"Profligate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... leaders. One lesson they all learn,—to hate slavery, teterrima causa. But the issue does not yet appear. We must get ourselves morally right. Nobody can help us. 'T is of no account what England or France may do. Unless backed by our profligate parties, their action would be nugatory, and, if so backed, the worst. But even the war is better than the degrading and descending politics that preceded it for decades of years, and our legislation has made great ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Finches went to the Continent; and she thought Georgina deserved credit for not having again seen Mark, when, as it now appeared, there had lurked in her heart affection sufficient to induce her to bestow herself, and all her wealth, upon him, spendthrift and profligate as she must know him to be. Miserable must be her future life; and Theodora's heart ached as she thought of wretchedness unaided by that which can alone give support through the trials of life, and bring light out of darkness. She could only pray that the once ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dried-up alligator,' I shouts, 'you ain't dead yet. You're part human, anyhow, if you did get all bogged up in matrimony. We'll take this town to pieces and see what makes it tick. We'll make all kinds of profligate demands upon the science of cork pulling. You'll grow horns yet, old muley cow,' says I, punching Perry in the ribs, 'if you trot around on the trail of vice with ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... you are right. I have not done well in this thing. My son is no better than an idle profligate. I say it to my shame, but so it is. Nothing that I say will keep him from his riotous comrades and licentious ways. I have spoken till I am weary of speaking, and all is in vain. And now that this terrible scourge ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... 1592: educated at Cambridge. Wrote Alphonsus, King of Arragon, James IV., George-a-Greene, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, and other plays. After leading a profligate life, he left behind him a pamphlet entitled, "A Groat's-worth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance:" this is full of contrition, and of advice to his fellow-actors and fellow-sinners. It is mainly remarkable for its abuse of Shakspeare, "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers;" ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... became soured at all humanity after that," narrated Zeph; "the more so because he had a profligate nephew who turned out bad. This was the man ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... headlong into the greatest extravagances; spending their whole time in debauched houses, and in swearing and drinking. This our author attributed to the bad example of those among whom they lived, all the lower people at Japara being as lewd and profligate as could be imagined; insomuch, that the first question they put to strangers from Europe is, if they have brought over any ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... a profligate Kite Who would haunt the saloons every night; And often he ust To reel back to his roost Too full to set ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... gross cases, let the reader reflect for a moment how extensive a ground is covered by the celebrated "A.M.D.G." formula ("Ad majorem Dei gloriam"). The conscience of an elector may be supposed to speak to him thus: "It is true that I know A.B. to be a profligate and thoroughly worldly man, but his influence with such or such a statesman or monarch will probably be the means of saving the Church from a schism in this, that or the other country. And that assuredly is A.M.D.G. And he is the man, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... objection is very absurd; but what then ought to be the inference drawn by the same persons, respecting the character of doctrines which, although in speculation they are fearful and appalling to the utmost, tend in reality to stupify the moral sense, and can be listened to by the profane and the profligate with complacency or apathy? While it explains their popularity, it is ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... wicked, gray-haired profligate. This may sound too sudden a revulsion for a long-wedded wife; but it is a venerable fact that, if a man or woman makes a practice of, and takes a delight in, believing and spreading evil of people indifferent to him or ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... knowledge; and even the man of rank, who desires to improve the minds of his children by a view of continental wonders. Our reprobation is, of the habit of living abroad, and living there for the vulgar and unmanly purpose of self-indulgence or paltry avarice. Those absentees have their reward in profligate sons, and foreignized daughters, in giving them manners ridiculous to the people of the Continent, and disgusting to their countrymen—morals adopting the grossness of continental life, and general habits rendered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... character. With extraordinary ability and consistency to the type he works out the gradual evolution of a wild Irish boy, hot-headed in love and fighting, full of daring impetuosity and ignorant vanity, into the ruffianly soldier, the intrepid professional gambler, and finally into the selfish profligate, who marries a great heiress and sets up as a county magnate. Instead of the mere unadulterated villainy and meanness which were impersonated in his previous stories, we have here the complex strength and weakness ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... does come, will be infinite. At first, she will have extensive popularity with the multitude; in a few short months or weeks, she will be ruined in the opinion of all the world."[20] "One can't help admiring her spirit," observes the moral Wilberforce, "though I fear she has been very profligate."[21] From such a man there might have been expected a severer judgment on her immorality, and a more subdued appreciation of her daring; but this evidence of "spirit" was an appeal to the English people which many a grave father of a family found ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... I will think on what thou hast said; but I must have your assistance to persuade the good Sir Hugh to make me his commissioner and fiduciary in this matter, for it is in his name I must speak, and not in my own. Since she is so far changed as to dote upon this empty profligate courtier, he shall at least do her the justice which is yet in ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... work at the colliery, his first employment being to lead coals from behind the screen to the pitmen's houses. His Scotch accent, and perhaps his awkwardness, exposed him to much annoyance from the "pit lads," who were a very rough and profligate set; and as boxing was a favourite pastime among them, our youth had to fight his way to their respect, passing through a campaign of no less than seventeen pitched battles. He was several times on the point of abandoning ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... dignity, a commanding power in the eye and expression of a pure, high-minded, resolute woman, which will abash even the boldest and most unscrupulous men. That is their shield and buckler, their defence against the attacks of the profligate. It is like the steadfast gaze of a dauntless man, which is said to have the power of awing even the fiercest of the beasts of the forest; but let her beware how for an instant she withdraws it, how she allows the softer feelings of her woman's nature to shake her firmness; ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... wealth and eminence—after his father had, by duplicity and tyranny, forced him into that sacred profession for which the young man felt himself unfit, and which his conscience long refused to consider merely as the means of worldly provision—the next step was to send him with a profligate patron, as chaplain to a regiment, notorious for gambling. The first sacrifice of principle made, his sense of honour, duty, and virtue, once abandoned, his natural sensibility only hastened his perversion. He had a high idea of the clerical character; but his past habits and his present ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... gleam of sunlight in his lonely dwelling, like sunlight she came and went in it, and one day he found her near to the track leading up to the fondak in talk with a passing traveller by the way, whom he recognised for the grossest profligate out of Tetuan. Unveiled, unabashed, with sweet looks of confidence she was gazing full into the man's gross face, answering his evil questions with the artless simplicity of innocence. At one bound Israel was between them; and in a moment ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... papal system has opposed the march of civilization and liberty throughout the world, by denouncing the circulation of the Bible, and the general diffusion of knowledge. Turn to every land where popery predominates, and you will find an ignorant and debased peasantry, a profligate nobility, and a priesthood, licentious, avaricious, domineering ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... a piker, Bill," he said, with the air of a profligate young millionaire escapading in the columns of the press. "You can't go to parties and things without ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... the timely publication of a Hymn to the Pillory, in which Defoe boldly declared the iniquity of his sentence, and pointed out to the Government more proper objects of their severity. Atheists ought to stand there, he said, profligate beaux, swindling stock-jobbers, fanatic Jacobites, and the commanders who had brought the English fleet into disgrace. As for him, his only fault lay in his not being understood; but he was perhaps justly punished for ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... restore them seven- fold if possible: or, if it be not in thy power, and thy conscience accuse thee, surrender thyself to the magistrate, and make the only satisfaction thou art able.' 'I have taken no one's goods,' said I. 'Of what art thou guilty, then?' said he. 'Art thou a drunkard? a profligate?' 'Alas, no,' said I; 'I am neither of these; would that I ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... no better test of the popular opinion of a man than the character assigned to him on the stage; and till the close of the sixteenth century Sir John Oldcastle remained the profligate buffoon of English comedy. Whether in life he bore the character so assigned to him, I am unable to say. The popularity of Henry V., and the splendour of his French wars served no doubt to colour all who had opposed him with a blacker shade than ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... which they are capable. To the evils which sometimes attend their matrimonial connections, arising from their looser morality, slaves, for obvious reasons, are comparatively insensible. I am no apologist of vice, nor would I extenuate the conduct of the profligate and unfeeling, who would violate the sanctity of even these engagements, and occasion the pain which such violations no doubt do often inflict. Yet such is the truth, and we can not make it otherwise. We know ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... well-meaning men, who have preferred peace and submission to theological warfare, and who might not think themselves justified in opposing their opinion to a national decision: yet are there also many of profligate lives, who were never educated for the profession, and whom the circumstances of the times have tempted to embrace it as a trade, which offered subsistence without labour, and influence without wealth, and which at once supplied a veil for licentiousness, and the means of practising ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... of justice is never base or cowardly. Clinton is a convicted thief, and deserves the doom impending over such transgressors. He is an unprincipled and profligate young man, and unworthy the love of a pure-hearted woman. He has tempted your brother from the paths of virtue, repaid your confidence with the coldest treachery, violated the laws of God and man, and yet, unparalleled infatuation—you love him still, and expose ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... it was a pleasure to run across a chap so different from the usual type of selfish, envious and profligate drifters. ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... the invaluable blessings which are certainly in their power. I will not conceive it possible that men who have eternal fame within their grasp will place the rich inheritance on the cast of a die, and, losing the venture, be damned among the worst and most profligate ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... with seven! and he counted them over mentally with a groan. 'What was to become of them?' Then Nutter would be down upon him, without mercy, for the rent; and Dangerfield, if, indeed, he cared to do it [curse it, he trusted nobody], could not control him; and Lord Castlemallard, the selfish profligate, was away in Paris, leaving his business in the hands of that bitter old botch, who'd go any length to be the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... prospect of reward save such as may be reckoned in the number of palkis and pletnis (whips and lashes); sons, whether rich or poor, to be exposed to cavil, cunning, and vindictiveness, to the practices of gambling judges and a profligate soldiery, to a venal police, to fraudulent employes, themselves badly paid for service, but whose extortions and abuses always meet with approval, a single complaint against whom would expose the complainant to be sent through that hopeless gate always open on the route ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... her in this manner was the gay, graceful, and profligate Duke of Buckingham, who became enamoured of her loveliness. Not only did he raise the most wonderful of card mansions for her delight, but having a good voice, and she possessing a passion for music, he invented songs and sung them to pleasure her. Moreover, he told her the ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... strangely sown, and their working formed one of those mysterious steps which led the foul-mouthed blasphemer to bitter repentance; who, when he had received mercy and pardon, felt impelled to bless and magnify the Divine grace with shining, burning thoughts and words. The poor profligate, swearing tinker became transformed into the most ardent preacher of the love of Christ—the well-trained author of The Jerusalem Sinner Saved, or Good News to the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... general's widow was furious. She gave them nothing and cursed them both. But he had not reckoned on a dowry; what allured him was the remarkable beauty of the innocent girl, above all her innocent appearance, which had a peculiar attraction for a vicious profligate, who had hitherto admired only the coarser ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... meal ended and they were again on the porch in the summer dusk that Winona made any progress in her criminal investigations. There, while Dave Cowan played his guitar and sang sentimental ballads to Mrs. Penniman—these being among the supposed infirmities of the profligate duchess—Winona drew the twins aside and managed to gain a blurred impression of the day's tremendous events. She never did have the thing clearly. The Merle twin was eager to tell too much, the other determined to tell ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... favourites who, with all her personal charms, but without her glimpses of a better human nature, have sacrificed the dignity of womanhood to a profligate ambition, this one upbraided herself in her last moments on her wasted life; and then, when all her ambition and vanity had turned to ashes, she understood what it was to have been the toy of men and the scorn ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... and earthly considerations disappear, as fade the stars at the approach of day, when we consider that measureless ruin, that gulf of everlasting despair, that voiceless woe, into which the emigrant may sink himself and family by locating in a profligate, dissipated or irreligious neighborhood, or in a community wholly swallowed up in the love of money, or absorbed in the questions, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... to say they seemed rather against themselves than against each other. Their principles may be more relaxed on some points than ours, but I doubt much whether a Frenchman would not be as much disgusted in England as an Englishman could possibly be in France; we call them a profligate race and condemn them in toto—something like ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... themselves almost as much as fairy-land. Take one of their characters, male or female (with few exceptions they are alike), and place it in a modern play, and my virtuous indignation shall rise against the profligate wretch as warmly as the Catos of the pit could desire; because in a modern play I am to judge of the right and the wrong. The standard of police is the measure of political justice. The atmosphere will blight it; it cannot live here. It ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Ctesipho Was present with his brother at this riot. This is the sum of all my miseries, If he, even he, a sober, hopeful lad, May be seduc'd into debaucheries. —But where shall I inquire for him? I warrant They have decoy'd him into some vile brothel. That profligate persuaded him, I'm sure. —But here comes Syrus; he can tell me all. And yet this slave is of the gang; and if He once perceives that I'm inquiring for him, He'll never tell me any thing; a rogue! I'll not discover ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... in regard to spiritual affairs ever perplexed the people, but in all religious matters they accepted the words of the fathers as the unquestionable truth. Unfortunately, the priests were, with scarcely an exception, lazy and profligate; yet the people were so superstitious and credulous that they feared to disobey them, or reserve anything which they might be required to confess." [Footnote: Washburn's ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... There is a dramatic quality in this scene of the President-to-be seated between two men who are to cause him more vexation of spirit than any others in public life. Burr, brilliant, gifted, ambitious, and profligate; Marshall, temperamentally and by conviction opposed to the principles which seemed to have triumphed in the election of this radical Virginian, to whom indeed he had a deep-seated aversion. After a short pause, Mr. Jefferson rose and read his Inaugural Address ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... up the ragged schools,—the institutions for reclaiming the youthful vagrants of London, and teaching the idle and profligate the sublime ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... writes with indomitable cheer, sending the lad tender letters of good advice, a little didactic to modern taste, but throbbing with affection. "Dear as you are to me," says this tender mother, "I would much rather you should have found your grave in the ocean you have crossed than see you an immoral, profligate, or graceless child." ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... officers in the colony. Lord Delaware was appointed governor and captain-general of the company, and a squadron of nine ships, with five hundred emigrants were sent to Virginia. But these emigrants consisted, for the most part, of profligate young men, whom their aristocratic friends sent away to screen themselves from shame; broken down gentlemen, too lazy to work; and infamous dependants on powerful families. They threw the whole colony into confusion, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... a little old Turk, poorly dressed like a marabout or santon of the desert—a sort of enthusiasts, who sometimes ventured into the camp of the Crusaders, though treated always with contumely, and often with violence. Indeed, the luxury and profligate indulgence of the Christian leaders had occasioned a motley concourse in their tents of musicians, courtesans, Jewish merchants, Copts, Turks, and all the varied refuse of the Eastern nations; so that the caftan and turban, though to drive both from the Holy Land was the professed ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... mind—as we both feel so strongly convinced of the immense superiority of Pedro over any other young Prince even dans les relations journalistes, besides which the position is so infinitely preferable. The Austrian society is medisante and profligate and worthless—and the Italian possessions very shaky. Pedro is full of resource—fond of music, fond of drawing, of languages, of natural history, and literature, in all of which Charlotte would suit him, and would be a real benefit ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... and hunger. Remember that China is reduced to the expedient of throwing its children into the water, according to the accounts of travelers. Now this production of two children is really the whole of marriage. The superfluous pleasures of marriage are not only profligate, but involve an immense loss to the man, as I will now demonstrate. Compare then with this poverty of result, and shortness of duration, the daily and perpetual urgency of other needs of our existence. Nature reminds us every hour of our real needs; and, on the other hand, refuses absolutely ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... admirers of Brunelleschi must study, are two small, but most exquisite masterpieces of Lippo Lippi. All the works of this most profligate of friars are tender and holy beyond description. They have also that distinguishing charm of the Florentine school of the fifteenth century, navet,—a fresh, gentle, and loving appreciation of the beautiful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Violet; "but the matter will not be allowed to drop. They were brought to the meet by that young profligate, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... to Major Milroy instead of to himself, and it has helped to exasperate the feeling against you. It is roundly stated in so many words that you have been prying into Miss Gwilt's family affairs, with the most dishonorable motives; that you have tried, for a profligate purpose of your own, to damage her reputation, and to deprive her of the protection of Major Milroy's roof; and that, after having been asked to substantiate by proof the suspicions that you have cast on the reputation of a ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... wife, "poor wretch," of whom he stood in some awe; and yet this inconsistent naval secretary liked to flit from flower to flower. He was vain, greedy, wanton, fond of the delight of the eye and the pride of life; he was loving and loose in his manners; he was pious, repentant, profligate; and he deliberately told the whole tale of all his many changes of mood and mistress, of piety and pleasure. One cannot open Pepys at random without finding him at his delightful old games. On the Lord's day he goes to church with Mr. Creed, and hears a good ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... papers laid before her without examining their purport. When her dividends were become due this treachery was discovered, and Mrs Revel found herself reduced to a very narrow income, and wholly deserted by her husband, who knew that he had no chance of obtaining further means of carrying on his profligate career. His death in a duel, which we have before mentioned, took place a few months after the transaction, and Mrs Revel was attacked with that painful disease, a cancer, so deeply seated as to be incurable. Still she was the same frivolous, heartless ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... indeed, but still they moved. Meanwhile Parliament was the stronghold of selfish interests; the Church was the jackal of the gentry; George III, who lost the American colonies and maintained negro slavery, was on the throne, until he went mad and was succeeded by his profligate son. ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... sister were still hesitating in what manner they could best attempt to bring their mother over to their party, she, suspecting our meetings, taxed her children with them; taxed her fair daughter with deceit, and an unbecoming attachment for one whose only merit was being the son of the profligate favourite of her imprudent father; and who was doubtless as worthless as he from whom he boasted his descent. The eyes of Idris flashed at this accusation; she replied, "I do not deny that I love Verney; prove to me that he is worthless; and ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... thrust out to grasp a bottle, just as he stopped his tongue in the middle of a sentence. All this presented a laughable discrepancy to the keen observation of Pillerault. Claparon's red face, and his wig with its profligate ringlets, gave the lie to his apparel and pretended bearing, just as his thoughts clashed and jangled with his speech. But these worthy people ended by crediting such discordances to the preoccupation of his ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... and having nothing very particular to do, he strolled in the direction of her lodging, and saw Gibbie go into the house. Having seen him in, he was next seized with the desire to see him out again; having lain in wait for him as a beneficent brownie, he must now watch him as a profligate baronet forsooth! To haunt the low street until he should issue was a dreary prospect—in the east wind of a March night, which some giant up above seemed sowing with great handfuls of rain-seed; but having made up his mind, he stood his ground. For two hours ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... in the hands of good and industrious characters, they would have produced abundant crops, and enriched their owners. But every day's experience evinced, that the people thus fortunately situated were, unluckily, some of the most profligate wretches in the colony; and their distance from the immediate seat of government added much to the inconvenience. Such of these farms as were situated on the low grounds were often overflowed after very heavy falls of rain; but this circumstance was in no way injurious ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... That is your Lord's own picture of His own glorious salvation; you are invited to come, "without one plea," in all your poverty and want, your weakness and unworthiness. Remember the Redeemer's saying to the woman of Samaria. She was the chief of sinners—profligate—hardened—degraded; but He made no condition, no qualification; simple believing was all that was required,—"If thou knewest the gift of God," thou wouldst have asked, and He would ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... Dialogue happen'd between two men of quality, and both men of wit too; and the effect was, that the Lord brought the reality of the Devil into the question, and the debate brought the profligate to be a penitent; so in short, the Devil was made a preacher ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... into the character of a heartless reprobate. He must have felt a certain piquancy in writing down the most atrocious sentiments in his own respectable parlour. He would show that the quiet humdrum old tradesman could be on paper as sprightly and audacious as the most profligate man about town. As quiet people are apt to do, he probably exaggerated the enormities which such men would openly avow; he fancied that the world beyond his little circle was a wilderness of wild beasts who could gnash ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... man and to those about him as often as it is an enemy. A great rascal provides for his wife and family. The worse he is the more he makes them the objects for your sympathy. He often provides also for himself. A profligate spendthrift who is always borrowing money will get more from his friends than the rigidly honest man who only borrows of them once, under pressure of the direst want. In the one case the friends will not be at all surprised, and they will give. In the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... persons, the majority, principal individuals of the state, and all possessing some respectability of situation, were guillotined in Paris alone. In the midst of this horror, there were twenty-six theatres open, filled with the most profane and profligate displays in honor of the ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... he said, "out of our scientific method of transportation, which very soon I will show you. We are a scientific people. Hah!" He laughed ironically. "The workers say that we princes are profligate—that we think only of women and music. But that is not so. Once, many generations ago, we were a tremendous nation, and skilled in science far beyond your own world—and with a population a hundred times what we have now. The land everywhere must ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... felt sure of catching him. And first, among the small folk under their protection, they stirred up two good souls to declare that they could no longer keep as vicar a profligate, a wizard, a devil, a freethinker, who bent one knee in church instead of two, who scoffed at rules and granted dispensations contrary to the rights of the Bishop. A shrewd accusation, which turned against him his natural defender, the Bishop of Poitiers, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... cultivate it, in two ships, which he placed under the command of his brother-in- law. The arrival of this fresh band of emigrants had proved a fruitful source of trouble and annoyance to the first settlers, for they were chiefly idle and profligate vagabonds, who had no settled occupation at home, and no characters to sustain. Weston himself described them in a letter to Bradford, as 'tolerably rude and profane.' And a friend of the Pilgrims wrote from England to warn them against having any connection ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... was delayed by Charles II.'s very vices. Clarendon's fall had left him surrounded by profligate aides, too timid and too indolent to face the resolute men of Massachusetts. They often discussed the contumacy of the colony, but went no further than words. Massachusetts was even encouraged, in 1668, forcibly to reassert its authority in Maine, against rule either by the king or ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the Scottish Prince. 1405.—Early in 1405 Henry was threatened with a fresh attack. Charles VI. of France was now a confirmed lunatic, and his authority had mainly fallen into the hands of his brother Louis, Duke of Orleans, a profligate and unscrupulous man who was regarded by the feudal nobility of France as their leader. The Duke of Orleans refused to consider himself bound to Henry by the truce which had been made with Richard, ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... spite of every external restraint, often appeared among the most distinguished citizens of Sparta. Cleomenes terminated his career of raving cruelty by cutting himself to pieces. Pausanias seems to have been absolutely insane; he formed a hopeless and profligate scheme; he betrayed it by the ostentation of his behaviour, and the imprudence of his measures; and he alienated, by his insolence, all who might have served or protected him. Xenophon, a warm admirer of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with respect to our public as private duties. Nor shall the faults of a few make impression upon me to the disadvantage of the order; for I am afraid a very censorious temper, in this respect, is too generally the indication of an uncharitable and perhaps a profligate heart, levelling characters, in order to cover some inward pride, or secret enormities, which they are ashamed to avow, and will not ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... heart and reflecting mind, a great share of sensibility, and a temper peculiarly formed for the enjoyments of social life. "But this gentleman, madam, who is her gallant this evening,—is his character unexceptionable? Will a lady of delicacy associate with an immoral, not to say profligate, man?" "The rank and fortune of Major Sanford," said Mrs. Richman, "procure him respect; his specious manners render him acceptable in public company; but I must own that he is not the person with whom I wish my cousin to be connected ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... the greatest of those interests. And when I found first one and then another to be dishonest, drunken, licentious, I was disposed to regard them as exceptions to the general rule. To the last; nay, for some time after my entire separation from the party, I supposed the profligate, unprincipled, abandoned ones to be the few, and the honest and virtuous ones to be the many. And when at length I was convinced past doubt of my mistake, the effect was terribly painful. But it was salutary. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... epistle once or twice, in a state of mind bordering on stupefaction. Robert Ratman, cad, sharper, blasphemer, insolent profligate, his brother! The notion was ludicrous. And yet, when he tried to laugh, the laugh died on his lips. He walked over to the portrait on the wall and looked at the wild, mocking boy's face there. For a moment, ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... Roos's conduct. This unhappy lady, whom we have already mentioned as the daughter of Sir Thomas Lake, Secretary of State, had the misfortune to be sincerely attached to her handsome but profligate husband, whose neglect and frequent irregularities she had pardoned, until the utter estrangement, occasioned by his passion for the Countess of Exeter, filled her with such trouble, that, overpowered at length by anguish, she complained to ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... took her hand and would have raised it to his lips; but she did not forget herself, and gently withdrew it, exclaiming, "O Gifted!" this time with a tone of tender reproach which made him feel like a profligate. He tore himself away, and when at a safe distance flung her a kiss, which she rewarded with ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... cook-house, dressed in a suit of spotless white duck, playing an accordeon; also he wore round his brown neck a thick wreath of white and scarlet flowers. Harry, I may remark, was a dandy and a notorious profligate, but against these natural faults was the fact that he could ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... the outward guise of regal office, in his bearing, politeness, address, magnificence, and high-heeled dignity, but he was sensual, ferocious, ignorant, profligate, and superstitious. His greatness was fictitious, his splendor superficial, and his character false. The king was the state, but his mistresses governed. A court thus constituted led the fashions and formed the manners of the people. It stamped the age with that type of character which ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... sword in vain? Good Mr. Landlord, are these your professions? Your bailmen should sleep ill to-night, for they are likely to answer roundly for this! And whom have we sparking it here? Brawling and swearing and turning into a profligate's tavern a place that should be for the sober entertainment of travellers? Whom have we here—eh! Let me ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... Catherines of Russia." Good God! Has our "best society" come to such a pass that its proudest ladies delight to personate notorious prostitutes?" There was no Racine or Moliere, no Charlotte Corday or Mme. de Stael"—the men posed as profligate kings, the women as courtesans! Yet in that same city young Mr. Seeley is arrested for looking at a naked dancing-girl, and "Little Egypt" has to "cut it" when she hears the cops! And what is the difference, pray, between a Pompadour and a Five Points nymph du pave? Simply this: The one rustles in ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... ages of the human career, the higher truths taught by an earlier race were lost, still a slight hint of the beauty and purity of the more ancient worship may be traced through most of the ages of the history of religion. Even among the profligate Greeks, the mysteries of Eleusis, celebrated in the temple of Ceres, were always respected. Care should be taken, however, not to confound these remnants of pure Nature-worship with that of the courtesan Venus, whose adoration, during the degenerate days of Greece, represented only the ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... had a mind to be a serious Man for the remaining Part of his Life. Great Multitudes immediately resorted to me. The first who made the Experiment was a Merry-Andrew, who was put into my Hands by a neighbouring Justice of Peace, in order to reclaim him from that profligate kind of Life. Poor Pickle-herring had not taken above one Turn in it, when he came out of the Cave, like a Hermit from his Cell, with a penitential Look, and a most rueful Countenance. I then put ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... 'Parliamentary Debates,'[*] 'Essay on the Account of the conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough,'[*] then the popular topick of conversation. This 'Essay' is a short but masterly performance. We find him in No. 13 of his Rambler, censuring a profligate sentiment in that 'Account[443];' and again insisting upon it strenuously in conversation[444]. 'An account of the Life of Peter Burman,'[*] I believe chiefly taken from a foreign publication; as, indeed, he could not himself know much about Burman; 'Additions to his Life of Baretier;'[*] 'The Life ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Jane ever think ill? And who is there, whatever might be their former conduct, that she would think capable of such an attempt, till it were proved against them? But Jane knows, as well as I do, what Wickham really is. We both know that he has been profligate in every sense of the word; that he has neither integrity nor honour; that he is as false and ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the opposite in nearly every particular, except height and angularity. She was bony and red-faced and opinionated. A few sallow years with a rapid, profligate nobleman had brought her, in widowhood, to a fine sense of appreciation of the slow-going though tiresomely unpractical men of the Odell-Carney type. It mattered little that he made poor investment of the money she had sequestered from his lordship; he had kept her in the ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... pleasure a milksop—everywhere out of his element, everywhere at sea, in the clouds, adrift, or by whatever word utter ignorance and incapacity are to be described. In society and in the work of life, he finds himself beaten by the youth whom at college he despised as frivolous or abhorred as profligate." ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... money overnight at cards, to a gamester who had been so impertinent as to send a message, demanding it that morning, though he had told the fellow that it would not suit him to pay him immediately. The father, who was a man of honour, reproached him with great severity for his profligate behaviour in general, and this scandalous debt in particular, which he believed to be some trifle; then giving him a bank-note for five hundred pounds, commanded him to go and discharge it without loss of time. This well-principled heir took the money; but, instead of waiting upon his creditor, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... that no man has a right to squander. The antediluvians might have afforded to be a little profligate in this direction, but the man who would fulfill his high destiny in this age has no time to lose. Lost time is forever lost. There is much useless complaint in the world of a want of time. It is not more time we need, ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... extinct. The most heart-rending spectacles we have ever met have been the children of parents suffering with the diseases mentioned. Their appearance is characteristic; no physician of experience can fail to detect the sins of a profligate parent in a syphilitic child. Every feature indicates the presence of a ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... of want; while despair drove many of those who remained to courses of reckless vice. Godfrey, firm to his duty and strong in faith, aided the exertions of the clergy in encouraging the spirits of his troops, and restraining their profligate excesses. A timely supply of provisions from some of the Armenian monasteries, and a brilliant victory obtained by Bohemond and the Count of Toulouse over an army which the Sultans of Aleppo and Damascus had sent to the succor of Antioch, rewarded Godfrey's confidence and infused new ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... of the vilest, most profligate, most lost wretches that ever disgraced a good name. Ethel, I command you to tell me—was this man ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... deliberating, and Zarah praying, Lysimachus was carousing amidst boon companions in the city. The ruin and approaching execution of his rival gave unwonted zest to the revels of the profligate Syrian. ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... treatment, and very reviling words, which he ever repaid with such meekness and beneficence as never failed to gain his very enemies. A lewd wretch, exasperated against him for his zeal against a wicked harlot, forged a letter of intrigue in the holy prelate's name, which made him pass for a profligate and a hypocrite with the duke of Nemours and many others: the calumny reflected also on the nuns of the Visitation. Two years after, the author of it, lying on his death-bed, called in witnesses, publicly justified the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... and dreads the scrutinizing eye of liberty, the freedom of the press, which pries into its secret recesses, discovering it in its lurking holes, and drags it forth to public detestation. If a tyrannically disposed prince, supported by an unprincipled, profligate minister, backed by a notoriously corrupt Parliament, were to cast about for means to secure such a triple tyranny, I know of no means he could devise so effectual for that purpose as the bill ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... not meddle with a volume of Shakespeare, in green cloth and cruelly fine print, which overawed me in like manner with its wood-cuts. I cannot say just why I conceived that there was something unhallowed in the matter of the book; perhaps this was a tint from the reputation of the rather profligate young man from whom my father had it. If he were not profligate I ask his pardon. I have not the least notion who he was, but that was the notion I had of him, whoever he was, or wherever he now is. There may never have been such a young ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to add, that the ruffians left, at a cottage on the roadside, the man whose face was blackened with powder, apparently because he was unable to bear transportation. He died in about half an hour after. On examining the corpse, it proved to be that of a profligate boor in the neighbourhood, a person notorious as a poacher and—smuggler. We I received many messages of congratulation from the neighbouring families, and it was generally allowed that a few such instances of spirited resistance would greatly check the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... friend's mother is constantly imploring him to ride in order to air her horses. It is a beautiful parental trait; but for those born horseless, what an economical substitute is the wooden quadruped of the gymnasium! Our Autocrat has well said, that the livery-stable horse is "a profligate animal"; and I do not wonder that the Centaurs of old should be suspected of having originated spurious coin. Undoubtedly it was to pay for the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... them.' I wonder how many Christian professors there are who would be least easily believed by those who live in the same house with them, if they said that Jesus had cast their devils out of them. It is a great mistake to take recent converts, especially if they have been very profligate beforehand, and to hawk them about the country as trophies of God's converting power. Let them stop at home, and bethink themselves, and get sober and confirmed, and let their changed lives prove the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... character, who were resisted for a time without success by a better element in the party. Under four years' administration of Governor R. K. Scott, a Northerner, and two of F. J. Moses, Jr., a South Carolinian—who later disappeared from public view in a penitentiary,—money was lavished in profligate expenditure; hundreds of thousands spent for legislative furniture and luxuries; franchises were corruptly sold; bogus enterprises enriched; debt piled up by millions, and thrown off by millions. (Repudiation, be it ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... Ptolemies during the intervals of peace left the Jews of Palestine largely to themselves, as long as they paid the heavy tribute that was exacted. It was, however, one of the most corrupt periods in human history. The Ptolemaic court was rich, profligate, and constantly degenerating. The popular story of Joseph the tax-collector (which Josephus recounts at length), while largely fanciful, vividly reflects the conditions and spirit of the age. Joseph, who evidently belonged to one of the leading families of Jerusalem, by his energy and effrontery ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... mortgage the estate to one Branthwait, a sergeant at law, in 1580, during which period it was occupied by Lord Chancellor Sir Christopher Hatton, the fine dancer, one of the celebrated favorites of Elizabeth, the lascivious daughter of King Henry the Eighth—a woman as fickle as profligate, as cruel and hard-hearted, so far as regarded her numerous paramours, as her brutal father was in respect to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... workwomen there (erased, and replaced by: "To the shoemaker, Anna Loder, in Vienna"),........200 Should she presume to make any written claims, I declare them to be null and void, having already paid for her and her profligate husband, Joseph Lungmayer, more than ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... hence, that in reference to the obtaining of Eternal Happiness, Vertue is not the thing, the most essentially requisite; and much less certainly will they think it to be so with respect to this present World, if they find their pious Instructor not only to choose the Society of Persons Profligate and Debauch'd for his Friends and Companions; but also (on all occasions) to labour the promotion of the like Men to Employments of the highest Truth, in preference of others of acknowledg'd Integrity and Sobriety of Life: The avow'd Reason whereof being only ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... a kind of pedantic and profligate literature, perfectly devoid of all natural sentiment, full of self-contradictions; and, in fact, the contrast to those maidens in my work, whom I have, during half my lifetime, seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears. And though I will not presume to estimate them as ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... evil, wicked, immoral, iniquitous, arrant, corrupt, depraved, sinful, base, demoralized, sinister, licentious, unprincipled, abandoned, graceless, vicious, incorrigible, unscrupulous, miscreant, reprobate, disreputable, rascal, scoundrel, profligate, knavish, naughty, malevolent, malicious, unrighteous, degrading, dissolute, libertine, hardened, wanton; injurious, prejudicial, pernicious, detrimental, baneful, unwholesome, baleful, deleterious, mischievous, noisome, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... did not seem possible that this could ever end, that any act of nature could blot this from his mind as though it had never been. It was unthinkable that through an eternity he should never know again the meaning of blue sky, of blossoms, of such profligate pictures as now met his eye at every step, but above all, that he should be blind to the girl herself and all for which she stood. No matter how long the journey he was about to take, no matter through what new spheres, these things must remain if anything at all of him ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... he deserved, to my mind, some tribute of regret. It is not to be denied that he was profligate in his habits and violent in his temper. But it is equally true that he was affectionate in the domestic circle, and, when moved by wisely applied remonstrance, sincerely penitent for sins committed under temptation that overpowered ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... in a nation marked for its degeneracy; nursed and reared in a church, as profligate as the world in which it was embedded; persecuted at every step of her career; groping as she did in spiritual desolation and ignorance, nevertheless, she arose to the highest pinnacle of pre-eminence ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... superiors have no single virtue or good intention. I do not, however, mean to confound the inhabitants of Sarawak, or the other rivers, with those of Borneo Proper. The latter are thoroughly corrupt and profligate. The former are Malays, but have their good qualities, and certainly are not possessed with the spirit of intrigue which seems the life, the only moving principle of the Borneons. It may truly be said of the latter, that they would tell a lie when the truth would serve them better. ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... expectations) of procuring such a command of money as enabled him to anticipate in boyhood the frolics and follies of a more mature age, and, with these accomplishments, he was returned on his father's hands as a profligate boy, whose example might ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... befall you." As he spoke, he wound his arms round the form of the fair actress, and endeavored to lift her from the carriage. But the Signora Pisani was not an ordinary person; she had been before exposed to all the dangers to which the beauty of the low-born was subjected amongst a lawless and profligate nobility. She thrust back the assailant with a power that surprised him, and in the next moment the blade of a dagger gleamed before his eyes. "Touch me," said she, drawing herself to the farther end of the carriage, ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
