"Sensual" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and sensual English stage has resisted and even burked the writer's attempt to express in terms of the theatre our European problems of war and religion, and to interpret through art the "years of the modern, years of the unperformed," it remains to be acknowledged with gratitude ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... co-existence of those twelve with the Soul that is referred to in common speech is only a common form of speech with the vulgar for ordinary purposes of the world. The dreamer, in consequence of the appearance of past sensual impressions, becomes conscious of his senses in their subtile forms, and endued as he already is with the three attributes (of goodness, passion, and darkness), he regards his senses as existing with their respective objects and, therefore, acts and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... has brought me where I am. Blind, and suffering without hope, and almost without intermission, I may give this testimony, which from me will not appear suspicious. There is something in the world better than sensual enjoyments, better than fortune, better than health itself- ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... subject to consider how far historical events are modified and the world's destiny affected by the different material agencies which man at various epochs has had at his disposal. The human creature in his passions and ambitions, his sensual or sordid desires, his emotional and moral nature, undergoes less change than might be hoped from age to age. The tyrant; the patriot, the demagogue, the voluptuary, the peasant, the trader, the intriguing politician, the hair-splitting diplomatist, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... morose, and melancholy even to madness. Foreign ambassadors could not get admission to his presence. His religion, consisting entirely in ecclesiastical rituals and papal dogmas, not in Christian morals, could not dissuade him from the most degrading sensual vice. Low-born mistresses, whom he was continually changing, became his only companions, and thus sunk in sin, shame and misery, he virtually abandoned his ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... one whose head they can get possession of here will in the future state be their servant: consequently, they make a business of "head hunting," accumulating the ghastly visages of their victims in their huts.39 The Caribs have a sort of sensual paradise for the "brave and virtuous," where, it is promised, they shall enjoy the sublimated experience of all their earthly satisfactions; but the "degenerate and cowardly" are threatened with eternal banishment beyond the mountains, where they shall be tasked ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... fidelity to the dream which differentiates the exceptional figure, the man of heroic stature, from the muddling, aimless mediocrities about him. What the dream is, matters not at all—it may be a dream of sainthood, kingship, love, art, asceticism or sensual pleasure—so long as it is fully expressed with all the resources of self. It is this sort of completion which Mr. Cabell has elected to depict in all his work: the complete sensualist in Demetrios, the complete ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... produced on him, he now felt an invincible aversion even to mention to him her name. He had seen Ione, bright, pure, unsullied, in the midst of the gayest and most profligate gallants of Pompeii, charming rather than awing the boldest into respect, and changing the very nature of the most sensual and the least ideal—as by her intellectual and refining spells she reversed the fable of Circe, and converted the animals into men. They who could not understand her soul were made spiritual, as it were, by the magic of her beauty—they who had no heart for poetry had ears, at least, for the melody ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... threw down a soft red glow. Heavy imitation Eastern curtains deadened the hum of voices and rattle of cups. The air was warm and scented, the light dim, and Foster, who had often camped in the snow, felt amused by the affectation of sensual luxury as he ate iced cakes and languidly watched the people. He could only see two or three men, one of whom he had noticed at the hotel and afterwards passed in the street. This was probably a coincidence, but it might have a meaning, and he ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... lives, turn and repent before it be too late; before our consciences are hardened; before the purer and nobler feelings which we learnt at our mothers' knees are stifled by the ways of the world; before we are hardened into bad habits, and grown frivolous, sensual, selfish and worldly. Let us repent. Let us put ourselves into the hands of Christ, the great physician, and ask Him to heal our wounded souls, and purge our corrupted souls; and leave to Him the choice of how He will ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... tones of his voice the doctor's keen intelligence caught the ring of his savage metal and felt the shock of his powerful personality—a personality which had thrown to the winds every mask, whose sole aim of life was sensual, whose only fears were of physical pain and death, who could worship a snake and ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... the same to our children."[247] Nature men have only petty coins of speech. They can express nothing great. They cannot compare, analyze, and combine. They are overwhelmed by a flood of details, in which they cannot discern the ruling idea. The material and sensual constitute their limits. If they move they have to get a new language. The American languages are a soft mass which changes easily if tribes separate, or as time goes on, or if they move their habitat.[248] Sometimes measures are adopted in order to make the language unintelligible, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... shall the elfin lamp of my glimmerous understanding, purged from sensual appetites and gross desires, shine like the constellation of thy intellectual powers. As for thee, thy thoughts are pure and thy lips are holy. Never did the unhallowed breath of the powers of darkness, and the pleasures of darkness, pollute the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... which will revolutionise a countenance; how easily noble and handsome features can degenerate into what is sordid and vulgar. In this bust the chin, though receding, is far from weak; the lips are full but not sensual; the nose has the faint aquiline curve of distinction. There is benevolence in the eyes, meditation in the brow, dignity and reserve throughout the physiognomy: it is the portrait of a man who may be great, but who must be good. When a bronze ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... such is the bliss ye give, That heaven's bright scenes seem bursting on the soul, With joy I'd yield each sensual wish, to live For ever 'neath ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... contrast with the golden red of her hair. Her forehead, small like those of ancient Grecian statues, formed with the rest of her face a perfect oval. Her nose, delicately curved, was slightly aquiline; the enamel of her teeth glistened when the light fell upon them; and her vermeil mouth voluptuously sensual, seemed to call for sweet kisses, and the gay smiles and delectations of dainty and delicious pleasure. It is impossible to behold or to conceive a carriage of the head freer, more noble, or more elegant than hers; thanks to the great ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... character of the emissaries of Rome when they are in the ascendency and are opposed; when in the minority, they are humble and meek, plausible and silver-tongued; and when there are none to oppose them, haughty, indolent, sensual, and self-indulgent. Such they have been in all ages and in every country, with the exception of the devoted Jesuit slaves, who have gone forth to carry their ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... even in her ignorant adherence to Christ, that kept her from falling to the level of those who renounced him for the Arabian impostor. This was seen especially in the blessings that came to her through the institution of Christian marriage, while others groaned under the debasing influence of a sensual polygamy. The wretchedness this occasioned is a topic too large and too painful to dwell upon here. But the wide gulf that separated the two classes was clearly seen, when on her Sabbath the missionary ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... he perceived a gentleman of prepossessing and jovial appearance, and with a handsome and tolerably youthful face. His large blue eyes looked gayly and boldly into the world; a genial smile was playing on his broad and rather sensual-looking lips; and his voice was ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... of that valley, even if he came remotely from such oligarchical sires as Socrates gives immediately to all democratical men, reached his motto of "Liberty and Equality" through no such sensual definition of life. ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... and straw for plastering purposes. At a comparatively early age they lose whatever looks they possess and become most extraordinarily malevolent hags. The Arab men, as they age, usually look rather fine and dignified. The young Arab is not attractive. He looks heavy, sullen and sensual, and his expression is full ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... plane, and the time of their sojourn upon it is passed, to quote from an early Letter on this subject, either "in happy ignorance and full oblivion, or in a state of quiet slumber, a sleep full of rosy dreams ". But on the other hand, if their earth-lives have been low and brutal, selfish and sensual, they will, like the suicides, be conscious to the fullest extent in this undesirable region; and they are liable to develop into terribly evil entities. Inflamed with all kinds of horrible appetites which they can no longer satisfy directly now they are without ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... are engaged in something that is of a purely intellectual nature, when, in reality, we have retired from the world, so that we may observe it from the outside, like spectators at a theatre. Even sensual pleasure itself is nothing but a continual striving, which ceases directly its aim is attained. As soon as we are not engaged in one of these two ways, but thrown back on existence itself, we are convinced of the emptiness and worthlessness of it; ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... She despised crinolines, girls, Macassar oil, sewing, and deportment. She adored walking, fishing, boys, and climbing trees. She did outrageous things with a genuine innocence that made the most sensual of the boys careful not to take advantage of her in any bad way. That she climbed out of her bedroom window at night to go and meet some three of the boys from the Grammar School and with them test the wishing pool on the moor on Midsummer Eve was proof of all these things, and yet what a scandal ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... are so scarce in the slaveholding States, compared with the number of white inhabitants, that it is not to be supposed great numbers of them follow their masters to such places; and if they did, what could their rude, and merely sensual minds comprehend of a discourse addressed to educated men? In Georgia, there is a law which forbids any congregation or company of negroes to assemble themselves contrary to the act regulating patrols. Every justice of the peace may go in person, or send a constable, to disperse any assembly ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... law demands in the most rigorous manner from every one of noble birth, the mastery over the senses. Menu says, c. ii. 93, "A man by the attachment of his organs to sensual pleasure, incurs certain guilt; but having wholly subdued them, he thence attains heavenly bliss. v. 94. Desire is never satisfied with the enjoyment of desired objects; as the fire is not appeased ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... features were those of a man of advancing years, but well-formed, and his smoothly-shaven, plump cheeks were well-rounded. His grey eyes looked out cheerfully and observantly, but had a vivid sparkle when he was excited and began to twitch his thick, sensual mouth. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... with Euthydemus concerning temperance he delivered himself to this effect:—"In your opinion, Euthydemus, is liberty a very valuable thing?" "To be valued above all things," answered Euthydemus. "Do you believe that a man who is a slave to sensual pleasures, and finds himself incapable of doing good, enjoys his liberty?" "Not in the least." "You allow, then, that to do good is to be free, and that to be prevented from doing it, by any obstacle whatever, is not to be free?" "I think so," said Euthydemus. ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... This sensual and sanguinary religion inspired other peoples with horror, but they imitated it. The Jews sacrificed to Baal on the mountains; the Greeks adored Astarte of Sidon under the name of Aphrodite, and Baal Melkhart of Tyre under the ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... that man to you in a single word. Envy. In Monsieur Bixiou there is, unquestionably, the makings of a great artist; but in the economy of his existence the belly has annihilated the heart and the head, and he is now and forever under the dominion of sensual appetites; he is riveted to the condition of a caricaturist,—that is to say, to the condition of a man who from day to day discounts himself in petty products, regular galley-slave pot-boilers, which, to be sure, give him a lively living, but in themselves ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... fat and sensual-looking young man, with bloated face and bloodshot that eyes spoke eloquently of his excesses. On his forehead was painted a small semicircular line above the eyebrows with a round patch in the middle, which was the sect-mark of the Saktas. His white linen ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... unproductive expenditure. But might not the profit takers have devised some way of getting rid of the surplus more intelligent than mere competition to displace one another, and more consistent with humane feeling than wasting wealth upon refinements of sensual indulgence in the presence ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... heart and hand The roaring tide of life, than lie, Unmindful, on its flowery strand, Of God's occasions drifting by! Better with naked nerve to hear The needles of this goading air, Than in the lap of sensual ease forego The godlike power to do, the godlike aim to ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... because such things are never imposed upon an unwilling world, but owe their strength to the closeness with which they interpret the aims and wants of human beings. Still more hopeful is the knowledge which one gains from looking back at the history of the world, that no selfish, cruel, sensual, or wicked interpretation of life has ever established a vital hold upon men. The selfish and the cruel elements of humanity have never been able to band themselves together against the power of good for very long, for the simple reason that those who are selfish ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of Death?— Can he who once drew honorable breath In liberty's pure sphere, Foster a sensual fear, When death and slavery meet him face to face, Saying: "Choose thou between us; here, the grace Which follows patriot martyrdom, and there, Black ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... actors in her little drama, whereas Helene Boehlau grants to the historical figures of Old Weimar participation at least in episodes. Clara Viebig can compass no great characters or persons of superior intelligence; even men she hardly shows otherwise than in their sensual brutality. She succeeds best with simple, vegetative natures of elemental instincts and eruptive passions, like the women of the Eifel, whose life of hardship, unhappiness in love, and maternal sorrows she knows how to represent with telling power. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... and pleasure, which was far more active in her now than when she married Jean Jacques. For a Spanish woman she had matured late; and that was because, in her youth, she had been active and athletic, unlike most Spanish girls; and the microbes of a sensuous life, or what might have become a sensual life, had not good chance ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... found that one or the other, or both, of their immediate progenitors had in some way departed widely from the condition of health; they were scrofulous, or predisposed to affections of the brain, and insanity, or had intermarried with blood-relations, or had been intemperate, or guilty of sensual excesses. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Such are the results of desire, when not directed to objects worthy of a moral being, and not kept under the rigid control of conscience, and the immutable laws of moral rectitude. When, in any of these forms, a sensual or selfish propensity is allowed to pass the due boundary which is fixed for it by reason and the moral principle, the mental harmony is destroyed, and even the judgment itself comes to be impaired and distorted ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... open their houses, modestly confessing, it may be presumed, their own incapacity, mainly trust to wax candles and upholstery. Gentlemen seem to rely on their white waistcoats. To these are added, for the delight of the more sensual, champagne and such good things of the table as fashion allows to be still considered as comestible. Even in this respect the world is deteriorating. All the good soups are now tabooed, and at the houses of one's accustomed friends—small barristers, doctors, government clerks, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... only put them into action in real life, but contrasted them with another character which may be said to form the reverse side of his hero's. Honest Sancho represents the material principle as perfectly as his master does the intellectual or ideal. He is of the earth, earthy. Sly, selfish, sensual, his dreams are not of glory, but of good feeding. His only concern is for his carcass. His notions of honor appear to be much the same with those of his jovial contemporary Falstaff, as conveyed in his memorable soliloquy. In the sublime ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... as buttons for his doublet. It was affirmed that on his journey to France, which preceded the marriage of the King, he had taken with him about thirty different suits, each more costly than the last. It was for him as much an affair of ambition as of sensual pleasure to make an impression upon women, and to achieve what are called conquests in the highest circles. He revelled in the enjoyment of successes in society. Moments of lassitude followed, when those who had to speak with him on business ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... one extreme of which is what we call pure intellect, and on the other pure feeling or emotion. The arts, I take it, are a means of giving expression to the emotional side of this mental activity, intimately related as it often is to the more purely intellectual side. The more sensual side of this feeling is perhaps its lowest, while the feelings associated with the intelligence, the little sensitivenesses of perception that escape pure intellect, are possibly ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... the gashed throat of a woman, the first comer, the passer-by in the street: a horrible malady against which he struggled, but which took possession of him again in the course of his amour with the submissive and sensual Severine, whom a tragic story of assassination caused to live in constant terror, and whom he stabbed one evening in an excess of frenzy, maddened by the sight of her white throat. Then this savage human beast rushed among the trains filing past swiftly, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... look more closely at the ethics of love at the time of the Renaissance, we are struck by a remarkable Contrast. The novelists and comic poets give us to understand that love consists only in sensual enjoyment, and that to win this, all means, tragic or comic, are not only permitted, but are interesting in proportion to their audacity and unscrupulousness. But if we turn to the best of the lyric poets and writers of dialogues, we find in them a deep and spiritual passion ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... repulsive wiping and smacking of the thin, sensual lips. "I suppose you know why I had you brought here ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... of the once musical and admired, but finally sensual and persecuted Boblink. It contains a moral, worthy the attention of all little birds and little boys; warning them to keep to those refined and intellectual pursuits, which raised him to so high a pitch of popularity, ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... and dissolute, but at the same time brave, prudent, cautious, generous, and capable of enthusiasm, clemency, and repentance; at once so lovable and so gentle that he was able to inspire those about him with the firmest friendship and the most absolute devotion. The latter was a religious though sensual monarch, fond of display—the type of sovereign who usually succeeds to the head of the family and enjoys the wealth which his predecessor had acquired, displaying before all men the results of an accomplished work, and often thereby endangering its stability. The real ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... people [the negroes] a physical delight in cruelty to beast as well as to man. The sight of suffering seems to bring them an enjoyment without which the world is tame; probably the wholesale murderers and torturers of history, from Phalaris and Nero downwards, took an animal and sensual pleasure in the look of blood, and in the inspection of mortal agonies. I can see no other explanation of the phenomena which meet my eye in Africa. In almost all the towns on the Oil Rivers, you see dead or dying animals in some agonizing ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... over average height, of strong fleshy build, with a small blonde mustache on his upper lip. Under his eyes little pouches had already begun to form; his mouth was full and sensual; but he still retained an air of liveliness, of carelessness and agility, that might at first sight seem the spontaneity of youth. He wore a brown suit, a gray flannel shirt and Stetson hat—the common apparel ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... the length and stiffness of his mustachios, a la Napoleon, indicate a constant use of cosmetics. His face is very red, his eyes brown and bold, his features rude, and his thick red lips and short round chin give him a sensual appearance. He had in his mouth a long German pipe, from which he puffed clouds of smoke, and after a military salute he accosted us ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... also ate. This narrative in its simplest meaning represents what they understand by "letter." "Spirit," however, they understand to mean the spiritual interpretation, which is thus: The serpent signifies the evil temptation which lures to sin. The woman represents the sensual state, or the sphere in which such enticements and temptations make themselves felt. Adam, the man, stands for reason, which is called man's highest endowment. Now, when reason does not yield to the allurements of external sense, all is well; but ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... contaminates, degrades him. His virile qualities and his religion both lose their best when he leaves the desert. Contact with the cities of Philistia and the fertile plains of the Canaanites, with their sensual agricultural gods, demoralized the Israelites.[1184] The prophets were always calling them back to the sterner code of morals and the purer faith of their days of wandering. Jeremiah in despair holds ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... infinite wisdom, consequently from God. Those who acknowledge the Divine, also see and think so; but those who do not acknowledge it, do not see and think so, because they are unwilling; and thereby they let down their rational principle into the sensual, which derives all its ideas from the luminous principle in which the bodily senses are, and confirms their fallacies urging, 'Do not you see the sun effecting these things by its heat and light? What is ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... up and the light fell on his face. It was deeply lined and of a curious dead color, but, while, it bore a sensual stamp and something in it hinted at cruelty, it was, Blake felt, the face of ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... the emotion, the inevitability of the plot,—it is the pure and intelligible form disclosed in the phases and movement of life, disengaged and set apart for the contemplation of the mind,—it is the purging of the sensual eye, enabling it to see through the mind as the mind first saw through it, which renders the world of art the new vision it is, the revelation accomplished by the mind for the senses. If the world of art were only a reduplication ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... clearness of her glorious voice, and on the absolute certainty of her intonation; but these mere physical requisites of a great singer are in themselves most uncommon. Irrespectively of the lady's clever vocalization, and of the strong dramatic impulse which she evinces, there is an actual sensual gratification in listening to her superb voice, singing with immovable certainty in perfect tune. Her German education, combined with long practice in Italian opera, peculiarly fit Mlle. Titiens for interpreting the ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... seems the foregoing strain of sentiment. Who could suppose it a prelude to detailed reminiscence on the author's part of sensual pleasures—the basest—enjoyed in the past? The venerable voluptuary keeps himself in countenance for his lascivious vein, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... Tuaricks of Ghat, who are purer Berbers; as well as for their disposition to thieving and petty larceny, of which I have recently been obliged to give some examples. The pure Berbers, likewise, are much less sensual than their bastard descendants, who seem, indeed, to have no idea of pleasure but in ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... Persia is therefore more common in proportion to the licence allowed; though, when discovered, it is severely punished, in some cases by death. Though a few are highly educated, the majority of Persian women are ignorant, indolent, and sensual. Mariages de convenance are as common as in France, and have a good deal to do with the immorality and intrigue that go ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... who would rather pay a drunken sailor eighteen or twenty Spanish dollars a month, than hire a sober native for his fish and taro." Wholly without energy, the Tahitians saunter away their lives in a state of drowsy indolence, aiming only at the avoidance of trouble, and the sensual enjoyment of the moment. The race rapidly diminishes. "In 1777, Captain Cook estimated the population of Tahiti at about two hundred thousand. By a regular census taken some four or five years ago, it was found to be only nine ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... confidence. Beauty is shallow—only skin deep; fleeting—only for a few years' reign; dangerous—tempting to vanity and lightness of mind; deceitful—dazzling often to bewilder; weak—reigning only to ruin; gross—leading often to sensual pleasure. And yet we say it need not be so. Beauty is lovely and ought to be innocently possessed. It has charms which ought to be used for good purposes. It is a delightful gift, which ought to be received with gratitude and worn with ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... those you call bishops do no bishop's work, but live after sensual pleasure, taking no care of Christ's flock, nor regarding ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... inarticulate, unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the Infinite, and impels us for a moment to gaze into it," exclaimed Carlyle. Wagner found in music the conscious language of feeling, that which ennobles the sensual and realizes the spiritual. "Music is the harmonious voice of creation, an echo of the invisible world, one note of the divine concord which the entire universe is destined one day to sound," wrote Mazzini. Literature is rich in noble definitions ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... close of the Empire—a line of voluptuaries, according to Ctesias and his followers, held possession of the throne; and the principle was established from the first, that happiness consisted in freedom from all cares or troubles, and unchecked indulgence in every species of sensual pleasure. This account, intrinsically suspicious, is now directly contradicted by the authentic records which we possess of the warlike character and manly pursuits of so many of the kings. It probably, however, contains a germ of truth. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... having tasted the pleasures of a more sunny clime, and having rioted in the excitements of sensual indulgence, soon became weary of tranquil life in Kief. He was also anxious to escape from the reproof which he always felt from the pious life of his mother. He therefore resolved to return to his conquered kingdom of Bulgaria. He said ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... a man of forty-five or fifty, with a heavy black beard, thick sensual lips, and dog-like face. He is clad roughly; and the few words which he utters prove that ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... you alone, O Sons Of Song, The wings that float the loftier airs along. Whoever lifts us from the dust we are, Beyond the sensual to spiritual goals; Who from the MOMENT and the SELF afar By deathless deeds allures reluctant souls, Gives the warm life to what the Limner draws,— Plato but thought what godlike Cato was.* Recall the Wars of England's giant-born, Is Elyot's voice, is Hampden's death in vain? Have all the meteors ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to the older satyrs. They were fond of wine and of every kind of sensual pleasure, and hence represented the luxuriant powers of nature, and were connected with the ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... earnest poetry consists in the union and harmonious melting down, and fusion of the sensual into the spiritual,—of man as an animal into man as a power of reason and self-government. And this we have represented to us most clearly in the plastic art, or statuary; where the perfection of outward form ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the forms of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness. But when from a long-distant past nothing ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... hung about his inflamed visage in wild elf locks, the animal predominating throughout; his eyes were small, red, and wolfish, and glared suspiciously from beneath his scarred and tufted eyebrows; while certain of his teeth projected, like the tusks of a boar, from out his coarse-lipped, sensual mouth. Dwarfish in stature, and deformed in person, Jem was built for strength; and what with his width of shoulder and shortness of neck, his figure looked as square and as solid as a cube. His throat and hirsute chest, constantly exposed to the weather, had acquired a ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... then he falls in love with a fair young girl as pure as falling snow of any stain in deed or in thought; he is engaged to marry her—or, I don't know, I haven't made up my mind on that point, perhaps it would be better if he did marry her. Well, the woman whom he has loved with a merely sensual passion comes back, and to revenge herself she tries to tempt the good girl to go wrong; she talks to her of men and pleasures; this is a good idea, I think, for I feel sure it is women far more than men who lead women astray. Then the first woman whom he has loved ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... would have suffered no irreparable loss if the police had thrown the Sceptic's Walk into the fire. It is an allegory designed to contrast the life of religion, the life of philosophy, and the life of sensual pleasure. Of all forms of composition, an allegory most depends for its success upon the rapidity of the writer's eye for new felicities. Accuracy, verisimilitude, sustention, count for nothing in comparison with imaginative adroitness ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... found that her loving trust, her faith in her lover, her girlish innocence of the ways of sensual men had been chiefly responsible for her griefs; that it was indeed, as Perigal said, that she in her weakness had been preyed upon by the strong. Thus, it followed that girlish confidence in the loved one's ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... suppress. This officer, though in his person as handsome as Absalom, or the blooming Adonis, was as destitute of soul as a monkey. He appeared to have no idea above that of dress and diversion: and provided he could but compass his own little pitiful ends, which were always of the sensual sort, he cared not how shamefully he prevaricated and lied, but would wink, and grin, and chuckle, as if he had done some great thing. He had served under a score of captains, who had all spoken of him as a slippery, worthless fellow, whom ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... Zeus, Aphrodite, Herakles, Dionysus, Pallas, Fauns and Satyrs, Nymphs of woods and waves, Tritons, the genius of Death, heroes and hunters, lawgivers and poets, presiding deities of minor functions, man's lustful appetites and sensual needs. All that men think, or do, or are, or wish for, or imagine in this world, had found exact corporeal equivalents. Not physiognomy alone, but all the portions of the body upon which the habits of the animating soul are wont to stamp themselves, were studied and employed as symbolism. Uranian ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... led to such constant additions by importation to the number of the slave population, that it now exceeds the white in the ratio of ten to one, while individually the slaves are both physically and in natural capacity more than equal to their sensual and degenerate masters. Bahia and its neighbourhood have a bad eminence in the annals of the Brazilian slave-trade. Upwards of fifty, some accounts say eighty cargoes, had been landed there since the Beagle's last visit: nor is the circumstance to be wondered at when we bear in mind, that ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... circumstance most clearly state; That he, by knowing fully each defect, Might punishment accordingly direct, In which no father-confessor should err, Who absolution justly would confer. The parson much his penitent abused; Said he, with sensual views to be amused, Is such a sin, 'tis scarcely worse to steal; The sight is just the ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... high passions, anger, hate, Mistrust, suspicion, discord; and shook sore Their inward state of mind, calm region once And full of peace, now tost and turbulent: For Understanding ruled not, and the Will Heard not her lore; both in subjection now To sensual Appetite, who from beneath Usurping over sovran Reason claimed Superiour sway: From thus distempered breast, Adam, estranged in look and altered style, Speech intermitted thus to Eve renewed. Would thou hadst hearkened to my words, and staid With me, as I besought thee, when that ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... not by what means themselves alive to keep. On the other side the laity, be they either rich or poor— If rich, then Avarice strangle them, because they will not lose Their worldly wealth: or else we have one subtle practice more; That is, that Sensual Suggestion their outward man shall pose, Who can full finely in each cause his mind to them disclose. But if that neither of these twain can to my train them win,[35] Then at his cue to play his part doth Tyranny begin. As for the poor knaves, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... situation of Mary, of necessity produced some further intercourse between her and Mr. Imlay. He sent a physician to her; and Mrs. Christie, at his desire, prevailed on her to remove to her house in Finsbury-square. In the mean time Mr. Imlay assured her that his present was merely a casual, sensual connection; and, of course, fostered in her mind the idea that it would be once more in her choice to live with him. With whatever intention the idea was suggested, it was certainly calculated to increase the agitation of her mind. In one respect however it produced an effect unlike ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... blue or black according to the mood of their possessor. His nose was strong and slightly curved, with delicately sensitive nostrils. A dark glossy moustache and beard trimmed a la Tsar, partly hid full, almost sensual lips and a powerful somewhat ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... tardily received, but pertinaciously retained, and resulted always in the highest physical pleasure. Thus the pressure of your sweet fingers upon my eyelids, at first only recognized through vision, at length, long after their removal, filled my whole being with a sensual delight immeasurable. I say with a sensual delight. All my perceptions were purely sensual. The materials furnished the passive brain by the senses were not in the least degree wrought into shape by the deceased understanding. Of pain there was some ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... white clear through. He was red-blooded, but at the same time his heart was clean. Once more he found himself contrasting the honest-eyed, pure-hearted Ruth with this sensual scoffer. There was no denying the physical appeal of the lithe, sinuous Russian; there was no gainsaying the call of the blood. On the other hand, the American girl stood for everything his own mother ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... ordinary sense of the term, he certainly is, but it is of the earlier type. Cyrenaic would be a juster epithet, the "carpe diem" doctrine of the poem is too gross and sensual to have commended itself to the real Epicurus. Intense fatalism, side by side with complete agnosticism, this is the keynote of the poem. Theoretically incompatible, these two "isms" are in practice ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... sensual pleasure the mind is enthralled to the extent of quiescence, as if the supreme good were actually attained, so that it is quite incapable of thinking of any other object; when such pleasure has been gratified it is followed by extreme melancholy, whereby the mind, though ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... fact that you have a seat among the cardinals, with the Pope, as advisors of the Holy See. We leave it to you whether it is becoming to your dignity to court young women, and to send those whom you love fruits and wine, and during the whole day to give no thought to anything but sensual pleasures. People blame us on your account, and the memory of your blessed uncle, Calixtus, likewise suffers, and many say he did wrong in heaping honors upon you. If you try to excuse yourself on the ground of your youth, I say ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... promised nothing but delights of a spiritual order; a paradise which, whatever material or imaginative adjuncts it might have, certainly disclosed none; which presented no one thing to gratify the prurient curiosity of man's fancy, or the eager passions of his sensual nature; which must, in fact, have been about as inviting to the soul of a Heathen as the promise of an eternal Lent to an epicure! Surely these were resistless seductions. Yet it is to such things as auxiliaries that Gibbon refers me for the ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... results in a swelling tide of miserable little lives. Consider what it will mean to have perhaps half the population of the world, in every generation, restrained from or tempted to evade reproduction! This thing, this euthanasia of the weak and sensual, is possible. On the principles that will probably animate the predominant classes of the new time, it will be permissible, and I have little or no doubt that in the future it will be ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... violated the sanctity of the reserved compartment by means of their railway key were both bigger and more manly than he who had a right to it. One was dark, and probably Jewish, with a heavy beard and moustache, in the midst of which his sensual and cruel mouth pouted disagreeably red. The other was puffy and flushed, with a brick-coloured complexion deeply pitted by smallpox. They also were flashily dressed with "horsey" neckties and conspicuous scarf-pins. As I glanced ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... suddenly, and we looked into an underground hall, where a dozen men were carousing—Duke Casimir's Hussars of Death, black-browed, evil-faced, slack-jowled villains every man of them, cruel and sensual. A blast of ribald oaths came sulphurously up, as if the mouth of hell had ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... intellectual equality of women, have almost, if not altogether, escaped me. The only important difference, I think, is, that men are generally duller and more conceited than women. The dulness is natural enough, on the broad ground that the males of all animals (being more sensual and selfish) are duller than the females. The conceit is easily accounted for. The English boy is told from childhood, as the negro boy is, that men are superior to women. The negro boy shows his assent to the proposition by beating his mother, the English one ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... dugs, And with her curses mix their angry hiss. Little wrought she upon that Holy One Who with his calm eyes dumbed her bitter lips And made her black snakes writhe to hide their fangs. Then followed Ruparaga—Lust of days— That sensual Sin which out of greed for life Forgets to live; and next him Lust of Fame, Nobler Aruparaga, she whose spell Beguiles the wise, mother of daring deeds, Battles and toils. And haughty Mano came, The Fiend of Pride; and smooth Self-Righteousness. Uddhachcha; and—with many a hideous ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... : ekkapti. select : elekti, elelekti. selfish : egoista. semicolon : punktokomo. semolina : tritikajxo. send : sendi, (—"for") venigi. sensation : sensacio, sense : sento, senco. sensitive : sentema. sensual : volupta. sentence : frazo, jugxo, verdikto. sentiment : sento, opinio. sentimental : sentimentala. separate : apart'a, -igi, disigi, malkunigi. serfdom : servuto. sergeant : sergxento. series : serio. serious : serioza. serve : servi, ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... for the revelation that there was something nobler than the acquisition of riches; but I suppose it was because no race ever needed it so much. And what new revelation—what new message is coming to the multitudes here in England who are living in a paradise of sensual gratification, blinded, besotted, their world a ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... the ranks of the people is complete; we gentlemen, you see, inherit in our blood certain vices and virtues. Thus, the Valois are cunning and subtle, brave, but idle; the Lorraines are ambitious, greedy, and intriguing; the Bourbons are sensual, without ideas, force, or will. Look at Henri: when Nature, on the contrary, draws a great man from among the people, like Gorenflot, he ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... from these two was a little woman, still very pretty, although of a certain age—the age of embonpoint—a brunette, with very delicate features, a little sensual mouth, and pretty rosy ears peeping forth from skilfully arranged masses of black hair. With a plump, dimpled hand, she held before her myopic eyes a pair of gold-mounted glasses; and she was speaking to a man of rather stern aspect, with a Slav ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... should learn How the soft plains they look on, lean over And love (they pretend) —Cower beneath them, the flat sea-pine crouches, The wild fruit-trees bend; E'en the myrtle leaves curl, shrink and shut, All is silent and grave: 'Tis a sensual and timorous beauty. How ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... sensual organs, in fact, our whole body and life, are but an accretion round and a fostering of the spermatozoa. They are the real "He." A man's eyes, ears, tongue, nose, legs and arms are but so many organs and tools that minister to the protection, education, increased intelligence and multiplication ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... be a Wolf first; 'tis to be thy Brother An infamy below the sin of a Coward: I am as far from being part of thee, As thou art from thy vertue: seek a kindred Mongst sensual beasts, and make a Goat thy Brother, A Goat is cooler; will you ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Europe, which are now so considerable,—Russia, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway,—did not, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, attract much attention. They were plunged in barbarism and despotism, and the light of science or religion rarely penetrated into the interior. The monarchs were sensual and cruel, the nobles profligate and rapacious, the clergy ignorant and corrupt, and the people degraded, and yet insensible to their degradation, with no aspirations for freedom and no appreciation of the benefits of civilization. Such heroes as Peter and Gustavus Adolphus ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... what makes it possible to proclaim an international law of war, approved by the legal conscience of all civilised peoples; and when a principle is thus generally accepted, it exerts an authority over minds and manners which curbs sensual appetites and triumphs over barbarism. We are well aware of the imperfect means of causing its decrees to be respected and carried out which are at the disposal of the law of nations. We know also that war, which moves nations so deeply, rouses to exceptional activity ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... speakest like one who never saw a woman worthy the affection of a soldier. Believe me, couldst thou look upon those of Europe, to whom, after Heaven, we of the order of knighthood vow fealty and devotion, thou wouldst loathe for ever the poor sensual slaves who form thy haram. The beauty of our fair ones gives point to our spears and edge to our swords; their words are our law; and as soon will a lamp shed lustre when unkindled, as a knight distinguish himself by feats of arms, having ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... our minds, they will be amiable and acceptable in the sight of God, and they will be useful and happy among themselves. Let it be our fervent prayer that neither canting and hypocritical emissaries from schools of artificial theology on the one hand, nor sensual and licentious crews and adventurers on the other, may ever enter the charming village of Pitcairn to give disease to the minds or the bodies ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... body seems to have rendered him fond of drinking, and fiery in disposition. As a youth he showed great power of self-control, by abstaining from all sensual pleasures in spite of his vehement and passionate nature; while his intense desire for fame rendered him serious and high-minded ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... austere. Meanness, thanklessness, loquaciousness, jealousy, an unbecoming attire, evil thoughts, whatever is sensual, whatever is coarse, any promenade in mud actual or metaphorical, severely it condemned. Particularly was avarice censured. "There are many who do not like to give," Ormuzd, in the Vendidad, confided to Zarathrustra. The high god added: "Ahriman ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... volunteer in her service to the end. His conduct through the whole of that enterprise is one of the most extraordinary that is to be found in the history of a young man, scarcely twenty years of age. Situated in a country that was like the lap of sensual pleasure, and with the means of enjoying it, how few are there to be found who would exchange such a scene for the woods and wildernesses of America, and pass the flowery years of youth in unprofitable danger and hardship! but such is the fact. When the war ended, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... their sinful lusts. God designs to bring his children, naturally rebellious, through the desert of crucifixions—through the temptations in the wilderness, into the promised land. But how many rebel, and choose rather to be bond-slaves in Egypt, than suffer the reductions of their sensual appetite. ...
— Letters of Madam Guyon • P. L. Upham
... p.0063] criticisms on his style. But amid his restless study Avicenna never forgot his love of enjoyment. Unusual bodily vigour enabled him to combine severe devotion to work with facile indulgence in sensual pleasures. His passion for wine and women was almost as well known as his learning. Versatile, light-hearted, boastful and pleasure-loving, he contrasts with the nobler and more intellectual character of Averroes. His bouts of pleasure gradually weakened ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... and nothing so conclusively demonstrates it as the extreme ineffectually of the moments of contrast with which Strauss has attempted to relieve the dominant mood of his work. Just as in "Salome" the more restless and sensual passages, lazily felt as they are, are nevertheless infinitely more significant than the intensely contrasting silly music assigned to the Prophet, so, too, in "Elektra," the moments when Strauss is cruel, brutal, ugly are of a much higher ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... deliriums. Chapter IV, under the general heading, "Psychic states and Diverse Post-Traumatic Neuroses": (a) Post-traumatic epilepsy; (b) Traumatic aphasia; (c) Alcoholism, traumatism and hallucinatory conditions; (d) Post-traumatic sensual perversions; (e) Pains, vertigos, deafness, etc., following trauma; (f) Distant post-traumatic psychic disorders with cerebral lesions; (g) Unclassifiable observations. To this comprehensive material is added an appendix on the topic of ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... intercourse, fornicate, have sex, do it, sleep together, fuck[vulg.]; sleep around, play the field.. masturbate, jerk off[coll.], jack off[coll.], play with oneself. have the hots[coll]; become aroused, get hot; have an erection, get it up. come, climax, ejaculate. Adj. sexy, erotic, sexual, carnal, sensual. hot, horny, randy, rutting; passionate, lusty, hot-blooded, libidinous; up, in the mood. homosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual. % 2. SENSATION 1. Sensation in general % 375. Physical Sensibility. — N. sensibility; sensitiveness &c. adj.; physical sensibility, feeling, impressibility, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... important as the innocent and honorable discovery of radiography; and one of the reasons why radiography was not discovered sooner was that the men whose business it was to discover new clinical methods were coarsening and stupefying themselves with the sensual villanies and cutthroat's casuistries of vivisection. The law of the conservation of energy holds good in physiology as in other things: every vivisector is a deserter from the army of honorable investigators. But the vivisector does not see this. He not only calls his methods scientific: ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... unhappy—a festival of the memory, of living in the past, of reflection upon those long-since vanished joys, the loss of which has caused the sorrow! For the children of the world, for the striving, for the seeker of inordinate enjoyments, for the ambitious, for the sensual, solitude is but ill-adapted—only for the happy, for the sorrow-laden, and also for the innocent, who yet know nothing of the world, of neither its pleasures nor torments, of neither its loves ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... sensual, but not greedy; I have such a variety of inclinations to gratify, that this can never predominate; and unless my heart is unoccupied, which very rarely happens, I pay but little attention to my appetite; to purloining ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... in time in preventing the entry of the cursed doctrine of Mahoma, which has already infected almost all the other realms, and its establishment there, which would be an easy thing, as the Chinese are so sensual and full of vices; and if it once enter that country, the conversion of souls will be extremely difficult, and the conquest of the land almost impossible, for this wicked belief renders men obstinate in its retention, and ferocious ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... of mockery. His attitude brought up the superfluous flesh about his chin and the roll of fat at the back of his neck. With his moustache en croc, and his shoebrush hair, I have rarely beheld a more sensual-looking desperado. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... "indelicacy" in their application to social refinement, and it is evident that the ideas of that time on this subject differ from ours only in degree. Under the Restoration, these words, or the thoughts they represent, had a very insignificant existence. Public taste inclined to the gross and the sensual, and welcomed as enjoyable, what the present discards as disgusting. Ladies of the highest rank sat through plays of which the purpose and effect was to degrade their own womanhood, to remove from the minds of the men who sat about and watched their countenances at each new obscenity, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... two King-Counts the secret of their policy and their fall. That of Henry II. is clearly a portrait. Nothing could be less ideal than the narrow brow, the large prosaic eyes, the coarse full cheeks, the sensual dogged jaw, that combine somehow into a face far higher than its separate details, and which is marked by a certain sense of power and command. No countenance could be in stronger contrast with his son's, and yet in both there is the same look of repulsive isolation ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... assumed this attitude towards popular belief are simple enough. He maintained that the evidence of sensual perception was the basis of all knowledge, and he thought that the senses (through dreams) gave evidence of the existence of the gods. And in the popular ideas of the bliss of the gods he found his ethical ideal directly confirmed. As regards their eternity ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... A life of innocence and purity, according to the example of Jesus Christ and his first true followers; implying entire abstinence from all sensual and carnal gratifications. ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... Vanier, who was entrusted with the management of his business affairs, lost his head at the avalanche of bills, protests and notes of hand which poured into his office, and which it was impossible to meet. The lawyer Lefebre, a fat and sensual free-liver, was equally low in funds, and laid on the government the blame of the confusion into which his affairs had fallen, though it had been entirely his own fault. As for Le Chevalier himself, he attributed his ruin, not without justice, ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... cruel, sensual, imperious, and magnificent. The gorgeous Temple which bore his name was the scene of priestly service and sacramental rites. The great national feasts of the Passover, of Tabernacles, and of Pentecost, were celebrated with solemn pomp, and attracted ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... civilized mind, and were accompanied by scenes which would have disgraced even Nero's revels. Nearly every night, with the gathering darkness, crowds would retire to some favorite spot, where, amid every species of sensual indulgence they would revel until the morning twilight. At such times the chiefs would lay aside their authority, and mingle with the lowest courtesan in ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... infinity. To-day, in books, in the rivalry of writers, especially novelists, success, (so-call'd,) is for him or her who strikes the mean flat average, the sensational appetite for stimulus, incident, persiflage, &c., and depicts, to the common calibre, sensual, exterior life. To such, or the luckiest of them, as we see, the audiences are limitless and profitable; but they cease presently. While this day, or any day, to workmen portraying interior or spiritual life, the audiences were limited, and ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... identify him as Henry d'Albret, King of Navarre. They conjecture the name of Hircan to be derived from Ilanricus, a not uncommon fashion of spelling Henricus. It might, however, simply come from hircus, a he-goat, for Hircan is a man of gross, sensual tastes. ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... Desmonds were not so potent either for good or ill. The late earl had chosen to live in London all his life, and had sunk down to be the toadying friend, or perhaps I should more properly say the bullied flunky, of a sensual, wine-bibbing, gluttonous——king. Late in life when he was broken in means and character, he had married. The lady of his choice had been chosen as an heiress; but there had been some slip between that cup of fortune and his lip; ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... family, than did Napoleon through days of Herculean exertion and nights of sleeplessness devote every energy of body and soul to the greatness of France. He loved not ease, he loved not personal indulgence, he loved not sensual gratification. The elevation of France to prosperity, wealth, and power, was a limitless ambition. The almost supernatural success which had thus far attended his exertions, did but magnify his desires and stimulate his hopes. He had no wish to elevate France ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... April 1492, Michelangelo lost his friend and patron. Lorenzo died in his villa at Careggi, aged little more than forty-four years. Guicciardini implies that his health and strength had been prematurely broken by sensual indulgences. About the circumstances of his last hours there are some doubts and difficulties; but it seems clear that he expired as a Christian, after a final interview with Savonarola. His death cast a gloom over Italy. Princes and ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... SIN.—The word "lust" is now universally employed and understood in one direction only. It is a pity and a mistake; because we fail to appreciate many of the warning signals which the Spirit of God stations along our path. Any inordinate desire for sensual and pleasurable excitement, whether fixed on a right object, or directed towards a wrong one, comes under the denomination of "lust." Strong and ill-regulated desire or passion, in whatever direction it expresses itself, will work our ruin, and not that alone of impurity, to ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... the Comic scene, (The flattering reflex of a sensual age) Shown prurient Folly's rank licentious mien, Refined, embellish'd on the ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... when he looked at it now. For had he been "good and true"? Alas! No—nothing but a sensual, ambitious weakling. ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... is one continued round of licentious pleasures and sensual gratifications; or the gloomy enthusiast, who detests the cheerful amusements he can never enjoy, and envies the healthy feelings he can never know, and who would put down the one and suppress the other, until he made the minds of his fellow-beings as besotted and distorted as ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... marriage to make a talk: it wouldn't be like you to bestow so much beauty on a widower. I think there is a certain vulgarity about an elegant girl marrying a widower. She is so refined, and he is generally so sleek and sensual. Did you hear from ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... powers. Many of them are so much in the habit of attending the theatres when favourite plays are acted, that they know almost every word of the principal scenes by heart. All their favourite amusements are in some measure of a refined kind. It is not in drinking clubs, or in sensual gratifications alone, that men of these ranks seek for relaxation, as its too often the case with us; but it is in the society of women, in conversation, in music and dancing, in theatres and operas, and caffes and promenades, in seeing and being seen; in short, in scenes resembling, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... for sensation is the desire of being, the distortion of the soul's eternal life. The lust of sensual stimulus and excitation rests on the longing to feel one's life keenly, to gain the sense of being really alive. This sense of true life comes only with the coming of the soul, and the soul comes only in silence, after self-indulgence has been courageously ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... plain colors, and the author does not hesitate to draw conclusions from them, too strongly convincing to be questioned by his readers. The old engraver, Karl Fischer, his wife and two daughters, are typical products of the time, especially the pretty and sensual Thekla, whose physical exuberance and innocent carelessness of social decencies are such a manifest ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... filling the wine-cups of the guests, saying, "This seems to me the best thing," strong opposition has been aroused, shown even in antiquity by the sharp protest of Plato and Lucian. Still this Phaeacian enjoyment is innocent enough; not ascetic is the trait, yet not sensual; to-day good people usually eat and drink without the song of bard or other spiritual entertainment accompanying ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... through the means of symbols, monumental records, and the investigation of extinct tongues, proves that from a stage of Nature worship and a pure and rational conception of the creative forces in the universe, mankind, in course of time, degenerated into mere devotees of sensual pleasure. With the corruption of human nature and the decline of mental power which followed the supremacy of the animal instincts, the earlier abstract idea of God was gradually lost sight of, and man himself in the form of a potentate or ruler, together with ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... Association with the base impaireth the understanding, as, indeed, with the indifferent maketh it indifferent, while communion with the good ever exalteth it. All those attributes which are spoken of in the world as the sources of religious merit, of worldly prosperity and sensual pleasures, which are regarded by the people, extolled in the Vedas, and approved by the well-behaved, exist in you, separately and jointly! Therefore, desirous of our own welfare, we wish to live amongst you who ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... sure to prevail; and these personal accomplishments, so far from being of use to the owner, serve only to deprive her of liberty, and the society of her friends; to render her a degraded victim, subservient to the sensual gratification, the caprice, and the jealousy of tyrant man. Among savage tribes the labour and drudgery invariably fall heaviest on the ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... folly, till a fund of materials has been transmitted to posterity, sufficient to form a concise history on this subject. Men in all ages have set a just value on life; and in proportion to the means of enjoyment, this value has been appreciated in a greater or less degree. If the gratification of the sensual appetite formed the principal object of living, its prolongation would be to the epicure, as desirable as the prospect of an existence to be enjoyed beyond the limits of the grave, is to ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... he looked at her, and the greedy expression came into his sensual, confident young face. "She's a corker," said he. "But I'm content to be ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... of eccentricity, and certainly Wenceslas, Emperor of Germany and King of Bohemia, had an eccentricity that approached the vagaries of the insane. The oldest son of Charles IV., he was brought up in pomp and luxury, and was so addicted to sensual gratification that he left the empire largely to take care of itself, while he gave his time to the pleasures of the bottle and the chase. Born to the throne, he was crowned King of Bohemia when but three ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... counsel, who discovered a flaw in the indictment, and succeeded, at great cost to Trefusis, in getting the sentence quashed. Agatha at last got tired of hearing of his misdeeds. She believed him to be heartless, selfish, and misguided, but she knew that he was not the loud, coarse, sensual, and ignorant brawler most of her mother's gossips supposed him to be. She even felt, in spite of herself, an emotion of gratitude to the few who ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... love it extremely, but I found myself defective in that noble practice of it. The more I loved it, the more I labored to acquire what I saw failed in. But, alas! I seemed continually to be overcome by that which was the contrary to it. My heart, indeed, was detached from all sensual pleasures. For these several years past, it has seemed to me that my mind is so detached and absent from the body, that I do things as if I did them not. If I eat, or refresh myself, it is done with such an absence, or separation, as I wonder at, with an entire ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... most interesting thing in art is the personality of the artist; and if that is singular, I am willing to excuse a thousand faults. I suppose Velasquez was a better painter than El Greco, but custom stales one's admiration for him: the Cretan, sensual and tragic, proffers the mystery of his soul like a standing sacrifice. The artist, painter, poet, or musician, by his decoration, sublime or beautiful, satisfies the aesthetic sense; but that is akin to the sexual instinct, and shares its barbarity: he lays before you also the greater gift ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... in the fullest sense of the word—man in the most complete development of his bodily strength and beauty, in the active exercise of the keenest senses, in the greatest because tempered enjoyment of sensual pleasure, in the free and joyous play of an intellect strong by nature, graced and guided by the most exquisite taste, and enlightened by the sublimest philosophy." Thus, beauty was so important to the Greek that every parent prayed that his children ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... reference to the personal allusions which the spirits and angels made during their visits or his wanderings. His distinguished rival, Christian Wolf, was encountered as a spirit by spirits from Mercury, who 'perceived that what he said did not rise above the sensual things of the natural man, because in speaking he thought of honour, and was desirous, as in the world (for in the other world every one is like his former self), to connect various things into series, and from these again continually to deduce others, and ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... common to both of us, so that we might well have been taken for twins, so did this community, this confidence, remain during the development of our physical and moral powers. That interest of youth; that amazement at the awakening of sensual impulses which clothe themselves in mental forms; of mental necessities which clothe themselves in sensual images; all the reflections upon these, which obscure rather than enlighten us, as the fog covers over and does not illumine the vale from which it is about to ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the fencing-school. Wrestling and football, nine-pins, prison-base, Among the rural clowns find each a place. Nay, Joan unwashed will leave her milking-pail To dance at May-pole, or a Whitsun ale. Thus wallow most in sensual delight, As if their day should never have a night, Till Nature's pale-faced sergeant them surprise, And as the tree then falls, just so it lies. Now look at home, thou who these lines dost read, See which of all these paths thyself ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... Such is the condition in our present state {126} of humiliation. And not the body alone, but the immaterial within us may be at war with the divine. What does the Apostle Jude mean in his description of certain who separated themselves, saying that they are "sensual, having not the Spirit" (Jude 19). The soul, the middle factor in the man, if we may say so, instead of being in alliance with our higher nature, the spirit, takes sides with the lower, the flesh, so ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... Ulford were of a similar type. Both were strong, healthy, sensual, slangy, audacious in a dull kind of fashion—Lady Holme did not call it dull—serenely and perpetually intent upon having everything their own way in life. Both lived for the body and ignored the soul, ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... stability of the rest, for on October 7, 1107, during the vacancy which occurred after Walkelin's death, it fell. The monkish chroniclers attributed the fall to the fact that William Rufus, "who all his life had been profane and sensual and had expired without the Christian viaticum" (Rudborne), was interred beneath it in 1100. William of Malmesbury, however, with a degree of incredulity rare in his days, says it may have been that it would have fallen in any case "through imperfect construction." He describes ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... dumb and full as hers; but she could not sing. If she could, what a story she would have told in a wordless way to this man who was coming! All she could do to show that he was welcome was to make crackers. Cooking is a sensual, grovelling utterance of feeling, you think? Yet, considering the drift of most women's lives, one fancies that as pure and deep love syllables itself every day in beefsteaks as once in Sapphic odes. It is a natural expression for our sex, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... grove was consecrated to health and joy, to luxury and love. The vigorous youth pursued, like Apollo, the object of his desires; and the blushing maid was warned, by the fate of Daphne, to shun the folly of unseasonable coyness. The soldier and the philosopher wisely avoided the temptation of this sensual paradise: [109] where pleasure, assuming the character of religion, imperceptibly dissolved the firmness of manly virtue. But the groves of Daphne continued for many ages to enjoy the veneration of natives and strangers; the privileges of the holy ground were ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the higher. Men often, from infirmity of character, make their election for the nearer good, though they know it to be the less valuable; and this no less when the choice is between two bodily pleasures, than when it is between bodily and mental. They pursue sensual indulgences to the injury of health, though perfectly aware that health is the greater good. It may be further objected, that many who begin with youthful enthusiasm for everything noble, as they advance in years sink into indolence and selfishness. ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... Bunbury—are indispensable. The last, a gentleman of family, fortune, and position, and equerry to the Duke of York, was, in truth, rather an amateur than an artist. Rowlandson was an able draughtsman, and something more; but his style and his tastes are essentially coarse and sensual, and his women are the overblown beauties of the Drury Lane and Covent Garden of his day. George Moutard Woodward, whose productions he sometimes honoured by etching, and whose distinguishing characteristics are carelessness and often ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... deepest and most lyrical of his productions. Here is the Sage of Craigenputtock at his best, at his grimmest, and, we must add, in his most incoherent mood. To make men think, to rouse men out of the slough of the conventional, the sensual, the mechanical, to make men feel, by sheer force of poetry, pathos, and humour, the religious mystery of life and the "wretchlessness of unclean living"—(as our Church article hath it)—nothing could ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison |
