"Vicious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the start. That is, A. had a severe emotional reaction to a horrible experience; this brought about insomnia and disordered nutrition, and these, by lowering the endurance and ability, brought to being a vicious circle of fatigue and depression, in which fatigue caused depression and depression increased fatigue. The treatment must be directed at first to the physical factors, and with these conquered the acquired forms of anhedonia usually ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... town. He went in out of mere idle curiosity, just recovered from a spree, and was so wrought upon that when he came out he was a different creature, a new man, the old life with its appetite for vicious indulgence sloughed off and left behind him, and he now possessed with a burning desire to do some such active service for God as aforetime he had done for the devil. After three or four months of some sort of training in an institution maintained by the California Society of Friends—a body more ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... were by that happy momentary majority carried against him, and Mahomed Reza Khan was placed in his former situation. But Mr. Hastings, though thus defeated, was only waiting for what he considered to be the fortunate moment for returning again to his corrupt, vicious, tyrannical, and disobedient habits. The reappointment of Mahomed Reza Khan had met with the fullest approbation of the Company; and they directed, that, as long as his good behavior entitled him to it, he should continue in the office. Mr. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... speak now of featherless brutes that go on two legs. When a man is brutal, he cannot be kind and good; when a man is good, he cannot be brutal;—believe my long experience, which has learned it. If all blockheads are not vicious,—and I think they are,—all wicked men are necessarily foolish. And that is the moral of this story, if you can't find a better one. If you will find me a better, I will go and tell it to the Pope ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... house, or permitted them to visit her. Her favour, or dislike, was founded upon mere impulse, or the caprice of first impressions. Among her earliest visitors, was a young man of twenty-two, clerk in a dry-goods' store. He had an open, prepossessing manner, but had indulged in vicious habits for many years, and was thoroughly unprincipled. His name I will call Warburton. Another visitor was a modest, sensible young man, also clerk in another dry-goods' store. He was correct in all his habits, and inclined to be religious. He had no ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... With my vicious horse at a furious speed, I came up Black Barrow Down, directed by some shout of men, which seemed to me but a whisper. And there, about a furlong before me, rode a man on a great black horse, and I knew that man was ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... still something, if we be vicious even; and, if I am not virtuous myself, at least I have not lost the sense that it were good to ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... heart, that I might be a little child again, that my father might learn me to speak without this wicked way of swearing.'[18] In his numerous confessions, he never expresses pain at having, by his vicious conduct, occasioned grief to his father or mother. From this it may be inferred, that neither his father's example nor precept had checked this wretched propensity to swearing, and that he owed nothing to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... (e.g. a Board of Education inspector) are choice of subject and fidelity to common vision. So, even if a drawing-master could recognise artistic talent, he would not be permitted to encourage it. It is not that drawing-masters are wicked, but that the system is vicious. Art ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... cabinet, and it was by Chase alone that the efforts of the patriots to expel Seward, were baffled. And yet, from the first day of the official assemblage of this cabinet down to the day of the meeting of the present session of Congress, Chase was more vigorously vicious than any other living man in daily, hourly, all the time, denunciation of Seward,—of course, behind Seward's back! Several insoluble problems, no doubt, there are; but there is not one thing, physical or not physical, which so completely defies any ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... Harry and Si Peters standing up in the boat. Peters had just struck at his chum, and Harry had partly dodged the vicious blow. ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... you are already beginning to be a public character, and are admonishing and reproaching me for not being one, suppose that we ask a few questions of one another. Tell me, then, Callicles, how about making any of the citizens better? Was there ever a man who was once vicious, or unjust, or intemperate, or foolish, and became by the help of Callicles good and noble? Was there ever such a man, whether citizen or stranger, slave or freeman? Tell me, Callicles, if a person ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... to the sea. To-morrow once more the flat, dusty country with the heat haze shimmering over it and every now and then the dull drone of some bursting crump, or the vicious crack of high explosive. Behind, the same old row of balloons; in front, the same old holes in the ground. . . . But to-day—peace. . ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... as members of Parliament, of all who cannot or will not afford to incur a heavy expense. I do not say that, so long as there is scarcely a chance for an independent candidate to come into Parliament without complying with this vicious practice, it must always be morally wrong in him to spend money, provided that no part of it is either directly or indirectly employed in corruption. But, to justify it, he ought to be very certain that he can ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... characters, either as conceived or preserved, I have no fault to find; but was much inclined to congratulate a writer, who, in defiance of prejudice and fashion, made the Archbishop a good man, and scorned all thoughtless applause, which a vicious ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... another person as her partner in that odious dance? The very fact that she had so deceived him was proof to him that she had known that she ought not to dance with Captain De Baron, and that she had a vicious pleasure in doing so which she had been determined to gratify even in opposition to his express orders. As he stalked up and down the room in his wrath, he forgot as much as he remembered. It had been represented to him that this odious romp had been no ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... of his own in a small village outside Moscow, and Sophia selected fifty boys of his own age to be his playmates. She had his former teachers dismissed and chose such comrades for him as she thought would grow up idle, vicious men. ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... advice of the proprietor moved my bureau and trunk against the bedroom door, I lay wide awake listening to the taking of the town apart. At each especially vicious crash I wondered if that might be Jimmy Powers ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... she broke two of his ribs. At the shrieks of the thief people ran up, but Lisette would not let him go till my servant and I compelled her, for in her fury she would have flown at anyone else. She had become still more vicious ever since the Saxon hussar officer, of whom I have told you, had treacherously laid open her shoulder with a sabre-cut on the battlefield ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... "However," life had made him philosophical; "the moments of unreasonable happiness are the most enviable no doubt, for there is neither gall nor satiety in the reaction. All this is as enchanting as—well, as a woman's promise. What lies beyond? Illiterate and mercenary Spaniards, vicious natives, and boundless ennui, one may safely wager. But if all California is as beautiful as this, no man that has spent a winter in ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... appended a note from Mr. Mivart, in which he said: "Nothing would have been further from our intention than to tax Mr. Darwin personally (as he seems to have supposed) with the advocacy of laws or acts which he saw to be oppressive or vicious. We, therefore, most willingly accept his disclaimer, and are glad to find that he does not, in fact, apprehend the full tendency of the doctrines which he has helped to propagate. Nevertheless, we cannot allow that we have enunciated a single ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... hardship of displacing incumbents dependent upon their official stations without sufficient consideration; from a supposed want of responsibility on the part of the President, and from an imagined defect of guaranties against a vicious President who might incline to abuse the power. On the other hand, an exclusive power of removal by the President was defended as a true exposition of the text of the Constitution. It was maintained that there are certain causes for which persons ought to be removed from office without ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... spirit with which he will take to his work when he rises into the higher school; and that nothing is worse for a boy than to fall into that loafing, tuck-shop- haunting set, who neither play hard nor work hard, and are usually extravagant, and often vicious. Moreover, they know well that games conduce, not merely to physical, but to moral health; that in the playing-field boys acquire virtues which no books can give them; not merely daring and endurance, but, better still, temper, self-restraint, fairness, honour, unenvious approbation ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... but still his interest and his conscience were at variance, and he could not bring himself either to be virtuous or vicious enough to comply with his father's wishes. He could not decide to go into the church merely from interested motives—from that his conscience revolted; he could not determine to make himself fit to do credit to the sacred profession—against this ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... have not as yet learned the refinement which only the cultivation of art can give; and when their intellects are uneducated, and their tastes are coarse, the tastes and amusements of classes still more ignorant must be coarse and vicious likewise, in an ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... please: it is new, just, and delightful. With the characters, either as conceived or preserved, I have no fault to find; but was much inclined to congratulate a writer, who, in defiance of prejudice and fashion, made the Archbishop a good man, and scorned all thoughtless applause which a vicious churchman would have brought him." It was with reference to this tragedy, that Lord Byron regretted the flippant and unjust sarcasms against his noble relation, which he had admitted into the early ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... in his balance. "Wha-at—not for me?" He looked at the piece of meat and crust, and suddenly, in a vicious spurt of temper, flung ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... phrase for which no emphatic place can be found without disorganising the structure of the period; the pert intrusion on a solemn thought of a flight of short syllables, twittering like a flock of sparrows; or that vicious trick of sentences whereby each, unmindful of its position and duties, tends to imitate the deformities of its predecessor;—these are a select few of the difficulties that the nature of language and of man conspire to put upon the writer. He is well served by his mind and ear if he can ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... Charlottetown until after the funeral. That night she lay with the baby on her arm, listening with joy to its soft little breathing. She did not sleep or wish to sleep. Her waking fancies were more alluring than any visions of dreamland. Moreover, she gave a spice to them by occasionally snapping some vicious sentences out loud ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... it!" said Farmer Perkins. "Knew it the minute I see them ears. He's a vicious brute, that colt, but we'll ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... of cheap clothes, imitative dispositions, and intellectual poverty, this class is greatly on the increase, it has been thought necessary that this Act should be framed to control their vicious habits: ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... the reporters never came near the house. Instead, lurid stories were concocted in the back rooms of nearby roadhouses. And, failing to find us at home, interviews were faked so badly that they verged on the burlesque ... where not vulgar, they were vicious ... words were slipped in that implied things which, expressed clearly, had furnished ample ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... striving to adapt herself to her environment, that she might search its farthest nook and angle; what with ceaseless efforts to check her almost momentary impulse to cry out against the vulgar display of modernity and the vicious inequity of privilege which she saw on every hand; what with her purity of thought; her rare ideals and selfless motives; her boundless love for humanity; and her passionate desire to so live her "message" that all the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... a gruff laugh. It was practically impossible not to confide in Bernard Monck. "She wants to get right away from that vicious little termagant of a mother of hers. There's no love between them and never will be, so what's the use of pretending? She wants to get into a wholesome bracing, outdoor atmosphere with someone who knows how to love her. She'll probably ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... they have come under my notice, I have pointed out. The chief of all is slavery. This stared me in the face the moment I entered the States; and it presses itself on my notice now that I have retired from the American shore. It is the beginning and the ending of all that is vile and vicious in this confederation of Republics. In England, you have been often told by American visiters that the Northern States of the Union are not at all identified with slavery, and are, in fact, no more ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... this universal dotage and deliration, the sound portion of mankind to bestir themselves and rally. When the widest and wildest violations of that divine right of Property, the only divine right now extant or conceivable, are sanctioned and recommended by a vicious Press, and the world has lived to hear it asserted that we have no Property in our very Bodies, but only an accidental Possession and Life-rent, what is the issue to be looked for? Hangmen and Catchpoles ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the Gold Coast with my late friend Colonel De Ruvignes, we suddenly came in the grey of the morning upon a herd of these beasts. We dismounted, hobbled our nags and sat down, sword and revolver in hand. Luckily it was feeding time for the vicious brutes, which scowled at us but did not attack us. During my four years' service on the West African Coast I heard enough to satisfy me that these powerful beasts often kill me and rape women; but I could not convince myself that they ever kept the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... and I had time to take in the full absurdity of the position; to measure the height; of the windows with my eye and plumb the dark shadows under the rafters, where the feebler rays of our candle lost themselves; to appreciate, in a word, the extent of our predicament. Maignan was furious, La Trape vicious, while my own equanimity scarcely supported me against the thought that we should probably be where we were until the arrival of my people, whom I had directed my wife to send to Le Mesnil at noon next day. Their coming would free us, indeed, but at the cost of ridicule and ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... appointment of an intendant of the finances. I beg to offer you my compliments," said Colbert, with a vicious smile. ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... art to fascination. Even admirable people, walking through his occasional one-man exhibitions, felt a lure in his presentations of sin, of warped womanhood, and, gazing at the blurred faces, the dilated eyes, the haggard mouths, the vicious hands of his portraits, were shiveringly conscious of missed experiences, and for the moment felt ill at ease with what seemed just there, and just then, the dullness of virtue. The evil admired him because ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... one logical difficulty thus introduced. The 'checks' are vice, misery, and moral restraint. But why distinguish vice from misery? Is not conduct vicious which causes misery,[232] and precisely because it causes misery? He replies that to omit 'vice' would confuse our language. Vicious conduct may cause happiness in particular cases; though its general ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... occupied with the framing of ideals and the search after absolute truth; as they grow older they generally become more practical; they accept, more or less, the idea of compromise, and make the best of things as they are or as they may be made. The age being vicious, Addison did not betake himself to a monastery, or urge others to do so; he tried to mend its morals. This was a difficult task. The Puritans, during their supremacy, had imposed their own severity on ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... on basing nature upon the foundation of a supreme ordaining Being, the unity of nature is in effect lost. For, in this case, it is quite foreign and unessential to the nature of things, and cannot be cognized from the general laws of nature. And thus arises a vicious circular argument, what ought to have been proved having ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... into the life of his subjects as the wind goes everywhere; mete out even justice to all like Yama (god of death); bind transgressors in a noose like Varuna (Vedic deity of sky and wind); please all like the moon, burn up vicious enemies like the god of fire; and support all ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... security of United States bonds deposited in the Treasury. These notes, prepared under the supervision of proper officers, being uniform in appearance and security and convertible always into coin, would at once protect labor against the evils of a vicious currency and facilitate commerce by cheap ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... friends. Never, perhaps, was this fact exemplified more clearly than on that battle eve. Community of guilt, indeed, bound those vicious souls together—community of interests, of fears, of perils, held them in league—yet, feeling as they did feel that their sole chance of safety lay in the maintenance of that confederation, each looked with evil eyes upon his neighbor, each almost hated the others, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... the Affections are possess'd, and the Soul hurried down the Stream to embrace low and base Objects; if those Spirits, which are the Life and enlivening Powers of the Soul, are drawn off to Parties, and to be engag'd in a vicious and corrupt manner, shooting out wild and wicked Desires, and running the Man headlong into Crime, the Case is easily resolv'd, the Man is possess'd, the Devil is in him; and having taken the Fort, or at least the Counterscarp and Out-Works, is making his Lodgment to cover and secure ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... have several plain, simple, unvarnished and unembellished cases which are typical of millions of similar cases and which prove conclusively that the law against imparting information about preventing conception is brutal, vicious, antisocial. Should not such a law be repealed, wiped off ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... friendly Rhimes, For raking in the dunghill of their crimes. To name each Monster wou'd make Printing dear, Or tire Ned Ward, who writes six Books a-year. Such vicious Nonsense, Impudence, and Spite, Wou'd make a Hermit, or a Father write. Tho' Julian rul'd the World, and held no more Than deist Gildon taught, or Toland swore, Good Greg'ry[48] prov'd him execrably bad, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... Neal's Money, for he offers it. Mr. Waller said the Company was pleas'd with this Answer, and the Wit of it seem'd to affect the King." Which shews the exceeding Aptness and Usefulness of a good Irony; that can convey an Instruction to a vicious, evil, and tyrannical Prince, highly reflecting on his Conduct, without drawing on ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... to overbear some encroaching pagan by loud-spoken interrogations respecting a bay mare with a switch tail, or a strawberry bullock with wide horns—such ostentatious inquiry being accompanied by a furtive and vicious jabbing of evidence's horse, or evidence himself, with some suitable instrument. Yet batch after batch was withdrawn and paid for; while the red sun rose higher, and Mr. Smythe became impatient and crusty, by reason of the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... who has subdued all motions, breathe forth through the nose with the gentle breath. Let the wise man without fail restrain his mind, that chariot yoked with vicious horses. ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... of their meeting at Vicksburg was accurately weighed by the enemy; and, however it may have imposed upon the Northern people, did nothing to insure the safety of the unarmed vessels upon which supplies depended. This essentially vicious military situation resulted necessarily in a degree of insecurity which could have but one issue—a retreat by both squadrons toward their respective bases, which soon ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... to be of innocent repute, for it is built solely from stuff that means to wander, and wandering since the days of Moses has been practiced by the most respectable persons. Yet Noah Webster, a most disinterested old gentleman, makes it clear that a vagabond is a vicious scamp who deserves no better than the lockup. Doubtless Webster, if at home, would loose his dog did such a one appear. A wayfarer, also, in former times was but a goer of ways, a man afoot, whether on ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... ejaculation was in spired by the mean, vicious, and unsportsmanlike conduct of Ammonia the gorilla, who had succeeded in gripping Mahdi by one leg, and was hanging on, ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... condition of Rome formerly with what it is to-day. Paralyzed by the necessary consequences of the Revolution, could she have risen again and maintained her position? A vicious government as to political matters has taken the place of the former Roman legislation, which, without being perfect, nevertheless contributed to form great men of every kind. Modern Rome has applied to its political government principles better suited to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... d'oeil on entering an anderoon. With such surroundings, one would expect to find refined, if not beautiful women; but, though the latter are rare enough, the former are even rarer in Persia. The Persian woman is a grown-up child, and a very vicious one to boot. Her daily life, indeed, is not calculated to improve the health of either mind or body. Most of the time is spent in dressing and undressing, trying on clothes, painting her face, sucking sweetmeats, and smoking cigarettes till her complexion is as yellow as a guinea. Intellectual ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... Buddha for which Saga is locally famous, the road continues through a somewhat undulating country, ridable, generally speaking, the whole way. Long cedar or cryptomerian avenues sometimes characterize the way. Strings of peasants are encountered, leading pack-ponies and bullocks. The former seem to be vicious little wretches, rather masters, on the whole, than servants ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... and sat in his chair. He looked very much like a codfish—with his gaping mouth and foolish eyes. He pulled one of his long whiskers and inspected the end of it; detected a split hair, separated it from its happier fellows, shut his eyes, gave a vicious wrench to it and gasped as it parted. Then he stared at the assembly before him, as if to catch them laughing, frowned at Manvers, who sat before him with folded arms; lastly he turned to the prisoner, who stood up and looked him ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... of a ballad, one must repeat a caution, hinted already, and made doubly important by a vicious tendency in the study of all phases of culture. It is a vital mistake to explain primitive conditions by exact analogy with conditions of modern savagery and barbarism. Certain conclusions, always guarded and cautious to a degree, may indeed be drawn; but it is folly to insist that what now goes ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... creatures required connecting bridges between the trees, but later when I saw the motley aggregation of half-savage beasts which they kept within their village I realized the necessity for the pathways. There were a number of the same vicious wolf-dogs which we had left worrying the dyryth, and many goatlike animals whose distended udders explained the ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... not that women are weak or that men are inherently vicious. That doesn't account for a case like this. Then, too, some mawkish people to-day are fond of putting the whole evil on low wages as a cause. It isn't that—alone. It isn't even lack of education or of moral training. Human nature is not so bad in the mass as some good people think. No, don't ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... hour the dark, silent woods wheeled past us. Swarms of black flies—those insect wolves—waylaid us and hung to us till a smart spurt of the horse, where the road favored, left them behind. But a species of large horse-fly, black and vicious, it was not so easy to get rid of. When they alighted upon the horse, we would demolish them with the whip or with our felt hats, a proceeding the horse soon came to understand and appreciate. The white and gray Laurentian boulders lay along the roadside. The soil seemed as if ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... vicious-looking nag, with mane half pulled out, and a "watch-eye," and feet "interfering," and a tail from which had been subtracted enough hair to make six "waterfalls," squealed out the suggestion that it was time for a rebellion, and she moved that ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... article in a leading London journal by an "intellectual" who attacked one of the noblest poets and greatest artists of a former century (or any century) on the ground that his high ethical standards were incompatible with the new lawlessness. This vicious lawlessness the writer described definitely, and he paid his tribute to dishonour as openly and brutally as any of the Bolsheviki could have done. I had always known that this was the real ground of the latter-day onslaught on some of the noblest literature of the past; but I had never ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... nation. Here is a remedy for unemployment, drink, slums, disease, and many forms of vice; a remedy that is within the reach of everyone, and that costs only the relinquishing of a foolish prejudice and the adoption of a natural mode of living plus the effort to overcome a vicious habit and the denial of pleasure derived from the gratification of corrupted appetite. Nature will soon create a dislike for that which once was a pleasure, and in compensation will confer a wholesome and beneficent enjoyment in the partaking of pure and salutary foods. Whether ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... long to wait! For an instant the pearl-pale zenith shone serenely void. Then, heralded by a droning noise as of giant bees, and a vicious spitting of shrapnel, high overhead sailed a wide-winged black bird, chased by four other birds bigger, because nearer earth. They soared, circling closer, closer—two mounting high, two flying low, and so passed westward, while the sky was spattered with shrapnel—long, white streaks ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Hester Stanhope, whom Kinglake, in his Eothen, first made familiar to so many of us. He there speaks of the "quiet women in Somersetshire," and their surprise when they learned that "the intrepid girl who used to break their vicious horses for them" was reigning over the wandering ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... therefore was surprised when the venerable playwright prepared the unexpected denouement. In pursuance of this end, it was decreed by the imperious and incontrovertible dramatist of the human family that this crabbed, vicious, antiquated marionette should wend his way to the St. Charles on a particular evening. Since the day at the races, the eccentric nobleman had been ill and confined to his room, but now he was beginning to hobble around, and, immediately with ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... were as polite as if they had been with fashionable ladies, rather intimidated their neighbors, but Baron von Kelweinstein gave the reins to all his vicious propensities, beamed, made obscene remarks, and seemed on fire with his crown of red hair. He paid them compliments in French from the other side of the Rhine, and sputtered out gallant remarks, only fit for a low pot-house, from between his ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... stood mute and impassive, waiting for further orders, whilst two soldiers were kneeling beside the prostrate form of Marguerite. Chauvelin gave his secretary a vicious look. His well-laid plan had failed, its sequel was problematical; there was still a great chance now that the Scarlet Pimpernel might yet escape, and Chauvelin, with that unreasoning fury, which sometimes assails a strong nature, was longing to ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... the heart of the Virgin was cut in a long, clean stroke—and opened in a disfiguring gash. Beneath it, on a little stand, lay a slim-bladed, vicious knife, covered ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... battle, swords, and javelins and arrows, none of these alarmed or frighted thee! But now what fitfulness of temper this, to carry off by violence, to rob my soul of one, the choicest jewel of his tribe. O! thou art but a vicious reptile, to do such wickedness as this! to-day thy woeful lamentation sounds everywhere within these palace walls, but when you stole away my cherished one, why wert thou dumb and silent then! if then thy voice had sounded ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... corpse by torch-light; would not sin the common way, but held that a kind of rusticity; they would do it new, or contrary, for the infamy; they were ambitious of living backward; and at last arrived at that, as they would love nothing but the vices, not the vicious customs. It was impossible to reform these natures; they were dried and hardened in their ill. They may say they desired to leave it, but do not trust them; and they may think they desire it, but they may lie for all that; they are a little angry ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... along the route, too, dressed in British-style brown uniforms. Some carried Sten guns, vicious little submachine ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... And in his memory stored each precious word; Successfully pursued the plan, and now, Room for my Lord—Virtue, stand by and bow. And is this all—is this the worldling's art, To mask, but not amend a vicious heart 330 Shall lukewarm caution, and demeanour grave, For wise and good stamp every supple knave Shall wretches, whom no real virtue warms, Gild fair their names and states with empty forms; While ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... to you, Susan, that my parentage is as obscure as it well can be; and secondly, that the early part of my life was as vicious. I may, indeed, extenuate it when I enter into an explanation, and with great justice: but I have now only stated the facts generally. If you wish me to enter into particulars, much as I shall blush at the exposure, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... simply went to fulfil a useful task, as they thought, in the interests of science, and, at the same time, they made their own chance observations; but I was a benefactor, I went for the purpose of aiding the unfortunate, the corrupt, vicious people, whom I supposed that I should meet with in this house. And, behold, instead of unfortunate, corrupt, and vicious people, I saw that the majority were laborious, industrious, peaceable, satisfied, contented, cheerful, polite, and very good ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... the law against vicious intromission has been very favourably represented by a great master of jurisprudence[575], whose words have been exhibited with unnecessary pomp, and seem to be considered as irresistibly decisive. The great moment of his authority makes it necessary ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Earl, is married to the Duke of Richmond's daughter,(15) at the Duke's country house, and are now coming to town. She will be fluxed in two months, and they'll be parted in a year. You ladies are brave, bold, venturesome folks; and the chit is but seventeen, and is ill-natured, covetous, vicious, and proud in extremes. And so get you ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... was older, so he was much more competent. Not so much vicious as curious and enterprising, he knew a great many things which I only guessed at, and could do much—or said that he could—which I only dreamed about. He put a good deal of heart into my instruction, and left me finally with my lesson learned. I never saw nor heard of him after I left the ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... ye treacherous Paths of Vice, Which lead Men blindfold to their End, In time like me repent you that are wise, And by Restraint your vicious Courses end. ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... his individual temperament, and if he fails in anything he refers it to the workings of the supernatural. A man, however, who tries to gain advancement by plots and injuries is in the first place held to be crafty and crooked, malicious and vicious: (and this I know you would allow no one to say or think about you, even if you might rule the whole world by it): again, if he succeeds, he is thought to have gained an unjust advantage, and if he fails, to have met with merited misfortune. [-3-] This being so, any one might reproach ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... were themselves the actual owners of property, had their illegitimate children as charges on the parish, regularly deducting the cost of their maintenance from their poor-rate, neither they nor their relatives feeling that to do so was any disgrace. The system must have been fearfully vicious that produced such depravation of moral feeling, and such a ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... man muttered a curse on her; then he said with a vicious, sharp flash in his eyes: "That patrician viper! Every where in everything—she spoils it all! But wait a while! I fancy she will soon be removed from our path, and then. . . . No, even now, at the present time, I will not allow ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... thus, that wit, imagination, sensibility, talents, &c. diversify to infinity the differences that are to be found in man. It is thus, that some are called good, others wicked; some are denominated virtuous, others vicious; some are ranked as learned, others as ignorant; some are ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... been so happy? how else did it come about that little by little he was withdrawing from the society and influence of his artificial world, as represented by such men as Sargeant? how else was he slowly loosening the grip of the one evil and vicious habit that had clutched him so long? how else was his ambition stirring? how else was his hitherto aimless enthusiasm hardening to energy and determination? She had not always so influenced him. In the days when they had just known each other, and met each other in the weekly ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... assistant on his pony comes tearing along across country. The weighing for the first race is going on; horses are being saddled, some vicious brute occasionally lashing out, and scattering the crowd behind him. The ladies are seated round the terraced grand stand; long strings of horses are being led round and round in a circle, by the syces; ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... where the young man grows up without any harvest of wild oats, with clear and unselfish ideals, with a longing to make the world purer and diviner than he found it, a picture which is in some measure realised around us to-day. May God deliver us not only from vicious but from selfish thoughts! I believe Thackeray saw something of that picture, but he didn't draw it with the colours I could have wished. There is a solemn text in Ezekiel, which came in the lesson lately, 'The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... directors of The King's Daughters' Home for Incurables!" Claire was sitting opposite her aunt, nervously fingering a paper-cutter. Mrs. Ffinch-Brown eyed her niece sharply, and with an obvious determination to drive her thrusts home before her victim recovered from the first vicious stabs she continued: "It seems they haven't a great deal of room out there, but she thinks she could arrange things. They'll raise the price to two thousand dollars after the fifteenth of the month, so I ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the ship kept bucking and sidling like a vicious horse, the sails filling, now on one tack, now on another, and the boom swinging to and fro till the mast groaned aloud under the strain. Now and again, too, there would come a cloud of light sprays over the bulwark, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the tempers and manners of men, even where vicious or absurd. The origin of Vice, from false representations of the fancy, producing false opinions concerning good and evil. Inquiry into ridicule. The general sources of ridicule in the minds and characters of ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... said, in excuse, that Canterbury would be inundated with vicious characters, who would corrupt the morals of the young men; that such a school would break down the distinctions between black and white; and that marriages between people of different colors would ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... summit of the hill when he felt the saddle slipping; the girth had unbuckled or broken. As he dismounted, the saddle came off with him, his foot still in the stirrup. The mare shied, and the rein slipped from his fingers; he clutched at it, but Mary gave a vicious toss of the head, wheeled about, and began trotting down the declivity. Her trot at once broke into a gallop, and the gallop into a full run—a full run for Mary. At the foot of the hill she stumbled, fell, rolled over, gathered herself up, and started off again at ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... punishment was not abolished. Whipping was constantly inflicted, not merely on men but on women, and in public as well as privately. The poor were brutalised by cruel and indecent punishments, and were far too much under the power of magistrates, some of them vicious and ignorant men, who had summary jurisdiction in a large number of ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... Deborah happily. Her father walked to the window. There as he looked blindly out, his eyes were assaulted by the lights of all those titty-tatty flats. And a look of vicious triumph appeared for a moment ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... and pine-woods, cold, silent, and solemn to the heart. Then you push off; the toboggan fetches away; she begins to feel the hill, to glide, to swim, to gallop. In a breath you are out from under the pine-trees, and a whole heavenful of stars reels and flashes overhead. Then comes a vicious effort; for by this time your wooden steed is speeding like the wind, and you are spinning round a corner, and the whole glittering valley and all the lights in all the great hotels lie for a moment ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... abusive treatment be taught to look on every living thing as an enemy, and to sally forth with the most spiteful intentions, as soon as any one approaches their domicile. How often does it happen that the vicious beast, which its owner so passionately belabors, is far less to blame for its obstinacy, than the equally vicious brute who so unmercifully ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... the rest? The parsons own it nowadays themselves, allowing a man's soul to be what God counts most important, but not going so far as to say any animal's soul isn't immortal too. Then where's the sacredness? If it's right to kill a vicious dog or a poisonous snake, how is it so wrong to out a man ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... demand is only a forerunner or symbol of the spiritual, and the signs of the times are even now ready for the keenest readers. People are beginning to enquire if this wonderful power for healing the body can not be used for the healing of vicious minds, ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... he also arose, while he revealed his white teeth in a vicious smile, "it may be in her power to carry out that resolution, but one thing is sure, she can never free herself from the fetters which she finds so galling—she can never marry any other ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... originally any diseased delight in filth for its own sake; was not—shall we say?—a natural, but an artificial Yahoo. He wielded a power over the public mind, approaching the absolute, and which he could have turned to virtuous, instead of vicious account—at first, it might have been amidst considerable resistance and obloquy, but ultimately with triumphant success. This, however, he never attempted, and must therefore be classed, in this respect, with such writers ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... company of two women on the terrace of a high-class restaurant in the Zoological Gardens. For this offence they were expelled from school. They were punished for their navet, not because their conduct was considered vicious, for a year after they passed their examinations and went to the University, gaining in this way a whole year; and when they had completed their studies at Upsala, they were attached to the Embassy in one of the ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... and, for an irrational moment, he hated everything that was blue that should have been green, everything sweet that should have been vicious, everything intelligent that should ...
— The Venus Trap • Evelyn E. Smith
... and he told himself that with Florence the first year would be possible, and that after the first year the struggle would cease to be a struggle. He knew himself, he declared, and he made all manner of excuses for his former vicious life, basing them all on the hardness of her treatment of him. He did not know himself, and such assurances were vain. But buoyed up by such assurances, he resolved that his future fate must be in her hands, and that her word alone should ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... traditional chaperon in thwarting the pleasures of the young. The comeliness, too, of his hostess led him, by inference, to suppose that the chaperon in question would prove to be of a peculiarly vicious and aggressive type. No such apparition came, however, to disturb his satisfaction, and he gradually came to believe in the lawfulness of the situation. His face may have betrayed something of the questionings which were racking his mind, for the self-possessed Kathleen, ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... Hume who had at last understood and who now was riding with bloody spurs and a quirt that cut in swift vicious blows at ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... about the waist; his boots were the high cavalry boots reaching to the knee; his large buckskin gauntlets covered his forearm; he rode a large bony horse, bob-tailed, with a wall-eye which gave him a vicious look, and suited well the brigandish air of his rider's whole appearance. Burnside's flashing eyes, his beard trimmed to the "Burnside cut" with the mustache running into the side whiskers whilst the square, clean-shaven chin and jaws gave a tone of decision and force to his features, made up a picture ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... had used tobacco for over sixty years, delivered from the abnormal appetite instantly through sanctification of the Spirit. I knew an old man, who had been a drunkard for over fifty years, similarly delivered. I knew a young man, the slave of a vicious habit of the flesh, who was set free at once by the fiery baptism. The electric current cannot transform the dead wire into a live one quicker than the Holy Spirit can flood a soul with light and love, destroy the carnal mind, and fill a man with ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... vicious manner of living, he resolved to bring him up in another kind; but for a while he bore with him, considering that nature cannot endure a sudden change, without great violence. Therefore, to begin his work the better, he requested a learned physician of that time, called Master Theodorus, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... could catch Cornelia's slender wrists in their coarse, rough hands, and tear the little weapon from her, there were cuts and gashes on their own arms; for the struggle if brief was vicious. Cornelia stood disarmed. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... with other actions and with various states of the mind."[156] His hypothesis of sexual selection is largely dependent upon the exercise of choice on the part of the female and her preference for "not only the more attractive but at the same time the more vigourous and vicious males."[157] Mental processes and physiological processes were for Darwin closely correlated; and he accepted the conclusion "that the nervous system not only regulates most of the existing functions of the body, but has indirectly influenced the progressive development of various ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... to have the Indians converted to Christianity; and having some natives of Hispaniola along with them as interpreters, they tried by their means to persuade the Indians to peace, leaving off their cruelty, idolatry, and other vicious practices; but they were much incensed against the Spaniards, on account of the villanous conduct of Guerra, and would by no means listen to any peace or intercourse. Having used all possible methods to allure them to peace and submission, pursuant to his instructions, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... the earth—on the one hand, unintelligent and cannibal negroes; on the other, the proud, handsome, and intelligent, though selfish and cruel white race. Again, from a moral standpoint, who can explain congenital tendencies to crime, the vicious by birth, the wicked by nature, the persons with uncontrollable passions? Wherefore are thrift and foresight lacking in so many men, who are consequently condemned to lifelong poverty and wretchedness? ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... where, after flinging the coin into the grate, he paced up and down the floor like an infuriated animal. Then by a sudden impulse he picked the coin up, and opening a toolbox which he kept in the room, he took from it a hammer and bradawl. Two or three vicious blows sufficed to make a hole in the centre of the Queen's countenance. Then with a brass-headed nail he pinned the miscreant piece of silver to the wall above the mantelpiece, and sat looking at it till the storm ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... on my mind still is an occasion when one of the most blatant and vicious of these opponents of religion fell ill. A Salvation Army lass found him deserted and in poverty, nursed and looked after him and eventually made a new man ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... bayonet's point was Van Tromp's stock-in- trade. With an older man he insinuated himself; with youth he imposed himself, and in the same breath imposed an ideal on his victim, who saw that he must work up to it or lose the esteem of this old and vicious patron. And what young man can bear to lose a ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... psalm-books at once fluttered open at "York"; Sunned their long dotted wings in the words that he read, While the leader leaped into the tune just ahead, And politely picked up the key-note with a fork; And the vicious old viol went growling along At the heels of the girls, in the rear ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... other hand, the multiplication of men, by complicating their relations, having rendered the precise limitation of their rights difficult, the perpetual play of the passions having produced incidents not foreseen—their conventions having been vicious, inadequate, or nugatory—in fine, the authors of the laws having sometimes mistaken, sometimes disguised their objects; and their ministers, instead of restraining the cupidity of others, having given themselves up to their own; all these causes have introduced ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... "This is vicious indulgence," Arnold said of his beverage, sitting under the inverted Japanese umbrellas. "I haven't been pitched out ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... didn't. Yes, mad—just mean, baby mad, Mr. Maddy Wayne, for all your CHRISTIAN resignation! That's what's the matter with you." Yet she looked very pretty and piquant in her small spitefulness, which was still so general and superficial that she seemed to shake it out of her wet petticoats in a vicious flap that ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... as the Holland Social Evil Bill, which was under consideration by the board of supervisors and had roused public opinion to white heat, both in favor and in opposition. Miss Anthony naturally made a fight against it, calling a meeting of women only and explaining to them, point by point, its vicious propositions. This provoked both favorable and adverse criticism by the press. At Mayfield she was a guest at the handsome home of Judge and Mrs. Sarah Wallis. Mrs. Knox, Mrs. Watson, Mrs. McKee and a big omnibus load drove up from San Jose, seventeen miles. She spoke at a number ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... best possible opportunity for killing it presented itself immediately. Without hesitation I swung up the heavy barrel, and drew the small silver bead directly on the base of the ear, where the side bones of a bear's head are flatter and thinner, directly alongside the brain. The vicious crack of the rifle sounded loud there in the thicket; but there came no answer in response to it save a crashing and slipping and a breaking down of the bushes as the vast carcass fell at full length. The little ball had done its work ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... all this for John, as said by me to him) I think manly and dignified compositions, distinguished by simplicity and unity of object and aim, and undisfigured by false or vicious ornaments. They are in several places incorrect, and sometimes uncouth in language, and, perhaps, in some, inharmonious; yet, upon the whole, I think the music exceedingly well suited to its end, that is, it has an energetic and varied flow of sound crowding ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... asses together in all his life"; but this was an extreme view. The House may not compare intellectually with the House of Commons, but it contains many bright men. A fool could hardly get in, though the labor unions have placed some vicious representatives there. The lack of manners distressed a lady acquaintance of mine, who, in a burst of indignation at seeing a congressman sitting with his feet on his desk, said that there was not a man in Congress who ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... blamable; I mean the tavern-haunters, the gay companions, who herd together to do little but talk, and who are so fond of talk that they go from home to get at it. The conversation amongst such persons has nothing of instruction in it, and is generally of a vicious tendency. Young people naturally and commendably seek the society of those of their own age; but, be careful in choosing your companions; and lay this down as a rule never to be departed from, that no youth, nor man, ought to be called your friend, who is addicted to indecent talk, or who ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... would tell you so," he said sadly, "and his poor wife. He is not a bad or vicious fellow, like the rest of the rascally pack. Probably when he came to himself, after the moment of rage, he could not simply believe what he had done. But that makes no difference. It was murder; no judge or jury could possibly take any other view. Dynes's evidence ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... barbarities excited by British agents, and cruelties to American seamen impressed by British officers. With the true instinct of his fine nature, he made his friends and companions among the wisest and highest of his time, although he loved all company that was not vicious and depraved. He knew Gerrit Smith in 1814; a few months' stay, as a journeyman printer, at Auburn, forged a lasting friendship with Elijah Miller, the father-in-law of William H. Seward, and with Enos T. Throop, afterward governor. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... there I sat alone in that waning old moonlight, that grew colder and paler by the minute, while the stiff breeze that poured down from Old Harpeth began to be vicious and icy as it nipped my ears and hands and nose and sent a chill down to ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... see), was the general name for any hurtful weed. In the old translation of the Bible, the Zizania, which is now translated Tares, was sometime translated Cockle,[78:1] and Newton, writing in Shakespeare's time, says—"Under the name of Cockle and Darnel is comprehended all vicious, noisom and unprofitable graine, encombring and hindring good corne."—Herball to the Bible. The Darnel is not only injurious from choking the corn, but its seeds become mixed with the true Wheat, and so in Dorsetshire—and perhaps ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... place him there, her husband would listen to no caution. Last but not least of those refusals to advise with those who knew as well as he what should be done had been the one of not heeding the cries of the men who had warned him not to approach the vicious brute. To dominate had been the keynote of her father's character; his death had been a fitting symbol of his overweening desire to pursue ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... Lincoln were fast friends ever after. Wherever Lincoln was at work, Armstrong used to "do his loafing," and Lincoln made visits to Clary's Grove, and long afterward did a friendly service to "old Hannah," Armstrong's wife, by saving one of her vicious race from the gallows, which upon that especial occasion he did not happen to deserve. Also Armstrong and his gang gave Lincoln hearty political support, and an assistance at the polls which was very effective, for success generally ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... have suffered severely as the result of excessive spoliation, which has produced vicious idleness and luxurious indulgence, with the ultimate effect ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... Indecency's the Bane to Ridicule, And only charms the Libertine, or Fool: Nought shall offend the Fair One's Ears to-day, Which they might blush to hear, or blush to say. No private Character these Scenes expose, Our Bard, at Vice, not at the Vicious, throws." ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden |
