"Debauchery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... down-looked, black, curling, stiff hair, splay-footed. To give him his right, he had the most piercing judgment naturally upon a figure of theft, and many other questions, that I ever met withal; yet for money he would willingly give contrary judgments; was much addicted to debauchery, and then very abusive and quarrelsome; seldom without a black eye or one mischief or other. This is the same Evans who made so many antimonial cups, upon the sale whereof he chiefly subsisted. He understood Latin very well, the Greek tongue not all; he had some arts above ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... exertion, or even grape-stones. The story of the grape-stone is told also of Anacreon. Perhaps in both cases it was a poetical fiction to mark the love of wine which distinguished these two personages; for Sophocles is accused by Athenaeus of licentiousness and debauchery, particularly when he commanded the Athenian army. In like manner it is asserted by Pausanias that Bacchus appeared to Aeschylus under the shadow of a vine, and ordered him to write tragedies, thereby figuratively ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... own accord, and, with his two fists on his hips, he surveyed the assembled guests with a melancholy and defiant air. The fatigue of bivouacs, absinthe, and fever, an entire existence of wretchedness and debauchery, stood revealed in his dull eyes. His white lips quivered, exposing the gums. The vast sky, empurpled, enveloped him in a blood-red light; and his obstinacy in remaining there caused ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... banquets, that he was vigilantly 'tapped' by the courtiers, and that he lent the king staggering sums. But in spite of his popularity he never seems to have evaded responsibility and wallowed in debauchery, like the king. We find Gilles shortly afterward defending Anjou and Maine against the English. The chronicles say that he was 'a good and hardy captain,' but his 'goodness' and 'hardiness' did not prevent him ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... So he was not long in getting commissions in considerable numbers. It only depended on himself to win riches and fame with all speed. But his chief idea was to amuse himself in company of Bruno di Giovanni and Nello, and squander along with them, in debauchery, all the money ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... of all Europe, by many of our kings, by a Saint Louis, by men full of religious zeal, such as Godfrey of Bouillon, and Simon, Count of Montfort. Is there not the greatest rashness in including such men as these in one sweeping condemnation? If all the Crusaders had not equally pure intentions; if debauchery insinuated itself into their armies, if prudence did not always regulate their proceedings; if sometimes even success did not crown their best-concerted measures, are these sufficient grounds for blaming ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... dishonorable. That her refusing to take a stand could not exonerate them. History would not fail to record the black fact against her race that, a free people, the boasted vanguard of human liberty, Americans had first made a race dependent, then by fraud and faithlessness, by cruelty and debauchery, were utterly destroying it. And finally, that by closing her eyes to the facts, because of her love for Levine, she was herself sharing the ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... that I cannot take a passionate interest in a discussion, the subject of which we cannot properly judge. According to Mussetistes, it was thanks to George Sand that the young poet was reduced to the despair which drove him to debauchery. On the other hand, if we are to believe the Sandistes, George Sand's one idea in interesting herself in Musset was to rescue him from debauchery and convert him to a better life. I listen to all such pious interpretations, but I prefer others for myself. I prefer seeing ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... fail to find rivals who will turn satirists and attack them in their homes and daily life. Certainly, it is not difficult for slander to magnify the genial gatherings of kindred spirits into scenes of wild debauchery. And it was also true, that if mere outside appearance is of any value as an index of what is hidden, the slight figure, the pale and almost girlish face, and the winning and courteous demeanor of the poet were far from indicating a man of low and debasing inclinations. Moreover, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... alas! in whom he seemed to take any particular interest. There, in the parlour, were the fraternal meetings attended by all the neighbouring Independent ministers, all clad in sober black, and whose wildest exploits in rollicking debauchery were confined to a pipe and a glass of home-made wine. Madeira, port and sherry were unknown in ministers' houses, though now and then one got a taste of them at the houses of men better to do, and ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... multiplied; families, a hundred families, a thousand families, are happy; the district becomes populated; villages spring up where there were only farms before; farms rise where there was nothing; wretchedness disappears, and with wretchedness debauchery, prostitution, theft, murder; all vices disappear, all crimes: and this poor mother rears her child; and behold a whole country rich and honest! Ah! I was a fool! I was absurd! what was that I was saying about denouncing myself? I really must pay attention and not be precipitate ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... quotation was the exiled head of the ruling family. Nothing had to be expected from such a man. He came to Rome in order to be near the Cardinal Giovanni, and to share this brother's better fortunes; but his days and nights were spent in debauchery among the companions and accomplices of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... blazing fires, and lay down to sleep without watch or guard. News of the situation was carried at once to Vesteras, where a force of three thousand men was got together and sent post-haste to Koeping. It reached the patriot camp soon after midnight on April 26. The scene of debauchery was not yet past. The Danes fell upon them as they lay there in their drunken ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... behind the throne. As time went on, the usual result of such a state of affairs showed itself. The able men of the Hojo family were followed by weak and vicious ones. Their tyranny and misgovernment grew unbearable. They gave themselves up to luxury and debauchery, oppressed the people by taxes to obtain means for their costly pleasures, and crushed beneath their oppressive rule the emperor, the shogun, and the people alike. Their cup of vice and tyranny at length overflowed. The day of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many other parts of the Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read, or for decency to hear; for it appears, from the 35th verse of this chapter, that the number of women-children consigned to debauchery by the order of ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... insist on her going to such places, but know your own happiness in having a wife that hath the discretion to avoid those places; which, though perhaps they may not be as some represent them, such brothels of vice and debauchery as would impeach the character of every virtuous woman who was seen at them, are certainly, however, scenes of riot, disorder, and intemperance, very improper to be frequented by a chaste ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... tell us something new? You have made fun of authority of all sorts to-day, which is every bit as vulgar as denying the existence of God. So you have no belief left, and the century is like an old Sultan worn out by debauchery! Your Byron, in short, sings of crime and its emotions in a final despair ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... gladiatorial show came and plucked his sleeve, in order, as she said, to obtain some of his good fortune. [Sidenote: His abdication.] The rest of his life was spent, near Cumae, in hunting, writing his memoirs, amusing himself with actors, and practising all sorts of debauchery. Ten days before he died he settled the affairs of the people of Puteoli at their request, and was busy in collecting funds to restore the Capitol up to the last. [Sidenote: His death.] Some say he died of the disease which destroyed Herod. Some say that ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... the poisonous influences by which she was surrounded, and that the poor girl did not sink into the depths of that luxurious sensuality which characterized Neapolitan society at that time. It was a more distinguished and fascinating type of debauchery than that which she had known in other days in England, and from which Greville had rescued her. The temptation to plunge into the boisterous merriment of a higher order of depravity than that to which she ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... in England is a meeting avowedly for merriment; in Ireland it is a nocturnal meeting avowedly for the purpose of watching and bewailing the dead; but, in reality, for gossiping and debauchery. See Glossary [C2]. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... scoffing at it. A gipsy encampment. The son of a millionaire exempted from military duty, while the only support of a large family is forced to serve. The university: a teacher relieved of military service, while the most gifted musicians are compelled to perform it. Soldiers and their debauchery—and the ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... ecclesiastical magistrate at Poitiers. They accused Grandier of having corrupted women and girls, of indulging in blasphemy and profanity, of neglecting to read his breviary daily, and of turning God's sanctuary into a place of debauchery and prostitution. The information was taken down, and Louis Chauvet, the civil lieutenant, and the archpriest of Saint-Marcel and the Loudenois, were appointed to investigate the matter, so that, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... world merry; and whether friend or foe, one party or another, if anything happens so scandalous as to require an open reproof, the world may meet with it there. Accordingly at the end of every paper we find 'Advice for the Scandalous Club: A weekly history of Nonsense, Impertinence, Vice, and Debauchery.'" This contained a considerable amount of indelicacy, and the humour was too much connected with ephemeral circumstances of the times to be very amusing at the present day. The Scandalous Club was a kind of Court of Morals, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... entrance to the harems of the rich, when they were expected after feeling the pulse of some Cashmerian beauty to pronounce her malady, and effect her cure forthwith. The lords of the creation too, debilitated from early dissipation or a life of debauchery, sued for remedies and charms, which, alas! are only to be found in the hundredth edition of a work known by its mysterious advertisement in the columns ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... made their way down the main street, it would have required no great strain upon the imagination to have fancied that the town had recently been carried by assault, and the victorious troops allowed the licence consequent upon street fighting. Even in the few short hours of occupation debauchery had had its way. Drunkenness is the worst attribute of irregular soldiering upon five shillings a-day. If the Colonial has money he will drink. Where the average white man greets a friend and acquaintance with a hand-shake, the South ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... represented as weak and avaricious, capable of any meanness in order to retain the favour of the Court and his military commands, which afforded him the opportunity of amassing enormous wealth. As for Antonina and Theodora, the revelations of the "Secret History" exhibit a mixture of crime and debauchery not less hideous than that displayed by Messalina. Justinian is represented as a monstrous tyrant, at once cunning and stupid, "like an ass," in the the words of the historian, and as the wickedest ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... a morbid love for sweets is an important characteristic. In the adult, laziness, debauchery and cowardice are to be noticed. His signature is peculiar, involved and often adorned with flourishes. He loves to be credited with the performance of great achievements, and will tatoo medals upon his body or other symbols significant ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... is not of itself necessarily a bad thing. This will be particularly clear if the distribution of the responsiveness to alcoholic stimulus is recalled. Some really valuable strains, marked by this susceptibility, may be eliminated through the death of some individuals from debauchery and the penalization of others in preferential mating; this would be avoided if ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... Moravians and Wesleyans formed similar societies among their own people. Independent of the pecuniary assistance which these societies bestow, they encourage in a variety of ways the good order of the community. For example, no one is allowed to receive assistance who is "disabled by drunkenness, debauchery, or disorderly living;" also, "if any member of the society, male or female, is guilty of adultery or fornication, the offending member shall be suspended for so long a time as the members shall see fit, and shall lose all claim on the society for any benefit during the suspension, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of the passing bell and sexton's chisel; upheavals of soul, flights to and from Brussels, interminable years of exile, and of lurid, tragic passion; years, interminable, monotonous years of potato-peeling and all manner of household piety; scenes of debauchery, horrors of opium and of drink; celebrity, cataclysmal celebrity, rushings up to town in storm and darkness, dim coffee-houses in Paternoster Row, dinner-parties; deaths, funerals, melancholia; and still celebrity; years, interminable, monotonous years of blazing celebrity, sounds of the literary ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... Tyburn, in those days, so the street outside Newgate had not obtained one infamous notoriety that has since attached to it. But, the gaol was a vile place, in which most kinds of debauchery and villainy were practised, and where dire diseases were bred, that came into court with the prisoners, and sometimes rushed straight from the dock at my Lord Chief Justice himself, and pulled him off the bench. It had ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... said, is essentially a fighting faith and never shows to full advantage save in the field. The faith and luxury of a wealthy capital, the debauchery and variety of vices which would spring up therein, naturally as weeds in a rich fallow, and the cosmopolitan views which suggest themselves in a meeting-place of nations, were sore trials to the primitive simplicity of the "Religion ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... young man had long been given to drunkenness and debauchery, and that his constitution was undermined by his excesses. The girl pressed her hands together and was silent; but after a few moments' pause she looked up at Reuben, and said, "You have given me courage by this visit. Come again soon. I must to ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... informed in their minds, many feeble in their circumstances, easily overreached, easily seduced. If they are many, the wages of corruption are the lower; and would to God it were not rather a contemptible and hypocritical adulation than a charitable sentiment, to say that there is already no debauchery, no corruption, no bribery, no perjury, no blind fury and interested faction among the electors in many parts of this kingdom!—nor is it surprising, or at all blamable, in that class of private men, when they see their neighbors aggrandized, and themselves ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of Providence be equally enjoyed by all? Away, then, with those absurd systems which to gratify the pride of a few debase the greater part of our species below the order of men. What an affront to the King of the universe, to maintain that the happiness of a monster, sunk in debauchery and spreading desolation and murder among men, of a Caligula, a Nero, or a Charles, is more precious in his sight than that of millions of his suppliant creatures, who do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... the morning they were again mounted, and on the road to Edinburgh, though the pallid visages of some of the troop betrayed that they had spent a night of sleepless debauchery. They halted at Linlithgow, distinguished by its ancient palace, which, Sixty Years since, was entire and habitable, and whose venerable ruins, not quite Sixty Years since, very narrowly escaped the unworthy fate of being converted into a barrack for French prisoners. May repose and blessings attend ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... Europe, that peculiar state of society known as "the feudal system." A great chieftain or lord lived in a strong castle built for defense against neighboring lords. A retinue of soldiers was in immediate attendance, who, when not engaged in war, passed their time in hunting and debauchery. All the expenses and waste of the castle and its occupants were defrayed by the peasants who cultivated the lands, and who were all obliged to take up arms whenever their lord's dominions ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... and prudent parent could send a young lad. Freed suddenly from all parental control, and exposed to the contaminating influence of broken-down gentlemen loafers, who hide their pride and poverty in the woods, he joins in their low debauchery, and falsely imagines that, by becoming a blackguard, he will be ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... there it was—all the data, statistics, and details of the town's debauchery and corruption ... damning, in cold type, the administration, and the aquiescent ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... thee, man, for very shame's sake! Art thou dead to the honor of thy calling, that thou dost wilfully consent to be the victim of wine-bibbing and debauchery? O thou frail soul! how hast thou quenched the heavenly essence within thee! ... why wilt thou be thus self-disgraced and all inglorious? Sah-luma! Sah- luma!"—and he shook him violently by the arm—"Up,—up, thou truant to the faith of Art! ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... subject. The character of the Hollanders is too grossly vicious and detestable to give the least pleasure. They are neither men, nor even devils; but a sort of lubber fiends, compounded of cruelty, avarice, and brutal debauchery, like Dutch swabbers possessed by demons. But of this play the author has himself admitted, that the subject is barren, the persons low, and the writing not heightened by any laboured scenes: and, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... to be found unfailing good sense. His very vices could not repress the clearness, the sincerity of his understanding. At the foot of the tribune, he was a man devoid of shame or virtue: in the tribune, he was an honest man. Abandoned to private debauchery, bought over by foreign powers, sold to the court in order to satisfy his lavish expenditures, he preserved, amidst all this infamous traffic of his powers, the incorruptibility of his genius. Of all the qualities of being the great man ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... heroic Britons had been able to defy the hordes of disciplined soldiers and armed men who, for nearly three months, day and night, had never ceased to attack the position; and the Kaisarbagh, that pretentious, garish palace of the Kings of Oudh, the centre of every kind of evil and debauchery. ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... physical contagion sought to slay the soul as the other strove to destroy the body, so incredible were their deeds, so enormous their depravity! The air was filled with blasphemy and impiety, with the groans of the gluttons and the howling of drunkards. The wildest night hid not greater debauchery than was ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... their excess tends to sensuality and crime. They are not only secretive, appropriative, selfish, and self-defensive, but when redundant are aggressive and tend to destructiveness, the gratification of animal indulgence, intemperance, and debauchery. The correspondence between the cerebral conformation and the physical development is very obvious. Lower orders of animals possess these faculties, and their spontaneous exhibition is called instinct. They possess the acquisitive, destructive, and propagative propensities, which ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... make these places their resort for the best part of the night, and participate in the recklessness and debauchery that has its ending only in an early death and the "Potter's Field," nothing remains to be said, except that they are the same as thousands leading similar lives in other cities of the world. The victims first of man's perfidy, through ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... and judge, contradicts and offends the spirit of license to the quick. This is why it is hated; this is why it is to be destroyed, and why they are preparing a future of rebellion, tyranny, falsehood, and degrading debauchery. The Church alone can save us, and you are asked to supplicate the Almighty to-night, under circumstances of deep hope, to favor the union of churchmen, and save the human race ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... districts of London, and had found them destitute of the slightest vestige of a muffin, which there appeared too much reason to believe some of these indigent persons did not taste from year's end to year's end. He had found that among muffin-sellers there existed drunkenness, debauchery, and profligacy, which he attributed to the debasing nature of their employment as at present exercised; he had found the same vices among the poorer class of people who ought to be muffin consumers; and this he attributed to the despair engendered by their being placed beyond the reach of ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... were spent in debauchery, Arthur managed, as a general thing, to fill his place through the day faithfully; and since the sudden demise of clerks in the establishment, it ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... ." he said to Psyekov, "there it is! . . . a gentleman, and a well-to-do one, too . . . a favourite of the gods, one may say, to use Pushkin's expression, and what has he made of it? Nothing! He gave himself up to drinking and debauchery, and . . . here now . . . he has ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... evil genius of man is man: my disposition changed from listening constantly [to their pernicious advice.] Wine, dancing, and gaming occupied my time. At last matters came to such a pitch, that, forgetting my commercial concerns, a mania for debauchery and gambling came over me. My servants and companions, when they perceived my careless habits, secreted all they could lay hand on; one might say a systematic plunder took place. No account was kept of the money which was squandered; from whence it ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... man must feel that he can thoroughly trust and reverence the woman,—the woman must feel the same towards the man. And the sense of 'reverence' is perhaps the best and most binding quality. But nowadays what woman will you find worth reverence?—what man so free from drink and debauchery as to command it? The human beings of our day are often less respectable than the beasts! I can imagine love,—what it might be—what it should be—but till we have a very different and more spiritualised world, the ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... tarnished, by his profligacy, the proud name that he bears. Even the friendship which existed for many, many years between his deceased father and myself, shall no longer induce me to receive at this house a young man whose reputation is all but tainted, even in a city of dissipation and debauchery, such as, alas! the once glorious Florence has become! For his immorality is not confined to gaming and wanton extravagance," continued the count, his glance becoming more keen, as his words fell like drops of molten lead upon ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... there are fewer dishes, there are fewer diseases; if there is less noise, there is also less sadness, and more pure joy. I was surprised at the calmness and the delightful tranquillity that reigned here, so little resembling what I had found below. Instead of swearing and cursing, buffoonery, debauchery, and drunkenness; instead of pride and vanity, torpor in the one corner, and riot in the other; instead of all the loud broiling, and the boasting and bustling, and chattering, which were incessantly stupifying ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... character of the court changed entirely; retaining only a semblance of its former decency, it became utterly corrupt. It possessed external elegance and distingue manners, but below this veneer lay intrigue, debauchery, and gross immorality. In order to meet the vast expenditures of the king and the queen-mother, the taxes were enormously increased; the people, weighed down by the unjust assessment and by want, began to clamor and protest. Undismayed by famine, poverty, and epidemic, Louise continued ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... in all the leading public buildings, columns generally forming the external, and arches the internal construction. Fabric after fabric arose on the ruins of others. The Flavii supplanted the edifices of Nero, which ministered to debauchery, by ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... to the eye as that many superficial folks think virtue tame and vice exhilarating. Here lies the difficulty. They look on those parts which are contiguous to vice, but are really not parts of it. In the self of vice is nothing attractive. Lying, lust, envy, hate, debauchery,—which of these is not tainted? Penuriousness is vice unadorned, and who thinks it fair? Like Spenser's "false Duessa," it is revolting. Drunkenness, bestiality, spleen,—what roseate views shall you take of these? Who admires Caliban? And Caliban is vice, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... mankind have to show; whereas the history of their successive alien establishments of mastery and usufruct is an unbroken sequence of incredibly shameful episodes,—always beginning in unbounded power and vainglory, running by way of misrule, waste and debauchery, to an inglorious finish in abject corruption and imbecility. Always have the gains in civilisation, industry and in the arts, been made by the subject Chinese, and always have their alien masters ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... society, poisoned at once the source 220of morals and of manners; for there can be nothing gentlemanlike in atheism, radicalism, and the level, ling system. To this state of things succeeded a reign of terror, assassination, and debauchery; and lastly, a military despotism, in which the private soldier rose to the marshals baton; a groom in the stables of the Prince of Conde saw himself ennobled; peers and generals had brothers still keeping little retail shops; and a drum-boy lived to see his wife—a washerwoman, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... revenue, and a composition is paid into the treasury of the society. Therefore one may say, as was said of Cleomenes, that, in this respect, his lordship was ultimus herorum, the last of the heroes. And the profusion of the best provisions, and wine, was to the worst of purposes—debauchery, disorder, tumult, and waste. I will give but one instance; upon the grand day, as it was called, a banquet was provided to be set upon the table, composed of pyramids, and smaller services in form. The first pyramid ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... age. We must not be misled by his exclusive references to poesia, as closer observation shows that he means thereby the whole mental activity of the poet-scholars. This it is whose enemies he so vigorously combats—the frivolous ignoramuses who have no soul for anything but debauchery; the sophistical theologian to whom Helicon, the Castalian fountain, and the grove of Apollo were foolishness; the greedy lawyers, to whom poetry was a superfluity, since no money was to be made by it; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... you not content with the name you bear, sir?" 'Our name is good as any in the three kingdoms,' said I, with truth. 'Then you would have me, for the sake of the coronet, joined to a wretch who is steeped in debauchery. Yes, debauchery, sir! You might then talk, forsooth, to the macaronies of Maryland, of your ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Irish"? And if they were lazy—which I entirely deny—who made them so? Had they no justification for their "laziness"? Why should they wear their lives out so that a rapacious landlord whom they never saw should live in riotousness and debauchery in the hells of ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... borrowed largely from the doctrines of the "divine men," made great use of this strange idea of "spiritual love" in bringing about the triumph of debauchery in the highest ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... services in various parts of the empire, he succeeded A.D. 14; his reign was distinguished by acts of cruelty, specially at the instance of the minister Sejanus, whom out of jealousy he put to death; given up to debauchery, he was suffocated in a fainting fit by the captain of the Praetorian Guards in A.D. 37, and succeeded by Caligula; it was during ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... been part of her spoils. The Pantheon had become a lupanar of divinities that presided over birth, and whose rites were obscene; an abattoir of gods that presided over death, and whose worship was gore. To please them was easy. Blood and debauchery was all that was required. That the upper classes had no faith in them at all goes without the need of telling; the atmosphere of their atriums dripped with metaphysics. But of the atheism of the upper classes the people knew nothing; they clung piously to a faith which held a theological justification ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... by practically adopting the maxim that "dead men tell no tales," enable themselves to pursue their diabolical career with impunity. The pirate is truly fond of women and wine, and when not engaged in robbing, keeps maddened with intoxicating liquors, and passes his time in debauchery, singing old ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... won't undertake to decide; only in all his behaviour with the fair sex he was extremely delicate. Women felt this, and were the more ready to sympathise with him and help him, until at last he revolted them by his drunkenness and debauchery, by the desperateness of which I have spoken already.... I can think of no other word ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... made no attempt to palliate or tone down anything that told against himself. He admitted that upon reaching New York he had entered upon a career of wild dissipation. He drank, gambled and indulged in debauchery to such an extent that in less than six weeks he had got pretty nearly to the end of his four hundred pounds. He assumed a false name and carefully abstained from ever looking at the newspapers, so that he remained in ignorance of all that had taken place in the neighborhood ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... the Greek and Roman writers with diligence and success, and early imbibed that love of literature and art by which he was distinguished throughout his life. But he was also fond of pleasure, and was conspicuous even among the Romans for licentiousness and debauchery. He was in every respect a contrast to Marius. He possessed all the accomplishments and all the vices which the old Cato had been most accustomed to denounce, and he was one of those advocates of Greek literature and of Greek ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... in Huronia. The chiefs of Oenrio invited the Jesuits to their village. But Brebeuf's demands were heavy. They should believe in God; keep His commandments; abjure their faith in dreams; take one wife and be true to her; renounce their assemblies of debauchery; eat no human flesh; never give feasts to demons; and make a vow that if God would deliver them from the pest they would build a chapel to offer Him thanksgiving and praise. They were ready to make the vow regarding the chapel, but the other conditions were too severe—the pest was ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... not defend nor seek to hide the poet's aberrations; he confessed them remorselessly, and condemned himself. But we do raise our voice against the exaggeration of occasional over-indulgence into confirmed debauchery; and dare assert that Burns was as sober a man as the average lairds and ministers who had the courage of their prejudices, and wrote themselves ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... of that superior knowledge with which the Almighty, the common Parent of mankind, had favoured them, to strengthen the principle of peace and good will in the breasts of the incautious Negroes, the Europeans have, by their bad example, led them into excess of drunkenness, debauchery, and avarice; whereby every passion of corrupt nature being inflamed, they have been easily prevailed upon to make war, and captivate one another; as well to furnish means for the excesses they had been habituated to, as to satisfy the greedy desire of gain in their profligate employers, who ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... vicious, and many damaging stories were known of him. He was one of Nana's admirers, and after a visit to her he was struck by sudden imbecility and semi-paralysis, the result of sixty years of debauchery. Nana. ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... rivalry between him and his elder brother, which had begun during their last joint campaigns in France, crystallised into definite parties the discordant tendencies that had been well marked since the crisis of 1371. The old king was a mere pawn in the game. His health had been broken by the debauchery and frivolity to which he had abandoned himself after the death of Queen Philippa. He was now entirely under the influence of Alice Perrers, a Hertfordshire squire's daughter, whose venality, greed, and shamelessness made her the fit tool ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... manual trades were largely represented, with the exception of that of tailor, which was exercised by only one member of the community. At one time, out of 9,584 beggars in the town of Bombay, there were only five Parsis and one Parsi woman. As to the class of the unfortunate victims of vice and debauchery, a Parsi has not hesitated to affirm that not one of his co-religionists could have been accused of living on the wages of shame. [78] Travellers have made the same remarks. Thus, according to Mandelslo, adultery and lewdness were considered by the Parsis as ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... that Man deserve? to whom his Fate; Has given an ample Stock or an Estate? (That has, perhaps, besides a tender Wife; Yet into Riot and Excess do's fall, And in debauchery consumes it all? And to his Sure Destruction makes such hast; He do's in Body, with his Substance waste: Lives till he want what he had misemply'd And is like one that God had ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... made sail for Jamaica—capturing another ship on the voyage laden with merchandise and a large amount of money in pieces of eight. Remaining on shore long enough to dissipate their booty in the usual round of drunkenness and debauchery which characterized the buccaneers when not upon the wave, Braziliano and his companions put to sea again, directing their course to his old haunts about Campeachy. Shortly after his arrival, while looking into the port, in a small boat, to espy what ships were offering for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the brutal, blustering speeches addressed by his father to the helpless, trembling peasants, and witnessed the cruel, degrading corporal punishments he inflicted upon them, while his eyes were speedily opened to his father's addiction to drinking, gambling, and debauchery. These experiences would most certainly have demoralised and depraved his childish mind had it not been for the powerful influence the refined and cultured mother had from the first exercised upon her ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... received from him, and the attempt to save the bridge foremost in my mind, I found excuse for lack of the finer feelings. And, too, what would it benefit had he been saved? His life was spent in debauchery, the gambling table and plots to overthrow any government where a leader in opposition to the ruling power would promise him a ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... from London to Oxford is so easily performed, it is amusing to read of Prideaux's miserable adventures, in the diligence, between a lady of easy manners, a "pitiful rogue," and two undergraduates who "sordidly affected debauchery." ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... scarce 40,000 men. It is true that this army had been, during its seven years' conflicts in Italy, Greece, and Asia, weaned from politics, and adhered to its general—who pardoned everything in his soldiers, debauchery, brutality, even mutiny against their officers, required nothing but valour and fidelity towards their general, and set before them the prospect of the most extravagant rewards in the event of victory—with all that soldierly enthusiasm, which is the more powerful that the noblest and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Olivier de Daim and Tristan, the king went to the house of the Fleming for those diversions with which King Louis XI. diverted himself. History has taken care to transmit to our knowledge the licentious tastes of a monarch who was not averse to debauchery. The old Fleming found, no doubt, both pleasure and profit in lending himself to the capricious pleasures of his ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... denunciations fell, were hidalgos of high birth, reduced by reckless courses to expatriate themselves in search of fortunes with which to return and resume their extravagances in Spain; contemptuous of all forms of labour, they passed their enforced exile in gambling, dicing, and debauchery in the company of their Indian mistresses, chosen among the native beauties. They alternately courted the favour of the Viceroy or intrigued against him as seemed most profitable to their interests; they displayed few of the virtues and most of the vices common ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... brought from the Tauric Chersonese and also for the Brauronia, festivals that were celebrated every four years in honour of the goddess. This was one of the festivals which the Attic people kept with the greatest pomp, and was an occasion for debauchery. ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... accordingly made Grand Vizier of that Prince, and ruled the state with some advantage: but, in a science still more difficult, he failed completely. He could not rule his own passions, but gave himself up to wine and women, and led a life of shameless debauchery. Amid the multifarious pursuits of business and pleasure, he nevertheless found time to write seven treatises upon the philosopher's stone, which were for many ages looked upon as of great value by pretenders to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Younger succeeded to the government of Syracuse in 367, but he was incompetent to the task; and his tyranny and debauchery brought about his temporary overthrow, ten years later, by Dion, his father's brother-in-law. Dion had enjoyed unusual favors under Dionysius the Elder, and was now a man of wealth and high position, as well as of great energy and marked mental capacities. For his talents ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... of all this, many scenes of wild orgies and debauchery still went on within its gates—as, in our own day, when the cholera ravaged Paris, the inhabitants of that facetious city made it a carnival, so now, in London, they were many who, feeling they had but a few days ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... historian fully tallies with the denunciation of the Hebrew prophets against the sin and wickedness of Babylon. Her inhabitants had gradually lost their warlike character. When the Persian broke into their city they were reveling in debauchery and lust; and when the Macedonian conqueror appeared at their gates, they received with indifference the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... training; and here is a man seventy years of age who had a noble father and mother, who gave their boy every advantage, the best of training, under the best of influences; yet he when a boy turned away from all these influences and spent his life in sin and debauchery, and in leading others into sin. These two, the unfortunate boy and the old hardened sinner, die. With many the idea is that God consigns them to a common punishment in Hell. But, reader, remember that God is just; and if that is ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... parents. Sterile, dissipated and prodigal, she made her husband very unhappy, thus avenging the first Mme. Brunner. She was a step-mother of the most abominable sort, launching her stepson into an unbridled life, hoping that debauchery would devour both the child and the Jewish fortune. After ten years of wedded life she died before her parents, having made great inroads upon ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... makes Timo'leon victorious over the Syracusans (that is historically correct); and he makes Euphrasia stab Dionysius the Younger, whereas he retreated to Corinth, and spent his time in debauchery, but supported himself by keeping a school. Of his death nothing is known, but certainly he was not stabbed to death ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... respect. The "Aurora's" own correspondent sent to his paper a favorable sketch of Paine's appearance, manner, and conversation: He was "proud to find a man whom he had admired free from the contaminations of debauchery and the habits of inebriety which have been so grossly and falsely sent abroad concerning him." But the enemy had ten guns to Paine's one, and served them with all the fierceness of party-hate. A shower of abusive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... muttering its remonstrances at seasons of the deepest gloom and depression. Henry VIII. might have heard that voice mingling with the groans of his victims; Charles II. could not altogether shut it out from the scenes of his midnight revel and debauchery. But no such hopeful contrast meets us in the features or the history of the neighboring continent. Democracy, it is true, the rough and hardy growth of the German forests, struck an earlier root and flourished at first with better promise there than in England. But this different fortune ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... of mystic nonsense which these two fair ones debate incessantly, and consequently cannot figure what must be the issue of this triple alliance: we have some idea of it. Only figure the coalition of prudery, debauchery, sentiment, history, Greek, Latin, French, Italian and metaphysics; all, except the second, understood by halves, by quarters, or not at all. You shall have the journals of this notable academy." Walpole sent, some seven weeks later, an account of the lady to the Hon. Henry Seymour Conway: "Did ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... it my business to know what is going on, Mr Cargrim,' replied the lady, much gratified, 'in order to stem the torrent of infidelity, debauchery, lying and flattery ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... great belly, or hump, constructed of straw or hay underneath his blouse. Then he is known as the "ragamuffin," on account of his covering of rags. Lastly he is termed the "infidel," and this is most significant of all, because by his cynicism and his debauchery he is supposed to typify the opposite of every ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... in their early teens, and toothless hags, decrepit and faltering. Faces which, in wild loveliness, might have vied with the white beauty of the daughters of the East. Faces seared and crumpled with weight of years and nights of debauchery. Men were there of superb physique, whilst others crouched huddled, with shuffling gait towards the manger seats, to seek rest for their rotting bones, and ease for ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... of carouses, in the crowd of people, seized by debauchery, perplexed by violent passions, half-crazy in their longing to forget themselves—only Sasha was calm and contained. She never drank to intoxication, always addressed people in a firm, authoritative voice, and all her movements were equally confident, ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... is not only filled with a wealth of detailed information concerning the period, it not only tells the story of political debauchery, ignorance and fraud; but notes also the few shreds of constructive work done by the legislators under the coercion of public opinion. All of these facts are put together in a logical manner and show that the author is not only gifted with keen ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... death the body is kept several days, and there is a grand concourse of both sexes, with beating of drums, dances, and debauchery, kept up with feasting, etc., according to the means of the relatives. The great ambition of many of the blacks of Angola is to give their friends an expensive funeral. Often, when one is asked to sell a pig, he ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... confusion of the tunes has set against the law and authority of rulers be better counselled; or, if not, strengthen us so to deal with these young men as shall make pure again Thy sheepfold, that they be no longer a means of leading others into wickedness and debauchery." I heard no more. This man was a close friend of my father. I knew but too well that it was I who was thus reproved, and thus put to shame. I looked this way and that, the hot blood in my face, thinking to escape. Custom held me. I caught, as I stared, furtive glances from some of the younger ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... their elections," Dolly went on, smilingly. "But the women of the present day wouldn't stand it. They would change it right away. They wouldn't continue giving the men an excuse two or three times a year to engage in all that carnage and debauchery for no rational reason. Do you know the sort of election the women will hold, Warren, if they ever ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... of fact, most of the Indians are demoralised, especially those who live in or near the towns, and they live in a state of degradation and perpetual debauchery. Though it is a legal offence to supply them with liquor, they nevertheless manage to get drunk at all times and seasons. When they work they are not to be relied on to continue at it steadily, and when drunk they ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... It may, nevertheless, happen, that an avaricious, an ambitious, or a timid man may abstain from excess in eating, drinking, or sexual indulgence, yet avarice, ambition, and fear are not contraries to luxury, drunkenness, and debauchery. For an avaricious man often is glad to gorge himself with food and drink at another man's expense. An ambitious man will restrain himself in nothing, so long as he thinks his indulgences are secret; and if he lives among drunkards and debauchees, he will, ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... an actual fact, involuntary loss of vital fluid (spermatorrhea), is a rare case even in the practice of specialists in genito-urinary diseases, and in these rare cases, the condition is usually a result of very great excesses, sexual debauchery or one of the sequelae of venereal disease. [Read: ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... and the guns never missing fire. But the geographer has followed the earth round, and found no Homer's elysium. Voyagers have traversed the deep in all directions, and found no Hesiod's islands of the blessed. The Mohammedan's celestial debauchery and the Indian's eternal hunting-ground for vast multitudes have no charm. But here rolls in the Bible heaven. No more sea—that is, no wide separation. No more night—that is, no insomnia. No more tears—that is, no heart-break. No more pain—that is, dismissal of lancet and bitter draught and miasma, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... and called a glorious good follow, because he is so lavish of his money. He gives his game suppers, drives his fast horses, invites his chums to fetes and parties, determined to have lots of "good times." He spends the night in frolics and debauchery, and leads off his companions with the familiar song, "we won't go home till morning." He gets them to join him in pulling down signs, taking gates from their hinges and throwing them into back yards and horse-ponds. If the police ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... seeming to extend over the whole land, affected nobles and people with its baleful influence. All law was at an end: the people, even while they murmured against the King, followed his evil example; and history shrinks from the scenes of debauchery and licentiousness, robbery and murder, which desecrated the land. But this state of things could not last long, while there still remained some noble hearts amongst the Castilians. Five years after their marriage, the Queen was said to have given birth to a daughter, whom Henry declared ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... feeble. In truth he had no great ability of any kind, but dauntless courage and high animal spirits. Nor should we deny him another much rarer praise,—a vein of good humor and kindliness, which did not forsake him through all his long career, amidst the riot of debauchery or the rancor of faction. So agreeable and insinuating was his conversation, that more than one fair dame as she listened found herself forget his sinister squint and his ill-favored countenance. He used to say of himself in a laughing strain, that though he was the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... great war, the waste of unheard-of sums of money, the giving of contracts involving millions by which fortunes were made in a night, the riot of speculation and debauchery by those who tried to get rich suddenly without labour, had created a new Capital of the Nation. The vulture army of the base, venal, unpatriotic, and corrupt, which had swept down, a black cloud, in wartime to take advantage of the misfortunes of the ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... capitalist regime! Who could see courts and congresses bought and sold; who could see children ground up in mills and factories, and women driven by the lash of want to sell their bodies; who could see the surplus of the world's wealth squandered in riot and debauchery, and the nations armed and drilled and sent out to slaughter each other in the quest for more. Who could know that all these things existed, and yet remain in their cloistered halls and pursue the placid ways of scholarship; ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... seems to have been said among the conspirators in regard to any plans of riot or debauchery, subsequent to the capture of the city. Either their imaginations did not dwell on them, or the witnesses did not dare to give testimony, or the authorities to print it. Death was to be dealt out, comprehensive and terrible; but nothing more is mentioned. ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... influence of vice, poverty, filth, debauchery, foul air, poorly prepared food and crowded dwellings, or in low, damp localities, with no rule regulating their eating or sleeping, clothing or exercise, is sure to have a great degree ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... seemly in the world than to see a Christian walk as becomes the gospel; nor anything more unbecoming a reasonable creature, than to hear a man say, 'I believe in Christ,' and yet see in his life debauchery and profaneness. Might I, such men should be counted the basest of men; such men should be counted by all unworthy of the name of a Christian, and should be shunned by every good man, as such who are the very plague of profession. For so ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... as a candidate for a scholarship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and passed a very creditable examination, though he failed in obtaining the election. Eight years later, we find him congratulating himself in his journal on thus having escaped the "scenes of debauchery" to which his "profligate acquaintances" might have introduced him. Was Corpus very much changed, when, only eleven years after, John Keble entered it at the same age? Was it that Martyn's Cornish schoolfellows ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... unequalled throne, his face sickly pale with boyish debauchery; his young fore head worn with the premature sensual wrinkles of lust; and his eyes bloodshot with last night's intemperance. He sits there, the Emperor-boy, vainly trying to excite himself, and forget her, in the blazonry of that pomp, and bids ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... worst of his companions. He returns home to find his father dead: and having had a substantial income left him already by an aunt, with the practical control of his mother's resources, he goes on living entirely a sa guise. This involves no positive debauchery or ruination, but includes smoking (then, it must be remembered, almost as great a crime in French as in English middle-class circles), playing at billiards (ditto), and a free use of strong drink and strong language. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the two extremes, no doubt can be made, that Blackmore's was the safest, and even dullness in favour of virtue (which, by the way, was not the case with Sir Richard) is more tolerable than the brightest parts employed in the cause of lewdness and debauchery. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... history of all wars proves that war engenders such hatred, recklessness, and immorality that fighters have come out of the conflict more godless than when they entered. The veterans of our own Civil War bear abundant testimony to the debauchery of youth during the four long ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... Scotland reminded Mrs. Montagu of the vigour of Salvator Rosa, combined with the grace of Claude Lorraine! At the age of nineteen, already affianced to Miss Warburton, he went on the Grand Tour, and excelled the ordinary model of young debauchery abroad. Mr. James Boswell found a Circe at Siena, Lyttelton found Circes everywhere. He returned to England in 1765; and that learned lady, Mrs. Carter, the translator of Epictetus, 'admired his talents and elegant manners, as much as she ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... occasionally indulged himself in amours unworthy of his character and tormenting to his wife; but he never suffered any other female to possess influence over his mind, nor insulted public opinion by any approach to that system of unveiled debauchery which had, during whole ages, disgraced the Bourbon Court, and undermined ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... a household word throughout all England for every sort of mischief. Wine, women, dice, cards, racing—in all forms of debauchery he had earned for himself a terrible name. He was of an old and noble family, and it had been hoped that he had sowed his wild oats when he married ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... negro slaves, who till the fields and crowd the workshops of our towns, to the entire exclusion of free labour; for the free population, or rather the miserable relics of them, disdain all manual employment: they divide their time between starvation and a degrading debauchery, the means for which are sedulously provided by the government. The time-honoured institutions of the bull-bait, the cockpit, and the ring, are in daily operation, under the most distinguished patronage. Hyde Park has ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... without intermission. The director's receptions were signalized by the performance of insipid cavatinas, and from these, as from his companions' revels in which he would sometimes indulge with the maddest debauchery as if to kill his own thoughts, he would escape to wander in the majestic ruins of the Coliseum and see the magic Italian moonlight shimmer through its broken arches, or stroll on the lonely Campagna till ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... friends to unite with you in committing those odious instruments of debauchery to the flames in which ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... riches was his ignorance of flash kens where he might fence his plunder. Meanwhile he painted his soul black with wickedness. Such hours as he could snatch from the profitable conduct of his trade he devoted to the austere debauchery of Leith or the Golden Acre. Though he knew not the seduction of whisky, he missed never a dance nor a raffle, joining the frolics of prigs and callets in complete forgetfulness of the shorter catechism. In vain the kirk compared him to a 'bottle in the smoke'; in vain the minister whispered ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... licentiousness. Every temple was the resort of the idle and the dissolute, and the shrines of the Cyprian Venus and the Athenian Minerva could attest that devotion, far from being a pure and exalted exercise of the mind, was only the introduction to dissoluteness and debauchery. ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various
... he had too little of an artist's passion for perfection. His longest narrative in prose, the Confession d'un Enfant du Siecle, has borne the lapse of time ill. "J'y ai vomi la verite," he said. It is not the happiest way of communicating truth, and the moral of the book, that debauchery ends in cynicism, was not left for Musset to discover. Some of his shorter tales have the charm of fancy or the charm of tenderness, with breathings of nature here, and there the musky fragrance of a Louis-Quinze boudoir. Pierre et Camille, with its deaf-and-dumb lovers, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... and son, were silent, patient, and submissive to the will of God, like folk whose wont it is to fall in instinctively with the ways of Nature like cattle. At the one end of the boat stood riches, pride, learning, debauchery, and crime—human society, such as art and thought and education and worldly interests and laws have made it; and at this end there was terror and wailing, innumerable different impulses all repressed by hideous doubts—at this ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... form the atmosphere of such a place, is not the less liable to become the bond-slave of the coarsest and most brutal,—just as a chair or table, which once decorated the superb saloon, comes, at last, battered and defaced, to the barroom of some filthy tavern, or some low haunt of vulgar debauchery. The great difference is, that the table and chair cannot feel, and the man can; for even a legal enactment that he shall be "taken, reputed, adjudged in law, to be a chattel personal," cannot blot out his soul, with its own private little world of memories, hopes, loves, fears, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the fanatic in eating appears! Miserably hot with gluttonous debauchery. He has feasted upon a thousand deaths! Belshazzar's court fed on fish of every type, birds of every flight, brutes of every clime, and added thereto each finer luxury known in the catalogue of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... and invoker of demons, and it is said would not scruple to have recourse to the most disgusting brutalities for the gratification of his avarice and debauchery. In Weaver's Funereal Monuments, it is recorded that Kelly, in company with one Paul Waring, went to the churchyard of Walton-le-Dale, near Preston, where a person was interred at that time supposed to have hidden a large sum of money, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... the simple innocent delights of home, sick of the companionship of gentle sisters, the love of a fond mother, and wishing to be back again at the old uproarious wine-parties, the drunken orgies, the card-playing and prize-fighting, the extravagance and debauchery of the bad set in ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... moral good and evil. Giving alms to common beggars is naturally praised; because it seems to carry relief to the distressed and indigent; but when we observe the encouragement thence arising to idleness and debauchery, we regard that species of charity rather as a weakness than a virtue. Tyrannicide, or the assassination of usurpers and oppressive princes, was highly extolled in ancient times; because it both freed mankind from many of these monsters, and seemed to keep the others in ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... out-of-the-way places, and the most lovely countries, and spent months and months at sea, and plunged into every kind of dissipation and debauchery. But neither the supple forms nor the luxurious gestures of the bayaderes, nor the large passive eyes of the Creoles, nor flirtations with English girls with hair the color of new cider, nor nights of waking dreams, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... Debauchery of all kinds, murder in all forms, were the daily matter of excitement or of jest to the brilliant circle which revolved around Queen Catherine de' Medici. After ten years' training under the tutelage of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... that would have made happy the soul of any writer of romances; but to Thyrsis in earliest childhood the fates had given the gift of seeing beneath the shams of things, and to him this dead Aristocracy cried out loudly for burial. There was an incredible amount of drunkenness, and of debauchery scarcely hidden; there was pretense strutting like a peacock, and avarice skulking like a hound; there were jealousy, and base snobbery, and raging spite, and a breath of suspicion and scandal ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... to burst his bondage. But in vain—he was fast fettered; and only bruised himself, like the caged lark, against the bars of his prison-house. Abandoning all further effort at emancipation, he gave himself up to the usual resource of a weak mind, debauchery; and drank so deeply to drown his cares, that, in the end, his hale constitution yielded to his excesses. It was even said, that remorse at his abandonment of the faith of his fathers had some share in his misery; and that his old ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth |
