it up to your face that he's with you, but he's playing against you. He can't stop us now. It's gone too far. The first tug is coming, to-morrow. We'll win out, hands down. The Rainbow first, then Pierre." He ended with a string of profanity. ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... roots of which cause much profanity in this country, there are some 250,000 pounds annually imported at from three to seven cents ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... of a name as "Jedidah." "Jedidiah" was bad enough, but there WERE a few Jedidiahs in Ostable County, whereas there was but one Jedidah. Mrs. Winslow, who did not fancy Jedidah any more than her husband did, wept; Captain Thad's profanity impregnated the air with brimstone. But they had solemnly sworn to the agreement and Mrs. Busteed had witnessed it, and an oath is an oath. Besides, Mrs. Winslow was inclined to think the whole matter guided by Fate, ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a tribute from so great a saint, it seems almost a profanity—certainly a bathos—to add any more secular touches. Yet, if the portrait is even to approach completeness, it must be remembered that we are not describing an ascetic or a recluse, but the most polished gentleman, the most fascinating companion, the most graceful and attractive ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... This product of pillage and massacre was solemnly divided between those entitled to it on the Festival of St. James, the patron saint of Spain, after fervent prayer to God. A deplorable mixture this of religion and profanity, too common unfortunately, in these times of mingled ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... thus in vain endeavor to fathom this inexplicable mystery the sound of voices broke upon her ears. Instantly she was all alert. They were coming closer! A second later she recognized the lurid profanity of the Swede. Malbihn, her persecutor, was returning! Meriem ran quickly to the opening of the tent and looked out. It was too late! She was fairly cornered! The white man and three of his black henchmen were coming straight across ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... daily paper wrote to his editor not long ago to complain that there was a wave of profanity passing over the country. Jimmy added a silent but heartfelt contribution ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... will see from this the difficulty of my position in this controversy. Mr. Martineau, while defending himself, deprecated the profanity of my other opponent, and the atheistic nature of his arguments. He spoke as a bystander, and with the advantage of a judicial position, and it is called "wanton and outrageous." A second writer goes into detail, and exposes some of the garbling arts which have been ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... extracted from amid the seals and ribbons puzzled Sir George not a little. But with each new libation he found new clauses and fresh causes for self-congratulation, though to speak exact truth I more than once married Sir George to the Earl of Derby, and in my profanity gave Lord James Stanley to the devil to have ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... are in the neighborhood, we must see the locality to which—in mild and humorous profanity—States people are sometimes assigned; and therefore proceed to Halifax and thoroughly "do" that sedate, quiet, ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... a wide field, while in plain sight in our rear was a good line of breastworks with its flank protected by the river. The indignation of the men grew almost into a mutiny and the swearing of those gifted in profanity exceeded all their previous efforts in that line. Even the green drafted men could see the folly of our position, for one of them said to me, "What can our generals be thinking about in keeping us out here! We can do no good here. We are only ...
— The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee • John K. Shellenberger
... Dogs were barking wildly, and two horses ran away, dragging with them part of a picket-fence. A brown shoat came bounding over the ties and broke through the wall of people, carrying many off their feet and creating panic and profanity. The train stopped, its engine hissing. A brakeman of flashy attire, with fine leather showing to the knees, strolled off and up the platform on high heels, haughty as a prince. Confusion ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... had the car out. Jimmie the Monk and Baxter had returned from their unsuccessful chase. As they made their inquiries from the starter and learned the care with which the coup d'etat had been arranged they lapsed into angry, if admiring, profanity. ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... never speaks of the past, but it has been remarked that whenever the stalwart form of a certain policeman passes her door, her clean, delicate face assumes an expression which can only be described as frozen profanity. The Strong Young ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... was midnight. This fact was indicated by the family clock—a Dutch one, with a face which had once been white, but was now become greenish yellow, probably from horror at the profanity of the artist who had painted a basket of unrecognisable fruit above it, an irate cockatoo below it, and a blue church with a pink steeple as near to the centre of it as the ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... inarticulate murmurs and stifled rumblings. But the impression produced on him was that they were swearing. If they had only sworn right out, he would not have minded it so much, because he would have known the worst. But the feeling that the air was full of suppressed profanity was very wearing and after standing it for a week, he gave up in disgust and went ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... dainty green except where the sandstone cliffs stood up in all the shades of yellow and red. Montana, as viewed on "horse round-up," looks better than in the first bleak days of March, and I could gaze upon it without profanity. I even got to like tearing over the newborn grass on a good horse, with a cowboy or two galloping, keen-faced and calm, beside me. It was almost better than slithering along a hard road with a motor-car stripped to ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... them a genealogical chapter from the Old or New Testament, for I can thus introduce their names without profanity. I always keep tea by me in case they should ask for it in the night, and I have an Etna to warm it for them; they take milk and sugar. The old white-headed clergyman came to see them last night; it was ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... as one has recently written, and as I have myself heard him state, "he permitted no profanity; no man of loose morals was suffered to remain there, unless, indeed, as a prisoner of war. 'I would rather,' said he, 'have the small-pox, yellow-fever, and cholera, all together in my camp, than a man without principle.... It is a mistake, ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... a clumsy crowd, half-hearted, moved chiefly by a cruel delight in destruction for its own sake, and giving voice at intervals to coarse comment of which the wittiest penetrated through a stream of profanity, like one of those same splinters of glass, to the consciousness of at least two of the three men who hung listening ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... into a string of profanity that shocked Larry, and set him to shivering again. He could do little save stare at this remarkable man, and draw in great breaths. No doubt he regretted the evil day he had promised to accompany his chum down into this region of swamps, alligators, ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... usually was committed to memory! Notwithstanding this difficulty, the emigrants did get along with it without many qualms, and most of them dropped quietly into the habit of worshipping agreeably to a liturgy, just as if it were not the terrible profanity that some of them had imagined. In this way, many of our most intense prejudices get ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... trap and slashed his oat-fed horse. The clatter of hoofs strangled but could not drown the sound of his profanity. He shouted choking and gurgling curses at the starry heavens; he cut viciously with his whip at passing vehicles; he scattered fierce and ever-changing oaths and imprecations along the streets, so that a late truck driver, crawling homeward, heard and was abashed. But he knew his recourse, ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... a medieval religious guild, regulated the affairs of every one with little regard for personal liberty. It was especially severe on rebellious servants, idle apprentices, shrewish women, the pigs that ran loose in the streets, and (after 1605) persons guilty of profanity. Regular church attendance and fixed hours of work were required. The corporation frequently punished with fines (the poet's father on one occasion) those who did not clean the street before their houses; and it was much ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... abetted those very tendencies in his nature which required to be checked. Their countenance, as clergymen, would allay the scruples and misgivings he might otherwise have felt, and stimulate to still wilder recklessness whatever profanity he might be tempted to indulge in. When he had let loose his first shafts of satire against their stricter brethren, those New Light ministers heartily applauded him; and hounded him on to still more daring assaults. He had not only his own quarrel ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... spoken. They were filled, as a general thing, all night, with an eager throng, especially on Sunday. Indeed everything then had its full course on Sunday. There were various sports; drinking and gambling ran riot. Blasphemous words filled the air. Men swore without the least thought. But profanity is not alone restricted to a frontier or border community, where laws and a sense of propriety are wanting. One may hear it in old and civilised towns, as he walks the streets, and sometimes from the lips of boys. In these saloons people of all ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... become insane. But lately, retreating through Mewar, he went to the shrine of Krishna and prostrating himself before his heathen image reviled the god as the cause of his disaster. When the priests, aghast at the profanity, expostulated, he levied a fine of three hundred thousand rupees upon them, and when, fearing an outrage to the image these infidels call a god, they sent the idol to Udaipur, he way-laid the men who had taken it and slew them ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... gone—and what a hole! Other men can do his work as well, if not as quickly. The paper still goes to press and the public sees no change; but we, who worked beside him, see it nightly. By twelve o'clock on a busy night, nervous, drawn faces surround the central desk, and profanity is snapped crossly back and forth. There is no alleviation of cheerful inanity. Presently somebody looks up, remarking, "I wish Bobbie Barton was back." And somebody else replies with profane asperity and lax grammar, "I wish he was!" Bobbie, meanwhile ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... thing on God's earth that he was made for, it was to pile up epithets against this infernal rebellion!" Chacun a son gout. Our young author has struck a harder blow at the Confederacy by his damaging facts, than if he had intensified them with the vocabulary of profanity and vituperation. There has been more than enough of bitter words, North and South; it is now a question of strength, and skill, and endurance. This book will teach us to respect the energy, while we detest the principles, of this ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... noticing, from his connection with the important and somewhat curiously conducted controversy respecting the Resurrection, to which Sherlock's 'Tryal of the Witnesses' gave both the impulse and the form. Annet, like Woolston, was prosecuted for blasphemy and profanity; and if the secular arm should ever be appealed to in such matters, which is doubtful, he deserved it by the coarse ribaldry of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Frankish armigerents who camped before their gates en route to the Holy Land. As a consequence, the language of ordinary address and intercourse amongst natives in the Orient was simple and less discolored by what may be called pious profanity. Their discourse was often dull and prolix, but never a composite of sacrilege and exaggeration. Only in their writings were they pedantic. From this the reader can anticipate somewhat of the meeting between Sergius and Lael. It is to be borne in mind additionally ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... your ear to the receiver of a field-telephone, you find yourself, as it were, suddenly thrust into a vast subterranean cavern, filled with the wailings of the lost, the babblings of the feeble-minded, and the profanity of the exasperated. If you ask a high-caste Buzzer—say, an R.E. Signalling Officer—why this should be so, he will look intensely wise and recite some solemn gibberish about earthed ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... prohibition as soon—We will not waste time and money in fighting Brewers and Distillers but the cause of them. We want to prohibit the tyranny and unlawfulness in preventing woman from a voice in the Government, Compulsory education, no games on Lord's Day, no profanity on ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... It was enough. Larner lost his temper. He crumpled the paper and tossed it in the waste basket. He was not given to profanity, but he could say "Judas Priest" ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... cowboys, Beulah soon discovered, were as unlike the cowboys of fiction and of her imagination as a Manitoba steer is unlike his Alberta brother; they did not carry revolvers, nor swagger in high boots, nor rip the air with their profanity; and their table manners reminded her of George and Harry Grant, and the Grants were outstanding examples of right living in the Plainville district. And Mrs. Arthurs, gentle and kind in all her doings, and yet firm and strong and calm, she was—such ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... Vernon, could reprimand and reproach his subordinates, at times, in a way to make the ground crack open and break up the ice in the Delaware a week earlier than usual, I do not mention it in order to show the boys of our day that profanity will make them resemble George Washington. That was one of his weak points, and no doubt he was ashamed of it, as he ought to have been. Some poets think that if they get drunk and stay drunk they will resemble Edgar A. Poe and George D. Prentice. There ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... expressed it. But what I am most concerned to suggest here is that the distinction between prose and poetry (using prose to mean artistically wrought language) will not survive investigation. The popular instinct has long ago seen that the vital thing is the matter—that it is profanity to call that "poetry" which is only verse; it remains to be recognised that even the distinction of form rests only on the non-recognition of the rhythm of "prose,"—a rhythm that is not metre in so far as metre has the sense of regular measure, but may for all that have laws of ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... her ministry among the sickest men; but it was not here alone that her influence was felt in the hospital. Was there jealousy in the kitchen, her quick penetration detected the cause, and in her gentle way harmony was restored; was there profanity among the convalescents, her daily presence and kindly admonition or reproof, with an occasional glance which spoke her sorrow for such sin, were enough to check the evil; or was there hardship or discontent, the knowledge that she was sharing the discomfort too, was enough to compel patient ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... hurried to the water-front to find a crowd of surly stevedores loafing about the dock, and an English sea-captain at breakfast in his cabin, his attention divided equally between toast, tea, marmalade and profanity. ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... Rimoa, a strapping, middle-aged man, Oomak, the Koriak, the man with the tattooed and scarified face whom Martin had seen at the wheel the first day at sea, the two Kanakas, and the Aleut. They talked to each other, he found, in a strange pidgin—a speech composed mainly of verbs and profanity, a language that would have shocked a purist to a premature grave. But Martin found his watchmates to be a brave, capable, though rather ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... would have become my manual of devotion, had not my father denounced it as a most blasphemous outrage upon revelation, and charged me never to repeat what he deeply regretted that I had committed to memory. I hated profanity, and would not have omitted the private repetition of a form of prayer, morning or evening, on any account, nor absented myself from public worship. A slighting expression applied to the Bible would kindle me into glowing resentment, expressed ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth |
