"Profligacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the river had been heretofore a source of support, were neither slow in seeing the cause nor in publishing the consequences to the world. Thus stood matters: dissoluteness of life on the one hand, distress on the other; profligacy and poverty, extravagance and starvation, linked ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... pure oxygen. Do we work as hard for God as the world does for itself? Look at the energy beneath us: how evil in every form is active; how lies and half-truths propagate themselves quick as the blight on a rose-tree; how profligacy, and crime, and all the devil's angels are busy on his errands. If we are sitting drowsy by our camp-fires, the enemy is on the alert. You can hear the tramp of their legions and the rumble of their artillery ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... (though Shaw is certainly, as we shall see, nearer to pure doubt about it than about anything else) does not strike the critic as being such an exasperating problem after all. An artist of vast power and promise, who is also a scamp of vast profligacy and treachery, has a chance of life if specially treated for a special disease. The modern doctors (and even the modern dramatist) are in doubt whether he should be specially favoured because he is aesthetically ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... he had acquired. This was The Life of Richard Savage;[*] a man, of whom it is difficult to speak impartially, without wondering that he was for some time the intimate companion of Johnson[468]; for his character was marked by profligacy, insolence, and ingratitude[469]: yet, as he undoubtedly had a warm and vigorous, though unregulated mind, had seen life in all its varieties, and been much in the company of the statesmen and wits of his time[470], he could communicate ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... two first Georges; both were detestable as men, and scarcely tolerable as monarchs. The foreign deeds of George I. were stained with the supposed murder of Count Konigsmark: the English career of George II. was one of the coarsest profligacy. Their example was infamous. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... settlers must be concealed under the veil of devotion. The streets, formerly so full of life and animation, are now deserted; games of all kinds, even the most innocent, are sternly prohibited; singing is a punishable offence; and the consummate profligacy of attempting to dance would certainly find no mercy. On Sundays, no cooking is permitted, nor must even a fire be kindled: nothing, in short, must be done; the whole day is devoted to prayer, with how much real piety may be easily imagined. Some of the royal ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... a work of time. The majority of the people are unstable, thriftless improvident and ignorant. Slavery left its blight of impotency and profligacy upon them. They come and go as did their fathers a hundred years ago. Their tools and utensils are the same their great-grandparents used, and they are content with them. We never worked harder and saw less result in the conversion of sinners than while in Kentucky, and yet never ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... of dark spirits, Quebec became the scene of a profligacy unparalleled in her history. The Palace, instead of being a hall of justice, was the abode of debauchery and gambling; and the mad revellers, whom a cynical fate had placed at the head of affairs, allowed the ship of state to drift upon the rocks. Even ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... our acquaintance.—How can people know what he is that wears that dress? The writer can alone tell the contents of the letter." In consequence of that reverence in which the dervish character is held, they did not think of his profligacy and admitted him into their society. The outward character of the holy is a patched cloak; this much is sufficient, that it has a threadbare hood. Be industrious in thy calling, and wear whatever dress thou choosest. Put a diadem on thy head, and bear a standard on thy shoulder. Holiness does not ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... be understood, my dear marquis, to speak of consequences which may be produced, in the revolution of ages, by corruption of morals, profligacy of manners, and listlessness in the preservation of the natural and inalienable rights of mankind, nor of the successful usurpations that may be established at such an unpropitious juncture upon the ruins of liberty, however ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... and the looseness and immorality of its rules of life, are not the only objections to it. Its tendency, wherever it has been introduced in the history of our world, has been evil, and only evil. France, at the commencement of her revolution in 1789, was an infidel nation. The profligacy of the Catholic priesthood, and the demoralizing example of the Regent, Duke of Orleans, and the infidel publications of Voltaire and his associates, had produced a contempt for religion through every rank of society. The people of France were taught by their literati that the ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... of royalty, who in his own day had made a considerable noise. History says little or nothing of him; but search the correspondence of his contemporaries, and you find reference to his wild daring, his bold profligacy, his restless spirit, his taste for the occult sciences. While still in the meridian of life he died and was buried, so say the chronicles, in a foreign land. He died in time to escape the grasp of the law, for he was accused of crimes which ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... (priding himself as he does in his fertile invention) he would have been utterly abandoned, irreclaimable, and a savage.'* And it must be observed, that scoffers are too witty, in their own opinion, (in other words, value themselves too much upon their profligacy,) to ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Curran, we must probe to the bottom the corruptions and baseness of that society, which deserves to be branded as among the most base and the most corrupt that history has hitherto described. The temptations which England employed, the horrible corruption and profligacy she fostered, must be fully known, if we desire to do justice to the men who came out undefiled ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... revel in ignorance. He had no particular merit except a certain easy good-nature, which rendered him unwilling to do harm or to give pain to any one, unless some interest of his own should make it convenient. His neglected and unrestrained youth was abandoned to license and to profligacy. He was married in the twenty-second year of his age, against his own inclination, to the Princess Sophia Dorothea of Zeil, who was some six years younger. The marriage was merely a political one, formed with ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Club, a boon companion of Bolingbroke, and, as Swift says, "not an old man, but an old rake." From various sources we gather that he was a high liver, and not very nice in his ways of high living. In spite, however, of his undoubted profligacy, he must have been a man of good nature and a kindly heart, since he received affectionate record from Gay, Pope, and Swift. Mr. Walter Sichel quotes from "an unfinished sketch of a larger poem," by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in which Disney's worst characteristics are held up to ridicule. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... rather more to blame than the men. In all general affairs, indeed, in all matters of consequence, the male sex must ever lead, and the other follow; but surely they have something in their power, were they to exert themselves. They ought never, by a silent approbation, to encourage looseness and profligacy among the men, and thus be accessary to the prostitution of numbers in the lower rank of their own sex; and if they have it not in their power to reform their gallants altogether, they can at least make them throw the mask of decency over ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... son Ingild, whose soul was perverted from honour. He forsook the examples of his forefathers, and utterly enthralled himself to the lures of the most wanton profligacy. Thus he had not a shadow of goodness and righteousness, but embraced vices instead of virtue; he cut the sinews of self-control, neglected the duties of his kingly station, and sank into a filthy slave of riot. Indeed, he fostered ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... of Cicero, a profligate man, joined Caesar, and was raised by him to the consulship; joined Caesar's murderers after his death; was declared from his profligacy a public enemy; driven to bay by a force sent against him, ordered one of his soldiers to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the temporal and eternal damnation of a multitude of men. There is a shamelessness among many in what is called high life that calls for vehement protest. The strife with many seems to be how near they can come to the verge of indecency without falling over. The tide of masculine profligacy will never turn back until there is a decided reformation in womanly costume. I am in full sympathy with the officer of the law who, at a levee in Philadelphia last winter, went up to a so-called lady, and ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... the other thrown into a state of anarchy and confusion. After having spread corruption like a deluge through the land, until all public virtue was lost, and the people were inebriated with vice and profligacy, they were then taught in the paroxysms of their infatuation and madness to cry out for havoc and war. History could not show an instance of such an empire ruined in such a manner. They had lost a greater extent of dominion in the first ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... who can describe the inveterate tenacity with which a drunkard's habits cling to him through life? He may repent—he may reform—he may look with actual abhorrence upon his past profligacy; but amid all this reformation and compunction, who can tell the moment in which the base and ruinous propensity may not recur, triumphing over resolution, remorse, shame, everything, and prostrating its victim once more ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... crime; private life is sacred, and inquiry into it is intolerable; and decency is virtue. Scandals, vulgarities, whatever shocks, whatever disgusts, are offences of the first order. Drinking and swearing, squalid poverty, improvidence, laziness, slovenly disorder, make up the idea of profligacy: poets may say any thing, however wicked, with impunity; works of genius may be read without danger or shame, whatever their principles; fashion, celebrity, the beautiful, the heroic, will suffice to force any evil upon the community. The splendours of a court, and the charms of good society, wit, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... been delayed should be completed within the days of the second or third interrex. There were three candidates, Milo, Hypsaeus, and Q. Metellus Scipio, by all of whom bribery and violence were used with open and unblushing profligacy. Cicero was wedded to Milo's cause, as we have seen from his letter to Curio, but it does not appear that he himself took any active part in the canvass. The duties to be done required rather the services ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... not," replied the undaunted Secretary; "I have got used to it. I fancy I hear Callaghan beginning now: 'The unbridled prodigality, sir, and the reckless profligacy, sir, of those individuals who have so long, under ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... nothing to his seditious conduct in public life. He attends every vestry meeting that is held; always opposes the constituted authorities of the parish, denounces the profligacy of the churchwardens, contests legal points against the vestry-clerk, will make the tax-gatherer call for his money till he won't call any longer, and then he sends it: finds fault with the sermon every Sunday, says that the organist ought to be ashamed of himself, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... has been attended. They are filled with horror and compassion at the sight of poor men spending their blood in the quarrels of princes, and brutifying their sublime capabilities in the drudgery of unremitting labour. For all sorts of vice and profligacy in the lower orders of society, they have the same virtuous horror, and the same tender compassion. While the existence of these offences overpowers them with grief and confusion, they never permit themselves to feel the smallest indignation or dislike towards the offenders. The ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... you. She will instantly be our ally, and soon our scholar. Afterward she will sell her crown jewels and her church jewels, which cover the whole kingdom, and will derive unnatural strength from her vices and her profligacy. You ought to have conciliated us as your ally, and to have had no other, excepting Holland and Denmark. England could never have, unless by her own folly, more than one enemy. Only one is near enough to strike her; and ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... checks which Aristotle's rules impose upon profligacy? The idea is more poetical, {452} and the line runs more smoothly; while the altered line is prosaic in comparison, and the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... Eliza's errors was easy; but to introduce discord and sorrow into this family was an act of the utmost ingratitude and profligacy. It was only requisite for my understanding clearly to discern, to be convinced of the insuperability of this obstacle. It was manifest, therefore, that the point to which my wishes tended ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... poverty and misery was fermenting. Slaves, the chance sweepings of every conquered country, shoals of Africans, Sardinians, Asiatics, Illyrians, and others, made up the bulk of the population of the Italian peninsula. The foulest profligacy of manners was general in all ranks. In universal weariness of revolution and civil war, and in consciousness of being too debased for self-government, the nation had submitted itself to the absolute authority of Augustus. Adulation was now the ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... history nor contemporary society shews us a single amiable and respectable character capable of it. This has always been recognized in cultivated society: that is why poor people accuse cultivated society of profligacy, poor people being often so ignorant and uncultivated that they have nothing to offer each other but the sex relationship, and cannot conceive why men and women should associate for ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... one. We give much to the 'heathen' populations within our Empire or the reach of our trade. We give them English laws, English science, English literature, English outlooks on life, the English tongue, English vices—opium, profligacy, and the like. Are these all the gifts that we are bound to carry to heathen lands? Dynamos and encyclopaedias, gin and rifles, shirtings and castings? Have we not to carry Christ? And all the more because we are so closely knit with so many of them. I wonder how many of you get the greater ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... us. England largely fails in this function; as witness in India godless civilians; as witness on every palm-shaded coral beach in the South Seas, profligate beach-combers, drunken sailors, unscrupulous traders; as witness the dying out of races by diseases imported with profligacy and gin from this land. 'A dew from the Lord!'; say rather a malaria from the devil! 'By you,' said the Prophet, 'is the name of God blasphemed among the Gentiles.' By Englishmen the missionary's efforts are, in a hundred cases, neutralised, or ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... late colonial secretary, in estimating the cost of the convict department, presented a calculation L100,000 annually less than the estimate of the officers on the spot. This difference Lord Stanley set up as proof of the culpable negligence and profligacy of colonial expense. He considered the body of persons employed in the control of prisoners excessive. A reduction was therefore enforced, and in the end less surveillance was employed than ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... priests, and kings, and nobles let them be, and who were collected to witness (a spectacle proper to the times) the burning of the lovely Rebecca at a stake for a sorceress, because she was a Jewess, beautiful and innocent, and the consequent victim of insane bigotry and unbridled profligacy. And it is at this moment (when the heart is kindled and bursting with indignation at the revolting abuses of self-constituted power) that Sir Walter stops the press to have a sneer at the people, and to put a spoke (as he thinks) in the wheel of upstart innovation! This is what he "calls ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... deeming herself forever abandoned, yielded to the importunities of her friends and married a mechanic by the name of Rogers. He proved to be a thoroughly worthless fellow. His unconcealed profligacy, and unfaithfulness to his wife, compelled her, after a few months of wretchedness, to return to her mother, and to resume her maiden name. The profligate husband fled from his creditors to the West Indies. Rumors soon reached Philadelphia of his ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... enphagy[obs3], dophagy[obs3], exophagy[obs3]; want of principle, want of ballast; obliquity, backsliding, infamy, demoralization, pravity[obs3], depravity, pollution; hardness of heart; brutality &c. (malevolence) 907; corruption &c. (debasement) 659; knavery &c. (improbity) 940[obs3]; profligacy; flagrancy, atrocity; cannibalism; lesbianism, Sadism. infirmity; weakness &c. adj.; weakness of the flesh, frailty, imperfection; error; weak side; foible; failing, failure; crying sin, besetting sin; defect, deficiency; cloven foot. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... considered the state of manners at Athens just at the moment of his appearance upon the stage of public life, imagine what an impression such a phenomenon must have made upon a people so lost in profligacy and sensuality of all sorts. What wonder that the unprincipled though gifted Demades, the very personification of the witty and reckless libertinism of the age, should deride and scoff at this strange man, living as nobody else lived, thinking as nobody else thought; a prophet, crying from ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... you may be right, good friend," quoth Rachel Harmer, as she sat beside her spinning wheel, and spoke to the accompaniment of its pleasant hum. "And yet, methinks, the vice and profligacy of this great city, and the lewdness and wanton wickedness of the Court, are enough to draw down upon us the judgments of Almighty God. The sin and the shame of it must be rising up ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... altogether fail to express. You hear constantly that woman, the helpmate of man, who adorns, dignifies, and blesses our lives, that woman in this country is cheap; that vast numbers whose names ought to be synonyms for purity and virtue are plunged into profligacy and infamy. But do you not know that you sent 40,000 men to perish on the bleak heights of the Crimea, and that the revolt in India, caused, in part at least, by the grievous iniquity of the seizure of ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... one of his entertaining letters. This Pope, who, says the candid historian, Mosheim, "to a profound ignorance of all those things which it was necessary for a Christian bishop to know, joined the most shameless indolence and the most notorious profligacy," abandoned his person, his dignity, and his government to the disposal of Donna Olympia Maldachini, the widow of his brother. The portrait of the Pope may be seen in the Doria Gallery at Rome; for it is still esteemed an honor by the noble family to which the gallery belongs to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of the Roman Empire when the early Caesars were on the throne, and when it was undisputed mistress of the world. You pass down the line of the Emperors with their strange alternations of greatness and profligacy, descending occasionally to criminal lunacy. When the Empire went rotten it began at the top, and it took centuries to corrupt the man behind the spear. Neither did a religion of peace affect him much, for, in spite of the adoption of Christianity, Roman history was still written in blood. ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... phallic worship of the Natchez and of Culhuacan, cited by the Abbe Brasseur, rests on no good authority, and if true, is like that of the Huastecas of Panuco, nothing but an unrestrained and boundless profligacy which it were an absurdity to call a religion.[149-3] That which Mr. Stephens attempts to show existed once in Yucatan,[149-4] rests entirely by his own statement on a fancied resemblance of no value whatever, and the arguments of Lafitau to ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... who was the author of several novels and books of travel. Although her record in intelligence and morals is good, John Croker, who regularly reviewed her books, accuses her works of licentiousness, profligacy, irreverence, blasphemy, libertinism, disloyalty and atheism. There are twenty-six pages of this in one review only, and any paragraph would be worth the quoting for its ferocity. After this attack it was Macaulay who said he hated ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... Whether you examine the conduct of the nation at large, or that of its chiefs and leaders, your feelings revolt at the one, and your integrity despises the other. You see the idols erected by Folly, degraded by Caprice;—the authority obtained by Intrigue, bartered by Profligacy;—and the perfidy and corruption of one side so balanced by the barbarity and levity of the other, that the mind, unable to decide on the preference of contending vices, is obliged to find repose, though with regret and disgust, in ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... associations, from the ingenious devices of a mysterious cuisine to the brilliant manoeuvres of the battle-field; infinite female tact, rare philosophic hardihood, inimitable bon-mots, exquisite millinery, consummate generalship, holy fortitude, refined profligacy, and intoxicating sentiment,—Ude, Napoleon, Madame Rcamier, Pascal, Ninon de I'Enclos, and Rousseau. Casual associations and desultory reading thus predispose us to recognize something half comical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... wholly ennobled by passion, for it never touched him deeply enough; and, on the other hand, he was not hardened by the habitual attitude of passion, for he was never really insincere. Sometimes it seemed as if nothing stood between him and utter profligacy but a little indolence, a little kindness, and a ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Letter on Itinerant Players will to some appear too harshly written, their profligacy exaggerated, and their distresses magnified; but though the respectability of a part of these people may give us a more favourable view of the whole body; though some actors be sober, and some managers prudent; still there is vice and misery left more than sufficient to ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... night passing through the streets, accompanied by musicians playing on bagpipes, and by innumerable spectators attracted by curiosity, to which were added anxious parents and relations, who came to look after those among the misguided multitude who belonged to their respective families. Imposture and profligacy played their part in this city also, but the morbid delusion itself seems to have predominated. On this account religion could only bring provisional aid, and therefore the town council benevolently took ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... poor should be so strongly impressed by the moral symptoms of the disease as to mistake them for the prime causes. "It is a fact apparent to every thoughtful man that the larger portion of the misery that constitutes our Social Question arises from idleness, gluttony, drink, waste, indulgence, profligacy, betting, and dissipation." These words of Mr. Arnold White express the common view of those philanthropists who do not understand what is meant by "the industrial system," and of the bulk of the comfortable classes when they are confronted with the evils of poverty as disclosed in ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... revealed by the Messiah, in the fullest and clearest manner. Moses, in this book, directs the method in which the Israelites were to deal with the seven nations, whom they were appointed to punish for their profligacy and idolatry; and whose land they were to possess, when they had driven out the old inhabitants. He gives them excellent laws, civil as well as religious, which were after the standing municipal laws of that people. This book concludes with Moses' ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... sell; and I was so disturbed by this open corruption, that I went to him, and expressed my great surprise. Hot words ensued between us; and I told him very plainly that I would have nothing further to say to him or his political profligacy. However, his potatoes were sold, and brought upwards of three guineas the peck, the nabob being the purchaser, who, to show his contentment with the bargain, made Mrs M'Lucre, and the bailie's three daughters, presents ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... fresh source of revenue was found in the Church. The same principles of feudal dependence were applied to its lands as to those of the nobles; and during the vacancy of a see or abbey its profits, like those of a minor, were swept into the royal hoard. William's profligacy and extravagance soon tempted him to abuse this resource, and so steadily did he refuse to appoint successors to prelates whom death removed that at the close of his reign one archbishoprick, four bishopricks, and eleven abbeys were found ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... Galen marks the beginning of the decline of medical science in ancient times, and this decline was contemporaneous with the overthrow of the Roman State. As everybody knows, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire resulted from the profligacy and incapacity of the emperors, luxurious living and vice among the people, tyranny of an overbearing soldiery at home, and the attacks of barbarian foes gradually increasing in strength. Rome fell ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... a display of profligacy! So, gentlemen, are these your morals? Methinks you place a special example before the household; drinking and carousing thus after midnight, when all decent persons ought to be at ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... lessons which they have to learn is, that freedom does not mean license and discord—does not mean every one doing that which is right in the sight of his own eyes. From that springs self-will, division, quarrels, revolt, civil war, weakness, profligacy, and ruin to the whole people. Without order, discipline, obedience to law, there can be no true and lasting freedom; and, therefore, order must be kept at all risks, the ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... above all, to the great satirist, who alone knew how to use ridicule without abusing it, who, without inflicting a wound, effected a great social reform, and who reconciled wit with virtue, after a long and disastrous separation, during which wit had been lead astray by profligacy, and virtue ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... me. "The Rooshians were good fighters—fought 'and to 'and with the butt of their muskets—and if they 'ad 'ad good commanders the Japs would never have won," said an Englishman who had seen service in India. A railway man also told me of the debauchery and profligacy of the Russian officers, disreputable women travelling regularly with them to and fro, drunkenness being also common. About the same charges were reported to me by a Japanese officer. In fact, it is said that the Japanese contrived to get a very considerable quantity of champagne to the ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... and Sarah, but then Nelly herself was completely in the dark as to the character of the injury against which she warned her, so that her friendly precautions were founded more upon the general and unscrupulous profligacy of Donnel's principles, and his daughter's violence, than upon any particular knowledge she possessed of her intentions towards her. Mave's own serene and innocent disposition was such in fact as to render her not easily impressed by suspicion; and our readers may have ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... monopoly and it was unfair that a needy governor should share its profits. But, after all, such a quarrel was only between rival monopolists. Better a trading governor than one who plundered the people or who by drunken profligacy ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... to the coarsest drudgery, remains a useless burthen upon the earth. Accordingly, it is found, that men are extremely jealous of their character in this particular; and many instances are seen of profligacy and treachery, the most avowed and unreserved; none of bearing patiently the imputation of ignorance and stupidity. Dicaearchus, the Macedonian general, who, as Polybius tells us [Footnote: Lib. xvi. Cap. 35.], openly erected one altar ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... had come home from Rome a short time before her husband arrived, but he, when he came, manifested no interest in rejoining her. Instead of that, he connected himself with a number of wicked associates, both male and female, whom he had known before he went to the Holy Land, and lived a life of open profligacy with them, leaving Berengaria to pine in neglect, alone and forsaken. She was almost heart-broken to be thus abandoned, and several of the principal ecclesiastics of the kingdom remonstrated very ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... victims of plunder and temptation; and the man who last week was impressed, by the perils of the tempest, with the terrors of the Lord, and was inclined to fear God and to serve him, is waylaid by unfeeling wretches, who first entice him into scenes of profligacy and blasphemy, and then cast him off, robbed of his money, seared in his conscience, and in a miserable condition of soul and body. Many benevolent efforts have been made to protect and fortify some of those who are thus beset, and to reclaim such as are not utterly lost; and ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... of the house of Lagus, Philopator, mounted the throne (B.C. 222) that the character of their rule changed for the worse, and their subjects began to have reason to complain of them. The weakness and profligacy of Philopater[14442] tempted Antiochus III. to assume the aggressive, and to disturb the peace which had now for some time subsisted between Syria and Egypt, the Lagidae and the Seleucidae. In B.C. 219 he drove the Egyptians out of Seleucia, the port of Antioch,[14443] ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... dutiful aspiration, we have much in the condition of the world around us to warn and rouse us to a vigorous and united effort to arrest the increasing tide of sin and crime. The developments of a grossly evil spirit at the present day fill us with horror and alarm; the profligacy and wanton cruelty of which we hear so many instances, make us tremble for our ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... of the French Court many a fine-feathered villain "struts his brief hour" on the stage, dazzling eyes by his splendour, and shocking a world none too easily shocked in those days of easy morals by his profligacy; but it would be difficult among all these gilded rakes to find a match for the Duc de Richelieu, who carried his villainies through little less than a century ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... subdue all the nations of mankind. Next, having conquered the earth by her virtue and by the spirit of liberty, she was able to maintain her ascendancy for centuries under the emperors, notwithstanding all her astonishing profligacy and anarchy. And, lastly, after her secular ascendancy had been destroyed by the inroads of the northern barbarians, she rose like the phoenix from her ashes, and, though powerless in material force, held mankind in subjection by the chains ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... credit for sagacity from accidental circumstances. It does not appear that his position was ill chosen, or his means disproportioned to his ends, had he been sustained by funds from England, as he had a right to expect. But through the profligacy of a near relative, commissioned to collect these dues, he was disappointed of them, and his paper protested and credit destroyed in our cities, before he became ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... was taught by her father; French by her mother: her proficiency in either was not remarkable, and she shirked her lessons in both whenever she could. What a strange, unaccountable character!—for with all these symptoms of profligacy at ten years old, she had neither a bad heart nor a bad temper, was seldom stubborn, scarcely ever quarrelsome, and very kind to the little ones, with few interruptions of tyranny; she was moreover noisy and wild, hated confinement and cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in the world ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... effort to shield that trade under the flag of the United States was characterized by Mr. Adams as "a compound of Yankee cunning, of Italian perfidy, and of French legerete, cemented by shameless profligacy unparalleled in American diplomacy." In October, 1842, Henry Clay himself became an anti-slavery agitator through his famous "Mendenhall Speech" at Richmond, Indiana. In response to a petition asking him to emancipate his slaves, he told the ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... well to note that all the tales as to the dissipation and profligacy of Mark Antony in his early days come from the "Philippics" of Cicero, who made the mistake of executing Lentulus, the step-father of Mark Antony, and then felt called upon forever after to condemn the entire family. "Philippics" are always a form ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... their sons and daughters, and warn them what to emulate and what to shun. They, as did their husbands, felt the necessity of preserving that delicacy of thought and action which is woman's ornament, and which is more efficient in rebuking licentiousness and profligacy in the young and the old than all the teaching of the schools without such example. Such were the mothers of the great and the good of our land, and such the mothers of those men now prominent and distinguished in the advocacy and support of the ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... of prints gives the history of a Prostitute. The story commences with her arrival in London, where, initiated in the school of profligacy, she experiences the miseries consequent to her situation, and dies in the morning of life. Her variety of wretchedness, forms such a picture of the way in which vice rewards her votaries, as ought to warn the young and ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... first place, when we speak about books, let us avoid the extravagance of expecting too much from books, the pedant's habit of extolling books as synonymous with education. Books are no more education than laws are virtue; and just as profligacy is easy within the strict limits of law, a boundless knowledge of books may be found with a narrow education. A man may be, as the poet saith, "deep vers'd in books, and shallow in himself." We need to know in order that we may feel rightly ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... London physicians, has increased mightily of late; and so has the reading of Shelley. It is not surprising. Byron's Corsairs and Laras have been, on the whole, impossible during the thirty years' peace! and piracy and profligacy are at all times, and especially nowadays, expensive amusements, and often require a good private fortune—rare among poets. They have, therefore, been wisely abandoned as ideals, except among a few young persons, who used to wear ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... had been born from my head, Clitipho, just as they say Minerva was from Jove's, none the more on that account would I suffer myself to be disgraced by your profligacy.[103] ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... Fletcher's theater retain a fineness of feeling and that politesse de coeur—which marks the gentleman. They are poetic creatures, and own a capacity for romantic passion. But the Manlys and Homers of the Restoration comedy have a prosaic, cold-blooded profligacy that disgusts. Charles Lamb, in his ingenious essay on "The Artificial Comedy of the Last Century," apologized for the Restoration stage, on the ground that it represented a world of whim and unreality in which the ordinary laws of morality had ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... easily thrown off, took in some degree from my approach to that character which I wished to become. I know nothing which would so polish the manners as continental intercourse, were it not for the English debauches with which that intercourse connects one. English profligacy is always coarse, and in profligacy nothing is more contagious than its tone. One never keeps a restraint on the manner when one unbridles the passions, and one takes from the associates with whom the latter are indulged, the air and ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... infatuation (says Smollett), luxury, vice, and profligacy increased to a shocking degree; the adventurers, intoxicated by their imaginary wealth, pampered themselves with the rarest dainties and the most costly wines. They purchased the most sumptuous ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... those whom they accused, the power of torturing them by a look. The examinations were all taken in writing, and several of them are detailed at full length in Mr. Hutchinson's history of Massachusetts. They exhibit a deplorable degree of blind infatuation on one side, and of atrocious profligacy on the other, which if not well attested, could scarcely be supposed to ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... who had wasted his patrimony by profligacy, whilst standing, one day, on the brow of a precipice from which he had determined to throw himself, formed the sudden resolution to regain what he had lost. The purpose thus formed was kept; and though he began by shoveling a load of coals into a cellar, for ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... consciences of oriental princes in such matters, quite as little, perhaps, had the two other counts in his London impeachment. One imputed savage cruelty to him; the other, with a Johnny-rawness that we find it difficult to comprehend, profligacy and dissoluteness of life. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... medium of natural elegant dialogue. His writings, though they did not draw the regards of the million with such irresistible and congenial attraction as those of Aristophanes, had the power in some measure to rescue comedy from the unbridled licentiousness and profligacy which, for fifty years before, had rendered it a public nuisance. The multitude, however, he could not, during his lifetime reclaim; for a miserable cotemporary of his, named Philemon, a coarse writer ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... "shining Nisida," to which Brutus retired after the assassination of Caesar, and where he bade Portia good-by before he departed for Greece and Philippi: the favorite villa of Cicero, where he wrote many of his letters to Atticus, looked on it. Baiae, epitome of the luxury and profligacy, of the splendor and crime of the most sensual years of the Roman empire, spread there its temples, palaces, and pleasure-gardens, which crowded the low slopes, and extended over the water; and yonder is Cape Misenum, which sheltered ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... which shroud in mystery the source of the Cromwell Road. After four lean days your gluttonous instincts led you precipitately to withdraw to Paris, from whence, knowing your unshakable belief in the vilest forms of profligacy, I appreciate that lack of means must ere long enforce ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... seen or suspected by others! This fear led to new circumspection. I now affected levities of demeanor and remark; studiously absented myself from home of an evening, leaving my wife with Edgerton, or any other friend who happened to be present; and, though I began no practices of profligacy, such as are common to young scapegraces in all times, I yet, to some ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... I in the profligacy of mine extreme youth marry two Laodices?" he said. "For another Laodice, wife to me, joined me some ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... worst tricks of the trade and of the craft in England. Our literature, before long, will be like some of those premature and aspiring whipsters, who become old men before they are young ones, and fancy they prove their manhood by their profligacy and ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... for profligacy was due, no doubt, to that vanity respecting women of which Davis himself speaks. He never refused to accept ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... conversation of a similar kind passed between them upon various topics connected with their profligacy and crimes. At length they separated for the night, after having concerted their plan of action ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... Tripoli. The neat appearance of the men in general is very striking, compared with that of the Arabs about the coast. The women are considered exceedingly handsome, indeed one or two were really so, and as fair as Europeans, but they are noted for their profligacy and love ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... from observing, that but little skill is necessary to constitute one of the merchants of these days. We are almost a continental tribe of Jews; but I hope heaven has not yet discovered such a settled profligacy in us as to cast us off, even for a year. Backward as we may be at this moment in our preparations, the enemy is not in a condition to expect more success in the coming, than in former campaigns. We have the debates of the British Parliament to December 5th, and perceive that the old game is playing, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... rapidly lost favor with the public, till at last he was regarded only as the husband of the popular actress,—then, merely tolerated for her sake. He fell, or rather flung himself, into a life of reckless dissipation and profligacy, and sunk so low that he scrupled not to accept from his wife, and squander on base pleasures, money won by the genius for which he hated her. Many were the nights when Zelma returned from the playhouse to her cheerless ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... marks of individuality; it means something. In a few years it reverts to type. Political parties grown old are all equally bad. They begin as radical and end as conservative. That which began in virtue is undone through profligacy. Among successful religions there is no choice—they all have a dash ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... falls short of this high standard, blame is attached to the missionary, instead of credit for that which he has effected. They forget, or will not remember, that human sacrifices, and the power of an idolatrous priesthood—a system of profligacy unparalleled in any other part of the world—infanticide a consequence of that system—bloody wars, where the conquerors spared neither women nor children—that all these have been abolished; and that dishonesty, intemperance, and licentiousness have been greatly reduced by ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... residing in remote places heard only of the gorgeous licence in which the great and powerful lived. They knew them only during their visits to their ancestral homes as worn-out debauchees from the great city, who brought the profligacy of the purlieus of the Louvre into the peaceful cottages of the peasantry on their estates. It was, indeed, so much the fashion to be wicked, that a gentleman was hindered from the practice of his Christian or social duties by the fear ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... surprise the reader, but they were part of a system profoundly meditated by Beatrix in this her third incarnation,—for at each passion a woman becomes another being and advances one step more into profligacy, the only word which properly renders the effect of the experience given by such adventures. Now, the Marquise de Rochefide had sat in judgment on herself before the mirror. Clever women are never deceived about themselves; they count their wrinkles, they ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... is his Only panacea, the remedy methinks is worse than the disease. Whether Christianity will be laid aside, I cannot say. As nothing of the spirit is left, the forms, I think, signify very little. Surely it is not an age of morality and principle; does it import whether profligacy is baptized or not? I look to motives, not to professions. I do not approve of convents: but, if Caesar wants to make soldiers of monks, I detest his reformation, and think that men had better not procreate than commit murder; nay, I believe that monks get ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... she had lost her one sole child, a fair-haired boy of most striking beauty and interesting disposition, at the age of seventeen, and by the worst of all possible fates; he lived (as we did at that time) in a large commercial city overflowing with profligacy, and with temptations of every order; he had been led astray; culpable he had been, but by very much the least culpable of the set into which accident had thrown him, as regarded acts and probable intentions; and ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... was no introduction of novel heresies. It was a revolt of the laity of Europe against the profligacy and avarice of the clergy. The popes and cardinals pretended to be the representatives of Heaven. When called to account for abuse of their powers, they had behaved precisely as mere corrupt human kings and aristocracies behave. They had intrigued; they had excommunicated; ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... living images, as animated representatives of the Divinity? Are those monarchs, then, who are habitually unjust, who wrest without remorse the bread from the hands of a famished people, to administer to the profligacy of their insatiable courtiers—to pamper the luxury of the vile instruments of their enormities, atheists? Are, then, those ambitious conquerors, who not contented with oppressing their own slaves, carry desolation, spread misery, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... Hyde could count some who were his warmest and most trusted friends. They formed an inner circle, with common sympathies at once in their memories and in their aims, and unassailed as yet by the coarse profligacy, the vulgar buffoonery, and the ignoble selfishness that were soon to become dominant in Charles's Court. Such were Ormonde, now Lord Steward, whose loyalty was as untarnished as his position was above the assaults of slander and envy, and whose unbroken friendship was a powerful ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... permitted to do it. Ordinary service must be secured by the motives to ordinary integrity. I do not hesitate to say that that state which lays its foundation in rare and heroic virtues will be sure to have its superstructure in the basest profligacy and corruption. An honorable and fair profit is the best security against avarice and rapacity; as in all things else, a lawful and regulated enjoyment is the best security against debauchery and excess. For as wealth ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... George III. won all hearts by living like a farmer. Instead of the fierce light beating about a throne, it played lambently upon a sty. And the nation who admired, imitated. When the Regent came, and with him that coarse profligacy which has alternated with cloudy insipidity in the annals of the line, the honest part of the world, out of antipathy to the son, was driven even further into domestic sentimentality of a greasy kind, than it had gone from affection for ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... replenished with merchandise—were reduced to ashes. The Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames and threatened destruction to our navy, and even to the government,—filling the court and country with terror. Still profligacy reigned in the court and country—a fearful persecution raged against all who refused to attend the church service. Thousands perished in prison, and multitudes were condemned to expatriate themselves. The timid and irresolute abandoned ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... fancy such folly and such profligacy? The fact is, I really believe he has got ... or that she made him believe it, and therefore compelled him to marry her. There is nothing but this sort of gossip stirring in town. The debates are most tedious, and the Houses very thin. I believe the Opposition as weary of it as we are. Phillimore ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... ribaldry organs, as well as their betters (the rogues, they WILL imitate them!) and as their tastes are somewhat coarser than my lord's, and their numbers a thousand to one, why of course the prints have increased, and the profligacy has been diffused in a ratio exactly proportionable to the demand, until the town is infested with such a number of monstrous publications of the kind as would have put Abbe Dubois to the blush, or made Louis XV. cry shame. Talk of English morality!—the worst licentiousness, in the worst ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... would have been time to elect a successor. This man was supposed to have within him the spirit of one of the principal war-gods. The tithes of the two large islands had been given him, and in pride and profligacy he had become a pest and a proverb. He had, however, his supporters, who took up arms to avenge him, and among them were his relatives Malietoa and his brother Tamalelangi, who, although they rejoiced at his death, were compelled, according to the custom ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... Burke said, 'were very unhandy instruments for those who wished to establish a system of tranquillity and order. The factions,' he added with fierce sarcasm, 'were to accomplish the purposes of order, morality, and submission to the laws, from the principles of atheism, profligacy, and sedition. They endeavoured to establish distinctions, by the belief of which they hoped to keep the spirit of murder safely bottled up and sealed for their own purposes, without endangering themselves ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... of more frequent occurrence than is usually supposed. Among such romances, those cases, perhaps, form an unusual proportion in which young, innocent, and high-minded persons have made a sudden discovery of some great profligacy or deep unworthiness in the person to whom they had surrendered their entire affections. That shock, more than any other, is capable of blighting, in one hour, the whole after existence, and sometimes of at once overthrowing the balance of life or of reason. Instances I have known of both; and ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... pains to inquire, before proceeding upon my errand, into the character of the heirs who had inherited the property of Elwood Henderson and Christopher Bigelow, and found that in each case there was one among the rest who was well known for his profligacy and reckless expenditure. It was a significant discovery, and increased, if possible, my interest in running down this nefarious trafficker in the ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... of which human nature is capable. Self-conceit, indeed, may be mortified at the unavoidable thought of identity of species, which it may seek many imaginary devices to conceal; and feverish sensibility may be wrought up to indignant discontent, at the power which placed it amid such profligacy. But the humble philosopher, on the other hand, will investigate the causes, without ceasing to deplore the effects, and will rejoice in the belief, that there are any means by which mankind may be redeemed from the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... body, took different roads, for those which were polluted with vices, that are common to men, and which had given themselves up entirely to unclean desires, and had become so blinded by them as to have habituated themselves to all manner of debauchery and profligacy, or to have laid detestable schemes for the ruin of their country, took a road wide of that which led to the assembly of the Gods: but they who had preserved themselves upright and chaste, and free ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... compensation also for the vices incident to slavery, that they are, to a great degree, secured against the temptation to greater crimes, and more atrocious vices, and the miseries which attend them; against their own disposition to indolence, and the profligacy which is ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... that no one seems to take heed, nor had I ever heard it described so as to form any adequate conception of it, till I found myself plunged into it.... Industry, man's crown of honor elsewhere, is here his badge of utter degradation; and so comes all by which I am here surrounded,—pride, profligacy, idleness, cruelty, cowardice, ignorance, squalor, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the conduct of his elder brother Galeazzo he had the worst possible example. Once in possession of supreme power, the new duke gave himself up to the most unbridled course of vice and cruelty. The profligacy of his life, and the horrible tortures which he inflicted on the hapless victims of his jealousy and anger, caused Milanese chroniclers to describe him as another Nero. He was commonly believed to have poisoned both his mother and Dorotea Gonzaga, the betrothed ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... as it is, is one which makes me respect him as one of a class. Of course, he is sometimes one of those "gents" whom Punch so ruthlessly holds up to just ridicule. He is sometimes a vulgar fop, sometimes fond of low profligacy—of betting-houses and casinos. Well—I know no class in any age or country among which a fool may not be found here and there. But that the "gent" is the average type of this class, I should utterly ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... it, sir," he responded, very suavely. "I knew I had dropped somewhere in Kent, and a glance at that well-kept grass of yours, at the rare profusion of early flowers, at the extreme fulness—er—profligacy—of your fruit-blossom, told me in a moment that the garden could belong to only one man in the county. Do you suppose I have been a horticultural enthusiast all these years without knowing Colonel Currie by name? Why, the—the dahlias you exhibit are alone sufficient to make ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... praying with his last breath for his disciples oppressed by the invaders. We reach the site of Hippo (or Hippone) by a Roman bridge, restored to its former solidity by the French, over whose arches the bishop must have often walked, meditating on his youth of profligacy and vain scholarship, and over the abounding Divine grace which had saved him for the edification of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... Chanterie arrived almost dying, and with what an illness! She nursed him and saved his life. Then she tried to bring him to better sentiments and a decent life. After promising all that angel asked, the jacobin plunged back into frightful profligacy, and finally escaped the hands of justice only by again taking refuge with his wife, in whose care ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... drawn in triumph through the streets of Paris, and that the municipal officers of the city, and the members of the National Convention of France, joined publicly in the impious parade. We need not wonder, then, that even the forms of religion were destroyed, and that licentiousness and profligacy walked forth unveiled. How unlike this is the state of things in these United States! We are professedly a Christian nation. We recognize the existence of a superior and superintending ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... than his own brothers or sons ever were; they go out, too, with greater pomp than they or any of the royal family can; and are ordered to be received with more honours as they pass through the different palaces. The profligacy that exists within the palace passes all belief, and these things excite more disgust among the aristocracy of the capital than all the misrule and malversation that arise from the King's ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... vindication of every species of transgression; and had the Gentiles but followed the example of their own heavenly hierarchy, they might have felt themselves warranted in pursuing a course either of the most diabolical oppression, or of the most abominable profligacy. [9:2] ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... a pause—until Fairford, pitying the poor man's state of mind, and believing he saw something in him that, but for early error and subsequent profligacy, might have been excellent and noble, helped on the conversation by asking, in a tone of commiseration, how he had been able to endure such ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... that just at this time his death was reported in Rome. But the "boy" was ambitious, astute, and far-seeing, and Marc Antony was descending to ruin with every step he took in his career of folly and profligacy. ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... sights he had seen; and must needs show me where had stood the booth of one Fielding—since infamously notorious as the writer of some trashy novels, the dulness whereof is only surpassed by their profligacy: and then he talks of Fawkes the conjurer, who made a great fortune, and of some humble person called 'Tiddy Doll,' a dealer in gingerbread and such foolish wares. But he could tell me nothing of those early preachings of our revered founder in Moorfields, which would have ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... ample to meet the ordinary annual demands upon our Treasury, with a sufficient margin for those extraordinary but scarcely less imperative demands which arise now and then. Expenditure should always be made with economy and only upon public necessity. Wastefulness, profligacy, or favoritism in public expenditures is criminal. But there is nothing in the condition of our country or of our people to suggest that anything presently necessary to the public prosperity, security, or ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... sufferers, who, as she had been informed, had fallen victims to the malice of the accuser. Her sentiments were espoused by all the company, except the French lady of pleasure, who, thinking the credit of the sisterhood concerned in the affair, bitterly inveighed against the profligacy of the age, and particularly the base and villainous attempts of man upon the chastity of the weaker sex; saying, with a look of indignation directed to the painter, that for her own part she should never be able to manifest the acknowledgment ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... all classes of people, not only for their benign influence on the happiness of life, in all its stages and classes, and of society in all its forms, but as the only means of preserving our constitution from its natural enemies, the spirit of sophistry, the spirit of party, the spirit of intrigue, profligacy, and corruption, and the pestilence of foreign influence, which is the angel of destruction to elective governments, if a love of equal laws, of justice and humanity, in the interior administration; if an inclination to improve agriculture, commerce, and manufactures for necessity, convenience, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... solution; but the general fact, notwithstanding some strange exceptions, (which however may not be altogether incapable of explanation,) is sufficiently established, that examples of singular excellence, or notorious profligacy may usually he traced to seeds sown in a former generation. They are not therefore to be altogether regarded in the light of isolated phenomena, but as the result of causes, which may be more or less accurately determined. At all events, God reveals himself as "a jealous God, visiting ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... long and desperate, but Vaughan had on his side youth and a constitution, not strong indeed, but unweakened by profligacy. By slow degrees his nervous system rallied from the shock, and after a long period of foreign travel he returned, in great part, to his former habits. Only he could not and would not re-enter the ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... daring and headlong in the pursuit of his pleasures; violent and implacable in his resentments. He rejoiced to find that Inez had been proof against his seductions, and had been inspired with aversion by his splendid profligacy; but he trembled to think of the dangers she had run, and he felt solicitude about the dangers that must ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... were overpowered with the glare of objects, equally new to them as they were captivating. Stealing, among the civilized nations of the world, may well be considered as denoting a character deeply stained with moral turpitude: with avarice, unrestrained by the known rules of right; and with profligacy, producing extreme indigence, and neglecting the means of relieving it. But at the Friendly and other islands which we visited, the thefts, so frequently committed by the natives, of what we had brought along ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... covetousness was the cause of all our disasters. For (to pass over other matters in which the officers aforesaid, or others with their unblushing connivance, displayed the greatest profligacy in their injurious treatment of the foreigners dwelling in our territory, against whom no crime could be alleged) this one melancholy and unprecedented piece of conduct (which, even if they were to choose their own judges, must appear wholly ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... would become servants to the lenders, the lenders the masters of the people. We now pride ourselves upon having given freedom to 4,000,000 of the colored race; it will then be our shame that 40,000,000 of people, by their own toleration of usurpation and profligacy, have suffered themselves to become enslaved, and merely exchanged slave owners for new taskmasters in the shape of bondholders and taxgatherers. Besides, permanent debts pertain to monarchical governments, and, tending to monopolies, perpetuities, and class ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... me under happier circumstances. The life of a country seigneur is but a poor preparation for existence in this court, where, although there is no longer the open licentiousness that prevailed in the king's younger days, there is yet, I believe, an equal amount of profligacy, though it has been sternly discountenanced since Madame Maintenon obtained an absolute, and I may say a well-used, influence over ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... Parthians, and at the close of the war had returned to the city. Petronius had for him a certain weakness bordering on attachment, for Marcus was beautiful and athletic, a young man who knew how to preserve a certain aesthetic measure in his profligacy; this, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... his lands, some to acquire a partnership with Lord Willoughby in a vessel trading to America; this vessel, or another, is among his assets recorded in his inventory. All his lands he sold—not that he was in debt, he was a large lender—for purposes of profligacy. These proceedings gave rise to gossip. The Laird must be selling his lands to evade forfeiture. He must have been engaged in the Gowrie mystery. Then Logan dies (July 1606). Bower is also dead (January 1606). It occurs to Sprot that there is money in all this, and, ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... young man comes into Manchester with the atmosphere of a mother's prayers and a father's teaching round about him; with holy thoughts and good resolutions beginning to sway his heart and spirit; and flaunting profligacy and seducing tongues beside him in the counting-house, in the warehouse, and at the shop counter, lead him away into excesses that banish all these, and, after a year or two of riot and sowing to the flesh, he 'of the flesh reaps ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... court-yard, his bed and crown, his clock and chair in the long suite of rooms kept sacred to his memory, typify the age when genius and beauty mingled their charms in the corrupt atmosphere of intrigue and profligacy. The noble expanse of wood, water, and meadow; the paths lined with stately myrtles and ancient box, spread as invitingly to the eye from this embayed window, as when the grand monarque stood there to watch the graceful walk of La Valliere, ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... the lower classes of men; and however we may affix the character of sobriety to mere cheapness of diet, and other accommodations with which any particular age, or rank of men, appear to be contented, it is well known, that costly materials are not necessary to constitute a debauch, nor profligacy less frequent under the thatched roof, than under the lofty ceiling. Men grow equally familiar with different conditions, receive equal pleasure, and are equally allured to sensuality in the palace and in the cave. ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... thing!" she cried, but did not tell whether she meant his profligacy in purchasing or his wantonness in destroying. "And now, pray enlighten me. Are you swinging him just for ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... had no such worthy object as Wolsey had. His pretext was that these institutions had sunk into a state of ingnorance, drunkenness, and profligacy. This may have been true of some of the smaller monasteries, though not of the large ones. But the vices of the monasteries the King had already made his own. It was their wealth which he now coveted. The smaller religious houses were speedily swept out of ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... cannot but denounce in the strongest terms, the profligacy of many married men. Not content with the moderation permitted in the divine appointed relationship of marriage, they become adulterers, in order to gratify their accursed lust. The man in them is trodden down by ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... run a course of despicable, commonplace profligacy. Accept that as the first reason why I ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... doubt, whose way was clear and easy in the struggles of his day, when reform and free trade in corn were obviously desirable and necessary—writes with contemptuous severity of the profligacy of politicians from the Restoration to the accession of the House of Hanover. "One who in such an age is determined to attain civil greatness must renounce all thought of consistency. Instead of affecting immutability in the midst of mutation, ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... genius in evidence again, his profligacy and his piety hand in hand. Ascending the stairs, I reached the door just in time to see the landlord, manipulator of the musical machine, forcing Geordie to the door, one hand gripping his throat, the other buffeting the helpless wretch in the face. Two or three of his unspeakable ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... regulated wholly with an idea to the gratification of man's sensuous desires, religious temples, under the supervision of the priesthood, became brothels, in which were openly practiced as part and parcel of religious rites and ceremonies the most wanton profligacy and the most shameless self-abandonment. The worship of Aphrodite or Venus, and also that of Bacchus, originally consisted in homage paid to the reproductive principles contained in the earth, water, and sun, but, as is well known, this ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... conditions in those days were very reprehensible. Though Boaz was high-born and a man of substance, yet he slept on the threshing-floor, so that his presence might act as a check upon profligacy. In the midst of his sleep, Boaz was startled to find some one next to him. At first he thought it was a demon. Ruth calmed his disquietude (58) with these words: "Thou art the head of the court, thy ancestors were princes, thou art thyself an honorable man, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... that seem to yon a short-sighted policy," he was urging upon his auditor, with the assistance of a thumb and forefinger of one hand, joined as upon a pinch of snuff, and tapping the centre of the other palm; "does not that appear inexcusable profligacy of extravagance, which fells and consumes whole surface forests of magnificent trees—virgin growth—(I use the term as it is usually applied, although, philosophically considered, it is inaccurate) giants, which centuries ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... fit. It only means taking a little trouble. And the rest, I think, is just a question of will-power and mental hygiene. No, I have no patience with people who grow old; unless, of course, they really are very old in years. I think it argues either stupidity or a kind of profligacy—mental, nervous, and emotional, I mean—and in either case it is very unfair to those about them, for there is nothing ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... winning personality has, in a sense, told against it; for men are prone to call the well-balanced nature cold and the well-regulated life Pharisaic. Addison did not escape charges of this kind from the wild livers of his own time, who could not dissociate genius from profligacy nor generosity of nature from prodigality. It was one of the great services of Addison to his generation and to all generations, that in an age of violent passions, he showed how a strong man could govern himself. In a time of reckless living, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... has been blamed for recording this "merry bourd" or jest; but Bishop Hepburn had rendered himself notorious by his profligacy. This indeed appears on the face of the public records. Under the Great Seal there passed the following letters of Legitimation;—(1.) "Johanni et Patricio Hepburn, bastardis filiis naturalibus Patricii Prioris Sancti ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... done, and the new furniture had got into its place, and my little book-room was settled sufficiently for work, I began a novel, to the writing of which I was instigated by what I conceived to be the commercial profligacy of the age. Whether the world does or does not become more wicked as years go on, is a question which probably has disturbed the minds of thinkers since the world began to think. That men have become less cruel, less violent, less selfish, less brutal, there can ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... idea is sounder than yours, if I may be permitted to say so. Just think of the awful temptations to which unmarried students are exposed in that sink of profligacy, Calcutta! How many promising lads have succumbed to them, wrecking their own lives and causing ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... of one of the old noble houses, was consecrated pope as Benedict IX, A.D. 1033, according to some authorities, at the age of ten or twelve years. He became noted for his profligacy and was driven from his throne, the Romans electing, as Pope Sylvester III, John, Bishop of Sabina, who is said to have paid a high price for the dignity. Benedict, however, regained the papal seat shortly afterward, and drove Sylvester into a refuge, but later sold ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... striking character in the play which bears his name. The narrow fanatical republican virtue of Verrina, the mild and venerable wisdom of the old Doria, the unbridled profligacy of his Nephew, even the cold, contented, irreclaimable perversity of the cutthroat Moor, all dwell in our recollections: but what, next to Fiesco, chiefly attracts us, is the character of Leonora his wife. Leonora is of kindred to Amelia in the Robbers, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Revolution. Chateaubriand, Guizot, Lamartine, Vilmain, De Tocqueville, Michelet, Sismondi, Amadee Thierry, Beranger, Barante, belong to this bright band. When such men, differing so widely in every other respect, are leagued together in defence of Christianity, we may regard as a passing evil whatever profligacy the works of Victor Hugo, Eugene Sue, and Sand, pour forth upon the Parisian world and middle classes throughout France. They, no doubt, indicate clearly enough the state of general opinion at this time. But what then? Their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various |
