"Badness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... London that season was talking of the two Bruffins, and every newspaper, in direct ratio to the badness of its paper and print, was scavenging for paragraphs, true or false, concerning the "palatial home" in Park Lane, neither Caldegard nor Randal Bellamy could ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... the human eye, but what a sight it must be to the eye that sees all! All these people, so many hundreds of thousands, acting and reacting upon one another's happiness, prosperity, goodness, and badness. Now at such a place as Seaforth people are left a good deal to their individuality, and are comparatively independent of one another; but here I feel what a pressure and bondage men's lives draw round each other. It makes me catch my breath. ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... the only things worth noting about the government of the Burmese were its exceeding badness, and its disconnection with religion. That it would have been a much stronger government had it been able to enlist on its side all the power of the monkhood, none can doubt. It might even have been a better government; of that I am not sure. But that such ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... to-day than heretofore? Is cowardice, then, an adjunct of happiness? Or is it simply because we have slaves and must punish them if they do wrong? But by what right can a man, who is bad himself, punish others for badness or stupidity? [84] Remember, too, that we have arranged for the maintenance of a whole multitude, to guard our persons and our houses, and it would be shameful for us to depend for safety on the weapons of others and refuse to carry weapons for ourselves. Surely we ought to know that there ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... time rooted in all; and so far do men sometimes run into the other extreme that some of them become our bitterest enemies, not merely after receiving benefits from us, but because they have received them. I cannot deny that some do this out of sheer badness of nature; but more do so because lapse of time destroys their remembrance, for time gradually effaces what they felt vividly at the moment. I remember having had an argument with you about this class of persons, ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... solicitude, which was a great mistake; tonics, not sweets, are required in such cases. Yet he was very grateful, and he said, with a blush, that, in any case, he would not rail against all women because of the badness of one. Indeed, you would not have fancied he had any great grudge against womankind. There were a great many English abroad that autumn, and we met whole batches of pretty girls at every station and at every table d'hote ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... will demonstrate, that we render virtue impossible, and exclude it entirely from the world. On the other hand, if we shift our position, and contend that no act is to be judged according to its own nature, but according to the goodness or badness of its origin or cause, he will also reduce this position, diametrically opposite though it be to the former, to precisely the same absurdity; namely, that it excludes all virtue out of the world, and banishes it from the universality of things! Surely, ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... nation of saints, in the modern sentimental sense of that word; they were prompt, stern men—more ready ever to strike an enemy than to parley with him; and, private adventurers as they all were, it was natural enough that private foolishness and private badness should be found among them as among other mortals. Every Englishman who had the means was at liberty to fit out a ship or ships, and if he could produce tolerable vouchers for himself, received at once ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... sitting to eat at the table of Don Alvar Fanez and his companions, by strenuously behaving himself in all feats of arms; and thus the honour of the Cid was advanced. This Martin Pelaez, thinking that none had seen his badness, washed his hands in turn with the other knights, and would have taken his place ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... ter be so sinful; an' ef she don't stop it, I sha'n't sleep with her. She'll be er breakin' out with the measles or sump'n some uv these days, jes fur er judgment on her; an' I don't want ter be catchin' no judgments just on account of her badness." ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... is there not something rather absurd in our ordinary notion of external things being good or bad in themselves? Can murders and treacheries, considered as mere outward happenings, or motions of matter, be bad without any one to feel their badness? And could paradise properly be good in the absence of a sentient principle by which the goodness was perceived? Outward goods and evils seem practically indistinguishable except in so far as they result in getting moral judgments made about them. But then ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... their detestation of meanness and wickedness, but very tepid in their appreciation of goodness. To hate is, unfortunately, more congenial with ordinary characters than to love; and it is more facile to look down on badness than to look up ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... party were now busily engaged in making the best of their way to the village, though the badness of the roads frequently compelled them to check the impatience of their animals, which often carried them over places that would not admit of any gait ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... justice brought the Jews small comfort; Cumanus was succeeded by Felix, an even worse creature. He was the brother of the Emperor's favorite Narcissus, "by badness raised to that proud eminence," and the husband of the Herodian princess Drusilia, who had become a pagan in order to marry him. Tacitus, the Roman historian, says[1] that "with all manner of cruelty he exercised royal functions in the spirit of a slave." Under his rapacious tyranny the people were ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... there is much difference between me and this Dante. He fled from country because he had one bad tongue which he shook at his betters. I fly because benefice gone, and head going; not on account of the badness of my tongue.' ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... "How de do," of course, to every passer-by, as it is the pride of the profession to lead the etiquette of the country; and, passing remarks upon the badness of the fences, the staunchness of the barns, and the coziness of the dwellings, soon leave the cultivated high-road for one of the by-ways which lead down the sparsely-settled "Neck." The sombre pine forests gather about us; a squirrel or two runs across the route, and a solitary crow caws ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... and bonnet were soon on, and the little maid set off with her mamma, in high spirits. Such was the badness of the paths in some places, that it was impossible for them to walk hand-in-hand, so that Anabella was sometimes obliged to trudge on by herself behind her mamma; but these were such kind of hardships as her little spirit ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... and Treviso, are far more picturesque, and Parma excels only in the number and beauty of her fountains. It is a city of gloomy aspect, says Valery, who possibly entered it in a pensive frame of mind, for its sadness did not impress us. We had just come from Modena, where the badness of our hotel enveloped the city in an atmosphere of profound melancholy. In fact, it will not do to trust to travellers in any thing. I, for example, have just now spoken of the many beautiful fountains in Parma because I think it right to uphold the statement of M. Richard's hand-book; but ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... myself comfortable in my new abode, when I was staked and lost again. In short, your highness, in that campaign I was the property of between forty and fifty Russian officers, and what with the fatigue of marching, the badness of provisions, and my constant unsettled state of mind and body, I lost much of my good looks—so much, indeed, that I found out that instead of being taken as a stake of one thousand sequins, I was ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... easy to indicate the source of Burr's inherent badness. His father, a clergyman of rare scholarship and culture, became, at the age of thirty-two, the second president of Princeton College, while Jonathan Edwards, his maternal grandfather, whose "Freedom of the Will" made him an intellectual world-force, became its third president; but if one ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... a minute, my dear," said Mrs. Goodriche, "you will find that rude manners must be one sign of badness of heart: a person who has always a lowly opinion of himself, and proper love for his neighbour, will never be guilty of rudeness; it is only when we think ourselves better than others, or of more consequence than they are, that we venture to be rude. ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... upon the subject; she therefore accosted him with all the eagerness imaginable: Son, said she, I beg of you, if it be not very irksome to you, to tell me what reason you have for your so great aversion to marriage? If you have no other than the badness and wickedness of some women, there can be nothing less reasonable, or more weak. I will not undertake the defence of those who are bad, there are a great number of them undoubtedly; but it would be the greatest injustice ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... been gratified by an incident I am going to relate to you. I stopped my horse lately where a great number of people were collected at an auction of merchants' goods. The hour of the sale not being come, they were conversing on the badness of the times, and one of the company called to a plain, clean old man with white locks, 'Pray, Father Abraham, what think you of the times? Will not these heavy taxes quite ruin the country? How shall we ever be able to pay ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... what I think good? No, I am that I am, and they that level At my abuses reckon up their own: I may be straight though they themselves be bevel; By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown; Unless this general evil they maintain, All men are bad and in their badness reign. ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... described, called the Holehouses. Here two other lesser gibbets had been erected during the night, one on either hand of the loftier instrument of justice, and the carpenters were yet employed in finishing their work, having been delayed by the badness of the weather. Half drowned by the torrents that fell upon them, the poor fellows were protected from interference with their disagreeable occupation by half a dozen well-mounted and well-armed troopers, and by as many halberdiers; and this company, completely exposed to the weather, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of classification has run all through the series, and it is my real quarrel with it. I do not understand the principle of selection. I did not understand the Dean's test of goodness, nor do I understand Mr. Seccombe's or Mr. Vincent's test of badness. What do we mean by a good man or a bad one, a good woman or a bad one? Most people, like the young man in the song, are 'not very good, nor yet very bad.' We move about the pastures of life in huge herds, and all do the same things, at the same times, ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... agreed to build a shanty on the field and sell it to Pop for $180. Pop desired immediate occupancy. There was a legal hitch, owing to the badness of the land and the questionable condition of Pop's mind. But the transfer of the property was ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... his soul, the only way open to him. You mustn't think of it as a bad way. Or a good way. It wasn't even his way. It was the way of something bigger than he was, bigger than anything he could ever be. Bigger than badness or goodness." ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... assimilated with the wholesomeness of creation. The evil forces are literally outlaws; they only need the control and cadence of spiritual laws to change them into good. The true goodness is not the negation of badness, it is in the mastery of it. Goodness is the miracle which turns the tumult of chaos ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... and her "badness" are almost daily confessed and deplored:—"I will never again trust to my own power, for I see that I cannot be good without God's assistance—. I will not trust in my own selfe, and Isa's health will be quite ruined by me—it will indeed." ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... something. I am firmly convinced that if the Government could have provided all despatch riders with Blackburnes, the percentage—at all times small—of messages undelivered owing to mechanical breakdowns or the badness of the roads would have been reduced to zero. I have no interest in the Blackburne Company beyond a sincere admiration of ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... shows in blushes bright, Or in eyelids dropping down, Like a violet from the light; Badness in a ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... surprise, "That only which is not good, and not fit to eat, is haram (prohibited)." I immediately said "Amen" to this, for generally the Moors maintain that pork and other things of the kind prohibited, are not good because they are prohibited, and not on account of any intrinsic badness in the things themselves. They, of course, asked me what sort of places were England and London. It's little use to answer such questions; they cannot realize the idea or forms of an European city, even in imagination. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... talk freely, Mrs. Goudie told Mavis and Dale, what indeed she had often told them before, of the shocking badness of Richard Bates and the ugly scenes that had taken place in this very house; of how he bullied his father to give him money, storming and raving like a lunatic when resisted; and of how the old fellow alone by himself had groaned ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... As midsummer flower, Gentle as falcon, Or hawk of the tower: With solace and gladness, Much mirth and no madness, All good and no badness; So joyously, So maidenly, So womanly Her demeaning In every thing, Far, far passing That I can indite, Or suffice to write Of merry Margaret As midsummer flower, Gentle as falcon, Or hawk of the tower, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... I hope to live in a beautiful world, where a man may speak to a pretty girl on the street. Badness is its own punishment, let the ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... of booksellers, of whom, I believe, much the same may be truly predicated as of these their productions. But the encouragement with which these lucubrations are read may seem most strange and more difficult to be accounted for. And here I cannot agree with my bookseller that their eminent badness recommends them. The true reason is, I believe, the same which I once heard an economist assign for the content and satisfaction with which his family drank water-cider—viz., because they could procure no better liquor. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... day should be fixed for his trial, and that the charge against him should be published; both were refused, and he was obliged to answer on the spot. He did so, and though the thorough badness and depravity of the fellow make me hesitate to say whether he showed more impudence or resolution, he certainly replied with great readiness. There were sundry things brought against him which did him much greater damage than the charge of collusion, and two men of consular rank, Pomponius ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... Islington, sixty years ago, were drawn by three horses, on account of the badness of the roads. The inside fare was at that time sixpence ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... badness of the food was the worst evil to a boy accustomed to plain but good country fare. The burgoo or oatmeal gruel served at breakfast made him sick; he knew how it had been made in the cook's dirty pans. The "Irish horse" and salt pork for dinner ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... must be his own. He must select the beginning that seems best adapted to his story. As an inspiration to reporters who are trying to write human interest stories, a few beginnings clipped from daily papers are given here. Some are good and some are bad; the goodness or badness in each case depends upon individual taste. They can hardly be classified in more than a general way for originality is opposed to all classifications. They ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... to our quarters and began to talk sense. Knowing that my time was limited, he enlarged upon the badness of the road and the too evident end of the travelling season, when the great rains would altogether prevent fast travel. Banza Ninga, the next stage, was distant two or three marches, and neither shelter nor provisions were to be found on the way. Here a canoe would carry ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... prolonged war came of it, Mr. Gould. However, here we possess the advantage of having only one South American Government hanging around for plunder out of the deal. It is an advantage; but then there are degrees of badness, and that Government is the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Bible are not those who begin with a deliberate intention of doing evil. They are weak creatures, 'reeds shaken by the wind,' who have no power of resisting the force of circumstances. It is a truth which every one's experience confirms, that the mother of all possible badness is weakness, and that, not only as Milton's Satan puts it, 'To be weak is to be miserable,' but that weakness is wickedness sooner or later. The man who does not bar the doors and windows of his senses and his ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... together every element of dread and terror,—barrenness, brokenness, dreariness, fearful cold, blinding fog, crushing ice, sudden savage change. And when it was completed, he rejoiced in his heart and said, "This is perfect in badness, it cannot be redeemed, it is wholly and forever mine, it is mine!" Then Ormuzd, lord of light, heard the voice of that accursed joy, and, looking, beheld the evil work. And he saw that it could not be redeemed, that it was fixed forever in its evil state. Then he came ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... madam, that the goodness or badness of your crop is the scale on which your conscience measures your obligation to pay a just debt, and that it contracts or expands as your crop increases or diminishes? Pardon me, madam, if I say that this appears to be ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... to themselves, and to account those things the best of all which have the most beneficial effect on mankind. Further, they were bound to form abstract notions for the explanation of the nature of things, such as goodness, badness, order, confusion, warmth, cold, beauty, deformity, and so on; and from the belief that they are free agents arose the further notions of praise and blame, ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... Why has not this paper been long ago outdone in giving the news? It has always been possible to suppress it by surpassing it. Its errors have given its rivals an immense advantage over it; for it has always prospered, not in consequence of its badness, but of its goodness. We are acquainted with two foolish young patriots who were wrought up to such a frenzy of disgust by its traitorous course during the first half of our late war, that they seriously considered whether there was any way in ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... possible disease when reading a book on medicine. I took pleasure both in the cunning designs, the glowing sentiments, the tumultuous events, and the character-drawing of these works. A good man was of the goodness, a bad man of the badness, possible only to the imagination of early youth. Likewise I found great pleasure in the fact that it was all written in French, and that I could lay to heart the fine words which the fine heroes spoke, and recall them for use some day when engaged ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... it is our sincerity," she said. "You are sincere in your goodness, and I, paradoxical as it sounds, in my badness." ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... smile, "it has been my experience that cod-liver oil is steadier than cider. The cod-liver oils I have had the pleasure of absorbing have been evenly vile, while the ciders that I have drank have been of a variety of goodness, badness, and indifferentness which has brought me to the point where I never touch it. But to return to inventions, since you desire to limit our discussion to a single subject, I think it is about the most ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... Downes, a gentleman, were both committed, the one to the town prison at Norwich, the other to the county prison there, for obstinate papistry; and seven more gentlemen of worship were committed to several houses in Norwich as prisoners....for badness of belief. This Rookwood is a papist of kind, newly crept out of his late wardship. Her majesty, by some means I know not, was lodged at his house, Euston, far unmeet for her highness, but fitter for the black guard; ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... is enlightened, hardened, sharpened, as to evil; he sees it where others do not.—MOZLEY, Essays, i. 308. All satirists, of course, work in the direction of Christian doctrine, by the support they give to the doctrine of original sin, making a sort of meanness and badness a law of society.—MOZLEY, Letters, 333. Les critiques, meme malveillants, sont plus pres de la verite derniere que les admirateurs.—NISARE, Lit. fr., Conclusion. Les hommes superieurs doivent necessairement passer pour mechants. Ou les autres ne voient ni un defaut, ni un ridicule, ni un ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... Wednesdays and Fridays, and to lectures whenever there were lectures; and never missed. She was handsome; and if she had ever smiled, would have been (I used to think) like an angel—but she never smiled. She was always grave and strict. She was so very good herself, I thought, that the badness of other people made her frown all her life. I felt so different from her, even making every allowance for the differences between a child and a woman; I felt so poor, so trifling, and so far off that I never ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... obedience is fatal, in the long run, to mental and spiritual growth, that the regulation of elementary or any other grade of education by a uniform syllabus is to be deprecated. It is also because a uniform syllabus is, in the nature of things, a bad syllabus, and because the degree of its badness varies directly with the area of the sphere of educational activity that comes under its control. It is easy for us of the Twentieth Century to laugh at the syllabuses which the Department issued, without misgiving, year after year, in the latter ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... difficulty in getting on shore, owing to the badness of the landing. The river was full of floating timbers, between which it required some skill to guide the boat. A wharf is now being built—not before it was needed*. [* Some excellent wharfs ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... at the time, looked up at the enthusiastic youth quickly. Her knowledge of English must have been improving, despite the badness of her pronunciation, for she seemed to understand the conversation, and to regard ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... ruined, how many mothers and families brought to beggary, how many industrious and virtuous groups have been pulled down from competence to penury, from the desire to prevent one from bringing shame on the parent! So that, contrary to every principle of justice, the bad is rewarded for the badness; and the good punished for the goodness. Natural affection, remembrance of infantine endearments, reluctance to abandon long-cherished hopes, compassion for the sufferings of your own flesh and blood, the dread of fatal consequences from your adhering to justice; all these beat at your ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... Tom Lorrigan, feared of his kind for his badness. His tone was hushed with amazement, all aglow ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... to badness. Appleby got worse toward us instead of better, and Crouse said he'd teach him a lesson. I suspected he would do something desperate so I made up my mind to get away. I laid my plans carefully, and, ashamed as I was, I decided to ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... suppose there are such passages in his works. Shakspeare must not suffer from the badness of our memories.' Johnson, diverted by this enthusiastick jealousy, went on with greater ardour: 'No, Sir; Congreve has nature;' (smiling on the tragick eagerness of Garrick;) but composing himself, he added, 'Sir, this is not comparing Congreve on the whole, with Shakspeare ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Burke, after taunting her husband to madness, tries to turn him from murder when she sees him, gun in hand, by crying: "For the love of God, would you leave it down. Leave it down and go in and look at the child sleeping. It would take the badness from your mind the same as it did ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... would have had much to learn and much to unlearn. Believe me, I know women, as only a priest of many years' standing can know them. Women are either bad or good. The bad are bad below man's understanding, because their badness is not leavened by one grain of honour; a fact the worst of men will ever fail to grasp. The good are good above man's comprehension, because their perfect purity of heart causeth the spirit ever to triumph over the flesh; and their love-instinct is the instinct of self-sacrifice. ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... manner in which the Russian diplomatists imagined to deceive Europe; their defence indeed is as triumphant a proof of the badness of their cause as the most earnest friend of Poland could desire. Our surprise may well be excited at the weakness of the argument, particularly when we remember that Catharine's servants had long been trained in glossing over the basest and most ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... done so had Sophy afforded her the slightest opportunity. But Sophy was heartlessly cruel in her indifference. In her younger days she had had her bad things, and now,—with George Whitstable by her side,—she meant to have good things, the goodness of which was infinitely enhanced by the badness of her sister's things. She had been so greatly despised that the charm of despising again was irresistible. And she was able to reconcile her cruelty to her conscience by telling herself that duty required her to show implacable resistance to such a marriage as this ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... lo! they are flown. And here we speak of understanding men, such as the Sydneys and the Drydens. Of the great body of critics you observe rightly, that they are better than might be expected of their badness, only the fact of their influence is no less undeniable than the reason why they should not be influential. The brazen kettles will be taken for oracles all the world over. But the influence is for to-day, for this hour—not for to-morrow and ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... neither wiser nor duller, stronger nor weaker than his school companions pleased Frau Schimmel, for as she loved to say: "Those people over whom one exclaims when one meets them, either because of their exceptional goodness or badness, are destined to be unhappy in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and I'm in a horrible inn kept by a Garibaldian bandit; and the various sorts of disgusting dishes sent up to look like a dinner, and to be charged for, are a daily increasing horror and amazement to me. They succeed in getting everything bad; no exertion, no invention, could produce such badness, I believe, anywhere else. The hills are covered for leagues with olive trees, and the oil's bad; there are no such lovely cattle elsewhere in the world, and the butter's bad; half the country people are shepherds, ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... badness, n. depravity, improbity, unscrupulousness, iniquity, immorality, turpitude, knavishness, villainy, peccancy, baseness, profligacy, venality, licentiousness, obliquity, pravity, degeneracy, viciousness, wantonness, criminality, libertinism, malevolence, incorrigibility, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... alli comio la gente." Ondegardo, Rel. Seg., Ms.] Quitting Xauxa, December 29, 1547, he passed through Guamanga, and after a severe march, rendered particularly fatiguing by the inclement state of the weather and the badness of the roads, he entered the province of Andaguaylas. It was a fair and fruitful country, and since the road beyond would take him into the depths of a gloomy sierra, scarcely passable in the winter snows, Gasca resolved ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... every fourth sentence he hears, by its inelegance or its want of logic; and the entire sermon torments him by its unsymmetrical structure, its want of perspective in the presentment of details, and its general literary badness." I quite believe that there was a moderate proportion of truth in the excuse thus urged; and you will probably judge that it would have been better, had the great man's mind not been brought to so painful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... house was a species of pigsty, built out of the rough branches of trees, without doors, windows, or roof. There was I to dwell, and that in a season when the thermometer was ranging between ninety-five and a hundred degrees. The very badness of things, however, stimulated us to exertion; we set to work, and in two days had built a couple of very decent huts, the only inconvenience of which was, that when it rained hard, we were obliged to take refuge under a neighbouring cotton-tree. Fortunately, out of the two thousand ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... prudence; but a good deal of it to contempt. For of all the rubbish that time shoots into the wallet of oblivion, contemporary criticism runs about the least chance of being rescued from the forgetfulness into which it has been thrust. This is a result entirely independent of its goodness or badness. If the criticism is both destructive and just, the very death of the subject against which it is directed causes it to perish in the ruin it has brought about. If it is unjust, it is certain to be speedily forgotten, ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... appeared to have nothing else to do but shadow her, she had been slow in developing her intention of organizing and teaching a school for the children of Pine. Riggs had become rather a doubtful celebrity in the settlements. Yet his bold, apparent badness had made its impression. From all reports he spent his time gambling, drinking, and bragging. It was no longer news in Pine what his intentions were toward Helen Rayner. Twice he had ridden up to the ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... a year elapsed after their marriage before Parker began to complain of the badness of the times, and to sit thoughtful and sometimes gloomy during the evenings he spent at home. This grieved Rachel very much, and caused her to exercise the greatest possible prudence and economy in order that the household expenses might be as little burdensome as possible ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... to get rid of that excess of fixed air which is apt to make undiluted champagne a rather uncomfortable material for a draught; but the custom is mainly the result of sad experience of the unwisdom of doing otherwise, owing (it must be admitted) to the badness of the so-called champagne only too commonly dispensed at ball suppers. How the man who wouldn't dream of giving his guests a glass of inferior wine at his dinner-table comes to think nothing of poisoning them with the cheap rubbish that audaciously flouts in advertising ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... I rule my life by absolute ideals; I admit that everything is relative. There is no such thing as goodness or badness, in the absolute sense, of course. Perhaps I am absurdly inconsistent when—though knowing my work can't be first rate—I strive to make it as good as possible. I don't say this in irony, Amy; I really ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... I live by the Badness of my Character!— I have nothing but my Infamy to depend on!—and, if it were once known that I had been betray'd into an honest Action, I should lose every Friend I have in ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... got the following maxim by heart: "Whenever J. is particularly quiet, look out for squalls." He was sure to be in some mischief. And I must say there was a novelty, an unexpectedness, an ingenuity, in his badness that constantly astonished me. The crimes he committed could be arranged alphabetically. He never repeated himself. His evil resources were inexhaustible. He never did the thing I expected he would. He ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... inwards from loss of teeth, his face was shrivelled and yellow, save where the cheeks were streaked with the colour of a dry winter apple; and where his beard had been, there lingered yet a few grey tufts which seemed, like the ragged eyebrows, to denote the badness of the soil from which they sprung. The whole air and attitude of the form was one of stealthy cat-like obsequiousness; the whole expression of the face was concentrated in a wrinkled leer, compounded of cunning, lecherousness, slyness, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... creditors could not touch a penny. He sends mournful sugared letters to them, desiring them not to be severe with him, for he bore towards all men an honest mind, and would pay them as far as he was able. He talked of the greatness of the taxes, the badness of the times, his losses by bad debts, and he brought them to a composition to take five shillings in the pound. His release was signed and sealed, and Mr. Badman could now put his head out of doors again, and be a ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... railway; that was the stark truth borne in upon Marguerite Whitland. She recognised, with a sense of dismay, the extraordinary badness of the bargain which Bones had made. Bones, with a real locomotive to play with—he had given the aged engine-driver a week's holiday—saw nothing but the wonderful possibilities of pulling levers and making a mass of rusting machinery jerk asthmatically ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... no use to think about badness or goodness now," said Willy, flinging another handful of grass into the road. "What'll I do? ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... the girls said, "Oh, come!" my newly discovered badness echoed their words. I wanted to go with ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... in me—or worse—to treat Arabella as I did. I didn't care about her being in trouble, and what she wished to tell you! Perhaps it was really something she was justified in telling you. That's some more of my badness, I suppose! Love has its own dark morality when rivalry enters in—at least, mine has, if other people's hasn't... I wonder how she got on? I hope she reached the ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Edward dogged, Julia rather excited. "Now, let us tell our adventures, she said. "As for me, shop after shop declined my poor sketches. They all wanted something about as good, only a little different: nobody complained of the grand fault, and that is, their utter badness. At last, one old gentleman examined them, and oh! he was so fat; there, round. And he twisted his mouth so" (imitating him) "and squinted into them so. Then I was full of hope; and said to myself; 'Dear mamma and Edward!' And so, when he ended by saying, 'No,' ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... they FEEL good or bad; there can be no dispute about it. This is the bottom fact of ethics. Different experiences have different intrinsic worth as they pass. There is a chiaroscuro of consciousness, a light and shade of immediate goodness and badness over all our variegated moments. The good moments are their own excuse for being, a part of the brightness and worth of life. They need nothing ulterior to justify them. The bad moments feel bad, and that is the end of it; they are bad-feeling moments, and no sophistication ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... lead to Rome," so all roads lead to Moscow: there were many roads, and "among them the road through Poltava, which Charles XII chose." Balashev involuntarily flushed with pleasure at the aptitude of this reply, but hardly had he uttered the word Poltava before Caulaincourt began speaking of the badness of the road from Petersburg to Moscow and of his ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... something else which puts all meaning into it. So Hamlet says, "There's nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." If I have in mind A as an end sought, then X is good. But if B is the end, X is bad. X has no goodness or badness of its own. No new quality is added to an object or ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... watch the contests, and Graciosa had to stand up behind her, where her loveliness was so conspicuous that the combatants could not keep their eyes off her. But the Queen was so vain that she thought all their admiring glances were for herself, especially as, in spite of the badness of their cause, the King's knights were so brave that they were ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... kill me," he sneered. "The world's a pretty low down place to have a thing like you prowling around in it, but it ain't so plumb low down, I reckon, as to let you put a hole in me. You're sure bad, but the trouble with you is that you're weak in your badness. It ain't much to kill a man, but you ain't got it in you. There's where ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... and the nature of their actions, by that they were both found sinners; the Publican an open, outside one, and the Pharisee a filthy, inside one. This is evident, because the best of them was rejected, and the worst of them was received to mercy. Mercy standeth not at the Publican's badness, nor is it enamoured with the Pharisee's goodness: it suffereth not the law to take place on both, though it findeth them both in sin, but graciously embraceth the most unworthy, and leaveth the best to shift for himself. And good reason that both should be dealt with after this manner; to wit, ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... drearily. Hilary's shame before him could hardly now add to the badness of the situation, as it had once done; the badness of situations has a limit, and this one had reached its limit some three hours since, just before he had laughed in ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... against the queer old party who made sheep's eyes at his clock every day. He hated him quite impartially, as he hated everybody. Mr. Lukisch had a bad heart in more senses than one, and a grudge against the world which he blamed for the badness of his heart. Also he had definite ideas of reprisal, which were focused by a dispossess notice, and directed particularly upon the person and property of his landlord. The clock he needed as the instrument of his vengeance; ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... (1715-1759) who fell at the battle of Kunersdorf. His temperament and the circumstances of his early life disposed him to melancholy; so that he readily came under the spell of Haller, Thomson, and the other poets who extolled nature and the simple life as a refuge from the badness of civilization. His best known production is the fragment called Spring (1749), in which fine passages of personal feeling are interwoven with detailed descriptions that are sometimes a little tedious. The text follows Muncker's edition ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... currant-loaf, "I don't think any tragedy in literature that I have ever come across impressed me so much as the first one, that I spelled out slowly for myself in words of three letters: the bad fox has got the red hen. There was something so dramatically complete about it; the badness of the fox, added to all the traditional guile of his race, seemed to heighten the horror of the hen's fate, and there was such a suggestion of masterful malice about the word 'got.' One felt that a countryside ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... granted at Woollett—matters as to which, verily, he had been reduced with Mrs. Newsome to the last intensity of silence. That was the consequence of their being too bad to be talked about, and was the accompaniment, by the same token, of a deep conception of their badness. It befell therefore that when poor Strether put it to himself that their badness was ultimately, or perhaps even insolently, what such a scene as the one before him was, so to speak, built upon, he ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... entertained by Artemus, he wished to have one of great artistic merit. Finding considerable difficulty in procuring one, and also discovering that the expense of a real work of art would be beyond his means, he resolved on having a very bad one or one so bad in parts that its very badness would give him scope for jest. In the small towns of the Western States, it passed very well for a first-class picture, but what it was really worth in an artistic point of view its owner ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... ill-natured; and oh! ten times worse than anything Christian had known in her girlhood, which had been forlorn indeed, but free; when she had followed through necessity her nomadic father, who had at any rate, left her alone, to form her own mind and character as she best could. Of man's selfishness and badness she knew enough; but of women's small sillinesses, narrow formalities, and petty unkindnesses, she ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Leopold's knowing, or at least being told as well as herself, that he need fear no punishment in the next world, whatever he might have to encounter in this; that there was no frightful God who hated wrong-doing to be terrified at; that even the badness of his own action need not distress him, for he and it would pass away as the blood he had shed had already vanished from the earth? Ought it not to encourage the poor fellow?—But to what? To live on and endure his misery, ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... not, by reason of them, brought any nearer to death. Nothing which was not destroyed from within ever perished by external affection of evil. The body, which is one thing, cannot be destroyed by food, which is another, unless the badness of the food is communicated to the body. Neither can the soul, which is one thing, be corrupted by the body, which is another, unless she herself is infected. And as no bodily evil can infect the soul, neither can any bodily evil, whether disease or ...
— The Republic • Plato
... a moment to turn a glass dish of syrupy blackberry jam upside down on his young head. It was the work of a good many minutes and several persons to get the jam off him again, and this interesting work took people's minds off the carpet, and nothing more was said just then about its badness as a bargain and about what mother hoped ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... reporting myself a man of irregular habits and bad hours, whose movements could not in the least be depended upon, I had to decline the hospitality which would fain have adopted me as its guest, notwithstanding the badness of the character that, in common honesty, I had to certify as my own. Next morning I breakfasted at the manse, and was introduced by Mr. Learmonth to two gentlemen of the place, who had been kindly invited to meet with me, and who, from their acquaintance with the geology ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... at present more particularly distressed from having emptied his snuff-box, began to be very importunate with us to return home. It was some time before the old corporal consented, alleging, that we were at a great distance from the harbour, and that, on account of the badness of the way, the night would probably overtake us before we reached the end of our journey. At length, however, he yielded to Ivaskin's entreaties, and conducted us along the side of a number of small lakes, with which the flat part of this country seems much to abound. These lakes are from half a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... natural order of things, O good Brahmana, is seen everywhere in this world. What is thy opinion as to the virtuousness or otherwise of this state of things? There is much that can be said of the goodness or badness of our actions. But whoever is addicted to his own proper ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... prison, and was, of course, struck off the rolls. I never heard anything of him for years, and then one day, some time ago, he turned up here and begged me to give him a job. I did—and I'll do him the credit to say that he earned his money. But—in the end, his natural badness broke out. One afternoon—I'm careless about some things—I left some money lying in this drawer—about forty pounds in notes and gold—and next morning Parrawhite never came to business. We've never seen ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... abundance of one year from compensating the scarcity of another, to raise the price in the home market. The scarcity which prevailed in England, from 1693 to 1699, both inclusive, though no doubt principally owing to the badness of the seasons, and, therefore, extending through a considerable part of Europe, must have been somewhat enhanced by the bounty. In 1699, accordingly, the further exportation of corn was prohibited for ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... into constant personal contact with the Queen. She was, in fact, the last of the Queen's women contemporaries who were also close friends. This fact was common knowledge, and Mr. Mudford in one of his notes, which were written in a calligraphy the badness of which it is almost impossible to describe without the aid of a lithographic print, wrote to me shortly, telling me of the death and asking me to write that night a leader on Lady Ely. He pointed out how great the loss was ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... change for the worse was over-fatigue incurred on an excursion which he made with his friends to a hermitage three miles [FOOTNOTE: George Sand does not say what kind of miles] distant from Valdemosa; the length and badness of the road alone would have been more than enough to exhaust his fund of strength, but in addition to these hardships they had, on returning, to encounter a violent wind which threw them down repeatedly. Bronchitis, from ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... me by his insolence." To aggravate is to augment the disagreeableness of something already disagreeable, or the badness of something bad. But a person cannot be aggravated, even if disagreeable or bad. Women are singularly prone to ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... trusted, the bad bringing-up is the reason for their being unfit to be trusted; and, as far as the expression is concerned, is admitted to be so. The only uncertainty lies in the question as to the degree of the badness of the education. The inference ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... what is to be called nothing, in the Thirty-Years War; his function was only that of suffering. He followed always the bad lead of Johann George, Elector of Saxony; a man of no strength, devoutness or adequate human worth; who proved, on these negative grounds, and without flagrancy of positive badness, an unspeakable curse to Germany. Not till the Kaiser fulminated forth his Restitution-Edict, and showed he was in earnest about it (1629-1631), "Restore to our Holy Church what you have taken from her ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... the last demand made upon them,—that it should be considered, not as taken compulsively, but as a friendly and amicable donation. They never admitted, nor did the Nabob ever contend, that he had any right at all to take this money from them. At that time it was not Mr. Hastings's opinion that the badness of the system would justify any violence as a consequence of it; and when the advancement of the money was agreed to between the parties, as a family and amicable compact, he was as ready as anybody to propose and sanction a regular treaty between the parties, that all claims on one side and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... maladministered as to corrupt and distract, impoverish and demoralize, a people. And yet, I agree with an old patriot of the past century who said, "There is no foundation to imagine that the goodness or badness of any government depends solely upon its administration. It must be allowed that the ultimate design of government is to restrain the corruptions of human nature; and, since human nature is the same at all times and in all places, the same form of government which is best for one nation is ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams
... a hymn in a fashion which brought dear old Scotland to Hugh's mind, which has the sweetest songs in its cottages, and the worst singing in its churches, of any country in the world. But it was almost equalled here; the chief cause of its badness being the absence of a modest self-restraint, and consequent tempering of the tones, on the part of the singers; so that the result was what Hugh could describe only ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... which had the usual characteristics of a small agricultural market town, some sombre mansions, a dingy inn, and a petty bourse, Marney mainly consisted of a variety of narrow and crowded lanes formed by cottages built of rubble, or unhewn stones without cement, and from age, or badness of the material, looking as if they could scarcely hold together. The gaping chinks admitted every blast; the leaning chimneys had lost half their original height; the rotten rafters were evidently misplaced; while in many instances the thatch, yawning in some parts to admit the wind and wet, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... and want to kick myself," was Hugh's not very self-complimentary soliloquy, as he went up the stairs. "What did I want to twit Ad for? Confound my badness!" and having by this time reached his own door, Hugh sat ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... Other people, and unfortunately by far the greater number of those who get married must be classed among the "other people," will inevitably go through a quarter or half an hour of greater or less badness as the case may be. Taking numbers into account, I should think more mental suffering had been undergone in the streets leading from St George's, Hanover Square, than in the condemned cells of Newgate. There is no time at which what the Italians call la figlia della ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... annually consumed in these settlements. This is in some measure occasioned by the inferiority of the barley grown at Port Jackson; but more, I am inclined to believe, by the want of skill in the brewers. If the indifferent quality of the beer, however, be attributable to the badness of the barley, this impediment to success would be removed by emigrating to Van Diemen's Land; since the barley raised in both the settlements in this island is equal to the best produced in this country. ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... tabooing our impulses, we must redirect them. Instead of trying to crush badness we must turn the power behind it to good account. The assumption is that every lust is ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... exhibited and tested, including two (Hussey's and McCormick's) from America, and an English one which was declared on all hands a mere imitation of Hussey's. Neither the original nor the copy, however, appear to have operated to the satisfaction of the assembly, perhaps owing to the badness of the weather and its effects on the draggled, unripe grain. With McCormick's a very different result was obtained. This machine is so well known in our Wheat-growing districts that I need only remark that it is the same lately ridiculed ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... Accordingly, by this way of reckoning, whatever falls away from goodness ceases to be; whence it comes to pass that the bad cease to be what they were, while only the outward aspect is still left to show they have been men. Wherefore, by their perversion to badness, they have lost their true human nature. Further, since righteousness alone can raise men above the level of humanity, it must needs be that unrighteousness degrades below man's level those whom it has cast out of man's estate. It results, then, that thou canst not consider ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... mischief. It was a bracing November day, cool as an ice-cream and clear as a whistle. The air sparkled like a fountain of golden sands, and was as full of oxygen as it could hold; and oxygen, you must know, is at the bottom of a great deal of the happiness and misery, goodness and badness, of this world. ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... agreeable, the weather being neither too hot nor too cold. We spent our time till the 10th in refitting our ships, taking wood on board, and laying in a stock of water, that which we brought from England, St Vincents, and Isla Grande, being spoilt by the badness of our casks. We also boiled up and refined eighty gallons of oil of sea-lions, which we used in lamps to save candles, and might have prepared several tons, if we had been provided with vessels. The sailors ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... had their regular journeys, and often remained one or two months in a place, when they worked at their trades. And as access to different towns was more difficult than at the present day, partly from the badness of the roads and partly from the paucity of carriers, they were considered by the peasantry, and by small farmers, of whom there were great numbers in those days, as very useful branches of the human family; I mean the industrious and better part of them. At that period they ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... Capsune, whom he had educated, said, "Gordon's eyes looked you through and through"—the features were not sufficiently marked, the carriage of the man was too diffident and modest to arrest or detain attention, and the explanation of the universal badness of the numerous photographs taken of him at all stages of his career is probably to be found in the deficiency of colouring and contrast. Everything in his appearance depended on expression, and expression generally baffles the photographer. Perhaps the least objectionable of ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... only being that had the approval of old Riley Brooke. It was curious—that turning of his tongue from the slander of men to the praise of God. And of the goodness of the Almighty he was quite as sure as of the badness of men. Assurance of his own salvation had come to him one day when he was shearing sheep, and when, as he related often, finding himself on his knees to shear, he remained to pray. Sundays and every Wednesday evening he wore a stove-pipe hat and a long frock coat of antique and rusty aspect. On ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... following explanation of Sullivan's previous statements—'He imagined that I and your commissioner were coming from government to enquire into the state of the potato crop, and he therefore exaggerated the badness of its condition and his own poverty, as much as possible.' He now wished to say, 'That he was not nearly so badly off as he had stated; that he had plenty of potatoes and milk—that he had a bed-tick which was in the loft when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Slough of Despond; for still as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth in his soul many fears, and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place. And this is the reason of the badness ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... badness of human beings," said Sir Richmond; "seeing how they have come about and what they are; but I have been surprised time after time by fine things.... Often in people I disliked or thought little of.... I can understand that I find you full of divine quality, ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... that all these six forms of government are pernicious—the three good kinds, from their brief duration the three bad, from their inherent badness. Wise legislators therefore, knowing these defects, and avoiding each of these forms in its simplicity, have made choice of a form which shares in the qualities of all the first three, and which they judge to be more stable and lasting than ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... on the Coast tried so persistently to stop it that the risk of capture was great and the profit from a successful venture correspondingly large. But the prejudice, he continued, was really not well-founded. Slavery, of course, was a very bad thing; but there were degrees of badness in it, and since it could not be broken up there was much to be said in favor of any course that would make it less cruel. The blacks who were the slaves of other blacks, or of Portuguese,—and it was only these that the traders bought—were exposed to such ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... throwing a blanket over the head of a horse in a burning stable, and so getting it out by coaxing, and forcing, and hiding the danger, is not to be thought of here. Sin is never smoothed over by God, nor its results, their badness and ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... though you really are a very good girl, and as good-natured as anybody can possibly be, remember, you have your faults, like other people, and, if I were you, the next time I wanted to assert anything energetically, I would assert it by "my badness," not "my goodness." ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... version took place at the end of 1832; and in the following year it was published by Mr. Valpy, along with some shorter poems, of which Miss Barrett subsequently wrote that 'a few of the fugitive poems may be worth a little, perhaps; but they have not so much goodness as to overcome the badness of the blasphemy of Aeschylus.' The volume, which was published anonymously, received two sentences of contemptuous notice from the 'Athenaeum,' in which the reviewer advised 'those who adventure in the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... and remarkable hill called BROOKS'S BLUFF: following the strait to the northward, they passed the remains of many Esquimaux habitations; and, though their short journey had been unsatisfactory on account of the badness of the weather, there was still sufficient to cause the most lively interest, and give strong hopes of the existence of some passage to the northeast of the small ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... Wednesday January 28th 1806. Drewyer and Baptiest La Page set out this morning on a hunting excurtion. about noon Howard and Werner returned with a supply of salt; the badness of the weather and the difficulty of the road had caused their delay. they inform us that the salt makers are still much straitened for provision, having killed two deer only in the last six days; and that there are no Elk in their neighbourhood. The party that were sent this ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... though it cost me a great many days to make it, yet, for want of iron, it not only wore out the sooner, but made my work the harder, and performed it much worse. However, this I bore with, and was content to work it out with patience, and bear with the badness of the performance. When the corn was sown, I had no harrow, but was forced to go over it myself, and drag a great heavy bough of a tree over it, to scratch it, as it may be called, rather than rake or harrow it. When it was growing and grown, I have observed ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... War.[359] But the fact that Seneca makes no reference to the existence of any learned didactic poem on the subject carries a little more weight, and there are marked parallels between Seneca's 'quaestiones Naturales' and passages in the Aetna.[360] Further, the very badness of the poem makes us hesitate to place it in the Augustan period. That age, no doubt, produced much bad work as well as good, but a poem so obscure and inartistically prosaic as the Aetna was more ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... no admirable marriage, however much the wish of a parent was to be respected. Every one recognized that Beatrice was a maid as unusual in her goodness as Simone was a man, thank Heaven, unusual in his badness. Wherefore, all detested the undertaking. Yet disbelief in the story, a disbelief that was popular, had perforce to change into unpopular belief when the very church was named in which the ceremony was to take place—the Church of the Holy ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... She had been really bad the day before; it was a pity to waste such perfect badness as that. Why not have the one bad wish to ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... than I, and what must she be now? It would frighten me to think of that, only she never knew she was good, and had such a way of not seeing the badness in me. ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... that when contractualism came in its turn to be discarded, it was discovered that Locke suffered far more than Hobbes by the change so made. For Hobbes cared nothing for the contract so long as strong government could be shown to be implicit in the natural badness of men, while Locke assumed their goodness and made his contract essential to their opportunity for moral expression. Nor did he, like Rousseau, seize upon the organic nature of the State. To him the State was always a mere aggregate, and the convenient simplicity of majority-rule ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... great orators smile when some 'boy' takes the public ear more than they do? Poor Saul had to drink the bitter cup, which all who love the sweet draught of popular applause have sooner or later to taste; and we need not think him a monster of badness because ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... neatly in leather; they weave a few coarse barracans, and make iron-work in a solid, though clumsy manner. One or two work in gold and silver with much skill, considering the badness of their tools, and every man is capable of acting as a carpenter or mason; the wood being that of the date tree, and the houses being built of mud, very little elegance or skill is necessary. Much deference is paid to the artists in leather or metals, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... distinguish'd too, pretty much by the Goodness or Badness of the Subject; how often have Men committed Murther, Robbery and Adultery in a Dream, and at the same time except an extraordinary Agitation of the Soul, and express'd by extraordinary Noises in the Sleep, by violent Sweating and other ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... husband for his life, there is a final relapse into rhyme and rhyming epigram, into the "jigging vein" dried up (we might have hoped) long since by the very glance of Marlowe's Apollonian scorn. It would be easy, agreeable, and irrational to ascribe without further evidence than its badness this misconceived and misshapen scene to some other hand than Shakespeare's. It is below the weakest, the rudest, the hastiest scene attributable to Marlowe; it is false, wrong, artificial beyond the worst of his bad and boyish work; but it has a certain ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... He IS real, at least. He is true to himself. So few men have the strength of their goodness or the courage of their badness, when it ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... He done you dirt. You pass that over. You could have fired him, but you let him stay and keep his job. That's goodness. And badness is resultin' from it, ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... knows not what it desires, and is always best pleased with a rattle. A farce-writer hath indeed some chance for success: but they have lost all taste for the sublime. Though I believe one reason of their depravity is the badness of the actors. If a man writes like an angel, sir, those fellows know not how to give a sentiment utterance."—"Not so fast," says the player: "the modern actors are as good at least as their authors, nay, they come ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... knew this, and it made him furious. He did not see that it was his own fault; that it was the badness in him which made the Prince shrink. He thought it was the doing of some one else. He grew to hate the Hermit and John and the animals, of whom his son and daughter were so fond. In his heart he cared little for any ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... without cover; sometimes they were obliged to pass the night in the open air, when the temperature was below the freezing point; frequently for four and twenty hours they had nothing to eat. Van Braam observes that, owing to the fatigues of the journey, the badness of the victuals, their early rising and exposure to the cold, he lost about five inches in the circumference of his body. Being rather corpulent, and not very expert in performing the Chinese ceremony at their public ...
— 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
... evil—evil that good may exist, and good that evil may exist. This deduction, however, is obviously at variance with the theory that God is all goodness, since if nothing can exist save by contrast, goodness must of necessity presuppose badness, and we are thus led to the conclusion that God is at the same time both good and bad, a conclusion which is undoubtedly a ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... receiving of it has given me unfeigned pleasure, although its contents, as far as the unworthy conduct of the party is productive of vexation to you, I as sincerely lament. I am sorry that it should be at your expense; but as it tends to expose the badness of the cause and the iniquity of its supporters, the friends of liberty and virtue can hardly regret that they should have thus ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... myself, it was another thing, and it was not refused to the extent of a shilling by the good fellow whose conversation I bought one afternoon when I found him, sitting up in his turfy bed, and mending his coat with needle and thread. I asked him of the times and their badness, and I hope I left him with the conviction that I believed him an artisan out of work, taking his misfortune bravely. He was certainly cheerful, and we had some agreeable moments, which I could not prolong, because ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... vague ambiguities, and the froth-dialect usual in Parliaments in these times, it may be considered one of the worst schools ever devised by man; and, I think, may almost challenge the OEil-de-Boeuf to match it in badness. ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... all about these things. Someone is the cause of this sickness. You don't know all the badness of the black man's heart. Look, here are the proofs that someone is working witchcraft against me. The only one who can fight that is the witch doctor. He is the only one who can make me well. See, here are the things that were taken from ...
— White Queen of the Cannibals: The Story of Mary Slessor • A. J. Bueltmann
... French in their contest with the Anglo-Dutch army, for which Ney was for the most part responsible, since from before 3 P.M. Napoleon was engrossed in preparing his right flank for defence against the Prussians. The issue of the great battle all men know. The badness of the roads retarded the Prussians greatly, and, save in Buelow's corps, there was no doubt considerable delay in starting; but the proverb that "All's well that ends well" might have been coined with special application ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... the editor that he was much the better man. The better man was naturally the man who had pledged himself to support a charming wife. We were neither of us good, as the event proved, but he had a finer sort of badness. The Blackport Beacon had two London correspondents—one a supposed haunter of political circles, the other a votary of questions sketchily classified as literary. They were both expected to be lively, and what was held out to each ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... Conqueror', a poem published in 1777, the Klopstockian note is still more audible. The form is a pseudo-antique strophe such as Klopstock often used; the substance a rhetorical denunciation of military ambition. The most awful curses are imprecated upon the head of the ruthless 'conqueror', whose badness is portrayed in lurid images and wild syntax that fairly rack the German language.[9] No wonder that editor Haug cautioned the young poet against nonsense, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... which indeed was of a prodigious bigness, bigger than one of our long boats that belong to one of our ships. Commissioner Pett at last came to our lodging, and caused the boats to go off; so some in one boat and some in another we all bid adieu to the shore. But through badness of weather we were in great danger, and a great while before we could get to the ship, so that of all the company not one but myself that was not sick. I keeping myself in the open air, though I was soundly ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys |
