"Vileness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... becomes a gentleman, we are not surprised to find the son such as he afterwards shows himself. Till the end approaches, we hear no more of Laertes, nor is more necessary; but without this scene we should have been unprepared for his vileness.] ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... within the scope of the present narrative to attempt any detailed account of the days and scenes that followed. They have been described by many writers; and the reader who bears in mind what Rome was—her vileness, her cowardice, her imbecility, her wealth, her arts, her monuments, her memories, her helpless population of religious communities of both sexes, and the sacred character of her high places and splendors, which served ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... was one thought of comfort: Cuthbert was not far away. Since her father had openly accused her of vileness, deceit, and treachery; since he had struck her down so cruelly, and had not even come to see her in her helplessness and weakness, must not Cuthbert's surmise be the true one—must he not surely be mad? She could see by the old woman's cowering looks if the door ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... took a savage pleasure in taunting him about his wife's depravity, until the very mention of her name was hateful to him. He acknowledged that he himself was bad enough, but her conduct had reached the extreme of vileness. The result was what might have been foreseen. Quarrels and recriminations were perpetual. The man hated the woman because of her vicious life; he hated himself because, as his conscience reminded him in lucid intervals, he was responsible ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... "Merry England" with its brilliant features and its romantic feudalism. This object is of course unattainable and ridiculous, a satire upon all historic development; but the good intention, the courage to resist the existing state of things and prevalent prejudices, and to recognise the vileness of our present condition, is worth something anyhow. Wholly isolated is the half-German Englishman, Thomas Carlyle, who, originally a Tory, goes beyond all those hitherto mentioned. He has sounded the social disorder more deeply than any other English bourgeois, and demands ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... in this baseness and vileness in you. The popes surely talked you into that when you were a child. I understand that you have to deal with desires and passions that are absolutely not unnatural or bad, but very common at your age. But do not seek relief from them with unworthy, ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... of the soul! filth of the body! vileness of the spirit! unfathomable depths of human folly! What am I and what are we, and whom do ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... and deep sorrow stripped the tale of half its vileness. At times her voice fell to a breath. Then she bent towards him humbly, and a perfume swept over him like a breeze from the tropics. The tale turned him to stone. Sister Claire undoubtedly drew upon her imagination and her reading for the facts, since it rarely ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... There, at the table where he sat, he had encountered one who earnestly announced himself as a "wise guy" and told him much about New York, all quite as pessimistic as the London romancer's talk had been enthusiastic. He suffered from misfortune which he blamed, unhesitatingly, to the vileness of the prosperous and ranted endlessly without attracting much attention till he touched upon the subject of the viciousness of the American rich man with women. This roused Kreutzer fully, for one of the tales the babbler told was of a gilded youth who had befriended ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... first founders; one thing to estimate the intention and sincerity of a movement, when it first stirred the hearts of men, and another thing to pass sentence upon it in the days of its degradation. The vileness into which Jesuitism eventually sank is a poor reason why we should malign and curse those who, centuries before, found in the rules and discipline and aims of that system an acceptable expression for their own disinterested social aspirations. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... habits of study. The youth had imbibed the venal corruption everywhere prevalent. Hence it not seldom happened that Roman scholars conspired to rob their master of his salary and desert his class in a body. Roman vileness and baseness disgusted Augustine even more than Punic insubordination. He therefore took advantage of a request made by the citizens of Milan of Symmachus who was then Prefect of Rome, that he would procure for ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions have been trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; one who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... cried out against his swearing, lying, and other outward notorious sins; but was in great horror for the sin of his nature; the vileness and original corruption of his heart. For this he was in so great anguish that the trouble of his spirit made him forget the pain ...
— Stories of Boys and Girls Who Loved the Saviour - A Token for Children • John Wesley
... that is either done or said over a glass of wine, how should he behave himself, who is not a true principally invited guest, but as it were a bastard and supposititious intruder? For whether he is free or not, he lies open to the exception of the company. Besides, the very meanness and vileness of the name is no small evil to those who do not resent it but can quietly endure to be called and answer to the name of shadows. For, by enduring such base names, men are insensibly accustomed and drawn on to base actions. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... found Arrowhead lighting a fire from a little load of sticks from the sledges. And between murderer and captor there sprang up the companionship of the open road which brings all men to a certain land of faith and understanding, unless they are perverted and vile. There was no vileness in Arrowhead. There were no handcuffs on his hands, no sign of captivity; they two ate out of the same dish, drank from the same basin, broke from the same bread. The crime of Arrowhead, the gallows waiting for him, seemed very far away. They were only two silent ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... act and the finale of "Tristan und Isolde" the most powerful plea that can be made for Wagner's guilty lovers. Nowhere else is the ennobling and purifying capacity of music demonstrated as in the death song of Isolde. Without such palliation the vileness, the horror, the hideousness of a play like "Tosca" is more unpardonable in an operatic form than in the original. Its lust and cruelty are presented in their nakedness. There is little or no time to reflect upon the workings of perverted ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... binna to du onything, I maist wiss I hadna kent," said Malcolm, whose honourable nature writhed under the imputed vileness. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... deceived and profaned her without remorse; he knew himself to be boundlessly loved by a lofty and noble spirit, that he was face to face with a grand and all-absorbing passion, and recognised fully both the grandeur of that passion and his own vileness. And yet under the lash of his base imaginings he would go so far as to hurt the mouth of the fond and patient creature, to prevent himself from crying aloud upon her lips the name that rose invincibly to his; and that loving ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... sin, depravity, and punishment, as a hint of where the scientific spirit may yet aid us. "The doctrine of predestination, of original sin, of the innate depravity of man, the evil fate of the greater part of the race, of the primacy of Satan in this world, of the essential vileness of matter, of a malevolent Demiurgos subordinate to a benevolent Almighty who has only lately revealed Himself, faulty as they are, appear to me to be vastly nearer the truth than the liberal, popular illusions that babies are all born good, and that ...
— The Things Which Remain - An Address To Young Ministers • Daniel A. Goodsell
... having laid down the premiss that "the magnanimous man always praises himself in his heart; and so the pusillanimous man always deems himself less than he is," he concludes, "Wherefore many on account of this vileness of mind, depreciate their native tongue, and applaud that of others; and all such as these are the abominable wicked men of Italy, who hold this precious mother-tongue in vile contempt, which, if it be vile in any case, is so only inasmuch as it sounds in the evil mouth of these adulterers."—Il ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... mercy; to thee only it appertaineth to forgive sins. Spare us therefore, good Lord, spare thy people, whom thou hast redeemed; enter not into judgement with thy servants, who are vile earth, and miserable sinners; but so turn thine anger from us, who meekly acknowledge our vileness, and truly repent us of our faults, and so make haste to help us in this world, that we may ever live with thee in the world to come; through Jesus ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... our happiness from them. The future belongs to them, and we must not, dare not, sacrifice that future nor give it in pledge for our own happiness. Last night I came to you. I was weak—yes; more than that—I was ignorant. I did not know, even as late as last night, the monstrous vileness, the consummate wickedness of present-day conditions. I learned that today, this morning, and now. I learned that the morality of the Church was a pretense. Far deeper than it, and vastly more powerful, was the morality of the dollar. My father, my family, my husband, were ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... the poem on Sierra Flat was remarkable and unprecedented. The absolute vileness of its doggerel, the gratuitous imbecility of its thought, and above all the crowning audacity of the fact that it was the work of a citizen and published in the county paper, brought it instantly into popularity. For many months Calaveras had languished for a sensation; since the last ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... himself!"—he also suspected him then. This crushed my last faint hope that, after all, it might turn out to be only a trick of the pupils; and, overpowered by the utter vileness and depravity of him who was set in authority over me, I buried my face in the pillow, feeling a strong inclination to renew the lamentations of the preceding night. Not many minutes had elapsed when the sound of a heavy footstep slowly ascending the stairs attracted ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... the chair of the divinity professor: and now fully convinced of the errors of the Romish church, and the vileness of its monastic agents, he determined to expose them. In public lectures he lashed their vices and opposed their follies. He unfolded a variety of abuses covered by the darkness of superstition. At first he began to loosen the prejudices ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... need here a word of caution. They follow De Tocqueville, and De Tocqueville follows Biot in speaking of the serf-system as abolished in most of France hundreds of years before this. But Biot and De Tocqueville take for granted a knowledge in their readers that the essential vileness of the system, and even many of its most shocking ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... inevitable that an ideal of the Supreme Creative power of the universe so one-sided, and so lacking in the essential of union, must degenerate into mere licentiousness and animalism; and it is estimated that about six hundred years B.C. the level of debauchery and vileness reigned. So-called religious rites and ceremonies were nothing ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... can turn its vision? Must you be told that it is a coward's part to kill the thing he fears, and doubly a coward's part to kill in this way? Had you stabbed him in the back with a knife, you would have shown the courage of your vileness. It would have been a vileness undisguised. But you feared the consequences of that, powerful as you are; and so you shelter your cowardice under the pretext of ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... ideal part that would be caught in this canvas. It is a sympathy for "substance"—the over-value together with a consciousness that there must be a lower value—the "Demosthenic part of the Philippics"—the "Ciceronic part of the Catiline," the sublimity, against the vileness of Rousseau's Confessions. It is something akin to, but something more than these predominant partial tones of Hawthorne—"the grand old countenance of Homer; the decrepit form, but vivid face of Aesop; ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... sort of bad boy. He regarded Gage as his superior, and he was ready to do almost anything for the fellow, but he could not imitate Leslie's daring, and he kept his own vileness so much concealed that many square, honest lads believed he was a really good fellow. Bart Hodge had begun to think Snell was a sneak and bad, but he had no proof of it, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... a body—the man's body, Thorpe was sure—had been smashed against the wood. A wisp of black hair in the blood gave its mute evidence of the hopeless fight. And the slime, like the trails on the deck, smeared with odorous vileness the whole room. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... you say indeed that you do seriously and heartily desire to see, and to be more deeply and powerfully convinced of your own vileness and sinfulness, of your own weakness and wretchedness, and of your wants and unworthiness? and that, in order to your deep and spiritual humiliation and self-debasing, that you may be more vile in your own eyes, and Jesus Christ and free grace more ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... to be brought out of prison, and he chided him because of his boast. And he spake on this wise: "Elphin, be it known to thee beyond a doubt, that it is but folly for a man to trust in the virtues of his wife further than he can see her; and that thou mayest be certain of thy wife's vileness, behold her finger, with thy signet ring upon it, which was cut from her hand last night, while she slept the sleep of intoxication." Then thus spake Elphin: "With thy leave, mighty king, I cannot deny my ring, for it is known of many; but ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... adorned with costly and magnificent temples. It was rich and voluptuous. Both private and public life were utterly corrupt. Even the religious practises of the Ephesians were unspeakably vile. This city was a moral bog, a sink of pollution, filled with all corruption, and reeking with vileness. It was a second Sodom. Vice stalked abroad everywhere and ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... preaches the essential vileness of the natural man, Christianity is a gospel of optimism. While it affirms that at present you are bad, it also affirms that this depravity is no intrinsic part of yourself. It unquestioningly asserts that it is something foreign to your true being. ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... which women of fashion go out for their shopping and their calls, and he related all the scandals of their conduct, false or true. He dwelt on all these stories and calumnies with a horrid pleasure, as though he rejoiced in the vileness of humanity. Did this mean the facile misanthropy of a profligate, accustomed to such conversations at the club, or in sporting circles, during which each man lays bare his brutal egotism, and voluntarily exaggerates the ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... that they are disinherited, and their folly is that they wish to be disinherited even more than they are. Hence, in the midst of their passionate and even heroic idealisms, there is commonly a strange poverty in their minds, many an ugly turn in their lives, and an ostentatious vileness in their manners. They wish to be the leaders of mankind, but they are wretched representatives of humanity. In the concert of nature it is hard to keep in tune with oneself if one is out of tune with everything. We should not then be yielding to any private ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... for mine, that I loved you the first word that I heard you speak in the garden. You were all that I knew of in life to yearn for—you were a wonderful light that had flashed upon me and blinded me; and when I saw my own vileness in it I flung myself down on my face, and felt a more fearful despair than I had ever dreamed could torture a soul. I would have crawled to you upon my knees and groveled in the dirt and begged ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... convict's life. That which bore upon her most weightily and incessantly was the degradation of this environment from which there was never any respite, the viciousness of this spot wherein she had been cast through no fault of her own. Vileness was everywhere, visibly in the faces of many, and it was brimming from the souls of more, subtly hideous. The girl held herself rigidly from any personal intimacy with her fellows. To some extent, at least, she could separate herself from their corruption in the matter of personal association. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... "Before the war is just a different age." For a while she was silent; then she drew a deep breath. "Don't you feel it as I feel it?" she whispered. "The bigness of it, the wonder of it. Underneath all the horror, underlying all the vileness—the splendour of it all. The glory of human endurance. . . . People wondered that I could stand it—I with my idealism. But it seems to me that out of the sordid brutality an ideal has been born which is almost the ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... loquacious meal, and for a while silence reigned, broken only by a few desultory remarks as to the vileness of the food produced by the officer responsible for the mess catering, and the exorbitant price he demanded for it—statements which had staled with much ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... man of my son's position in a network of accepted prejudices and opinions. Everything is prepared in advance—his political and religious convictions, his judgments of people, his sense of honour, his ideas of women, his whole view of life. He is taught to see vileness and corruption in every one not of his own way of thinking, and in every idea that does not directly serve the religious and political purposes of his class. The truth isn't a fixed thing: it's not used to test actions by, it's tested by them, and made to fit in with them. And ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... your gay Uncle Amos' black-bumpered Ford before you membered to the district; still, house-Amish pure Old Order though my people are, I married you, from love and youngness and girlish ignorance. But I do not care, even in this wilderness you've brought us to in that big English ship, to hear such vileness spoke out ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... sit,"—here Mr. Wilson laid his hand on the shoulder of a pale young man beside him,—"I have sought, I say, to persuade this godly youth, that he should deal with you, here in the face of Heaven, and before these wise and upright rulers, and in hearing of all the people, as touching the vileness and blackness of your sin. Knowing your natural temper better than I, he could the better judge what arguments to use, whether of tenderness or terror, such as might prevail over your hardness and obstinacy; insomuch that you should no longer hide the name of him ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mythology which first drew the attention of believers in polytheism to the inconsistency between the goodness, which was felt to be of the essence of the divine nature, and the vileness, which was imputed to them in some myths; but it is the irrationality and absurdity of mythology that seems, to the modern mind, to be its most uniform characteristic. So long as the only mythology that was studied was the mythology of Indo-European ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... stood in her eyes also, and in his also after a while. It is very easy for a clergyman in his pulpit to preach eloquently upon the vileness of worldly wealth, and the futility of worldly station; but where will you ever find one who, when the time of proof shall come, will give proof that he himself feels what he preaches? Mr. Townsend was customarily loud and eager upon this subject, and yet he was now shedding tears because ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... newborn hope, as one blows out a candle. There are many quite natural things in this world which we are strong enough to bear but for our nerves. I am struck by a truth not recognized by me formerly, not recognized generally,—that love for another man's wife, if only a pastime is the greatest vileness, and if real, the greatest misfortune that can happen to any man; the more worthy the woman the greater the misfortune. I have a burning curiosity within me, very bitter at the same time, as to what Aniela would do if I said to her: "Either ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... perplexed between two humours; twenty times an uncontrollable burst of laughter kept my anger back, and twenty times the anger that was rising from the bottom of my soul suddenly ended in a burst of laughter. I was confounded by so much shrewdness and so much vileness, by ideas now so just and then so false, by such general perversity of sentiments, such complete turpitude, and such marvellously uncommon frankness. He perceived the struggle going on within me:] What ails ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... martyr," said Mme. Chantelouve. "His body was so transparent that he could see through his chest the vileness of his heart. His kind of 'vileness' at least we can stand. But I must admit that this utter disregard of cleanliness makes me suspicious of the monasteries and renders your beloved Middle ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... conquests and exterminations; and a longing seizes him to plunge into every kind of vileness. Moreover, the degradation wherewith men are terrified is an outrage done to their souls, a means still more of stupefying them; and, as nothing is lower than a brute beast, Antony falls upon four paws on the table, and ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... emotion, grasped his old friend's hands, stammering confused words of thanks. The vileness of the action committed for his sake brought tears ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... must have been impossible. But Steve had learned his lessons of life in a ruthless school. He had no thought for any leniency towards an enemy, alive or dead. He had no reverence for the empty shell, which, in life, had contained nothing but vileness. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... present some particular scene as typical of the peculiar vileness and mischief wrought by this modern warfare that Germany has elaborated and thrust upon the world, I do not think I should choose as my instance any of those great architectural wrecks that seem most to impress contemporary ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... which I thought due to your rank, and freely told you all I knew or thought of public affairs; and I must ever confess, whatever may be the event, that you generously gave me such opening, as I now think I ought to have embraced: but the true cause of my not doing it was the vileness and treachery of many persons around you, who, I supposed, ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... branch for their purposes, they addressed a letter to Preston, remonstrating with him for his servile attachment to the minister; on which he confidently returned an answer, assuring them that he was as fully convinced of the vileness and profligacy of the Duke of Buckingham's character as any man could be, but that there was no way to come at him but by the lowest flattery, and that it was necessary for the glory of God that such instruments should be made use of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... obtained money to be used in tempting the mistress of Christy. He then accused her before the courts, she was condemned, and paid a fine of ten dollars. On the following day, Christy appeared in court against the mistress of Flarey, with two fellow-policemen, to describe their own vileness in order to get revenge on Flarey by depriving him of his mistress and reducing her to the level of a common prostitute. The woman was discharged, indicating that it was a trumped up case. The Commission's report, in describing the details ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... and talk with the cook and the chambermaid, they would consider themselves insulted. Yet they come here and talk with other Irish girls every whit as ignorant and unattractive as the servants at home—only the latter are virtuous and these are infamous. Thus does one touch of vileness make the whole ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe |
