"Immorality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fellow-creature actually suffering from want of food or shelter is, perhaps, more repugnant to the average American than to the average Englishman, and more apt to act immediately on his purse-strings. In that which popular language usually means when it speaks of immorality, all outward indications point to the greater purity of the American. The conversation of the smoking-room is a little less apt to be risque; the possibility of masculine continence is more often taken for granted; solicitation on the streets is rare; ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... discontents, small or great disgusts, leading often enough to altri guai People get to think themselves victims of incompatibility, when they are merely suffering from a foolish custom—the habit of being perpetually together. In fact, it's an immoral custom. What does immorality mean but anything that tends to kill love, to harden hearts? The common practice of man and wife occupying the same room is monstrous, gross; it's astounding that women of any sensitiveness endure it. In fact, their ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... the lesser lights of minor denominations—took the hansom cab murder as a text whereon to preach sermons on the profligacy of the age, and to point out that the only ark which could save men from the rising flood of infidelity and immorality was their own particular church. "Gad," as Calton remarked, after hearing five or six ministers each claim their own church as the one special vessel of safety, "there seems to be a whole ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... fulfills all ethical laws. What health is to the body, what sweetness is to the lark's song, what perfume is to the rose, that morality is to culture and character. Drunkenness and gluttony have not more power to blear the eye than immorality to degrade the soul. When Homer tells us that Ulysses escaped unharmed from the enchanted palace, but suffered injury from his unfaithfulness to a friend, the poet wishes us to know that it is easier to recover from the poison of Circe's ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... This point had been conceded to the accusation and could no longer be disputed. Here, by means of a clever autonomasia which went back to the sources and causes of crime, the district-attorney thundered against the immorality of the romantic school, then dawning under the name of the Satanic school, which had been bestowed upon it by the critics of the Quotidienne and the Oriflamme; he attributed, not without some probability, to the influence of this perverse literature the crime of Champmathieu, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... beds stand side by side, and she admits him into hers. And so the king is highly delighted, since he likes ——-' I will not go any further, gentlemen, for the virtuous frankness of the German princess might in this assembly be charged with immorality." ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... condition of New Orleans at this period the year 1816-1817 was deplorable. For vice and immorality, it doubtless bore away the palm from every city in Christendom or heathen lands. Gaming houses, and vile, disgusting receptacles of vice and infamy, were thickly scattered over every part of the city. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... person, or does any other such things as are criminal in our own country, he is either taken to a hospital and most carefully tended at the public expense, or if he is in good circumstances, he lets it be known to all his friends that he is suffering from a severe fit of immorality, just as we do when we are ill, and they come and visit him with great solicitude, and inquire with interest how it all came about, what symptoms first showed themselves, and so forth,—questions which he will answer with perfect unreserve; for bad conduct, though ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... cannot take up another calling without being pinched by the social law in all that he holds dear in life. His wife deserts him, his children refuse to acknowledge him as their father, and his property is absorbed by his society or caste. All this for no crime, no immorality; and he may be a noble and true man. If he chooses to be a tinker, instead of a trader, all the gods of Hindu antiquity light upon his head, and worry him to the funeral pyre by ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... villages, where the new army is swarming to be billeted, the clergymen and their wives are greatly agitated. Even in times of peace one's vicar's wife tells one stories in shocked whispers of 'immorality'—though the rustic mind does not seem to regard it as particularly immoral. An illegal baby is generally accepted with simple resignation or merely a little fretful complaint even in quite decent cottages. ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Shelley or Byron. They were friends; they, were geniuses; but they were both badly afflicted with common moral leprosy. It is playing with morals to excuse either of them because he was a genius. Nothing in the genius of either demanded or was served by the course of cheap immorality which both practised. It was not because Shelley was a genius that he married Harriet Westbrook, then ran away with Mary Godwin, then tried to get the two to become friends and neighbors until his own ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... Flood is believed still because people never examine what is taught them as the word of God. Every one who analyses the story must pronounce it the most extraordinary amalgam of immorality and absurdity ever palmed off ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... an outpouring of pent-up feeling, as much as is the song of the lark. Of course we are speaking of the true creative artist, and not of the laborious copyist. If he subordinates his work as a means to some further end; if his aim is morality or immorality, truth or error, pleasure or pain; if it is anything else than the embodiment or utterance of his own soul, so far he is acting riot as an artist, but as a minister of morality, or truth, or pleasure, or their contraries. ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... that he, with two other bankers, were some weeks ago dining with the Kaiser; and the Kaiser spoke to them about the mission of Germany. He said that a great part of Europe was paralysed by materialism, that immorality had eaten out the best life of France, and was fast finding its way into the vitals of England. That Germany was called by God to purify Europe, and that he who was anointed by God to reign over Germany, felt it his duty to fight ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... passed into the next, the Church led the revolt against decency, order, and morality; when scepticism took the place of faith, even of duty, and criticism the place of authority, then Browning became interested, not of course in the want of faith and in immorality, but in the swift variety and intensity of the movement of intellectual and social life, and in the interlacing changes of the movement. This was an enchanting world for him, and as he was naturally most interested in the arts, he represented the way in which the main elements of the Renaissance ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... unlearned to know what to believe; new manifestoes were issued continually by the King and clergy, full of learned arguments and persuasive appeals; and the professors of the old religion were continually discredited by accusations of fraud, avarice, immorality, hypocrisy and the like. They were silenced, too; while active and eloquent preachers like Latimer raged from pulpit to pulpit, denouncing, ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... of gold are more alike than we think for. In the one nothing aroused vigilance; in the other, everything rouses it; the result to society is, perhaps, very much the same. The presence of old Mother Tonsard, which was more a necessity than a precaution, was simply one immorality the more. And thus it was that the Abbe Brossette, after studying the morals of his parishioners, made this ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... occasionally, but until then I had believed that Edward Baines had never crossed the threshold of a playhouse. He saw my look of surprise, and continued, "Yes, I am sorry to say that between the years 1819 and 1822 I attended the theatre frequently in London, and I can never forget the shocking immorality I witnessed both on the stage and among the audience." Dear, simple, high-principled, and most scrupulous soul! It was impossible to make way against his ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... unfortunate teacher: in case a child should ask if the things in the Bible happened, "Either the teacher must answer him insincerely and that is immorality, or he must answer him sincerely, and that is sectarian education, or he must refuse to answer him at all, and that is first of all bad manners and a sort of timid ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... was therefore considered to be an institution recognized by the state as a means of punishing immorality, upholding the Catholic religion, persuading the skeptical,—confirming the wavering, and exercising a salutary terror over the ladies of the upper class, at that period renowned for their dissolute morals. The aristocracy of Florence patronized and protected the institution—because ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... Synod declared "that in this Seminary shall be taught in the German and English languages, the fundamental doctrines of the sacred Scriptures as contained in the Augsburg Confession of Faith," and that any professor may be removed "on account of error fundamental doctrines, immorality," etc. (5.) Article I, Section 2, of the Constitution of the Seminary, drawn up Schmucker and adopted by Synod, states that the Seminary is designed "to provide our churches with pastors who sincerely believe, and ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... been willing to play in that million-dollar success called Gossip. It was offered her. The lead was one of those saccharine parts, vulgar, false, and slyly carnal. She didn't in the least object to it on the ground of immorality, but the bad writing bothered her. There was, for example, a line in which she was supposed to beat her breast and say: "He's my mate! He's my man! And I'm his woman!! I love him, I tell ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... warning the northern merchants that unless these fanatics were hung they would lose the benefit of southern trade. A Charleston paper threatened to cut out and "cast upon the dunghill" the tongue of any one who should lecture upon the evils or immorality of slavery. The Augusta Chronicle declared that if the question be longer discussed the Southern States would secede and settle the matter by the sword, as the only possible means of self-preservation. A prominent Alabama clergyman advised hanging every man who favoured emancipation, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... immorality.... I know of no language sufficiently potent to express fully my absolute detestation of what I believe to be the most poisonous doctrine ever ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... on which I have never been able to satisfy myself.—The only safe conclusion I have been able to draw, being the folly, mischief, and immorality of all oaths but judicial ones,—and those no farther excepted than as they are means of securing a deliberate consciousness of the presence of the Omniscient Judge. The inclination of my mind is at this moment, to the principle that an oath may deepen the guilt of an act sinful ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... perhaps also the staff hoped to provide company and a fellow-sufferer for their editor, who was then in durance vile, his of fences being "inciting to an indecent assault" and an act of criminal immorality. I should not have felt called upon to remind my readers of a scandal half forgotten in England, while still held in lively remembrance by the jealous European world, had not the persistent fabrications, calumnies, and slanders of the Pall Mall, which ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... went on, "it is the simple history of Fernande, an ange dechue of the Quartier Breda. She had formed a connection with a man who suited her perfectly in every way, and they went on in happy immorality, till she found out that Maurice had a wife somewhere, a very charming person, who loved him dearly; perhaps she thought that the possession of two such affections by one man was de luxe; at all events, she cut him at once, refusing consistently ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... deny it, they will respect you. Aim at their esteem; despair of their love or gratitude; make your place what the best class of servants will value, and, though in their heart they may not thank you for it, you will gain, perhaps, one servant out of twenty who will keep gross imposition and gross immorality at bay. ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... poor are a marrying class—scarcely any occur until the condition of the girl is too manifest to be any longer concealed. Instances could be mentioned where the clergyman's wife, with a view to check the immorality around her, has offered a reward of a piece of furniture to the first married woman who does not bear a child till nine months after marriage; the custom being within three months. The frequency of the appeals to the petty sessions in rural districts for orders of ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... some trace of his displeasure from his countenance, while Kaunitz, with a faint, derisive smile, passed on. The empress, at that moment, reopened the door, and came out into the hall. Father Porhammer, advancing to her, said, "Did I not prove to your majesty the truth of my statement concerning the immorality of—" ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... vocation, if he could only see it; he can inculcate submission to authority, hope, charity, obedience—in fact, all the higher virtues; he can become a handmaid of the Church. And now, when irreligion, and immorality, and scepticism are rampant, we must ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... be at once discerned in his face, voice, and manner; from which likewise a keen observer might draw the safe conclusion that, though a decided man of fashion, and something of a dandy, he was above either puppyism or immorality. And Agatha's rich Anglo-Indian father had not judged foolishly when he put his only child and her property in the trust of, as he believed, that rare personage, an ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... and swarm with vermin, as the fowls, goats, or even a cow or two, generally increase the domestic party. It is well known that Paphos in Cyprus was the supposed birthplace of Venus, and that the island was at one time celebrated for the beauty of women and immorality: the change has been radical, as I believe no women are more chaste, and at the same time less attractive, than the Cypriotes of the present time. They are generally short and thickset; they are hardly treated by the men, as they perform most of the rough work in cultivation ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... not consent to give an enduring form to what is false or pernicious. It has often been remarked, with a kind of superstitious wonder, that poems of an immoral character never live long; but the reason is, that it is the characteristic of immorality to tie down man in the chains of the senses, and this shews that it has nothing in common with the spiritual nature of poetry. For the same reason, a poem based upon atheism, although it might attract attention for a time, would meet with no permanent response ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... corresponded with the verses, had taken him at his word, the poet would, in all probability, have been beaten to death. All his life long he evinced a great animosity towards the priesthood, and his famous poem abounds with passages reflecting upon their avarice, cruelty, and immorality. At his death he left a large box, filled with some weighty material, which he bequeathed to the Cordeliers, as a peace-offering, for the abuse he had lavished upon them. As his practice of alchymy was well-known, it was thought the box was filled with gold and silver, and the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... long-expected liberator. The whole country is anxious for revanche [revenge], and is arming silently, but with the evident belief that the hour is coming." To add to the growing hostility, the Post quotes from the Paris Figaro an article imputing the grossest immorality to German women. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... compelled, by the laws of his caste, to renounce some of the most sensible and healthful amusements which a university life offers. He must lead a very humdrum sort of life indeed. It is not enough that he should be free from the stains of vice and immorality; that his principles and habits should be those of a gentleman; that he should avoid excesses, and be observant of discipline; this the university would have a right to expect from all who are candidates for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... direct commandments. But the Bible nowhere prohibits war: in the Old Testament we find war and even conquest positively commanded, and although war was raging in the world in the time of Christ and his apostles, still they said not a word of its unlawfulness and immorality. Moreover, the fathers of the church amply acknowledge the right of war, and directly assert, that when war is justly declared, the Christian may engage in it either by stratagem or open force. If it be of that highly wicked ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... present generation will find it difficult to realize. For years it had been a crime to teach them the alphabet. They had been bought and sold like cattle. Their lives were a daily school in sensual immorality, deceit and dishonesty. Every manly aspiration, and womanly feeling, was smothered at its birth. They had come from savagery to slavery, and in a day, without training or preparation, they were set free. It is no wonder that they were ignorant, indolent, degraded ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., June, 1888., No. 6 • Various
... that place which God hath prepared for them that serve him, and presently afterwards he said, the Catholic religion is to serve God and roan. He was an eminent example of temperance and sobriety, and one that had the true art of living. His worst enemies could never charge him with any vice or immorality." With this character the Freethinkers have no right to be dissatisfied. The Abbe Lodivicat says, "His library was curious and valuable; always open to the learned, even to his opponents, whom he furnished with pleasure, both with books and arguments, which were employed in confuting ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... generally. Let us remark, in passing, that the intensity of the effect does not here depend on its length. A word is sometimes sufficient, provided it gives us a glimpse of an entire system of transposition accepted in certain social circles and reveals, as it were, a moral organisation of immorality. Take the following remark made by an official to one of his subordinates in a novel of Gogol's, "Your peculations are too extensive for an official of ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... looking wretchedly ill, on account of the excitement she had passed through and the anxiety she was in. She confessed to the women what had happened with Joseph, and they advised her to accuse him of immorality before her husband, and then he would be thrown into prison. Zuleika accepted their advice, and she begged her visitors to support her charges by also lodging complaints against Joseph, that he had been annoying them with ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... that opinion. But, whether it is correct or otherwise, it is very clear to me that, as Beelzebub is not to be cast out by the aid of Beelzebub, so morality is not to be established by immorality. It is, we are told, the special peculiarity of the devil that he was a liar from the beginning. If we set out in life with pretending to know that which we do not know; with professing to accept for proof evidence which we are well aware is inadequate; with wilfully ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... usher with the resounding words:—'You, sir, have neither place nor right of speech. Go tell those who sent you that we are here by the will of the people, and only bayonets shall drive us hence!' But Mirabeau bore a tainted character, and was always distrusted. 'Ah, how the immorality of my youth,' he used to say, in words that sum up the tragedy of many a puissant life, 'how the immorality of my youth hinders the public good!' The event proved that the popular suspicion was just: the patriot is now no longer merely suspected, but known, to have sullied his hands with the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... had been liberal. Several of her intimate friends and more that she associated with daily made what she euphemistically termed a cult of men. The naive deliberate immorality of young things not only in the best society but in all walks of life is far more prevalent than the good people of this world will ever believe. Those with much to lose seldom lose it; the instinct of self-protection envelops them as a mantle; although in small ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... religious sentiment. Events that have happened during the past month have confirmed me in the opinion that the Imperial Government have acted in the Khilafat matter in an unscrupulous, immoral and unjust manner and have been moving from wrong to wrong in order to defend their immorality. I can retain neither respect nor affection for such ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... find how bitterly he resented the attack on Bassett. The "Advertiser" spoke of the leader as though he were a monster of immorality and Dan honestly believed Bassett to be no such thing. His loyalty was deeply intensified by the hot volleys poured into the Boordman Building; but he was not disturbed by the references to himself. He winced a little bit at being called a "stool pigeon"; ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... nothing to do with morality. That is rather a shocking statement, perhaps, but it is a true one. It may be balanced by saying that civilization has nothing to do with immorality either. The early Christians were looked upon as very uncivilized people by the Romans of their time, and the meanest descendants of the Greeks secretly called the Romans themselves barbarians. In point of civilization and what we call cultivation, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... and abject priesthood, cast off by a savage father, the admirer of that gloomy theology founded by the murderer of Michael Servetus, and charged by his jealous brother writers as one of the founders of a Satanic School, for neither immorality of life nor breach of the parental relation, but for heterodoxy to an expiring system of dogmatism, and for acting on and asserting the right of man to think and judge for himself, a father was to have two children torn from him, in the sacred ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... know or imagine the Comforts of being warm or living at Ease? And that Power and Preheminence are their inseperable Attendants?) But only to instance the great Supports they afford us under the severest Calamities and Misfortunes; to shew that the Love of them is a special Antidote against Immorality and Vice, and that the same does likewise naturally dispose Men to Actions of Piety and Devotion: All which I can make out by my own Experience, who think my self no ways particular from the rest of Mankind, nor better nor worse by Nature ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... judge cannot be counted on; I know my peril and my chances, every one; and I take them—every one. For it is a good fight, Mr. Quarrier; it will be talked of for years to come, wonderingly; not because of your effrontery, not because of my obstinacy, but because such monstrous immorality could ever have existed in this land of ours. Your name, Harrington's, mine, will have become utterly forgotten long, long before the horror of these present conditions shall cease to ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... despatch, medically speaking, a dozen young folks in a season. Morality is powerless against a dozen vices which destroy society and which nothing can punish.—Another cup!—Upon my word of honor! man is a jester dancing upon a precipice. They talk to us about the immorality of the Liaisons Dangereuses, and any other book you like with a vulgar reputation; but there exists a book, horrible, filthy, fearful, corrupting, which is always open and will never be shut, the great book of ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... without much private injury to the individuals who partake of them. It is, however, not a little remarkable, that till lately, on the very opposite side of the road, the neighbourhood has exhibited scenes of vice, immorality, and indecency, which it is the great object of this Charity if possible to prevent, by an endeavour to reclaim the miserable and deluded wretches from their evil ways. I remember the late John Home Tooke related in the House of Commons a curious anecdote, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... two directions; the first by movement of their best into the higher class, swelling that slowly into the majority; the second, by the stern sloughing off of their worst by the diseases which spring from idleness, self-indulgence, filth, and immorality. ...
— Church work among the Negroes in the South - The Hale Memorial Sermon No. 2 • Robert Strange
... them the revolution in question was due, conceived that the cause of Israel's misfortunes might be not Jehovah's weakness but his wrath—a wrath kindled against the immorality, lukewarmness, and infidelity of the people. Repentance and a change of life, together with a purification of the cultus, would bring back prosperity. It was too late, perhaps, to rescue the whole state. But a remnant might be saved like a brand from the burning, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the artist, "what people are sure to call it, 'Whistler's little joke.' On the contrary, it is an indignant protest against the idea that there is any immorality in the nude." ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... unless it became necessary—that is, unless it could be done without money loss. For up-town or down-town, to make money was always and in all circumstances the highest morality, to lose money the profoundest immorality. ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... charge has never been made, so far as we are aware, against the Prince, it is superfluous to discuss the amount of immorality which should belong to such a deception. A tendency to employ stratagem in his warfare against Spain was, no doubt, a blemish upon his—high character. Before he is condemned, however, in the Court of Conscience, the ineffable wiles of the policy with which he had to combat must be thoroughly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Mainz, the protector of the seller of indulgences. Full of the popular belief in the wisdom and the goodwill of the highest rulers, Luther thought (he often said so later) that it was only necessary to present honestly to the princes of the Church the disadvantage and immorality of such abuses. But how childish this zeal of the monk appeared to the polished and worldly prince of the Church! What so deeply offended the honest man was, from the point of view of the Archbishop, a matter long settled. The sale of indulgences was an evil in the Church a hundred ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... 1902, God gave the little company a great opportunity. For years already some faithful Japanese under missionary influences, had been lamenting the position of the girls given over to immorality, who were severed for life from the rest of the community, and kept under police supervision, in a special quarter called the Yoshiwara of each city, as well as cut off from all the hopes of the Gospel. A law had indeed been passed allowing such girls as might wish to abandon ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... habit of it, acquired in prison, cripples and degrades him after he gets out. Contract labor is a crime which is getting recognized as such; it disgraces the nation or the state which tolerates it, and the shame of it, if not its immorality, may lead to its general suppression. Unpaid convict labor for the state, as on roads and so forth, is better than private contract labor, but is also a disgrace to the employer—a contemptible saving of pennies at the cost of human souls. Honest work is a manly thing, and those who ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... These accusations of immorality are, probably, greatly exaggerated by the enemies of the Jansenists; yet one may gather, even from the tenor of Montgeron's defence, that there was more or less truth in the charges brought against the conduct of some of the convulsionists, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... had been withdrawn from me by a Church order appointing him in control of the Eastern missions. I was without the support of either the Democratic or Republican organizations: my following was a personal one: and consequently the attack upon me chiefly took the form of stories of personal immorality, privately circulated. These stories culminated in a motion before the Woman's Republican Club, demanding my withdrawal from the Senatorial contest on the ground of "gross misconduct"—a motion introduced ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... twenty-five years!" said Moretti bitterly, "You should have made your confession before, and have made it privately. There is something unnatural and reprehensible in the sudden blazon you have made to the public of your gross immorality." ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... above details on the immorality of savages (39. See on this subject copious evidence in Chap. vii. of Sir J. Lubbock, 'Origin of Civilisation,' 1870.), because some authors have recently taken a high view of their moral nature, or have attributed ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... from persecution of all sorts, from revenge, or punishment for some misdeed at home. Some are lovers who have run away from their tribe to escape the rage of an injured husband. Thus recruiting directly favours the general anarchy and immorality, and indirectly as well, since the recruiters do their best to create as much trouble as possible in the villages, knowing it will be to their advantage. If they hear of a feud raging between two tribes, they collect at the shore and try to pick up fugitives; if there is no war, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... an immense stress is placed on the value of Morality. Very little stress is placed on the value of Immorality. I do not, of course, use the words "Morality" and "Immorality" in any question-begging way as synonymous of "goodness" and of "badness," but, technically, as names for two different sorts of socially-determined impulses. ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... difficulty, but it seems to me not insuperable. It will not do for us to say to you, in justification of non-performance, "the stipulation is immoral, and therefore we cannot execute it;" for you deny the immorality, and we cannot assume ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... with which he had become acquainted through a friend." Davenant and Dryden in 1670 improved "The Tempest"; Davenant corrected the errors of "Measure for Measure" and "Much Ado" in 1673; Sedley cut out the immorality from "Antony" in 1677; Shadwell, in the following year, reformed the character of "Timon"; Tate restored "Lear" to his kingdom and Cordelia to life, and even made "Henry VI.," "Richard II.," and "Coriolanus" conform to the rules of dramatic art which Shakspere ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... manners and etiquette warns ladies against scolding and disputing, against swearing and getting drunk, and against some other objectionable actions which betray a great lack of feminine modesty. The "Moral Instructions" of the Chevalier de la Tour Landry present a picture of coarseness and immorality among both men and women, which shows how incompatible was the barrack-like existence of feudal times with the practice of any sort of ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... New England standard of excellence as applied to woman has been a mistaken one; and, in consequence, though the girls are beautiful, the matrons are faded, overworked, and uninteresting; and that such a state of society tends to immorality, because, when wives are no longer charming, men are open to the temptation to desert their firesides, and get into mischief generally. He seems particularly to complain of your calling ladies who do nothing the 'fascinating ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... them. On the other hand, they are furnished comfortable homes, clothing and food, and are taken care of all of their lives, just the same as religious devotees belonging to any other sect. Notwithstanding their notorious unchastity and immorality, no discredit attaches to the profession, and the very vices for which they are condemned are considered acts of duty, faith and worship, although it seems almost incredible that a religious sect will encourage gross immorality in its own temples. Yet Hinduism has done worse things than that, and ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... about it, which one would remember all one's life, something amusing and almost maddening, which one had been in search of for a long time, and which imparted a flavor of curry, as it were, into the common-place flavor of immorality. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... insult, as is our American fashion. In spite of the opinion of every leading lawyer in the State, sixteen—fanatics, to give them the benefit of the doubt, voted that a disbelief in Christian dogma was the same thing as 'open immorality.' The Father of Lies made ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... it ever remembered, that the slightest suspicion of immorality attaches either to the heroine of this book, or to the leading philosophers of her school, for several centuries. Howsoever base and profligate their disciples, or the Manichees, may have been, the great Neo-Platonists were, as Manes himself was, persons ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... visitor's painful duty to protect children from cruelty, criminal neglect, or immorality by legal removal from their parents' control. Here a society for the protection of children will often render valuable assistance. Such a society is likely to be hampered in its work by the unwillingness of charitable ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... The Bible and Slavery. The Ambulance System. The Bibliotheca Sacra. Immorality in Politics. The Early Life of Governor Winthrop. The Sanitary Commission. Renan's Life of Jesus. ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... political agitation as from the discontent engendered by poverty, and by the difficulty of finding work for operatives,—a state not unlike that of England before the passage of the Reform Bill. According to Louis Blanc the public distress was appalling, united with disgusting immorality among the laboring classes in country districts and in great manufacturing centres. In consequence there were alarming riots at Lyons and other cities. The people were literally starving, and it required great resolution and firmness ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... are not going to speak. There is one, Uncle Chinaman, who is a marvel. In describing the actual condition of Spain, he once uttered this authoritative phrase: 'Clericalism in the zenith, immorality in high places, the debt floating more ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... I was informed by settlers on the road that the character of Kentucky travelers was entirely changed, and that they were as remarkable for sobriety as they had formerly been for dissoluteness and immorality. And indeed I found Kentucky to appearances the most moral place I had ever seen. A profane expression was hardly ever heard. A religious awe seemed to pervade the country. Upon the whole, I think the revival in Kentucky the most ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Jesus Christ. He can make him see, I say, that his own goodness did stand more in his way to the kingdom of heaven than he was aware of; and can make him feel too, that his leaning to that is as great iniquity as any immorality that men commit. The sum then is, that men that are converted to God by Christ, through the Word and Spirit—for all this must go to effectual conversion—must have their hearts broken, and spirits made contrite; I say, it MUST be so, for the reasons ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... original, and which almost outrages humanity. As he represents them, the Hindus are not only on a par with the least civilized nations of the old and new world, but they are plunged almost without exception in the lowest depths of immorality and crime. Considered merely in a literary capacity, the description of the Hindus, in the history of British India is open to censure for its obvious unfairness and injustice, but in the effect which it is ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... incompatibility between the "patience" commended, and not being able to "bear them which were evil." But patience under persecution or any other providential dispensation, is perfectly consistent with an enlightened zeal against error and immorality. Indeed, the two graces,—patience and zeal, are inseparable in themselves, and as connected with all the other graces of the Holy Spirit.—There were such in the primitive church, who claimed to be apostles, and who, upon trial, were discovered to be impostors. Paul, in the exercise of the miraculous ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... the first foundation, or swallow it? Both of them knew mankind exactly well, for both of them began that study in themselves, and there they found the best part of human composition; the worst they learned by long experience of the folly, ignorance, and immorality of most beside them. Their philosophy, on both sides, was not wholly speculative, for that is barren, and produces nothing but vain ideas of things which cannot possibly be known, or, if they could, yet would only terminate in the understanding; but it was ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... could buy upon you. I have built up the greatest fortune in all the West for you. I have kept you pure and sweet and good—and to think that such a fellow should dare—" Mr. Wayland choked with anger. "The one thing I cannot stand in a man or a woman is immorality. I have lived clean myself, and my son shall be as ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... officials must be done away with. Simony with its degrading influence must be abolished. The marriage of the clergy must be checked, so that the property of the Church should not be dissipated. The whole body of churchmen, from the priest to the archbishop, must be redeemed from the immorality and worldliness which degraded them in the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... that these facts are the stuff of art, because they are the stuff of nature; that it takes multitudes of such facts, not just one or two picked out because of their 'moral beauty'—for you purists believe in the beauty of morality as well as in the immorality of beauty—to make up a faithful picture of life. And you shuddered, didn't you? as you laid down the book you sat up half the night to read, and you said it was ugly, revolting; you couldn't see any perfect ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... observe, from the phraseology of these concluding paragraphs, what is made still more evident by the perusal of the whole letter, that the great ground of Peter's complaint against his son was not his immorality and wickedness, but his idleness and inefficiency. If he had shown himself an active and spirited young man, full of military ardor, and of ambition to rule, he might probably, in his private life, have been as vicious ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... fellow men does not touch this matter at all. Whether some other law is or is not obeyed, is entirely outside the question. It is a matter of dry fact that the scientific man may be moral or immoral, provided that his immorality does not upset his eyesight or nervous system. It is the same with Yoga. Morality matters profoundly, but it does not affect these particular things, and if you think it does, you are always getting into bogs and changing your moral standpoint, either lowering or making it absurd. Try ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... pleasures." At the close of the same year (1701) he brought out a successful comedy, "The Funeral," which was followed by "The Lying Lover" and "The Tender Husband," plays which gave strong evidence of the influence of Jeremy Collier's attack on the immorality of the stage. "The Tender Husband" owed "many applauded strokes" to Addison, to whom it was dedicated by Steele, who wished "to show the esteem I have for you, and that I look upon my intimacy with you as one of the most valuable enjoyments of my life." In 1705 Steele married a lady ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... be forced. Such an individual was Edith Whittlesey. She was born in a rural district of England, where life proceeds by rule of thumb and the unexpected is so very unexpected that when it happens it is looked upon as an immorality. She went into service early, and while yet a young woman, by rule-of-thumb progression, she became a ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... into the world on account of false swearing, and the profanation of God's name. Captivity enters the world on account of idolatry, immorality, bloodshed, and not suffering the land to rest on the Sabbatical year. At four seasons the pestilence is prevalent—in the fourth year, the seventh, and the end of the seventh, and the end of the feast of tabernacles in every year. In the fourth ...
— Hebrew Literature
... civilly indissoluble, has yet a hundred modifications which remove it far from the Puritan ideal which we of the Protestant faith cherish. Hence the French novel, whose strained sentiment and deeply logical immorality have wakened strange echoes among us of the stricter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... abstain from "meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication" (xv. 29). The rule was primarily meant for Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia. It prohibits complicity in idolatry, and in the immorality with which Syrian idolatry had been historically associated. And it prohibits the eating of blood and things strangled, a practice which might cause friction in the presence of Jewish communities. Nothing is said about circumcision or the sabbath. ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... system of which they formed a part; and the indulgent but candid observer, who tries to dilute his censure with the truism that he could not have been placed anywhere in this sublunary world without discovering many evils, informs us that in his seven years' residence at the university he saw immorality, habitual drunkenness, idleness, ignorance and vanity openly and boastfully obtruding themselves on public view, and triumphing without control over the timidity of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... Athanasius and Marcellus, and the doings of the Westerns at Sardica. Hereupon they denounce Hosius, Julius, and others as associates of heretics and patrons of the detestable errors of Marcellus. A few random charges of gross immorality are added, after the Eusebian custom. They end with a new creed, the fourth of Antioch, with some verbal changes, and seven anathemas ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... East brought to Rome immense riches, which laid the foundation of its Oriental extravagance and luxury, and finally undermined the strength of the state. From Greece were introduced learning and refinement, from Asia immorality and effeminacy. The vigor and tone of Roman society are nowhere more forcibly shown than in the length of time it took for its subjugation ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... the Girls' Friendly Society in the village, which was at that time famous for its drunkenness and immorality. We drove ourselves to the meetings in a high two-wheeled dog-cart behind a fast trotter, coming back late in pitch darkness along icy roads. These drives to Innerleithen and our moonlight talks are among ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... of that time, being heartily tired of the frivolity and intrigues, and disgusted at the immorality of the court, he obtained leave from Mazarin to rejoin his regiment, as the campaign might be expected to open shortly again. The cardinal had warmly congratulated him upon the suppression of the insurrection in Poitou, of which he had received full details from his agents ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... classical studies as the panacea of civilization, provided they were made serviceable to pure Christianity. His sincere ethical feeling made him recoil from the obscenity of a Poggio and the immorality of the early Italian humanists. At the same time his delicate and natural taste told him that a pedantic and servile imitation of antique models could never produce the desired result. Erasmus knew Latin too well to be strictly classical; his Latin was alive and required freedom. In his ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... far less prejudicial to be a witness to the immorality of the great, than to that immorality which leads to greatness. In a democracy, private citizens see a man of their own rank in life, who rises from that obscure position, and who becomes possessed of riches and of power in a few years: the spectacle excites their surprise and their envy: and ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... particular; or, possibly, through a Decline of all Religion, in general; the pontifical and episcopal Dictatorship and Authority are wofully fallen, from the Chair of Infallibility, where they had been seated by Opinion. The Sons of the most bigotted Ancestors do now perceive, that Piety and Immorality are not rightly consistent. And even the vulgar and ignorant, among the Roman Laity, would grumble at departing from an Inch of their Property, though the Priest should advise, and the Pope, himself, should ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves. I quite sympathise with the rage of the English democracy against what they call the vices of the upper orders. The masses feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and immorality should be their own special property, and that if anyone of us makes an ass of himself he is poaching on their preserves. When poor Southwark got into the Divorce Court, their indignation was quite magnificent. And ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... Ben. There's lots of miserable wretches and immorality and profanity among the regulars. I want you to remain a good boy, as you always have been. I need not tell you to be brave. ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... of the town's sore spots too. I've found out that crowding people in tenements and shacks means disease and immorality. Isn't that the church's affair? Angus MacPherson has taught me that when the jobs are gone little crimes come, followed by bigger ones; and sickness comes too, with the death rate going up. Babies are born to unmarried mothers, and babies, with names or without, die ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... and gave myself in passion and sincerity to a religious experience that has made me tolerant of all religion ever since. I discharged my best captain for immorality. So did I my cook, and a better never boiled water in Manatomana. For the same reason I discharged my chief clerk. And for the first time in the history of trading my schooners to the westward carried ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... than they know to be their value. But we think too much stress has been laid on this part of their character by some travellers. It is regarded in France as a sort of professional accomplishment, without which it is in vain to attempt exercising a trade; and it is hardly thought to indicate immorality of any kind, more than the obviously false expressions which are used in the ordinary intercourse of society in England, or the license of denying oneself to visitors. That it should be so regarded is no doubt a proof of national inferiority, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Michelet apparently accepts the charge of immorality; according to which the cure took advantage of his popularity among the ladies of Loudun, by his insinuating manners, to seduce the wives and daughters of the citizens. By another writer (Alexandre Dumas, Celebrated ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... 'nightman's work' of analysing Antony and Kean, and of collecting everything that spite has said about their author's life, their author's habits, their author's manners and customs and character: of whose vanity, mendacity, immorality, a score of improper qualities besides, enough has been written to furnish a good-sized library. And the result of it all is that Dumas is recognised for a force in modern art and for one of the greatest inventors and amusers the century has produced. ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... patrician officers called censors. The functions of these magistrates were many and important. They took the census, and thus assigned to every man his position in the different classes of the citizens; and they could, for immorality or any improper conduct, not only degrade a man from his rank, but deprive him of his vote. It was their duty to watch the public morals and in case of necessity to administer wholesome advice. Thus we are told of their reproving the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... to feel most painfully alone; but she rejoiced to think, that she should spare him the care and perplexity of the suit, and meet him again, all his own. Marriage, as at present constituted, she considered as leading to immorality—yet, as the odium of society impedes usefulness, she wished to avow her affection to Darnford, by becoming his wife according to established rules; not to be confounded with women who act from very different motives, though her conduct would be just the same without the ceremony as with ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the authorities tolerate such things! Allow them to go on in the light of day! [Confronting MRS. ALVING.] Had I not cause to be deeply concerned about your son? In circles where open immorality prevails, and has even ...
— Ghosts • Henrik Ibsen
... yeas and 108 nays. This decision of the House of Representatives against an impeachment on the charges then made was entirely justified. This imposing process was not authorized for misconduct, immorality, intoxication or neglect of duties, such as were alleged in the report of the committee, but only for high crimes or misdemeanors. The House properly made this distinction, and here the accusations against the President would ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... shall be deprived of the right of petition, if their moral character is not good? Where, in the land of freemen, was the right of petition ever placed on the exclusive basis of morality and virtue? Petition is supplication—it is entreaty—it is prayer! And where is the degree of vice or immorality which shall deprive the citizen of the right to supplicate for a boon, or to pray for mercy? Where is such a law to be found? It does not belong to the most abject despotism! There is no absolute monarch on earth, who is not compelled, by ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... look at it rightly, did not corrupt Mrs. Leigh any more than he did the whole British public. They rebelled at the immorality of his conduct and the obscenity of his writings; and he resolved that they should accept both. And he made them do it. At first, they execrated 'Don Juan.' Murray was afraid to publish it. Women were determined not to read it. In 1819, Dr. William Maginn of ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... immorality of charging interest—"usury" as they call it (see Chapters IV., IX., and XVII.), and they are indignant that the banks are unwilling to advance gratis unlimited funds to Socialist town councils to be wasted as fancy may direct ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker |
