"Obscene" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this peroration, which had been delivered with an accompaniment of violent gesture and a wealth of obscene epithets, quite beyond the power of the mere chronicler to render. Lenoir had a harsh, strident voice, very high pitched, and he spoke with a broad, provincial accent, somewhat difficult to locate, but quite unlike ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... received many anonymous letters—those from the men often obscene, those from the women revealing that curious connection between prostitution and the lowest type of politics which every city tries in vain to hide. I had offers from the men in the city prison to vote properly if released; various communications ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... Indians, mostly Cherokees, crossed the Tennessee not thirty miles from Knoxville. They attacked a small station, within which there were but thirteen souls, who, after some resistance, surrendered on condition that their lives should be spared; but they were butchered with obscene cruelty. Sevier immediately marched toward the assailants, who fled back to the Cherokee towns. Thither Sevier followed them, and went entirely through the Cherokee country to the land of the Creeks, burning the towns and destroying the stores of provisions. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... want to go," he cried, "to the family Ancestral Temple and mourn my old master. Who would have ever imagined that he would leave behind such vile creatures of descendants as you all, day after day indulging in obscene and incestuous practices, 'in scraping of the ashes' and in philandering with brothers-in-law. I know all about your doings; the best thing is to hide one's stump of an arm in one's sleeve!" (wash one's dirty clothes ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... evening sacrifice begun, When evil demons, lurid as the clouds That gather round the dying orb of day, Cluster in hideous troops, obscene and dread, About our altars, casting far and near Terrific shadows, while the sacred fire Sheds a pale lustre o'er their ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... the book of the Thousand Nights and a Night has Hachisch- made-words for life. Gallant, subtle, refined, intense, humourous, obscene, here is the Arab intelligence drunk with conception. It is a vast extravaganza of passion in action and picarooning farce and material splendour run mad. The amorous instinct and the instinct of enjoyment, not tempered but heightened greatly by the strict ordinances of dogma, ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... take part in the great Olympic, Isthmian and other games took with them a tent, wherein to camp in the open. Further, there is an obscene allusion which the actor indicates by ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... Enough for our purpose to remark that even some Christian writers, of the age immediately succeeding that of the early martyrs, showed themselves more than half pagans in their tastes and productions. Ausonius in the West, the preceptor of St. Paulinus, is so obscene in some of his poems, so thoroughly pagan in others, that critics have for a long time hesitated to pronounce him a Christian. How many of his contemporaries hovered like him on the confines of Christianity and paganism! When Julian the apostate restored idolatry, many, who ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... festivals, of which Michelet gives a full and amusing description, one called the "Fete of the Tipsy Priests," when they elected a Bishop of Unreason, offered him incense of burned leather, sang obscene songs in the choir, and turned the altar into a dice table; the other called the "Fete of the Cuckolds," when the laymen crowned each other with leaves, the priests wore their surplices wrong side out and threw bran in each others' eyes, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... I cried, "who have failed to understand your own symbols. To use plain language, then, where is Susan? She is the lamb that was entrusted to your keeping, and that you suffered the obscene ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... disclosed as soon as trustees and superintendent dare to ask the necessary questions. Whether an instructor's personality will enable him to fill the minds of children with interests more wholesome, more absorbing than obscene stories or morbid sex curiosity can also be learned. When school-teachers are prepared to teach the social and economic aspects of general health they will quickly solve the problem ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... sudden rising, as it were out of the earth, of all the obscene creatures, who sell 'correct cards of the races.' They may have been coiled in corners, or sleeping on door-steps, and, having all passed the night under the same set of circumstances, may all want to circulate their blood at the same time; but, however that may be, they spring into existence ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... things that the Southern white man will not tolerate, and the obscene intimations of the foregoing have brought the writer to the very outermost limit of public patience. We hope we ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... because they were drunkards; two, because they paid their addresses at the same time to other ladies; and six, because they attempted to influence my choice by bribing my maid. Two more I discarded at the second visit for obscene allusions; and five for drollery on religion. In the latter part of my reign, I sentenced two to perpetual exile, for offering me settlements, by which the children of a former marriage would have ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Ay, but, Sir Paul, I conceive if she has sworn, d'ye mark me, if she has once sworn, it is most unchristian, inhuman, and obscene that she should break it. I'll make up the match again, because Mr. Careless said it would ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... separate him from his wife, from his children, from all those whose conversation makes life dear to him; cast him on the ends of the earth; let him there fall amongst reprobates who are the last stain and disgrace of our common nature; give him those obscene-mouthed monsters for his constant companions and consolers; let the daily vision of their progress from infamy to infamy, until the demon that inspires them has exhausted invention and the powers of nature together, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... hour he recounted how a Monsieur Gendrin, designer, had deceived the vigilance of his porter, Rue Saint-Honore. Monsieur Gendrin had committed infamies worthy of Marat,—obscene drawings at which the police winked. This Gendrin, a profoundly immoral artist, had brought in women of bad lives, and made the staircase intolerable,—conduct worthy of a man who made caricatures of the government. And why such conduct? Because ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... kept and evidently much used. It was hung with ex-voto limbs and with many gifts. It was a centre of worship, of a sort of almost obscene worship. Afterwards the black pine-trees and the river of that valley seemed unclean, as if an unclean spirit lived there. The very flowers seemed unnatural, and the white gleam on the mountain-tops was a glisten of ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... ungainly bully, leaving him furious and dripping. Keekie Joe trembled at this rash exploit of his new friend and waited in fearful suspense for the sequel. It was not long in coming. With a roar of obscene invectives, Slats Corbett rushed upon the smiling, slim, quiet stranger, and then in the space of two seconds, there was Slats Corbett lying flat in the mud. In a kind of trance Keekie Joe ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... period, a period essentially rationalistic and devoted to pleasure, a period which believed in nothing but the obvious and understood love only in the sense of sensual pleasure. If sensuality had hitherto been evil—at least theoretically—it now became obscene. Stripped of every grand and cosmic feature, it degenerated into the principal form of amusement. The eighteenth century, though instructive and interesting to the student of eroticism, produced nothing new. Under the undisputed sway of France, a period of sensuality set in, unparalleled by any ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... waited day by day; alone With the white temple's shrined concupiscence, The Paphian goddess on her obscene throne, Binding all chastity to violence, All innocence to lust that feels no shame— Venus Mylitta born ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... stood open to the street, and were more obscene in their appointments than the lowest of the itinerant hells found at our races. Upon the tables however lay piles of silver, and behind them the ready croupiers administered. I observed wretched devils playing here, whose whole ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... simply found so much mire stirred up from the very depths of Paris life: prostitutes and criminals, the murderers of to-morrow, who came to see how a man ought to die. Loathsome, bareheaded harlots mingled with bands of prowlers or ran through the crowd, howling obscene refrains. Bandits stood in groups chatting and quarrelling about the more or less glorious manner in which certain famous guillotines had died. Among these was one with respect to whom they all agreed, and of whom they spoke as of a great captain, a hero whose marvellous courage was deserving ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... active sacrilegious outrages. An example is the historic trial of Alcibiades for profanation of the Mysteries. But this was not an isolated occurrence; there were more of the same kind at the time. Of the dithyrambic poet Cinesias it is said that he profaned holy things in an obscene manner. But the greatest stress of all must be laid on the well-known mutilation of the Hermae at Athens in 415, just before the expedition to Sicily. All the tales about the outrages of the Mysteries may ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... frightful condition, his body torn by thorns. He was brought back, and having become perfectly quiet, was thought to be well, and resumed his duties; but a short time after our return to Paris he had a new attack. The character of his malady was exceedingly obscene; and he presented himself before the Empress Josephine in such a state of disorder, and with such indecent gestures, that it was necessary to take precautions in regard to him. He was confided to the care of the wise Doctor Esquirol, who, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... into the dark, quivering mire, which shook for yards in soft undulations around our feet. Its tenacious grip plucked at our heels as we walked, and when we sank into it it was as if some malignant hand was tugging us down into those obscene depths, so grim and purposeful was the clutch in which it held us. Once only we saw a trace that someone had passed that perilous way before us. From amid a tuft of cotton grass which bore it up out of the slime some dark thing ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... at the recollection of the poissardes, or rather furies, who wore white aprons, which they screamed out were intended to receive the bowels of Marie Antoinette, and that they would make cockades of them, mixing the most obscene expressions with these ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Ralph wondered how the man could have the effrontery to call his notes by the name of evidence. They consisted of a string of obscene guesses, founded upon circumstances that were certainly compatible with guilt, but no less compatible with innocence. There was a quantity of gossip gathered from country-people and coloured by the most flagrant animus, and even so the witnesses did not agree. Such sentences as ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... with which the surface above was already covered. As the door of the cell closed, he looked around from his work. Like the man's on the floor, his face had a ghastly pallor, against which the dirt with which it is stained, shows with peculiarly obscene effect, while the beards and hair of both had grown long and matted and were filled with straw. So completely had their miserable condition disguised them, that Perez would not have known in the dim light of the cell that he ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... self-possessed bit of me which knew that the war and all that horrible movement was false for me. And so I wasn't going to be dragged in. The Germans could have shot my mother or me or what they liked: I wouldn't have joined the WAR. I would like to kill my enemy. But become a bit of that huge obscene machine they called the war, that I never would, no, not if I died ten deaths and had eleven mothers violated. But I would like to kill my enemy: Oh, yes, more than one enemy. But not as a unit in a vast obscene mechanism. That ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... every mob is a convention. In its secondary sense it means the common soul of such a crowd, its instinctive anger at the traitor or its instinctive salutation of the flag. Conventions may be cruel, they may be unsuitable, they may even be grossly superstitious or obscene; but there is one thing that they never are. Conventions are never dead. They are always full of accumulated emotions, the piled-up and passionate experiences of many generations asserting what they could ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... skin. But he did not complain. He had a source of comfort within him of which those around knew nothing. What grieved him most was the fearful language he heard hourly uttered, God's holy name profaned, foul oaths, and obscene conversation. Whenever he could he endeavoured to escape from it. He either tried to get on deck when his shipmates were below, or below when they were on deck—to get anywhere where they were not. ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... man. Even his learning alone would have made him the most distinguished man in France at the time he lived. Those who hated him have tried to cover his memory with shame, and have represented him as merely a buffoon, but such was not the truth. He did often descend to buffooneries and to almost obscene sayings, and these things have had their influence upon France, and have contributed to make the French people what they are to-day—a nation of professed Catholics, but really a nation of infidels and atheists. But Rabelais was more than a wit. ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... "Graces," others as weazened and smoked as saints by Ribera. In the middle are oblong plates with pates and sliced bologna and things in jelly; then come ranks of cakes, creamcakes and fruitcakes, everything from obscene jam-rolls to celestial cornucopias of white cream. Through the door you see a counter with round loaves of bread on it, and a basketful of brown rolls. If someone comes out a dense sweet smell of fresh bread and pastry ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... as it is (so he would say) obscene,—'t is the word Virgil writes of dogs wallowing in the mud and mire,—to depict murderers, whoreson men-at arms, fighting-men, conquering heroes and plundering thieves, wreaking their foul and wicked will, yea! and poor devils ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... wrapped in linen bandages, is oftener to be met with than any other of the many animals thus preserved by the Egyptians. In spite of the great care bestowed on cats, there can have been no lack of mice in Egypt. In one nomos or province the shrew-mouse was sacred, and a satirical, obscene papyrus in Turin shows us a war between the cats and mice; the Papyrus Ebers contains poisons for mice. We ourselves possess a shrew-mouse exquisitely wrought ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ruined, pulled to pieces by slanderous tongues! By God, Jasper, what a beast you look! The most delicate woman, alive, the one farthest from just this sort of muck, being sworn in the Mayor's office, testifying in an obscene murder case, before the Sheriff and Constable, and heaven knows what police and ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... way, And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds. Peace hath her not ignoble wreath, 115 Ere yet the sharp, decisive word Lights the black lips of cannon, and the sword Dreams in its easeful sheath: But some day the live coal behind the thought. Whether from Baael's stone obscene, 120 Or from the shrine serene Of God's pure altar brought, Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and pen Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught, And, helpless in the fiery passion caught, 125 Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men: Some day the ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... his dagger—bought in El Rastro—sharp, guarding it as a sacred object. If he ever happened across a cat or dog, he would enjoy torturing it to death with oft-repeated stabs. His speech was obscene, ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... is very difficult; the afternoon is tolerable, but you say truly when the daylight goes, evils spring up. A whole cavalcade of obscene ideas then pass through my brain; how can any one be recollected ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... His eyelids burnt and quivered with the strain Of looking, and against his temples beat The all enshrouding, suffocating dark. He stumbled, lurched, and struck against a door That opened, and a howl of obscene mirth Grated his senses, wallowing on the floor Lay men, and dogs and women in the dirt. He sickened, loathing it, and as he gazed The candle guttered, flared, and then ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... what we may all be. There is no heart without its deity. Alas! alas! for the many listening to me now whose spirits are like some of those Egyptian temples, which had in the inmost shrine a coiled-up serpent, the mummy of a monkey, or some other form as animal and obscene. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... the simple little folk who meet one's gaze, as they patiently carry on their minute trades in the gloom of their tiny open-fronted houses. Workmen squatted on their heels, carving with their imperceptible tools, the droll or odiously obscene ivory ornaments, marvelous cabinet curiosities which have made Japan so famous with the European amateurs who have never seen it. Unconscious artists tracing with steady hand on a background of lacquer or of porcelain traditional designs learnt by heart, or transmitted to their brains ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... Dullness offers "yon Juno of majestic size" as the chief prize in the booksellers' games. "Chetwood and Curll accept this glorious strife," the latter, as always, wins the obscene contest, "and the pleas'd dame soft-smiling leads away." Nearly all of this account is impudent slander, but Mr. Pope's imputations may have had enough truth in them to sting. His description of Eliza is a savage caricature of ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... childish. These old houses are only brick and wood, soaked in human sweat, grained with human dirt. But if the pale blue envelope lying by the biscuit-box had the feelings of a mother, the heart was torn by the little creak, the sudden stir. Behind the door was the obscene thing, the alarming presence, and terror would come over her as at death, or the birth of a child. Better, perhaps, burst in and face it than sit in the antechamber listening to the little creak, the sudden stir, for her heart was swollen, and pain threaded it. My son, my son— ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... themselves were a parody on Pope's poem. Warburton chose to regard this as a broach of privilege, and he assailed Wilkes with even greater fury than Sandwich had done, winding up by apologizing to the devil for even comparing Wilkes to him. An admiring House immediately voted the poems obscene, libellous, and a breach of privilege. Two days afterwards an address from the Lords called upon the King to prosecute ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... nature—one quiescent, one active; the latter being regarded as the Sakti or energy of the god, otherwise called his wife. The origin of the system is not fully explained; nor is the date of its rise ascertained. The worship assumes wild, extravagant forms, generally obscene, sometimes bloody. It is divided into two schools—that of the right hand and that of the left. The former runs into mysticism and magic in complicated observances, and the latter into the most appalling licentiousness. ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... former display and carriage of these now obscene symbols in the popular celebrations; of the behavior of even respectable citizens during the excitement and frenzy of the festivals; of their presence in the wayside shrines; of the philosophy, hideousness or pathos of the subject, we cannot ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... common privilege to sprinkle one's friend with the red powder or red rose-water. Boys and common people run about the streets sprinkling red water or red powder over all passengers, and using abusive (obscene) language. The cow-herd caste is conspicuous at this ceremony. The cow-boys, collecting in parties under a koryphaios, hold, as it were, a komos, leaping, singing, and dancing[55] through the streets, striking together the wands which they carry. These cow-boys not only dress (as do others) in new ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... of these; and it goes by the name of the old comedy. In those pieces no person whatever was spared. Though they were so modelled and represented as to deserve the name of regular comedy they were obscene, scurrilous, and defamatory. In them the most abominable falsehoods were fearlessly charged upon men and women of all conditions and characters; not under fictitious names, nor by innuendo, but directly and with ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... the woods did ring with song! There were patriotic songs, romantic and love songs, sarcastic, comic, and war songs, pirates' glees, plantation melodies, lullabies, good old hymn tunes, anthems, Sunday-school songs, and everything but vulgar and obscene songs; these were scarcely ever heard, and were nowhere in the ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... length to Christophe; for hours she would try to recollect some detail that she had forgotten; she never spared him one; absurdities piled one on the other, strange marriages, deaths, dressmakers' prices, burlesque, and sometimes, obscene things. He had to listen to her and give her his advice. Often she would be for a whole day under the obsession of her inept fancies. She would find life ill-ordered, she would see things and people rawly and overwhelm Christophe with her jeremiads; and it seemed ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... had listened to the intemperate, the blasphemous, and almost obscene invective of that tirade with a detachment that afterwards, in retrospect, surprised him. He was so amazed by the man, by the reactions taking place in him between mind and body, and by his methods of bullying and coercing ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... expression? Here he was, playing the great man; making himself, however, most particularly agreeable to Messrs. Quirk and Gammon. Slang was of the same school; fat, vulgar, confident, and empty; telling obscene jokes and stories, in a deep bass voice. He sang a good song, too—particularly of that class which required the absence of ladies—and of gentlemen. Hug (Mr. Toady Hug) was also a barrister; a glib little Jewish-looking fellow, creeping into considerable ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... tendency to obsessive ideas and doubts; that is, ideas and doubts that persist in coming against the will of the patient, such as the obscene word or phrase that continually obtrudes itself on a chaste woman, or the doubt whether one has shut the door or properly turned off the gas. Of course, everybody has such obsessions and doubts occasionally, but to be psychasthenic ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... man should have inquired of Boccace or of Chaucer, what need they had of introducing such characters where obscene words were proper in their mouths, but very indecent to be heard; I know not what answer they could have made; for that reason, such tale shall be left untold by me. You have here a specimen of Chaucer's language, which is so obsolete, that his sense is scarce to be understood; ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... and cowering shivering forms, looking into the roads and kennels as they went in search of refuse food or disregarded offal. These forms were never beheld but in those nights of cold and gloom, when the terrible spectres, who lie at all other times in the obscene hiding-places of London, in archways, dark vaults and cellars, venture to creep into the streets; the embodied spirits of Disease, and Vice, and Famine. It was whispered by those who should have known, that these were Sampson ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... by its effect on himself, its insight, and its hold on his memory, that Si Sylvanne's talk was real wisdom. Parts of it would not look well in print; but the rugged words, the uncouth Saxonism, the obscene phrase, were the mere oaken bucket in which the pure and precious waters ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... also those relating to Natural History; which latter were sold by auction without his Eminence's name: but it is a gross error in the Bibl. Krohn, p. 259, no. 3466, to say that many of these books were impious and obscene. These are scarce and dear volumes; and as they supply some deficiencies [Transcriber's Note: missing 'in'] Audiffredi's account of books published at Rome in the xvth century [vid. p. 62, ante], the bibliographer should omit ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... To think that you may have a man of noble mind, full of every lofty aspiration, and that a gross physical cause, such as the fall of a spicule of bone from the inner table of his skull on to the surface of the membrane which covers his brain, may have the ultimate effect of turning him into an obscene creature with every bestial attribute! That a man's individuality should swing round from pole to pole, and yet that one life should contain these two contradictory personalities—is ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... providence in all matters human, notwithstanding that it is foolhardy and sometimes incongruous to follow Him too closely. Because being universal He is to be found in all sorts of encounters, sublime by the conduct which He keeps, but obscene or ridiculous for the part man takes in it and which is the only part where they appear to us. And therefore one must not shout, in the manner of Capuchin monks and goody-goody women, that God is ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... a hundred years ago, or be interested in a model of that catboat the boy Joshua had sailed on a bay which glittered in summers now forgotten—but even the theoretically absolute power of a fleet captain had its limits. At least the men nowadays were not making this room obscene with naked women. Though in all honesty, he wasn't sure he wouldn't rather have that than ... brush-strokes on rice paper, the suggestion of a tree, and a classic ideogram. He did not understand the ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... moment this Lady appears in the Boxes the grave part of the fair Sex are seen to put their Fans before their Faces; and are heard to whisper one another— Lud what an indecent Sight Miss Giggle's Neck is— It is really quite obscene! I wonder somebody does not tell her of it, then the Men, they are all in a high Grin; and the Smarts are frequently heard to roar out— O Gad— they are ravishingly White, and smooth ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... joy to that suffering woman. Instead of the tones of the church bell summoning to the house of prayer, she heard the dreadful sound of the lash falling upon the backs of her brethren and sisters in bondage. For the voice of prayer she heard curses. For the songs of Zion obscene and hateful blasphemies. No bible was there with its consolations for the sick of heart. Faint and fevered, scarred and smarting from the effects of her cruel punishment, she lay upon her pallet of moss—dreading the coming ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... in his books is not merely this man's aspiration or that woman's destiny, but the overwhelming sweep and devastation of universal forces, the great central drama that is at the heart of all other dramas, the tragic struggles of the soul of man under the gross stupidity and obscene joking of the gods. "In the novels of Conrad," says Galsworthy, "nature is first, man is second." But not a mute, a docile second! He may think, as Walpole argues, that "life is too strong, too clever and too ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... o'clock. They met in the large upper room, and their sessions were prolonged far into the night, or rather into the morning, for it happened often enough that daylight peeped in through the eastern window and found the company still undispersed. Ribald jests, drunken laughter and obscene songs were kept up the whole night through. The quantity of rum, whisky, brandy and beer consumed in the course of a week must have been something to wonder at. The refreshments were provided at the expense of the host, and as it was Jim's business to keep up the supply of spirits, lemons and hot ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... souls, for the most part, often obscene and rowdy as they sat and sang around the camp fire. Mose had never been a rude boy; on the contrary, he had always spoken in rather elevated diction, due, no doubt, to the influence of his father, whose speech was always serious and well ordered. ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... above that age does so, let him be treated as you would a slave, on account of his being infamous. Since we forbid his speaking everything which is forbidden, it is necessary that he neither sees obscene stories nor pictures; the magistrates therefore are to take care that there are no statues or pictures of anything of this nature, except only to those gods to whom the law permits them, and to which the law allows persons of a certain age to pay ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... found, an obscene creed has persisted. Witness what took place at Guerande, at Chichebouche, at Croissic, at Livarot. In former times the towers, the pyramids, the wax tapers, the boundaries of roads, and even the trees had a phallic meaning. Bouvard and Pecuchet collected whipple-trees ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... mind that," he said, "I'll take the risk. Last night I dreamt that I was in a public-house among a lot of men who were telling most obscene stories. According to Freud every dream is the fulfilment of a wish. Do you mean to tell me that I wish to be in such ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... but do not agree with Captain Britton that it is a witty and uncommonly interesting book; the wit is obscene, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... keep them from bolting. Moreover, even in emotional phases, he was always silent while chewing the cud of his reflections. Bridget was thinking, too. She had an uneasy sense of startlement, without exactly knowing why she felt startled in that inward way. It was as though some great obscene bird of flight had brushed her with its wings, and brought vaguely to her consciousness unpleasant possibilities. But presently she became interested in watching Colin's handling of the team. She had often sat behind such a team, but never beside ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... pusillanimous, and other things as well," the scientist replied stonily, "but, unlike you, I am not a fool. These walls, this very atmosphere, are fields of force that will transmit no rays directed by you. You weak-minded scion of a depraved and obscene house—arrogant, overbearing, rapacious, ignorant—your brain is too feeble to realize that you are clutching at the Universe hundreds of years before the time has come. You by your overweening pride and folly ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... men's ears. The tyrannous Star-chambers, branding-irons, chimerical Kings and Surplices at All-hallowtide, they are gone, or with immense velocity going. Oliver's works do follow him!—The works of a man, bury them under what guano-mountains and obscene owl-droppings you will, do not perish, cannot perish. What of Heroism, what of Eternal Light was in a Man and his Life, is with very great exactness added to the Eternities; remains forever a new divine portion of the Sum of Things; and no owl's ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... degrading ones, are occurring daily in the aristocratic religious denominations. The sect parties and socials, the fashionable balls, the obscene theatrical performances, are enjoyed, and admired, and applauded, by thousands so low in morality that they feel no shame. Their hearts are so naturalized and inclined to lewd ways that sin can scarcely bring a feeling of shame. ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... crowded; so the two friends were chained in a large room where persons charged with trifling offences were commonly kept. They had company, for there were some twenty manacled and fettered prisoners here, of both sexes and of varying ages,—an obscene and noisy gang. The King chafed bitterly over the stupendous indignity thus put upon his royalty, but Hendon was moody and taciturn. He was pretty thoroughly bewildered; he had come home, a jubilant prodigal, expecting to find everybody wild with joy ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... reasoning, the Italian prevailed. Together, without objection from the captain of the yard, with many unavailing protests from Richling, who would now do it alone, and with Ristofalo smiling like a Chinaman at the obscene ribaldry of the spectators in the yard, they scrubbed the cell. Then came the tank. They had to stand in it with the water up to their knees, and rub its sides with brickbats. Richling fell down twice in the water, to the uproarious delight of ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... Sydenham, and Jones:—Ordered, &c. "That the Lord Mayor of the City of London and the rest of the Committee for regulating Printing do cause all the books entitled Choice Droliery, Songs and Sonnets (being stuffed with profane and obscene matter, tending to the corruption of manners), to be seized wherever the same shall be found, and cause the same to be delivered to the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex, who are required to give order ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... And so on and so on. I never write 'valetudinarian' at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn't do it for fifteen. Examine your obscene ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Thurston read an ill-concealed fear, a reflection of panic that was gripping the nation—the whole world. These great machines were sinister. Wherever they appeared came the sense of being watched, of a menace being calmly withheld. And at thought of the obscene monsters inside those spheres, Thurston's lips were compressed and his eyes hardened. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... published a few years ago, demonstrate amply the sexual freedom in rural Germany, and Moll, who is decidedly of opinion that the country enjoys no relative freedom from sexuality, states (op. cit., pp. 137-139, 239) that even the circulation of obscene books and pictures among school-children seems to be more frequent in small towns and the country than in large cities. In Russia, where it might be thought that urban and rural conditions offered less contrast than in many countries, the same difference has ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... servitors, relations, and friends, I tried to make the sacred sign of the cross; the Succubus perched on my bed, on the bolster, at the foot, everywhere, occupying herself in distracting my nerves, laughing, grimacing, putting before my eyes a thousand obscene images, and causing me a thousand wicked desires. Nevertheless, taking pity on me, my lord the Archbishop caused the relics of St. Gatien to be brought, and the moment the shrine had touched my bed the said ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... word or feature. He went on humming a tune without words as he worked, handing out biscuits and ham to the hungry crew. Jim had eaten his breakfast already, and was smoking a cigarette at his ease. Now and then he addressed somebody in obscene jocularity. ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... arise; the odious imputations on honour and purity that would follow. Could we, the teachers of a lofty morality, venture to face a prosecution for publishing what would be technically described as an obscene book, and risk the ruin of our future, dependent as that was on our fair fame? To Mr. Bradlaugh it meant, as he felt, the almost certain destruction of his Parliamentary position, the forging by his own hands of a weapon that in the hands of his foes would be well-nigh fatal. ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... devout Billy—Billy Preston. That pious man liked to have the talk mainly to himself, and he thought that anything not obscene was tame. By the way, these abrupt and insolent remarks are characteristic of public-house wit. A favourite joke is to ask a friend a serious question. When he fails to answer, then the joker shouts some totally irrelevant and indecent ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... mortal abhorrence by the Christians, than the other and more rational kinds of heathen devotion; that is, if any at all had a right to be termed so. The brutal worship of Apis and Cybele was regarded, not only as a pretext for obscene and profligate pleasures, but as having a direct tendency to open and encourage a dangerous commerce with evil spirits, who were supposed to take upon themselves, at these unhallowed altars, the names and characters ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... schooners (bought in the United States by O'Brien to make war with on the British Empire) appeared like slender sticks far away up the empty stretch of water; and that gathering of ruffians, thieves, murderers, and runaway slaves slept in their noisome dens. Their habits were obscene and nocturnal. Cruel without hardihood, and greedy without courage, they were no skull-and-crossbones pirates of the old kind, that, under the black flag, neither gave nor expected quarter. Their usual practice was to hang in rowboats ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... to pursue one's way through Swift's poems, without being repelled again and again by the filth in which it pleases him to wade. The Beast's Confession, which has been reprinted in the Selections from Swift (Clarendon Press), is not obscene, like The Lady's Dressing-Room, Strephon and Chloe, and other poems of the class; but it has the inhumanity which deforms the description of the Houyhnhnms. Strange to say, in private life Swift appears to have been not only moral ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... moved they sent up shrill wordless calls to their fellows who were still in the fields, which were immediately answered. She realised that any minute the woods would be full of lads whom the sight of her would change to obscene creatures, and that being consolidated in this undisturbed place they would say and do things that would hurt her so much that they would hurt her child. There was nothing for it but to leave the cover of the wood and cross the waste space and walk down ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... a curious discovery, that in a province of this kingdom, not fifty miles from its capital, a sort of devotion is still paid to Priapus, the obscene divinity of the ancients (though under another denomination), I have thought it a circumstance worth recording; particularly as it offers a fresh proof of the similitude of the Popish and Pagan religion, so well observed ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... works, made interesting by genius and taste, which have flooded this Country, and which are often found on the parlor table, even of moral and Christian people. Of this class, the writings of Bulwer stand conspicuous. The only difference, between some of his works and the obscene prints, for vending which men suffer the penalties of the law, is, that the last are so gross, as to revolt the taste and startle the mind to resistance, while Bulwer presents the same ideas, so clothed ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... in this counthry," the obscene tirade ended. "You came out of these woods with rags on your back and started at bein' a gentleman when we were only bhoys. You've made a gr-reat success av it with the ladies, we'll gr-rant you that; but you should have stuck to your ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... not this be yet another instance of the Jew-Puritan abhorrence of the word God as an obscene or blasphemous term when uttered outside the synagogue or the conventicle? If so, we might read—and believe that the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... notice gave one as a specimen. They are certainly very ingenious, and may be "graziosissimi" to an Italian ear and imagination; but I cannot think that the pure mind of Milton would take much delight in obscene allusions, however neatly ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... waters; she fumbled at buttons and hooks and stays, let things lie where they fell—and of all that luxury nothing was more pleasant than the knowledge that she did not have to take precautions against the rats, mice, cockroaches, and all their obscene little brothers which—on some far-off fantastic voyaging when she had been young and foolish—she seemed to remember having found in her own room. Then she was sinking into a bed like a tide of rainbow-colored foam, sinking ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... is no sound on the earth except the ticking of the grasshopper, or the croaking of obscene frogs in ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a dazed bewilderment, men of former wealth and dignity reduced to beggary and humiliation; with school-girls whose innocence of life's realities was suddenly thrust face to face with things ugly and obscene, and cruel as hell. ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... crime and productive of misery into one—I say Drink is the root of almost all evil. It is heartbreaking to know what is going on at our own doors, for, however we may shuffle and blink, we cannot disguise the fact that many millions of human beings who might be saved pass their lives in an obscene hell—and they live so in merry England. Durst any one describe a lane in Sandgate, Newcastle-on-Tyne, a court off Orange Street or Lancaster Street, London, an alley in Manchester, a four-storey tenement in the Irish quarter ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... set the world on fire, though she perish in the conflagration! A fourth is undressing. The fellow bringing in a pewter dish, as part of the apparatus of this elegant and Attic entertainment, a blind harper, a trumpeter, and a ragged ballad-singer, roaring out an obscene song, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... and how she punishes crime, without respect of persons. Both criminals shall feel the lash of justice. If my woman's heart break, the empress shall do her duty. It shall not be said that lust holds its revels in Vienna, as at the obscene courts of Versailles and St. Petersburg. No! Nor shall the libertines of Vienna point to the Austrian emperor as their model, nor shall their weeping wives be taunted with reports of the indulgence of the Austrian empress. Morality and decorum shall prevail in Vienna. The ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... nourishment which is called supper: So much for the time When. Now for the ground Which? which I meane I walkt vpon, it is ycliped, Thy Parke. Then for the place Where? where I meane I did encounter that obscene and most preposterous euent that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon coloured Inke, which heere thou viewest, beholdest: suruayest, or seest. But to the place Where? It standeth North North-east and by East from the West corner ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare |
