"Libertine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... far as usual accounts state, what even in our day would be called a libertine. He married the Countess of Manchester (the widow of a relative) before his entry into public life, and was deeply occupied in party politics and fiscal administration. I am told that Davenant impugns his morals: this may be the exception which proves the rule; some of the lampoons directed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... the second act, satire and fantasy become absolutely unbridled; the poet's genius sings and dances under him, like a strong ship in a storm, but the vessel is rudderless and the pilot an emphatic libertine. The wild impertinence of fancy, in this act, from the moment when Peer and the Girl in the Green Gown ride off upon the porker, down to the fight with the Boeig, gigantic gelatinous symbol of self deception, exceeds in recklessness anything else written since the second part ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... wickedness out of their hearts. In like manner, when the great Teacher warned his followers to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees, he meant that they should eschew on the one hand the lie of self-righteous superstition, and on the other the lie of libertine unbelief. The Apostle Paul, too, while he does not forbid another use, employs the conception, in point of fact, to illustrate the presence and power ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... Williams, and discovering the interest the republican had in her affections, he determined to get her into his power, for the purpose of holding a check on the whig officer, whom he equally feared and hated. A libertine in principle, and a profligate in practice, he scrupled at no means to attain his object, and a violent attack on the peaceful dwelling of a defenceless woman was as consonant with his views ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... depicted on Meroe's face that the Roman general for an instant remained motionless. Then, urged either by compunction for his violence; or by the certainty that, if he attempted force, he would have but a corpse in his possession; or, as the unscrupulous libertine later pretended, by a generous impulse that had guided him throughout;—whatever his motive, Caesar stepped back several paces, and raised his hand to heaven as if to call the gods to witness that he would respect his prisoner. Still suspicious, ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... a leader of thought. He laboured at it all his life, and his mental qualifications enabled him to keep pace with the public desires in all their branches. The age was frivolous, and he excelled in fugitive pieces; it was libertine, and he had obscene verses at command; the esprits forts had a leaning to incredulity, and he put himself at the head of the movement, and made use of it to turn into ridicule all that men had been most accustomed to revere. Gifted with extraordinary powers of raillery and sarcasm, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... without further explanation, "I am a man of the world, and I know the utmost capabilities of human wickedness. I don't believe you are a real libertine. But I know Grey Town. Many a dog has been hanged here because of his bad name. ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... an act from me,' he replied, looking into the eyes of the libertine robber, 'that I refuse to discuss a proposition so odious and ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... ever wrought out by a composer. The famous finale of Don Giovanni, after all, only shows us a libertine at odds with his victims, who invoke the vengeance of Heaven; while here earth and its dominions try to defeat God. Two nations are here face to face. And Rossini, having every means at his command, has made wonderful use of them. He has succeeded in expressing the turmoil of a tremendous ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... been pictured as a libertine and a pillager. His face has been caricatured so often that people have the cartooned impression of him and believe him to be ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... not read that either Epicurus, or that libertine school of Cyrene, or what the Cynic impudence uttered, was ever questioned by the laws. Neither is it recorded that the writings of those old comedians were suppressed, though the acting of them were forbid; ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... the convention, Li Chia had to question Sun in his turn. They exchanged such words as are customary between educated men. Finally the libertine said: ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... man after the brave impulsive "no" had roared in his face. Just before midnight when he saw the electric light flash on in the private office of the president of the Exchange National Bank, Lige Bemis, libertine with men, strolled home and counted the battle won. "He's writing his speech," he said to Barclay over the telephone at midnight. And John Barclay, who had fought the local contest in the election with Bemis to be loyal to a friend, and to help one who was in danger of losing the profit on half ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... for him no more than did the little girls and babies. Life changed its aspect entirely. Gone were the days of vagabondage, the lazy, the delicious even though cold and hungry hours of dreaming and reading in the brickfield; gone was the happy freedom of the chartered libertine of the gutter. He was bound, a little slave, like hundreds of other little slaves and thousands of big ones, to a relentless machine. He entered the hopeless factory gate at six in the morning and left it at half-past ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... quite a different man from what you were in externals; in externals you have been a civil, moral, and rational man; whereas in internals, you have been neither civil, moral, nor rational, because a libertine and an adulterer: and such men, when they are allowed to ascend into heaven, and are there kept in their externals, can see the heavenly things contained therein; but when their internals are opened, instead of heavenly things they see infernal. ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... God," he said, "that however gross and innumerable my errors and backslidings, I am no libertine." (Here Endicott's eyes flashed, but he contented himself with stroking, in a musing manner, the long tuft of hair on his chin.) "The evil we are called upon by the united voice of the suffering ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... and fell on her knees before the old libertine.—Young and innocent as she was, a dark suspicion of his purpose came like a shadow over her soul, and she cried ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... conqueror [w]. [MN 1191. 12th May.] The king here espoused Berengaria, who, immediately embarking, carried along with her to Palestine the daughter of the Cypriot prince; a dangerous rival, who was believed to have seduced the affections of her husband. Such were the libertine character and conduct of the heroes engaged in this pious enterprise! [FN [w] Bened. Abb. p. 650. Ann. Waverl. p. 164. Vinisauf, p. 328. W. Heming. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... has a very individual talent for painting woman in her first bloom, when the bud is about to burst into the rose and the child is about to become a maiden. As in the Eighteenth Century all the world was somewhat libertine, even the moralists, Greuze, when he painted an Innocence, always took pains to open the gauze and give a glimpse of the curve of the swelling bosom; he puts into the eyes a fiery lustre and upon the lips a dewy smile that suggests the idea that ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... the anomaly of a man scrupulously honorable in regard to his own sex, and absolutely codeless in regard to the other. He was what modern nomenclature calls a "contemporaneous varietist." He was, in brief, an offensive type of libertine. Woman, first and foremost, was his game. Every woman attracted him. No woman held him. Any new woman, however plain, immediately eclipsed her predecessor, however beautiful. The fact that amorous interests took precedence over all others was quite enough ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... progeny; while the Catholic priest who, being strictly celibate, never adds to the population, "mashes" the ladies through the confessional, worming out all their secrets, and making them as pliable as wax in his holy hands. Too often the professional son of God is a chartered libertine, whose amors are carried on under a veil of sanctity. What else, indeed, could be expected when a lot of lusty young fellows, in the prime of life, foreswear marriage, take vows of chastity, and undertake to stem the current of their natures by such feeble ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... allowed to receive visits in the presence of a lay-sister, and to perform in concerts on the feast-days of the order; but some few convents had a name for far greater license, and it was a common thing for the noble libertine returned from Italy to boast of his intrigue ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... Church, a great prince among priests, living in shameless luxury, in violation of every law, human and divine, with the children of his mistresses set up in palaces, himself living on the fat of the land. What law does he not break, this libertine, this usurer? What makes the corn dear, so that you cannot get it for your starving children?—what but this plunderer, this robber, seizing the funds that extremity has dragged from the poor in order to buy ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... fears were not unfounded. Lord Alphingham loved Caroline, but the love of a libertine is not true affection, and such a character for the last fourteen years of his life he had been; nine years of that time he had lived on the Continent, gay, and courted, in whatever country he resided, winning many a ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... case was related to me by a horrified mother who had discovered that the marriage ceremony had been performed by an accomplice of the libertine who had seduced her daughter and since confessed his crime. But whether the ceremony be performed by a priest of the Church or by a more unauthorized scoundrel, the girl is equally at the mercy of her "husband" and equally betrayed in ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... purpose because it develops the obsession of licentious and obscene thoughts, the victim alternating between temporary victory over "sin" and the remorse of defeat. But the seeker of purely physical pleasure, the libertine or the average sensualist, is no less a pathological case, living as one-sided and unbalanced a life as the ascetic, for his conduct is likewise based on ignorance and lack of understanding. In seeking pleasure without the exercise of responsibility, ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... his part, my dear," said Mr. Ayrton. "I think that he's a bit of a fool to run his head into a hornet's nest because he has come to the conclusion that Abraham's code of morality was a trifle shaky, and that Samson was a shameless libertine. Great Heavens! has the man got no notion ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... houses at Hong Kong did not wish the libertine to be disturbed in his depredations. The Chinese merchants were able to see this fact if those officials were not ready to admit it even to themselves. They knew how to throw a stone that would secure their own glass houses. Hence they said in their ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... Francis I. as valet de chambre, and accompanied his master to the battle of Pavia, where he was wounded and made prisoner. Pursued by the Catholics as a heretic, and afterwards by the Genevan Calvinists as a libertine, he was protected as long as was possible by the King and by his sister. He died at Turin, a refugee to Italy, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... every young northern woman until the day she marries, and wakes to torment her like a biblical devil if she does not. There is no miser like a reformed spendthrift, and no ascetic will go to such extremes of self-mortification as a converted libertine; in the same way, there are no such portentously virginal old maids as those who might have been the most womanly wives; the opposite is certainly true also, for the variety 'Hemiparthenos,' studied after nature by Marcel Prevost, ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... morality are high and refined, such as become the Father of a nation. Were he a libertine, his influence would soon vanish; for men will never trust the important concerns of society to one they know will do what is hurtful to society for his own pleasures. He told me that his father had brought him up with great strictness, and that he had very seldom ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... of women devoid of hair about the genital region. Riolan says that he examined the body of a female libertine who was totally hairless from the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... air of every thing, and the whole appears but a covered indigence, a magnificent poverty. That neatness and chearfulness, which attends the table of him who lives within compass, is wanting, and exchanged for a libertine way of service ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... to the lady's voice and made her express herself with warmth and with a shamelessly libertine air. ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... by a cruel and revengeful disposition, partaking of the character of his works. He was one of the triumvirate of painters, who assassinated, persecuted, or drove every talented foreign painter from Naples, that they might monopolize the business. He was also a reckless libertine, and, according to Dominici, having seduced a beautiful girl, he was seized with such remorse for his many crimes, as to become insupportable to himself; and to escape the general odium which was heaped upon him, he fled from Naples on board a ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... unprincipled libertine, cold, selfish, and unfeeling. He was eminently successful too in his diabolical enterprise, although there was nothing prepossessing in his person or in his manners; but he had the reputation of being irresistible, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... had been: each must tell the other everything; a common bond of suffering was between them and a common bond of love, though love so differing. "I knew, of course, that he was often unfaithful to me; he is a libertine; but I was the centre; he always came back to me.—I saw the end approaching about five years ago. I fought—oh how warily—so that he shouldn't dream I was afraid;—it is fatal for a woman to let a man know she is afraid,—the brutes, the cruel ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... that. Whom could she send in her place? Ah! there was the double check. She couldn't expose her father to a stranger; yet if her apprehensions were grounded on anything more substantial than fear, strangers must in time know all. Could Merry be made use of? No—that would not do. The libertine tone of the invalid, his impudent allusion to herself, convinced Kate that a man must be her agent, if any one were to be. But what man did she know? If she sent any of the servants, her father would recognize them, and the attempt fail. She ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... the prince,—in a tone into which, despite his awe of that terrible man, THE FIRST GRAND INQUISITOR OF SPAIN, his libertine spirit involuntarily forced itself, in a half latent raillery,—"sorcery of eyes like those bewitched the wise son of a more pious sire ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... islands looked as we passed between them, with a fair wind and studding sails set alow and aloft. Their tropical charms seemed more glowing, the water bluer, the palm trees statelier, the vegetation more libertine than ever. On the south the land rises gradually from the shore to a range of lofty mountains. Immediately behind Honolulu - the capital - a valley with a road winding up it leads to the north side of the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... she swallowed it whole, and her colour flamed high. At this signal of distress Archie awoke to a sense of his ill-behaviour. What had he been doing? He had been exquisitely rude in church to the niece of his housekeeper; he had stared like a lackey and a libertine at a beautiful and modest girl. It was possible, it was even likely, he would be presented to her after service in the kirk-yard, and then how was he to look? And there was no excuse. He had marked the tokens of her shame, of ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... peer, Has danced a Tango and has dropped a tear. Fresh from the schoolroom, pink and plump and pert, Bedizened, bouncing, artful and alert, No victim she of vapours and of moods Though the sky falls she's "ready with the goods"— Will suit each client, tickle every taste Polite or gothic, libertine or chaste, Supply a waspish tongue, a waspish waist, Astarte's breast or Atalanta's leg, Love ready-made or glamour off the peg— Do you prefer "a thing of dew and air"? Or is your type Poppaea or Polaire? The crystal casket of a maiden's dreams, ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... I suppose, that he has proved to be a perfect libertine. Honestly, wouldn't you both feel better if he had never ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... you must take all this with reserve. D'Aubigne, being artist and man of science, has a vivid imagination. But he understands Carville, and appreciates the difference between him and the average libertine. With Carville it is always a grande affaire. For the time, as D'Aubigne quaintly puts it, his love is like a red, red rose. And I relate my adventures to you because you have roused my interest in your neighbours and it is only fair ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... and cry, he had undoubtedly consummated his fell design. After cautioning her to be more careful in future I parted from the damsel (who to the last protested her gratitude) and walked homeward to my lodgings, on the way reflecting how frail a thing is woman when matched against man the libertine." ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... own production, in the collection of plays and poems going under his name, published in 1745, 8vo., a copy of which I purchased at Nassau's sale, many years since. (2.) The Doating Lovers, or the Libertine Tamed, a comedy in five acts; acted in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It is dedicated to the Duchess of Hamilton and Brandon, whose "elegant taste and nice judgment in the most polite entertainments of the age," as well as her "piercing wit," are eulogised. Accident ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... callous than humble. His devotion, which was quite real, kept him from no sin he had a mind to. His talk showed good-humor, gayety, even wit enough; but there was a levity in his acts and words that he had brought from among those libertine devotees with whom he had been bred, and that shocked the simplicity and purity of the English lady, whose guest he was. Esmond spoke his mind to Beatrix pretty freely about the Prince, getting her brother to put in a word of warning. Beatrix was entirely ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... great-grandfather of William, the 5th lord, who outlived son and grandson, and was [v.04 p.0898] succeeded by his great-nephew, the poet. Admiral the Hon. John Byron (q.v.) was the poet's grandfather. His eldest son, Captain John Byron, the poet's father, was a libertine by choice and in an eminent degree. He caused to be divorced, and married (1779) as his first wife, the marchioness of Carmarthen (born Amelia D'Arcy), Baroness Conyers in her own right. One child of the marriage survived, the Hon. Augusta Byron (1783-1851), ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... humanity are sad media through which to receive truth—often so opaque that no truth can reach the mind at all. It is impossible for a man whose affections are bestialized, whose practices are libertine, and whose imaginations are all impure, to receive the truth that there are such things as purity and virtue, and that there are men and women around him who are virtuous and pure. There is no truth which personal vice will not distort. ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... is endowed with a greater degree of curiosity than man. It occured to me to place myself in a contiguous apartment, where I could observe if this libertine priest was accustomed to take similar liberties with the nuns. I did so, and was fully convinced that only the old left him without ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... relative to suicide, and seemed determined to destroy himself. To this may be added, that he led a dissipated life, was greatly addicted to gaming, and did all which could constitute the character of a libertine; on which account his father frequently reprehended him and sometimes in terms of severity, which considerably added to the doom that seemed to ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Thackeray, but a party politician in those days could scarcely be a faithful chronicler. He could see what he wished to see, but found it necessary to shut his eyes when the prospect became unpleasant. George was a heartless libertine, but Addison observes with great satisfaction that the women most eminent for virtue and good sense are in his interest. 'It would be no small misfortune,' he says, 'to a sovereign, though he had all the male part of the nation on his side, if he did not find himself king ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... what I may call private and personal ends. Thus the man of business lives for the acquisition of riches; the scholar and the scientist, of knowledge; the statesman, of power; the speculator, of excitement; the libertine, of pleasure; and so forth. Few are they who ever dream of devoting life as a whole to the pursuit of an end which is potentially attainable by all men, and which is therefore worthy of Man as Man. The idea of there being such an end has indeed ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... October, 1685, "You have, no doubt, seen the edict by which the king revokes that of Nantes; nothing can be more beautiful than its contents, and never did or will any king do anything more memorable." The noble libertine and freethinker replied to her, "I admire the steps taken by the king to reunite the Huguenots. The war made upon them in former times and the St. Bartholomew gave vigor to this sect; his Majesty has sapped it ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... restaurant, gorges himself with rich dishes and costly wines, then seeks his bed to dream blissfully over his fat salary and his luxurious supper. The ballet-girl takes up her solitary walk for the humble home in which perhaps an infirm mother is anxiously waiting her return, exposed to such libertine insults as the midnight appearance of a young girl on the street is sure to invite. It is many hours since she dined; she is fatigued and hungry, but she sups upon a crust, or the cold remains of what was at best a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... in gazing upon great masses of gold. Avaricious people gathered proof of this when they looked at the eyes of the good man, to which the yellow metal seemed to have conveyed its tints. The glance of a man accustomed to draw enormous interest from his capital acquires, like that of the libertine, the gambler, or the sycophant, certain indefinable habits,—furtive, eager, mysterious movements, which never escape the notice of his co-religionists. This secret language is in a certain way the freemasonry of the ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... clung closely to her body, and as her eyes met mine, I, for the first time in my life, felt a sudden tenderness for her, something that I never before felt when any woman's eyes had looked into mine. And I had never been a saint, though never a libertine; but between the two courses, I think, I had had as much experience of women as falls to most men, and I had never yet met a woman who seemed to so hold and possess my moral sense as did this semi-savage ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... glittered in Pascal's eyes, but he breathed freely once more. "As for Vantrasson," resumed Madame Ferailleur, "it is certain that he took a violent fancy to his sister's apprentice. This man, who has since become an infamous scoundrel, was then only a rake, an unprincipled drunkard and libertine. He fancied the poor little apprentice—she was then but thirteen years old—would be only too glad to become the mistress of her employer's brother; but she scornfully repulsed him, and his vanity was so deeply wounded that he persecuted the poor ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... was far from being a libertine. And that he sincerely loved the beautiful maid of Marblehead is certain. He has come down to us as one of the most knightly men of his time, a gentleman and a scholar, who was also a sincere follower of the Church of England and its teachings. Both in manner and person he is said ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... before the THIRD and last part was given to the world; but then everything had changed! the poet, the subject, and the patron! The old theme of the sectarists had lost its freshness, and the cavaliers, with their royal libertine, had become as obnoxious to public decency as the Tartuffes. Butler appears to have turned aside, and to have given an adverse direction to his satirical arrows. The slavery and dotage of Hudibras to the widow revealed the voluptuous ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... and is not contented to delight, unless he can shock the public. He would force them to admire in spite of decency and common sense—he would have them read what they would read in no one but himself, or he would not give a rush for their applause. He is to be "a chartered libertine," from whom insults are favours, whose contempt is to be a new incentive to admiration. His Lordship is hard to please: he is equally averse to notice or neglect, enraged at censure and scorning praise. He tries the patience of the town to the very utmost, and when they shew ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... even in the fourteenth, to rob the eighteenth of the credit of originating the doctrine of equality. To mention only one of the early writers,—[For copious references to authorities on the spread of communistic and socialistic ideas and libertine community of goods and women in four periods of the world's history—namely, at the time of the decline of Greece, in the degeneration of the Roman republic, among the moderns in the age of the Reformation, and again in our own day—see Roscher's Political Economy, notes ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... nourrice," with other rural and domestic idylls by Greuze; the voluptuous element, the tempting undercurrent of sensuality made perceptible in the fragile simplicity of his artless maidens, is a dainty bit for the libertine tastes which are kept alive beneath moral aspirations.[2309] After these, Ducis, Thomas, Parny, Colardeau, Boucher, Delille, Bernardin de St. Pierre, Marmontel, Florian, the mass of orators, authors and politicians, the misanthrope Champfort, the logician La Harpe, the minister ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... coquetry. A coquette Armand, makes promises to many, and gives herself to none; and a woman who keeps such promises is a libertine. This much I believed I had grasped of our code. But to be melancholy with humorists, gay with the frivolous, and politic with ambitious souls; to listen to a babbler with every appearance of admiration, to talk of war with a soldier, wax enthusiastic with philanthropists ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... oddly that good and wise men at Cambridge should think of raising me into an object of criticism. I have always been, from my incapacity of methodical writing, 'a chartered libertine,' free to worship and free to rail, lucky when I could make myself understood, but never esteemed near enough to the institutions and mind of society to deserve the notice of masters of literature and ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... herself free as the wind, and permitted herself all the innocent gaieties which that "chartered libertine," a coquette, can take. She flirted with all the bachelors, widowers, and married men, in a manner which did extraordinary credit to her years: and let not the reader fancy such pastimes unnatural at her early age. The ladies—Heaven bless them!—are, as a ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... justice and mercy to tyranny and cruelty, and had a passion for logic and order"; and adds, "he was a man without beliefs or illusions or scruples." He began by being a fop and ultra-extravagant; and was always, if we may believe accounts, a libertine of the first water. He was, of course, an epileptic. In short, there is nothing in history to give an absolutely sure clue to his real self. But there is that passage in Madame Blavatsky, which I have quoted before, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... guardianship of the children. But twenty years ago, when our woman's rights movement commenced, by the laws of the State of New York, and all the states, the father had the sole custody and control of the children. No matter if he were a brutal, drunken libertine, he had the legal right, without the mother's consent, to apprentice her sons to rumsellers, or her daughters to brothel keepers. He could even will away an unborn child, to some other person than the mother. And in many of the states the law still prevails, and the mothers are still utterly ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... of an evening, startles us in the same way as the alarming indications of profligacy in a son or ward in real life should startle a parent or guardian. We have no such middle emotions as dramatic interests left. We see a stage libertine playing his loose pranks of two hours' duration, and of no after consequence, with the severe eyes which inspect real vices with their bearings upon two worlds. We are spectators to a plot or intrigue (not reducible in life to the point of strict morality) ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... absences from home, were all imputed to a very unreasonable inclination to gallantry. His concierge was deceived as well as his friends, and laughing at his supposed infatuation, disrespectfully called him an old libertine. It was only the officials of the detective force who knew that Tirauclair and Tabaret were one and ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... influence of such society. The moral advantages of the system of education which formed the Duke of York, the Duke of Cumberland, and the Queen of Denmark, may perhaps be questioned. George the Third was indeed no libertine; but he brought to the throne a mind only half open, and was for some time entirely under the influence of his mother and of his Groom of the Stole, John Stuart, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... she responds, in a sonorous alto, without appearing to notice Gabou,—but smiling upon Fafa as she passes, with her great eyes turned full upon his face.... All the libertine blood of the man flames under that look;—he feels as if momentarily wrapped in a ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... element. But, though sufficiently familiarized with guilt, he was not as yet acquainted with it in its basest shapes—he had not yet acted with meanness, or at least with what the world terms such. He had been a duellist, the manners of the age authorized it—a libertine, the world excused it to his youth and condition—a bold and successful gambler, for that quality he was admired and envied; and a thousand other inaccuracies, to which these practices and habits lead, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... with hard words. The general consensus of opinion was in favor of a theory which seemed the most likely; this was Mme. Vauquer's view. According to her, the man so well preserved at his time of life, as sound as her eyesight, with whom a woman might be very happy, was a libertine who had strange tastes. These are the facts upon which Mme. Vauquer's slanders ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... profligacy, and now, he and his mother are determined to have my fortune. Aunt exhausted all her stock of melodramatic and sentimental language and her tears in trying to get me to fulfill what she called my father's 'dying wish,' by marrying that debauchee and libertine; then she tried threats, and finally became so wild with rage, that she reminded me of the will, and told me I should never marry any one else; that Humphrey should have the property, as my father intended, sooner or later, if not with me, then without me. I knew Helen intended to come ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... no harm—merely that every one thinks thoughts and feels impulses that would be startling if expressed in speech. Don't we all know how terrifying a thing speech is, and thought? a chartered libertine." ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... look at your lighted windows from the street, and watch your shadow— happy if only I could think that you were well and happy, my sweet little bird! Yet how are things in reality? Not only have evil folk brought you to ruin, but there comes also an old rascal of a libertine to insult you! Just because he struts about in a frockcoat, and can ogle you through a gold-mounted lorgnette, the brute thinks that everything will fall into his hands—that you are bound to listen to his insulting condescension! ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to report this case to the proprietors of that store; but Laura was so distressed for fear of notoriety, ultimate results, also the deprivation of a living for that libertine's delicate wife and children, that I reluctantly desisted. This I know: In answer to many prayers, both her friends' and her own, she won out; but she never gave up that key, and to this day she does not know what door it unlocked or whether some other poor, silly girl received and ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... The libertine custom of indulging in a plurality of wives, as adopted by many of the mountaineers, never received the sanction, in thought, word or action, of Kit Carson. His moral character may well be held up as an example to men whose pretensions to virtuous ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... mysteries not permitted except among heathens. I fear the theatre carries down that ancient tradition and worship, as masons have carried their secret signs and rites from temple to temple. When the libertine hero carries off the beauty in the play, and the dotard is laughed to scorn for having the young wife: in the ballad, when the poet bid his mistress to gather roses while she may, and warns her that old Time is still a-flying: in the ballet, when honest Corydon ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stonemason; chiefly in the gravestone, tomb, and monument way, and wholly of their colour from head to foot. No man is better known in Cloisterham. He is the chartered libertine of the place. Fame trumpets him a wonderful workman—which, for aught that anybody knows, he may be (as he never works); and a wonderful sot—which everybody knows he is. With the Cathedral crypt he is better acquainted than ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... good," what is there in the system of secular ethics that should oblige me to forego my favorite indulgences, or that can impress me with the conviction that I ought to do so? True I may suffer, and suffer much, as the drunkard and the libertine do, in the way of natural consequence, and it may be prudent to be temperate in the indulgence of my sensual appetites; there may even be a sense of inward degradation, and a politic regard to the opinions of my fellow-men, which will operate to some extent as a restraining ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... hedges around my thoughts, and even around my words, lest swine and libertine should break into ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the reputation of Bully West, notorious as a brawler and a libertine. Who in all the North did not know of it? Her heart fluttered a signal ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... Sunday, gloomy as a Pharisaical Sabbath, were easily imitated by men to whom all religions were the same. The sincere Puritans soon found themselves lost in a multitude, not merely of men of the world, but of the very worst sort of men of the world. For the most notorious libertine who had fought under the royal standard might justly be thought virtuous when compared with some of those who, while they talked about sweet experiences and comfortable scriptures, lived in the constant practice of fraud, rapacity, and secret debauchery. The people, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... six feet high, lank, but graceful as a panther, and the pink of politeness, was, beneath his varnish, one of the wildest young men in London—gambler, horse-racer, libertine, what not?—but in society charming, and his manners singularly elegant and winning. He never obtruded his vices in good company; in fact, you might dine with him all your life and not detect him. The young serpent was torpid in wine; ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... rescued righteous Lot who was troubled greatly by the libertine course of the wicked. Was it not a great aggravation that they not only rushed publicly and shamelessly into whoredom and adultery, but into such sins as may not be mentioned,—insomuch that they did not even spare the angels who came ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... easily understand his injustice to the latter when he tells us himself that he had never loved with passion. His death was of a piece with his life. Having been a public frequenter of brothels and the associate of the loosest company, he died like the libertine. He was taken ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... these thieves had a different will—not a mere wish, however anxious:—for this wish "the libertine" doubtless has, as described in p. 50,—but an effective will. Well, and who doubts this? The point in dispute is, as to the means of producing this reformation in the will; which, whatever the Barrister may think, Christ at least thought so difficult ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... name without spot or stain; yes, he could have witnessed and borne all this, and the blessed memory of her virtues would have consoled him in his bereavement and his sorrow. But to reflect that she was trampled down into guilt and infamy by the foot of the licentious libertine, was an event that cried for blood; and blood he had, for he murdered the seducer, and that with an insatiable rapacity of revenge that was terrible. He literally battered the head of his victim out of all shape, and left him a dead and worthless mass of inanimate matter. The crime, though ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... gambling casino that of a cathedral, nor the music to Wilde's Salome that of Brahms' German Requiem, yet whatever of beauty there may be in the shapes will divert the attention from the meanness or vileness of the non-aesthetic suggestion. We do not remember the mercenary and libertine allegory embodied in Correggio's Danae, or else we reinterpret that sorry piece of mythology in terms of cosmic occurrences, of the Earth's wealth increased by the fecundating sky. Similarly it is a common observation ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... weeping willow with other sentimentalities invented by royalism during the Terror,—in spite of his ruins, the chevalier, trimming his beard before a shabby old toilet-table, draped with trumpery lace, exhaled an essence of the eighteenth century. All the libertine graces of his youth reappeared; he seemed to have the wealth of three hundred thousand francs of debt, while his vis-a-vis waited before the door. He was grand,—like Berthier on the retreat from Moscow, issuing orders to an army ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... Roustan's proposition was the hope of seeing a few of these much vaunted beauties, and that I had been cruelly disappointed in not having seen the shadow of a woman. At this frank avowal the Emperor, who had expected it in advance, laughed heartily, and took his revenge on my ears, calling me a libertine: "You do not know then, Monsieur le Drole, that your good friends the Greeks have adopted the customs of those Turks whom they detest so cordially, and like them seclude their wives and daughters in order that they may never appear before ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... any cause of policy, The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, Familiar as his garter: that when he speaks, The air, a chartered libertine, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... grandmother—a black-eyed Spanish lady of high rank—was made quite unpleasantly notorious by her associations with a brother of Lady Henrietta Verdayne. He was an unprincipled roue—this Lord Hubert Aldringham—a libertine who openly boasted of the conquests he had made abroad. Being appointed to many foreign posts in the diplomatic service, he was naturally on intimate terms with people of rank and royalty. They say he was very fascinating, with the devil's own eye, and ten times as ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... certain motives of those who are 'there sitting where we dare not soar', are reprehensible. Let us assume that Homer was a drunkard, that Virgil was a flatterer, that Horace was a coward, that Tasso was a madman, that Lord Bacon was a peculator, that Raphael was a libertine, that Spenser was a poet laureate. It is inconsistent with this division of our subject to cite living poets, but posterity has done ample justice to the great names now referred to. Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in the balance; if their sins 'were ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the leaders of rural communities and of social centers generally. I have tried to avoid the two extremes which Guizot says are always to be shunned, viz.: that of the "visionary theorist" and that of the "libertine practician." The former is analogous to a blank cartridge, and the latter to the mire of a swamp or the entangled underbrush of a thicket. The legs of one's theories (as Lincoln said of those of a man) should be long enough to reach the earth; and yet they must be free to move upon the solid ground ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... his cheeks swelled with the spiritual inflations of church power. He fixed his open eyes upon me and surveyed me from top to toe. I too made my remarks. 'He is a true son of the church,' said I.—The libertine sarcasm was instantly repelled, and my train of ideas was purified from such irreverend heresy—'He is an orthodox divine! A pillar of truth! A Christian Bishop!' Thought is swift, and man assents and recants before his eye ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... he does not mind to some extent gulling the gullible. His chief aim is to trick his creditors—themselves, as it happens, not worthy of much pity; and, himself kind-hearted, loving his wife and daughter, and not a libertine, he appeals to the sympathies of the reader or the audience. Most of the amusement of the play—and it is very amusing —is derived from the metamorphoses adopted by the Jobber in dealing with each sort of creditor. Moreover, the love-passages between Julie, the daughter, and a poor ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... much as any man; but he desired to receive it only on his own terms. He profoundly appeals to writers endowed with "the artistic conscience" as "the martyr of literary style." In morals something of a libertine, in matters of art he exhibited the intolerance of weakness in others and the remorseless self-examination and self-torment commonly attributed to the Puritan. His friend Maxime Du Camp, who tried to bring him out and teach him the ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... mildest award of the law on the offender. Mark how different was the result! From the shifts and ambiguities of a wicked Bench, who had a fellow-feeling of iniquity with the defenders, my suit was lost, the graceless libertine was absolved, and I was incarcerated, and bound over to keep the peace, with heavy penalties, before I was set ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... and the modern french were antipodes, but they are now converging, under a government, which, in point of security, and even of mildness, has no resemblance, since the first departure from the ancient establishments. The french, like the libertine son, after having plunged in riot and excesses, subdued by wretchedness, are returning to order and civilization. Unhappy people, their tears have almost washed away their offences—they have suffered to their heart's core. Who will not pity them to see their change, and hear their tales of misery? ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... various passions. There was love—that is, such love as a libertine feels; jealousy; anger at the coarse handling he had experienced; wounded self-love, for with his gold-lace and fine plumes he believed himself a conqueror at first sight; and upon the ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... I have said, are perfectly aware of the fact that women corrupt women much more than men do. The tale is the "Story of the Libertine Husband" in the Book of Sindibad; blended with the "Story of the Go-between and the Bitch" in the Book of Sindibad. It is related in the "Disciplina Clericalis" of Alphonsus (A.D. 1106); the fabliau ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Maternal hope and joy subdued all those little considerations, which are lost when the mind is absorbed by any powerful sentiment. Monsieur de la Bourdonnais delivered to her a letter from her aunt, who informed her, that she deserved her fate for having married an adventurer and a libertine; that misplaced passions brought along with them their own punishment, and that the sudden death of her husband must be considered as a visitation from heaven; that she had done well in going to a distant island, rather than dishonour her family by remaining in France: and that, after all, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... neither eye-glass nor telescope; they want good stout horrors easily visible. With their eyes fixed on the carnivora, they pay no attention to the reptiles; happily, they abandon to the writers of comedy the shading and colorings of a Chardin des Lupeaulx. Vain and egotistical, supple and proud, libertine and gourmand, grasping from the pressure of debt, discreet as a tomb out of which nought issues to contradict the epitaph intended for the passer's eye, bold and fearless when soliciting, good-natured and witty in all acceptations of the word, a timely jester, full of tact, knowing how ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... saw you, when you entered the terrace-room at Cherbury and touched my cheek. From that moment I was yours. I declare to you, most solemnly I declare to you, that I know not what love is except to you. The world has called me a libertine; the truth is, no other woman can command my spirit for an hour. I see through them at a glance. I read all their weakness, frivolity, vanity, affectation, as if they were touched by the revealing rod of Asmodeus. You were ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... men another mistake, which the common retailers of character committed. Henry was said to be wholly negligent, while William was reputed to be extremely attentive to the other sex. William, indeed, was gallant, was amorous, and indulged his inclination to the libertine society of women; but Henry it was who loved them. He admired them at a reverential distance, and felt so tender an affection for the virtuous female, that it shocked him to behold, much more to associate with, the depraved ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... and overstimulated desire. The poor are growing poorer, and to "keep in the ring," to live and dress beyond their means as many do, it is necessary to have an unexacting standard of morals. In this way the promiscuous libertine is evolved,—the most insidious and dangerous product of present day civilization, and the most pernicious factor in the spread of immoral impulses and ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... highly-strung sensibility to give them keenness. The heroine is first bullied and then deserted by her family, cut off from the friends who have a desire to help her, and handed over to the power of an unscrupulous libertine. When she dies of a broken heart, the most callous and prosaic of readers must feel that it is the only release possible for her. And in the gradual development of his plot, the slow accumulation of horrors upon the head of a virtuous victim, Richardson shows the power which places him in the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... sought to preserve the energies of the people for a more noble trial. The multitude, moreover, impeded one another by their own violent impetuosity; and to this it was owing, more than to the defence of his followers, or the intercession of the popular Flaccus, that the young libertine was not torn to pieces, on the threshold ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... saves himself from failure. But what did you want? Owing to your unfortunate habit—you now, I hope, feel its inconvenience—of not explaining yourself, I have had to discover this for myself. First, then, I have had to ask myself, what is a Don Juan? Vulgarly, a libertine. But your dislike of vulgarity is pushed to the length of a defect (universality of character is impossible without a share of vulgarity); and even if you could acquire the taste, you would find yourself overfed ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... great god Pan. If she had consented he would have taken her off on that yawl of his imagination round the world or down to Florida, without thought of the morrow or the convenances, or Society; but please do not imagine this rather primitive gentleman a chartered libertine. He would have married her as soon as not, but he had neither the genius nor the inclination for the courtship that leads by slow degrees up to the ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... I am not your dear lady. You are not the first man who has concluded that because I am devoted to music and can reach F flat with the greatest facility—Patti never got above E flat—I am marked out as the prey of every libertine. You think I am like the thousands of weak women ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... you. She would be as frenzied as you were a moment ago; and she would not listen to reason. If you dared to hint outside in the world, that you believed her guilty, there are some of her old friends who would feel like doing to you what you want to do to that libertine ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the adaptedness of such preaching as that to the need of the moment for which it was prepared? And how did the libertine French monarch contrive to escape the force of truth like the following, with ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... Russia from the rest of Europe was rent. An army of three hundred thousand men was enlisted, Siberia was discovered, the printing press introduced, and civilization commenced. But the czar was, nevertheless, a brutal tyrant and an abandoned libertine, who massacred his son, executed his nobles, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... listen. Remember I would not have come to you if I had not had evidence. You take exception to Lans and his ways of life, I have been informed that you have even called him a—a—libertine!" ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... desponding lady, on whom the Beauvoir descendant, a bitterest enemy, takes care to remind them the hovering curse must burst. This Rowland Beauvoir is the villain of the story, whose sole aim it is, after the fulfilment of his own libertine wishes, to see the curse accomplished: and Charlotte's love for a certain young Saville, whom Beauvoir hates as his handsome rival in court patronage, as well as her pointed refusal of himself, gives new and present life to his ancestral ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... populous and so corrupt a city, Catiline, as it was very easy to do, kept about him, like a body-guard, crowds of the unprincipled and desperate. For all those shameless, libertine, and profligate characters, who had dissipated their patrimonies by gaming,[78] luxury, and sensuality; all who had contracted heavy debts, to purchase immunity for their crimes or offenses; all assassins[79] or sacrilegious persons from every quarter, ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... marked in these lines: he was an excellent poet, but of abandoned morals, and of the most impious principles; a complete libertine and an avowed atheist. He lost his life in a riotous fray; for, detecting his servant with his mistress, he rushed into the room with a dagger in order to stab him, but the man warded off the blow by seizing Marlowe's wrist, and turned the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... Salon" who prided themselves on the fashionable rigor of their doctrine but insisted on the practical impossibility of living up to it in the absence of efficacious grace. In my interpretation, Mandeville was both intellectually and temperamentally a "libertine" patently putting on the mask of rigorism in order to be able at the same time to attack the exponents of austere theological morality from their rear while making a frontal attack on less exacting and more humanistic systems of morality. The phenomenon was not ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... several puzzles of the same kind. That an English-speaking Protestant married couple in easy circumstances and of fair education, and belonging to a religious circle, should not only be aware that their pastor was a libertine and should be keeping it a secret for him, but should make his adulteries the subject of conversation with him in the family circle, is hardly capable of explanation by reference to any known and acknowledged tendency ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... whole morning to obtain these papers. And now, gentlemen, you have to decide whether a few hours' delay in taking his seat in this Chamber justifies you in sending a colleague back to his electors. But after all, whatever is done, whether some persist in thinking me a forger, or a libertine, or merely a negligent deputy, I feel no anxiety about the verdict of my electors. I can confidently assert that after a delay of a few weeks I ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... like Heav'n's bright Minister on High, Command the throbbing Breast, and watry Eye, And, as our captive Spirits ebb and flow, Smile at the Tempests you have rais'd below: The Face of Guilt a Flush of Vertue wears, And sudden burst the involuntary Tears: Honour's sworn Foe, the Libertine with Shame, Descends to curse the sordid lawless Flame; The tender Maid here learns Man's various Wiles, Rash Youth, hence dread the Wanton's venal Smiles— Sure 'twas by brutal Force of envious Man, First ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... associate of a man whose name has become synonymous with vice, a dissolute and fearless assassin of private character, of domestic comfort, and of social happiness; when he is known to be the bosom friend and supporter of the profligate and abandoned libertine, who, from the vulgar debauches of night, hastens again to the invasion of private property. Who, through the robbery of the public revenue, and the violation of private seals, hurries down the precipice ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... centrifugal, and you can make the centrifugal overcome the centripetal. As when there is a mighty tide of good in a family that may be overcome by determination to evil, as in the case of Aaron Burr, the libertine, who had for father President Burr, the consecrated; as in the case of Pierrepont Edwards, the scourge of New York society seventy years ago, who had a Christian ancestry; while on the other hand some of the best men and women of this day are those who have come ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... DOWIE: (Violently) Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men. A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery, recalling the cities of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse. A worshipper of the Scarlet Woman, intrigue is ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the kind with certainty. But the angles of resemblance are many between the groundwork of the "Tempest" and the earliest of Manx records. Mannanan-beg-Mac-y-Lear, the magician who surrounded the island with mists when enemies came near in ships; Maughold, the robber and libertine, bound hand and foot, and driven ashore in a wicker boat; and then Bridget, the virgin saint. Moreover, the stories of Little Man-nanan, of St. Patrick, and of St. Maughold were printed in Manx in the sixteenth century. ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... with rosebuds before they be withered," said Solomon's libertine. Alas! he did not reflect that they withered in the very gathering. The roses of pleasure seldom last long enough to adorn the brow of him who plucks them; for they are the only roses which do not retain their sweetness after they ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... clear of giving serious offence, save on occasions extremely few, must be counted to him for righteousness. It is true that, as a Lord Chancellor once declared, "Punch is a chartered libertine." But for him to have won his "charter" at all proves him at least to have been worthy of it, the tolerance and indulgence of the nation having been in themselves a temptation. It is not so much that he has not hit hard; it ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... notwithstanding the austere and cruel principles of a bloody religion, will sometimes be, by a fortunate inconsistency, humane, tolerant, moderate; in this case the principles of his religion do not agree with the mildness of his disposition. A libertine, a debauchee, a hypocrite, an adulterer, or a thief will often show us that he has the clearest ideas of morals. Why do they not practice them? It is because neither their temperament, their interests, nor their habits agree with their sublime theories. The rigid principles of Christian ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... are very common in the annals of popular superstition. It is, for example, currently believed in Ettrick Forest, that a libertine, who had destroyed fifty-six inhabited houses, in order to throw the possessions of the cottagers into his estate, and who added to this injury, that of seducing their daughters, was wont to commit, to a carrier in the neighbourhood, the care of his illegitimate children, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... charms of a child. How should she understand the Paragot that I knew? His soul still shone the stainless radiance that had dazzled her young eyes. That was all that mattered. It was easy to convert the outer man to convention. It was the simplest thing in the world to make the chartered libertine of talk accept the Index Expurgatorius of subjects mete for discussion: to regulate the innate vagabond by the clock: to bring the pantheistic pagan of wide spiritual sympathies (for Paragot was by no means an irreligious man) into ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... women be no more to blame in the matter than the other sex. To-day, in the fashionable society of our great cities, how much does it injure a wealthy young man's prospects for matrimony, if it is a well-known fact that he is a libertine? And how long can such a state of things continue without dragging down the women who marry such men? If a lady cares not if her lover is a libertine, she cannot possess much of genuine virtue. The fashionable men of Paris keep mistresses—so do those of all classes, the students, perhaps, ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... under the name of Rasputin. A Siberian peasant by birth, immoral, filthy in person, untrained in mind, he had early received the nickname of Rasputin, which means "ne'er-do-well," on account of his habits. A drunkard, and a libertine always, he posed as a sort of saint and miracle worker, let his hair grow long, and tramped about the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... II., who thus bestowed this vast dominion upon a few of his friends, was in marked contrast, as a sovereign, to Queen Elizabeth. He was a gay, dissolute, shameless libertine, who despised all that is valuable in human duties, and spent his life in the paltriest amusements. He could be polite and entertaining in conversation, but abundantly justified Lord Rochester's remark that "he never did a wise thing or said a ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... to public as well as private notice. The French all speak highly of her, and it is impossible, on seeing Malmaison and hearing of her virtues, not to join in their opinion. To be sure, as a Frenchman told me in running through a list of virtues, "Elle avait ete un peu libertine, mais ce n'est rien cela," and, indeed, I could almost have added, "C'est bien vrai," for every allowance should be made; consider the situation in which she was placed, her education, her temptations; many a saint might have ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... somewhat peculiar reputation. Lady Carey, although she is such a brilliant woman, says and does the most insolent, the most amazing things, and the Prince of Saxe Leinitzer goes everywhere in Europe by the name of the Royal libertine. They are powerful enough almost to dominate society, and we poor people who abide by the conventions are absolutely nowhere beside them. They think that we are bourgeois because we have virtue, and prehistoric because we are ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in this folly," she cried, "to fret for that shallow idler, whose love is lighter than thistledown, whose element is the ruelle of one of those libertine French duchesses he is ever talking about. To rebel against the noblest gentleman in England! Oh, sister, you must know him better than I do; and yet I, who am nothing to him, am wretched when I see him ill-used. Indeed, Hyacinth, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... Even the gay libertine who sang "How happy could I be with either!" did not go so far as this. But we have already had occasion to remark on the laxity ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... nor charm of person, nor strength of mind, but who possesses wealth, has a far greater chance of securing unlimited sexual indulgence and the life companionship of the fairest maid, than her brother's tutor, who may be possessed of every manly and physical grace and mental gift; and the ancient libertine, possessed of nothing but material good, has, especially among the so-called upper classes of our societies, a far greater chance of securing the sex companionship of any woman he desires as wife, mistress, or prostitute, than the most physically attractive and mentally developed male, ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... all who knew him remarked the singularity of his habits. His frequent absences from home had given to his proceedings an appearance at once eccentric and mysterious. Never was young libertine more irregular in his habits than this old man. He came or failed to come home to his meals, ate it mattered not what or when. He went out at every hour of the day and night, often slept abroad, and even disappeared for entire weeks at a time. Then ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... man, cool, insolently polite, and plentifully endowed with the judgmatical daring that is the necessary equipment of a society libertine—counseled patience, toleration, even silent recognition of Anstruther's undoubted claims for ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... by so eminent an authority as John Bright. Is it indeed a fact? Wherever woman owns property which she would relieve from unjust taxation; wherever she has a son whom she would preserve from the temptations of intemperance, or a daughter from the enticements of a libertine, or a husband from the conscriptions of war, she has a separate interest which she is entitled ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... and, like them, entirely misinterpreted by the hearers. It struck like a dagger into the wounded and tender heart of Helen; it pierced Laura, and inflamed the high-spirited girl with scorn and anger. "And it was to this hardened libertine," she thought—"to this boaster of low intrigues, that I had given my heart away." "He breaks the most sacred laws," thought Helen. "He prefers the creature of his passion to his own mother; and when he is upbraided, he laughs, and glories in his crime. 'She gave me her all,' I heard him say ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... however, bringing no other ideas either new or old to our minds, we went to the opera, and heard Morichelli sing: after which they gave us a new dramatic dance, made upon the story of Don John, or the Libertine; a tale which, whether true or false, fact or fable, has furnished every Christian country in the world, I believe, with some subject of representation. It makes me no sport, however; the idea of an impenitent sinner going to hell is too seriously terrifying to make amusement out ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... came to our meeting and told us that he was a gambler, a pickpocket, a drunkard, a libertine and worse—enticing girls from their homes and placing them in houses of infamy. He asked us to pray for him, which of course we did. Joe disappeared for an hour or so, but returned at midnight to our meeting, and at half-past twelve knelt in the street, ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... has shown us the soul of the madman, drunkard, libertine, the street-walker, he has also exposed the psychology of ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... poet may stimulate the license of the libertine; the optimism of the seer may confirm the evil-doer; the equality of the democrat may foster the insolence of the rowdy. This is our lookout and not the poet's. We take the same chances with him that we do with nature; we are to trim our sails to the breeze he brings; we are to sow ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... gambler," says one man. There is mercy for you. "I am a libertine," says another. There is mercy for you. "I have plunged into every abomination." Mercy for you. The door of grace does not stand ajar to-night, nor half swung around on the hinges. It is wide, wide open; ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage |
