"Turpitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... people are a "law unto themselves," where courts, lawyers, sheriffs, and constables existed not, and yet has seen as much quiet and order, and more honesty in paying just debts, than where legal restraints operated in all their force. The turpitude of vice and the majesty of virtue, were as apparent as in older settlements. Industry, in laboring or hunting, bravery in war, candor, honesty, and hospitality were rewarded with the confidence and honor of the people. ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... with an unlawful intent. The charge is not of a mistake in the exercise of supposed powers, but of the assumption of powers not conferred by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both, and nothing is suggested to excuse or palliate the turpitude of the act. In the absence of any such excuse or palliation there is only room for one inference, and that is that the intent was unlawful and corrupt. Besides, the resolution not only contains no mitigating suggestions, but, on the contrary, it holds up the act complained of as justly obnoxious ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... debasement; abjectness &c. adj.; degradation, dedecoration[obs3]; a long farewell to all my greatness [Henry VIII]; odium, obloquy, opprobrium, ignominy. dishonor, disgrace; shame, humiliation; scandal, baseness, vileness[obs3]; turpitude &c. (improbity) 940[obs3]; infamy. tarnish, taint, defilement, pollution. stain, blot, spot, blur, stigma, brand, reproach, imputation, slur. crying shame, burning shame; scandalum magnatum[Lat], badge of infamy, blot in one's escutcheon; bend sinister, bar sinister; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to Edward of all his affairs. It made him suspect that he was inconstant. The affair with the Dolciquita he had sized up as a short attack of madness like hydrophobia. His relations with Mrs Basil had not seemed to him to imply moral turpitude of a gross kind. The husband had been complaisant; they had really loved each other; his wife was very cruel to him and had long ceased to be a wife to him. He thought that Mrs Basil had been his soul-mate, separated from him by an unkind ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... done in the flesh, I ask whether it is consistent with the idea we have of divine justice to think that both will be condemned to the same everlasting punishment? If it be, then there is no more moral turpitude in parricide than in telling a trivial falsehood, which injures no one, but still is offensive and displeasing to God. But if it be not consistent with divine justice, then you must admit the distinction of guilt, and consequently of punishment. Now, that God exacts a temporary ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... constantly in a state of activity and vigour. Mr. John Hunter, one of our most celebrated English anatomists, dissected several of these birds, but did not find them in any respect different from the other tribes; from which he concludes the accounts of their turpitude to be erroneous. Now, although I feel no doubt myself, that such instances have occurred, yet I by no means believe them to be frequent. Indeed, a particular friend of mine, a skilful navigator, tells me he has not infrequently seen, when many hundreds of miles distant from shore, large flights ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... rejected her for her birth,—the scrupulousness of modesty, for her history. The night, that consecrated so many homes and gathered together so many families in innocence and repose, was to her blacker than its own blackness in misery and turpitude; the morning, that radiated gladness over the face of the world, revealed the extent and exaggerated the sense of her own degradation. But the vision of Jesus had alighted upon her; she had seen him speeding on his errands of mercy; she hung about the crowd that followed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... first, called evil good, and good evil, put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. He openly threw aside the admission of any one moral obligation. Never did some of the Roslyn boys, to their dying day, forget the deep, intolerable, unfathomable flood of moral turpitude and iniquity which he bore with him; a flood, which seemed so irresistible, that the influence of such boys as Montagu and Owen to stay its onrush seemed as futile as the weight of a feather to bar the fury of a mountain stream. Eric might have done much, Duncan might have done much, ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... you are very anxious for people to know how near you came to absolute turpitude. You may rest easy on that point. I shall speak to my father, of course, and we will agree to say that he ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... presidential campaign which made me sure that it would be impossible to elect him. An impartial but kindly judge had, some months before, while expressing great admiration for Mr. Blaine, informed me of some transactions which, while they showed no turpitude, revealed a carelessness in doing business which would certainly be brought to bear upon him with great effect in a heated political campaign. It was clear to me that, if nominated, he would be dragged through the mire, the Republican party ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... question as well as the less. Reason too, pleads for the one as well as for the other. Consistency of moral doctrine again demands both. But if we admit the restricted interpretation, and exclude the larger, we offend reason. All consistency is at an end. Individual responsibility for moral turpitude will be taken from man. Crimes, clearly marked and defined in the page of Christianity, will cease to be crimes at the will of princes. One contradiction will rush in after another; and men will have two different standards of morality, as they adhere ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... that Cain, after hearing the words from an angry father, was overwhelmed with terror and confusion, not knowing whither to turn. The expression, "which hath opened its mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand," is, indeed, terrifying, but it portrays the turpitude of the fratricidal ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... the only grounds," &c. &c. &c.—Mr. Bowles's sensibility in denying his "sensitiveness to criticism" proves, perhaps, too much. But if he has been so charged, and truly—what then? There is no moral turpitude in such acuteness of feeling: it has been, and may be, combined with many good and great qualities. Is Mr. Bowles a poet, or is he not? If he be, he must, from his very essence, be sensitive to criticism; and even if he be not, he need not be ashamed of the common ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... prostitutes; (5) paupers; (6) persons likely to become public charge; (7) professional beggars; (8) persons afflicted with a loathsome or contagious disease; (9) persons who have been convicted of a felony or other crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, not including those convicted of purely political offences; (10) polygamists; (11) anarchists (or persons who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of the government of the United States or of all government or forms of laws, or ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... of the bar, thought to be the law established by the Supreme Court in the Knight sugar case. But the Supreme Court in its decree dissolving the Standard Oil and Tobacco Trusts, condemned them in the severest language for moral turpitude; and an even severer need of condemnation should be ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... hear of some daring crime—it comes full upon us in the deepest shade of turpitude, and raises indignation; but the eye that gradually saw the darkness thicken, must observe it with more compassionate forbearance. The world cannot be seen by an unmoved spectator, we must mix in the throng, and feel as men feel before we can judge of their feelings. If we mean, in short, to live ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... appeased?—when does conscience raise a barrier against its further progress? It is a state difficult to believe. Could I have listened with an ear of credulity to the tale of Thompson—could I have borne to listen to it with patience, had I not witnessed an act of turpitude that ocular demonstration could only render credible—had I not been prepared for that act by the tone, the manner, the expressions of the minister, when we passed an hour together, ignorant of each other's presence? It was a dreadful conviction that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... morals that he satirizes. He is interested, not so much in effecting a fundamental reform in the lives of his characters, as in giving them a little social sense. He preaches, not against distinct moral turpitude like hypocrisy and avarice, but against inordinate affection for lap-dogs (Melampe), pietistic objections to masked balls {Masquerades}, and superstitious belief in legerdemain (Witchcraft). Holberg voices the urbane humanistic spirit that characterized the ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... abdomen!" said Mr. Boggs, slapping that portion of his frame as if he had a special grudge against it and would be glad if he could hit it hard enough to bring it to a realizing sense of its turpitude. "My figure had gone to the devil! It was not as large as it is now, but it was large enough to cook my gruel. My waist had increased so gradually that I had never noticed it. I got a tape and took its measure. ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... the contents of the firm's cash drawer in order to play the races, believes himself to be unfortunate only, and more sinned against than sinning. No matter how much of a scoundrel a man may be, his self-analysis brings him far short of the correct degree of turpitude. ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... leaving us both just where it had found us—our tempers rather than our views suffering in the conflict. Two or three times I was tempted to rattle out a volley of indignation at his amazing and unparalleled effrontery, and of calling him to account for his turpitude; but my better judgment withheld me, bidding me reserve my blows until they should fall unerringly and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... become so obtuse as to wholly blunt the sense of reason, the brotherly sympathy of a common race-feeling, and the broad, liberal and just inculcations of Jesus Christ. The nation was sunk to the moral turpitude of Constantinople; and not even a John crying in the wilderness could arouse it to a sense of the exceeding foulness in the midst of which it grovelled, or of the storm gathering on the ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... country with a cold impartiality, and to place its interests exactly on a par with the interests of other lands? Who, save the Chinaman himself, thinks it as important that a Chinaman should have enough to eat as that an American or an Englishman should? Was not the turpitude, that excluded the Chinaman from Australia, traced to the two deadly sins of undue diligence and sobriety? [Footnote: Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, article, "Australia."] As for freedom, men of certain ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... gone between us by mail, has been read by other eyes than ours. This was true of your last letter to me, and, without doubt, it will be true of this letter. Can you imagine it? Think of the moral turpitude of a creature employed to break open private letters and to read them! Can you imagine work more degrading? What a dirty dog he must be! how despicable, indeed, he must seem to himself!" And so Mr. Buchanan went on until he wound up as follows: "Not only does this person ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... circumstance of a woman in full health, often in the middle of her friends and family, being roasted alive by combustibles fastened to her person, from which it is impossible to escape till her most sensitive parts have been reduced to a cinder! What crime ever perpetrated by human turpitude could have warranted a more dreadful fate! What demons, contriving mischief and torments, could have invented a combination of miseries so terrible and heart-rending? The decorations of beauty—the gratification of pride—even the humble means ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... of all in the form of universal good-will to all. (4) The disposition to desire and love moral excellence, whether observed in ourselves or others—in short, true piety towards God. He goes on to give a similar scale of moral turpitude. Again, putting aside the indifferent qualities, and also those that merely make people despicable and prove them insensible, he cites—(1) the gratification of a narrow kind of affection when the public good ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... (like a certain princess) we have a taste that way, in the surgeon's dissecting-room; we do not look upon pictures to have our minds agonized and contaminated by the sight of human turpitude and barbarity, streaming blood, quivering flesh, wounds, tortures, death, and horrors in every shape, even though it should be all very natural. Painting has been called the handmaid of nature; is it ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... alive; never a Decimus was allowed to stand in the way of the nine seniors. The birth of twins is an evil portent to the Mpongwes, as it is in many parts of Central Africa, and even in the New World; it also involves the idea of moral turpitude, as if the woman were one of the lower animals, capable of superfetation. There is no greater insult to a man, than to point at him with two fingers, meaning that he is a twin; of course he is not one, or he would have been killed at birth. Albinos are ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... discovered that the Rajah's ruby had mysteriously disappeared from the collection of jewels to be divided. The other pirates immediately suspected their captain of having secretly purloined it, and, indeed, so certain were they of his turpitude that they immediately set about taking means to force a ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... who holds notions opposed to the current prejudices, than to hit the right mark where intellectual integrity and prudence, firmness and wise reserve, are in exact accord. When we come to declaring opinions that are, however foolishly and unreasonably, associated with pain and even a kind of turpitude in the minds of those who strongly object to them, then some of our most powerful sympathies are naturally engaged. We wonder whether duty to truth can possibly require us to inflict keen distress on those to whom we are bound by the tenderest ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... mouth with kisses. I cannot describe to you the sense of horror and of loathing with which the contact of her lips oppressed me. There was about her something so unnatural, so inhuman, that I believe even then I could have destroyed her with as little sense of moral turpitude as if she had been ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... honestly as the baker or the butcher. If lawbreaking is to be found in the business of some corporations, it is incumbent upon us to determine just in what way the law is being broken, why it is being broken, what sort of law it is that is being broken, and how much moral turpitude or public wrong is involved. All these factors would be determined by a judge upon the bench before passing sentence upon the meanest malefactor, and yet we find that the public is constantly urged by the newspapers to pass sentences of ruin ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson
... he said. "But I'm not qualified to interpret the law. I'll arrest you and bring you to trial and then it's up to some judge to rule upon your purity and innocence of criminal intent, and freedom from moral taint or turpitude. Maybe take ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... not only France, but the world. Unquestionably part of this evil example was his falsehood to the Republic. Promise, pledge, honor, oath, were all violated in this monstrous treason. Never in history was greater turpitude. Unquestionably he could have saved the Republic, but he preferred his own exaltation. As I am a Republican, and believe republican institutions for the good of mankind, I cannot pardon the traitor. The people of France are ignorant; he did not care to have them educated, ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... anarchic whole Evolve the laws which shall Disorder deep Within the grave entomb and on that throne The God of Order seat, and in his hand Imperial scepter place, to rule the world Politic, as it on its axis rolls, Unharmed by venomed darts of turpitude? I dreamed of formulating certain laws Which economic matters would control. The midnight lamp, companion of my toil, Has burned in vain. Alas, I see it now. When the great "Commoner," of wisdom full, A plank within our platform did ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... made some little advance in education, he is transformed into a conceited coxcomb, who, instead of plundering travellers on the highway, finds in city life a sphere for the indulgence of his evil propensities. What is the cause of this incorrigible turpitude of the negroes? To answer this important question is not easy, if we admit the principle that the negro is as capable of cultivation as the Caucasian; and in support of it the names of some highly-educated Ethiopians may be cited. Those who are disposed to maintain this principle, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... clearly seems to render him responsible for the evil which he might easily have prevented; and, on the other hand, if he pervades the moral world with his power in such a manner as to bring all things to pass, this as clearly seems to implicate him in the turpitude ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... which an inordinate love of luxury and the insatiable desires of jaded senses had suggested as a means to satisfaction, until the treachery of his own accomplices had thrown the glaring light of publicity on a career of turpitude such as even these decadent times had ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... celibacy. It was well understood, and not disputed, that celibacy was a rule of the church, and not an ordinance of Christ or the Gospel. It was an ascetic practice which was enjoined and enforced on the clergy. They never obeyed it. The rule produced sin and vice, and introduced moral discord and turpitude into the lives of thousands of the best men of the Middle Ages. In the baser days of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the current practice was a recognized violation of professed duty and virtue, under money penalties or penances. Yet the notion of celibacy for the clergy had been so ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... practical logic to run its course without let or hindrance, and prevented the "brakes" of common-sense from acting when he found himself, in his very zeal for the Law, descending an inclined plane into an unfathomable abyss of turpitude and folly. The man (or people) who is able, of his own experience, to tell the rest of mankind what a given scheme of life really means and is really worth, owing to his having offered himself as the corpus vile for the required experiment, is one of the greatest benefactors of the human ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... Turpitude of character must betray itself. Moral corruption can no more be hidden than physical corruption. Wickedness "will out," like murder or smallpox. A man's wife discovers it; his children shun him instead of clinging about ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... shall die incredulous. As for the moral turpitude that man unveiled to me, even with tears of penitence, I cannot, even in memory, dwell on it without a start of horror. I will say but one thing, Utterson, and that (if you can bring your mind to credit it) will be more than enough. The creature who crept ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... Lord Clarenceux. They were the eyes of one capable at once of the highest and of the lowest. Mingled with their hardness was a melting softness, with their cruelty a large benevolence, with their hate a pitying tenderness, with their spirituality a hellish turpitude. They were the eyes of two opposite men, and as I gazed into them they reconciled for me the conflicting accounts of Lord Clarenceux which I ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... unnatural crime prevails most in those countries where polygamy is allowed, that is to say, in those countries where the affections of women are not consulted, but their persons purchased for gold—a remark which may lead to this conclusion, that it is rather a moral turpitude than a propensity arising from physical or local causes. The appetite for female intercourse soon becomes glutted by the facility of enjoyment; and where women, so circumstanced, can only receive the embraces of their proprietors from a sense of duty, their coldness ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... absurdity. But granting, for the sake of argument, that archangels fall infinitely short of moral perfection, and I should only be able to see in the fact a hopeless aggravation of my previous difficulty. If it is hard to reconcile the supreme goodness of God with the moral turpitude of man, much more would it be hard to do so if his very angels are depraved. Therefore, if the reasonable question which I originally put "may be followed by a series of similar questions to which there is no end," the goodness of God must simply be pronounced a delusion. ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... however, at most only calculated to excite a smile; there is no turpitude in them, and they merit notice but as indications of the humour of character. It was his Lordship's foible to overrate his rank, to grudge his deformity beyond reason, and to exaggerate the condition of his family and circumstances. But the alloy of such small vanities, his caprice and ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... murder, and wrong of almost every kind, then flourished. We are refined in our vices, they were gross and barbarous in theirs. They had neither so many ways nor so many means of sinning; but the sum of their moral turpitude was greater than ours. We have a sort of decency and good breeding, which lay a certain restraint on our passions; they were boorish and beastly, and their bad passions ever in full play. Civilization prevents barbarity and atrocity; mental cultivation induces ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... against the virtue of Anne Hyde, and they were forced upon the ears of the Duke by those who were his intimate and trusted friends, and who professed themselves impelled, forsooth, by conscience and loyalty, to betray to him their own share in the infidelities of his wife. It is a picture of revolting turpitude, and not the least strange feature about it is the tolerance with which that turpitude was treated, in a society, and at a Court, where honour and manliness were professedly esteemed, and where, even if morality ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... that the faithful may with more good will avoid the sin of lying, the Parish Priest shall set before them the extreme misery and turpitude of this wickedness. For, in holy writ, the devil is called the father of a lie; for, in that he did not remain in Truth, he is a liar, and the father of a lie. He will add, with the view of ridding men of so great a crime, the evils which follow upon lying; and, whereas they are ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... reason. I left Baby Charles and Steenie laying his duty before him, and if he can resist doing what they desire him, why I wish he would teach me the gate of it. O Geordie, Jingling Geordie, it was grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing on the turpitude of incontinence.' 'I am afraid,' said George Heriot, more hastily than prudently, 'I might have thought of the old proverb of Satan reproving sin.' 'Deil hae our saul, neighbour,' said the king, reddening, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... exploits, that which ranks next in turpitude, and which led to their overthrow, was the piracy of the Morning Star. They fell in with that vessel near the island Ascension, in the year 1828, as she was on her voyage from Ceylon to England. This vessel, besides a valuable cargo, ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... a French writer suggests, because the dirty work was too dirty for his fingers, but probably because he was getting old and stupid and out-of-date, and failed to keep in touch with new forms of turpitude. He left Venice again and paid a visit to Vienna, saw beloved Paris once more, and there met Count Wallenstein, or Waldstein. The conversation turned on magic and the occult sciences, in, which Casanova was an adept, as the reader ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... estrangement from the house of her protector since she first entered it, I have unconsciously committed such an offense against Mr. Blyth as no contrition can ever adequately atone for. Now indeed I feel how presumptuously merciless my bitter conviction of the turpitude of my own sin, has made me towards what I deemed like sins in others. Now also I know, that, unless you have spoken falsely, I have been guilty of casting the shame of my own deserted child in the teeth of the very man who had nobly ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... though no unskilful writer, here wrote in vain; for what ingenuity can veil the turpitude of long and practised treachery? To keep up appearances, Sir Judas resorted more than usually to court; where, however, he was perpetually enduring rebuffs, or avoided, as one infected with the plague of treachery. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... chattels. The primitive Slavic communal organization thus survived only on the royal domain, and there it exists till the present day. The census of Peter having thus fairly inaugurated chattelhood, it immediately began to develop itself in all its turpitude. The masters grew more reckless and cruel; they sold chattels separately from the lands; they brought them singly into market, disregarding all family-ties and social bonds. Estates were no more valued according to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... bedchamber which I have mentioned. Thence we passed into the grand Presentation Saloon, on the ceiling of which Lebrun had painted a likeness of Louis XIV. A tri-coloured cockade placed on the forehead of the great King still bore witness of the imbecile turpitude of the Convention. Lastly came the hall of the Guards, in front of the grand staircase of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... which Philadelphia and New-York have exhibited some striking instances. I mean the practice of certain meanspirited wretches, who bear malice towards particular performers, and make parties to hiss them off the stage. It is not easy to conceive of a greater degree of baseness, turpitude, and cowardice, than is manifested by this conduct. The object of their malice is unable to defend himself from their attacks. This, to a generous mind, would be an aegis, and protect the person who could make such a plea, as completely ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... task, if possible, to describe the sensation created by this amazing disclosure; and we may only add in conclusion, that the prisoner was convicted on other testimony; and after an earnest admonition from the justice, on the turpitude of crime and its dreadful miseries, Jared Sculpin was sentenced to give Simon Bogle one good day's work, and one good fleece of wool for his time lost in hunting the chain, and in bringing the offender to justice; to carry the chain on his back through the main travelled ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... basely purchased. The odium of his injured countrymen spoke loudly throughout the land he had betrayed. He was burned in effigy countless times, and a growing generation was told with wrath and scorn the abhorrent tale of his turpitude. Meanwhile, as if by defiant self-assurance to wipe away the perfidy of former acts, he issued a proclamation to "the inhabitants of America," in which he strove to cleanse himself from blame. This ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... requires its exercise. In such a case he has no alternative. He must either exert the negative power intrusted to him by the Constitution chiefly for its own preservation, protection, and defense or commit an act of gross moral turpitude. Mere regard to the will of a majority must not in a constitutional republic like ours control this sacred and solemn duty of a sworn officer. The Constitution itself I regard and cherish as the embodied ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... dispatches sent rolling through the country a wave of patriotic feeling before which the Republican leaders quailed and which swept away many of their followers. Jefferson held that the French Government ought not to be held responsible for "the turpitude of swindlers," and he steadfastly opposed any action looking to the use of force to maintain American rights. Some of the Republican members of Congress, however, went over to the Federalist side, and Jefferson's party was presently reduced to a feeble and dispirited ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... these lads as he ought, and brought them up to their own, and made them Kelmscotts indeed, instead of nameless adventurers, they might never have fallen into such abysses of turpitude. But he had let them grow up in ignorance of their own origin, with the vague stain of a possible illegitimacy hanging over their heads; and what wonder if they forgot in the end how noblesse oblige, and sank at last into foul depths of ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... one sharp sweep He went across Judea and down went its pride and its power. In 1861 God shaved our nation. We had allowed to grow Sabbath desecration, and oppression, and blasphemy, and fraud, and impurity, and all sorts of turpitude. The South had its sins, and the North its sins, and the East its sins, and the West its sins. We had been warned again and again, and we did not heed. At length the sword of war cut from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf, and from Atlantic seaboard to Pacific seaboard. The pride of the land, not ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... cruel fashion. "The good little fellow" was strangely taken aback, and wished to defend himself; but Villars produced proofs that could not be contradicted. Thereupon the ill-favoured dog avowed his turpitude, and had the audacity to approach Villars in order to speak low to him; but the Marechal, drawing back, and repelling him with an air of indignation, said to him, aloud, that with scoundrels like him he wished for no privacy. Gathering up, his pluck at this, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... in the dark again!" He turned a wall key, three pink-shaded lamps, a cluster of pink-glass grapes, and a center bowl of alabaster flashing up the familiar spectacle of Louis Fourteenth and the interior decorator's turpitude; a deep-pink brocade divan backed up by a Circassian-walnut table with curly legs; a maze of smaller tables; a marble Psyche holding out the cluster of pink grapes; a gilt grand piano, festooned in rosebuds. ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... concerning the pamphlet on which I was then engaged. Consideration however did but seem to confirm me in my purpose. Let my defence be right or wrong, and I had by no means yet decided in the negative, still the turpitude of the bishop and my persecutors was no less flagitious. These incidents once more turned my thoughts toward Turl, whom I knew not whether to admire, love, or hate. I was not so entirely overwhelmed but that I had arguments, at least I had words, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... which are reprehensible, not because they are directed against his fellow-countrymen, but because they are personalities. That these offences have their precedents in men whose memory the world delights to honor does not remove their turpitude, but it is a fact which should modify our condemnation in a particular case; unless, indeed, we are to deliver our judgments on a principle of compensation—making up for our indulgence in one direction by our severity in another. On this ground of coarseness and personality, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... with the gloomiest forbodings. What a fool I had been not to insist that whatever expert accompanied Higgs should be a married man. And yet, now when I came to think of it, that might not have bettered matters, and perhaps would only have added to the transaction a degree of moral turpitude which at present was lacking, since even ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... and proper sense, is the expression to an inferior of the will of a superior, which the inferior has it in his power to obey or to resist, but resistance to which entails a penalty more or less severe, in proportion to the moral turpitude, or the injurious consequences of the act of disobedience. In this its strict sense the law can only exist in connection with beings possessed of reason to understand it, of power to obey it, and of free will to determine whether they will obey it or ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... of his ends. Webster's arraignment of South Carolina was directed against an alleged erroneous dogma and only incidentally affected personal morality. The reaction, therefore, was void of bitter resentment. Sumner's charges were directed against alleged moral turpitude, and the classic form and scrupulous regard for parliamentary rules which he observed only added to the feeling of personal resentment on the part of his opponents. Some of the defenders of slavery ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... stopped the fountains!' Mrs. Fox-Moore spoke as though detecting an additional proof of turpitude. 'Those two policemen,' she went on, in a whisper, 'why are they ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... sentiments only added fuel to the flames of Don Miguel's vengeance, and the kingdom was laid at the mercy of a set of men to whose vengeance, brutality, and avarice there were no bounds. One step downward in the path of moral turpitude ever leads to another. From the moment of his return, Don Miguel had hated his sister Bonna Maria, because she had been her brother's regent, and had been faithful to the constitution. Miguel learned ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sudden impulse, or some one obstinate desire, got the better of their reason; or it might happen, that the motive for committing a great crime was not of so dark a dye as that which often induces to one of less turpitude. And yet neither our author, nor any one else, would hesitate to accord to the crime of murder the very severest penalty that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... trees: [76] cowards, dastards, [77] and those guilty of unnatural practices, [78] are suffocated in mud under a hurdle. [79] This difference of punishment has in view the principle, that villainy should he exposed while it is punished, but turpitude concealed. The penalties annexed to slighter offences [80] are also proportioned to the delinquency. The convicts are fined in horses and cattle: [81] part of the mulct [82] goes to the king or state; part to the injured person, ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... of the present British Negro philanthropy, and the occasion of her assumed moral turpitude in elevating the heathen barbarian of Africa to the primary plane of civilization, to the protection of its laws, and the meliorations of its moral, political, social, and religious institutions. It is because monarchy was beginning ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... Salisbury Spring Assizes, 1830, Mr. Justice Gazalee, addressing the grand jury, said that none of the crimes appeared to be marked with circumstances of great moral turpitude. The prisoners numbered one hundred and thirty; he passed sentences of death on twenty-nine, life transportations on five, fourteen years on five, seven years on eleven, and various terms of hard ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... every way in which I could possibly employ it. I labored night and day. I labored in Parliament; I labored out of Parliament. If, therefore, the resolution of the House of Commons, refusing to commit this act of unmatched turpitude, be a crime, I am guilty among the foremost. But, indeed, whatever the faults of that House may have been, no one member was found hardy enough to propose so infamous a thing; and on full debate we passed the resolution against the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... over the Bridge, "Do you observe," continued he, "that extensive building? That is called the Penitentiary. It is a building designed for the punishment, employment, and reformation of offenders of secondary turpitude, usually punished by transportation for a term of years. It has been conceived since the commencement of the disputes which terminated in the separation of the American States. The plan of it is known to be partly that of Mr. Jeremy Bentham. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan |
